Budgeting versus implementing fiscal policy:the Italian case

The budgeting process has been recently reformed in Italy (L. 196/2009) in order to improve control of budget and transparency in the provision of clear information on government fiscal policy. Indeed, the general government final expenditures often deviate significantly from the initial forecasted amounts. Therefore, although the initial budget is often formulated in contractionary stance compared with the previous year’s final account, the final outcome turns out to be expansionary. As a consequence, confidence in the reliability of expenditure estimates in the initial budget and in the value of the initial budget as an indicator of the stance of fiscal policy have been undermined. Using real-time data for Italy, reported in the Relazione Previsionale e Programmatica (RPP) and in the Relazione Unificata sull’Economia e la Finanza Pubblica (RUEF), we explore fiscal plans and their implementation for GDP and general government aggregated and disaggregated items of revenue, expenditure and budget balance over the period 1998-2009. Both reports are employed with the aim of measuring the budgetary policy implementation error, following the methodology of Beetsma et al. (2009). We focus on the first year of the fiscal plans because budgetary slippages mainly occur in this year (Balassone et al. 2010). The main findings suggest that implemented budgetary adjustment falls systematically short of planned adjustment for GDP, for primary balance and overall balance. Actually, the main determinants of the implementation error of both primary and overall balance are the expenditures, in particular, the capital expenditures. Moreover, it seems that errors in macroeconomic forecasts cannot be considered the driving force of the budgetary slippages. Our results are in line with the strand of literature (von Hagen 1992; von Hagen and Harden 1994; Alesina and Perotti 1999; Tanaka 2003) according to which credible plans are the conditio sine qua non for healthy budget outcomes and resorting fiscal transparency and accountability. To improve public budgeting in Italy, we deem necessary a renewed commitment by policy makers in term of planning and control of public expenditures.fiscal plans; real-time data; implementation; budget process; expenditure and revenue; Italy

The Role of Father Involvement and Marital Satisfaction in the Development of Family Interactive Abilities: A Multilevel Approach.

The study aims to investigate the development of family interactions from pregnancy to preschool age in a longitudinal perspective, using multilevel analysis. Also, it explored the impact of couple relationship and father involvement in childcare on the developmental trend of the quality of mother\u2013father\u2013child interactions. One hundred and three primiparous families were assessed at 7th month of pregnancy, 4th, 9th, and 18th months of child\u2019s life and during preschool age (36\u201348th), using the observational procedure named, Lausanne Trilogue Play. Parents\u2019 perception of marital satisfaction was assessed with the Dyadic Adjustment Scale at each point of measure; moreover, in the postnatal assessment, parents completed the Father Involvement Questionnaire. Results showed that family interactions increase over time. Secondly, a decrease of marital adjustment is associated with an improvement of the quality of family interactions. Moreover, father involvement predicts the quality of family interactions from the earliest stages of child\u2019s life. In a longitudinal perspective, family interactions and marital quality show opposite developmental trends and father\u2019s involvement represents a particularly important feature of the family

Development of a petroleum knowledge tutorial system for university and corporate training

The increasingly rapid development of the disciplines of petroleum engineering and petroleum geology has led to new methodologies and interpretation techniques forming new knowledge that should be offered quickly and efficiently to modern engineers and geologists. This need is equally important for students as well as for young professionals. Access and training to all scientific information is necessary to ensure success in their future careers. Today, e-learning has become a common medium for the management and distribution of on-line educational content. Learning Management Systems (LMSs) were not only developed to handle a large variety of multimedia content that provides an organized knowledge repository used to accelerate access to information and skill acquisition; but, LMSs can also keep detailed statistics on the use of the available material offering a powerful training and educational tool. In this document, the Petroleum Knowledge Tutorial System, an LMS platform offering a variety of online educational and training options to petroleum engineers and geologists, is presented. It was created using Moodle, open-source software that can be used to create on-line courses. The platform covers fundamental educational concepts in a structured way. It follows an optimized "workflow" that can be applied not only to solve a specific exercise but also any similar problem encountered over the course of one's career. The platform was designed to offer a repository of learning material in various forms and to favor user-platform interactions. It can be used for training and evaluation purposes through exercises and problem solving that the user can perform online by using browsing software along with internet access. Special tools were created and implemented on the platform to assist the user in completing a variety of tasks including performing exercises involving calculations with given data and plots of points or lines on graphs without leaving the learning environment. Furthermore, videos with detailed explanations follow each learning module and provide the full solution to every exercise. The LMS automatically keeps a large statistical database including the users' access to activities on the platform that can be exported and further processed to improve the platform functionality and evaluate the users' performance

HOW TO APPROACH SUBSIDENCE EVALUATION FOR MARGINAL FIELDS: A CASE HISTORY

This paper presents the evaluation of the subsidence potentially induced by underground storage of natural gas in a marginal depleted field located in Southern Italy. The critical aspect of the study was the lack of data because economic and logistic reasons had restricted data acquisition at the regional scale to perform a geomechanical study. This limitation was overcome by accurately gathering the available data from public sources so that the geometry of a largescale 3D model could be defined and the formations properly characterized for rock deformation analysis. Well logs, seismic data and subsidence surveys at the regional scale, available in open databases and in the technical literature, were integrated with the available geological and fluid-flow information at the reservoir scale. First of all, a 3D geological model, at the regional scale, incorporating the existing model of the reservoir was developed to describe the key features of a large subsurface volume while preserving the detail of the storage reservoir. Then, a regional geomechanical model was set up for coupled mechanic and fluid-flow analyses. The stress and strain evolution and the associated subsidence induced in the reservoir and surrounding formations by historical primary production as well as future gas storage activities were investigated. Eventually, the obtained results were validated against the measurements of ground surface movements available from the technical literature for the area of interest, thus corroborating the choice of the most critical geomechanical parameters and relevant deformation properties of the rocks affecting subsidence

Art as Complement of Philosophy

Art and aesthetic experience, as well as the nature of depiction, representations and images, are crucial topics in the ongoing multifaceted debate at the interface between philosophy of perception, aesthetics, philosophy of mind and neuroscience.This issue collects the papers presented at San Raffaele Spring School of Philosophy and International Conference 2017 and investigates the mentioned topics, together with other related ones, by locating them in the more general framework concerning the relation between perception and cognition.In this introductory chapter, we provide some sketches of this multidisciplinary field of inquiry together with an overview of the materials collected in the issue

MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry profiling of bovine skim milk for subclinical mastitis detection

INTRODUCTION: Mastitis is one of most impacting health issues in bovine dairy farming that reduces milk yield and quality, leading to important economic losses. Subclinical forms of the disease are routinely monitored through the measurement of somatic cell count (SCC) and microbiological tests. However, their identification can be tricky, reducing the possibilities of early treatments. In this study, a MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry approach was applied to milk samples collected from cows classified according to the SCC, to identify differences in polypeptide/protein profiles. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twenty-nine raw milk samples with SCC >200,000 cell/ml (group H) and 91 samples with SCC lower than 200,000 (group L) were randomly collected from 12 dairy farms. Spectral profiles from skim milk were acquired in the positive linear mode within the 4,000–20,000 m/z mass acquisition range. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Based on signal intensity, a total of 24 peaks emerged as significant different between the two groups. The most discriminant signals (4,218.2 and 4,342.98 m/z) presented a ROC curve with AUC values higher than 0.8. Classification algorithms (i.e., quick classifier, genetic algorithm, and supervised neural network) were applied for generating models able to classify new spectra (i.e., samples) into the two classes. Our results support the MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry profiling as a tool to detect mastitic milk samples and to potentially discover biomarkers of the disease. Thanks to its rapidity and low-cost, such method could be associated with the SCC measurement for the early diagnosis of subclinical mastitis

A Practical Application of Genomic Predictions for Mastitis Resistance in Italian Holstein Heifers

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Selecting the best animals for farms has always been a fundamental aspect of animal breeding. To assist in the traditional selection performed on phenotypes and to further improve genetic selection as performed in recent years, genomic tools could be applied to select animals early in their productive careers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the application of a commercial genomic tool on animals selected from farms grouped by their average somatic cell count. The obtained results showed that farms with good animal management practices also rear animals with better genomic indexes, probably due to selection on other well-established indexes (e.g., productive traits). Selecting heifers based on their wellness genomic indexes would further improve both their economic value and their disease resistance and resilience. ABSTRACT: Heifers are a fundamental resource on farms, and their importance is reflected in both farm management and economy. Therefore, the selection of heifers to be reared on a farm should be carefully performed to select only the best animals. Genomic selection is available nowadays to evaluate animals in a fast and economic way. However, it is mainly used on the sire line and on performance traits. Ten farms were selected based on their 5-year records of average somatic cell count and evenly classified into high (>300,000 cells/mL) and low somatic cell count (<150,000 cells/mL). Genomic indexes (regarding both wellness and productive traits) were evaluated in 157 Italian Holstein heifers reared in the selected ten farms (90 from high-cells farms and 67 from low-cells ones). Linear mixed models were fitted to analyze the effects of the abovementioned genomic indexes on related phenotypes. Results have shown that farms classified into low somatic cell count had an overall better animal genomic pool compared to high somatic cell count ones. Additionally, the results shown in this study highlighted a difference in wellness genomic indexes in animals from farms with either a high or a low average somatic cell count. Applying genomic tools directly to heifer selection could improve economic aspects related to herd turnover

Reawakening the Intrinsic Cardiac Regenerative Potential: Molecular Strategies to Boost Dedifferentiation and Proliferation of Endogenous Cardiomyocytes

Despite considerable efforts carried out to develop stem/progenitor cell-based technologies aiming at replacing and restoring the cardiac tissue following severe damages, thus far no strategies based on adult stem cell transplantation have been demonstrated to efficiently generate new cardiac muscle cells. Intriguingly, dedifferentiation, and proliferation of pre-existing cardiomyocytes and not stem cell differentiation represent the preponderant cellular mechanism by which lower vertebrates spontaneously regenerate the injured heart. Mammals can also regenerate their heart up to the early neonatal period, even in this case by activating the proliferation of endogenous cardiomyocytes. However, the mammalian cardiac regenerative potential is dramatically reduced soon after birth, when most cardiomyocytes exit from the cell cycle, undergo further maturation, and continue to grow in size. Although a slow rate of cardiomyocyte turnover has also been documented in adult mammals, both in mice and humans, this is not enough to sustain a robust regenerative process. Nevertheless, these remarkable findings opened the door to a branch of novel regenerative approaches aiming at reactivating the endogenous cardiac regenerative potential by triggering a partial dedifferentiation process and cell cycle re-entry in endogenous cardiomyocytes. Several adaptations from intrauterine to extrauterine life starting at birth and continuing in the immediate neonatal period concur to the loss of the mammalian cardiac regenerative ability. A wide range of systemic and microenvironmental factors or cell-intrinsic molecular players proved to regulate cardiomyocyte proliferation and their manipulation has been explored as a therapeutic strategy to boost cardiac function after injuries. We here review the scientific knowledge gained thus far in this novel and flourishing field of research, elucidating the key biological and molecular mechanisms whose modulation may represent a viable approach for regenerating the human damaged myocardium

Cardiotoxicity of Anticancer Drugs: Molecular Mechanisms and Strategies for Cardioprotection

Chemotherapy and targeted therapies have significantly improved the prognosis of oncology patients. However, these antineoplastic treatments may also induce adverse cardiovascular effects, which may lead to acute or delayed onset of cardiac dysfunction. These common cardiovascular complications, commonly referred to as cardiotoxicity, not only may require the modification, suspension, or withdrawal of life-saving antineoplastic therapies, with the risk of reducing their efficacy, but can also strongly impact the quality of life and overall survival, regardless of the oncological prognosis. The onset of cardiotoxicity may depend on the class, dose, route, and duration of administration of anticancer drugs, as well as on individual risk factors. Importantly, the cardiotoxic side effects may be reversible, if cardiac function is restored upon discontinuation of the therapy, or irreversible, characterized by injury and loss of cardiac muscle cells. Subclinical myocardial dysfunction induced by anticancer therapies may also subsequently evolve in symptomatic congestive heart failure. Hence, there is an urgent need for cardioprotective therapies to reduce the clinical and subclinical cardiotoxicity onset and progression and to limit the acute or chronic manifestation of cardiac damages. In this review, we summarize the knowledge regarding the cellular and molecular mechanisms contributing to the onset of cardiotoxicity associated with common classes of chemotherapy and targeted therapy drugs. Furthermore, we describe and discuss current and potential strategies to cope with the cardiotoxic side effects as well as cardioprotective preventive approaches that may be useful to flank anticancer therapies