Modelling transport and real-estate values interactions in urban systems

This article presents hedonic Multiple Linear Regression models (MLR), Spatial Auto-Regressive hedonic models (SAR), Spatial autoregressive hedonic in the Error term Models (SEM) and spatial Durbin hedonic Models (SDM) to estimate houses price variations in metropolitan areas as a result of changing environmental and accessibility conditions. The goodness of fit of the different models has been compared along with a series of hypotheses about the performance of the specifications considering spatial relationships between observations. The case study for such analysis was the urban area of Santander (Spain). It has been observed the models which considered spatial dependence between observations offered a greater degree of fit in a scenario showing strong spatial correlation in MLR residuals. The SEM model combined with a Queen-Contiguity matrix provided a good fit to the data and at the same time presented significant parameters with theoretically coherent signs. This model estimated increases of 1.8% for each additional transit line present in the areas of housing, as well as a reduction of 1.1% in their prices for each additional minute in travelling time to the Central Business District. Closeness to the train stations, however, implied reductions in house prices

Hacia un diseño eficiente de sistemas de transporte público en áreas urbanas

Trabajo presentado en:III Congreso de Ingeniería Civil, Territorio Y Medio Ambiente “Agua, Biodiversidad e Ingeniería”, Zaragoza, 25-27 de octubre de 2006Hoy día, la generación de un sistema de transporte eficiente es un problema de gran relevancia en el desarrollo urbano. La importancia del tema se basa en que distintos modos de transporte conllevan diferentes resultados en cuanto a nivel de servicio percibido por los usuarios, así como del coste de funcionamiento del sistema. De esta manera, estas diversidades conducen a diversos niveles de bienestar social. Por ello, el desarrollo de metodologías que permitan obtener y adaptar dinámicamente el sistema de transporte público de acuerdo a los cambios que experimenta una urbe es un problema primario para los planificadores del transporte. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar las variables que influyen en el problema de diseño de redes eficientes de transporte público urbano y estudiar las relaciones que existen entre la oferta de transporte público y la demanda de viaje, y resaltar la importancia del transporte público como instrumento para un desarrollo sostenible. Las conclusiones que se sacan son que un diseño eficiente de las redes hace que el transporte público sea más atractivo, y se pueden obtener beneficios económicos y sociales relevantes a un coste admisible, optimizando unas variables de diseño de las redes de transporte público urbano

Modelling the spatial interactions between workplace and residential location

The use of Multinomial Logit (MNL) models specification for the simulation of residential location have been often criticised due to the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives hypothesis (IIA) which does not allow for the existence of spatial correlation between residential zones. Moreover, it is not clear when and to what extent the influence of the workplace zone and accessibility to employment affect the residential location choices made by households; in other word, whether the residing choice is conditional to the workplace, or vice versa; or if such choices (residence and work place) are joint. In this paper, Nested Logit (NL) and Cross-Nested Logit models of residential location choice are specified and compared to MNL, to investigate the existence of spatial correlation between different locations. Furthermore, different assumptions are tested, considering the choice of residential zone and the joint choice of residential zone and work place zone. The models were estimated for the urban area of Santander (Spain). The results indicate that the inclusion in the model specification, of the spatial correlation between zones fit the data significantly better. Home-work journey times were a statistically significant factor in household location choice, whereas accessibility to employment had the correct sign but it was not statistically significant

Ultra-high Q/V hybrid cavity for strong light-matter interaction

The ability to confine light at the nanoscale continues to excite the research community, with the ratio between quality factor Q and volume V, i.e., the Q/V ratio, being the key figure of merit. In order to achieve strong light-matter interaction, however, it is important to confine a lot of energy in the resonant cavity mode. Here, we demonstrate a novel cavity design that combines a photonic crystal nanobeam cavity with a plasmonic bowtie antenna. The nanobeam cavity is optimised for a good match with the antenna and provides a Q of 1700 and a transmission of 90%. Combined with the bowtie, the hybrid photonic-plasmonic cavity achieves a Q of 800 and a transmission of 20%, both of which remarkable achievements for a hybrid cavity. The ultra-high Q/V of the hybrid cavity is of order of 106 (λ/n)−3, which is comparable to the state-of-the-art of photonic resonant cavities. Based on the high Q/V and the high transmission, we demonstrate the strong efficiency of the hybrid cavity as a nanotweezer for optical trapping. We show that a stable trapping condition can be achieved for a single 200 nm Au bead for a duration of several minutes (ttrap > 5 min) and with very low optical power (Pin = 190 μW)

Vinblastine, bleomycin, and methotrexate chemotherapy plus irradiation for patients with early-stage, favorable Hodgkin lymphoma - The experience of the gruppo italiano studio linfomi

BACKGROUND. The acknowledged effectiveness of vinblastine, bleomycin, and methotrexate (VBM) chemotherapy in patients with early-stage Hodgkin lymphoma has been associated with conflicting toxicity reports. METHODS. One hundred forty-three patients were evaluated clinically and had favorable Stage IA or IIA Hodgkin lymphoma. Ninety-three patients were treated with the standard VBM schedule combined with extended-field radiotherapy (EFRT), leaving the choice of the therapeutic sequence free. Fifty subsequent patients were treated with a slightly modified VBM schedule (VbMp) combined with RT limited to involved fields (IF-RT) and delivered only after the end of chemotherapy. In the VbMp schedule, intervals between cycles were 21 days instead of 28 days, bleomycin doses were reduced, small doses of prednisone were given orally, and the interval before RT was prolonged. RESULTS. Clinical response was complete in 96% of patients who were treated with VBM plus EF-RT and in 94% of patients who were treated with VbMp plus IF-RT. Recurrence rates were nearly identical (12% and 11%, respectively) over necessarily different follow-up (91 months and 33 months, respectively). Hematologic toxicity was tolerable in both trials, and pulmonary side effects were moderate in the first trial and negligible in the second. On the whole, treatment was tolerated better when RT followed chemotherapy. CONCLUSIONS. The VBM regimen was confirmed to be effective in patients with early-stage Hodgkin lymphoma. Administration of all cycles before RT improved tolerance; pulmonary toxicity probably is mitigated further by reduced bleomycin doses, mild prednisone therapy, and a more prolonged resting interval before RT. A slightly higher recurrence rate was expectable in the VBM plus IF-RT trial despite the actual intensification of vinblastine and methotrexate

Encontros interculturais entre fronteiras: corpos e afetos migrantes

Questa ricerca, sviluppatasi tra il 2014 e il 2018, analizza i significati dell’incontro interculturale, a partire da contesti migratori, specialmente di migrazioni forzate, in due città, Padova, in Italia e San Paolo, in Brasile. Le ricerche principali sull’argomento e i principali documenti ufficiali dell’Unione Europea e di istituzioni internazionali pensano l’interculturalità come incontro pacifico e armonico nel quale la diversità è presentata come inerentemente positiva. Anche nei casi in cui si prenda in considerazione il conflitto, il soggetto enunciativo è etereo e produce politiche violente a partire da epistemiologie decorporificate. Questa ricerca di dottorato si pone come obiettivo quello di sfidare queste forme di pensiero investigando e problematizzando l’intreccio dei significati che costituiscono l’incontro interculturale in contesto migratorio. Appoggiandoci alle teorie dei pensatori del gruppo Latino Americano, oltre che postcoloniali e femministe e a concetti decoloniali di differenza, cultura, onto- epistemiologie e identitá, ci poniamo l’obiettivo di approfondire la comprensione dell’influenza di Modernità, capitalismo, neoliberalismo e colonialità, inteso come un complesso intreccio di significati e processi. La ricerca ripercorre la trama degli incontri interculturali tra migranti e professionali dell’ambito migratorio, contestualizzandoli nella complessità del mondo/parola, che si compone di contesti storicamente e geograficamente localizzati, con l’obiettivo di capire come la colonialità e l’ordine geopolitico mondiale performa e co-crea l’interculturalità. I dati sono stati generati attraverso interviste, incontri, osservazione di lezioni di lingua e analisi documentale e usati come spunto per pensare la teoria. I risultati principali indicano la presenza di un processo di formazione di significati fondato sull’ epistemiologia moderna/coloniale, sia tra gli operatori del settore che tra i migranti; il desiderio di pensare la differenza nei termini riduttivi della diversità, con politiche di integrazione che non mettono in discussione le basi epistemiche, intrappolati nella tela neoliberale, alla ricerca di elementi sostanziali in comune; la presenza di rotture politiche che pensano gli incontri interculturali di forma altra; la necessità di ri-significare etica, giustizia sociale, cittadinanza transnazionale e democrazia attraverso nuove forme, voci e soggettività dello stare-con

Mixing Pruning and Distillation for Lighter Diffusion Models

Diffusion Models (DMs) represent the state-of-the-art in image generation tasks in terms of training stability and sample quality, but their sampling procedure is highly resource-intensive. This thesis addresses the efficiency problem of DMs by proposing a novel method combining Progressive Distillation with structured pruning, to reduce the computational and memory overhead without severely compromising image quality. The Progressive Distillation method, introduced in Progressive Distillation for Fast Sampling of Diffusion Models by Salimans and Ho, reduces the number of required sampling steps by iteratively training a student DM to match the teacher model's output in half the steps. However, this method requires the student to retain the same network architecture as the teacher, limiting further compression. For this reason, we introduce a structured pruning technique during the distillation process, incorporating concepts such as pruning ratio differentiation based on the layer location and normalization-layer-lead pruning. We also introduce Flexible Group Normalization (FGN), a variation to the Group Normalization layer, to handle uneven channel groups post-pruning. We validate our method with experiments on the CIFAR-10 dataset, conducting pruning sensitivity and weight magnitude variation analyses, and comparing different pruning scoring criteria to refine our approach. Though sacrificing some sample quality and not particularly optimized, the pruned models achieve significant reductions in computational requirements, with the best quality/compression trade-offs observed in 8-step and 4-step models. Our method provides a possible solution for DM efficiency and gives cues for further research exploring this family of combined complexity-reduction techniques

The significance of the European Union for the evolution of citizenship and immigration policies: The cases of the United Kingdom and Italy.

This thesis analyses the link that the establishment of European citizenship creates between citizenship, nationality, and immigration policies. To be a European citizen, one needs to be a national of a member state. According to this criterion, nationality and citizenship are bound to each other. There is no possibility of access for those who do not have the status of national citizenship. European citizenship legitimised a privileged position to which not all individuals are entitled, and conditions of access are under the jurisdiction of each member state. It is argued that normatively European citizenship reinforces the ideology of nationality while empirically it has been used to forge a sort of European identity. In other words, the underlying argument is that European citizenship functions to define European identity and nationality functions towards the establishment of national immigration policies. This process leads to the formation of a binary typology of 'us and them', strengthened by legislation and political debates. The formation of the category of 'us' as Europeans does not find a response at the empirical level as the public does not fully identify with the Euro-polity. What emerges instead is that the public regards 'compatibility' between a European and national identity as more optimal. The principal benefit of Euro-citizenship is to re-prioritise the means of citizenship from political rights to social and economic rights. This 'opportunity structure', nevertheless, remains in a void as long as Community membership relies on the condition of nationality. The thesis proposes the introduction of a 'legal subjectivity' based on the redefinition of the concept of legality detached from nationality and grounded in the active exercise of civil, political, and social rights. Such a redefinition is necessary to sidestep the difficulties entailed in any attempt to separate citizenship from nationality in theory and practice. This would deprive citizenship of its regulative functions in terms of inclusion and exclusion, and it would reduce the importance attached to the inherent link between citizenship and nationality

La Croisière du Vanadis : sur les traces d'Edith Wharton

A trace is both a material imprint and a trail or series of imprints, marking the passage of a being or an object in transit; it can therefore be understood as the material evidence of a path that has been pursued. In the particular context of this research, the term trace refers first and foremost to the record of a sea voyage. This unpublished journal, kept by Edith Wharton, gives an account of the various stages of the Mediterranean cruise she made in the yacht, the Vanadis, in the spring of 1888.This long book is of particular interest, insofar as it, not only gives a fascinating account of the response of a young nineteenth-century cultivated American to the different cultures discovered in the course of a voyage leading her from North Africa to the Greek Islands and the shores of the Adriatic, but also provides valuable insight into the early responses of an artist in the making.The term “trace” therefore refers to both these aspects: first the voyage itself, the places visited, their physical features and historical significance; secondly the traces left by the visitor who embarked on this adventure at a turning point in her life. The sentiment that the future artist is poised at the crossroads of her existence, leads the researcher – in an attempt to leave as few stones as possible unturned – on a trail leading back to her past and forward to her future. This investigation would not be complete without a survey of travel literature, as the particular genre Edith Wharton has chosen as her means of expression. All these traces unite to form a series of “signs” (in the Saussurian sense of the word), which the researcher endeavours to interpret in the hopes of understanding what is “signified” on a deeper level.Une trace est une suite d’empreintes, laissées par le passage d’un être ou d’un objet – c’est donc avant tout l’indice d’un chemin parcouru. C’est à ce déplacement dans le temps et dans l’espace qu’invitent mes travaux de recherche dont l’objectif est de suivre Edith Wharton « à la trace ». La trace, c’est d’abord, pour ce qu’elle nous apprend sur le voyageur et son rapport au monde, cette croisière en Méditerranée qu’elle entreprend en 1888 à bord du Vanadis. C’est également l’empreinte qui subsiste de cette expérience du voyage : un manuscrit dactylographié qui retrace le périple et rend compte du rapport particulier d’Edith Wharton à l’écriture.La trace – ce qu’on suit (« suivre à la trace ») – renvoie donc à une double activité : d’une part au voyage lui-même, d’autre part, à l’exploration de toutes les pistes que j’ai cru bon d’ouvrir à partir du document originel : sur la vie et l’œuvre d’Edith Wharton, sur son environnement socio-culturel et sur le genre de la littérature de voyage – toute une série d’empreintes, donc de signes conduisant à de nombreux signifiés. La question demeure toujours, en dernier ressort, de savoir si les signifiés que croit avoir découvert le chercheur sont bien ceux de l’écrivain

R-CVP versus R-CHOP versus R-FM for the initial treatment of patients with advanced-stage follicular lmphoma: results of the FOLL05 trial conducted by the Fondazione Italiana Linfomi

PURPOSE Although rituximab (R) is commonly used for patients with advanced follicular lymphoma (FL) requiring treatment, the optimal associated chemotherapy regimen has yet to be clarified. PATIENTS AND METHODS We conducted an open-label, multicenter, randomized trial among adult patients with previously untreated stages II to IV FL to compare efficacy of eight doses of R associated with eight cycles of cyclophosphamide, vincristine, and prednisone (CVP) or six cycles of cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone (CHOP) or six cycles of fludarabine and mitoxantrone (FM). The principal end point of the study was time to treatment failure (TTF). Results There were 534 patients enrolled onto the study. Overall response rates were 88%, 93%, and 91% for R-CVP, R-CHOP, and R-FM, respectively (P=.247). After a median follow-up of 34 months, 3-year TTFs were 46%, 62%, and 59% for the respective treatment groups (R-CHOP v R-CVP, P=.003; R-FM v R-CVP, P=.006; R-FM v R-CHOP, P=.763). Three-year progression-free survival (PFS) rates were 52%, 68%, and 63% (overall P=.011), respectively, and 3-year overall survival was 95% for the whole series. R-FM resulted in higher rates of grade 3 to 4 neutropenia (64%) compared with R-CVP (28%) and R-CHOP (50%; P< .001). Overall, 23 second malignancies were registered during follow-up: four in R-CVP, five in R-CHOP, and 14 in R-FM. CONCLUSION In this study, R-CHOP and R-FM were superior to R-CVP in terms of 3-year TTF and PFS. In addition, R-CHOP had a better risk-benefit ratio compared with R-FM