Interview with the Coordinator Prof. Giuseppe Di Giovanni, University of Malta, Department of Physiology and Biochemistry

Interview with the Coordinator of the Malta Neuroscience Network Programme, Prof. Giuseppe Di Giovanni regarding the Malta Neuroscience Net- work. "With the creation of the Malta Neuroscience Network, we will be keeping up with the most important developments with regard to brain research world- wide: multi-disciplinary collaboration. Understanding the way the brain works, and above all brain diseases is extremely complicated, and requires the involvement of researchers coming from a number of diff erent scientifi c disciplines and clinical areas collaborating in new ways."peer-reviewe

Second Neuroscience Day at the University of Malta

The second Neuroscience Seminar Day @ the University of Malta was held on the 5th and 6th of July 2011 at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. The principal aim of this day was to create a forum in which Maltese and Italian neuroscientists could meet. Academics involved in this field benefit substantially by meeting and interacting with international colleagues, and thereby developing new collaborations. This view is held not only by myself, but also by Professor Richard Muscat, ProRector for Research and Innovation, who is always highly supportive of the development of the field of neuroscience and of research in general in Malta. My second objective in organising these neuroscience seminars is to offer the opportunity for our medical and science students and also the general public to get to know about new developments in the field of brain research achieved by both Maltese and foreign scientists.peer-reviewe

self-monitoring reading of implicit contents and moral of self

The research concerns self-monitoring psychological processes and aims to verify two hypothesises: that there is difference in the theories on Self in HSM and LSM, and that the HSMs are more able implicit readers than the LSMs. The 18 item SMS was administered to 86 people, who had also undergone the implicit reading test. HSM and LSM were then thoroughly studied with further implicit reading trials and by means of dilemmas intended to explore their implicit theories of self. The HSMs read more implicits, in a livelier way, and with less fatigue. The dilemmas show differences in the structure of the self and above all in the moral conviction of self.

Hunting electroweakinos at future hadron colliders and direct detection experiments

We analyse the mass reach for electroweakinos at future hadron colliders and their interplay with direct detection experiments. Motivated by the LHC data, we focus on split supersymmetry models with different electroweakino spectra. We find for example that a 100 TeV collider may explore Winos up to ~ 7 TeV in low scale gauge mediation models or thermal Wino dark matter around 3 TeV in models of anomaly mediation with long-lived Winos. We show moreover how collider searches and direct detection experiments have the potential to cover large part of the parameter space even in scenarios where the lightest neutralino does not contribute to the whole dark matter relic density.Comment: 25 pages, matches version accepted by JHE

Bs Mixing, DeltaGamma_s and CP Violation

We discuss the results from the Tevatron experiments on mixing and {\sf CP} violation in the $B_s-\bar{B}_s^0$ system, with particular emphasis to the first measurements of the decay width-difference $\Delta\Gamma_s$ and the {\sf CP} violating phase $\beta_s$ using flavor tagging information. We also briefly review the charge asymmetry measurements in semileptonic $B_s$ decays and in $B^\pm \to J/\psi K^\pm$ decays.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Pub. Proceedings of the XLIIIrd Rencontres de Moriond on Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories, La Thuile, Italy, March 1-8, 200

Integration of migrants in Italy: A simple general and objective measure

Measuring migrants’ integration into host societies is a challenging task as, in general, measuring any social behavior and social phenomena. The task is affected by many specific problems related to the definition of the objective of study and the impact of subjective evaluations in the construction of an index. Our study aims to provide a measure of integration as much as possible general and objective. More in details, first, we consider some different general aspects of the integration problem related to migrants’ polarization, cultural diversification, social stability, integration in the labor market. Second, we aggregate them in a synthetic linear index, which is rather objective since the weights are computed by only considering the statistical properties of our dataset, i.e. choosing those weights that minimize the information loss in terms of data variances/co-variances.Migrations; migrants’ integration; regional index; principal component analysis

FISCAL-MONETARY POLICY COORDINATION AND DEBT MANAGEMENT: A TWO STAGE DYNAMIC ANALYSIS

This paper studies the interaction between two autonomous policymakers, the central bank and the government, in managing public debt as the result of a two-stage game. In the first stage the institutional regime is established. This determines the equilibrium solution to be applied in the second stage, in which a differential game is played between the two policymakers. It is shown that, if the policymakers can communicate before the game is played, (multiple-equilibrium) coordination problems can be solved by using the concept of correlated equilibrium. Unlike Nash equilibrium, which only allows for individualistic and independent behaviour, a correlated equilibrium allows formonetary and fiscal policies, differential games, correlated equilibrium.

Cetacean Morbillivirus-Associated Pathology: Knowns and Unknowns

The present minireview deals with the pathology of Cetacean Morbillivirus (CeMV) infection in free-ranging cetaceans. In this respect, while "classical" CeMV-associated lesions were observed in the lung, brain, and lymphoid tissues from striped dolphins (Stenella coeruleoalba) and pilot whales (Globicephala melas) which were victims of the 1990-1992 and 2006-2008 epidemics in the Western Mediterranean, an apparent reduction in CeMV neurovirulence, along with a different viral antigen's tissue and cell distribution, were found during the 2010-2011 and the 2013 outbreaks in the same area. Of remarkable concern are also the documented CeMV ability to induce maternally acquired infections in wild cetaceans, coupled with the progressively expanding geographic and host range of the virus in both Hemispheres, as well as in conjunction with the intriguing forms of "brain-only" morbilliviral infection increasingly reported in Mediterranean-striped dolphins. Future research in this area should address the virus-host interaction dynamics, with particular emphasis on the cell receptors specifying viral tissue tropism in relation to the different cetacean species and to their susceptibility to infection, as well as to the CeMV strains circulating worldwide