Nearly strain-free heteroepitaxial system for fundamental studies of pulsed laser deposition: EuTiO3 on SrTiO3

High quality epitaxial thin-films of EuTiO3 have been grown on the (001) surface of SrTiO3 using pulsed laser deposition. In situ x-ray reflectivity measurements reveal that the growth is two-dimensional and enable real-time monitoring of the film thickness and roughness during growth. The film thickness, surface mosaic, surface roughness, and strain were characterized in detail using ex situ x-ray diffraction. The thicnkess and composition were confirmed with Rutherford Backscattering. The EuTiO3 films grow two-dimensionally, epitaxially, pseudomorphically, with no measurable in-plane lattice mismatch.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Working For the Few: Political Capture and Economic Inequality

Economic inequality is rapidly increasing in the majority of countries. The wealth of the world is divided in two: almost half going to the richest one percent; the other half to the remaining 99 percent. The World Economic Forum has identified this as a major risk to human progress. Extreme economic inequality and political capture are too often interdependent. Left unchecked, political institutions become undermined and governments overwhelmingly serve the interests of economic elites to the detriment of ordinary people

Working For the Few: Political Capture and Economic Inequality

Economic inequality is rapidly increasing in the majority of countries. The wealth of the world is divided in two: almost half going to the richest one percent; the other half to the remaining 99 percent. The World Economic Forum has identified this as a major risk to human progress. Extreme economic inequality and political capture are too often interdependent. Left unchecked, political institutions become undermined and governments overwhelmingly serve the interests of economic elites to the detriment of ordinary people

Analysis of Collectivism and Egoism Phenomena within the Context of Social Welfare

Comparative benefits provided by the basic social strategies including collectivism and egoism are investigated within the framework of democratic decision-making. In particular, we study the mechanism of growing "snowball" of cooperation.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Translated from Russian. Original Russian Text published in Problemy Upravleniya, 2008, No. 4, pp. 30-3

Simulation-based flood fragility and vulnerability analysis for expanding cities

Accurately quantifying flood-induced impacts on buildings and other infrastructure systems is essential for risk-sensitive planning and decision-making in expanding urban regions. Flood-induced impacts are directly related to the physical components of assets damaged due to contact with water. Such components include building contents (e.g., appliances, furniture) and other non-structural components whose damage/unavailability can severely impact the buildingsﾒ functionality. Conventional fragility analysis approaches for flooding do not account for the physical damage to the individual components, mostly relying on empirical methods based on historical data. However, recent studies proposed simulation-based, assembly-based fragility models that account for the damage to the building components. Such fragility models require developing detailed inventories of vulnerable components of households and identifying building archetypes to be considered in a building portfolio for the region of interest. Content inventories and building portfolios have so far been obtained for specific socio-economic contexts such as the United States of America. However, building types and their content can significantly differ between countries, making the available fragility models and computational frameworks unsuitable for flood vulnerability analysis in rapidly expanding cities characterised by extensive informal settlements, such as low- and middle-income countries. This paper details how to adapt the available methodologies for flood vulnerability assessment to the context of formal and informal settlements of expanding cities in the global south. It also details the development of content inventories for households in these cities using field surveys. The proposed survey is deployed in various areas vulnerable to floods in Kathmandu, Nepal. Based on the survey results, each component within the household is associated with a corresponding flood capacity (resistance) distribution (in terms of water height and flood duration). These distributions are then employed in a simulation-based probabilistic framework to obtain fragility relationship and consequence models. The relevant differences between the results obtained in this study and those from previous studies are then investigated for a case-study building type. In addition, the influence of socio-economic factors (e.g., household income) and past flood experience (possibly resulting in various flood-risk mitigation strategies at a household level) on the resulting flood impacts is also included in the model

Biological and chemical characterization of new isolated halophilic microorganisms from saltern ponds of Trapani, Sicily

Halophilic microorganisms inhabiting hypersaline environments such as salt lakes, Dead Sea, or salt evaporation ponds, have acquired specific cell adaptation to grow within stressful conditions. In this study, we isolated heterotrophic and autotrophic microorganisms from several saltern ponds located at the Natural Reserve “Saline di Trapani e Paceco”, Sicily, Italy. The aim of the study was to investigate the biotechnological potential of new microbial strains from saltern ponds, by capturing their biological and chemical diversity. After the isolation and identification of the sampled strains, their growth capacity was determined under low and high salinity conditions. The metabolomic profiles of heterotrophs and pigments production of photosynthetic organisms were analyzed. In parallel, antiproliferative tests on human cell lines were conducted with total extracts coming from the microorganism cultures, together with repair activity assessment of non-cytotoxic extracts. Some of the isolated strains were found to synthetize known bioactive molecules and to exert bioactivity on human cells. In particular, the high salinity increases cell repair activity, probably due to an higher production of antioxidants pigments (e.g. lutein and fucoxanthin) from photosynthetic microorganisms; same culture condition augment also concentration of molecules with interesting bioactivities, such as ectoine, betaine, trigonelline, amino acids and oxiglutathione from heterotrophic microorganisms. In conclusion, this work represents the first study on the isolation of halophilic microorganisms populating the ‘Trapani-Paceco’ saltern and shows how an interdisciplinary investigation based on marine microbiology, cell biology, and modern metabolomics can disclose their biotechnological potential

Dedicated multichannel readout ASIC coupled with single crystal diamond for dosimeter application

This paper reports on the tests of a low-noise, multi-channel readout integrated circuit used as a readout electronic front-end for a diamond multi-pixel dosimeter. The system is developed for dose distribution measurement in radiotherapy applications. The first 10-channel prototype chip was designed and fabricated in a 0.18 um CMOS process. Every channel includes a charge integrator with a 10 pF capacitor and a double slope A/D converter. The diamond multi-pixel detector, based on CVD synthetic single crystal diamond Schottky diodes, is made by a 3 × 3 sensor matrix. The overall device has been tested under irradiation with 6 MeV radio therapeutic photon beams at the Policlinico ``Tor Vergata'' (PTV) hospital. Measurements show a 20 fA RMS leakage current from the front-end input stage and a negligible dark current from the diamond detector, a stable temporal response and a good linear behaviour as a function of both dose and dose rate. These characteristics were common to each tested channel

MiR-16-1* and miR-16-2* possess strong tumor suppressive and anti-metastatic properties in osteosarcoma

Osteosarcoma (OS) is an aggressive malignancy affecting mostly children and adolescents. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in OS development and progression. Here we found that miR-16-1* and miR-16-2* “passenger” strands as well as the “lead” miR-16 strand possess strong tumor suppressive functions in human OS. We report different although strongly overlapping functions for miR-16-1* and miR-16-2* in OS cells. Ectopic expression of these miRNAs affected primary tumor growth, metastasis seeding, and chemoresistance and invasiveness of human OS cells. Loss-of-function experiments verified tumor suppressive functions of these miRNAs at endogenous levels of expression. Using RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP) assays, we identify direct targets of miR-16-1* and miR-16-2* in OS cells. Furthermore, validation experiments identified FGFR2 as a direct target for miR-16-1* and miR-16-2*. Overall, our findings underscore the importance of passenger strand miRNAs in osteosarcomagenesis

Effect of Different Percentage of Camelina sativa Cake in Laying Hens Diet: Performance, Welfare, and Eggshell Quality

Although camelina [Camelina sativa (L.) Crantz] is a good source of protein, antioxidants, and polyunsaturated fatty acids, its antinutritional compounds limit its use in animal feeding. The aim of this study was to verify the effect of feeding laying hens with up to 20% of camelina cake from a breeding line containing a low level of glucosinolates on performance, welfare, and eggshell quality. Two hundred and forty Hy-Line\uae hens from 18 to 51 weeks of age were divided into three treatments: control (C), camelina cake 10% (CAM10), and camelina cake 20% (CAM20). Egg number was recorded daily, while egg weight, feed consumption, and mortality were recorded weekly. At 24 and 43 weeks of hen age, shell resistance to fracture was measured. Our results demonstrate no detrimental effects for CAM10 and CAM20 diets on feed intake, growth performance, and welfare. No difference in egg production was detected among the diets. The significant (p < 0.05) interaction of diet and age factors suggest that the addition of camelina cake, up to 20%, likely protects the eggshell of older hens. Our findings confirm that camelina cake might be an alternative and sustainable protein source for hens