Economic growth and corporate renewal

To address competition from Emerging and Industrialized Countries it is necessary for Italian companies to face structural and financial reforms. Structural reforms will affect and improve processes, products. They will upgrade knowledge transfer. At the same time, financial reforms are necessary to adjust firms’ dimensions with what markets and international competition require. A movement in the right direction is the rise of innovative medium firms. These corporations are spreading through affiliation networks which improve the systemic efficiency and that are responsible for the progressive deep changes in the industry. Italy’s growth strategy will call for appropriate industrial policies and supported by a widespread socioeconomic consensus.internationalization, technological change, international trade, emerging countries.

Once upon a time: looking back at the relationship between service and manufacturing

Little attention had been paid to the service sector, if we define services as those intangible activities necessary for the fruition of a good. The Italian tertiary sector accounts for 60% of GDP, which is in line with what is happening in other developed nations. Still services provided by the network are not diffused – and this is particularly true for SMEs. The advancement of knowledge and network has led to vertical disintegration and delocalization of many productive processes (outsourcing, e-business), new and larger potential markets (e-commerce), change of governance and management of enterprises. Innovation has not only to do with technology but also with marketing, logistics, human resource, and organization. Innovation requires both technical competences and models to read and understand an entire value chain such a SSME. Industrial policies do not only need to focus on diffusion and financing of technologies. Policies need to support application and performance of technologies as the goal here is to bring to scale the production of services to accompany the rise of the service economy and Italian firms’ competitiveness. One of the reference frameworks of policies should be new web-based platforms, where web-based services can be developed and delivered to establish demand and supply dynamics, and relationships on all sides of the platform. Hence it is necessary to pick technological and organizational solutions which are reliable and could act as ignition elements to lead SMEs to get on the web and become sophisticated users of the services available on the web.

Interazioni fra economia criminale e economia legale

Le connessioni fra economia legale ed economia criminale creano squilibri, non sempre percepiti, poiché si mimetizzano dietro le inefficienze dei mercati, delle imprese e le carenze delle amministrazioni pubbliche. I nessi causali sono difficilmente identificabili, perciò, le indagini si rivolgono all’illegalità identificata con il termine mafia sia per la criminalità organizzata italiana sia per le organizzazioni di origine estera. Il saggio propone una analisi dei modelli economici compatibili con le strategie e le gestioni economiche e finanziarie delle criminalità e, in particolare, delle imprese legali-criminali, ripercorrendo le difficoltà legate alle ricerche statistiche ed economiche.Classificazione JEL: A11, H26, K4.Parole chiave: Economia criminale, sommerso, evasione fiscale. The connections between the legal economy and the criminal economy create imbalances, not always perceived, blended in behind the inefficiencies of markets, firms and the shortcomings of the public administrations. The causal links are difficult to identify, therefore, the investigations address the illegality with the word “mafia” both for Italian organized crime and for organizations of foreign origin. This essay proposes an analysis of economic models compatible with the strategies and economic and financial management of crime and, in particular, of legal-criminal enterprises, retracing the difficulties linked to statistical and economic research.JEL classification: A11, H26, K4.Keywords: Criminal Economy, hidden economy, evasion

Ultracold atoms confined in an optical lattice plus parabolic potential: a closed-form approach

We discuss interacting and non-interacting one dimensional atomic systems trapped in an optical lattice plus a parabolic potential. We show that, in the tight-binding approximation, the non-interacting problem is exactly solvable in terms of Mathieu functions. We use the analytic solutions to study the collective oscillations of ideal bosonic and fermionic ensembles induced by small displacements of the parabolic potential. We treat the interacting boson problem by numerical diagonalization of the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian. From analysis of the dependence upon lattice depth of the low-energy excitation spectrum of the interacting system, we consider the problems of "fermionization" of a Bose gas, and the superfluid-Mott insulator transition. The spectrum of the noninteracting system turns out to provide a useful guide to understanding the collective oscillations of the interacting system, throughout a large and experimentally relevant parameter regime.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figures Minor modification were done and new references were adde

Occurrence of testicular microlithiasis in androgen insensitive hypogonadal mice

<b>Background</b>: Testicular microliths are calcifications found within the seminiferous tubules. In humans, testicular microlithiasis (TM) has an unknown etiology but may be significantly associated with testicular germ cell tumors. Factors inducing microlith development may also, therefore, act as susceptibility factors for malignant testicular conditions. Studies to identify the mechanisms of microlith development have been hampered by the lack of suitable animal models for TM.<BR/> <b>Methods</b>: This was an observational study of the testicular phenotype of different mouse models. The mouse models were: cryptorchid mice, mice lacking androgen receptors (ARs) on the Sertoli cells (SCARKO), mice with a ubiquitous loss of androgen ARs (ARKO), hypogonadal (hpg) mice which lack circulating gonadotrophins, and hpg mice crossed with SCARKO (hpg.SCARKO) and ARKO (hpg.ARKO) mice.<BR/> <b>Results</b>: Microscopic TM was seen in 94% of hpg.ARKO mice (n=16) and the mean number of microliths per testis was 81 +/- 54. Occasional small microliths were seen in 36% (n=11) of hpg testes (mean 2 +/- 0.5 per testis) and 30% (n=10) of hpg.SCARKO testes (mean 8 +/- 6 per testis). No microliths were seen in cryptorchid, ARKO or SCARKO mice. There was no significant effect of FSH or androgen on TM in hpg.ARKO mice.<BR/> <b>Conclusions</b>: We have identified a mouse model of TM and show that lack of endocrine stimulation is a cause of TM. Importantly, this model will provide a means with which to identify the mechanisms of TM development and the underlying changes in protein and gene expression

Quantum charges and spacetime topology: The emergence of new superselection sectors

In which is developed a new form of superselection sectors of topological origin. By that it is meant a new investigation that includes several extensions of the traditional framework of Doplicher, Haag and Roberts in local quantum theories. At first we generalize the notion of representations of nets of C*-algebras, then we provide a brand new view on selection criteria by adopting one with a strong topological flavour. We prove that it is coherent with the older point of view, hence a clue to a genuine extension. In this light, we extend Roberts' cohomological analysis to the case where 1--cocycles bear non trivial unitary representations of the fundamental group of the spacetime, equivalently of its Cauchy surface in case of global hyperbolicity. A crucial tool is a notion of group von Neumann algebras generated by the 1-cocycles evaluated on loops over fixed regions. One proves that these group von Neumann algebras are localized at the bounded region where loops start and end and to be factorial of finite type I. All that amounts to a new invariant, in a topological sense, which can be defined as the dimension of the factor. We prove that any 1-cocycle can be factorized into a part that contains only the charge content and another where only the topological information is stored. This second part resembles much what in literature are known as geometric phases. Indeed, by the very geometrical origin of the 1-cocycles that we discuss in the paper, they are essential tools in the theory of net bundles, and the topological part is related to their holonomy content. At the end we prove the existence of net representations

A First Search for coincident Gravitational Waves and High Energy Neutrinos using LIGO, Virgo and ANTARES data from 2007

We present the results of the first search for gravitational wave bursts associated with high energy neutrinos. Together, these messengers could reveal new, hidden sources that are not observed by conventional photon astronomy, particularly at high energy. Our search uses neutrinos detected by the underwater neutrino telescope ANTARES in its 5 line configuration during the period January - September 2007, which coincided with the fifth and first science runs of LIGO and Virgo, respectively. The LIGO-Virgo data were analysed for candidate gravitational-wave signals coincident in time and direction with the neutrino events. No significant coincident events were observed. We place limits on the density of joint high energy neutrino - gravitational wave emission events in the local universe, and compare them with densities of merger and core-collapse events.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, science summary page at http://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-S5LV_ANTARES/index.php. Public access area to figures, tables at https://dcc.ligo.org/cgi-bin/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=p120000

Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Infection of Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) Shares Features of Both Pathogenic and Non-pathogenic Lentiviral Infections.

The virus-host relationship in simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infected chimpanzees is thought to be different from that found in other SIV infected African primates. However, studies of captive SIVcpz infected chimpanzees are limited. Previously, the natural SIVcpz infection of one chimpanzee, and the experimental infection of six chimpanzees was reported, with limited follow-up. Here, we present a long-term study of these seven animals, with a retrospective re-examination of the early stages of infection. The only clinical signs consistent with AIDS or AIDS associated disease was thrombocytopenia in two cases, associated with the development of anti-platelet antibodies. However, compared to uninfected and HIV-1 infected animals, SIVcpz infected animals had significantly lower levels of peripheral blood CD4+ T-cells. Despite this, levels of T-cell activation in chronic infection were not significantly elevated. In addition, while plasma levels of β2 microglobulin, neopterin and soluble TNF-related apoptosis inducing ligand (sTRAIL) were elevated in acute infection, these markers returned to near-normal levels in chronic infection, reminiscent of immune activation patterns in 'natural host' species. Furthermore, plasma soluble CD14 was not elevated in chronic infection. However, examination of the secondary lymphoid environment revealed persistent changes to the lymphoid structure, including follicular hyperplasia in SIVcpz infected animals. In addition, both SIV and HIV-1 infected chimpanzees showed increased levels of deposition of collagen and increased levels of Mx1 expression in the T-cell zones of the lymph node. The outcome of SIVcpz infection of captive chimpanzees therefore shares features of both non-pathogenic and pathogenic lentivirus infections.This work was supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and by the Wellcome Trust.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from PLOS via http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.100514