Is there room for shared cars in Italy? Considerations from some recent experiences

Car sharing is increasing its role worldwide as an alternative transport mode, that could contribute to a more sustainable urban mobility by reducing congestion and pollution. The paper focuses on the understanding of which are the main characteristics of this service starting from the literature on this topic both in terms of user profile and impact of the service; in the second part of the paper, the Italian context will be presented starting from the analysis of four Italian experiences with a particular focus on Milan’s car sharing. Summarizing the conclusion, it emerges that to date, the overall impact on transport is still quite low, in part due to a scarce integration and coordination with other transport modes and in part because car is still perceived primarily as a status symbol and a “good” rather than as a “service”. Therefore, car sharing can perform as a significant complementary and sustainable solution to mobility needs only in a context of cultural change and inside a transport policy aimed at changing transport behavior.car sharing; sustainable mobility; transport policy; urban mobility; peer to peer car sharing;

A proposal for a world database on transport infrastructure regulation

The paper presents the structure and the concepts at the basis of a database on world transport infrastructure regulation, to be launched. The database will be built promoting a “soft” survey on the world regulatory practices, to be filled by scholars and experts on a voluntary basis. The goal of the database is to stimulate research on best practices and interaction among regulators, regulated and scholars. The work is still under construction. The database structure is ready and the survey is already launched, but incomplete. This paper is a preliminary document which provides a detailed description of the aims and of the database structure, in order to circulate the project and collect suggestions from the academic community. The structure of the paper is as follows. After a presentation of the aims of the work, section 2 provides a literature review on existing databases. Section 3 details the project, describing the characteristics of the survey, the strengths and weaknesses of the approach, the network to be activated. Section 4 is giving more details on the actual structure of the database and of the corresponding survey. Section 5 gives notice of the first results obtained with a preliminary survey and a preliminary review of literature on some selected countries. Conclusions will outline the next steps of the research.transport; regulation; investment; infrastructure; database; survey

Astroinformatics of galaxies and quasars: a new general method for photometric redshifts estimation

With the availability of the huge amounts of data produced by current and future large multi-band photometric surveys, photometric redshifts have become a crucial tool for extragalactic astronomy and cosmology. In this paper we present a novel method, called Weak Gated Experts (WGE), which allows to derive photometric redshifts through a combination of data mining techniques. \noindent The WGE, like many other machine learning techniques, is based on the exploitation of a spectroscopic knowledge base composed by sources for which a spectroscopic value of the redshift is available. This method achieves a variance \sigma^2(\Delta z)=2.3x10^{-4} (\sigma^2(\Delta z) =0.08), where \Delta z = z_{phot} - z_{spec}) for the reconstruction of the photometric redshifts for the optical galaxies from the SDSS and for the optical quasars respectively, while the Root Mean Square (RMS) of the \Delta z variable distributions for the two experiments is respectively equal to 0.021 and 0.35. The WGE provides also a mechanism for the estimation of the accuracy of each photometric redshift. We also present and discuss the catalogs obtained for the optical SDSS galaxies, for the optical candidate quasars extracted from the DR7 SDSS photometric dataset {The sample of SDSS sources on which the accuracy of the reconstruction has been assessed is composed of bright sources, for a subset of which spectroscopic redshifts have been measured.}, and for optical SDSS candidate quasars observed by GALEX in the UV range. The WGE method exploits the new technological paradigm provided by the Virtual Observatory and the emerging field of Astroinformatics.Comment: 36 pages, 22 figures and 8 table

Financing transport infrastrucure projects in Italy: a critical analysis of the main approaches

This paper aims at analysing the methodology used for financing large infrastructure projects in Italy. In particular, it focuses on the Italian highway sector, where in the last years many projects have been launched using new financial instruments. The paper discusses three of these “instruments”. The first one is the Project Financing, discussed starting from a general review, analyzing also the different typologies used, the risks involved and their allocation among the various subjects that take part in the PF mechanism. A special case concerns the recently introduced model used for the Italian highways, known as “PF with takeover compensation”. There are two other important mechanisms used for financing infrastructure projects in Italy: the exploitation of road demand rigidity and the spreading of the investment over the entire network, favouring larger concessions. We conclude that all these three mechanisms present deep flaws in terms of transparency and of contradiction with economic feasibility criteria (that have to dominate the public investment rationale).transport; investment; infrastructure; project financing; highway.

Evolutionary-guided cofactor engineering

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The juridical and social treatment of teenage crime in Uruguay

Este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación realizada en Montevideo (2009-2010) que toma como objeto de estudio el discurso experto respecto a la infracción adolescente en el sistema judicial y penal uruguayo. Material y métodos: Con este objetivo, se analizan los discursos que surgen de una muestra aleatoria de los expedientes judiciales archivados en el año 2009 en dos de los cuatro Juzgados de Adolescentes de Montevideo, recuperando la palabra de los fiscales, defensores, jueces y peritos que actúan en el ámbito judicial. También se analizan los informes periciales de psicólogos, trabajadores sociales y educadores sociales que provienen de las instituciones penales para adolescentes que están dirigidos al Juez y, por lo tanto, se incluyen en el expediente judicial. Resultados: El trabajo empírico da cuenta de la influencia de la consideración del contexto sociofamiliar del adolescente trasgresor en el proceso judicial y el peso que los procesos de desocialización de la pobreza tienen en los mecanismos de decisión. Discusión: El debate abierto por los resultados de la investigación está relacionado con la discusión jurídica sobre el derecho que juzga el actor en lugar del acto infractor, tanto como la alarma que el riesgo social despierta ante los mecanismos punitivos, que concluyen en una lectura criminalizante de la pobreza.______________________________________________This article presents the results of research on expert discourse about teenage crime in the criminal justice system of Uruguay. This research was conducted in Montevideo between 2009 and2010. Materials and methods: The study analyzes the discourses that emerge from a random sample of court records filed in 2009 in two of the four Youth Courts of Montevideo, including the interventions of prosecutors, defenders, judges and social and psychological experts. It also analyzes the expert reports of psychologists, social workers and social educators from penal institutions for adolescents that are addressed to the Court and, therefore, included in court documents. Results: Empirical work accounts for the influence of the social and family context of teenagers on judicial processes and the relevance that the de-socialization of poverty may have to decision-making. Discussion The debate opened by the results of the investigation is related to the legal debate over the right to judge the actor in place of the infraction, as well as the alarm that social risk causes in punitive mechanisms--which often leads to the criminalization of poverty

ANALISI DEGLI STATI METASTABILI DEL CERVELLO

Il cervello umano è un sistema dinamico molto complesso che presenta peculiari caratteristiche di non stazionarietà: in questo lavoro di analisi dei segnali elettrofisiologici, l’attenzione è stata focalizzata proprio su questo aspetto. In particolare sono state valutate le tecniche di segmentazione dei segnali EEG, sia di tipo parametrico che di tipo non parametrico. Queste tecniche permettono la rilevazione dei processi di transizione rapida (RTP), ossia dei punti di transizione rapida tra i segmenti con caratteristiche di quasi-stazionarietà presenti negli EEG. Siamo andati ad analizzare un recente algoritmo di segmentazione, valutandone pregi e difetti. In seguito è stato sviluppato un nostro algoritmo di segmentazione e ricerca degli RTP (FinderRTP), le cui caratteristiche sono state valutate facendo ricorso a segnali EEG artificiali da noi appositamente generati. Dopo aver validato l’algoritmo, abbiamo applicato il finderRTP a dei segnali EEG sperimentali. Infine abbiamo indagato le caratteristiche statistiche degli RTP trovati e dei tempi di attesa tra gli RTP