Economic Impact of Rural Development Plan 2007 2013 in Tuscany

In 2007 in every European Union region, involved in the planning of Rural Development Plan (RDP), an independent evaluator should asses the impact of the plan in term of value added and productivity. Each region has adopted different methodologies but few of them have followed the indications of Common and Monitoring Evaluation Framework (CMEF) to evaluate the net value deriving by direct and indirect effect. IRPET, the Independent evaluator of Tuscany, utilising REMI-IRPET model has assed the impact of RDP on the main economic variables until 2020. Among 30 different measures it has been chosen only 5 of them that cover more than 54% of total amount of public and private investments. The economic impacts are also evaluated at provincial level.evaluation, regional model, rural development, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Dorsal hippocampal astrocyte signaling regulates heroin-conditioned immunomodulation but not heroin-conditioned place preference

Repeated context-heroin pairings result in Pavlovian associations that manifest as heroin-conditioned appetitive responses or peripheral immunomodulation upon re-exposure to heroin-conditioned stimuli. The dorsal hippocampus (DH) is a critical neural substrate governing these context-heroin associations. Within the DH, there appears to be divergent mechanisms mediating heroin-conditioned Pavlovian responses. Evidence suggests that DH interleukin-1 signaling regulates heroin-conditioned immunomodulation but not heroin-conditioned place preference (CPP). The present study sought to further investigate the role of DH neuroimmune signaling in heroin-conditioned Pavlovian responses. Astroglial activity has been implicated in both drug addiction and mechanisms of learning and memory. As such, we employed chemogenetic tools to examine the involvement of DH astrocytes in the expression of both heroin-conditioned immunomodulatory and appetitive responses. Interestingly, chemogenetic stimulation of DH astroglial Gi-signaling disrupted heroin-conditioned immunomodulation but did not alter heroin-CPP. These data provide further evidence that differential DH mechanisms regulate heroin-conditioned Pavlovian responses.Master of Art

Review of \u3ci\u3eWorking the Garden: American Writers and the Industrialization of Agriculture\u3c/i\u3e By William Conlogue

In Working the Garden William Conlogue critiques readings of American literature dependent on pastoral assumptions, proposing instead a georgic perspective that would examine the history of the intersections we have made among human work, human imagination, and the physical environment. While he takes a somewhat reductive view of previous critical approaches and of American applications of pastoral modes, his demonstration of the ways in which georgic questions alter our understanding of our literature promises to be of significant importance to the study of Great Plains literature. The georgic, Conlogue explains, explores the lived landscapes of rural experience where our ambiguous and contradictory relationships with nature are most obvious. He suggests that American authors articulate political and social justice positions on an urban- defined agriculture whose central figure is the twentieth-century progressive farmer invested in philosophies and practices of industrial agriculture. Conlogue frames his argument with clear and involving material contrasting old and new agriculture and expanding definitions of the farm novel. His introduction also traces valuable and productive connections among national history, the politics of farming, and American literature. Succeeding chapters develop these connections, which seem to me one of the main strengths of the book. The chapter on bonanza farming incorporates details from the lives of Iowa farmers, knowledgeable discussion of the history and culture of bonanza farms and their contemporary consequences, analysis of journalistic contributions to the ideology of industrial agriculture, and a strong reading of Frank Norris\u27s The Octopus. Conlogue\u27s chapter on racism and industrial farming is particularly forceful and convincing. Reviewing migrant field workers\u27 activism and the racism directed against these workers and against black farmers, he draws provocative links between literature and social justice, exploring the politics of farming as warfare in Ernest Gaines\u27s A Gathering of Old Men and in perhaps the most conspicuous connection between agriculture and literature- Teatro Campesino (Farmworkers Theater) and the new genre it created, the acto. Other chapters examine women and industrial agriculture (O Pioneers! and Barren Ground); class and agribusiness (The Grapes of Wrath and Of Human Kindness); and possibilities for farm futures (A Thousand Acres, Remembering, and A Timbered Choir). These chapters similarly combine stories of actual farmers-including Conlogue himself, in an effective Postscript-with cogent analyses of literary texts, assessments of cultural and political movements, and discussions of contemporary issues. Working the Garden significantly ties the nation\u27s most life-sustaining activity-food production-to how it thinks through its most pressing and potentially explosive issues

Self-propelled fish locomotion in an otherwise quiescent fluid

Since the deep observations by Leonardo da Vinci, understanding fish locomotion in water has always attracted the attention of scientists in many fields, from fluid mechanics to other disciplines concerning environmental sciences. The complexity of this problem is mainly given by the non-linear interaction between the fish body and the surrounding fluid otherwise at rest, leading to the desired forward locomotion and to the unavoidable angular and lateral recoil reactions, which are essential for a correct evaluation of the swimming performance. Despite many advances have been obtained for the study of fish self-propulsion in recent years, from simple mathematical models up to complex numerical solutions, the main mechanisms underlying fish locomotion are not fully clarified and still require further investigations. In this thesis free swimming conditions is deeply analyzed for both steady swimming and fast maneuvers by a theoretical approach which considers the full body-fluid system to obtain the ex- changed internal forces. The focus is on the added mass and the vortex shedding contributions to the locomotion performance and on the role of recoil motions which, together with the prescribed body deformation, define the free swimming behavior. To this purpose, the impulse formulation allows for an easy isolation of the potential contri- bution, related to the added mass, and of the vortical contribution related to bound and released vorticity and a simple two-dimensional numerical model with concentrated vorticity is adopted for the numerical simulations to generate meaningful results able to clarify these physical phenomena. The aim is a unified procedure for both undulatory and oscillatory swimming to obtain valid an- swers for cruising speed, expended energy and kinematics, hence for the swimming performance in terms of the cost of transport and propulsive efficiency. The same model is also able to give new insights on the impressive performance characterizing fish fast maneuvers. The extreme turning capability and the large acceleration, so essential to fish survival along pray-predator encounters, are studied by highlighting the potential and the vortical impulses and their interplay induced by recoil motions, to show their relevance for the realization of the maneuver

Review of \u3ci\u3eWorking the Garden: American Writers and the Industrialization of Agriculture\u3c/i\u3e By William Conlogue

In Working the Garden William Conlogue critiques readings of American literature dependent on pastoral assumptions, proposing instead a georgic perspective that would examine the history of the intersections we have made among human work, human imagination, and the physical environment. While he takes a somewhat reductive view of previous critical approaches and of American applications of pastoral modes, his demonstration of the ways in which georgic questions alter our understanding of our literature promises to be of significant importance to the study of Great Plains literature. The georgic, Conlogue explains, explores the lived landscapes of rural experience where our ambiguous and contradictory relationships with nature are most obvious. He suggests that American authors articulate political and social justice positions on an urban- defined agriculture whose central figure is the twentieth-century progressive farmer invested in philosophies and practices of industrial agriculture. Conlogue frames his argument with clear and involving material contrasting old and new agriculture and expanding definitions of the farm novel. His introduction also traces valuable and productive connections among national history, the politics of farming, and American literature. Succeeding chapters develop these connections, which seem to me one of the main strengths of the book. The chapter on bonanza farming incorporates details from the lives of Iowa farmers, knowledgeable discussion of the history and culture of bonanza farms and their contemporary consequences, analysis of journalistic contributions to the ideology of industrial agriculture, and a strong reading of Frank Norris\u27s The Octopus. Conlogue\u27s chapter on racism and industrial farming is particularly forceful and convincing. Reviewing migrant field workers\u27 activism and the racism directed against these workers and against black farmers, he draws provocative links between literature and social justice, exploring the politics of farming as warfare in Ernest Gaines\u27s A Gathering of Old Men and in perhaps the most conspicuous connection between agriculture and literature- Teatro Campesino (Farmworkers Theater) and the new genre it created, the acto. Other chapters examine women and industrial agriculture (O Pioneers! and Barren Ground); class and agribusiness (The Grapes of Wrath and Of Human Kindness); and possibilities for farm futures (A Thousand Acres, Remembering, and A Timbered Choir). These chapters similarly combine stories of actual farmers-including Conlogue himself, in an effective Postscript-with cogent analyses of literary texts, assessments of cultural and political movements, and discussions of contemporary issues. Working the Garden significantly ties the nation\u27s most life-sustaining activity-food production-to how it thinks through its most pressing and potentially explosive issues

La cultura dei servizi di accoglienza migranti in Italia. Una ricerca esplorativa [The culture of migrant reception services in Italy. An exploratory research]

Italy has a long history of immigration, which has become part of the country’s landscape in a complex and varied way, and has led to significant changes in important contexts such as in the school, the work place, and in the provision of welfare services. And yet, immigration policies still consist in emergency measures that do not recognize the phenomenon in its long -standing and structural dimension. In addition, public opinion is concerned as a result of the alarmist distortion of this issue, as shown by the gapbetween data on immigration and perceived immigration. Since in this research we take into consideration collusively shared experiences, these misunderstandings can not be corrected by providing more information on the real data; we posit that the emotional scope must be recognized in order to address this issue. In particular, we asked ourselves how this context -changes brought by immigration, public opinion, and government policies -is repre sented within the migrant Accordingly, we interviewed a group of reception staff from the Roman area on the type of service that they think they are offering. The results show how, in their experience, this complex reality of immigration is not evoked: the experience within the services is isolated from the Italian narrative and context. However, the voice of migrants and their point of view, emerge as a resource within these services, as openness rather than isolation

La rappresentazione del rapporto tra utenti e sistema sanitario: I modelli culturali dei medici di medicina generale - The representation of the relationship between users and healthcare system: Cultural models of general practitioners

The present research study explores the emotional and symbolic representation of the Italian healthcare system and specifically of general medical services reported by a group of Italian general practitioners. General medicine is recently affected by a structural change which could be sustained also by a cultural revolution, however this revolution seems to be oriented to expected values without a clear methodology which promotes and accompanies this cultural change. The present study deals with the lack of practices due to these unrealized expected values and assumes that for intervening it is necessary knowing the existing culture before thinking to change it. Interviews to 36 general practitioners were analyzed by Emotional Text Analysis (AET). Results highlight a factorial space characterized by five clusters. According to respondents’ perspective, healthcare problems refer to two large issues characterized by powerlessness of general practitioners to intervene. On the one hand, there is health emergency, dealt with by first aid and emergency medicine. On the other hand, there is chronicity, especially affecting the elderly, which is dealt with by other workers (nurses, private family assistants, social workers) who care patients at home and replace physicians. The general practitioners’ work is difficult because of many different reasons; but the central theme is the lack of absolute power – based on morality and consciousness – which leads to the perception of catastrophic consequences for medical profession and the physician-patient relationship. Often, general practitioners are in their offices and are not able to go to patients’ home, therefore they cannot create care relationships based on trust and dependence which allow useful and trustworthy interventions. In sum, the core theme emerging from data refers to the general practitioners’ perceived lack of personal and trust-based relationships with patients

Point-of-Care Testing of Hemostasis in Cardiac Surgery

An excessive perioperative blood loss, that requires transfusion of blood products, sometimes occurs in patients undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass for cardiac surgery. Blood loss and transfusion requirements in these patients may be reduced with a better control of heparin treatment and its reversal. Blood component administration in patients with excessive post-cardiopulmonary bypass bleeding has been empiric for a long time due to turnaround times of laboratory coagulation tests. Devices are now available for rapid, point-of-care assessment of hemostasis alterations to allow an appropriate, targeted therapy. In particular, a quick evaluation of platelet and coagulation defects with new point-of-care devices can optimize the administration of pharmacological and transfusion-based therapy in patients with excessive bleeding after cardiopulmonary bypass