Are Asymmetrically Informed Agents Envious?

In most economies, a fair allocation does not exist. Thus, it seems that we are condemned to live in an unfair world, since we are not happy with what we have and we look at the others with envious eyes. In this paper we want to give an hope for a more equitable society.Asymmetric information; fair allocation; constrained market equilibrium; Maximin and Bayesian expected utility function.

The CIARD RING, an infrastructure for interoperability of agricultural research information services

Creating integrated information services in agriculture giving access and adding value to information residing in distributed sources remains a major challenge. In distributed architectures, value added services by definition interface several information sources / services. Therefore value added services cannot be built without an awareness of what others have done: which sources are available, how to tap into them, how to exploit their semantics. The Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) Routemap to Information Nodes and Gateways (RING) is a portal offering an interlinked registry of existing information services in agriculture. The CIARD RING covers both information services and sources: in nowadays information architectures, the distinction between the two is very fluid. In the RING, the definition of "service" includes any form of providing information from one server instance (website, mail server, web services, XML archive...) to many clients (browsers, email clients, news readers, harvesters...) The services registered in the RING are described in details and categorized according to criteria that are relevant to the use of the service and its interoperability. The RING categorizes and interlinks the featured services according to criteria such as: standards adopted, vocabulary used, technology used, protocols implemented, level of interoperability etc. In addition, it features detailed instructions on how the registered services can be "interoperated". The vision is that the RING will become the common global technical platform for the community of agricultural information professionals for accessing, sharing and exchanging information through web services. This paper describes how the RING provides an infrastructure for enhancing interoperability of information sources and thus paves the way towards better accessibility of information through value-added and better targeted services

The International Financial Crisis: an Expert Survey

The advent of the international financial crisis, and of its effects on the economy, all the world now face the question how to manage the crisis and what measures to implement to restore a normal condition. In this paper we present and discuss the results and implications of an international expert survey. Our target is to understand the perception with regards to several aspects of the international financial crisis and some possible future implications for policy makers’ authorities.international financial crisis; subprime; expert survey

The observation of Extensive Air Showers from an Earth-Orbiting Satellite

In this paper we review the main issues that are relevant for the detection of Extensive Air Showers (EAS) from space. EAS are produced by the interaction of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Particles (UHECP) with the atmosphere and can be observed from an orbiting telescope by detecting air fluorescence UV light. We define the requirements and provide the main formulas and plots needed to design and optimize a suitable telescope. We finally estimate its expected performances in ideal conditions.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures; submitted to Astroparticle Physics 27 pages, 14 figures; major revision; added new figures and sections; typos fixed. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:0810.571

Longterm Influence of Inertia on the Diffusion of a Brownian Particle

We demonstrate experimentally that a Brownian particle is subject to inertial effects at long time scales. By using a blinking optical tweezers, we extend the range of previous experiments by several orders of magnitude up to a few seconds. The measured mean square displacement of a freely diffusing Brownian particle in a liquid shows a deviation from the Einstein-Smoluchowsky theory that diverges with time. These results are consistent with a generalized theory that takes into account not only the particle inertia but also the inertia of the fluid surrounding the particle. This can lead to a bias in the estimation of the diffusion coefficient from finite-time measurements. We show that the decay of the relative error is polynomial and not exponential and, therefore, can have significant effects at time scales relevant for experiments.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Dietary interventions to contrast the onset and progression of diabetic nephropathy. a critical survey of new data

This article is a critical overview of recent contributions on the dietary corrections and the foods that have been claimed to delay or hinder the onset of diabetic nephropathy (DN) and its progression to end-stage renal disease. Innovative dietary and behavioral approaches to the prevention and therapy of DN appear the more captivating in consideration of the rather well established protocols for glucose and blood pressure control in use. In addition to restricted caloric intake to contrast obesity and the metabolic syndrome, adjustments in the patient's macronutrients intake, and in particular some degree of reduction in protein, have been long considered in the prevention of DN progression. More recently, the focus has shifted to the source of proteins and the content of glycotoxins in the diet as well as to the role of specific micronutrients. Few clinical trials have specifically addressed the role of those micronutrients associated with diet proteins that show the most protective effect against DN. Research on clinical outcome and mechanisms of action of such micronutrients appears the most promising in order to develop both effective intervention on nutritional education of the patient and selection of functional foods capable of contrasting the onset and progression of DN