CLUSTERING THE HETEROGENITY OF EU URBAN PERFORMANCES

Cities represent today the intrinsic socio-economic complexity of local systems. Looking at the performances of urban systems enable us to explaining the main factors of territorial development. By moving from the theory of "progressive systems", and assigning to the cities some of this theory's properties, it is possible to outline a methodological perspective to capture the emerging phenomena describing the cities' performances. Keeping this view in mind, the aim of the paper is facing the intrinsic socio-economic complexity and heterogeneity of cities within the EU integration policies.. In order to better qualify this issue, we provide a multidimensional scaling approach, as a quantitative method useful to compare the several urban performances by letting a cluster evidence among the EU cities emerge.Urban trajectories, progressive system, multidimensional scaling.

Archives of the Mediterranean: governance and record-keeping in the Crown of Aragon in the Long Fifteenth Century

From the late medieval period the Crown of Aragon was at the forefront of archival innovation. Culminating in the establishment of the Royal Archive of Barcelona in 1318, this development was not, as is traditionally stated, a mere imitation of external models but the result of an innovative historical process that had its roots in local history and reflected the structure of the Aragonese monarchy. As a result of the later enlargement and decentralization of the Crown, and especially after the advent of the House of Trastámara in 1414, the Aragonese developed an extensive system for record-keeping across the Mediterranean. By focusing on what I describe as a complex archival network, this article analyses a series of administrative developments, which are generally studied in isolation, as interrelated responses to similar needs across disparate and far-flung territories. The results differed within the Iberian dominions (Aragon, Majorca and Valencia) and in the Italian kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, with Sardinia somewhere in between. For all these differences, however, the establishment of a number of financial archives shows that this network had an especially crucial role in defending the royal patrimony in all the territories under the rule of the Crown of Aragon. The authorities also tried to use archives as tools for exercising pressure upon local political elites, as demonstrated, for instance, by the systematic inquiry into feudal possessions and pecuniary rights instigated by King Ferdinand II in early sixteenth-century Sicily. The outcome, however, was totally unexpected

The transition towards low-carbon mobility: policies measures and consumer behaviour.

146 p.El cambio climático provocado por la emisión de gases de efecto invernadero es uno de los retos más urgentes a los que se enfrenta la sociedad moderna. Para limitar sus efectos negativos en el futuro se necesitan esfuerzos significativos en cada sector de la economía. En Europa, el transporte, especialmente el de carretera, es uno de los sectores que más contribuyen a las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero.La hoja de ruta europea para el consumo de energía baja en carbono prevé una reducción de 60% en la intensidad de emisiones del transporte para el 2050 con respeto a los niveles del 1990.Para este objetivo, es necesaria una transición hacia una movilidad baja en carbono, lo que implica reducir las emisiones del transporte en términos de intensidad por viaje y/o reducir la duración y la frecuencia de los desplazamientos. Para garantizar el éxito de esta transición, se debe disponer de instrumentos que influyan en las decisiones de los consumidores en relación al modo de transporteelegido. Sin embargo, el éxito de estas medidas también dependerá de su aceptación por parte de la ciudadanía y de la disposición de esta para cambiar sus hábitos de transporte.En este contexto, la presente tesis analiza las implicaciones en términos de comportamiento de algunas de las medidas más relevantes para impulsar la transición hacia una movilidad sostenible, con el objetivo de evidenciar potenciales barreras y facilitadores de la transición energética y extraer recomendaciones para mejorar las políticas para la transición hacia una movilidad baja en carbono.Tres conjuntos de medidas han sido considerados con este propósito: el apoyo a la difusión de servicios de movilidad alternativos; medidas enfocadas en fomentar un cambio modal hacia un mayor uso del transporte público y de modos de transporte activo; y, restricciones directas al acceso en entornos urbanos de los vehículos más contaminantes para reducir los niveles de concentración de contaminantes locales y promover la renovación del parque móvil con vehículos de combustibles alternativos

Treatment timing and multidisciplinary approach in Apert syndrome

Apert syndrome is a rare congenital disorder characterized by craniosynostosis, midface hypoplasia and symmetric syndactyly of hands and feet. Abnormalities associated with Apert syndrome include premature fusion of coronal sutures system (coronal sutures and less frequently lambdoid suture) resulting in brachiturricephalic dismorphism and impaired skull base growth. After this brief explanation it is clear that these anatomical abnormalities may have a negative impact on the ability to perform essential functions. Due to the complexity of the syndrome a multidisciplinary (respiratory, cerebral, maxillo-mandibular, dental, ophthalmic and orthopaedic) approach is necessary in treating the psychological, aesthetic and functional issues. The aim of this paper is to analyse the different functional issues and surgical methods trying to enhance results through a treatment plan which includes different specialities involved in Apert syndrome treatment. Reduced intellectual capacity is associated to the high number of general anaesthesia the small patients are subject to. Therefore the diagnostic and therapeutic treatment plan in these patients has established integrated and tailored surgical procedures based on the patients’ age in order to reduce the number of general anaesthesia, thus simplifying therapy for both Apert patients and their family members

Parametrised modified gravity and the CMB Bispectrum

We forecast the constraints on modified theories of gravity from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies bispectrum that arises from correlations between lensing and the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. In models of modified gravity the evolution of the metric potentials is generally altered and the contribution to the CMB bispectrum signal can differ significantly from the one expected in the standard cosmological model.We adopt a parametrised approach and focus on three different classes of models: Linder's growth index, Chameleon-type models and f(R) theories. We show that the constraints on the parameters of the models will significantly improve with future CMB bispectrum measurements.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Beyond the immune suppression: the immunotherapy in prostate cancer

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second most common cancer in men.Aswell in many other human cancers, inflammation and immune suppression have an important role in their development.We briefly describe the host components that interact with the tumor to generate an immune suppressive environment involved in PCa promotion and progression.Different tools provide to overcome the mechanisms of immunosuppression including vaccines and immune checkpoint blockades. With regard to this, we report results of most recent clinical trials investigating immunotherapy in metastatic PCa (Sipuleucel-T, ipilimumab, tasquinimod, Prostvac-VF, and GVAX) and provide possible future perspectives combining the immunotherapy to the traditional therapie

Prompt Application-Transparent Transaction Revalidation in Software Transactional Memory

Software Transactional Memory (STM) allows encapsulating shared-data accesses within transactions, executed with atomicity and isolation guarantees. The assessment of the consistency of a running transaction is performed by the STM layer at specific points of its execution, such as when a read or write access to a shared object occurs, or upon a commit attempt. However, performance and energy efficiency issues may arise when no shared-data read/write operation occurs for a while along a thread running a transaction. In this scenario, the STM layer may not regain control for a considerable amount of time, thus not being able to early detect if such transaction has become inconsistent in the meantime. To tackle this problem we present an STM architecture that, thanks to a lightweight operating system support, is able to perform a fine-grain periodic (hence prompt) revalidation of running transactions. Our proposal targets Linux and x86 systems and has been integrated with the open source TinySTM package. Experimental results with a port of the TPC-C benchmark to STM environments show the effectiveness of our solution

Preemptive Software Transactional Memory

In state-of-the-art Software Transactional Memory (STM) systems, threads carry out the execution of transactions as non-interruptible tasks. Hence, a thread can react to the injection of a higher priority transactional task and take care of its processing only at the end of the currently executed transaction. In this article we pursue a paradigm shift where the execution of an in-memory transaction is carried out as a preemptable task, so that a thread can start processing a higher priority transactional task before finalizing its current transaction. We achieve this goal in an application-transparent manner, by only relying on Operating System facilities we include in our preemptive STM architecture. With our approach we are able to re-evaluate CPU assignment across transactions along a same thread every few tens of microseconds. This is mandatory for an effective priority-aware architecture given the typically finer-grain nature of in-memory transactions compared to their counterpart in database systems. We integrated our preemptive STM architecture with the TinySTM package, and released it as open source. We also provide the results of an experimental assessment of our proposal based on running a port of the TPC-C benchmark to the STM environment

Model-Based Proactive Read-Validation in Transaction Processing Systems

Concurrency control protocols based on read-validation schemes allow transactions which are doomed to abort to still run until a subsequent validation check reveals them as invalid. These late aborts do not favor the reduction of wasted computation and can penalize performance. To counteract this problem, we present an analytical model that predicts the abort probability of transactions handled via read-validation schemes. Our goal is to determine what are the suited points-along a transaction lifetime-to carry out a validation check. This may lead to early aborting doomed transactions, thus saving CPU time. We show how to exploit the abort probability predictions returned by the model in combination with a threshold-based scheme to trigger read-validations. We also show how this approach can definitely improve performance-leading up to 14 % better turnaround-as demonstrated by some experiments carried out with a port of the TPC-C benchmark to Software Transactional Memory