FDI potential and shortfalls in the MED AND CEECS: determinants and diversion effects

This paper examines FDI flows (1994-2004) from the EU (and for comparison from the USA and Japan) to two neighbouring regions: Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and South Mediterranean (MED) countries. The analysis provides circumstantial evidence that the intensification of FDI in CEE, following integration within the EU, has had no discernible dampening effect on FDI flows directed to MED countries. This hypothesis is confirmed in several empirical analyses. First, a random effect gravity regression for determinants of bilateral FDI flows to a large sample of 84 developed and developing partners shows that when environmental, institutional and policy variables are included in the analysis MED countries are not different from the rest of the sample. Moreover, the actual capital inflow to MED economies is not much far from the flow predicted based on the enlarged gravity equation. This suggests that the low inflow of FDI to the region might correspond to equilibrium condition considering various distortions that economic agents have to face in MED countries. This result is also confirmed by the common trend followed by coefficients obtained interacting yearly with regional dummies for the two areas

SWAT: A System for Detecting Salient Wikipedia Entities in Texts

We study the problem of entity salience by proposing the design and implementation of SWAT, a system that identifies the salient Wikipedia entities occurring in an input document. SWAT consists of several modules that are able to detect and classify on-the-fly Wikipedia entities as salient or not, based on a large number of syntactic, semantic and latent features properly extracted via a supervised process which has been trained over millions of examples drawn from the New York Times corpus. The validation process is performed through a large experimental assessment, eventually showing that SWAT improves known solutions over all publicly available datasets. We release SWAT via an API that we describe and comment in the paper in order to ease its use in other software

OXIDIZED CELLULOSE WRAP IN SECONDARY INTENTION HEALING OF THE ORAL MUCOSA IN THE TREATMENT OF ONJ

Osteonecrosis of the jaws (ONJ) due to the use of bisphosphonate drugs is a particularly complex condition. The mechanisms through which this pathology develops are manifold. To date, the management of ONJ is controversial.This study analyzed out-patients with documented ONJ treated in Oral and maxillofacial surgery Unit of University "Magna Graecia" of Catanzaro.A total of 11 patients, 8 women and 3 men, were enrolled. The inclusion criteria were: (1) refusal to surgical treatment with flaps; (2) absence of antiplatelet therapy which would also make it impossible to prepare gel from platelet-rich plasma (PRP) or similar; (3) absence of antiblastic therapy in the healing phase. Each case was staged according to the classification of the Italian Societies of Oral Medicine and Maxillofacial Surgery (SICMF-SIPMO classification): a clinical-radiological bone involvement.The following data were recorded: clinical data, comorbidities and concomitant drugs, antibiotic drugs used, type of treatment adopted, clinical mucosal healing time.Each patient underwent antibiotic protocol prior to surgery. Endpoint with surgery was: complete removal of necrotic tissues, packaging of a "re-epithelialization trench" (RET) and apposition of a compress of oxidized cellulose inside this RET. 100% of the patients endured the post-surgery very well, 10 out of 11 (90,91%) patients had excellent healing by secondary intention of the surgical wound. Only one patient (9.09%) had prolonged bone exposure; he subsequently resumed antiblastic therapy and was therefore excluded from work.The results indicate how the use of an oxidized cellulose pack associated with the correct packaging of a re-epithelialization site can guarantee satisfactory post-operative comfort and rapid wound healing. Radiological follow-up was performed at one year. It confirmed the correct healing of the site (clinical and radiological healing)

Give more data, awareness and control to individual citizens, and they will help COVID-19 containment.

The rapid dynamics of COVID-19 calls for quick and effective tracking of virus transmission chains and early detection of outbreaks, especially in the "phase 2" of the pandemic, when lockdown and other restriction measures are progressively withdrawn, in order to avoid or minimize contagion resurgence. For this purpose, contact-tracing apps are being proposed for large scale adoption by many countries. A centralized approach, where data sensed by the app are all sent to a nation-wide server, raises concerns about citizens' privacy and needlessly strong digital surveillance, thus alerting us to the need to minimize personal data collection and avoiding location tracking. We advocate the conceptual advantage of a decentralized approach, where both contact and location data are collected exclusively in individual citizens' "personal data stores", to be shared separately and selectively (e.g., with a backend system, but possibly also with other citizens), voluntarily, only when the citizen has tested positive for COVID-19, and with a privacy preserving level of granularity. This approach better protects the personal sphere of citizens and affords multiple benefits: it allows for detailed information gathering for infected people in a privacy-preserving fashion; and, in turn this enables both contact tracing, and, the early detection of outbreak hotspots on more finely-granulated geographic scale. The decentralized approach is also scalable to large populations, in that only the data of positive patients need be handled at a central level. Our recommendation is two-fold. First to extend existing decentralized architectures with a light touch, in order to manage the collection of location data locally on the device, and allow the user to share spatio-temporal aggregates-if and when they want and for specific aims-with health authorities, for instance. Second, we favour a longer-term pursuit of realizing a Personal Data Store vision, giving users the opportunity to contribute to collective good in the measure they want, enhancing self-awareness, and cultivating collective efforts for rebuilding society

Social Innovation on the Rise: yet another buzzword in time of austerity?

International audienceWe challenge the idea that social innovation can constitute an effective strategy to counterbalance the retrenchment of public social provisions. The changes within the Italian healthcare system, one of the most important sectors of the welfare state, in which social innovation ideas have been widely discussed, are a clear example of a broader trend toward decentralisation and marketization. In conjunction with a new balance between public and private funding, these changes are contributing to increased inequalities and territorial disparities. A social innovation perspective, which is not embedded within a structural reform of the Italian welfare state and the health care system, might simply become a convenient buzzword to forward neoliberal ideology in a time of austerity

“AN EMPIRICAL LAW ABOUT REGIONAL UNEMPLOYMENT IN EASTERN EUROPE”

The paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on regional unemployment during transition in Central and Eastern Europe. The focus is on Optimal Speed of Transition (OST) models and on comparison of them with the neoclassical tradition. In the typical neoclassical models, spatial differences essentially arise as a consequence of supply side constraints and institutional rigidities. Slow-growth, high-unemployment regions are those with backward economic structures and constraints on factors mobility contribute to making differences persistent. However, such explanations leave the question unanswered of how unemployment differences arise in the first place. Economic transition provides an excellent testing ground to answer this question. Prefiguring an empirical law, the OST literature finds that the high degree of labour turnover of high unemployment regions is associated with a high rate of industrial restructuring and, consequently, that low unemployment may be achieved by implementing transition more gradually. Moreover, international trade, FDI and various agglomeration factors help explain the success of capital cities compared to peripheral towns and rural areas in achieving low unemployment

Social Innovation on the Rise: yet another buzzword in a time of austerity

We challenge the idea that social innovation can constitute an effective strategy to counter-balance the retrenchment of public social provisions. The changes within the Italian healthcare system, one of the most important sectors of the welfare state, in which the concept of social innovation been widely discussed, are a clear example of a broader trend toward decentralisation and marketization. In conjunction with a new balance between public and private funding, these changes are contributing to increased inequalities and territorial disparities. The call to social innovation have, is not embedded within a structural reform of the Italian welfare state and has the health care system, might simply become a convenient buzzword to forward neoliberal ideology in a time of austerity

“Mind the Gap: unemployment in the new EU regions”,

IZA Discussion Paper, n. 1565, ftp://ftp.iza.org/dps/dp1565.pdf, April

"Mind the Gap: Unemployment in the New EU Regions"

The paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on regional unemployment during transition in Central and Eastern Europe. The focus is on optimal speed of transition (OST) models and on comparison of them with the neo-classical tradition. In the typical neo-classical models, spatial differences essentially arise as a consequence of supply side constraints and institutional rigidities. Slow-growth, high-unemployment regions are those with backward economic structures and constraints on factors mobility contribute to making differences persistent. However, such explanations leave the question unanswered of how unemployment differences arise in the first place. Economic transition provides an excellent testing ground to answer this question. Pre-figuring an empirical law, the OST literature finds that the high degree of labour turnover of high unemployment regions is associated with a high rate of industrial restructuring and, consequently, that low unemployment may be achieved by implementing transition more gradually. Moreover, international trade, foreign direct investment and various agglomeration factors help explain the success of capital cities compared to peripheral towns and rural areas in achieving low unemployment. The evidence of the empirical literature on supply side factors suggests that wage flexibility in Central and Eastern Europe is not lower than in other EU countries, while labour mobility seems to reinforce rather than change the spatial pattern of unemployment