Ethnic discrimination in the Italian rental housing market

With a field experiment carried out on the Internet, this paper studies the presence of discrimination in the Italian rental housing market against persons whose names are distinctive of different ethnic groups and gender. Further, we investigate whether providing information on the job or personal characteristics of the applicant may reduce the extent of discrimination. We also study if sending ill-formed emails negatively affects immigrants’ chances of success in receiving a positive response. We created twelve fictitious individuals: four with Italian-sounding names, four with typical Arab/Muslim names and four with East European-sounding names. We made these individuals send emails to apply for vacant rental apartments in 41 Italian cities. The results provide a multifaceted picture. The degree of discrimination varies across ethnic groups, genders and the level of information, but seems to be present only in part of the country, and is also closely correlated with the size of the flat. Perfect mastery of the receiving-country’s language does not play an important role.

Il social housing in Europa

This paper aims to provide an overview of practice and policies in social housing sector in the European Union. In order to establish meaningful comparisons between Member States – that are characterized by a great heterogeneity in housing systems – first of all we present a definition of social housing, according to its distinctive elements. After a brief historical review, the paper analyses: the role of social housing, the al location criteria, the providers and the sources of financing. Then, some recent social and economics trends are examined: on the one hand these have determined an important need of houses at affordable prices, and on the other hand have induced providers – both public and private – to diversify and broaden their areas of intervention. Finally the paper focus on some relevant EU countries: France, UK, Netherlands and SwedenSocial housing; housing policies; European Union

L'edilizia sociale di fronte all'immigrazione a Modena: politiche abitative e domanda potenziale (o inevasa)

This paper provide a review of housing policies implemented in the Municipality of Modena for those tenants living in unaffordable housing. In the first part of the paper we analyze demand and supply for each of these policies, our sources being microdata from the Municipality: we find that immigrants represent about half of the demand, but that a relevant part of this demand remains unanswered. Then, in the second part we use survey data ICESmo2 in order to detect potential demand for a new housing policy, offering housing at affordable rents – higher than in the public sector but lower than in the private controlled sector. Our results show that this potential demand counts about 2,000 families: in particular, these are one-earner families, under 40, small and foreign familiesrental housing market; immigration; Modena

A New Approach for the Study of the Coast Indentation Index

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C-peptide: a predictor of cardiovascular mortality in subjects with established atherosclerotic disease

Aim: Insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes are independent risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. Levels of C-peptide are increased in these patients and its role in the atherosclerosis progression was studied in vitro and in vivo over the past years. To evaluate the possible use of C-peptide as cardiovascular biomarkers, we designed an observational study in which we enrolled patients with mono- or poly-vascular atherosclerotic disease. Methods: We recruited 431 patients with stable atherosclerosis and performed a yearly follow-up to estimate the cardiovascular and total mortality and cardiovascular events. Results: We performed a mean follow-up of 56months on 268 patients. A multivariate Cox analysis showed that C-peptide significantly increased the risk of cardiovascular mortality [Hazard Ratio: 1.29 (95% confidence interval: 1.02-1.65, p<0.03513)] after adjustment for age, sex, diabetes treatment, estimated glomerular filtration rate and known diabetes status. Furthermore, levels of C-peptide were significantly correlated with metabolic parameters and atherogenic factors. Conclusion: C-peptide was associated with cardiovascular mortality independently of known diabetes status in a cohort of patients with chronic atherosclerotic disease. Future studies using C-peptide into a reclassification approach might be undertaken to consider its potential as a cardiovascular disease biomarker

ESPERIENZE DAL NORD E DAL SUD DEL MONDO VERSO LA CREAZIONE DI POLITICHE ALIMENTARI URBANE IN GRADO DI RENDERE PIU' SOSTENIBILI I SISTEMI ALIMENTARI DELLE CITTA'

Urban food policies are powerful institutional actions, to build more sustainable food systems of contemporary cities. These new policies are designed with a systemic and cross-sectoral approach, they able to act at the intersection of different issues and fields such as water, waste, planning, health, transport, education, environment, trade. We will describe the experiences developed in the Northern and Southern cities of the world (with a focus on West, Africa and Latin America), through the recent Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, which could start a new kind of city-to-city cooperation initiatives

LIMPIC: a computational method for the separation of protein MALDI-TOF-MS signals from noise

BACKGROUND: Mass spectrometry protein profiling is a promising tool for biomarker discovery in clinical proteomics. However, the development of a reliable approach for the separation of protein signals from noise is required. In this paper, LIMPIC, a computational method for the detection of protein peaks from linear-mode MALDI-TOF data is proposed. LIMPIC is based on novel techniques for background noise reduction and baseline removal. Peak detection is performed considering the presence of a non-homogeneous noise level in the mass spectrum. A comparison of the peaks collected from multiple spectra is used to classify them on the basis of a detection rate parameter, and hence to separate the protein signals from other disturbances. RESULTS: LIMPIC preprocessing proves to be superior than other classical preprocessing techniques, allowing for a reliable decomposition of the background noise and the baseline drift from the MALDI-TOF mass spectra. It provides lower coefficient of variation associated with the peak intensity, improving the reliability of the information that can be extracted from single spectra. Our results show that LIMPIC peak-picking is effective even in low protein concentration regimes. The analytical comparison with commercial and freeware peak-picking algorithms demonstrates its superior performances in terms of sensitivity and specificity, both on in-vitro purified protein samples and human plasma samples. CONCLUSION: The quantitative information on the peak intensity extracted with LIMPIC could be used for the recognition of significant protein profiles by means of advanced statistic tools: LIMPIC might be valuable in the perspective of biomarker discovery

IL-6 Levels Influence 3-Month All-Cause Mortality in Frail Hospitalized Older Patients

The multidimensional prognostic index (MPI) is a sensitive and specific prognosis estimation tool that accurately predicts all-cause mortality in frail older patients. It has been validated to assess the risk of 1-month to 2-year mortality in frail older patients during hospitalization and after hospital discharge. However, whether the MPI is a valid prognostic tool for follow-up periods of different lengths remains to be validated. To this end, we followed up 80 hospitalized patients (female=37, male 43) at least 75 years of age (mean age=82.6±4.4, range=75-94 years) to assess the 3-month all-cause mortality (mean follow-up=61.0 ± 31.7 months [range 4-90 days]). Accordingly, patients were subdivided into low (MPI-1, score 0-0.33), moderate (MPI-2, score 0.34-0.66) and high (MPI-3, score 0.67-1) mortality risk classes. Moreover, baseline biochemical, inflammatory and metabolic parameters, as well as anamnestic and clinical characteristics, were obtained. Although the MPI-3 score was significantly associated with 3-month all-cause mortality in univariate analysis (HR=5.79, 95%CI=1.77-18.92, p=0.004), a multivariate model indicated that only low albumin (HR=0.33, 95%CI=0.16-0.68, p=0.003) and high IL6 (HR=1.01, 95%CI=1.00-1.02, p=0.010) levels were significantly associated with 3-month all-cause mortality. In conclusion, we suggest that measurement of IL6 as well as albumin, rather than the MPI score, may help in providing tailored therapeutic interventions to decrease short term mortality in older hospitalized individuals

Analysis of genetic diversity in the Oryza officinalis complex

The genetic relationships among 34 accessions of wild rice from Asia, Africa, America and Australia were analysed using RFLP technique. After southern blotting, DNA digestion pattern was hybridised with a highly repetitive DNA sequence of a retrotransposon from a gypsy family of mobile elements. A dendrogram was constructed from RFLP data in which the species clustered according to their genome designation (CC, BB, BBCC and CCDD genomes). Some species did not appear in the same group, for example, O. eichingeri from Africa and Sri Lanka clustered separately from each other. The same situation was observed for the accessions from China of O. officinalis, which cluster together showing a close relationship with O. rhizomatis, and O. eichingeri (both of CC genome). Also, the tetraploid BBCC from India of O. officinalis appears in the same cluster of O. eichingeri and O. punctata (both from Africa) suggesting close phylogenetic relationship with the African genomes BB, CC and BBCC