IL NUOVO VOLTO DELLA GIURISDIZIONE “IN EXECUTIVIS” Tra crisi di identità e prospettive di riforma

Il presente lavoro tenta di eseguire una ricognizione dei nuovi poteri che, le Sezioni Unite, hanno riconosciuto in capo al giudice dell'esecuzione penale. Ciò in riposta alle pressioni provenienti da Strasburgo, di una maggiore tutela dei diritti fondamentali, di cui fa parte la libertà personale. Diritto pregiudicato da una disciplina rigida, che non permette modificazioni del trattamento sanzionatorio una volta che la sentenza di condanna acquista i crismi della "cosa giudicata". Pressati dalla necessità di conformarsi alle pronunce di Strasburgo e della Corte costituzionale, i giudici di legittimità, pur in assenza di una espressa disposizione normativa, hanno cercato la strada per riportare nell’alveo della legalità le pene inflitte sulla base di norme dichiarate incostituzionali. Ripercorrendo i momenti salienti della giurisprudenza degli ultimi 5-6 anni, si analizza l’opera di equilibrismo della Corte di Cassazione che, in definitiva, ha portato ad una progressiva demolizione del mito dell’intangibilità del giudicato; affermando la supremazia del diritto fondamentale della libertà personale su quello di stabilità dei rapporti giuridici. Per realizzare questa finalità, i giudici, hanno rinvenuto, attraverso un’interpretazione a maglie molto larghe delle previsioni del codice di procedura penale, nel giudice dell’esecuzione, l’organo deputato alle necessarie modifiche della pena

The dynamothermal aureole of the Donqiao ophiolite (northern Tibet)

Metamorphic rocks found at the base of the Jurassic Donqiao ophiolite of northern Tibet are interpreted as a basal dynamothermal aureole produced during obduction of the massif. The rocks form a sequence some 8 m thick, varying from high-grade amphibolites at the contact with overlying harzburgites to greenschist facies metasedimentary rocks lower down. The mineral paragenesis is similar to other such aureoles, and indicates that temperatures in excess of 750°C may have been reached during metamorphism. The lack of high-pressure minerals suggests that the rocks were produced by subcretion in a relatively shallow dipping subduction zone. Ar-Ar geochronology on amphibole separates provides dates of 175-180 Ma for the displacement of the ophiolite, significantly older than the age of emplacement estimated from stratigraphic relationships. The ophiolite was clearly obducted very soon after its formation in a suprasubduction zone environment.published_or_final_versio

Conservative treatment of CMC-1 osteoarthritis

Initially, osteoarthritis of the carpometacarpal joint of the thumb (CMC-1) should be conservatively treated. However, literature concerning this topic is absent. Therefore, 39 patients (71 hands) with conservatively treated osteoarthritis of the carpometacarpal joint of the thumb were reviewed. The minimum follow-up period was I year; the average follow-up period was 8.8 years. Thirty-two women had bilateral CMC-I osteoarthritis; the remaining seven patients had unilateral CMC-1 osteoarthritis. Although suggested by others, long-term pain relief was not observed in this study. Moreover, patient satisfaction, thumb strength, and mobility were not influenced by the duration of the CMC-1 osteoarthritis. In conservatively treated patients, worse results are achieved than in operated patients, especially concerning their subjective experiences. The authors therefore advise surgery, especially in the case of pain which hampers the activities of daily life

Long-term effects of ocean temperature rise on the deep sea

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization operates a global International Monitoring System, with 11 hydroacoustic stations around the globe located in the deep-sea sound channel. Continuous measurements provide up to 20 years of sound pressures at frequencies of up to 100 Hz, depending on when each station was installed. These relatively long timescales allow investigating the effects of climate over that period. This presentation will show data from CTBT stations H11 (Wake Island, in the North Pacific) and H01 (Cape Leeuwin, in the Indian Ocean). Multiscale aggregations of 1-minute power spectral density (PSD) levels and sound energy measures over several days are used to show their correlation with sea surface temperature (SST) measurements at different timescales. In particular, we can detect seasonal changes in the SST as well as longer term climatic variations. The spectral analysis also shows periodic features in PSD levels around 15 to 31 Hz. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2014 that the increase in temperature has mostly affected the upper (0 - 700 m) ocean while assessing the impact of climate change in the deep sea (> 1000 m) is a challenging task due to the difficulty of gathering long-term comprehensive data. This link between sound pressure levels at 1-km depths and the surface temperature of the ocean is particularly important. Sound is an Essential Ocean Variable, and a key factor to better understand the Earth’s climate system

Effects of study design and allocation on participant behaviour-ESDA: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background: What study participants think about the nature of a study has been hypothesised to affect subsequent behaviour and to potentially bias study findings. In this trial we examine the impact of awareness of study design and allocation on participant drinking behaviour. Methods/Design: A three-arm parallel group randomised controlled trial design will be used. All recruitment, screening, randomisation, and follow-up will be conducted on-line among university students. Participants who indicate a hazardous level of alcohol consumption will be randomly assigned to one of three groups. Group A will be informed their drinking will be assessed at baseline and again in one month (as in a cohort study design). Group B will be told the study is an intervention trial and they are in the control group. Group C will be told the study is an intervention trial and they are in the intervention group. All will receive exactly the same brief educational material to read. After one month, alcohol intake for the past 4 weeks will be assessed. Discussion: The experimental manipulations address subtle and previously unexplored ways in which participant behaviour may be unwittingly influenced by standard practice in trials. Given the necessity of relying on self-reported outcome, it will not be possible to distinguish true behaviour change from reporting artefact. This does not matter in the present study, as any effects of awareness of study design or allocation involve bias that is not well understood. There has been little research on awareness effects, and our outcomes will provide an indication of the possible value of further studies of this type and inform hypothesis generation

Milling plant and soil material in plastic tubes over-estimates carbon and under-estimates nitrogen concentrations

Peer reviewedPostprin

Subnanosecond spectral diffusion measurement using photon correlation

Spectral diffusion is a result of random spectral jumps of a narrow line as a result of a fluctuating environment. It is an important issue in spectroscopy, because the observed spectral broadening prevents access to the intrinsic line properties. However, its characteristic parameters provide local information on the environment of a light emitter embedded in a solid matrix, or moving within a fluid, leading to numerous applications in physics and biology. We present a new experimental technique for measuring spectral diffusion based on photon correlations within a spectral line. Autocorrelation on half of the line and cross-correlation between the two halves give a quantitative value of the spectral diffusion time, with a resolution only limited by the correlation set-up. We have measured spectral diffusion of the photoluminescence of a single light emitter with a time resolution of 90 ps, exceeding by four orders of magnitude the best resolution reported to date

Unconventional motional narrowing in the optical spectrum of a semiconductor quantum dot

Motional narrowing refers to the striking phenomenon where the resonance line of a system coupled to a reservoir becomes narrower when increasing the reservoir fluctuation. A textbook example is found in nuclear magnetic resonance, where the fluctuating local magnetic fields created by randomly oriented nuclear spins are averaged when the motion of the nuclei is thermally activated. The existence of a motional narrowing effect in the optical response of semiconductor quantum dots remains so far unexplored. This effect may be important in this instance since the decoherence dynamics is a central issue for the implementation of quantum information processing based on quantum dots. Here we report on the experimental evidence of motional narrowing in the optical spectrum of a semiconductor quantum dot broadened by the spectral diffusion phenomenon. Surprisingly, motional narrowing is achieved when decreasing incident power or temperature, in contrast with the standard phenomenology observed for nuclear magnetic resonance