New research opportunities for roadside safety barriers improvement

Among the major topics regarding the protection of roads, restraint systems still represent a big opportunity in order to increase safety performances. When accidents happen, in fact, the infrastructure can substantially contribute to the reduction of consequences if its marginal spaces are well designed and/or effective restraint systems are installed there. Nevertheless, basic concepts and technology of road safety barriers have not significantly changed for the last two decades. The paper proposes a new approach to the study aimed to define possible enhancements of restraint safety systems performances, by using new materials and defining innovative design principles. In particular, roadside systems can be developed with regard to vehicle-barrier interaction, vehicle-oriented design (included low-mass and extremely low-mass vehicles), traffic suitability, user protection, working width reduction. In addition, thanks to sensors embedded into the barriers, it is also expected to deal with new challenges related to the guidance of automatic vehicles and I2V communication

Nutritional cognitive neuroscience of aging: Focus on carotenoids and cognitive frailty

The term „nutritional cognitive neuroscience” was recently established to define a research field focusing on the impact of nutrition on cognition and brain health across the life span. In this overview, we summarize the robust evidence on the role of carotenoids as micronutrients with different biological properties in persons with cognitive (pre)frailty. As neurodegenerative processes during aging occur in a continuum from brain aging to dementia, we propose the name „nutritional cognitive neuroscience of aging“ to define research on the role of nutrition and micronutrients in cognitive frailty. Further studies are warranted which integrate carotenoid interventions in multidomain, personalized lifestyle strategies

Environmental niche and global potential distribution of the giant resin bee Megachile sculpturalis, a rapidly spreading invasive pollinator

Abstract Since alien species may threaten native ecosystems when becoming invasive, one of the main challenges is try to predict their potential spread. Despite bees are essential pollinators and provide important ecosystem services in their native areas, outside these areas they could represent a risk for the local bee fauna, e.g. by competing for resources or by transmitting pathogens, as it was observed for species of Megachile, the bee genus with the highest number of recorded alien species. Here, using two complementary methods (Multidimensional Envelope procedure (MDE) and the Maximum Entropy algorithm (MaxEnt)), we aim to explore environmental niche as well as to identify potential worldwide distribution of the giant resin bee Megachile sculpturalis, native to Asia and recently introduced in North America and Europe. The two methodological approaches predict an important expansion for the species and reveal a preference for areas of Palearctic and Nearctic regions with reduced temperature fluctuations and moderate precipitation regimes. The Southern hemisphere seems not having good conditions for this species. Estimations for the future (2070) predict a further, though limited expansion to northern areas in the North hemisphere. However, during roughly 25 years of spreading outside its native range, M. sculpturalis clearly expanded the range of inhabitable environmental conditions, which may increase its potential invasiveness in a pattern difficult to predict using only correlative methods. Physiological and ecological data are necessary to better assess the potential niche of this bee species and in consequence to better predict its future spreading dynamics

Optimal Incentives in a Principal-Agent Model with Endogenous Technology

One of the standard predictions of the agency theory is that more incentives can be given to agents with lower risk aversion. In this paper, we show that this relationship may be absent or reversed when the technology is endogenous and projects with a higher efficiency are also riskier. Using a modified version of the Holmstrom and Milgrom’s framework, we obtain that lower agent’s risk aversion unambiguously leads to higher incentives when the technology function linking efficiency and riskiness is elastic, while the risk aversion–incentive relationship can be positive when this function is rigid

L’altro che forse sono. Tra umano e animale

The question of the human in its relations with the animal and, in general, with the living being is focused through a reading of some of Martin Heidegger works and through the reading of Jacques Derrida. Some allegations that the latter turns to Heidegger seem somewhat out of place. In fact, the basic positions of the German philosopher on the question of the animal in relation to the human seem to allow the possibility of a response, in terms of a responsibility on the part of the human, just by virtue of the absolute essential distance that he stresses between man and living being. The paper try to show the need for a response to the other, in that dimension of otherness which hardly one might approach or even assimilate, as some recent reflections seem to hope and expect

L\u2019altro che forse sono. Tra umano e animale

The question of the human in its relations with the animal and, in general, with the living being is focused through a reading of some of Martin Heidegger works and through the reading of Jacques Derrida. Some allegations that the latter turns to Heidegger seem somewhat out of place. In fact, the basic positions of the German philosopher on the question of the animal in relation to the human seem to allow the possibility of a response, in terms of a responsibility on the part of the human, just by virtue of the absolute essential distance that he stresses between man and living being. The paper try to show the need for a response to the other, in that dimension of otherness which hardly one might approach or even assimilate, as some recent reflections seem to hope and expect

Socrates as therapist

The article is devoted to a critical analysis of Lacan’s interpretation of Socrates’s philosophical figure. According to Lacan, in Plato’s writings Socrates plays a role similar to that of a therapist. If so, this role brings to the fore a dimension of philosophical discourse that usually stays in the background: the dimension of desire and its relations both to the subject and to the truth. If it is impossible to rule out desire and its relations from philosophical and dialogical practice, then absolutistic claims concerning the search for truth fail