P. 236-245 ; This article is an excerpt of a long and extensive work on Castilian and Portuguese geographical discoveries of the XV and XVI centuries. Among the jungles, deserts and snowy peaks of the, nowadays well known, central Mexico, takes place one of the most interesting, exciting and dramatic encounter in history. It is the 1519. On one side are the soldiers of Castile, armed with steel, on the other side of a huge cultural and mental barricade are the Aztecs, descendants of proud warriors who shed blood to conquer the Anahuac valley and that, pouring out, more prepare to lose it. The article tries to summarize the main points of the military campaign known as "Conquest of Mexico" but also to investigate the actors, drawing upon the direct evidences of the protagonists of the event, the Aztec codes and the current interpretation of historians, anthropologists and archaeologists. The author's aim is to open up to the reader such a different world in the way of thinking, in the habits, in the warfare, torn by the irreconcilable dichotomy between sophistication and ferocity, majestic temples and human sacrifices. Unfortunately this story has been misrepresented by historiographical clichés that has identified the good and the evil, the murderers and the martyrs. As an historian I have tried to maintain a proper intellectual and critical detachment and came to the inescapable conclusion that these are not bed men: these are men born and lived five centuries ago, within systems of thought and values opposed to those recognized today by the democratic nations ; SI
Many statistical analyses aim at a causal explanation of the data. When discussing this topic it is important to specify the exact query we want to talk about. A typical causal question can be categorized in two main classes: questions on the causes of observed effects and questions on the effects of observed causes. In this dissertation we consider both EoC and CoE causal queries from a particular perspective that is Mediation. Mediation Analysis aims to disentangle the pathway between exposure and outcome on a direct effect and an indirect effect arising from the chain exposure-mediator-outcome. In the EoC framework, if the goal is to measure the causal relation between two variables when a third is involved and plays the role of mediator, it is essential to explicitly define several assumptions among variables. However if any of these assumptions is not met, estimates of mediating effects may be affected by bias. This phenomenon, known with the name of Birth Weight paradox, has been explained as a consequence of the presence of unmeasured confounding between the mediator and the outcome. In this thesis we discuss these apparent paradoxical results in a real dataset. In addition we suggest useful graphical sensitivity analysis techniques to explain the potential amount of bias capable of producing these paradoxical results. From a CoE perspective, given empirical evidence for the dependence of an outcome variable on an exposure variable, we can typically only provide bounds for the "probability of causation" in the case of an individual who has developed the outcome after being exposed. We show how these bounds can be adapted or improved if further information becomes available. In addition to reviewing existing work on this topic, we provide a new analysis for the case where a mediating variable can be observed. In particular we show how the probability of causation can be bounded in two different cases of partial and complete mediation.
The phenomenon of abandonment today mainly concerns small villages, located in disadvantaged or fragile areas, but also urban and industrial "fragments", which have concluded their life cycle or have lost their function, becoming incompatible with the socio-economic system. The most obvious causes are natural and anthropic, traumatic and gradual, and depend on the fragility of the territory, often increased by neglect and poor maintenance, in a spiral process in which abandonment increases neglect, neglect increases abandonment; but they also depend on the traditional socio-economic system, which cannot keep up with the speed of processes in the so-called advanced areas. Depopulation and abandonment are not phenomena of our time. In every age and at every latitude territories have been gradually inhabited, abandoned and then re-inhabited, according to a life cycle that is sometimes natural, sometimes unnaturally accelerated by political choices. However, it is evident, looking at the history of places, that single events have almost never been the sole cause of abandonment: often communities have faced and overcome a disaster, finding in themselves the stimuli and solutions for a possible recovery. Problems arise, however, when human action is added to the event, a disrespectful, short-sighted intervention or even simple inaction. These are political actions that directly or indirectly trigger processes of abandonment, where they do not follow the history, needs and identity of places and communities. Una storia di abbandono. Cause, conseguenze, trasformazioniIl fenomeno dell'abbandono oggi riguarda principalmente insediamenti "minori", ubicati in aree disagiate o fragili a cui si affiancano "frammenti" urbani e industriali che hanno concluso il proprio ciclo vitale o hanno perso la propria funzione, diventando incompatibili con il sistema socio-economico. Le cause più evidenti sono naturali e antropiche, traumatiche e graduali, che fanno leva sulla fragilità del territorio, spesso accresciuta da incuria e ...
This PhD thesis attempts to investigate the role of economic uncertainty in driving the behaviour of household savings for six European countries. Focusing on three main sources of economic uncertainty Unemployment Risk, Fiscal Policy Uncertainty and Financial Crisis-Investment risk, I construct a Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR) model comprising of the Household Saving Rate, main variable of interest; the unemployment rate, to proxy labour income uncertainty and the risk of an income loss; the volatility of financial stock prices per each country, to detect for the presence of financial uncertainty/crisis; a policy uncertainty indicator, using alternatively the Policy Uncertainty Index devised by Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2012), the Debt to GDP ratio or the Government Surplus/Deficit to GDP ratio. A comparison among country-specific cumulative impulse response functions suggests that: 1. Household saving rate's response to a change in investment risk is ambiguous, due to two counterbalancing effects: higher risk increases the volatility of future consumption and thus stimulates the accumulation of savings, while a more uncertain rate of return reduces the attractiveness of saving since it increases the risk of capital losses. 2. A labour uncertainty shock is detrimental or a booster for saving depending on whether the downward pressures on saving rate due to lower saving from unemployed people, prevails or not over the higher households propensity to save for precautionary reasons. 3. Fiscal policy instruments and related uncertainty influence the savings pattern of the private sector: private saving falls when governments reduce deficits (or the debt level) or run large budget surpluses and vice versa, as suggested by the Ricardian paradigm. I then propose another possible approach to the analysis, a Bayesian estimation of the reduced form VARs for the panel of European countries, as a Hierarchical Linear Model, with the future aim of improving estimation results.
In the last years, FPGAs have been heavily used in many different critical applications, such as spatial and military ones, where these devices operate in harsh environments. For this reason, research studies about faults (detection, recovery, modelling etc.) in FPGA technology are of primary concern. The main objective of this thesis is the development of an integrated environment for the analysis of fault effects in FPGA routing. The integrated environment has been developed as a Python library, named PyXEL, that integrates Xilinx Software, such as Vivado and ISE tools, and exploits a strong know-how to carry out experiments on routing faults in FPGAs in an automated way. In particular, PyXEL provides an easy way to execute design manipulation, fault injection, bitstreams manipulation, collection and analysis of results. Furthermore, PyXEL has been used for the analysis of fault effects in the interconnection network of the Xilinx Artix-7 XC7A100T FPGA. Routing faults such as conflicts and opens have been injected in the FPGA using randomly chosen Programmable- Interconnect-Points (PIPs). The experiments conducted show that it is possible to use PyXEL in order to gain insights into the real behaviours of fault effects in FPGA routing.
With the introduction of the European Stability and Growth Pact most European members introduced domestic fiscal rules to make all different levels of govern- ment responsible for the control of central public accounts. There is a broad debate on the suitability of the fiscal rules set in the Treaty of Maastricht and in the Stability and Growth Pact. The present PhD's thesis review the evolution of Domestic Stability Pact in Italy (Chapter 1) and empirically investigate two research questions. In Chapter 2 we explore the impact of capital expenditure constraints on investments in public works. After 2008, the Italian central gov- ernment strongly changed financial rules aimed at imposing fiscal discipline on local governments. Municipalities subject to the Domestic Stability Pact (DSP) collided with new stronger expenditure restrictions and tougher punishments for non-compliers. This institutional change allows us to identify a causal relationship between the DSP and investment in public works implementing a "Difference-in- Differences" (D-i-D) design. Being exposed to the Pact reduces investment in public works by 47% and number of auctions by 44%, while increases winning re- bate by 5.5% and number of bidders by 16%. In Chapter 3 we evaluate the effect of a reduction in investment for public works on new firm formation. The results show that the amount invested in public works by local governments is a very important determinant of new firm formation. A one standard deviation decrease in total starting value decreases the entry rate for all firms by 21% and the entry rate for construction firms only by 29%.
Medication non-adherence is an important public health concern, affecting health outcomes and overall health care costs. Adherence is becoming a priority included in the political agenda of health care system. In 2012 was launched from EC the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP-AHA). The EIP-AHA A1 Action Group is focused on prescription and adherence. Part of the results of this thesis have been made available to A1 Action Group as preliminary data that might be useful for the further focused interventions. This thesis aims to provide more evidence on relation between poor adherence and adverse outcomes and to define reason of poor adherence, by using drug-utilization approaches using different sources of health-related automated databases. The scope of the study is also to evaluate economic impact of enhancing adherence by using real-life approach. The case study is population exposure to anti-osteoporotic drugs: with ageing populations, the burden of osteoporotic fractures on society will increase in the coming years and the prevention of osteoporotic fractures is therefore a major public health issue. The results showed sub optimal level of persistence and drug regimen is one of the strong predictors of non-adherence. Gender influences adherence to therapy and this is an issue that could be taken in strong consideration in tailor intervention to improve adherence. Another aspect is comorbidity this highlighted that an approach centered on comorbidity/multimorbidity, could be more pertinent, in particular when address health issues concerning older people. The ICER , expressed in terms of cost/fracture avoided equals € 821. This value indicates the cost that the NHS should support each fracture avoided This thesis demonstrated the potential of the use of existing data sources to evaluate appropriateness of drug use. Drugs cost money to buy, but if we use them in an appropriate way we can also save costs in other areas. In particular enhancing adherence to medication may lead to reductions in the number of patients requiring hospitalization. This research only explored cost effectiveness of improve adherence in drug use for osteoporosis, but clearly many different pattern of drugs for chronic conditions could be assessed in a similar way.
Institutional reforms have long been a central focus of the European economic policy debate, and the labor market in particular has been subject to never definitive reforms in the past 20 years, mainly aimed at fostering wage moderation and flexible labor contracts. The employment effects of labor market institutions have been widely analyzed, but the focus on this aspect has overshadowed an equally important but scantily investigated element: their possible dynamic impact on innovation and productivity growth. This paper is a critical survey of the literature which may help shed light on this issue. Growth theory as well as the results of the empirical growth literature teach us that the main drivers of long run productivity growth in advanced countries are innovation, research and development, human capital accumulation. Reforms which enhance labor market flexibility can in principle affect these growth drivers through different channels, but the sign of the effects on productivity growth is ambiguous. Existing empirical evidence shows that wage and numerical flexibility have negative effects on research and development, innovation and firm sponsored training, suggesting that the dynamic effects of labor flexibility are negative. This suggests that the tradeoff between labor market flexibility and productivity growth which has been detected both within many European countries and across European countries is not just a temporary, static, short run effect linked to the employment effect of flexibility enhancing reforms, but may also reflect a more worrying permanent, dynamic, long run phenomenon. ; Quello delle riforme istituzionali è un tema da lungo tempo centrale nel dibattito Europeo di politica economica, e il mercato del lavoro in particolare è stato soggetto, negli ultimi 20 anni, a riforme mai definitive, principalmente rivolte a promuovere la moderazione salariale e la flessibilità dei contratti di lavoro. Gli effetti occupazionali delle istituzioni del mercato del lavoro sono stati ampiamente analizzati, ma la focalizzazione su questo punto ha messo in secondo piano un aspetto ugualmente importante ma scarsamente indagato: i loro possibili effetti dinamici sull'innovazione e sulla crescita della produttività. Il presente lavoro è una rassegna critica della letteratura che può aiutare a far luce su questo aspetto. La teoria della crescita, e i risultati della relativa letteratura empirica ci insegnano che i principali motori della crescita della produttività nel lungo periodo per le economie avanzate sono l'innovazione, la ricerca e sviluppo, l'accumulazione di capitale umano. Le riforme che aumentano la flessibilità del mercato del lavoro possono in linea di principio influenzare questi motori di crescita attraverso diversi canali, ma la direzione degli effetti sulla crescita della produttività è ambigua. L'evidenza empiria esistente mostra che la flessibilità salariale e numerica tendono ad avere effetti negativi sulla ricerca e sviluppo, sull'innovazione e sull'investimento in formazione da parte delle imprese, e dunque che gli effetti dinamici della flessibilità del lavoro sulla crescita tendono ad essere negativi. Questo suggerisce il trade off tra flessibilità del mercato del lavoro e crescita della produttività che è stata riscontrata sia all'interno di vari Paesi Europei che su dati longitudinali per vari paesi Europei non è solo un effetto statico di breve periodo legato all'impatto occupazionale delle riforme pro-flessibilità, ma potrebbe riflettere un più preoccupante fenomeno dinamico, permanente, di lungo periodo.
La tesi ha come obiettivo quello di costruire una revisione della letteratura sul tema "country of origin effect e turismo" basata sulla ricerca di articoli e riviste di marketing. La revisione prenderà in esame un arco temporale di 5 anni (dal 2009 al 2013). Nella prima parte della tesi viene definito il fenomeno del country of origin effect e vengono spiegati modelli, teorie e processi che sono alla base di questo concetto, con un focus particolare nell'ambito del settore turistico. Dopo la parentesi teorica, il lavoro spiega la fase di revisione della letteratura spiegando il metodo di analisi e classificazione delle riviste e degli articoli. Le conclusioni si concentrano sul rapporto tra effetto del Paese di origine e turismo, su come la letteratura scientifica affronta l'argomento e su nuove prospettive di indagine.
The aim of this article is to reconstruct the journey of Charles I, King of Hungary (1310–1342), from Visegrád to Naples in the year 1333. Through an analysis of documents written in the Angevin Chancellery in Naples from 1331 to 1333 (all physically lost, but accessible through transcripts published during the 1800s both in Naples and in Budapest), papal letters of the same period, and some major medieval and modern narrative sources, I try to understand the reasons that brought Charles I to Naples and to clarify the strong political implications, even long-term ones, that the journey had for the history not only of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Sicily but of the Kingdom of Hungary as well. Looking closely at an Angevin document from 1333, never contextualized in the historical moment it was issued, I will formulate new hypotheses concerning the artistic consequences the journey had on the funerary politics of Robert of Anjou, King of Sicily (1309–1343), and on the commissioning of monumental tombs intended to solemnly guard the remains of prominent members of the Angevin dynasty in the cathedral of Naples.
The research dissertation on labour migration issue in the European Union and the effect on Labour markets aims at identifying the various trends in migration by immigrants for work or for family reunification. This is highlighted through a basic background into the theories of migration and their effect on the economic development of the country. This is then, linked together with immigrant incorporation in the European Union while drawing specific focus on the trends of migration with the subsequent policies for the management of these migratory pattern. Moreover, the research takes country specific examples of United Kingdom, Italy and France in highlighting the policy initiatives that the authorities have implemented for the management of immigrants, most important and effective of which were the regularization schemes. Lastly, the dissertation analyses the impact of these policies which deem to ambiguous and lacking in transparency and lays down three inherent policy recommendations based on the already entrenched regulations within the system.
Dioxins are commonly known as highly toxic compounds that are persistent organic pollutants. 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), the most potent dioxin congener, and dioxin-like products are formed during the incomplete combustion of organic compounds in the presence of chlorine (waste incineration, burning of various fuels and poorly controlled combustion sources). In 1997, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified TCDD as carcinogen. Prostate cancer (PC) is an extremely serious disease in dogs. PC also represents the most commonly diagnosed cancer in males in the Western world. In general, animal models of human cancer have evolved in attempts to capture the complexity of the human disease. In particular, as humans, the dogs are the only other mammals that develop PC. The canine prostate gland shares many morphological and functional similarities with the human prostate, so this specie represents thus an attractive model for the study of the prostatic disease in dogs. Consequently, to evaluate the biological effects of TCDD on prostate cancer, in this study we used human prostate cancer cell line, PC3. Until now, very few data are present in literature about PC3 and TCDD exposure. It is known that in PC3 cell line, a hormone-independent prostate cancer cell line, TCDD induces cytochrome P450 (CYP) 1A1 and CYP1B1 via the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR). This effect of TCDD could result in higher elimination rates of concomitant drugs metabolized by these particular CYP isoenzymes. Autophagy is a tightly regulated process playing a normal part in cell growth, development, and homeostasis and helping to maintain a balance between the synthesis, degradation, and subsequent recycling of cellular products through the degradation via the lysosome. Defects of autophagy machinery are responsible for pathogenesis of different diseases, including cancer. The role of autophagy in cancer is controversial. There is evidence that autophagy may play a critical role in cancer progression at later stages, such as dissemination and metastasis, which account for most cancer-associated deaths, whereas in other cases it clearly contributes to tumor suppression by inducing tumor cell death. So, the aim of this study is to evaluate the biological effects of TCDD exposure to a highly metastatic prostate cancer cell line, PC3. The prostate cancer cell line PC3 was exposed to different concentrations of TCDD (0.1, 1 and 100 pg/ml) and after 24, 48, and 72 hours of exposure cell proliferation and viability, cell morphology and cell cycle analysis were performed. Also, autophagy was evaluated using the following: (a) detection of acidic vesicular organelles (AVOs) by acridine orange staining; (b) immunofluorescence analysis (IF) of LC3 (microtubule associated light chain protein 3), one of the well-known autophagy markers; (c) LC3 gene expression by real-time PCR; (d) study of autophagic flux by chloroquine (CQ) (10µM), autophagy inhibitor, by western blot; (e) study the expression of multiple genes involved in autophagy machinery by real-time PCR. When compared with their relative controls, TCDD (100 pg/ml) exposure at 24, 48, and 72 hours caused the following: (1) significant increase of cell proliferation (CP) (CP24h =20.3%, CP48h =54.5% and CP72h =52.4%); (2) significant increase of cell population at S phase; (3) significant increase of autophagy demonstrated by (a) detection of AVOs; (b) LC3 IF positivity; (c) LC3 over expression (expression ratio24h =1.4, expression ratio48h =6.2 and expression ratio72h =11.4); (d) CQ increased LC3-II accumulation; (e) moreover, we demonstrated that the induction of autophagy by TCDD in PC3 cells was accompanied by an increase in the mRNA levels of certain genes that are present in different subnetworks composing the autophagy interactive network, such as: PIK3C3, BECN-1, AMBRA1, MAP1LC3B, ATG4A, ATG4C, ATG5, ATG7, ATG10, ATG16L1, GABARAPL1, PRKAA, WIPI-1. Also, we showed that TCDD negatively influenced genes that are autophagy inhibitor, such as: AKT1 and BCL2. These data suggested a multiple effect of TCDD on autophagy machinery. Furthermore, we revealed that TCDD exposure upregulated TNF whose high levels have been related to prostate cancer progression via stimulation of proliferation, survival of malignant cells and increased resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. From the 1980s, several illegal and uncontrolled sites of urban, toxic, and industrial waste disposal have been active in Campania region, Southern Italy, with the highest concentration reached in Naples and Caserta provinces. In 1994, Campania region is under a declared State of Emergency, because of the saturation of regional waste treatment facilities. There are growing national and international evidences that the accumulation of waste, illegal and legal, urban and industrial, has contaminated soil, water, and the air with a range of toxic pollutants including dioxins. A high correlation between incidences of cancer, respiratory illnesses, and genetic malformations and the presence of industrial and toxic waste landfills was also found. In Spring 2002, a dioxin emergency emerged in this region, as result of National Control Program of Residues in Foodstuff carried out by Health Minister in 2001, indeed, levels of TCDD exceeding the European Union tolerance were detected in dairy products and milk from cow and water buffalo, raised on in some areas of Campania Region. Cancer mortality descriptive studies demonstrated an increase of incidents rates of the prostate cancer in the same areas where dioxin levels were elevated. Furthermore, studies performed in animal model suggested that TCDD exposure is associated with abnormal prostate development, altered prostate pathology and increase susceptibility to prostate cancer. The administration of TCDD to a variety of cultured cells may alter their ability to proliferate and die. In a previous study we demonstrated that TCDD induced proliferation in Madin-Darby Bovine Kidney (MDBK), an epithelial cell line, in which analysis of MDBK cell morphology revealed some alterations in a large number of exposed cells, where neither signs of apoptosis nor necrosis were detected, but we found that TCDD activated cell death with autophagy. Herein, TCDD exposure in PC3, a cancer cell line, induced no signs of cell death. So, taken together, our results support the idea that TCDD, may induce the progression of prostate cancer enhancing cell proliferation, inducing autophagy, deregulating the expression of genes related to the autophagy machinery, and upregulating TNF resulting in an increased risk for both animal and human health.
