Parthenope University of Naples
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Deficits in reaching movements under visual interference as a novel diagnostic marker for mild cognitive impairment
No full text: Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) may exhibit poorer performance in visuomotor tasks than healthy individuals, particularly under conditions with high cognitive load. Few studies have examined reaching movements in MCI and did so without assessing susceptibility to distractor interference. This proof-of-concept study analyzed the kinematics of visually guided reaching movements towards a target dot placed along the participants' midsagittal/reaching axis. Movements were performed with and without a visual distractor (flanker) at various distances from the reaching axis. Participants were instructed to avoid "touching" the flanker during movement execution. The whole sample included 11 patients with MCI due to Alzheimer's disease, 10 healthy older adults, and 12 healthy young adults, all right-handed. Patients with MCI performed reaching movements whose trajectories deviated significantly away from the flanker, especially when it was 1 mm away, with less consistent trajectories than controls. Also, our results suggest that trajectory curvature may discriminate between patients with MCI and healthy older adults. The analysis of reaching movements under conditions of visual interference may enhance the diagnosis of MCI, underscoring the need for multidimensional assessments incorporating both cognitive and motor domains
Fiscal consolidation plans with underground economy
No full textFiscal consolidation literature often neglects that there are economies characterized by sizable underground sectors, with their mechanisms of response
to fiscal policy shocks. Therefore, reliable analyses of fiscal consolidation plans
call for the decomposition of Gross Domestic Product in its regular and hidden
components. We investigate fiscal consolidation effects in the context of tax
evasion for the Italian economy. Results show that a temporary cut in public
spending associated with a permanent drop in tax rate yet entails tax evasion
reduction. The main underlying mechanism is the strong responsiveness of
the underground sector, implying a reallocation of resources toward the regular sector
Operativity of the Taunsa Barrage, Pakistan: Experimental Investigation on the Subsidiary Weir
No full textRiver barrages ensure water availability for enhanced irrigation and human
consumption. Of course, effective and sustainable management of existing barrages requires
controlling riverbed erosion through appropriately designed stilling basins with
their appurtenances. The present study assesses the stilling basin performance of the
Taunsa Barrage, a vital water resources infrastructure built in 1958 in Punjab, Pakistan, and
rehabilitated between 2004 and 2008 through the construction of a subsidiary weir (SW)
downstream of the main weir. A physical modeling approach was employed, consisting
of two distinct phases of laboratory experiments. Phase 1 replicated the Taunsa Barrage
before rehabilitation, assessing the need for SW construction under different discharge
rates and downstream bed elevations. Phase 2 reproduced the post-rehabilitation conditions,
including varying discharge values, heights and positions of the SW, to evaluate the
stilling basin design concerning the ability to dissipate flow energy. The results demonstrated
(i) inadequate tailwater levels and oscillating hydraulic jump formation under
increased discharges in pre-rehabilitation conditions (highlighting the poor performance of
the original Taunsa Barrage stilling basin and the need for an SW to address these hydraulic
deficiencies), and (ii) that the SW, under the design conditions, achieved optimal head
loss for discharge values near the design discharge. However, the head loss efficiency was
highly sensitive to variations in the distance and height of the SW due to hydraulic jump
pulsations. Moreover, the head loss efficiency rapidly degraded for discharges greater than
the design discharge. These findings indicate that the Taunsa barrage stilling basin may
lack the capacity to accommodate higher discharges resulting from the interplay between
climate change and land use alterations within the upstream Indus River basin. Future
research should focus on developing a design that enhances energy dissipation robustness,
reducing susceptibility to potential discharge increases
La clausola del beneficiario effettivo nelle direttive europee: le sentenze "danesi" e i rapporti con il divieto di abuso del diritto
No full textUno snodo fondamentale nell’evoluzione del concetto di beneficial ownership può ricollegarsi alle prime pronunce sul tema da parte della Corte di Giustizia, nell’ambito delle controversie attinenti all’interpretazione delle Direttive interessi e royalties e madre-figlia: si tratta delle c.d. sentenze danesi, cause riunite C-115/16, C-118/16, C-119/16 e C-299/16, in tema di interessi, e cause riunite C-116/16 e C-117/16, in tema di dividendi, pubblicate il 26 febbraio 2019. In queste sentenze, la Corte di Giustizia afferma che per interpretare la clausola del beneficiario effettivo ai fini della Direttiva occorre seguire l’evoluzione della corrispondente nozione in sede OCSE: in questa prospettiva, la clausola del beneficiario effettivo finisce per assumere, anche nel diritto unionale, una connotazione antielusiva, diventando uno degli elementi da valutare per contrastare le strategie di treaty shopping attuate attraverso l’interposizione di società conduit
Combination of searches for singly and doubly charged Higgs bosons produced via vector-boson fusion in proton–proton collisions at s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
No full textA combination of searches for singly and doubly charged Higgs bosons, H± and H±±, produced via vector-boson fusion is performed using 140 fb−1 of proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected with the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider. Searches targeting decays to massive vector bosons in leptonic final states (electrons or muons) are considered. New constraints are reported on the production cross-section times branching fraction for charged Higgs boson masses between 200 GeV and 3000 GeV. The results are interpreted in the context of the Georgi-Machacek model for which the most stringent constraints to date are set for the masses considered in the combination
INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE E CIRCUITO INVESTIGATIVO
No full textLa vertiginosa diffusione dell’intelligenza artificiale ambisce a migliorare anche l’inchiesta preliminare, puntando a offrire pratiche investigative più performanti e decisioni giudiziarie maggiormente “oggettive”. La fruibilità dell’I.A. non va però
calibrata soltanto sull’efficientamento delle indagini, ma postula un serio vaglio di compatibilità con i valori fondamentali: l’uso delle “macchine” sarebbe ammissibile purché non comprometta le libertà della persona e solo se allineato con la legalità processuale, le guarentigie sovraordinate che presidiano l’accertamento penale e l’indipendenza della magistratura. D’altra parte, l’operato dei software non è esente da errori né, tanto meno, è garanzia di “neutralità”; peraltro, l’opacità di taluni sistemi “intelligenti” impedisce di governarli appieno e di saggiare l’attendibilità epistemologica
dei risultati automatizzati. Il rispetto delle coordinate assiologiche costituisce pertanto requisito indefettibile per contenere l’impatto dell’I.A. e salvaguardare il primato delle regole che governano la procedura giudiziaria
Patterns of Diffusion of Political Science Methods. The Southern European ‘Latecomer Communities’
No full textRicerca e progettazione pedagogica per contrastare povertà educative e dispersione scolastica. A 100 anni dalla nascita di Alberto Manzi
No full textPreparing for the 2061 return of Halley's comet. A rendezvous mission with an innovative imaging system
No full textThe return of Comet 1P/Halley will promote a worldwide interest for ground and space observations of a celestial body of outstanding scientific and cultural interest. In addition to remote observations, space will open the possibility of in situ study, similarly to what was done during the passage of 1986. In this paper, we first discuss the scientific motivations for a rendezvous mission capable to overcome the limitations of the flyby missions that took place at that time. In the second part, we describe an example of a rendezvous trajectory that can be carried out with existing power and propulsion technologies, i.e., with radioisotope thermoelectric generators and a Hall effect thruster. Furthermore, the transfer is made possible by the gravitational assistance of a giant planet. The resulting mission concept, nicknamed HCREM (Halley Comet REndezvous Mission), selected from a number of cases treated in a previous paper of ours (Beolchi et al., 2024), will be capable to reach the comet beyond the distance of Saturn, when the sublimation of super-volatile species (e.g. CO and CO2) will be ongoing, and well before the onset of the sublimation of water (expected to occur around 4 AU, namely at larger heliocentric distance than Mars). Following a direct transfer from Earth, a gravity assist with Jupiter inserts the spacecraft into the cometary orbital plane with retrograde motion. Electric propulsion modifies the trajectory so that the spacecraft reaches the target with zero relative velocity. After the rendezvous, the spacecraft will accompany the comet before, around and after perihelion, which will happen in July 2061, until the outbound crossing of the ecliptic and possibly even later. Given the large heliocentric distances reached by the spacecraft, our concept mission does not foresee the implementation of solar panels. In this way, some shortcomings deriving from the adoption of this technology onboard the Rosetta mission to comet 67P are avoided and operations can occur even inside the dense dust coma at short distance from the nucleus. In the third part of the paper, an innovative imaging system with a very large field of view of approximately 100°is proposed. This optical system allows the simultaneous capture of both details of the cometary surface and the surrounding space within a single image frame. For several degrees outside the borders of the nucleus, it allows following the trajectories of chunks and clouds ejected by pits or fractures, all phenomena crucial to the understanding of the cometary activity. In the conclusions, we stress that a concerted effort is needed in the current decade to plan and approve a rendezvous mission to 1P. Indeed, the scenario here described requires launching before 2040, less than 15 years from now. Later launches with existing rockets imply a severe loss of scientific knowledge, because the spacecraft will not be able to reach the comet before the onset of water sublimation