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Psychological characterization of hypertensive patients: associations with adherence to pharmacological treatment and self-management
Get PDFIntroduction: The role of psychosocial factors in the onset and progression of essential hypertension has been object of a large body of literature, yet findings appear to be controversial.
Aims: We assessed the predictive role of psychosomatic syndromes, affective symptomatology, psychological reactance, psychological distress, well-being and quality of life on adherence to antihypertensive medications, lifestyle behaviors, hypertension severity and absolute cardiovascular risk grading, as well as their temporal stability at 1-year follow-up, in a sample of hypertensive patients. In addition, we aimed to validate the Italian version of the Hong Psychological Reactance Scale (HPRS).
Methods: Eighty consecutive hypertensive outpatients treated with antihypertensive medications were compared to 80 controls. Psychosocial variables were assessed using clinical interviews and self-rating questionnaires at baseline and at 1-year follow-up. Cardiac parameters were also collected. One-hundred and fifty individuals from general population provided data for the HPRS validation.
Results: Hypertensive patients reported significantly higher levels of psychological distress and lower levels of psychological well-being at baseline compared to controls. Among hypertensive patients, allostatic overload (AO) was the most frequently reported psychosomatic syndrome at baseline. Patients with AO displayed significantly greater levels of psychological distress and lower levels of well-being and quality of life than those without. Further, patients with illness denial were significantly more likely to report poor adherence to pharmacological treatment and, as well as those with higher levels of affective symptomatology, were less likely to follow a balanced diet. At follow-up, patients displayed significantly higher levels of well-being and lower levels of stress, mental pain and quality of life.
Conclusions: Findings suggest the clinical relevance of psychosocial factors and psychosomatic syndromes in the progression of hypertension, with important implications for its management. As to the Italian validation of the HPRS, results support previous findings, even though a confirmatory factor analysis should be carried out
Wireless Network Analytics for Next Generation Spectrum Awareness
Get PDFThe importance of networks, in their broad sense, is rapidly and massively growing in modern-day society thanks to unprecedented communication capabilities offered by technology. In this context, the radio spectrum will be a primary resource to be preserved and not wasted. Therefore, the need for intelligent and automatic systems for in-depth spectrum analysis and monitoring will pave the way for a new set of opportunities and potential challenges.
This thesis proposes a novel framework for automatic spectrum patrolling and the extraction of wireless network analytics. It aims to enhance the physical layer security of next generation wireless networks through the extraction and the analysis of dedicated analytical features. The framework consists of a spectrum sensing phase, carried out by a patrol composed of numerous radio-frequency (RF) sensing devices, followed by the extraction of a set of wireless network analytics. The methodology developed is blind, allowing spectrum sensing and analytics extraction of a network whose key features (i.e., number of nodes, physical layer signals, medium access protocol (MAC) and routing protocols) are unknown. Because of the wireless medium, over-the-air signals captured by the sensors are mixed; therefore, blind source separation (BSS) and measurement association are used to estimate the number of sources and separate the traffic patterns. After the separation, we put together a set of methodologies for extracting useful features of the wireless network, i.e., its logical topology, the application-level traffic patterns generated by the nodes, and their position. The whole framework is validated on an ad-hoc wireless network accounting for MAC protocol, packet collisions, nodes mobility, the spatial density of sensors, and channel impairments, such as path-loss, shadowing, and noise. The numerical results obtained by extensive and exhaustive simulations show that the proposed framework is consistent and can achieve the required performance
Non-standard signatures from Cosmic Microwave Background polarisation
Get PDFIn this Thesis we focus on non-standard signatures from CMB polarisation, which might hint at the existence of new phenomena beyond the standard models for Cosmology and Particle physics. With the Planck ESA mission, CMB temperature anisotropies have been observed at the cosmic variance limit, but polarisation remains to be further investigated. CMB polarisation data are important not only because they contribute to provide tighter constraints of cosmological parameters but also because they allow the investigation of physical processes that would be precluded if just the CMB temperature maps were considered. We take polarisation data into account to assess the statistical significance of the anomalies currently observed only in the CMB temperature map and to constrain the Cosmic Birefringence (CB) effect, which is expected in parity-violating extensions of the standard electromagnetism. In particular, we propose a new one-dimensional estimator for the lack of power anomaly capable of taking both temperature and polarisation into account jointly. With the aim of studying the anisotropic CB we develop and perform two different and complementary methods able to evaluate the power spectrum of the CB. Finally, by employing these estimators and methodologies on Planck data we provide new constraints beyond what already known in literature.
The measure of CMB polarisation represents a technological challenge and to make accurate estimates, one has to keep an exquisite control of the systematic effects. In order to investigate the impact of spurious signal in forthcoming CMB polarisation experiments, we study the interplay between half-wave plates (HWP) non-idealities and the beams. Our analysis suggests that certain HWP configurations, depending on the complexity of Galactic foregrounds and the beam models, significantly impacts the B-mode reconstruction fidelity and could limit the capabilities of next-generation CMB experiments. We provide also a first study of the impact of non-ideal HWPs on CB
Tipicity and harm in crimes against public administration
Get PDFIl lavoro affronta lo statuto penale della pubblica amministrazione, osservandolo attraverso moduli interpretativi costituzionalmente orientati e, segnatamente, quelli conformi ai principi di tassatività, offensività e proporzione. A questi se ne aggiunge un altro, ritenuto criterio immanente al titolo, dato dalla funzione amministrativa, che gioca un ruolo centrale nell’economia offensiva all’interno di tutte le fattispecie penali.
L’indagine si divide in tre parti. Nella prima, si intende analizzare l’evoluzione diacronica dei modelli istituzionali di amministrazione, dovuta al mutamento radicale del rapporto tra autorità e individuo: a seguito dell’avvento dello Stato sociale e costituzionale di diritto, all’affermarsi di una concezione orizzontale del suddetto rapporto corrisponde un paradigma di amministrazione civil servant, finalisticamente orientata al soddisfacimento dei beni della vita, trovando copertura costituzionale negli articoli 97, 2 e 3 Cost.
Queste vicende rappresentano il punto di partenza per ogni riflessione di sistema su questa branca di parte speciale, non potendosi pretendere di calibrare in maniera corretta l’offensività di un reato o la ragionevolezza di un’incriminazione prescindendo da un confronto con il ruolo dell’amministrazione e dalla funzione che essa svolge.
Successivamente, dopo aver chiarito il significato di buon andamento e imparzialità, strumentali alla ‘buona amministrazione’, si vuole trovare un punto di equilibrio tra l’esercizio della discrezionalità, che funge da mezzo rispetto al fine del risultato amministrativo, che è ciò che qualifica oggi il modello vigente di amministrazione ‘di risultato’, e alcune disposizioni incriminatrici che possono intersecarsi con lo svolgimento fisiologico del potere discrezionale.
Infine, prendendo spunto anche dal recente corso della giurisprudenza costituzionale, si vuole applicare un metodo ermeneutico costituzionalmente conforme ad una serie di fattispecie del titolo.
In questo modo si eviterà di costruire un corpus di reati esangue, che riporta il diritto penale ad una superata concezione sanzionatoria, provocando un “effetto di congelamento” dell’efficienza amministrativa con pregiudizio dei diritti sottostanti.The work deals with the criminal statute of the public administration, observing it through constitutionally oriented interpretation, in particular, those conforming to the principles of typicity and offensiveness. In addition to these, there is another, considered to be an immanent criterion of the title, given the administrative function, which plays a central role in the offensive economy within all criminal cases.
In the first part, it’s intended to analyse the diachronic evolution of the institutional models of administration, due to the radical change in the relationship between authority and individual: following the advent of the social and constitutional State of law, the affirmation of a horizontal conception of the relationship corresponds to a paradigm of civil servant administration, which is finalistically oriented to the satisfaction of the goods of life, finding constitutional coverage in Articles 97, 2 and 3.
These events must be the starting point for any systemic reflection on this branch, since it’s not possible to correctly calibrate the offensiveness or the reasonableness of an incrimination regardless of a comparison with the role of the administration and the function it performs.
Then, after clarifying the concrete meaning of ‘good performance’ and ‘impartiality’, instrumental to the 'good administration', the aim is to find a balance between exercise of discretionality, which serves as a means to the end of the administrative result, which is what qualifies today the current model of administration 'of result', and some criminal provisions that may intersect with the physiological development of discretionary power.
Finally, taking inspiration from the recent course of constitutional jurisprudence, the aim is to apply a constitutional hermeneutic to a series of crimes.
In this way it will be avoided to build a bloodless corpus of offences, which causes a "chilling effect" of the administrative efficiency with prejudice to the underlying rights
I, You, the Others. A Study on the Lyric Genre
Get PDFNonostante la ricchezza e la varietà delle voci che costituiscono l’orizzonte proteiforme della poesia degli ultimi centocinquanta anni, pare ancora non del tutto tramontato uno dei miti più duraturi della modernità letteraria: che tutta la poesia sia da considerare poesia lirica e che la lirica sia, sostanzialmente, liricità, un’accezione tonale più che un genere letterario. A fondamento di tale mito convergono numerose ricostruzioni storiche dello scorso secolo. La presente ricerca nasce dalla convinzione che sia altamente fuorviante considerare la lirica in maniera statica e non dinamica, prenderla in esame come un qualcosa di fisso e già dato, quasi si trattasse di un concetto metastorico, che può o non può conservare una sua attualità, una sua inerenza con la forma dell’esperienza della contemporaneità. I nostri modi di leggere, rappresentare e costruire la realtà cambiano in continuazione, mentre la lirica rimarrebbe lì, cristallizzata nei modi e negli statuti che le sono stati associati in età romantica. La lirica ha, nelle letterature occidentali, una lunghissima storia, ma uno statuto generico ondivago e incerto. Tre risultano essere gli snodi decisivi per la sua evoluzione: il momento della sua fondazione (l’antichità greca), il momento della sua riattivazione generica (il Rinascimento), e il momento della sua ridefinizione (il Romanticismo). Nel presente lavoro si cercherà di ripercorrere questa storia attraverso una prospettiva eccentrica, ossia quella del rapporto io-tu. In questo modo emergeranno nuove costanti e nuove varianti in base alle quali considerare il testo lirico e la sua storia. L’obiettivo è quello di delineare una teoria della lirica aperta, inclusiva e anti-essenzialistaDespite the abundance and variety of the voices that constitute poetry’s protean outlooks of the last one hundred and fifty years, it still seems that one of literary modernity’s oldest myths is yet to be forgotten: the myth that implies that all poetry has to be considered lyric and that lyric is just a connotation of mood rather than a literary genre.
This myth is supported by numerous historical reconstructions of the last century. This research was born from the belief that it is highly misleading to treat lyric as something static rather than dynamic and to look into it as something fixed and motionless, almost as if it was a metahistorical concept that can or can not maintain its own relevance in present times, its own inherence in the experience of modernity.
The ways through which we read, represent and process reality are always changing, while lyric is supposed to just stand there, crystallized in the fashions and the rules that were associated with it in the Romantic Age. Lyric has a very long history in western literatures but its statutes are generic, uncertain and shifty.
Its evolution’s timeline can be divided into three decisive moments : its foundation (Ancient Greece), the moment of its generic re-activation (Reinassance) and the moment of its redefinition (Romantic Age).
In this work I will try to retrace this history with an eccentric point of view, which is that of the I-you relation. In this way there will be new constants and variants through which we can look at lyric and its history. The goal is to define an open, more inclusive and anti-essentialistic theory of lyric
Impact of anthropogenic stressors on the microbial communities in marine holobionts and ecosystems
Get PDFFree-living or host-associated marine microbiomes play a determinant role in supporting the functioning and biodiversity of marine ecosystems, providing essential ecological services, and promoting the health of the entire biosphere. Currently, the fast and restless increase of World’s human population strongly impacts life on Earth in the forms of ocean pollution, coastal zone destruction, overexploitation of marine resources, and climate change. Thanks to their phylogenetic, metabolic, and functional diversity, marine microbiomes represent the Earth’s biggest reservoir of solutions against the major threats that are now impacting marine ecosystems, possibly providing valuable insights for biotechnological applications to preserve the health of the ocean ecosystems. Microbial-based mitigation strategies heavily rely on the available knowledge on the specific role and composition of holobionts associated microbial communities, thus highlighting the importance of pioneer studies on microbial-mediated adaptive mechanisms in the marine habitats.
In this context, we propose different models representing ecologically important, widely distributed, and habitat-forming organisms, to further investigate the ability of marine holobionts to dynamically adapt to natural environmental variations, as well as to anthropogenic stress factors.
In this PhD thesis, we were able to supply the characterization of the microbial community associated with the model anthozoan cnidaria Corynactis viridis throughout a seasonal gradient, to provide critical insights into microbiome-host interactions in a biomonitoring perspective. We also dissected in details the microbial-derived mitigation strategies implemented by the benthonic anthozoan Anemonia viridis and the gastropod Patella caerulea as models of adaptation to anthropogenic stressors, in the context of bioremediation of human-impacted habitats and for the monitoring and preservation of coastal marine ecosystems, respectively. Finally, we provided a functional model of adaptation to future ocean acidification conditions by characterizing the microbial community associated with the temperate coral Balanophyllia europaea naturally living at low pH conditions, to implement microbial based actions to mitigate climate change
Abusing data dominance in the digital market. The application of merger control and article 102 TFEU to data-related conducts.
Get PDFThe internet and digital technologies revolutionized the economy. Regulating the digital market has become a priority for the European Union. While promoting innovation and development, EU institutions must assure that the digital market maintains a competitive structure. Among the numerous elements characterizing the digital sector, users’ data are particularly important. Digital services are centered around personal data, the accumulation of which contributed to the centralization of market power in the hands of a few large providers. As a result, data-driven mergers and data-related abuses gained a central role for the purposes of EU antitrust enforcement.
In light of these considerations, this work aims at assessing whether EU competition law is well-suited to address data-driven mergers and data-related abuses of dominance. These conducts are of crucial importance to the maintenance of competition in the digital sector, insofar as the accumulation of users’ data constitutes a fundamental competitive advantage.
To begin with, part 1 addresses the specific features of the digital market and their impact on the definition of the relevant market and the assessment of dominance by antitrust authorities. Secondly, part 2 analyzes the EU’s case law on data-driven mergers to verify if merger control is well-suited to address these concentrations. Thirdly, part 3 discusses abuses of dominance in the phase of data collection and the legal frameworks applicable to these conducts. Fourthly, part 4 focuses on access to “essential” datasets and the indirect effects of anticompetitive conducts on rivals’ ability to access users’ information. Finally, Part 5 discusses differential pricing practices implemented online and based on personal data.
As it will be assessed, the combination of an efficient competition law enforcement and the auspicial adoption of a specific regulation seems to be the best solution to face the challenges raised by “data-related dominance”
La infraestructura barroca del trabajo de plataforma. Una etnografía multisituada.
Get PDFLe conseguenze del management algoritmico sui lavoratori sono note tra gli studiosi, ma poche ricerche indagano le possibilità di agency, soprattutto a livello individuale, nella gig-economy. A partire dalla quotidianità del lavoro, l’obiettivo è analizzare le forme di agency esercitate dai platform workers nel settore della logistica dell'ultimo miglio. La ricerca si basa su un'etnografia multi-situata condotta in due paesi molto distanti e riguardante due diversi servizi urbani di piattaforma: il food-delivery in Italia (Bologna, Torino) e il ride-hailing in Argentina (Buenos Aires). Nonostante le differenze, il lavoro di campo ha mostrato diverse continuità tra i contesti geografici. Innanzitutto, le tecnologie digitali giocano un ruolo ambivalente nell'ambiente di lavoro: se la tecnologia è usata dalle aziende per disciplinare il lavoro, costituisce però anche uno strumento che può essere impiegato a vantaggio dei lavoratori. Sia nel ride-hailing che nelle piattaforme di food-delivery, infatti, i lavoratori esprimono la loro agency condividendo pratiche di rimaneggiamento e tattiche per aggirare il despotismo algoritmico. In secondo luogo, la ricerca ha portato alla luce una gran varietà di attività economiche sviluppate ai margini dell'economia di piattaforma. In entrambi i casi le piattaforme intersecano vivacemente le economie informali urbane e alimentano circuiti informali di lavoro, come evidenziato dall'elevata presenza di scambi illeciti: ad esempio, vendita di account, hacking-bots, caporalato digitale. Tutt'altro che avviare un processo di formalizzazione, quindi, la piattaforma sussume e riproduce l’insieme di condizioni produttive e riproduttive dell'informalità (viração), offrendo impieghi intermittenti e insicuri a una massa di lavoratori-usa-e-getta disponibile al sottoimpiego. In conclusione, le piattaforme vengono definite come infrastrutture barocche, intendendo con il barocco tanto la natura ibrida dell'azione che mescola forme di neoliberismo-dal-basso con pratiche di solidarietà tra pari, quanto la progressiva ristrutturazione dei processi di accumulazione all’insegna di una rinnovata interdipendenza tra formale e informale nelle infrastrutture del «mondo a domicilio».The impacts of algorithmic management on work are well known among scholars, but there is a relative dearth of literature discussing the possibilities of agency - especially at individual level - in the gig-economy. By looking at the everyday use of digital technologies, the thesis aims to analyse the forms of agency expressed by platform workers in the platform-based last-mile logistics. The research is based on a multi-sited ethnography of platform labour carried out in two very distant countries concerning two different platform-based urban services: food-delivery in Italy (Bologna, Torino) and ride-hailing in Argentina (Buenos Aires). Despite the differences, the fieldwork shows several continuities among the geographical contexts. First, digital technologies play an ambivalent role in the working environment. While technology is used by companies to further intensify and subjugate work, on the other hand, it is also a tool that can be employed to support workers’ needs. Both in ride-hailing and food-delivery platforms, workers exert their agency by sharing reworking practices and tactics to circumvent the algorithmic despotism on and off the app. Secondly, the fieldwork has uncovered a myriad of informal economic activities developed at the boundaries of the platform economy, although platform owner firms often act as formalising agents. Showing examples from both the cases of study, platforms strongly intersect urban informal economies and fuel informal circuits of labour, as highlighted by the high presence of illicit or illegal exchanges: e.g., fake accounts market, sale of hacking bots, digital caporalato. In conclusion, platforms are defined as baroque infrastructures, conceiving baroqueness as both the complex and hybrid nature of action that mixes forms of neo-liberalism from below with solidarity practices, and the restructuring of accumulation processes under a renewed interdependence between formal and informal in the new digital infrastructures of the «world at home»
Variety, flexibility, and use of abstract concepts. A multiple grounded perspective.
Get PDFThe nature of concepts is a matter of intense debate in cognitive sciences. While traditional views claim that conceptual knowledge is represented in a unitary symbolic system, recent Embodied and Grounded Cognition theories (EGC) submit the idea that conceptual system is couched in our body and influenced by the environment (Barsalou, 2008).
One of the major challenges for EGC is constituted by abstract concepts (ACs), like fantasy. Recently, some EGC proposals addressed this criticism, arguing that the ACs comprise multifaced exemplars that rely on different grounding sources beyond sensorimotor one, including interoception, emotions, language, and sociality (Borghi et al., 2018). However, little is known about how ACs representation varies as a function of life experiences and their use in communication.
The theoretical arguments and empirical studies comprised in this dissertation aim to provide evidence on multiple grounding of ACs taking into account their varieties and flexibility. Study I analyzed multiple ratings on a large sample of ACs and identified four distinct subclusters. Study II validated this classification with an interference paradigm involving motor/manual, interoceptive, and linguistic systems during a difficulty rating task. Results confirm that different grounding sources are activated depending on ACs kind. Study III-IV investigate the variability of institutional concepts, showing that the higher the law expertise level, the stronger the concrete/emotional determinants in their representation. Study V introduced a novel interactive task in which abstract and concrete sentences serve as cues to simulate conversation. Analysis of language production revealed that the uncertainty and interactive exchanges increase with abstractness, leading to generating more questions/requests for clarifications with abstract than concrete sentences.
Overall, results confirm that ACs are multidimensional, heterogeneous, and flexible constructs and that social and linguistic interactions are crucial to shaping their meanings. Investigating ACs in real-time dialogues may be a promising direction for future research
The welfare of the Italian heavy pig: research experiences in breeding, during transport and in the perception of consumers
Get PDFQuesto elaborato contiene studi riguardanti il benessere del suino pesante italiano ed in particolare si sofferma su alcuni aspetti particolarmente significativi per il miglioramento del benessere. Gli aspetti in esame hanno riguardato la percezione da parte del consumatore italiano del benessere in azienda; inoltre sono stati studiati gli effetti sul benessere di alcune caratteristiche dell'allevamento e di aspetti multifattoriali riguardanti il trasporto al macello.
Alla luce dei lavori contenuti in questo lavoro, emerge come una revisione della normativa, anche considerando la categoria dei suini pesanti, possa migliorare notevolmente le loro condizioni di benessere.
I consumatori italiani, infatti, hanno confermato di essere attenti e interessati al benessere animale, oltre che disposti a spendere di più per gli animali derivanti da pratiche innovative e più rispettose del benessere, come l'immunocastrazione.
Un altro criterio importante, soprattutto in questa categoria di prodotti, è la disponibilità di spazio. Le nostre evidenze sperimentali dimostrano che garantire a questa categoria di suini requisiti di spazio superiori a quelli richiesti dalla normativa migliora il comportamento degli animali e i parametri di produzione.
Infine, in termini di trasporto, lo studio da noi condotto ha permesso di identificare parametri da utilizzare come indicatori del livello di stress degli animali, risultando in una buona correlazione con i parametri di stress ematobiochimico.
A conclusione di queste variegate esperienze di ricerca, si evidenzia quindi come investire in ulteriori impegni da parte del settore suinicolo, perseguendo l'obiettivo di ridurre al minimo gli stress a cui sono sottoposti i suini pesanti nel corso della loro vita, dall'adozione di tecniche di castrazione meno invasive, il miglioramento delle condizioni di allevamento e di trasporto, dovrebbe essere l'obiettivo comune di tutti i protagonisti della filiera, anche con l’obiettivo di ottenere un prodotto finale con un valore etico che soddisfi le aspettative implicite del consumatore.This paper contains studies concerning the welfare of the Italian heavy pig and focuses on some aspects particularly significant for the improvement of welfare. The aspects under investigation concerned the perception of the Italian consumer of welfare on the farm; in addition, the effects on the welfare of some characteristics of the farm and of the multifactorial characteristics that occur during transport to the slaughterhouse were investigated.
In the light of the works included in this paper, it emerges how reviewing the legislation, also considering the category of heavy pigs, could significantly improve their welfare conditions.
In fact, Italian consumers have confirmed that they are attentive and interested in animal welfare, as well as willing to spend more for animals resulting from innovative practices that are more respectful of welfare, such as immunocastration.
Another important criterion, especially in this product category, is the availability of space. Our experimental evidence shows that guaranteeing this category of pigs space requirements higher than those required by the legislation improves the behavior of the animals and production parameters.
Finally, in terms of transport, the study we conducted made it possible to identify parameters to be used as indicators of the stress level of the animals, resulting in a good correlation with the hematobiochemical stress parameters.
In light of these varied research experiences, it is therefore highlighted how to invest in additional commitments by the pig sector, pursuing the objective of minimizing the stresses to which heavy pigs are subjected throughout their life, from the adoption of techniques less invasive castration, the improvement of housing and transport conditions, should be the common goal of all the protagonists of the supply chain, also in pursuit of an ethical content of the final products that satisfies the implicit expectations of the consumer