Hasil untuk "History of Italy"

Luca Barra, Diego Cavallotti, Emiliano Rossi

Establishing a first, pilot inventory of privately-owned local TV channels operating in Italy between 1976 and 1990 is the core aim of the ATLas – Atlas of Local Televisions project, a nationally-funded research currently encompassing four Italian universities, with the intent of driving attention on an often neglected area of both academic investigation and archival practice. The research focuses on a sample of five networks which operated in contrast to the national public service monopoly, with vibrant creative innovations and a distinct connection with territories and local economies. After a scientific overview of the project, this contribution will delve into the methodological challenges underlying the design of an open-access repository that hosts a selection of audiovisual fragments drawn from the channels’ native archives, now difficult or impossible to access, or archived following random or commercial criteria. Particular attention is paid to the process of inventory, indexing and generating metadata of the various collected sources, in an effort to maintain a balance between creative and historiographical instances, and to allow the development of dedicated digital exhibitions. With accounts referring to three case studies (Antenna 3, Sardegna 1, and TeleSanterno), the article shares and discusses some lessons learnt, as well as the main struggles (and possible biases) encountered through the analysis, highlighting the memorial and testimonial value of this area of media history.

Donato Traversa, Simone Morelli, Angela Di Cesare et al.

<i>Dirofilaria immitis</i> and <i>Angiostrongylus vasorum</i> are major parasitic nematodes of dogs. Many environmental and phenological changes have recently modified their geographic patterns in many countries; thus, this study has updated the distribution of <i>D. immitis</i> and <i>A. vasorum</i> in dog populations of selected regions of Central and Southern Italy. Also, collateral data on other endoparasites affecting the study population have been collected. Blood and fecal samples collected from 2000 dogs were tested using Knott’s test and copromicroscopy (i.e., Baermann’s and fecal flotation tests), respectively. Binomial logistic regression was performed to evaluate statistically significant associations between positivity for <i>D. immitis</i> and/or <i>A. vasorum</i> and potential risk factors. Overall, 35 (1.7%) and 62 (3.1%) dogs were positive for microfilariae of <i>D. immitis</i> and first stage larvae (L1) of <i>A. vasorum</i>, respectively, while 3 (0.1%) were co-infected by both nematodes. Microfilariae of <i>Dirofilaria repens</i> were found in 148 (7.4%) dogs, while at the flotation, eggs of Ancylostomatidae, <i>Trichuris vulpis,</i> and ascarids were found in the feces of 323 (16.5%), 249 (12.4%), and 172 (8.6%), dogs, respectively. Overall, 217 (10.8%) and 44 (2.2%) dogs were positive for eggs of <i>Capillaria aerophila</i> and <i>Capillaria boehmi</i>. The presence of cardiorespiratory clinical signs or non-specific signs, history of travel, and an age of >4 years old were significantly associated with positivity for <i>D. immitis</i>, while <i>A. vasorum</i> was significantly recorded in dogs with cardiorespiratory signs, or with a history of mollusk ingestion or permanent outdoor housing. These results confirm that <i>D. immitis</i> is enzootic in the investigated regions of Central and Southern Italy, even where it was rare/undetected until recently. Indeed, although some dogs positive for <i>D. immitis</i> had a history of travel in enzootic areas, the majority of them were never moved, indicating that they acquired the parasite in the region where they live. Additionally, <i>A. vasorum</i> is stably enzootic in the study areas, as also are other extraintestinal nematodes (i.e., <i>D. repens</i> and <i>C. aerophila</i>) that are more frequently detected today than in the past. A high level of vigilance and routine parasitological screening are necessary, considering the high prevalence of intestinal parasites in owned dogs that are also co-infected by respiratory parasites. The implementation of chemoprevention against <i>D. immitis</i> in dogs living in the examined area should be encouraged.

Leonardo Boncinelli, Stefania Miricola, Eugenio Vicario

The concept of quality of life in urban settings is increasingly associated to the accessibility of amenities within a short walking distance for residents. However, this narrative still requires thorough empirical investigation to evaluate the practical implications, benefits, and challenges. In this work, we propose a novel methodology for evaluating urban accessibility to services, with an application to the city of Florence, Italy. Our approach involves identifying the accessibility of essential services from residential buildings within a 10-minute walking distance, employing a rigorous spatial analysis process and open-source geospatial data. As a second contribution, we extend the concept of 10-minute accessibility within a network theory framework and apply a clustering algorithm to identify urban communities based on shared access to essential services. Finally, we explore the dimension of functional redundancy. Our proposed metrics represent a step forward towards an accurate assessment of the adherence to the 10-minute city model and offer a valuable tool for place-based policies aimed at addressing spatial disparities in urban development.

Andrea Pessina, Elena Sorge, Fabrizio Burchianti et al.

Here is presented a group of polished axe heads found in 2016 in Volterra, in a place named Sant’Alessandro, in a context that has returned only materials of the recent Orientalizing (mid-7th - beginning of 6th century b.C.). Immediately below a housing structure, a pit containing 5 objects in polished stone, referable to the Neolithic Age and made in High Pressure metaophiolites of the Western Alps, was brought to light. It is one of the rare hoards of green stone objects known in Italy. Given the absence of Neolithic materials in the area and the stratigraphic position of the pit, it is also possible to assume with prudence that these objects were collected as ceraunia by the Iron Age populations, as already documented in other sites of the same period.

Petra Saskia Bayerl, Babak Akhgar, Ernesto La Mattina et al.

This paper investigates citizens' counter-strategies to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by law enforcement agencies (LEAs). Based on information from three countries (Greece, Italy and Spain) we demonstrate disparities in the likelihood of ten specific counter-strategies. We further identified factors that increase the propensity for counter-strategies. Our study provides an important new perspective to societal impacts of security-focused AI applications by illustrating the conscious, strategic choices by citizens when confronted with AI capabilities for LEAs.

Hagit Attiya, Michael A. Bender, Martin Farach-Colton et al.

A data structure is called history independent if its internal memory representation does not reveal the history of operations applied to it, only its current state. In this paper we study history independence for concurrent data structures, and establish foundational possibility and impossibility results. We show that a large class of concurrent objects cannot be implemented from smaller base objects in a manner that is both wait-free and history independent; but if we settle for either lock-freedom instead of wait-freedom or for a weak notion of history independence, then at least one object in the class, multi-valued single-reader single-writer registers, can be implemented from smaller base objects, binary registers. On the other hand, using large base objects, we give a strong possibility result in the form of a universal construction: an object with $s$ possible states can be implemented in a wait-free, history-independent manner from compare-and-swap base objects that each have $O(s + 2^n)$ possible memory states, where $n$ is the number of processes in the system.

Neda Torabi Farsani, Leila Mirghadr, Hossein Sadeghi Shahdani

AbstractSearching in family roots and traveling to discover genealogy with a leisure motivation is called tourism, which can not only create opportunities to introduce and preserve family heritage, but also diversify the tourism market. The present study pursued the following 3 objectives: 1) identification of the potentials of Isfahan City for promoting ancestral tourism, 2) introduction of suitable travel packages of ancestral tourism in Isfahan Province, and 3) identification of appropriate strategies for promoting ancestral tourism. This research was of an exploratory type with qualitative method associated with thematic analysis. The statistical population of the study consisted of the experts in the fields of history, tourism, and culture. The findings of this research illustrated that Isfahan City had the potential of promoting ancestral tourism due to the presence of famous families, who had migrated to this city throughout history, families, who were known for their professions, royal families, neighborhoods called other cities in Isfahan;, and immigrants and refugees throughout the history, as well as different past divisions of the country. In addition, the incoming and outgoing travelers and city tour packages could be introduced as the revenue-generating opportunities in the ancestral tourism sector in this province. Lastly, the 4 strategies of market penetration, product development, horizontal integration, and collaboration could be introduced as suitable strategies for the prosperity of ancestral tourism in Isfahan City.Keywords: ancestral tourism, Isfahan, genealogical tourism, roots tourism IntroductionNowadays, searching in family roots, as well as traveling and discovering genealogy with a leisure motivation is one of the aspects of tourism that can not only create opportunities to introduce and preserve family heritage, but also diversify the tourism market. Ancestral tourism has been proposed as one of the rapidly growing segments of the heritage tourism market (Basu, 2004; Santos and Yan, 2010), which was not noticed by academics in 2005 and was just introduced under the umbrella of cultural heritage tourism. The existing research literature demonstrate that the genealogical tourists are not a homogeneous group whose activities have been described by presenting a set of terms. Ancestral tourism is variously classified into genealogical tourism, heritage tourism, diaspora tourism, cultural tourism, and roots tourism (McCain and Ray, 2003, pp. 713-17; Timothy and Teye, 2004; Basu, 2004; Gaudry, 2007).It is noteworthy that Isfahan Province has been invaded by many foreigners throughout history and many ethnic groups, such as Georgians, Armenians, etc. have immigrated to Isfahan. In addition, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province and Yazd Province have been parts of Isfahan. Historical evidence has demonstrated that Isfahan has a great potential to organize ancestral tours. Therefore, the current research sought to identify suitable travel packages for the development of ancestral tourism in Isfahan Province and identify suitable solutions and strategies for the development of this new niche market of tourism from the experts’ points of view. Methodology The present study pursued the following 3 objectives: 1) identifying the potentials of Isfahan City for promoting ancestral tourism, 2) introducing suitable travel packages of ancestral tourism in Isfahan Province, and 3) identifying appropriate strategies for promoting ancestral tourism. This research was of an exploratory type with a qualitative method based on thematic analysis. MAXQDA software was used as a tool for data analysis. The statistical population of the study included the experts in the fields of history, tourism, and culture. The data were gathered through snowball sampling or chain-referral sampling as a non-probability sampling technique. After each interview, the data were coded until the codes reached a saturation point in the 16th interview and no new codes were added to the previous codes. Results and discussionThe research findings indicated that Isfahan had the potential of promoting ancestral tourism due to the presence of famous families, who had migrated to this city throughout history, families, who were known for their professions, royal families, neighborhoods called other cities in Isfahan, and immigrants and refugees throughout the history, as well as different past divisions of the country. In addition, the incoming and outgoing people and city tour packages could be introduced as the revenue-generating opportunities in the ancestral tourism sector in this province. Lastly, the 4 strategies of market penetration, product development, horizontal integration, and collaboration could be introduced as suitable strategies for the prosperity of ancestral tourism in Isfahan. ConclusionAncestral tourism is a journey that is done with the motivation of discovering and searching family genealogies. The results of our data analysis indicated that famous families, such as Kazeruni, Homayi, Sheikh Baha'i, etc., who had migrated to this city throughout history live in Isfahan City. In addition, being the capital of Iran, especially during the Safavid dynasty, and the 34-year rule of Mass'oud Mirza Zell-e Soltan, the first son of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, had made this city suitable for ancestral tours. There were also families in Isfahan, who were famous for their professions. Moreover, there existed some neighborhoods in Isfahan called other cities. The presence of immigrants and refugees throughout the history and different past divisions of the country were the other potentials that attracted visitors and genealogical tourists to Isfahan.The second purpose of the present study was to identify travel packages with the subject of genealogy. The results of data analysis using a qualitative method based on thematic analysis demonstrated that the design of packages for visits to this city and province with the subject of genealogy, including itinerary designs for the incoming and outgoing tourists, especially for Armenians, Georgians, and Iraqis, would not only help diversify the tourism market of the province, but also be a source of income for travel agencies and tour guides. It is worth mentioning most of the researches in the field of ancestral tourism (Pelliccia et al., 2018; Murdy et al., 2018) emphasized on incoming travel packages, while the city of Isfahan and Isfahan province had the potential of outgoing packages and city tours as well.The third goal of the current research was to identify appropriate strategies for the prosperity of ancestral tourism in Isfahan City. Ultimately, the 4 strategies of market penetration, product development, horizontal integration, and collaboration were introduced as suitable strategies for the prosperity of ancestral tourism in this city. Birtwistle (2005) also emphasized marketing strategy for ancestral tourism boom, which was confirmed by the results of this investigation. References- Agoes, A. and Par, M. M. (2016, May). Tourism Management in Cikondang Ancestral Hamlet. In Asia Tourism Forum 2016-the 12th Biennial Conference of Hospitality and Tourism Industry in Asia (pp. 78-84, Atlantis Press.- Alexander, M., Bryce, D., & Murdy, S. (2017). Delivering the past: Providing personalized ancestral tourism experiences. Journal of Travel Research, 56(4), 543-555.- Basu, P. (2004). My own island home: The Orkney homecoming. Journal of Material Culture, 9(1), 27-42.- Basu, P. (2005). “Roots Tourism as Return Movement: Semantics and the Scottish Diaspora.” In Emigrant Homecomings: The Return Movement of Emigrants 1600-2000, edited by M. Harper, 131-50, Manchester: Manchester University Press.- Basu, P. (2007). Highland homecomings: Genealogy and heritage tourism in the Scottish diaspora., London: Routledge.- Birtwistle, M. (2005). Genealogy tourism: The Scottish market opportunities. In M. Novelli (Ed.), Niche tourism: Contemporary issues, trends, and cases (pp. 59-72). Oxford: Elsevier.- Coles, T. E. and Timothy, D. J. (Eds.) (2004). Tourism, diasporas, and space London: Routledge. Fowler, S. (2003). Ancestral tourism. Insights, 2003, D31-D36- Fowler, H. W. and Fowler, F. G. (1974). The concise Oxford dictionary of current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.- Gaudry, L. (2007). What Clan Are You? An Exploration of Heritage and Ancestral Tourism with Canadian Scottish Descendents (Master's thesis, University of Waterloo), Ontario, Canada.- Garrod, B. and Fyall, A. (2000). Managing heritage tourism. Annals of tourism research, 27(3), 682-708.- Gergelyova, M. (2007). An investigation of the potential of genealogy tourism as a catalyst for regional development in County Galway. Unpublished thesis (Master of Arts in Heritage Studies), Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology. Galway, Ireland. http://hdl.handle.net/10759/314245- Harraway, D.J. (1997), Modest Witness. London: Routledge- Higginbotham, G. (2012). Seeking roots and tracing lineages: Constructing a framework of reference for roots and genealogical tourism. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 7(3), 189-203.- Hjorthén, A. (2021). Old World Homecomings: Campaigns of Ancestral Tourism and Cultural Diplomacy (1945–66). Journal of Contemporary History, 56(4), 1147-1170.- Luke, C. (2013). Cultural sovereignty in the Balkans and Turkey: The politics of preservation and rehabilitation. Journal of Social Archaeology, 13(3), 350-370.- McCain, G. and Ray, N. M. (2003). Legacy tourism: The search for personal meaning in heritage travel. Tourism Management, 24(6), 713-717.- Maruyama, N. U., Weber, I., & Stronza, A. L. (2010). Negotiating identity. Experiences of Tourism Culture & Communication, 10(1), 1-14.- Murdy, S., Alexander, M., & Bryce, D. (2018). What pulls ancestral tourists ‘home’? An analysis of ancestral tourist motivations. Tourism Management, 64, 13-19.- Nash, C. (2005). Geographies of relatedness. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30(4), 449-462.- Russell, D. W. (2008). Nostalgic tourism. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 25(2), 103-116.- Stephenson, M. L. (2002). Travelling to the ancestral homelands: The aspirations and experiences of a UK Caribbean community. Current Issues in Tourism, 5(5), 378-425.- Pelliccia, A. (2018). In the family home: Roots tourism among Greek second generation in Italy. Current Issues in Tourism, 21(18), 2108-2123.- Scottish Parliament (2000). The Scottish Tourism Industry. The Information Center Research Notes. Database online: Available atwww.scottishparliament.uk/SI/whats_happening/research/pdf-res-notes/rn00-77. pdf- Santos, C. A. and Yan, G. (2010). Genealogical tourism: A phenomenological examination. Journal of Travel Research, 49(1), 56-67.- Sim, D. and Leith, M. (2013). Diaspora tourists and the Scottish Homecoming 2009. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 8(4), 259-274.- Wilson, F. R., Pan, W., & Schumsky, D. A. (2012). Recalculation of the critical values for Lawshe’s content validity ratio. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 45(3), 197-210.

Maurizio Cattani, Giorgia Cappelletti

This paper presents a synthesis of the research carried out in the settlement of Poggio della Gaggiola, located in the upper Reno Valley, enriching the knowledge on the Bronze Age settlement pattern in the Apennines with particular reference to the territory of the province of Bologna. This framework is currently at the centre of a research project on “upland archaeology in the Bronze Age”. Unpublished materials from Renato Scarani’s excavations carried out from 1949 to 1951 are also presented, while the descriptions of the main finds discovered in the 19th century that were lost are revisited. A special in-depth look at the methodologies of investigation and the changing research perspectives in the Apennines, as well as the spatial analysis, suggests interpretations of the geographical and geomorphological context where Poggio della Gaggiola settlement is located.

Giuseppe Lassandro, Valentina Palladino, Michela Faleschini et al.

AbstractBackgroundInherited thrombocytopenias (ITs) are rare congenital bleeding disorders characterized by different clinical expression and variable prognosis. ITs are poorly known by clinicians and often misdiagnosed with most common forms of thrombocytopenia.Material and methods“CHildren with Inherited Platelet disorders Surveillance” study (CHIPS) is a retrospective – prospective observational cohort study conducted between January 2003 and January 2022 in 17 centers affiliated to the Italian Association of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology (AIEOP). The primary objective of this study was to collect clinical and laboratory data on Italian pediatric patients with inherited thrombocytopenias. Secondary objectives were to calculate prevalence of ITs in Italian pediatric population and to assess frequency and genotype–phenotype correlation of different types of mutations in our study cohort.ResultsA total of 139 children, with ITs (82 male - 57 female) were enrolled. ITs prevalence in Italy ranged from 0.7 per 100,000 children during 2010 to 2 per 100,000 children during 2022. The median time between the onset of thrombocytopenia and the diagnosis of ITs was 1 years (range 0 - 18 years). A family history of thrombocytopenia has been reported in 90 patients (65%). Among 139 children with ITs, in 73 (53%) children almost one defective gene has been identified. In 61 patients a pathogenic mutation has been identified. Among them, 2 patients also carry a variant of uncertain significance (VUS), and 4 others harbour 2 VUS variants. VUS variants were identified in further 8 patients (6%), 4 of which carry more than one variant VUS. Three patients (2%) had a likely pathogenic variant while in 1 patient (1%) a variant was identified that was initially given an uncertain significance but was later classified as benign. In addition, in 17 patients the genetic diagnosis is not available, but their family history and clinical/laboratory features strongly suggest the presence of a specific genetic cause. In 49 children (35%) no genetic defect were identified. In ninetyseven patients (70%), thrombocytopenia was not associated with other clinically apparent disorders. However, 42 children (30%) had one or more additional clinical alterations.ConclusionOur study provides a descriptive collection of ITs in the pediatric Italian population.

Dauro Mattia Zocchi, Camilla Bondioli, Seyed Hamzeh Hosseini et al.

This article aims to contribute to the limited literature on traditional gastronomic knowledge concerning acorn-based bread by ethnographically documenting the ingredients, preparation techniques and consumption practices of baked goods made from acorn seeds and flour that are still used today or at least still present in living memory. A qualitative comparative case method was adopted, and ethnographic data were gathered from 67 people in six selected Mediterranean, Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries. The analysis highlighted distinct trajectories in the development of acorn-based bread, showing some differences in terms of ingredients, preparation techniques and baking methods in the two cultural and geographical macro-regions. By exploring the evolution of the alimentary role of acorn bread in the past century, our findings also support the hypothesis that the product, at least during the last two centuries, has mostly been used as a famine food. By acknowledging the cultural importance of acorn fruits and acorn-based products, this study suggests that the rediscovery of acorn-based products and associated traditional knowledge may foster the sustainable development of rural and marginal regions in the Mediterranean, Middle East and Central Asia. This could help to reinforce the resilience of local communities and thus increase food security. Furthermore, reassessing acorns as a foodstuff may aid in developing innovative products in line with emerging trends in the food sector, which is looking for new non-cereal-based bakery products and other novel culinary applications.

Giulia Gianferrari, Ilaria Martinelli, Elisabetta Zucchi et al.

Increased incidence rates of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) have been recently reported across various Western countries, although geographic and temporal variations in terms of incidence, clinical features and genetics are not fully elucidated. This study aimed to describe demographic, clinical feature and genotype–phenotype correlations of ALS cases over the last decade in the Emilia Romagna Region (ERR). From 2009 to 2019, our prospective population-based registry of ALS in the ERR of Northern Italy recorded 1613 patients receiving a diagnosis of ALS. The age- and sex-adjusted incidence rate was 3.13/100,000 population (M/F ratio: 1.21). The mean age at onset was 67.01 years; women, bulbar and respiratory phenotypes were associated with an older age, while C9orf72-mutated patients were generally younger. After peaking at 70–75 years, incidence rates, among women only, showed a bimodal distribution with a second slight increase after reaching 90 years of age. Familial cases comprised 12%, of which one quarter could be attributed to an ALS-related mutation. More than 70% of C9orf72-expanded patients had a family history of ALS/fronto-temporal dementia (FTD); 22.58% of patients with FTD at diagnosis had C9orf72 expansion (OR 6.34, <i>p</i> = 0.004). In addition to a high ALS incidence suggesting exhaustiveness of case ascertainment, this study highlights interesting phenotype–genotype correlations in the ALS population of ERR.

Alessandro Fassò, Jacopo Rodeschini, Alessandro Fusta Moro et al.

The air in the Lombardy region, Italy, is one of the most polluted in Europe because of limited air circulation and high emission levels. There is a large scientific consensus that the agricultural sector has a significant impact on air quality. To support studies quantifying the role of the agricultural and livestock sectors on the Lombardy air quality, this paper presents a harmonised dataset containing daily values of air quality, weather, emissions, livestock, and land and soil use in the years 2016 - 2021, for the Lombardy region. The pollutant data come from the European Environmental Agency and the Lombardy Regional Environment Protection Agency, weather and emissions data from the European Copernicus programme, livestock data from the Italian zootechnical registry, and land and soil use data from the CORINE Land Cover project. The resulting dataset is designed to be used as is by those using air quality data for research.

Melanie Marx, Gregorio Rocha, Pavel Zehtindjiev et al.

Abstract European Turtle Doves (Streptopelia turtur) are long‐distance migrants and have experienced a population decline of more than 78% since 1980. Their conservation depends on refined knowledge of breeding origins and population connectivity. Feathers collected at stopover sites, but molted at breeding grounds, provide an opportunity to assign birds to potential regions of origin using tissue stable hydrogen isotope values and relate those to a European feather hydrogen isoscape. Here, 101 feather samples from 13 different breeding countries were analyzed to calibrate the European hydrogen isoscape and 101 feather samples from Spanish, Italian, Maltese, Greek, and Bulgarian stopovers were assigned to potential regions of origin. The assigned range of origin for all 101 individuals grouped together agreed with known distribution patterns. Bulgarian samples were mostly assigned to Russian areas. Possible origins of Greek, Italian, Maltese, and Spanish samples ranged from central to southern Europe. Individual assignments highlighted four broad regions of origin, corresponding to a cool/humid to hot/dry temperature gradient. Proportions of birds assigned to these regions varied among birds sampled at different stopover sites. Therefore, our results provide important information about population connectivity and may be useful to evaluate possible influences of hunting on Turtle Dove populations.

Enzo Pace

Deus ex-machina Modern Form of Believing in the Relative Secularization continues to produce its effects over the long term, despite the conspicuous recovery of public space regained from 1980 to today by the major world religions. The alleged return of the sacred or the alleged revenge of God, however, does not seem able to contrast the triumph of capitalism as a religion, to take up the formula used by Walter Benjamin. The modern consumer society saves the salvable, incorporating the sacred into the commodities, making the goods a sign of identification, a cult. The appearance of strong religions, so-called fundamentalisms, constitutes a specular and high response to the forms of believing in the relative in the societies of late secularization. The author starts from the prophetic visions on the magnificent fortunes of capitalism, advanced by Max Weber and Walter Benjamin, analyzing the process of commodification of religious symbols in contemporary affluent societies. Therefore, there is not the return of God who was presumed dead. Rather the machine of neo-capitalism saves God by making him prodigiously incarnate in the beauty of goods.

Nicola Luigi Bragazzi, Muhammad Mansour, Alessandro Bonsignore et al.

Since late December 2019, a novel, emerging coronavirus was identified as the infectious agent responsible for a generally mild but sometimes severe and even life-threatening disease, termed as “coronavirus disease 2019” (COVID-19). The pathogen was initially named as “2019 novel coronavirus” (2019-nCoV) and later renamed as “Severe Acute Respiratory Coronavirus type 2” (SARS-CoV-2). COVID-19 quickly spread from the first epicenter, the city of Wuhan, province of Hubei, mainland China, into neighboring countries, and became a global pandemic. As of July 15th 2020, the outbreak is still ongoing, with SARS-CoV-2 affecting 213 countries and territories. The coronavirus has caused a dramatic toll of deaths and imposed a severe burden, both from a societal and economic point of view. COVID-19 has challenged health systems, straining and overwhelming healthcare facilities and settings, including hospital and community pharmacies. On the other hand, COVID-19 has propelled several changes. During the last decades, pharmacy has shifted from being products-based and patient-facing to being services-based and patient-centered. Pharmacies have transitioned from being compounding centers devoted to the manipulation of <i>materia medica</i> to pharmaceutical centers, clinical pharmacies and fully integrated “medical-pharmaceutical networks”, providing a significant range of non-prescribing services. Moreover, roles, duties and responsibilities of pharmacists have paralleled such historical changes and have known a gradual expansion, incorporating new skills and reflecting new societal demands and challenges. The COVID-19 outbreak has unearthed new opportunities for pharmacists: community and hospital pharmacists have, indeed, played a key role during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that a fully integrated, inter-sectoral and inter-professional collaboration is necessary to face crises and public health emergencies. Preliminary, emerging evidence seems to suggest that, probably, a new era in the history of pharmacies (“the post-COVID-19 post-pharmaceutical care era”) has begun, with community pharmacists acquiring more professional standing, being authentic heroes and frontline health workers.

SZABO Eva

School dropout is a global problem because economic and social development can be achieved only if it is sustained by people with a solid education. Lately, many young people aged between 18-24 years end up choosing a university specialization without knowing clearly what their professional expectations are for the future. At the European and national level, measures are constantly being taken to prevent university dropout. Although the average number of students dropping out between 18-24 years from 2005 to 2019 show a tendency to decrease, we can still see the lack of trust from young people in educational programs. In 27 of the studied countries, the number of men leaving the university programmes is higher than that of women. The increasing presence of women in university programs is possible due to the opportunities to combine successfully, family, professional and university life. Efforts to encourage lifelong learning are significant, in addition to national institutions and the European Council, organizations such as the European Association for Adult Education; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); International Education; the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) have joined forces with a well-defined agenda. The average number of adults participating in the learning process aged between 25-64 years in 28 European countries from 2005 to 2019 grow with 2.79%. The highest values are recorded in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and the United Kingdom because education for them is a landmark. Countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Slovakia and Croatia need to review their educational policies because the low values show a lack of trust in the system. The confidence of Austrian adults in the quality of university education is demonstrated by the high number of participants. With a rich educational history nowadays, Italy is struggling to engage adults in the educational process. Although 2019 has been beneficial for lifelong learning, we must not forget that it is an ongoing process. European countries want that in the XXI century adult education became an integral part of people’s lives.

Gaetano Perone

Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) is a severe ongoing novel pandemic that is spreading quickly across the world. Italy, that is widely considered one of the main epicenters of the pandemic, has registered the highest COVID-2019 death rates and death toll in the world, to the present day. In this article I estimate an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model to forecast the epidemic trend over the period after April 4, 2020, by using the Italian epidemiological data at national and regional level. The data refer to the number of daily confirmed cases officially registered by the Italian Ministry of Health (www.salute.gov.it) for the period February 20 to April 4, 2020. The main advantage of this model is that it is easy to manage and fit. Moreover, it may give a first understanding of the basic trends, by suggesting the hypothetic epidemic's inflection point and final size.

Bo-Cyuan Lin, Yen-Jia Chen, Yi-Cheng Hung et al.

In this paper, we firstly propose SQIARD and SIARD models to investigate the transmission of COVID-19 with quarantine, infected and asymptomatic infected, and discuss the relation between the respective basic reproduction number $R_0, R_Q$ and the stability of the equilibrium points of model. Secondly, after training the related data parameters, in our numerical simulations, we respectively conduct the forecast of the data of US, South Korea, Brazil, India, Russia and Italy, and the effect of prediction of the epidemic situation in each country. Furthermore, we apply US data to compare SQIARD with SIARD, and display the effects of predictions.

Chen Qu, Liu Yang, Minghui Qiu et al.

Conversational question answering (ConvQA) is a simplified but concrete setting of conversational search. One of its major challenges is to leverage the conversation history to understand and answer the current question. In this work, we propose a novel solution for ConvQA that involves three aspects. First, we propose a positional history answer embedding method to encode conversation history with position information using BERT in a natural way. BERT is a powerful technique for text representation. Second, we design a history attention mechanism (HAM) to conduct a "soft selection" for conversation histories. This method attends to history turns with different weights based on how helpful they are on answering the current question. Third, in addition to handling conversation history, we take advantage of multi-task learning (MTL) to do answer prediction along with another essential conversation task (dialog act prediction) using a uniform model architecture. MTL is able to learn more expressive and generic representations to improve the performance of ConvQA. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model with extensive experimental evaluations on QuAC, a large-scale ConvQA dataset. We show that position information plays an important role in conversation history modeling. We also visualize the history attention and provide new insights into conversation history understanding.

Carlos E. González-Guillén, Toby S. Cubitt

All Hamiltonian complexity results to date have been proven by constructing a local Hamiltonian whose ground state -- or at least some low-energy state -- is a "computational history state", encoding a quantum computation as a superposition over the history of the computation. We prove that all history-state Hamiltonians must be critical. More precisely, for any circuit-to-Hamiltonian mapping that maps quantum circuits to local Hamiltonians with low-energy history states, there is an increasing sequence of circuits that maps to a growing sequence of Hamiltonians with spectral gap closing at least as fast as O(1/n) with the number of qudits n in the circuit. This result holds for very general notions of history state, and also extends to quasi-local Hamiltonians with exponentially-decaying interactions. This suggests that QMA-hardness for gapped Hamiltonians (and also BQP-completeness of adiabatic quantum computation with constant gap) either require techniques beyond history state constructions. Or gapped Hamiltonians cannot be QMA-hard (respectively, BQP-complete).