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The Italian territory is located at the heart of one of the global hot spots of climate change, where the implementation of climate‐smart land management practices is imperative to guarantee the present and future maintenance of ecosystem functions as well as the sustainability of human socioeconomic activities. The project HIGHLANDER (HIGH performance computing to support smart LAND sERvices) led by Cineca aims at building a comprehensive and multi‐sector framework for land‐management decision‐making in Italy. The project relies on high quality information on different components of the landscape, with a focus on climate‐driven processes, and state‐of‐the‐art computing infrastructures. The HIGHLANDER Data Portal maximizes the impact of HIGHLANDER results by providing access to data products and services. In this article, we describe the architectural features of the platform, as well as the available HIGHLANDER datasets and downstream applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine financial literacy and financial resilience in Italy. We show that financial literacy is particularly low among the young, women, and the less educated. We also highlight regional differences in financial knowledge, with individuals in Southern Italy performing worse. We find that the lack of financial literacy increases the probability of being unable to face financial shocks and leads to an overaccumulation of debt. Hence, our results support the hypothesis that financial literacy can be considered an enabling factor for financial resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Donations after circulatory death (DCD) are still challenging in Italy because of prolonged ischemia time (tWIT) due to the law and logistical issues. This cohort study was primarily aimed at assessing the association between successful transplantation and DCD types in the North Italy Transplant program. Adjusted risk ratios (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for type III versus type II DCD were estimated using a Poisson regression model with a robust error variance. All consecutive DCD between 2008 and 2020 were included. Among 142 DCD, 102 were eligible for liver donation, and 96 were proposed: 68/69 (99%) and 28/33 (85%) type III and II DCD, respectively. Sixty‐nine livers were recovered, 51/68 (75%) from type III and 18/28 (64%) from type II DCD, respectively (RR: 1.18; 95% CI: 0.87–1.60). After ex‐vivo perfusion, 50/68 (74%) and 14/28 (50%) livers from type III and type II DCD were transplanted (RR: 1.49; 95% CI: 1.01–2.19). The estimate decreased after further controlling for tWIT (RR: 1.11; 95% CI: 0.55–2.24). Five patients (7.8%) experienced a PNF, 3/50 and 2/14 from type III and type II DCD, respectively. Type III DCD livers were more likely to be transplanted than type II. Warm ischemia time might explain this difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We look at how strongly shocks to wealth affect labour supply, using Italian data. We use asset price shocks to provide a measure of wealth changes that is exogenous to the household's saving and labour supply. Results point to significant effects of wealth on hours of work, whether agents leave their jobs and labour earnings. The magnitude of these effects can be substantial – for example, for individuals who suffered larger wealth losses during the financial crisis. Responses are similar for men and women on average, but older working‐age individuals have relatively strong responses that drive the population results. Short‐run effects are somewhat persistent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pentraxin 3 (PTX3) is an acute phase protein; its plasmatic levels significantly rise during severe infections. Data on PTX3 levels in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients with central nervous system (CNS) infections are lacking. We aimed (a) to assess the diagnostic potential of measuring CSF PTX3 levels in patients with CNS infections and (b) to establish CSF PTX3 cutoffs to distinguish between bacterial and aseptic meningoencephalitis (ROC curve). PTX3 levels were measured in CSF from 19 patients admitted to Trieste Hospital, Italy, with CNS infection. A diagnosis of bacterial infection and aseptic meningoencephalitis was made in 7 (37%) and 12 (63%) patients, respectively. Subjects with bacterial infections showed significantly higher PTX3 levels (13.5 vs 1.27 ng/mL in aseptic meningoencephalitis, p = 0.010). We identified two different CSF PTX3 levels cutoffs. (1) The best cutoff to maximise Youden's J was 9.6 ng/mL with a sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value (NPV) of 71.4%, 91.4%, 83.3%, 84.6%, respectively. (2) The cutoff with higher NPV (100%) was 3.6 ng/mL; a diagnosis of bacterial infections was obtained in 0% patients with CSF PTX3 levels < 3.6 ng/mL vs 58% of those with CSF PTX3 levels ≥ 3.6 ng/mL (p = 0.017). CSF PTX3 levels are higher in bacterial meningitis than aseptic meningoencephalitis. A cutoff of 3.6 ng/mL of CSF PTX3 has a high NPV and can be used to exclude bacterial CNS infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate marginal propensities to consume from wealth shocks. We exploit large asset‐price shocks in 2007–2008 and household‐level panel data to implement instrumental variables. A fall of one euro in risky financial wealth resulted in cuts to annual total (non‐durable) consumption of 8.5–9 (5.5–5.7) cents, with small effects on food spending. Effects seem stronger for lower‐wealth or indebted households, but significant responses from wealthier households and those without mortgages are important for our baseline results. Counterfactuals indicate financial‐wealth effects were relatively important for consumption falls in Italy in 2007–2008. The estimated effects are consistent with a simulated life‐cycle model capturing the wealth shock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant breeding programmes frequently face the dilemma whether to breed for wide or specific adaptation. This is especially true for forage crop breeding, whose genetic resources may largely include landraces that are adapted to specific growing conditions. This study aimed to (1) investigate the extent and pattern of genotype × location (GL) interaction for biomass yield of recent lucerne cultivars across organically-managed sites of Northern and Central Italy and its relationship with cultivar selection environments, (2) provide an empirical assessment of yield gains derived from specific-adaptation and wide-adaptation breeding strategies, and (3) identify top-performing cultivars for different geographic regions. Cultivar adaptive responses, modelled by additive main effects and multiplicative interaction analysis, displayed wide GL interaction of cross-over type across test sites that reflected remarkably the geographic area and/or the growing conditions (particularly for extent of summer drought) of their selection environment. GL interaction patterns suggested three putative subregions to breed for specific adaptation, namely, Northern Italy north of the Po river, Northern Italy south of the Po river, and Central Italy. Growing specifically-adapted cultivars provided an estimated average advantage of 12.9% across subregions relative to the best-performing widely-adapted cultivar. Yield gains of recent top-performing material over an historical, widely-adapted cultivar indicated that selection for specific adaptation would provide 3.2-fold greater yield gain averaged across subregions, and 3.4-fold greater yield gain over the target region when weighting yield gains on the putative proportion of the target region of each subregion, compared with selection for wide adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Post-traumatic cerebral infarction (PTCI) is common after traumatic brain injury (TBI). It is unclear what the occurrence of a PTCI is, how it impacts the long-term outcome, and whether it adds incremental prognostic value to established outcome predictors.Methods: This was a prospective multicenter cohort study of moderate and severe TBI patients. The primary objective was to evaluate if PTCI was an independent risk factor for the 6-month outcome assessed with the Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS). We also assessed the PTCI occurrence and if it adds incremental value to the International Mission for Prognosis and Clinical Trial design in TBI (IMPACT) core and extended models.Results: We enrolled 143 patients, of whom 47 (32.9%) developed a PTCI. In the multiple ordered logistic regression, PTCI was retained in both the core and extended IMPACT models as an independent predictor of the GOS. The predictive performances increased significantly when PTCI was added to the IMPACT core model (AUC = 0.73, 95% C.I. 0.66-0.82; increased to AUC = 0.79, 95% CI 0.71-0.83, p = 0.0007) and extended model (AUC = 0.74, 95% C.I. 0.65-0.81 increased to AUC = 0.80, 95% C.I. 0.69-0.85; p = 0.00008). Patients with PTCI showed higher ICU mortality and 6-month mortality, whereas hospital mortality did not differ between the two groups.Conclusions: PTCI is a common complication in patients suffering from a moderate or severe TBI and is an independent risk factor for long-term disability. The addition of PTCI to the IMPACT core and extended predictive models significantly increased their performance in predicting the GOS.Trial Registration: The present study was registered in ClinicalTrial.gov with the ID number NCT02430324. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diverse theories of industry dynamics predict heterogeneity in production efficiency to be the driver of firms’ growth, survival, and industrial change, either through a direct link between efficiency and growth, or through an indirect effect via profitabilities, as more productive firms can enjoy higher profit margins which, under imperfect capital markets, allow them to invest and grow more. Does the empirical evidence bear out such predictions? This article explores the dynamics of selection and reallocation through an investigation of the relations linking productivity, profitability and growth at the firm level. Exploiting large panels of Italian and French industrial firms, we find that heterogeneity in efficiencies primarily yields persistent profitability differentials, whereas the relationships of corporate growth with either productivity or profitability appear much weaker, if at all existent. This suggests that selection forces are much less strong than usually assumed. The results robustly apply across different industrial sectors and across the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This work analyses the properties of corporate growth in a large longitudinal sample of Italian manufacturing firms. In particular, it focuses on the statistical properties of growth rates and on the influence of proxies for relative efficiency upon relative growth. In line with previous work, the emergence of 'fat tails' in growth rate distributions and the idiosyncratic nature of autocorrelation coefficients confirm the existence of a structure in the growth process richer than the one normally assumed by the 'Gibrat Law' hypothesis and suggest the presence of firm-specific drivers of growth. At the same time, there is a remarkable puzzle concerning the absence of any negative relationship between size and growth variance and only weak influences of relative efficiencies upon growth dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing a large sample of Italian firms we find that the probability of default increases with size. This contrasts with the common observation, based on measures of exit from business registry data, that firms' death rate is inversely related to the scale of their operation and suggests a rethinking of the economic role of larger companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the portfolio effect of changes in social security wealth exploiting a decade of Italian pension reforms. The Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth records detailed portfolio data and elicits expectations of retirement outcomes, thus allowing us to measure expected social security wealth and assess to what extent Italian households perceive the innovations brought about by the reforms. We find that households have responded to cuts in pension benefits mostly by increasing real estate wealth, and that this response is stronger among households able more accurately to estimate future social security benefits. We also compute that for the average household consumable wealth increases by 40 percent of the reduction in social security wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study the impact of firms’ productivity and scale of activity on the cost of labour for Italian manufacturing firms, investigating how the work-force composition affects the total expenditures for wages. Our analysis reveals that once productivity differences among firms are accounted for, size still retains a positive effect on cost of labour. We show that the source of this phenomenon is the relatively higher proportion of non-production workers in bigger firms, which results in a cost of labour for white collar workers that increases with increasing firm size. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This work explores and compares some basic properties of corporate growth process at both aggregate manufacturing level and disaggregated sectoral levels. Using an extensive dataset on Italian manufacturing firms, we investigate which properties of firm growth dynamics are robust under disaggregation. We compare the results obtained with three different definitions of firm size, namely total sales, number of employees and value added. Our analysis suggests that while different sectors are characterized by significant differences in firm size distributions, in the degrees of concentration and in the autoregressive structure of the growth processes, there are also regularities which hold across all of them, such as the approximate unit root nature of the growth process and the power exponential shape of the growth rates density. Together, these “stylized facts” suggest challenging puzzles on the drivers of corporate growth and the resulting industrial structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the variability of the risk premium in the Italian stock market, over the period 1978-89. We have modelled volatility using two different approaches: ARCH-M models and non-parametric models. The estimates of the ARCH-M models confirm the existence of both an ARCH process in the variance and a time-varying risk premium. Also the non-parametric specification confirms the existence of a time varying risk premium. Moreover in both models the acceleration in the inflation rate has a negative effect on stock prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evapotranspiration has a large impact on water budgets, playing a fundamental role in theregulation of water fluxes between soil, vegetation and atmosphere. In forested catchments,the evapotranspiration is dominated by the transpiration component. Despite its importantrole in the hydrological cycle at the catchment scale, transpiration is often overlooked and notwell represented by hydrological models. In this work, we aim to investigate the role of evapotranspiration on the hydrologicalresponse and the water balance of two small forested catchments in Italy: the Ressi catchment(0.02 km2) located in the pre-Alps, and the Re della Pietra catchment (2.0 km2) in theApennines. The two catchments are covered by dense mixed broad-leaf forest, but the Ressicatchment is characterized by wetter conditions than the Re della Pietra catchment due to thelarger mean annual precipitation. Meteorological (rainfall, air temperature, global solar radiation and wind speed), soilmoisture and leaf area index data were collected in the two catchments, and these data wereused to perform hydrological simulations with the GEOframe-NewAGE system. Then, thepredicted streamflow was compared to the measured streamflow data at the two streamgauging stations. The modular structure of the hydrological model allowed for testingdifferent methods to compute hourly evapotranspiration amounts, i.e. classical approachessuch as the Penman-Monteith FAO method, the Priestley-Taylor equation and the newSchymanski-Or method, which was modified to include the water stress factor andtranspiration resistances. The Schymanski-Or method was also upscaled from the leaf to thecatchment scale. Preliminary simulations performed with the different methods to estimate evapotranspirationwere evaluated using the Nash-Sutcliffe and the Kling-Gupta efficiency, showing generallybetter results using the Schymanski-Or method. Further analyses will be carried out tocompare the evapotranspiration fluxes and the hydrological response in the two catchments atdifferent time scales. Acknowledgements: This study is part of the research project "SILVA - Water fluxesbetween soil, vegetation and atmosphere: a comparative analysis in two Italian forestedcatchments", funded by Premio Florisa Melone 2018 assigned by the Italian HydrologicalSociety. Keywords: evapotranspiration, forested catchments, hydrological model,GEOframe-NewAGE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hydrological response of forested catchments is strongly influenced by evapotranspiration.Numerous studies have reported the effect of evapotranspiration on the annual water balanceat different spatial scales, but detailed eco-hydrological monitoring at the small catchmentscale is still needed to improve the estimation of evapotranspiration fluxes and runoffresponse by hydrological models. In this study, we used hydrometeorological data from two small forested catchments inItaly to i) investigate the hydrological response of the two catchments at seasonal andrainfall-runoff event time scale, and ii) analyze the daily fluctuations in streamflow and theshallow water table. The two catchments are covered by dense mixed broad-leaf forest. The Ressi catchment(0.02 km2) is located in the Italian pre-Alps and its climate is oceanic, while the Re dellaPietra catchment (2.0 km2) lies in the Northern Apennines and the climate is humidsub-tropical. Streamflow, rainfall, air temperature and solar radiation were measured continuously inboth catchments. In the Ressi catchment, shallow water table was measured in twopiezometers installed at a depth of 2.0 and 1.8 m in the riparian zone, while sap flow wasmonitored in two beech trees located in the riparian zone, and one beech tree and onechestnut tree on the hillslope. Preliminary results show that during the growing season, rainfall-runoff events had largerainfall intensities, short duration and small stormflow volumes. In the Ressi catchment,runoff coefficients varied between 0.1 and 96% (mean: 17%, n=155, period: August2012-November 2016), with event runoff coefficients in summer much smaller (mean: 7%,n=66) than during the rest of the year. In the Re della Pietra catchment, event runoffcoefficients in the period July-September were also small and varied between 1.2 and 5.1%(n=8). During dry periods, streamflow tended to decrease in both catchments, but with differentdynamics. Strong daily streamflow fluctuations were observed in summer in the Re dellaPietra catchment, with minimum streamflow lagging peak solar radiation by 1-3 hours.Conversely, no daily streamflow fluctuations were observed at the end of the growing season,probably due to the reduced impact of evapotranspiration on the catchment storage. In theRessi catchment, we did not observe clear daily streamflow fluctuations, likely due to thefrequent summer storms interrupting the baseflow. However, the shallow watertable experienced daily fluctuations. We observed that the minimum water tablelevel lagged peak sap flow by 1-6 hours, implying a role of evapotranspiration onwater table variations. Based on these results, further analyses will be carried out toestimate daily and seasonal groundwater recharge and evapotranspiration in bothcatchments. Acknowledgements: This study is part of the research project "SILVA - Water fluxesbetween soil, vegetation and atmosphere: a comparative analysis in two Italian forestedcatchments", funded by Premio Florisa Melone 2018 assigned by the Italian HydrologicalSociety. Keywords: daily streamflow fluctuations; shallow water table; evapotranspiration; runoffcoefficients; forested catchments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]