A Visual Analytics System for Space–Time Dynamics of Regional Income Distributions Utilizing Animated Flow Maps and Rank-based Markov Chains

Regional income convergence and divergence has been an active field of research for more than 20 years, and research papers in this field are still being produced at a prodigious rate. Despite their importance for the study of dynamics of income distribution, interactive visualization tools revealing spatiotemporal dimensions of the income data have been sparsely developed. This study introduces a visual analytics system for the space–time analysis of income dynamics. We use state-level US income data from 1929 to 2009 to demonstrate the visual analytics system and its utility for exploring similar data. The system consists of two modules, visualization and analytics. The visualization module, a Web-based front-end called Rank-Path Visualizer (RPV), draws inspiration from the cartographic technique of flow mapping, originally developed by Tobler and embodied in his canonical Flow Mapper application.     

A dendrochronological analysis of Pinus pinea L. on the Italian mid-Tyrrhenian coast

In order to assess the response of the radial growth of Pinus pinea L. to climatic variability in Central Italy, dendrochronological and dendroclimatological analyses were carried out on five different populations scattered along the Tyrrhenian coasts of the peninsula. The aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the ecological demands of this species, particularly in the study area. For each site total ring, early-, and late-wood width chronologies were developed. Multidimensional analyses were performed for the three tree-ring datasets in order to analyze the relations between sites chronologies. Both Principal Component Analyses and hierarchical classifications highlighted an important difference of one site in respect to the other, probably due to site characteristics. Correlation functions were performed to infer the main climatic factors controlling the radial growth of the species. For a comparative study, we limited our attention to the common interval 1926–2003 (78 years) in which the response of the tree-ring chronologies to climate at both local and regional scale was investigated. Positive moisture balance in the late spring-summer period of the year of growth is the climatic driver of P. pinea radial growth in the study area. Moreover, this study shows how low summer temperatures strongly favor the radial growth of the species.     

Cuban Miami on the Air: Narratives of Cubanía

Radio has been a fundamental aspect of Cuban culture on and off the island since the first broadcast in Havana in 1922. When Cubans fled the island after the revolution of 1959 for the USA, particularly Miami, radio quickly became a vital medium for navigating a new country and for consolidating a Cuban exile identity. Politically, radio in Miami has been an effective means for articulating hardline exile politics. But with generational turnover and increasingly moderate stances on Cuba by more recent arrivals and US-born Cuban Americans, how is radio changing? How are narratives of what constitutes cubanía – Cubanness – shifting in an increasingly diverse Cuban Miami? This article takes up these questions through an examination of an immensely popular morning program that aired in 2009 in southern Florida called the Enrique y Joe Show. I examine how the Enrique y Joe Show, produced and performed by US-born Cuban Americans, utilized a form of irreverent Cuban humor called choteo to represent and satirize the hardline Cuban exile politics that have been dominant on Miami's radio waves for decades. Ultimately, their performances deploy choteo to articulate Cuban American identity divorced from a particular political orthodoxy. The coda reflects on changes in Miami's radio landscape since 2009.     

Electoral rule and public sector efficiency: Some evidence from Italian municipalities

We study the effect of Law 81/1993, which introduced a different rule for the election of mayors, on the technical efficiency of Italian cities over the period 1998–2006. Since 1993, municipalities below 15,000 inhabitants vote with a single-ballot system, whereas cities above 15,000 inhabitants are subject to a double ballot. We first estimate the output-oriented technical efficiency of municipalities through data envelopment analysis, and then we perform a regression discontinuity design analysis by exploiting the exogenous change in the electoral scheme at the 15,000 inhabitants cut-off. We find evidence that municipalities voting under a double-ballot rule show lower levels of efficiency—in terms of provision of public goods—compared with cities voting under a single-ballot scheme, by about 6.5%. This effect is driven by inefficiencies registered in specific sectors, that is, police, education, and maintenance of roads. Furthermore, the overall lower efficiency of municipalities voting under runoff is related to the different level of educational attainment of elected mayors, whereas it is not driven by the features of Law 81/1993 relating to the number of lists forming a coalition in support of mayoral candidates and to disjoint votes.     

The Italian Enlightenment and the Rehabilitation of Moral and Political Philosophy

ABSTRACT

By reconstructing the eighteenth-century movement of the Italian Enlightenment, I show that Italy’s political fragmentation notwithstanding, there was a constant circulation of ideas, whether on philosophical, ethical, political, religious, social, economic or scientific questions, among different groups in various states. This exchange was made possible by the shared language of its leading illuministi—Cesare Beccaria, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Francesco Maria Zanotti, Antonio Genovesi, Mario Pagano, Pietro Verri, Marco Antonio Vogli, and Giammaria Ortes—and resulted in four common traits. First, the absence of a radical trend, such as the French materialist-atheist trend and, British Deism. Second, the rejection of inhumane laws and institutions, capital punishment, torture, war and slavery. Third, the idea of public happiness as the goal of good government and legislation. And fourth, the conception of the economy as a constellation where social capital, consisting of education, morality, and civility, plays a decisive role. I conclude that the Italian Enlightenment, not unlike the Scottish Enlightenment, was both cosmopolitan and local, which allowed its leading writers to develop a keen awareness of the complexity of society alongside a degree of prudence regarding the possibility and desirability of its modernization.     

First record of the ichthyodectiform fish Xiphactinus (Teleostei) from Patagonia,Argentina

Abstract

We report the first record of the genus Xiphactinus from southern South America. The recovered fossil material consists of an associated maxilla and abdominal vertebra, probably derived from latest Maastrichtian marine deposits of the Salamanca Formation in Chubut Province, Argentina. Xiphactinus has been widely reported from Late Cretaceous strata throughout the Northern Hemisphere, although to date, equivalent Southern Hemisphere occurrences include only a single specimen from Venezuela. Our new discovery thus indicates that Xiphactinus had a much more cosmopolitan distribution, encompassing the southern paleolatitudinal extremities of South America during the terminal Cretaceous.

Julieta J. De Pasqua [julietadepasqua@gmail.com], Laboratorio de Anatomía Comparada y Evolución de los Vertebrados, Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales ‘Bernardino Rivadavia’, Av. Ángel Gallardo, 470, C1405DJR, Buenos Aires, Argentina;

Federico L. Agnolin [fedeagnolin@yahoo.com.ar], Laboratorio de Anatomía Comparada y Evolución de los Vertebrados, Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales ‘Bernardino Rivadavia’, Av. Ángel Gallardo, 470, C1405DJR, Buenos Aires, Argentina. CONICET; Fundación de Historia Natural ‘Félix de Azara’, Departamento de Ciencias Naturales y Antropología, Universidad Maimónides; Hidalgo 775 piso 7, C1405BDB, Buenos Aires, Argentina;

Sergio Bogan [sergiobogan@yahoo.com.ar], Fundación de Historia Natural ‘Félix de Azara’, Departamento de Ciencias Naturales y Antropología, Universidad Maimónides; Hidalgo 775 piso 7, C1405BDB, Buenos Aires, Argentina.