Mental health support to staff in a major hospital in Milan(Italy)during the COVID-19 pandemic:a framework of actions

To the Editor,As of 31 M arch 2020,m ore than 100000 cases of coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)have been confirm ed in Italy.1 Progressive mitigation measures have been introduced by the Italian governm ent since 9 M arch 2020 to underm ine and break the virus transmission chain.However,the COVID-19-associated hospitalisation rate in Lombardy,the epicentre of the outbreak,has risen since the late days o f February 2020,by 30%each day,and it is only very recently that it slowed down to 5%daily,which still translates to 500 new patients every day who are in absolute need of hospital care.

Tourism as an Exit Strategy at Crisis Times

The contemporary crisis is giving evidence of failing macroeconomic theories and policies, after decades of focusing on the aggregate domestic demand and the role of the public expenditure. The contemporary crisis has shown the weakness of fiscal policy. With very low interest rates, the monetary policy does not seem to provide an alternative exit strategy out of the crisis, too. In this paper we discuss the hypothesis that GDP can still be a reliable estimate of growth. Nevertheless, at crisis times, only if the focus is on the foreign demand like International Tourism Receipts and Exports, and Exports can be an exit strategy. One component of Exports and International Tourism Receipts are worthy of attention. Thanks to a cluster analysis of per year variations of International Tourism Receipts (ITRs), GDP and Exports (World Bank Database) from 2007 to 2011, average positive variations of GDPs are matching with positive ITRs and Exports for “clusters” of countries. Performances of Europe and USA are worse than China, Brazil, India and South Africa and these continents and countries are separated in two different clusters. This result can be related to an increase of trade in emerging economies more than in mature ones, whose exit out of the crisis is much more demanding. The research confirms that Tourism and Exports are having an impact on the growth at different intensities (Europe and America vs. Asia) at crisis times.

Strategies, Performances and Profiling of a Sample of U.S. Universities in 2012

The global economic crisis is affecting performances of not-for-profits. At the same time donors are targeted by a pressing good-cause related marketing, so that the competition for philanthropy is particularly keen. U.S. universities can be public, not-for-profit and for-profit. U.S. not-for-profit universities are confronted with different marketing, fundraising and revenue diversification. Above all, marketing concerns customers and their segmentation and their purchasing-power exploitation;fundraising aims to gain the trustworthiness of donors, instead. The aim of this paper is the analysis of the revenue diversification of a sample of 100 U.S. not-for-profit universities according to IRS (Internal Revenue Service) Forms. These 100 U.S. universities had the highest 2012’s revenues for the Guidestar ranking (www.guidestar.org). The cluster analysis gives evidence that the highest gain and the highest solvency are both connected with the implementation of revenue diversification for one profile. The most crowded cluster is the Marketing Expert with the second highest gain.

异托邦的两个版本:艺术实践在参与式城市更新过程中的作用

本文的目的是通过文化艺术干预项目,参与到城市更新代理人与当地社区之间权力关系(power relationship)的论辩中。我们的研究提出了一个新的概念框架,重点比较解释城市社会和参与性空间理论的两个异托邦(heterotopia)概念。异托邦的概念可以追溯到米歇尔·福柯(Michel Foucault)和亨利·列斐伏尔(Henri Lefebvre)两位重要的思想家。我们通过将其与公共空间(public space)内的艺术文化活动相联系,为当代城市建立了另一种分析范式。我们利用这两种不同的异托邦概念解读,从权力关系的角度,探索艺术实践与城市空间相互作用的含义。分析中,我们发现,福柯的异托邦概念可能有利于城市自上而下的规划和中产阶级化(gentrification),与之相反,列斐伏尔的理念可能更适合作为重新激活城市权力(the right to the city)的策略。