Modelling pandemic risks for policy analysis and forecasting.

What were the economic effects of vaccination campaign, agents' adaptation to containment measures, and fiscal and monetary measures during the COVID-19 pandemic? To quantify these effects, we augment the ECB's macro-econometric model with an endogenous epidemiological block, providing one of the first institutional policy models with epidemiological elements. The model tracks closely actual pandemic developments by relying on detailed epidemiological data and by nesting a wide range of features, including vaccination campaigns, emergence of new variants and learning effects. Importantly, it includes an endogenous policy reaction function for containment measures, allowing counterfactual simulations. Our simulation results show that: (i) agents' adaptation to containment measures over time was key in reducing negative macroeconomic consequences of lockdowns, (ii) the vaccination campaign slowed down infection rates and hospitalizations, enabling a relaxation of containment measures and avoiding a sharp double dip in economic activity and (iii) complementary fiscal and monetary policy interventions provided support to the economy.

Michelangelo Effect in Virtual Sculpturing: Prospective for Motor Neurorehabilitation in the Metaverse.

We investigated the Michelangelo effect, i.e. the facilitatory effect of a virtual art therapy in motor rehabilitation (Iosa et al. 2021), with a novel virtual reality paradigm in which users are engaged in motor exercises with 3D sculptures. In particular, thirty young adults were immersed in a virtual environment where they could sculpt, by using the real hands, some famous sculptures in the history of art, such as the David of Michelangelo, the Venus of Milo and the statue of Laocoon and His Sons, and their control stimuli, i.e. statues in very low resolution or cubes. We recorded the kinematics (length, the time to complete each trial, mean normalized jerk) and questionnaire answers (objective and subjective beauty, User Satisfaction Evaluation Questionnaire and Nasa Task Load Index). In general, we found that the perception of subjective and objective beauty was higher when sculpting the statues than control stimuli, the judgment of usability of the system was high. The perceived fatigue was not higher when sculpting the statues despite the longer time spent in completing the task that with respect to the control stimuli. Moreover, we found that the interaction with the experimental statues affected the fluidity and symmetry of hands movements. Finally, we discuss this evidence regarding the art therapy and neuroaesthetics principles for motor rehabilitation in the Metaverse with VR, including the possible role of virtual embodiment (illusory feeling to have a virtual body) for boosting the efficacy of the clinical applications.

Switchable reactivity of acylated alpha, beta-dehydroamino ester in the Friedel-Crafts alkylation of indoles by changing the Lewis acid.

Highly regioselective electrophilic substitution of indoles with N-acetylated alpha,beta-dehydroalanine methyl ester, promoted by different transition metal salts was achieved. The orthogonal regioselectivity provides an efficient protocol toward highly functionalized 3-indolyl-alpha-amino acids. The mechanism of the reactions was explored by NMR studies.