  Kinetic plasma processes have been investigated in the framework of solar
wind turbulence, employing Hybrid Vlasov-Maxwell (HVM) simulations. The
dependency of proton temperature anisotropy T_{\perp}/T_{\parallel} on the
parallel plasma beta \beta_{\parallel}, commonly observed in spacecraft data,
has been recovered using an ensemble of HVM simulations. By varying plasma
parameters, such as plasma beta and fluctuation level, the simulations explore
distinct regions of the parameter space given by T_{\perp}/T_{\parallel} and
\beta_{\parallel}, similar to solar wind sub-datasets. Moreover, both
simulation and solar wind data suggest that temperature anisotropy is not only
associated with magnetic intermittent events, but also with gradient-type
structures in the flow and in the density. This connection between
non-Maxwellian kinetic effects and various types of intermittency may be a key
point for understanding the complex nature of plasma turbulence.
