Archivio Istituzionale della Ricerca- Università del Piemonte Orientale
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Unraveling the joint effect of firm and stakeholder pro-environmental engagement on firm economic rewards: an application to waste management services
No full textPurpose
This paper aims to examine whether the pro-environmental engagement (PEE) of firms in response to the environmental expectations of stakeholders increases firm market power and whether the level of stakeholder PEE can counterbalance this effect.
Design/methodology/approach
This study draws on stakeholder theory and the co-production paradigm. The stakeholder perspective provides a theoretical basis for the increase in market power of organizations that improve their PEE, while co-production paradigm provides a theoretical foundation for the negative impact of stakeholder PEE on market power. The empirical evidence is derived from waste management services in Italy. The authors use a stochastic frontier approach to determine firm market power indices in relation to firm and stakeholder PEE.
Findings
The results confirm that market power increases when stakeholder expectations are met, while stakeholder commitment (mainly service recipients) challenges this effect. Furthermore, the findings suggest the existence of a self-reinforcing mechanism, as organizational efforts tend to keep pace with the empowerment of service recipients.
Originality/value
The originality of the study lies in the use of market power as a performance parameter, which has the advantage of being directly related to the acquisition of monopoly rents. In this context, the sustainability efforts of firms have strategic valence, as they allow them to approach a monopolistic condition, while the co-production efforts of service recipients can mitigate this socially undesirable outcome
A non-hypothesis-driven practical laboratory activity on functional metagenomics: “fishing” protein-coding DNA sequences from microbiomes
Get PDFPractical laboratory of the most functional metagenomics courses focuses on activities aimed at providing specific skills in bioinformatics through the analysis of genomic datasets. However, sequence-based analyses of metagenomes should be complemented by function-based analyses, to provide evidential knowledge of gene function. A “true” functional metagenomic approach relies on the construction and screening of metagenomic libraries - physical libraries that contain DNA cloned from metagenomes of various origin. The information obtained from functional metagenomics will help in future annotations of gene function and serve as a complement to sequence-based metagenomics. Here, we describe a simple protocol for the construction of a metagenomic DNA library, optimized and tested by a team of undergraduate biotechnology students. This protocol is based on a technique developed in our laboratory and currently used for research. Using this protocol, libraries of protein domains can be quickly generated, from the DNA of any intron-less genome, such as those of bacteria or phages. Therefore, these libraries provide a valuable platform for training students in various validation tools, including computational methods - for example, metagenome assembly, functional annotation - and proteomics techniques, including protein expression and analysis. By varying the biological source and validation pipeline, this approach offers virtually limitless opportunities for innovative thesis research projects
Real-world study in steroid-refractory acute graft versus host disease: Comparison of efficacy and tolerability of ruxolitinib alone or ruxolitinib in association with extracorporeal photopheresis or extracorporeal photopheresis monotherapy
No full textMeasurement of the inclusive isolated-photon production cross section in pp and Pb–Pb collisions at TeV
No full textThe ALICE Collaboration at the CERN LHC has measured the inclusive production cross section of isolated photons at midrapidity as a function of the photon transverse momentum (), in Pb–Pb collisions in different centrality intervals, and in pp collisions, at centre-of-momentum energy per nucleon pair of = 5.02 TeV. The photon transverse momentum range is between 10–14 and 40–140 GeV/c, depending on the collision system and on the Pb–Pb centrality class. The result extends to lower than previously published results by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the same collision energy. The covered pseudorapidity range is || < 0.67. The isolation selection is based on a charged particle isolation momentum threshold = 1.5 GeV/c within a cone of radii R = 0.2 and 0.4. The nuclear modification factor is calculated and found to be consistent with unity in all centrality classes, and also consistent with the HG-PYTHIA model, which describes the event selection and geometry biases that affect the centrality determination in peripheral Pb–Pb collisions. The measurement is compared to next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations and to the measurements of isolated photons and Z0 bosons from the CMS experiment, which are all found to be in agreement
Multi-pathway blood biomarkers to target and monitor multidimensional prevention of cognitive and functional decline (nested in the IN-TeMPO study framed within the world-wide FINGERS network)
No full textBackground: As the population ages, the identification of preventive strategies able to delay cognitive and functional decline associated with aging represents a major challenge. To date, multidimensional approaches seem to be effective in reducing or delaying the onset of age-related diseases. Objectives: The multicentric randomized controlled trial IN-TeMPO (ItaliaN study with Tailored Multidomain interventions to Prevent functional and cognitive decline in community-dwelling Older adults, ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT06248723), framed within the World-Wide FINGERS network, aims to verify the efficacy of guided multidomain interventions in preventing age-related cognitive and functional decline. Within this study, we will explore a comprehensive array of established and exploratory blood biomarkers of several pathologic age-related processes, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), neurodegeneration, inflammation, senescence and sarcopenia, to stratify subject risk and assess the effect of multidomain interventions on biomarkers. Design and participants: ApoE4 status and plasma p-tau217 (AD), NfL (neurodegeneration), GFAP and IL-6 (inflammation), GDF-15 (senescence/sarcopenia) will be evaluated in all subjects (n = 1,662) both at the baseline and at the end of the study (12 months). Exploratory additional biomarkers will be measured at the same time points in a subgroup of 100 subjects: BDNF, ghrelin, IGF-1, irisin and redox status in plasma as markers of sarcopenia/senescence and oxidative stress, gamma-H2AX in PBMCs as marker of senescence, and amyloid beta aggregates in plasma, urine and erythrocytes as supportive markers of AD. Untargeted metabolomics analysis in plasma and untargeted volatilomics analysis in whole blood and urine will be performed to explore molecular alterations that may be associated with the pathogenesis and progression of age-related diseases in frail older adults with the aim of identifying novel potential biomarkers. Conclusion: The comprehensive clinical use of multiple laboratory biomarkers can contribute both to the early identification of trajectories of cognitive and functional decline in older adults, and to the identification of mechanisms underlying the effect of multidisciplinary interventions on age-related pathological processes
Confidence Interval for the Complexity Index of Functional Data
No full textThis paper presents the concept of complexity index for generic random processes. This is based on the notion of small-ball probability and the possibility that this probability can be decomposed as a factorization of two functions. One of these two factors carries information regarding the complexity of the process, which coincides with the number of random sources characterizing the process or, equivalently, its degrees of freedom. This factor has been studied in literature and this paper shows some statistical results on how it can be exploited to make inference on the degrees of freedom of the random process
Offers That Can’t Be Refused and People Sleeping with Fishes: The Linguistic Legacy of The Godfather
No full textThe Godfather is a crime novel written by American author Mario Puzo in 1969. It tells the story of a fictional Mafia family in New York City (and Long Island), headed by Don Vito Corleone, the Godfather. The novel covers the years 1945 to 1955 and includes the back story of Vito Corleone from early childhood (in Sicily) to
adulthood. The novel was turned into a film directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1972. As far as the Corleones are concerned, as well as the people who belong to their crew, it is a fact that their representation is different from the stereotyped representation of Italian American gangsters usually portrayed in Hollywood productions. First of all, they always refer to themselves as businessmen, rather than gangsters, and throughout the dialogues of the film they continuously mention their “business” (some examples: “It’s good business”; “I’m a business
man”; “This is business, not personal!”; “Even the shooting of your father was business, not personal”; “This is business, and this man is taking it very very personal”; “It’s not personal, it’s strictly business”). Don Vito Corleone stresses the fact that he does not consider himself and his family as criminals at the very beginning of the film. In the initial scene of the film, Bonasera (a mortician by trade whose daughter is the goddaughter of Don Vito’s wife) goes to Don Vito on his daughter Connie’s wedding day, pleading for revenge and asking him to kill the young American men who tried to dishonour his own daughter and then brutally beat her when she resisted. Don Vito abruptly refuses, and later comments with Tom Hagen: “We’re not murderers, in spite of what this undertaker thinks”. The differences in the depiction of the characters are also reflected on the language variety that they speak, as will be seen in the paper
