6,365 research outputs found
Did Plant Patents Create the American Rose?
No full textThe Plant Patent Act of 1930 was the first step towards creating property rights for biological innovation: it introduced patent rights for asexually-propagated plants. This paper uses data on plant patents and registrations of new varieties to examine whether the Act encouraged innovation. Nearly half of all plant patents between 1931 and 1970 were for roses. Large commercial nurseries, which began to build mass hybridization programs in the 1940s, accounted for most of these patents, suggesting that the new intellectual property rights may have helped to encourage the development of a commercial rose breeding industry. Data on registrations of newly-created roses, however, yield no evidence of an increase in innovation: less than 20 percent of new roses were patented, European breeders continued to create most new roses, and there was no increase in the number of new varieties per year after 1931.
Playing the lottery with a little bit of stats know-how
No full textIan McHale dreams of winning the lottery. As a statistician, does he stand a better chance? With Rose D. Baker, he explains..
Functional Grammar Studies for Non-Native Speakers of English (dal 2004) - ISSN 1973-2228 nei Quaderni del CeSLiC: new volume
No full textThe series is entitled Functional Grammar Studies for Non-Native Speakers of English, and is contained within the Quaderni del Centro di Studi Linguistico-Culturali (CeSLiC), a research center in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages of the University of Bologna.
The series proposes a metalinguistic description of English grammar in a functional, socio-semiotic perspective and is proving to be an effective teaching/learning resource for improving English literacy outcomes in the L2 pedagogic setting. Its principal ‘consumers’ are the students of the English Language Studies Program (ELSP) in Bologna’s Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature, for whom the first 3 volumes provide the basic course-book in each of their three years of the first-level degree course in foreign languages and literatures.
This new volume:
Manfredi, Marina (2012) Translating Text and Context: Translation Studies and Systemic Functional Linguistics. Volume 2: From Theory to Practice. In: Quaderni del CeSLiC. Functional Grammar Studies For Non-Native Speakers of English,
is, like the first, meant for the students of translation in the graduate degree course in Language, society and communication.
Following on the first volume (Manfredi 2008) focusing on the theoretical issues that link Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Translation Studies (TS), this second volume aims at demonstrating how they can be fruitfully exploited in the actual practice of translation. The book starts with the illustration of four models informed by SFL, which have been offered by renowned TS scholars and linguists (House 1977/1981, 1997; Bell 1991; Baker 1992/2011; Steiner 1997, 1998, 2004) and, to a different extent, have been applied to the practice of translation. Then, partly drawing on such models, as well as on the SFL analysis outlined by Miller (2005), the book puts forth a Hallidayan approach to translation practice, integrated with further insights from TS. The goal is to offer a tool for translation teaching, to be employed for both the production and evaluation of target texts, working with the language pair English/Italian. It is argued that the proposed SFL approach could be exploited to translate a wide range of text-types, from (semi-)specialized to literary. The model is also seen in operation through the practical analysis and translation, from English into Italian, of a diverse range of sample texts, from a variety of text-types. The book’s ultimate aim is to offer a contribution to translation education, in the hope that an SFL integrated approach could provide a systematic method for coping with the intricacies that languages, texts and contexts inevitably pose in a complex and multifaceted process like translation.
The full text of this and all volumes in the series can be seen at
http://amsacta.unibo.it/view/series/Quaderni_del_CeSLiC=2E_Functional_Grammar_Studies_For_Non-Native_Speakers_of_English.htm
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The world of maritime and commercial law ::essays in honour of Francis Rose /
No full text"For four decades, Professor Francis Rose has been at the forefront of commercial and maritime law scholarship as both author and editor. In honour of his outstanding contribution, this collection gathers twenty-two essays from internationally-leading scholars and practitioners, in which they expose and debate important contemporary controversies within their respective fields: general contract law, sales law, carriage of goods by sea, insurance law, agency law, the law of restitution/unjust enrichment, and the conflict of laws"-
Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives and Museums. Part 3: Recommendations and Readings
No full textRecommendations on social metadata features most relevant to libraries, archives, and museums and an annotated reading list of the literature the research group consulted during our research. We believe it is riskier to do nothing and become irrelevant to our user communities than to start using social media features
Predicting creditworthiness in retail banking with limited scoring data
No full textThe preoccupation with modelling credit scoring systems including their relevance to predicting and decision making in the financial sector has been with developed countries, whilst developing countries have been largely neglected. The focus of our investigation is on the Cameroonian banking sector with implications for fellow members of the Banque des Etats de L’Afrique Centrale (BEAC) family which apply the same system. We apply logistic regression (LR), Classification and Regression Tree (CART) and Cascade Correlation Neural Network (CCNN) in building our knowledge-based scoring models. To compare various models’ performances we use ROC curves and Gini coefficients as evaluation criteria and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov curve as a robustness test. The results demonstrate that an improvement in terms of predicting power from 15.69% default cases under the current system, to 7.68% based on the best scoring model, namely CCNN can be achieved. The predictive capabilities of all models are rated as at least very good using the Gini coefficient; and rated excellent using the ROC curve for CCNN. Our robustness test confirmed these results. It should be emphasised that in terms of prediction rate, CCNN is superior to the other techniques investigated in this paper. Also, a sensitivity analysis of the variables identifies previous occupation, borrower’s account functioning, guarantees, other loans and monthly expenses as key variables in the forecasting and decision making processes which are at the heart of overall credit policy
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