3,155 research outputs found
Firm Performance, Guarantees and SMEs Credit Access
No full textThe first purpose of this paper is to highlight how subjective firm performance and guarantees mitigate the credit access difficulty in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Secondly, in the light of the previous studies, we check the effect of Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on credit access difficulty. The data is collected through a survey in Italy and Austria, directed to 328 SMEs.
The findings show that higher levels of performance are asso- ciated to less difficulty in accessing credit, particularly when the banks financing the firm are relationship lending oriented. While collateral, bank guarantees and public guarantees seem to have no effect on difficulties in accessing credit, mutual guarantees have a clear risk-sharing effect, particularly in relationships where banks implement transaction lending technologies. No EO dimension impacts on difficulties in accessing credit. Unlike larger companies, SMEs soft information such as EO do not seem to di- rectly influence the loan policies of financial intermediaries, thus leaving an indirect effect through guarantee
Surface hydration and cationic sites of nanohydroxyapatites with amorphous or crystalline surfaces: A comparative study
No full textThis paper is an extension of previous work devoted to the characterization of platelet-like hydroxyapatite (HA) nanoparticles constituted by a crystalline core coated by an amorphous surface layer 1-2 nm thick (Bertinetti et al. J. Phys. Chem. C. 2007, 111, 4027 -4035). By increasing the preparation temperature, the platelet morphology was retained but HA nanoparticles exhibited a higher degree of crystallinity (evaluated by X-ray diffractometry). High-resolution transmission electron microscopy revealed that, in this case, the crystalline order was extended up to the particles' surfaces, which were of the (010), (100), and (001) types. IR spectroscopy was used to investigate the surface hydration of both materials, in terms of adsorbed H2O molecules and surface hydroxy groups, as well as the Lewis acidity of surface cations, by removing water and adsorbing CO. For both features, strong similarities between amorphous and crystalline surfaces were found
An assessment of the impact of possible CAP reform scenarios on Romanian agriculture
No full textUsing a simplified model, with key-variable the prices of two different possible scenarios of CAP reform after 2013 (moderate and radical), this paper present a comparison between the price effects of implementation of each reform scenario at 2015 horizon on Romanian agriculture. This short analysis shows that, under the presented hypotheses, the net welfare effect, due to the price changes, for the selected products, is positive in both reform scenarios, yet greater in the case of the radical reform. Integrated in the large context of Romanian development, it seems that the influence of CAP reform upon agriculture and rural areas will be most likely a gradual one: an interpenetration between the two scenarios is foreseeable, starting with the moderate reform that will dominate the period around 2013, the reform measures acquiring a more radical character afterwards.CAP reform, Romania, welfare effects, Agricultural and Food Policy,
Relationship lending, access to credit and entrepreneurial orientation as cornerstones of venture financing
No full textAbstract Purpose – This paper investigates the effect of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on small- and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) access to credit. Starting with the idea that SMEs’ strategy-making process, structures and behaviour can favour credit access, the authors also explore the moderating role of bank lending technologies in shaping this relationship. Design/methodology/approach – This study relies on a unique survey of Austrian and Italian SMEs which contains detailed information on access to credit, EO dimensions, relationship lending and firm-level characteristics. The authors perform stepwise logistic regressions to assess whether EO interacts with SME’s access to finance, and how relationship lending enhances this relationship. Findings – Proactiveness, autonomy and competitive aggressiveness are important constructs for improving access to bank financing. Those dimensions became more important when a relationship bank is involved, suggesting a role for relationship lending in overcoming SMEs’ opaqueness. In addition, relationship lending is crucial for innovative SMEs in overcoming credit denial rates. Research limitations/implications – The small sample did not allow to analyse the effect of EO on discouraged borrowers. Furthermore, alternative measures of relationship lending (such as geographical proximity or the length of the relationship) and the share of credit granted by the relationship bank would have been interesting to further validate our results. Practical implications – This study shows that EO dimensions and the type of lending technology are relevant for the financial success of SMEs. More precisely, the authors show that diversity within the banking system helps innovative, autonomous, proactive and competitive SMEs. These important pieces of soft information are injected into the final lending decision when a relationship bank is involved. The evidence suggests the need for SMEs to interact with local banks to fully exploit their EO posture. Originality/value – To the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to analyse whether relationship lending can affect the EO–credit access relation
Rich, Sturmian, and trapezoidal words
No full textIn this paper we explore various interconnections between rich words, Sturmian words, and trapezoidal words. Rich words, first introduced by the second and third authors together with J. Justin and S. Widmer, constitute a new class of finite and infinite words characterized by having the maximal number of palindromic factors. Every finite Sturmian word is rich, but not conversely. Trapezoidal words were first introduced by the first author in studying the behavior of the subword complexity of finite Sturmian words. Unfortunately this property does not characterize finite Sturmian words. In this note we show that the only trapezoidal palindromes are Sturmian. More generally we show that Sturmian palindromes can be characterized either in terms of their subword complexity (the trapezoidal property) or in terms of their palindromic complexity. We also obtain a similar characterization of rich palindromes in terms of a relation between palindromic complexity and subword complexity
Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation of Topological Relations - I: Introduction and Models
No full text@article{DBLP:journals/informaticaSI/ForlizziN99,
author = {Luca Forlizzi and
Enrico Nardelli},
title = {Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation
of Topological Relations - I: Introduction and Models.},
journal = {Informatica (Slovenia)},
volume = {23},
number = {2},
year = {1999},
bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation of Topological Relations - II: Intersection and Union
No full text@article{DBLP:journals/informaticaSI/ForlizziN00,
author = {Luca Forlizzi and
Enrico Nardelli},
title = {Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation
of Topological Relations - II: Intersection and Union.},
journal = {Informatica (Slovenia)},
volume = {24},
number = {1},
year = {2000},
bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
System-on-chip Computing and Interconnection Architectures for Telecommunications and Signal Processing
No full textThis dissertation proposes novel architectures and design techniques targeting SoC building blocks for telecommunications and signal processing applications.
Hardware implementation of Low-Density Parity-Check decoders is approached at both the algorithmic and the architecture level. Low-Density Parity-Check codes are a promising coding scheme for future communication standards due to their outstanding error correction performance.
This work proposes a methodology for analyzing effects of finite precision arithmetic on error correction performance and hardware complexity. The methodology is throughout employed for co-designing the decoder. First, a low-complexity check node based on the P-output decoding principle is designed and characterized on a CMOS standard-cells library. Results demonstrate implementation loss below 0.2 dB down to BER of 10^{-8} and a saving in complexity up to 59% with respect to other works in recent literature. High-throughput and low-latency issues are addressed with modified single-phase decoding schedules. A new "memory-aware" schedule is proposed requiring down to 20% of memory with respect to the traditional two-phase flooding decoding. Additionally, throughput is doubled and logic complexity reduced of 12%. These advantages are traded-off with error correction performance, thus making the solution attractive only for long codes, as those adopted in the DVB-S2 standard. The "layered decoding" principle is extended to those codes not specifically conceived for this technique. Proposed architectures exhibit complexity savings in the order of 40% for both area and power consumption figures, while implementation loss is smaller than 0.05 dB.
Most modern communication standards employ Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing as part of their physical layer. The core of OFDM is the Fast Fourier Transform and its inverse in charge of symbols (de)modulation. Requirements on throughput and energy efficiency call for FFT hardware implementation, while ubiquity of FFT suggests the design of parametric, re-configurable and re-usable IP hardware macrocells. In this context, this thesis describes an FFT/IFFT core compiler particularly suited for implementation of OFDM communication systems. The tool employs an accuracy-driven configuration engine which automatically profiles the internal arithmetic and generates a core with minimum operands bit-width and thus minimum circuit complexity. The engine performs a closed-loop optimization over three different internal arithmetic models (fixed-point, block floating-point and convergent block floating-point) using the numerical accuracy budget given by the user as a reference point. The flexibility and re-usability of the proposed macrocell are illustrated through several case studies which encompass all current state-of-the-art OFDM communications standards (WLAN, WMAN, xDSL, DVB-T/H, DAB and UWB). Implementations results are presented for two deep sub-micron standard-cells libraries (65 and 90 nm) and commercially available FPGA devices. Compared with other FFT core compilers, the proposed environment produces macrocells with lower circuit complexity and same system level performance (throughput, transform size and numerical accuracy).
The final part of this dissertation focuses on the Network-on-Chip design paradigm whose goal is building scalable communication infrastructures connecting hundreds of core. A low-complexity link architecture for mesochronous on-chip communication is discussed. The link enables skew constraint looseness in the clock tree synthesis, frequency speed-up, power consumption reduction and faster back-end turnarounds. The proposed architecture reaches a maximum clock frequency of 1 GHz on 65 nm low-leakage CMOS standard-cells library. In a complex test case with a full-blown NoC infrastructure, the link overhead is only 3% of chip area and 0.5% of leakage power consumption.
Finally, a new methodology, named metacoding, is proposed. Metacoding generates correct-by-construction technology independent RTL codebases for NoC building blocks. The RTL coding phase is abstracted and modeled with an Object Oriented framework, integrated within a commercial tool for IP packaging (Synopsys CoreTools suite). Compared with traditional coding styles based on pre-processor directives, metacoding produces 65% smaller codebases and reduces the configurations to verify up to three orders of magnitude
LASSO modeling of the Arabidopsis thaliana seed/seedling Transcriptome: a model case for detection of novel mucilage and pectin metabolism genes
No full textWhole genome transcript correlation-based approaches have been shown to be enormously useful for candidate gene detection. Consequently, simple Pearson correlation has been widely applied in several web based tools. That said, several more sophisticated methods based on e.g. mutual information or Bayesian network inference have been developed and have been shown to be theoretically superior but are not yet commonly applied. Here, we propose the application of a recently developed statistical regression technique, the LASSO, to detect novel candidates from high throughput transcriptomic datasets. We apply the LASSO to a tissue specific dataset in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana to identify novel players in Arabidopsis thaliana seed coat mucilage synthesis. We built LASSO models based on a list of genes known to be involved in a sub-pathway of Arabidopsis mucilage synthesis. After identifying a putative transcription factor, we verified its involvement in mucilage synthesis by obtaining knock-out mutants for this gene. We show that a loss of function of this putative transcription factor leads to a significant decrease in mucilage pectin
Bioactive Glasses Containing Au Nanoparticles. Effect of Calcination Temperature on Structure, Morphology, and Surface PropertiesDOI:10.1021/la100472p
No full textBioactive glasses containing gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have been synthesized via the sol-gel route usingHAuCl4 x 3H2O as gold precursor. The formation process of AuNPs was studied as a function of the thermal treatment,which induces nucleation of Au particles and influences their nature, optical properties, shape, size, and distribution.The physicochemical characterization indicates that the sample treated at 600 °C presents the best characteristics to beused as a bioactive material, namely high surface area, high amount of AuNPs located at the glass surface, presence ofmicropores, and abundant surface OH groups. In the case of samples either aged at 60 °C or calcined at 150 °C, AuNPsjust begin their formation, and at this stage the gel is not completely polymerized and dried yet. A thermal treatment athigher temperatures (900 °C) causes the aggregation of AuNPs, forming “AuMPs” (i.e., Au microparticles) in adensified glass-ceramic material with low surface area, absence of pores, and low number of surface OH groups. Thesefeatures induce in the glass-ceramic materials treated at high-temperatures a lower bioactivity (evidenced by SBFreaction), as compared with that exhibited by the glass samples treated at 600 °C
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