967 research outputs found
The Wine Attributes with the Greatest Influence in the Process of Consumer Choice in Spain
No full textThe commercialisation of wine in Spain is problematic due to two concrete circumstances: the decrease in wine consumption because of a consumer shift toward substitute drinks and the greater presence of national and foreign wine in the interior market, which involves an increase in business competitiveness. The increase in competitiveness of quality Spanish wine depends on producing enterprises’ knowledge of wine consumer preferences so they can offer consumers what they demand. In order to respond to this matter and better adapt supply, 421 wine consumers were surveyed using the Best-Worst Scaling methodology. Various segmentations were also made by consumer income and age groups. The results indicate that the two main attributes which condition consumers in choosing wine are the region of origin and having tasted it previously. The region of origin attribute is valued in general by consumers over 34 years old who have a monthly family income above 1,500 €. The attribute of having tasted it before, which on many occasions is associated with the price attribute, is valued particularly by younger consumers and those with lower incomes.Consumer behaviour, Wine attributes, Food Marketing, Consumer/Household Economics,
Evaluation of novel approach to deflectometry for high accuracy optics
No full textA deflectometrical facility was developed at Italian National Institute for Astrophysics-OAB to characterize free-form optics with shape errors within few microns rms. Deflectometry is an interesting technique because it allows the fast characterization of free-form optics. The capabilities of deflectometry in measuring medium-high frequencies are well known, but the low frequencies error characterization is more challenging. Our facility design foresees an innovative approach based on the acquisition of multiple direct images to enhance the performance on the challenging low frequencies range. This contribution presents the error-budget analysis of the measuring method and a study of the configuration tolerances required to allow the use of deflectometry in the realization of optical components suitable for astronomical projects with a requirement of high accuracy for the optics. As test examples we took into account mirrors for the E-ELT telescope
Dr. Rodolfo D. Torres talk at University of Washington Tacoma: After Latino Metropolis
No full textThe role of class and spatial politics in Latino Los Angeles will be the subject of this timely talk. Professor Rodolfo D. Torres is co-author of the highly acclaimed book, Latino Metropolis (University of Minnesota Press, 2000). He will revisit this important book
How corporate governance and globalization can run afoul of the law and good practices in business: The Enron's disgraceful affair.
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to set out the Enron’s demise into the perspective of Corporate and Global Governance. To accomplish this target, the incremental cash flow model is expanded to give room for governance issues, while a functional introduction to information sets is developed, including bounded rationality, asymmetric information, opportunistic behavior, transaction costs and agency problems. Then, corporate governance is linked to globalization by means of some recent approaches that go beyond a narrow economic mindset to encompass a far-reaching dynamics. Taking advantage of such background, the Enron’s story is tracked down over a span of fifteen years since its starting day to its bankruptcy filing. Leading events are explained from corporate and global governance viewpoints, while an in-depth analysis is worked out on Enron’s complex game of deception and breach of contracts: the outrageous affiliated limited partnerships, the lavish pay package to its executives, the involvement with global governance through the Indian affair and the Taliban connection. It is for the incremental cash flow model to explain malfeasance with cash flows from assets, and how cash flows to creditors were actually contrived. Furthermore, to highlight how cash flows were swindled from stockholders and, finally, how Enron made wheeling and dealing with cash flows on behalf of its managers.corporate governance, global governance, incremental cash flow model, globalization, information sets, good practices.
Reflective and antireflective coatings for the optical chain of the ASTRI SST-2M prototype
No full textASTRI is a Flagship Project of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, led by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, INAF. One of the main aims of the ASTRI Project is the design, construction and on-field verification of a dual mirror (2M) end-to-end prototype for the Small Size Telescope (SST) envisaged to become part of the Cherenkov Telescope Array. The ASTRI SST-2M prototype is designed according to the Schwarzschild-Couder optical scheme, and adopts a camera based on Silicon Photo Multipliers (SiPM); it will be assembled at the INAF astronomical site of Serra La Nave on mount Etna (Catania, Italy) in the second half of 2014, and will start scientific validation phase soon after. With its 4m wide primary dish, the telescope will be sensitive to multi-TeV Very High Energy (VHE) gamma rays up to 100 TeV and above, with a point spread function of ∼2 arcminutes and a wide (semiaperture 4.8°) corrected field of view. The peculiarities of the optical design and of the SiPM bandpass pushed towards specifically optimized choices in terms of reflective coatings for both the primary and the secondary mirror. Fully dielectric multi-layer coatings have been developed and tested as an option for the primary mirror, aiming to filter out the large Night Sky Background contamination at wavelengths λ>∼700 nm. On the other hand, for the large monolithic secondary mirror a simpler design with quartz-overcoated aluminium has been optimized for incidences far from normality. The conformation of the ASTRI camera in turn pushed towards the design of a reimaging system based on thin pyramidal light guides, that could be optionally integrated in the focal surface, aiming to increase the fill factor. An anti-reflective coating optimized for a wide range of incident angles faraway from normality was specifically developed to enhance the UV-optical transparency of these elements. The issues, strategy, simulations and experimental results are thoroughly presented. © 2013 SPIE
Point spread function computation in normal incidence for rough optical surfaces
No full textThe Point Spread Function (PSF) allows for specifying the angular resolution of optical systems which is a key parameter used to define the performances of most optics. A prediction of the system's PSF is therefore a powerful tool to assess the design and manufacture requirements of complex optical systems. Currently, well-established ray-Tracing routines based on a geometrical optics are used for this purpose. However, those ray-Tracing routines either lack real surface defect considerations (figure errors or micro-roughness) in their computation, or they include a scattering effect modeled separately that requires assumptions difficult to verify. Since there is an increasing demand for tighter angular resolution, the problem of surface finishing could drastically damage the optical performances of a system, including optical telescopes systems. A purely physical optics approach is more effective as it remains valid regardless of the shape and size of the defects appearing on the optical surface. However, a computation when performed in the two-dimensional space is time consuming since it requires processing a surface map with a few micron resolution which sometimes extends the propagation to multiple-reflections. The computation is significantly simplified in the far-field configuration as it involves only a sequence of Fourier Transforms. We show how to account for measured surface defects and roughness in order to predict the performances of the optics in single reflection, which can be applied and validated for real case studies
Rodolfo Lenz
No full textIn this article the author intends to offer an overall profile of Dr. Rodolfo
Lenz’ versatile personality, portraying him as the man, the phonetician, the
expert scholar in Araucanian, the orthographer, the methodologist, the
compulsive scientist. All these personality traits contributed to renovate in
Chile the interest in language, in foreign language methodology and the
institutionalization of folklore as a science, which earned him the Chilean
nationalityEn este trabajo el autor se propone dar una visión de conjunto de la polifacética
personalidad del Dr. Rodolfo Lenz: el hombre, el fonetista, el araucanista, el
lexicógrafo, el gramático, el ortógrafo, el metodólogo, el científico compulsivo.
Aspectos todos que contribuyeron a renovar profundamente en Chile el
estudio de las ciencias del lenguaje, la metodología de la enseñanza de las
lenguas extranjeras y la fundación del folclor como ciencia, por todo lo cual
el Gobierno le confirió nuestra nacionalida
El funcionalismo de rodolfo lenz
No full textSummary
This paper deals with the contributions to Hispanic Linguistics by the German-Chilean linguist Rodolfo Lenz (1863–1935), some of whose proposals – often attributed to other scholars – may be seen as an alternative to the ideas of the prestigious Andrés Bello (1781–1865). The paper first reviews those aspects of his work which anticipate some of the basic tenets of Functional Grammar, such as the notion of ‘transposition’ (function shifting), his views on sentential structure, and his treatment of passives as attributive constructions. The paper also explores Lenz’s contributions to Indo-European linguistics and his theoretical affinities with, if not anticipations of, the work of other well-known linguists like Búhler, Tesnière, Hjelmslev, and Benveniste. In sum, the author seeks to vindicate Rodolfo Lenz and his insightful views in both general linguistic theory and Spanish grammar.</jats:p
Rodolfo Lenz
No full textIn this article the author intends to offer an overall profile of Dr. Rodolfo Lenz’ versatile personality, portraying him as the man, the phonetician, the expert scholar in Araucanian, the orthographer, the methodologist, the compulsive scientist. All these personality traits contributed to renovate in Chile the interest in language, in foreign language methodology and the institutionalization of folklore as a science, which earned him the Chilean nationality.En este trabajo el autor se propone dar una visión de conjunto de la polifacética personalidad del Dr. Rodolfo Lenz: el hombre, el fonetista, el araucanista, el lexicógrafo, el gramático, el ortógrafo, el metodólogo, el científico compulsivo. Aspectos todos que contribuyeron a renovar profundamente en Chile el estudio de las ciencias del lenguaje, la metodología de la enseñanza de las lenguas extranjeras y la fundación del folclor como ciencia, por todo lo cual el Gobierno le confirió nuestra nacionalida
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