1,223 research outputs found
Content of minor species in Jupiter’s upper troposphere as inferred from Juno JIRAM data (PJ1-15)
No full textThe archive contains the retrieval results presented in the manuscript 2019JE006206 by Grassi et al. (2019), submitted to JGR Planets.
This work was supported by the Italian Space Agency through ASI-INAF contract 2016-23-H.1-2018
Examining insurance companies’ use of technology for innovation
No full textThe insurance industry is innovating. Business models, services and processes are rapidly evolving, largely backed by technological developments. The particular his- torical context of COVID-19 provides a suitable case to understand the relevance of exploiting technology to react quickly to traditional and emerging risks. Focusing on the initiatives put in place by the most influential insurance companies at the global level, we have framed the innovation mechanisms in the industry, highlighting four rationales underpinning these initiatives (Adaption, Expansion, Reaction and Aggression), which differ according to the relevance of the technology in use and innovation to the portfolio of risks covered. Overall, it emerges that insurance com- panies have the room and capability to innovate, in many cases using technological applications to cover new and existing risks. While the initiatives studied concern the entire value chain, basic primary activities, such as product development, sales and claims management, show that innovation based on new or existing technology determines the success and competitiveness of the business
Insurtech and New Technologies Effect on the Relationship between Insurance and Prevention: A Systematic Literature Review
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Translating technological innovation into efficiency: the case of US public P&C insurance companies
No full textIn recent years, Insurtech innovations, driven by technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain, emerged in the insurance industry, with the promise of improving efficiency. However, while the positive impact of technology on insurance companies’ efficiency is expected, literature assessing it empirically is scarce, when it comes to recent technological change. Focusing on the US public P&C insurance sector in the period 2012–2018 and relying on both nonparametric (two stage DEA) and parametric (SFA) approaches, it emerges that on average insurance companies were not able to leverage on technological innovations to improve their efficiency. On average a relative level of efficiency among companies, according to a two stage DEA model, was quite stable in time, while the SFA approach shows that the distance between efficient and less efficient firms slightly increased. Moreover, we found one very efficient firm, almost a leader of the market in terms of efficiency, and a homogeneous group of followers, indicating that there is vast scope for improvement for less efficient companies. Nevertheless, even the most efficient company impaired its efficiency over time, suggesting that neither the leader nor on average the followers properly leveraged technology to improve their efficiency. In a competitive scenario, with new players’ entrance and fierce competition, inertia may seriously affect their positioning. Academicians, managers and policymakers should carefully consider the effects that a non-improvement of efficiency following technological change may have on market structure, competition and regulations, potentially opening to further discussion on how technological innovations adoption should be facilitated
Giovanni Battista Grassi (1854-1925): a forgotten Italian scholar and his fundamental studies on malaria
No full textA century ago, on May 4, 1925, an Italian doctor, zoologist, botanist, and entomologist called Giovanni Battista Grassi (1854-1925) died in Rome. Grassi was known especially for his studies on malaria, and he was one of the scholars who created the “Italian school of malariology” which played a critical role in the study and prevention of malaria. At that time malaria was a main problem in the colonies for the military. In the tropics malaria is a common disease that causes high fever and other symptoms. When the French chemist Louis Pasteur published his germ theory in the 1860s, scientists began to consider that an organism, might be responsible for the malaria disease and the breakthrough came in 1880 with a French army surgeon called Alphonse Laveran (1845-1922). By the middle of the 19th century, it was therefore clear that many diseases are caused by microorganisms, and several scholars began to assume that also malaria was caused by a bacterium. Laveran recognized the parasite group that caused the infection in human beings, however his studies were challenged. He after examining blood from people infected with malaria, (1889) was able to absolutely show that malaria is caused by another type of single-celled organism, a protozoan of the Plasmodium family, which attacks red blood cells. Laveran also identified other single-celled parasites that cause other diseases. In fact, there are four types of malarial infection caused by four species of parasite plasmodium. In 1898 Grassi began a large study that represented a turning point in the study and treatment of the disease. With the current manuscript, in addition to recalling some of the main and well-known steps in the historical evolution of this fearsome, dangerous, and insidious infectious disease, we believe it’s important to remember the scientific personality of this Italian scholar. The scientist Grassi is to be noted among the protagonists in the view of history of medicine and zoology between the 19th and 20th centuries, mainly because of his famous research, developed by a group of scholars, which led to the exact identification of the vector of human malaria
Analisi HR-NMR per la valutazione dello stato ossidativo di grassi animali
No full textL’utilizzo della spettrometria NMR nello studio della componente grassa degli alimenti è sempre più presente in letteratura, in particolare per i grassi di origine vegetale; meno frequenti sono invece i lavori riguardanti i grassi di origine animale. Decisamente scarsi sono gli studi relativi all'impiego quantitativo delle informazioni che si possono ricavare da questa tecnica. Lo scopo del presente lavoro è quello di effettuare una valutazione iniziale sulla possibilità di utilizzo di tecniche di risonanza magnetica nucleare ad alta risoluzione per lo studio dello stato ossidativo di grassi di origine animale, attraverso l’identificazione e successiva quantificazione di prodotti di ossidazione
Evidence for a spatial bias in the perception of sequences of brief tones
No full textListeners are unable to report the physical order of particular sequences of brief tones. This phenomenon of temporal dislocation depends on tone durations and frequencies. The current study empirically shows that it also depends on the spatial location of the tones. Dichotically testing a three-tone sequence showed that the central tone tends to be reported as the first or the last element when it is perceived as part of a left-to-right motion. Since the central-tone dislocation does not occur for right-to-left sequences of the same tones, this indicates that there is a spatial bias in the perception of sequences
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