3,015 research outputs found
Relative age effect and second-tiers: No second chance for later-born players
No full textThe main objective of this research was to determine the existence of relative age effect (RAE) in five European soccer leagues and their second-tier competitions. Even though RAE is a well-known phenomenon in professional sports environments it seems that the effect does not decline over the years. Moreover, additional information is required, especially when taking into account second-tier leagues. Birthdates from 1,332 first-tier domestic players from France, England, Spain, Germany and Italy and birthdates from 1,992 second-tier domestic players for the 2014/2015 season were taken for statistical analysis. In addition to standard statistical tests, the data were analyzed using econometric techniques for count data using Poisson and negative binomial regressions. The results obtained confirmed a biased distribution of birthdates in favor of players born earlier in the calendar year. For all of the five first-tier soccer leagues there was an unequal distribution of birthdates (France χ2 = 40.976, Pχ2 = 21.892, P = 0.025; Spain χ2 = 24.690, P = 0.010; Germany χ2 = 22.889, P = 0.018; Italy χ2 = 28.583, P = 0.003). The results for second-tier leagues were similar (France χ2 = 46.741, Pχ2 = 27.301, P = 0.004; Spain χ2 = 49.745, Pχ2 = 30.633, P = 0.001; Italy χ2 = 36.973, PD (index of discrimination, that is, the ratio between the expected counts of players born in the middle of the first and the twelfth month of the selection year) is 2.13 and 2.22 for the first- and second-tier, respectively. In other words, in the top five European first-tier and second-tier leagues, one should expect the number of players born in the first month of the calendar year to be twice the number of those born in the last month. The RAE in the second-tiers is the same as in the first-tiers, so it appears that there is no second chance for later born players. This reduces the chances to recover talented players discarded in youth simply because of lower maturity.</div
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,
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
Essays on discrimination in the marketplace
No full textThis thesis is composed of four self-contained papers and focuses on discrimination in themarket place. Essay 1: “Disability Discrimination in the Rental Housing Market – A Field Experiment onBlind Tenants.” Although discrimination against disabled people has been investigated inthe labor market, the housing market has received less attention in this regard. This paperfocuses on the latter market and investigates whether blind tenants assisted by guide dogsare discriminated against in the rental housing market. The data are collected through afield experiment in which written applications were sent in response to onlineadvertisements posted by different types of advertisers. I find statistically significantevidence that one type of online advertiser, that is, the apartment owner (i.e., a person whoadvertises and rents out his/her own apartment(s) on his/her own), discriminates againstblind tenants, because of the presence of the guide dog, not because of the disability.According to the legislation, this behavior qualifies as illegal discrimination. Essay 2: “Does the design of correspondence studies influence the measurement of discrimination?”(co-authored with Carlsson and Rooth). Correspondence studies can identify the extent ofdiscrimination in hiring as typically defined by the law, which includes discriminationagainst ethnic minorities and females. However, as Heckman and Siegelman (1993) show,if employers act upon a group difference in the variance of unobserved variables, thismeasure of discrimination may not be very informative. This issue has essentially beenignored in the empirical literature until the recent methodological development byNeumark (2012). We apply Neumark’s method to a number of already publishedcorrespondence studies. We find the Heckman and Siegelman critique relevant forempirical work and give suggestions on how future correspondence studies may address thiscritique. Essay 3: “Does Labor Market Tightness Affect Ethnic Discrimination in Hiring?” (co-authoredwith Carlsson and Rooth). In this study, we investigate whether ethnic discriminationdepends on labor market tightness. While ranking models predict a negative relationship,the prediction of screening models is ambiguous about the direction of the relationship.Thus, the direction of the relationship is purely an empirical issue. We utilize three (butcombine into two) correspondence studies of the Swedish labor market and two distinctlydifferent measures of labor market tightness. These different measures produce very similarresults, showing that a one percent increase in labor market tightness increases ethnicdiscrimination in hiring by 0.5-0.7 percent, which is consistent with a screening model.This result stands in sharp contrast to the only previous study on this matter, Baert et al.(forthcoming), which finds evidence that supports a ranking model. Essay 4: “Relative Age Effect on Labor Market Outcomes for High Skilled Workers – Evidencefrom Soccer.” In sports and education contexts, children are divided into age groups that arearbitrary constructions based on admission dates. This age-group system is thought todetermine differences in maturity between pupils within the same group, that is, relative904627 Luca Furmaco_inl.indd 5 2015-02-24 16:58age (RA). In turn, these within-age-group maturity differences produce performance gaps,that is, relative age effects (RAEs), which might persist and affect labor market outcomes. Ianalyze the RAE on labor market outcomes using a unique dataset of a particular group ofhigh-skilled workers: soccer players in the Italian major soccer league. In line with previousstudies, evidence on the existence of an RAE in terms of representativeness is found,meaning that players born relatively early in an age group are over-represented, whileplayers born relatively late are under-represented, even accounting for specific populationtrends. Moreover, players born relatively late in an age group receive lower gross wages thanplayers born relatively early. This wage gap seems to increase with age and in the quantileof the wage distribution
Essays on discrimination in the marketplace
No full textThis thesis is composed of four self-contained papers and focuses on discrimination in themarket place. Essay 1: “Disability Discrimination in the Rental Housing Market – A Field Experiment onBlind Tenants.” Although discrimination against disabled people has been investigated inthe labor market, the housing market has received less attention in this regard. This paperfocuses on the latter market and investigates whether blind tenants assisted by guide dogsare discriminated against in the rental housing market. The data are collected through afield experiment in which written applications were sent in response to onlineadvertisements posted by different types of advertisers. I find statistically significantevidence that one type of online advertiser, that is, the apartment owner (i.e., a person whoadvertises and rents out his/her own apartment(s) on his/her own), discriminates againstblind tenants, because of the presence of the guide dog, not because of the disability.According to the legislation, this behavior qualifies as illegal discrimination. Essay 2: “Does the design of correspondence studies influence the measurement of discrimination?”(co-authored with Carlsson and Rooth). Correspondence studies can identify the extent ofdiscrimination in hiring as typically defined by the law, which includes discriminationagainst ethnic minorities and females. However, as Heckman and Siegelman (1993) show,if employers act upon a group difference in the variance of unobserved variables, thismeasure of discrimination may not be very informative. This issue has essentially beenignored in the empirical literature until the recent methodological development byNeumark (2012). We apply Neumark’s method to a number of already publishedcorrespondence studies. We find the Heckman and Siegelman critique relevant forempirical work and give suggestions on how future correspondence studies may address thiscritique. Essay 3: “Does Labor Market Tightness Affect Ethnic Discrimination in Hiring?” (co-authoredwith Carlsson and Rooth). In this study, we investigate whether ethnic discriminationdepends on labor market tightness. While ranking models predict a negative relationship,the prediction of screening models is ambiguous about the direction of the relationship.Thus, the direction of the relationship is purely an empirical issue. We utilize three (butcombine into two) correspondence studies of the Swedish labor market and two distinctlydifferent measures of labor market tightness. These different measures produce very similarresults, showing that a one percent increase in labor market tightness increases ethnicdiscrimination in hiring by 0.5-0.7 percent, which is consistent with a screening model.This result stands in sharp contrast to the only previous study on this matter, Baert et al.(forthcoming), which finds evidence that supports a ranking model. Essay 4: “Relative Age Effect on Labor Market Outcomes for High Skilled Workers – Evidencefrom Soccer.” In sports and education contexts, children are divided into age groups that arearbitrary constructions based on admission dates. This age-group system is thought todetermine differences in maturity between pupils within the same group, that is, relative904627 Luca Furmaco_inl.indd 5 2015-02-24 16:58age (RA). In turn, these within-age-group maturity differences produce performance gaps,that is, relative age effects (RAEs), which might persist and affect labor market outcomes. Ianalyze the RAE on labor market outcomes using a unique dataset of a particular group ofhigh-skilled workers: soccer players in the Italian major soccer league. In line with previousstudies, evidence on the existence of an RAE in terms of representativeness is found,meaning that players born relatively early in an age group are over-represented, whileplayers born relatively late are under-represented, even accounting for specific populationtrends. Moreover, players born relatively late in an age group receive lower gross wages thanplayers born relatively early. This wage gap seems to increase with age and in the quantileof the wage distribution
A General Formulation to Describe Empirical Rainfall Thresholds for Landslides
No full textAbstractIn this paper, a brief description of the Generalized FLaIR Model (GFM, De Luca and Versace, 2016) is provided, that is able to reproduce all the empirical thresholds proposed in literature, aimed to forecast landslides triggered by rainfall. In particular, this paper focuses on Antecedent Precipitation (AP) schemes. The paper demonstrates that these are particular solutions of the GFM and will exemplify this using AP schemes for NE Italy1, Seattle2 and Nicaragua - El Salvador3
The technological specialization of countries : an analysis of patent data
No full textNew methods of analysis of patent statistics allow assessing country profiles of technological specialization for the period 1990-2006. We witness a modest decrease in levels of specialization, which we show to be negatively influenced by country size and degree of internationalization of inventive activities
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