196,266 research outputs found
IDENTIFICATION OF SOURCE TERMS IN NONLINEAR CONVECTION DIFFUSION PHENOMENA BY SINC COLLOCATION-INTERPOLATION METHODS
No full textGender Differences in Earnings and Leadership: Recent Evidence on Causes and Consequences
No full textWomen's labour market outcomes have improved substantially in the past decades, both in absolute terms and relative to men, in the United States and Western European countries as well as in several other countries around the world. Specifically, gender gaps have narrowed considerably (and in several cases disappeared) in human capital accumulation (educational attainment), labour force participation, hours of work and occupation. Claudia Goldin referred to this phenomenon as a 'grand gender convergence' (Goldin 2014). Yet, gender gaps in earnings and leadership still persist. Women earn substantially less than men and are under-represented in leadership positions in firms and organisations more broadly. The presence and persistence of gender gaps in earnings and leadership is cause for great concern for both reasons of social justice and efficiency, to the extent that the gender imbalances reflect a sub-optimal allocation of human capital in firms and in the economy. In this article, we focus on the causes and consequences of female-male gaps in earnings and representation at the top of organisations. Gender gaps in wages and leadership are one of the most researched topics in labour economics and beyond. Rather than attempting to summarise the vast literature on these subjects, we present a selective discussion of recent empirical work in an attempt to highlight recent findings on causes and consequences of gender gaps in the labour market and to discuss the main knowledge gaps and what we believe are some of the most promising areas for future research.1 Most of the papers we focus on refer to the United States, but the trends and patterns described are likely to apply more broadly
Time for Blood: The Effect of Paid Leave Legislation on Altruistic Behavior
No full textOrganizations and public agencies that promote pro-social activities constantly struggle to attract and encourage more contributions. In this article, we study the effects of an explicit reward in the context of blood donation. Specifically, we analyze the effects of a legislative provision that grants a one-day paid leave of absence to blood donors who are employees in Italy, using a unique data set with the complete donation histories of the blood donors in an Italian town. The across-donor variation in employment status, and within-donor changes over time are the sources of variation that we employ to study whether the paid-day-off incentive affects the frequency of their donations. Our analysis indicates that the day-off privilege leads donors who are employees to make, on average, one extra donation per year, which represents an increase of around 40%. We also find that the provision has persistent effects, with donors maintaining higher donation frequencies even when they cease to be eligible for the incentive. We discuss the implications of our findings for policies aimed at reducing the shortages in the supply of blood and, more generally, for organizations that try to motivate voluntary contributors
Multicolumn Countercurrent Solvent Gradient Purification (MCSGP) process for the intensification of the polishing step of a bioactive peptide mixture
No full textPharmaceutical products, including peptides, must satisfy very strict purity specifications, because
of quality and safety reasons. Therefore, the necessity to operate one or more purification steps to
obtain high quality drugs is indisputable. Critical impurities chemically very similar to the target
product are generated during the synthesis and are generally removed by means of preparative
single-column chromatographic techniques (=batch methods) [1,2]. Batch methods struggle to
separate completely the peptide of interest from other groups of impurities, because of their
similarity and of high loading of sample processed in preparative conditions, which cause peaks
overlapping [3]. The typical situation encountered in these cases is the so-called center-cut
separation, where the target elutes as intermediate between two other groups of impurities less and
more retained respectively. The direct consequence of this apparently insurmountable overlapping
is a yield-purity trade-off, a limit intrinsic to batch chromatography according to which it is possible
to obtain either high purity or high recovery of the peptide of interest, depending on whether the
overlapping windows are collected or not [4]. This trade-off leads to drawbacks in the overall
economy of the process. Multicolumn chromatographic processes, operating in continuous and
countercurrent mode, can alleviate this limitation by performing internal recycling of the
overlapping portions of the chromatogram [5]. The technique used in the frame of this research is
twin-column Multicolumn Countercurrent Solvent Gradient Purification (MCSGP), which has been
applied to the purification of an industrial crude of a bioactive decapeptide. It has been
demonstrated that MCSGP leads to promising results, including a remarkable improvement in
process performance (up to 6 times higher) from the point of view of recovery, productivity and
solvent consumption, with respect to the corresponding batch run. The automation of the process on
industrial scale would lead to great reproducibility which would reflect in improved consistency in
product quality.
[1] C. De Luca; S. Felletti; G. Lievore; A. Buratti; S. Vogg; M. Morbidelli; A. Cavazzini; M.
Catani; M. Macis; A. Ricci; W. Cabri, J Chromatogr A 2020, 1625, 1-7.
[2] C. De Luca; S. Felletti; G. Lievore; T. Chenet; M. Morbidelli; M. Sponchioni; A. Cavazzini; M.
Catani, Trends Analyt Chem 2020, 132, 1-8.
[3] S. Vogg; N. Ulmer; J. Souquet; H. Broly; M. Morbidelli, Biotechnol J 2019, 1800732, 1-8.
[4] T. Müller-Späth; G. Ströhlein; O. Lyngberg; D. Maclean, Chem Today 2013, 31, 56-60.
[5] F. Steinebach; T. Müller-Späth; M. Morbidelli, Biotechnol J 2016, 11, 1126-1141
Taratura di un sistema di misura 3D basato sulla triangolazione di luce strutturata per la progettazione ed il controllo di pezzi meccanici
No full textProcess intensification of the polishing step of a bioactive peptide through Multicolumn Countercurrent Solvent Gradient Purification
No full textPharmaceutical products, including peptides, must satisfy very strict purity specifications, because of quality and safety reasons. Therefore, the necessity to operate one or more purification steps to obtain high quality drugs is indisputable. Critical impurities chemically very similar to the target product are generated during the synthesis and are generally removed by means of preparative single-column chromatographic techniques (=batch methods) [1,2]. Batch methods struggle to separate completely the peptide of interest from other groups of impurities, because of their similarity and of high loading of sample processed in preparative conditions, which cause peaks overlapping [3]. The typical situation encountered in these cases is the so-called center-cut separation, where the target elutes as intermediate between two other groups of impurities less and more retained respectively. The direct consequence of this apparently insurmountable overlapping is a yield-purity trade-off, a limit intrinsic to batch chromatography according to which it is possible to obtain either high purity or high recovery of the peptide of interest, depending on whether the overlapping windows are collected or not [4]. This trade-off leads to drawbacks in the overall economy of the process. Multicolumn chromatographic processes, operating in continuous and countercurrent mode, can alleviate this limitation by performing internal recycling of the overlapping portions of the chromatogram [5]. The technique used in the frame of this research is twin-column Multicolumn Countercurrent Solvent Gradient Purification (MCSGP), which has been applied to the purification of an industrial crude of a bioactive decapeptide. It has been demonstrated that MCSGP leads to promising results, including a remarkable improvement in process performance (up to 6 times higher) from the point of view of recovery, productivity and solvent consumption, with respect to the corresponding batch run. The automation of the process on industrial scale would lead to great reproducibility which would reflect in improved consistency in product quality.
References
[1] De Luca, C.; Felletti, S.; Lievore, G.; Buratti, A.; Vogg, S.; Morbidelli, M.; Cavazzini, A.; Catani, M.; Macis, M.; Ricci, A.; Cabri, W. J Chromatogr A 2020, 1625, 1-7.
[2] De Luca, C.; Felletti, S.; Lievore, G.; Chenet, T.; Morbidelli, M.; Sponchioni, M.; Cavazzini, A.; Catani, M. Trends Analyt Chem 2020, 132, 1-8.
[3] Vogg, S.; Ulmer, N.; Souquet, J.; Broly, H.; Morbidelli, M. Biotechnol J 2019, 1800732, 1-8.
[4] Müller-Späth, T.; Ströhlein, G.; Lyngberg, O.; Maclean, D. Chem Today 2013, 31, 56-60.
[5] Steinebach, F.; Müller-Späth, T.; Morbidelli, M. Biotechnol J 2016, 11, 1126-1141
Expectations, reference points, and compliance with Covid-19 social distancing measures
No full textWe study the behavioral impact of announcements about the duration of a policy and their relationship with people's expectations in the context of the COVID-19 lockdowns. We surveyed representative samples of Italian residents at three moments of the first wave of the pandemic to test how intentions to comply with social-isolation measures depend on the duration of their possible extension. Individuals were more likely to reduce, and less likely to increase, their compliance effort if the hypothetical extension was longer than they expected, whereas positive surprises had a lesser impact. The behavioral response to the (mis)match between expected versus hypothesized extensions is consistent with expectations acting as reference points and can help explain the increase in observed physical proximity in Italy following lockdown extension announcements. Our findings suggest that public authorities should consider citizens’ expectations when announcing policy changes
A 0.07 mm^2 Asynchronous Logic CMOS Pulsed Receiver Based on Radio Events Self-Synchronization
No full textThis paper presents an ultra-low-power radio receiver implemented only with CMOS logic gates used as basic building blocks and proves its operation. The self-timed duty-cycled system is self-synchronized with the input radio signal, runs a noise-robust baseband detection and does not require any reference besides power supply. Based on S-OOK modulation, the 350-450 MHz digital radio RX occupies an area of 0.07 mm 2 in a 130 nm RFCMOS technology and achieves a 0.1% sensitivity of -63 dBm at 95 kbps, 380 MHz center frequency and 40 μW active power consumption at 1.1 V power supply. At 1.0 V it achieves -62 dBm sensitivity and 33 μW active power at ~ 0.1% error rate. The compact receiver, whose architecture is parametric and technology scalable, suits energy harvested and miniaturized biomedical applications. The paper also presents the potential advantages of asynchronous logic pulse radio and introduces an ad-hoc VHDL model demonstrating RTL-/gate-level accurate error-rate predictions capabilities based on digital simulation only, i.e., without requiring electrical-level co-simulation
A SURVIVAL ANALYSIS STUDY TO DISCOVER WHICH SKILLS DETERMINE A HIGHER SCORING IN BASKETBALL
No full textOver the years data analytics for sports has developed consistently. Survival analysis is a method that allows to study the occurrence of a particular event during a period of follow-up. This work aims studying the main achievements associated to the probability of reaching a certain amount of points during a NBA season segment.
A Stepwise Cox regression model and a Lasso Cox regression were used to select the most important variables. Two settings were examined, with 20% and 50% censoring. Results showed that attempting more shots, gaining more achievements (double doubles) and having been selected for the All-Star game increase the probability of success, i.e. exceeding the given threshold of points. Moreover, a higher number of steals seems to decrease the probability of reaching a certain amount of points. Thus, players more involved in this fundamental are penalized in terms of scored points
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