8 research outputs found
Consumers' attitude towards farmers' markets: an explorative analysis in Tuscany
No full textFarmers Markets (FMs) around the world are often considered as one key response to the less sustainable conventional food production systems. Despite the economic crisis, international studies show that the most important factor leading people to buy fresh products in these points of sale is the quality. In fact, consumers usually cite \better food quality", \locally produced foods", \higher social interaction" and \learning directly about the vendors and their food production practices", as the principal motivations in buying in FM environment. In this paper the results of a survey carried out in several FMs and shops in Tuscany are presented. A sample of consumers were interviewed on-site using a structured questionnaire. The attitude of respondent towards FM was assessed using a test scale composed of 16 items referring to five different features of this form of distribution, supposed to be relevant in the consumer choice: quality of products, direct contact with farmers, convenience, environmental sustainability, and support for rural development processes. The high level of reliability of the attitude scale allowed its use in performing a cluster analysis of observed units. The cluster analysis allowed to identify two groups of consumers with different characteristics both in term of socio-economic descriptive variables and in term of attitudes and motivations towards FMs.food miles,Alternative Food Networks (AFN),sustainability,Italy,Short Food Supply Chain (SFSC)
The Cartolari family from Perugia. From paper sellers to publishing house
No full textThis paper aims to show how a family of stationers, who had long supplied parchment, paper and possibly manuscript books to the academic and professional market in Perugia, reinvented itself by starting a business to address all areas of the new print world. In particular I will focus on the role played by Francesco Cartolari and the strategies he adopted in leading a transformation which ended up with the reintroduction of printing activity in Perugia and the foundation of a publishing house. In 1471, when the earliest printing company was founded in Perugia, its associates decided to establish the workshop in a place owned by one of them, Matteo Baldeschi, as it was in a very central location: the main square, the ‘piazza maggiore’, close to the workshop of the ‘cartolarius’ Baldassarre di Francesco. Baldassarre was born in Papiano, a village in the southern contado – the rural administrative division of the medieval commune – from which he moved to Perugia around 1442. He, in fact, applied for the citizenship in 1467 when he could declare having lived and worked in town for the twenty-five years required by the statutes. As for his activities, he said he had always practised, and was still practising, the ‘arte de fare carte et coiame’: the art of making parchment and leather; he was a cartolarius. His acquisition of citizenship was an important step, as it enabled him to apply to join the guild, which apparently cost him four additional years of work. In the register of the ‘Arte dei Cartolari’ his name is found under the year 1471
Fully Dynamic Online Selection through Online Contention Resolution Schemes
No full textWe study fully dynamic online selection problems in an adversarial/stochastic setting that includes Bayesian online selection, prophet inequalities, posted price mechanisms, and stochastic probing problems subject to combinatorial constraints. In the classical ``incremental'' version of the problem, selected elements remain active until the end of the input sequence. On the other hand, in the fully dynamic version of the problem, elements stay active for a limited time interval, and then leave. This models, for example, the online matching of tasks to workers with task/worker-dependent working times, and sequential posted pricing of perishable goods. A successful approach to online selection problems in the adversarial setting is given by the notion of Online Contention Resolution Scheme (OCRS), that uses a priori information to formulate a linear relaxation of the underlying optimization problem, whose optimal fractional solution is rounded online for any adversarial order of the input sequence. Our main contribution is providing a general method for constructing an OCRS for fully dynamic online selection problems. Then, we show how to employ such OCRS to construct no-regret algorithms in a partial information model with semi-bandit feedback and adversarial inputs
Online Learning with Sublinear Best-Action Queries
No full textIn online learning, a decision maker repeatedly selects one of a set of actions, with the goal of minimizing the overall loss incurred. Following the recent line of research on algorithms endowed with additional predictive features, we revisit this problem by allowing the decision maker to acquire additional information on the actions to be selected. In particular, we study the power of \emph{best-action queries}, which reveal beforehand the identity of the best action at a given time step. In practice, predictive features may be expensive, so we allow the decision maker to issue at most such queries. We establish tight bounds on the performance any algorithm can achieve when given access to best-action queries for different types of feedback models. In particular, we prove that in the full feedback model, queries are enough to achieve an optimal regret of . This finding highlights the significant multiplicative advantage in the regret rate achievable with even a modest (sublinear) number of queries. Additionally, we study the challenging setting in which the only available feedback is obtained during the time steps corresponding to the best-action queries. There, we provide a tight regret rate of , which improves over the standard regret rate for label efficient prediction for
Bifunctional carbazole derivatives for simultaneous therapy and fluorescence imaging in prion disease murine cell models
No full textPrion diseases are characterized by the self-assembly of pathogenic misfolded scrapie isoforms (PrPSc) of the cellular prion protein (PrPC). In an effort to achieve a theranostic profile, symmetrical bifunctional carbazole derivatives were designed as fluorescent rigid analogues of GN8, a pharmacological chaperone that stabilizes the native PrPC conformation and prevents its pathogenic conversion. A focused library was synthesized via a four-step route, and a representative member was confirmed to have native fluorescence, including a band in the near-infrared region. After a cytotoxicity study, compounds were tested on the RML-infected ScGT1 neuronal cell line, by monitoring the levels of protease-resistant PrPSc. Small dialkylamino groups at the ends of the molecule were found to be optimal in terms of therapeutic index, and the bis-(dimethylaminoacetamido)carbazole derivative 2b was selected for further characterization. It showed activity in two cell lines infected with the mouse-adapted RML strain (ScGT1 and ScN2a). Unlike GN8, 2b did not affect PrPC levels, which represents a potential advantage in terms of toxicity. Amyloid Seeding Assay (ASA) experiments showed the capacity of 2b to delay the aggregation of recombinant mouse PrP. Its ability to interfere with the amplification of the scrapie RML strain by Protein Misfolding Cyclic Amplification (PMCA) was shown to be higher than that of GN8, although 2b did not inhibit the amplification of human vCJD prion. Fluorescent staining of PrPSc aggregates by 2b was confirmed in living cells. 2b emerges as an initial hit compound for further medicinal chemistry optimization towards strain-independent anti-prion compounds
Graves’ orbitopathy as a rare disease in Europe: a European Group on Graves’ Orbitopathy (EUGOGO) position statement
No full text\ua9 2017 The Author(s). Background: Graves’ orbitopathy (GO) is an autoimmune condition, which is associated with poor clinical outcomes including impaired quality of life and socio-economic status. Current evidence suggests that the incidence of GO in Europe may be declining, however data on the prevalence of this disease are sparse. Several clinical variants of GO exist, including euthyroid GO, recently listed as a rare disease in Europe (ORPHA466682). The objective was to estimate the prevalence of GO and its clinical variants in Europe, based on available literature, and to consider whether they may potentially qualify as rare. Recent published data on the incidence of GO and Graves’ hyperthyroidism in Europe were used to estimate the prevalence of GO. The position statement was developed by a series of reviews of drafts and electronic discussions by members of the European Group on Graves’ Orbitopathy. The prevalence of GO in Europe is about 10/10,000 persons. The prevalence of other clinical variants is also low: hypothyroid GO 0.02-1.10/10,000; GO associated with dermopathy 0.15/10,000; GO associated with acropachy 0.03/10,000; asymmetrical GO 1.00-5.00/10,000; unilateral GO 0.50-1.50/10,000. Conclusion: GO has a prevalence that is clearly above the threshold for rarity in Europe. However, each of its clinical variants have a low prevalence and could potentially qualify for being considered as a rare condition, providing that future research establishes that they have a distinct pathophysiology. EUGOGO considers this area of academic activity a priority
