356 research outputs found
Does the market reward for going green?
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of the application of green standards on the companies’ financial returns. It aims at answering the following question: does the market reward or penalize the players that carry out responsible management policies toward environment? Using US data from 2009 to mid-2014 and employing two financial models, that is Capital Asset Pricing Model and Fama-French three-factor model, we first estimate the extra remuneration provided to investors. Then, we link this extra return to a green-based factor. The green-factor data are taken from Newsweek Green Rankings, which annually publishes an environmental ranking of the 500 biggest publicly traded companies in the USA. The analysis demonstrates that there exists no linear relationship between the adoption of green standards and financial returns, i.e. the “green-behavior” does not affect the remuneration required by investors. These results could be justified by the fact that the implementation of
environmentally friendly standards is quite a new one
La lingua salvata di Nelida Milani
No full texte Tongue Set Free by Nelida Milani · This essay deals with the theme of the relationship between language, dialect and identity that represents the driving force behind the writing of Nelida Milani, the most representative author of Istrian literature since the 1980s
GURU v2.0: An interactive Graphical User interface to fit rheometer curves in Han's model for rubber vulcanization
No full textA GUI software (GURU) for experimental data fitting of rheometer curves in Natural Rubber (NR) vulcanized with sulphur at different curing temperatures is presented. Experimental data are automatically loaded in GURU from an Excel spreadsheet coming from the output of the experimental machine (moving die rheometer). To fit the experimental data, the general reaction scheme proposed by Han and co-workers for NR vulcanized with sulphur is considered. From the simplified kinetic scheme adopted, a closed form solution can be found for the crosslink density, with the only limitation that the induction period is excluded from computations. Three kinetic constants must be determined in such a way to minimize the absolute error between normalized experimental data and numerical prediction. Usually, this result is achieved by means of standard least-squares data fitting. On the contrary, GURU works interactively by means of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to minimize the error and allows an interactive calibration of the kinetic constants by means of sliders. A simple mouse click on the sliders allows the assignment of a value for each kinetic constant and a visual comparison between numerical and experimental curves. Users will thus find optimal values of the constants by means of a classic trial and error strategy. An experimental case of technical relevance is shown as benchmark
Influence of Cryolite Content on the Thermal Properties and Coalescence Efficiency of NaCl–KCl Salt Flux
No full textSalt fluxes with fluoride additions are necessary for the treatment and recycling of contaminated or oxidized aluminium scrap. This study aims to investigate the effect of cryolite additions on the thermal properties and the coalescence efficiency of a NaCl–KCl salt flux mixture. Thermodynamic calculations were carried out to examine the phase diagram of the salt mixture as the cryolite content increases. The study of the melting properties of the salt was carried out by means of differential scanning calorimetry. The coalescence efficiency of the salts was assessed by re-melting coated aluminium chips. The experimental results show a decrease in the liquidus temperature as the cryolite content increases; this differs from the thermodynamical calculations. For cryolite contents up to 3 wt%, higher cryolite content in the salt leads to higher coalescence of re-melted chips. However, the coalescence differences observed between the recycling products for cryolite contents of 3% and higher were minor
Diario veneziano e altri racconti: la rubrica di Milena Milani sul quotidiano La Stampa. Con un affondo sul Premio Strega
No full textThis essay offers a thematic reading of some short stories appeared in the
column that Milena Milani held in the daily newspaper La Stampa (Stampa Sera) from
1950 to 1964. In her texts, Venice is one of the cities of her youth, where to discover the
everyday but also herself as a writer, a profession that will identify her spirit in life. My
research also aims to highlight a brief catalogue of Milani’s short stories between the
forties and the sixties that could be read in her books and in newspapers and magazines
of that period. In the end, I also offer a list of her books in Italian Archives and author
Funds connected to the Premio Strega: she wanted to participate to the prize in 1947
and then succeeded in 1954 and in 1964.This essay offers a thematic reading of some short stories appeared in the
column that Milena Milani held in the daily newspaper La Stampa (Stampa Sera) from 1950 to 1964. In her texts, Venice is one of the cities of her youth, where to discover the everyday but also herself as a writer, a profession that will identify her spirit in life. My research also aims to highlight a brief catalogue of Milani’s short stories between the 40s and the 60s that could be read in her books and in newspapers and magazines of that period. In the end, I also offer a list of her books in Italian Archives and author Funds connected to the Premio Strega: she wanted to participate to the prize in 1947 and then succeeded in 1954 and in 1964
Sex/Gender-Specific Imbalance in CVD: Could Physical Activity Help to Improve Clinical Outcome Targeting CVD Molecular Mechanisms in Women?
No full textIn the last two decades, new insights have been gained regarding sex/gender-related differences in cardiovascular disease (CVD). CVD represents the leading cause of death worldwide in both men and women, accounting for at least one-third of all deaths in women and half of deaths in women over 50 years in developing countries. Important sex-related differences in prevalence, presentation, management, and outcomes of different CVDs have been recently discovered, demonstrating sex/gender-specific pathophysiologic features in the presentation and prognosis of CVD in men and women. A large amount of evidence has highlighted the role of sex hormones in protecting women from CVDs, providing an advantage over men that is lost when women reach the menopause stage. This hormonal-dependent shift of sex-related CVD risk consequently affects the overall CVD epidemiology, particularly in light of the increasing trend of population aging. The benefits of physical activity have been recognized for a long time as a powerful preventive approach for both CVD prevention and aging-related morbidity control. Exercise training is indeed a potent physiological stimulus, which reduces primary and secondary cardiovascular events. However, the underlying mechanisms of these positive effects, including from a sex/gender perspective, still need to be fully elucidated. The aim of this work is to provide a review of the evidence linking sex/gender-related differences in CVD, including sex/gender-specific molecular mediators, to explore whether sex- and gender-tailored physical activity may be used as an effective tool to prevent CVD and improve clinical outcomes in women
Spatial Prediction in the H.264/AVC FRExt Coder and its OptimizationSignal Processing
No full textThe chapter presents a review of the fast spatial prediction strategy that were designed for the Intra coding mode of the video coding standard H.264/AVC. At the end, the author presents an effective strategy based on belief propagation message passing
L’archivio don Lorenzo Milani della Fondazione per le scienze religiose di Bologna. Cronistoria di carte e ricerca
No full textThe author describes the reasons for the founding of the Archive Don Lorenzo Milani in Bologna, at the Foundation for Religious Studies, in 1974. In addition, the article outlines the status of the research on Don Milani, including the Opera Omnia of his writings, which will be published in 2017 by Meridiani Mondadori, on the Fiftieth anniversary of his death
The Effects of Information Technology on Contemporary Italian Poetry
No full textThe aim of this paper is to investigate the different ways in which the contemporary italian poets approach the inevitable interference between poetry and Web in the age of global communication. The computer technology provides not only a specific vocabulary for new materials for metaphors, but also new methods of composition (such as hypertext), and also it accelerates the circulation of text on the Web. In this paper the author analyzes poems about computer technology and Internet written by poets who belong to generations “pre-computing” and by “computer-native” poets. The results of this analysis show that most of the italian poets has resisted to the contamination between new media and poetry: only in the last ten years the creative experimentation through Internet become real (as the technique of the “sought poems”)
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