Towards Trasparent Data Access with Context Awareness

Applying the principles of open research data is an important factor accelerating the production, analysis of scientific results and worldwide collaboration. However, still very little data is being shared. The aim of this article is analysis of existing data access solutions in order to identify reasons for such situation. After analysis of existing solutions and data access stakeholders needs, the authors propose own vision of data access model evolution

Italy and development policies from the golden age to the current crisis: the role of the “nuovo meridionalismo”

The first aim of this paper on “L’Italia e le politiche di sviluppo dalla golden age alla crisi attuale: il ruolo del “nuovo meridionalismo” (Italy and its development policies from the golden age to the current crisis: the role of “nuovo meridionalismo”)” is to examine the state of the art concerning the strategies for the development of southern Italy. These strategies have been severely weakened, not only because of national policy choices, but also because of the prevailing cultural bias against Southern issues; this culture took hold even amongst those people of Southern Italy committed to “abolish the South”. Only in recent years has the trend been inverted, as the gap between the regions of Southern Italy and those in the Center and Northern areas has grown wider and wider and the attention has been focused back, at the national level, on an “open problem” such as the backwardness of Southern Italy. In order to perform an effective historical evaluation, this paper will reconsider the starting moment of the “nuovo meridionalismo”, when the birth of the SVIMEZ and the efforts carried out to define the industrialization strategies of the less developed area of our country gave life to a complex of unvaluable reforms, beginning with the extraordinary intervention and with the establishment of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno. The positive turn impresses by this innovative setup of industrial policy had its roots in those development theories which, from the mid-XX° Century, began to bring the issue of “depressed areas” and of those cornerstone choices necessary to effectively tackle global problems. From them on, all the strategies for productive growth had to contend with defining the gap issue and the dual dynamics of several economies, as it is the (paradigm) case with Southern Italy. Upon the 150th anniversary of Italian unity, to effectively sum up all the main points of this paper, if one wants to meaningfully take on the lesson of “nuovo meridionalismo”, without invoking abstract reasons of social cohesion, a path must be detected. This path should be made of reciprocal interests between two areas: a Northern one and a Southern one; the latter has vast unproductive areas, but also creativity, talents and singe innovative experiences. Within this new and difficult context, the solution to the issues of Southern Italy, if accompanied by a profound conviction and commitment towards the need to stand up to global competition and market choices, can retake its role as a fundamental theme of the national economic policy, in order to benefit the rest of the country as well.Nuovo meridionalismo; SVIMEZ; policies for development; Southern Question; industrialisaton;

Quality of (Digital) Services in e-Government

Internet growth in the nineties supported government ambition to provide better services to citizens through the development of Information and Communication Technologies based solutions. Thanks to the Lisbon conference, which in 2000 covered and investigated this topic, e-government has been recognized as one of the major priorities in Public Administration innovation process. As a matter of\ud fact in the last 10 years the number of services provided to citizens through Information and Communication Technologies has increased rapidly. Nevertheless the increasing rate, the access and usage of digital services do not follow the same trend. Nowadays Public Administrations deliver many electronic services which\ud are seldom used by citizens. Different reasons contribute to the highlighted situation.\ud The main assumption of the thesis is that quality of e-government digital services strongly affects real access to services by citizens. According to the complexity of quality in e-government, one of the main challenges was to define a suitable quality model. To reach such aim, domain-dependent characteristics on the services delivery have been investigated. The defined model refers to citizen,\ud technology and service related quality characteristics. Correspondingly a suitable way to represent, assess, and continuously improve services quality according to\ud such domain requirements has been introduced.\ud Concerning the service related quality aspects a methodology and a tool permitting to formally and automatically assess the quality of a designed service with\ud respect to the quality model has been defined. Starting from an user friendly notation, both for service and quality requirements, the proposed methodology has\ud been implemented as an user friendly tool supported by a mapping from user friendly notations to formal language. The tool allows to verify formally via model checking, if the given service satisfies one by one the quality requirements addressed by the quality model.\ud Additionally in some case an unique view on e-government service quality is quite useful. A mathematical model provides a single value for quality starting from the assessment of all the requirements defined in the quality model. It relies on the following activities: homogeneity, interaction and grouping.\ud A set of experiments has been performed in order to validate the goodness of the work. Services already implemented in a local Public Administration has\ud been considered. Literature review and domain experts knowledge were the main drivers of this work. It proofs the goodness of the quality model, the application of formal techniques in the complex field of study such as e-government and the quality aggregation via the mathematical model.\ud This thesis introduces advance research in e-government by providing the contributions that quality oriented service delivery in Public Administration promotes services used by the citizens. Further applications of the proposed approaches could be investigated in the areas of practical benchmarking and Service Level Agreement specification

Embedding Diversity: Communication and Label Concept for Underutilized Crops – Checklist for your First Evaluation

There are some very successful cases of marketing of underutilized crops in European countries. Examples are the marketing of rare varieties in Austrian and Swiss supermarkets. Other examples are market initiatives in Spain, France, or Italy, selling local produces and processed foods in specialised shops, at farmers markets, or directly at the farm. A consumer survey was conducted in 2017 in France, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland during DIVERSIFOOD project in order to gain additional data on such examples; and Rossi et al. (2016)1 developed the DIVERSIFOOD Case Study Framework. Among others an objective of these studies was to identify some best-case examples for the use of a trademark, label or logo and the related communication strategies. Then a flagship approach to communicate the benefits of underutilized crops by means of a label should be developed. The studies identified many individual approaches of the various marketing initiatives, each based on slightly different secrets of success. Within the DIVERSIFOOD consortium it was concluded that there’s no sense in defining a single best-label flagship approach; instead, a concept should give an idea of the possibilities to communicate the value of agrobiodiversity to consumers. This concept is the resulting outcome. It provides a structured approach for networks an market initiatives to evaluate whether a label for underutilized crops is feasible, and wheter it is in line with theire values and aims or not, and what the premises for the communication strategy are for those underutilized crops. This concept provides a general idea about topics that should be considered. The result could be the introduction of a label or the abandonment of introducing a label. In the beginning of such an evaluation there are most likely existing underutilized crops, that is, genetic resources, such as old, locally, and newly bred underutilized varieties, as well as some products or product ideas derived from these crops. The main target groups of this concept are farmers involved in participatory breeding, seed savers, seed networks and communities, foundations, and breeders of underutilized crops, as well as partners of such genetic resources. Moreover, the concept could be interesting for initiatives and organizations that consider the integration of underutilized crops in their existing label; however there is no specific treatment of this topic in the concept. The concept should be considered as the first step in the evaluation of a new label. The treated topics might also hint on further considerations when developing a successful marketing initiative. However, the concept focuses mainly on two points: 1. Introduction of a label2, a logo, a trademark or similar and some implications 2. Communication tools and communication contents for products of underutilized crop

Phenomenological study of gay male undergraduate college students' experiences at a Jesuit Catholic university, A

2016 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.The purpose of this interpretative phenomenological study was to understand how male undergraduate students who identify as openly gay experience marginality and mattering at a Jesuit Catholic university. There were 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States as of this writing, each with its own varying approach towards the treatment of gay and lesbian students. Much like the state of the Catholic Church in the era of Pope Francis, many Jesuit colleges and universities struggle with the philosophical contradiction between maintaining a distinctly Catholic identity and creating a campus climate that reflects the Jesuit values of care and social justice. Using Schlossberg’s (1989) theory of marginality and mattering in college environments as the theoretical framework, data were collected from fourteen participants through semi-structured interviews, which took place at a Jesuit Catholic university in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Data were then analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis, which yielded three cross-case superordinate themes and ten sub-themes. The three cross-case superordinate themes—Identity; Campus Climate, and; The Church and the Institution—described key elements of participants’ experiences as male undergraduate students who identify as openly gay at a Jesuit Catholic university and how these students experienced marginality and mattering on-campus. Each of the three main themes was then used as a lens to explore how participants experienced marginality and mattering

Market development and diversification strategies. The Swarovski Case

The descriptive case study has the aim to analyse two of the most important competitive strategies: the market development and the diversification strategies of Swarovski firm through a detailed analysis. The case has been characterized by a long and difficult data collection phase, considering that there were not any similar cases to follow. It is a market research, which focuses on different analysis fields: competition, product portfolio, distribution, prices and promotions. It refers to the Italian case too ponting out interesting results demostrating how the Italian business is relevant for the firm activity. Findings show how a leader company as Swarovski succeed in introducing and selling its products succesfully all over the world through its market development, diversification and premium price strategies

Italy and development policies from the golden age to the current crisis: the role of the “nuovo meridionalismo”

The first aim of this paper on “L’Italia e le politiche di sviluppo dalla golden age alla crisi attuale: il ruolo del “nuovo meridionalismo” (Italy and its development policies from the golden age to the current crisis: the role of “nuovo meridionalismo”)” is to examine the state of the art concerning the strategies for the development of southern Italy. These strategies have been severely weakened, not only because of national policy choices, but also because of the prevailing cultural bias against Southern issues; this culture took hold even amongst those people of Southern Italy committed to “abolish the South”. Only in recent years has the trend been inverted, as the gap between the regions of Southern Italy and those in the Center and Northern areas has grown wider and wider and the attention has been focused back, at the national level, on an “open problem” such as the backwardness of Southern Italy. In order to perform an effective historical evaluation, this paper will reconsider the starting moment of the “nuovo meridionalismo”, when the birth of the SVIMEZ and the efforts carried out to define the industrialization strategies of the less developed area of our country gave life to a complex of unvaluable reforms, beginning with the extraordinary intervention and with the establishment of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno. The positive turn impresses by this innovative setup of industrial policy had its roots in those development theories which, from the mid-XX° Century, began to bring the issue of “depressed areas” and of those cornerstone choices necessary to effectively tackle global problems. From them on, all the strategies for productive growth had to contend with defining the gap issue and the dual dynamics of several economies, as it is the (paradigm) case with Southern Italy. Upon the 150th anniversary of Italian unity, to effectively sum up all the main points of this paper, if one wants to meaningfully take on the lesson of “nuovo meridionalismo”, without invoking abstract reasons of social cohesion, a path must be detected. This path should be made of reciprocal interests between two areas: a Northern one and a Southern one; the latter has vast unproductive areas, but also creativity, talents and singe innovative experiences. Within this new and difficult context, the solution to the issues of Southern Italy, if accompanied by a profound conviction and commitment towards the need to stand up to global competition and market choices, can retake its role as a fundamental theme of the national economic policy, in order to benefit the rest of the country as well

Italy and development policies from the golden age to the current crisis: the role of the “nuovo meridionalismo”

The first aim of this paper on “L’Italia e le politiche di sviluppo dalla golden age alla crisi attuale: il ruolo del “nuovo meridionalismo” (Italy and its development policies from the golden age to the current crisis: the role of “nuovo meridionalismo”)” is to examine the state of the art concerning the strategies for the development of southern Italy. These strategies have been severely weakened, not only because of national policy choices, but also because of the prevailing cultural bias against Southern issues; this culture took hold even amongst those people of Southern Italy committed to “abolish the South”. Only in recent years has the trend been inverted, as the gap between the regions of Southern Italy and those in the Center and Northern areas has grown wider and wider and the attention has been focused back, at the national level, on an “open problem” such as the backwardness of Southern Italy. In order to perform an effective historical evaluation, this paper will reconsider the starting moment of the “nuovo meridionalismo”, when the birth of the SVIMEZ and the efforts carried out to define the industrialization strategies of the less developed area of our country gave life to a complex of unvaluable reforms, beginning with the extraordinary intervention and with the establishment of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno. The positive turn impresses by this innovative setup of industrial policy had its roots in those development theories which, from the mid-XX° Century, began to bring the issue of “depressed areas” and of those cornerstone choices necessary to effectively tackle global problems. From them on, all the strategies for productive growth had to contend with defining the gap issue and the dual dynamics of several economies, as it is the (paradigm) case with Southern Italy. Upon the 150th anniversary of Italian unity, to effectively sum up all the main points of this paper, if one wants to meaningfully take on the lesson of “nuovo meridionalismo”, without invoking abstract reasons of social cohesion, a path must be detected. This path should be made of reciprocal interests between two areas: a Northern one and a Southern one; the latter has vast unproductive areas, but also creativity, talents and singe innovative experiences. Within this new and difficult context, the solution to the issues of Southern Italy, if accompanied by a profound conviction and commitment towards the need to stand up to global competition and market choices, can retake its role as a fundamental theme of the national economic policy, in order to benefit the rest of the country as well