Financial Risk Disclosure: Evidence From Albanian And Italian Companies

In recent years standard setters, regulators and professional bodies worldwide have shown an increased interest in risk reporting. This has reflected the fallacy of the financial reporting model to communicate a company’s risk profile, the recent scandals and the financial crisis. The European Union, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and other national standard settershave introduced specific requirements in order to impose companies to highlight the principal financial risks and uncertainties that they face.The idea is that high-quality risk disclosure help investors and other market participants in their decision-making process, by providing a better understanding of the risk exposures and risk management practices of companies. Previous studies show large heterogeneity in risk reporting within individual countries and identify size as key determinant of risk disclosure. A few researches propose a cross-country investigation of risk reporting and to date there is a lack of evidence about companies operating in Southern Europe, especiallyin the Balkans. The aim of this study is twofold. First, we fill this gap by analyzingrisk reporting regulations in Albania and in Italy to examine the different requirements. Second, we examine risk information disclosed by a sample of 12 Albanian companies and 12 Italian companies within their annual reports, using content analysis. Due to small sample size we offer preliminary findings about financial risk disclosure. The results show that on average Albanian companies disclose less information on financial riskthan Italian companies. Different explanations can be given for this evidence: i) risk disclosure regulationis less incisive in Albania, because it is limited to inform investors about the relevance of financial instruments and the terms and conditions of loans; ii) Albanian companies have fewer incentives to disclose risk information than Italian companies. Keywords: Financial risk disclosure, risk reporting, risk disclosure, content analysis, cross-country investigatio

Opportunities and Challenges in the Use of Big Data in Healthcare: A Literature Review

Digitalisation and the use of technology are pushing the spread of new business models and improving the efficiency of processes. The demand for innovative and revolutionary applications is increasing, along with the use of big data (BD). The proliferation of large quantities of data is receiving considerable attention in all sectors due to the possibility of using these data in decision-making processes. In the healthcare sector, the role of BD is prominent, especially regarding patient diagnostics, fast epidemic recognition and patient management improvement. To ensure personalised care, the health system must transform individual medical services into electronic forms and favour complete and systemic automation based on the advanced technologies of Industry 4.0. This paper consists of a systematic literature review of the use of BD in the healthcare sector, focusing on the opportunities and challenges. To this end, we selected articles from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. Providing a deep understanding of the state of the art, this paper aims to reveal the implications of the use of BD and offer valuable insights to address future research and identify emerging issues. Keywords: big data, healthcare, digitalisation, internet of things, artificial intelligenc

Towards the Use of Big Data in Healthcare: a literature review

The interest in new and more advanced technological solutions is paving the way for the diffusion of innovative and revolutionary applications in healthcare organizations. The application of an artificial intelligence system to medical research has the potential to move toward highly advanced e-Health. This analysis aims to explore the main areas of application of big data in healthcare, as well as the restructuring of the technological infrastructure and the integration of traditional data analytical tools and techniques with an elaborate computational technology that is able to enhance and extract useful information for decision-making. We conducted a literature review using the Scopus database over the period 2010-2020. The article selection process involved five steps: the planning and identification of studies, the evaluation of articles, the extraction of results, the summary, and the dissemination of the audit results. We included 93 documents. Our results suggest that effective and patient-centered care cannot disregard the acquisition, management, and analysis of a huge volume and variety of health data. In this way, an immediate and more effective diagnosis could be possible while maximizing healthcare resources. Deriving the benefits associated with digitization and technological innovation, however, requires the restructuring of traditional operational and strategic processes, and the acquisition of new skills

The key drivers of born-sustainable businesses: Evidence from the italian fashion industry

Environmental pollution has become one of the most pressing preoccupations for governments, policymakers, and consumers. For this reason, many companies make constant efforts to comply with international laws and standards on ethics, social responsibility, and environmental protection. Fashion companies are among the main producers of pollution because their manufacturing processes result in highly negative outcomes for the environment. In recent years, numerous fashion industries have been transforming their production policies to be sustainable, while others are already born as sustainable businesses. Based on Resource-Based View (RBV) theory and Natural Resource-Based View theory (NRBV), this paper aims at understanding how internal and external factors stimulate born-sustainable businesses operating in the fashion sector, adopting a multiple case study methodology. Our analysis shows that culture, entrepreneurial orientation of the founders, and the proximity of the suppliers among the internal factors, combined with the increase of green consumers as an external factor, foster the creation of green businesses. At the same time, neither current legislation nor the dynamism and competitiveness of markets have influenced the choice of the companies’ founders to start a business based on green production logic. These results reveal the centrality of the founders’ sensitivity toward green strategies to create a sustainable business. The findings have practical implications because they could support regulatory institutions to introduce some incentives that more clearly encourages companies that choose to adopt sustainable business models from the founding, by acting to the internal and external key factors that drive born-sustainable businesses. This study also provides an extension of the existing literature on sustainable born companies, offering researchers useful information on internal and internal factors that promote the adoption of green policies in the fashion industry

From technological advances to biological understanding: The main steps toward high-precision RT in breast cancer.

Radiotherapy improves local control in breast cancer (BC) patients which increases overall survival in the long term. Improvements in treatment planning and delivery and a greater understanding of BC behaviour have laid the groundwork for high-precision radiotherapy, which is bound to further improve the therapeutic index. Precise identification of target volumes, better coverage and dose homogeneity have had a positive impact on toxicity and local control. The conformity of treatment dose due to three-dimensional radiotherapy and new techniques such as intensity modulated radiotherapy makes it possible to spare surrounding normal tissue. The widespread use of dose-volume constraints and histograms have increased awareness of toxicity. Real time image guidance has improved geometric precision and accuracy, together with the implementation of quality assurance programs. Advances in the precision of radiotherapy is also based on the choice of the appropriate fractionation and approach. Adaptive radiotherapy is not only a technical concept, but is also a biological concept based on the knowledge that different types of BC have distinctive patterns of locoregional spread. A greater understanding of cancer biology helps in choosing the treatment best suited to a particular situation. Biomarkers predictive of response play a crucial role. The combination of radiotherapy with molecular targeted therapies may enhance radiosensitivity, thus increasing the cytotoxic effects and improving treatment response. The appropriateness of an alternative fractionation, partial breast irradiation, dose escalating/de-escalating approaches, the extent of nodal irradiation have been examined for all the BC subtypes. The broadened concept of adaptive radiotherapy is vital to high-precision treatments

Reversible splenial lesion and complex visual disturbances due to carbamazepine withdrawal.

No abstract availabl

Increased Carotid Thickness in Subjects with Recently-Diagnosed Diabetes from Rural Cameroon

PMCID: PMC3423396This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Convexal subarachnoid hemorrhage and acute ischemic stroke: a border zone matter?

Background Convexal subarachnoid hemorrhage (c-SAH) is an infrequent condition with variable causes. c-SAH concomitant to acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is even less frequent, and the relationship between the two conditions remains unclear. Methods Between January 2016 and January 2018, we treated four patients who were referred to our stroke unit with ischemic stroke and concomitant nontraumatic c-SAH. The patients underwent an extensive diagnostic workup, including digital subtraction angiography (DSA). Results All four patients developed acute focal neurological symptoms with restricted MRI diffusion in congruent areas. In three of the patients, infarcts were in a border zone between the main cerebral arteries and c-SAH was nearby. The fourth patient showed a small cortical infarct, and c-SAH was in a border zone territory of the contralateral hemisphere. An embolic source was discovered or strongly suspected in all cases. One patient was treated with intravenous thrombolysis, but this treatment was not related to c-SAH. None of the four patients showed microbleeds or further cortical siderosis, thus excluding cerebral amyloid angiopathy. In addition, DSA did not show signs of vasculitis, reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome, or intracranial arterial dissection. Conclusions We proposed the embolism or hemodynamic changes of the border zone arterioles as a unifying pathogenetic hypothesis of coexisting c-SAH and AIS

Erdheim-Chester disease: A systematic review.

Erdheim-Chester disease (ECD) is a rare form of non-Langerhans-cell histiocytosis, associated in more than 50% of cases to BRAF(V600E) mutations in early multipotent myelomonocytic precursors or in tissue-resident histiocytes. It encompasses a spectrum of disorders ranging from asymptomatic bone lesions to multisystemic, life-threatening variants. We reviewed all published reports of histologically-confirmed ECD and explored clinical, radiological, prognostic and therapeutic characteristics in a population of 448 patients, including a unique patient from our Department. To find a clinically relevant signature defining differentiated prognostic profiles, the patients' disease features were compared in relation to their CNS involvement that occurred in 56% of the entire population. Diabetes insipidus, visual disturbances, pyramidal and extra-pyramidal syndromes were the most recurrent neurological signs, whereas concomitant pituitary involvement, retro-orbital masses and axial lesions in the presence of symmetric bilateral osteosclerosis of long bones depicted the typical ECD clinical picture. Patients with CNS infiltration showed a lower occurrence of heart involvement and a higher incidence of bone, skin, retro-peritoneal, lung, aortic and renal infiltration. No difference in the therapeutic algorithm was found after stratification for CNS involvement. A better understanding of the disease pathogenesis, including BRAF deregulation, in keeping with improved prognostic criteria, will provide novel suggestions for the management of ECD