Identity and the Dynamics of Preferences

Some recent economic contributions have studied individual identity in terms of explicit choices and social categories to which a person belongs to. According to Social sychology, identity is also the result of a process in.uenced by self-regulation mechanisms. We model endogenous identity-dependent preferences as the dynamic result of two mechanisms: environmental pressure and the persistent effect of past socialization in the adaptation to new environments We apply this model to environments where the agent must tradeoff con.icting utility functions, such as material and non-material payoffs, or self-interest and other-regarding preferences. The model shows that heterogeneity in individual preferences, besides being the result of socialization, cultural transmission and environmental incentives, critically hinges on the feed-back of behaviour on preferences

Cultura Organizzativa e Sostenibilita' della Governance Multistakeholder

L'intento di questo contributo e' di mettere in relazione due categorie concettuali, quella di "governo multistakeholder" e quella di "cultura organizzativa". L'argomentazione si sviluppa attraverso l'esposizione ed il commento di due proposizioni diffuse all'interno della letteratura economica: la prima sostiene che la costruzione di un modello di governo multistakeholder possa contribuire ad accrescere l'efficienza dell'azione collettiva che costituisce l'impresa, tuttavia tale modello e' ritenuto di costosa implementazione, in particolare nel caso di eterogeneita' (di obiettivi e di motivazioni) tra i partecipanti. La seconda proposizione sostiene che la diffusione di una cultura organizzativa omogenea, contenendo i costi di coordinamento, sia uno strumento per risolvere i dilemmi di azione collettiva all'interno di una istituzione, anche se la riduzione della eterogeneita' culturale in un'impresa puo' limitare le capacita' di adattamento dell'organizzazione ad un ambiente mutevole. La multistakeholdership, concluderemo, e' nello stesso tempo implementabile in modo efficiente in presenza di una cultura sufficientemente omogenea, ma deve essere anche lo strumento per permettere una continua apertura ed adattamento della cultura organizzativa, in modo da scongiurare il rischio di un eccessivo irrigidimento della capacita' dell'impresa di leggere il contesto in cui agisce.governo multistakeholder; cultura organizzativa; stakeholder society; norma sociale

what does early mean remarks on immediate prosthetic vascular access cannulation for urgent hemodialysis

Management of complicated vascular access. A step-by-step description of a case of hyperkalemia and vascular access failure in a patient receiving maintenance hemodialysis treated for numerous prev..

Portable Bio/Chemosensoristic Devices: Innovative Systems for Environmental Health and Food Safety Diagnostics

This mini-review covers the newly developed biosensoristic and chemosensoristic devices described in recent literature for detection of contaminants in both environmental and food real matrices. Current needs in environmental and food surveillance of contaminants require new simplified, sensitive systems, which are portable and allow for rapid and on-site monitoring and diagnostics. Here, we focus on optical and electrochemical bio/chemosensoristic devices as promising tools with interesting analytical features that can be potentially exploited for innovative on-site and real-time applications for diagnostics and monitoring of environmental and food matrices (e.g., agricultural waters and milk). In near future, suitably developed and implemented bio/chemosensoristic devices will be a new and modern technological solution for the identification of new quality and safety marker indexes as well as for a more proper and complete characterization of abovementioned environmental and food matrices. Integrated bio/chemosensoristic devices can also allow an “holistic approach” that may prove to be more suitable for diagnostics of environmental and food real matrices, where the copresence of more bioactive substances is frequent. Therefore, this approach can be focused on the determination of net effect (mixture effect) of bioactive substances present in real matrices

Is contrast enhancement needed for diagnostic prostate MRI?

Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System version 2 (PI-RADS v2) provides clinical guidelines for multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) [T2-weighted imaging (T2WI), diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI)] of prostate. However, DCE-MRI seems to show a limited contribution in prostate cancer (PCa) detection and management. In our experience, DCE-MRI, did not show significant change in diagnostic performance in addition to DWI and T2WI [biparametric MRI (bpMRI)] which represent the predominant sequences to detect suspected lesions in peripheral and transitional zone (TZ). In this article we reviewed the role of DCE-MRI also indicating the potential contribute of bpMRI approach (T2WI and DWI) and lesion volume evaluation in the diagnosis and management of suspected PCa

Using spatial interpolation in the design of a coverage metric for Mobile CrowdSensing systems

Mobile Crowd Sensing (MCS) is an emerging paradigm that exploits the ubiquity of smartphones and cheap sensor devices to collect data and thus contribute to the provision of useful services, especially in the domains of urban life. While many MCS implementations have been proposed for different applications, the lack of common performance metrics means that their efficiency cannot be easily compared. In this paper, we formalize a generic coverage model for the class of MCS systems sampling spatial phenomena before introducing a way to produce one such a metric by exploiting a spatio-temporal estimator. We avail of a large-scale dataset of users' mobility traces to demonstrate the use of the newly introduced metric in informing the resolution of a typical problem in MCS system design

Sensing Interpolation Strategies for a Mobile Crowdsensing Platform

Mobile Crowd Sensing (MCS) allows an efficient collection of heterogeneous data over large areas, leveraging on the cooperation of MCS subscribers that offer services on their smartphones to this purpose. However, the coverage that a MCS platform can provide for a given area depends on the availability of subscribers and on their mobility in that area. To guarantee a better coverage, a MCS platform may employ a combination of static and mobile sensors and interpolation strategies that may provide meaningful data for all the area under observation. We discuss how two mechanisms (mixing static and mobile sensors and interpolation) can be combined together by using the large-scale mobility datasets of ParticipAct and the Weather Underground dataset

Using Spatial Interpolation in the Design of a Coverage Metric for Mobile Crowdsensing Systems

Mobile Crowd Sensing (MCS) is an emerging paradigm that exploits the ubiquity of smartphones and cheap sensor devices to collect data and thus contribute to the provision of useful services, especially in the domains of urban life. While many MCS implementations have been proposed for different applications, the lack of common performance metrics means that their efficiency cannot be easily compared. In this paper, we formalize a generic coverage model for the class of MCS systems sampling spatial phenomena before introducing a way to produce one such a metric by exploiting a spatio-temporal estimator. We avail of a large-scale dataset of users' mobility traces to demonstrate the use of the newly introduced metric in informing the resolution of a typical problem in MCS system design

Do hydrodynamic changes affect abundances of the striped Venus clam? A preliminary analysis in the Southern Adriatic Sea.

The striped venus clam (Chamelea gallina Linnaeus, 1758) is one of the most important commercially valuable bivalves distributed in the Italian sandy soft bottoms of the Adriatic Sea (Central Mediterranean Sea). The impacts of hydraulic dredge used in the harvesting of this bivalve have been widely investigated in this area, while poor data are available on the relationships between juveniles’ recruitment and water circulation. This preliminary study explores the dynamics of C. gallina populations in the Northern Gargano Area during the period 2018-2019, in which a strong decrease in abundance of juveniles and adults was detected. The analysis on abundance data (N/100 m2) and the distribution along the depth gradient were integrated with outputs on water currents (speed m/s, and direction) obtained from the 3D hydrodynamic numerical model MIKE 3 FM HD. A significant decrease in abundance was observed from 2018 to 2019, while a slight regression of the depth range for the juveniles distribution was observed in 2019. Relevant changes in the water circulation were observed between the two years, with a higher current speed and larger cyclonic gyres in 2018 than in 2019. These preliminary results suggest the occurrence of sudden hydrodynamic changes in the investigated area, which can affect the dispersal of larvae towards unsuitable muddy bottoms for the larval settlement. Further analysis should be carried out with an integration of other oceanographic variables and an improvement in the modelling of the temporal scale resolution