The performance effects of board heterogeneity: What works for EU banks?

We examine the impact of board heterogeneity on the performance of EU listed banks in the wake of the global financial crisis. In a comprehensive set-up, we consider standard board features (type, tenure, size, and age of board members) as well as board diversity features (gender diversity, employee representation, internationalisation, and age diversity). We propose a diversity index, which summarises the different dimensions of diversity and control for unobserved heterogeneity and reverse causality. Our analysis uncovers a complex relationship between board heterogeneity and bank performance, which is influenced by market conditions and by national culture. Overall board diversity does not seem to affect bank performance, but it does decrease performance variability during the Eurozone crisis and in countries culturally more open to diversity. Different board and diversity features have a positive impact on bank performance (size, tenure, and employee representation); the relationship is non-linear, with the effect of diversity being more relevant when there is a significant proportion of minority representatives. While substantial board internationalisation has a negative impact on bank performance, the presence of foreign directors appears to be less detrimental during the Eurozone crisis and in countries that are more welcoming towards diversity

Radiosounding: Possible change in aerological data due to instrument change

radiosounding system allows to measure the profile of some meteorological quantities (temperature, humidity, pressure) from the ground up to a certain altitude. Such systems are continuously used by meteorological services in order to perform periodical measurements during the day, at pre-determined times. The evolution of instrumentation technology leads to a fast obsolescence of equipment through time, so that, inevitably, new instrumentation replaces the old one. The new VAISALA Radiosound RS92 has been recently introduced to substitute previous model RS90. The RS90 is currently used by many national and international institutes, including the Italian Air Force Meteorological Service (Servizio Meteorologico dell’Aeronautica Militare). In order to assess the way in which the substitution of RS90s with the new RS92s would affect measures performed by the altitude observation network with regard also to the historical series, several comparative measurements have been conducted by the “Reparto Sperimentazioni di Meteorologia Aeronautica” at Vigna di Valle (Rome). During this testing series, Company VAISALA has given a remarkable level of cooperation by a continuous presence of technicians. The entire test has been performed according to WMO (World Meteorological Organization) protocols

Neural Network and Microwave Sensing for Food Contamination Monitoring

In this paper, a technique covering the lacks in currently adopted food safety devices is presented, through a microwave-sensing prototype combined with a neural network. An antennas array, composed by 6 low-cost printed circuit boards, surrounds the product to analyze. Their positions and number have been chosen as a trade-off between an optimal coverage of the volume of interest and the physical constraints of an industrial device, i.e., the conveyor belt, moving at production speed. The signals are recorded and used to train a neural network, resulting in an overall 99.45% success rate in classification

Semileptonic decays, magnetic moments and spin distributions of spin-1/2 baryons with sea contribution

Spin-1/2 baryons are considered as a composite system made out of a "core" of three quarks surrounded by a "sea" (of gluons and $q\bar{q}$-pairs) which is specified by its total quantum numbers. Specifically, we assume this sea to be a flavor octet with spin-0 or 1 but no color. We show our model can provide very goods fits to magnetic moments and semileptonic decay data using experimental errors. The predictions for spin distributions are in reasonable agreement with experiment.Comment: To be published in Int. J. of Mod. Phys.

Hardware Acceleration of Beamforming in a UWB Imaging Unit for Breast Cancer Detection

The Ultrawideband (UWB) imaging technique for breast cancer detection is based on the fact that cancerous cells have different dielectric characteristics than healthy tissues.When a UWB pulse in the microwave range strikes a cancerous region, the reflected signal is more intense than the backscatter originating from the surrounding fat tissue. A UWB imaging system consists of transmitters, receivers, and antennas for the RF part, and of a digital back-end for processing the received signals. In this paper we focus on the imaging unit, which elaborates the acquired data and produces 2D or 3D maps of reflected energies.We show that one of the processing tasks, Beamforming, is the most timing critical and cannot be executed in software by a standard microprocessor in a reasonable time.We thus propose a specialized hardware accelerator for it.We design the accelerator in VHDL and test it in an FPGA-based prototype. We also evaluate its performance when implemented on a CMOS 45nm ASIC technology. The speed-up with respect to a software implementation is on the order of tens to hundreds, depending on the degree of parallelism permitted by the target technology

A Cluster Analysis of Cyclists in Europe: Common Patterns, Behaviours, and Attitudes

This study uses cluster analysis on a sample of regular cyclists from six European countries (the U.K., the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, Italy, and Spain) to shed light on common cycling patterns, demographic characteristics, and attitudes. Participants completed an online survey on cycling behaviour, attitudes towards cycling, discomfort while cycling in mixed traffic, cycling environment and comparative cycling risk perception. A two-step cluster analysis was performed to identify segments of cyclists based on cycling patterns, and a multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to profile the segments. The two-step cluster analysis yielded three components. Leisure-time cyclists cycled almost exclusively for leisure/training, had a clear preference for car use relative to bicycle, and low riding frequency. Resolute Cyclists were characterised by a high variety of cycling trip purpose, a clear preference for bicycle use relative to the car, and high riding frequency. Convenience Cyclists were characterised by cycling for personal business or leisure/training but not for commuting, no evident preference for bicycle vs car, and medium riding frequency. The value of the present study is to highlight commonalities in patterns, characteristics, and attitudes of cyclists in Europe. Our study showed that cycling patterns and habits are linked to psychosocial variables such as attitudes and the cycling environment, explicitly highlighting the importance of discomfort in mixed traffic and the relationship with cycling culture

Lights and shadows of schizophrenia therapy research : Lessons from oral risperidone and olanzapine

Peer reviewedPostprintPostprin

Hand arm vibration generated by a rotary pick-up for table olives harvesting

The manual harvest of olives is one of the most expensive operations in the table olives production, but the use of the electric hand-guided machines triples the productivity.  The development of these new machines leads to changes in the harvesting methodologies and in the operator’s working behavior.  These items may also affect the hand-arm vibration (HAV) transmitted to the operators during the work.  Aim of this study is to evaluate the hand-arm vibration transmitted to the operator using an experimental electric labor saving machine with rotary combs with teeth of different dimensions covered by silicon to minimize the damage to the drupes.  Moreover, the olives removal forces have been analyzed to understand if the force necessary to detach the drupes is correlated to the vibration levels transmitted to the operator’s hand arm.  With this type of hand held olive harvester, it has been found that higher is the fruit removal force, higher are the measured vibration levels.   Keywords: HAV, portable olive shakers, rotary pick-up, table olive