From viability to sustainability: the contribution of the viable systems approach (VSA)

The current dynamics of business systems require new ways of conceiving the role of single entities. On this basis, a complex of interactions between the company and the reference context must be activated to guarantee survival dynamics. From these considerations re-emerge the ideas of Peccei (2013) and King (2013) that recognise in the systemic thought the foundations for a sustainable society. The present study derives from these considerations, and aims at contributing to the advancement of the knowledge necessary to overcome the challenges in the sustainability field. The methodological approach, albeit heuristic, can be traced back to the positive scientific and constructivist method. The results of the study showed the prevalence of qualitative and subjective techniques, accompanied by the so-called inductive method, testifying to the intense interaction between the scholar and the object investigated. With regard to future research, it would be interesting to construct a flexible, scalable and extensible model to recover both a database and an ontology for the theoretical framework

Management of gestational diabetes mellitus

The incidence of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is on the increase and, if not diagnosed, managed and treated adequately, can have unfavorable maternal and fetal outcomes. Several studies have shown that glycemic values considered as adequate in the past when monitoring GDM failed to contain these adverse outcomes and randomized trials are needed to ascertain whether these targets should be lowered. Dietary restrictions remain the mainstay of GDM management and suitable physical exercise can help too. The use of rapid-acting insulin analogues (lispro and aspart) are novel treatments for improving metabolic control by reducing postprandial glycemia, while long-acting insulin analogues need to be evaluated by further studies for safety in clinical use before they can be prescribed. Numerous studies have found glyburide and metformin safe in women with GDM but more randomized controlled trials are needed, with a long-term follow-up of mother and child, to confirm these results

the enterprise and its relationship with the financial system in view of the innovative methods of capitalization a literature review

This paper aims to provide a further contribution to the evolution of the relationship between the system "enterprise" and its over-financial, superordinate level (L + 1) system, in view of the risk-return ratio and taking into account the innovative methods of capitalization of the enterprises. To reach this goal, an inductive methodology has been applied with a focus on literature review. The originality of this paper lies in addressing the issue from a managerial point of view, providing in this way a further contribution. However, the empirical validation of the conceptual model proposed affects the work, thus it lays the basis for future investigations through a quantitative analysis of the bank-enterprise relationship from the view point of enterprise itself, according to the innovative regulation issued by the Basel Committee

Speech emotion recognition with artificial intelligence for contact tracing in the COVID‐19 pandemic

If understanding sentiments is already a difficult task in human‐human communication, this becomes extremely challenging when a human‐computer interaction happens, as for instance in chatbot conversations. In this work, a machine learning neural network‐based Speech Emotion Recognition system is presented to perform emotion detection in a chatbot virtual assistant whose task was to perform contact tracing during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The system was tested on a novel dataset of audio samples, provided by the company Blu Pantheon, which developed virtual agents capable of autonomously performing contacts tracing for individuals positive to COVID‐19. The dataset provided was unlabelled for the emotions associated to the conversations. Therefore, the work was structured using a sort of transfer learning strategy. First, the model is trained using the labelled and publicly available Italian‐language dataset EMOVO Corpus. The accuracy achieved in testing phase reached 92%. To the best of their knowledge, thiswork represents the first example in the context of chatbot speech emotion recognition for contact tracing, shedding lights towards the importance of the use of such techniques in virtual assistants and chatbot conversational contexts for psychological human status assessment. The code of this work was publicly released at: https://github.com/fp1acm8/SE

the creation of a new company as process

This paper aims to investigate both the process that, from incubation of the entrepreneurial idea arrives to economic and technical start-up of the new combination and subsequent entry into the market, and the trend of registrations of new businesses at the Companies Registry of Italian Chamber of Commerce. The article is structured as follows: after the introduction, in the first section we analyze the stages through which the process relating to the creation of a company is gradually developing. In the second section it will be discuss the well-known problem of the conversion of the business dynamic, firstly in numbers, and then the interpretation of those numbers. It will then be analyzed the role of the financial resources that are known to constitute a critical factor in any new venture. The work will be completed with the analysis of data about the performance of new companies registered at Companies Registry of Italian Chamber of Commerce in a time span of ten years. The originality of the work lies in comparing the number of firms registered in the period before the crisis with the following one. The limitations of the research are influenced by lacking of information on the reasons why deciding to start up a new company. Regarding future research it is suggested to perform an empirical analysis aimed at overcoming the limit shown and to identify the characteristics of the government body, both in the start and in the moments following the birth of the company, including the value creation generated over time

a start up socially responsible subject of evolutionary change in its sector

This research aims to verify, through a case study, if a firm operating in a sector plagued by the crisis can successfully overcome the start-up phase by creating shared value with stakeholders, supporting and anticipating the trends of its reference environment. The study of the choices that have enabled the company to establish itself and its results, if consistent with the assertions of the literature, will, therefore, allow to validate the thesis and to measure the effectiveness of the theories and observations cited. The originality of the work lies in the proposed case study: a company that, since the start-up phase, every day "listening" to the needs of the market, and thanks to the propensity to technological innovation in addition to dimensional growth both nationally and internationally, has been at the center of the transformation processes in its industry, rather than be guided by it. All associated with the voluntary adoption of structural and organizational, production and communication models that enable the social responsibility of the Renner Italy SPA to generate values and not just profits

E2F1 activation is responsible for pituitary adenomas induced by HMGA2 gene overexpression

The High Mobility Group protein HMGA2 is a nuclear architectural factor that plays a critical role in a wide range of biological processes including regulation of gene expression, embryogenesis and neoplastic transformation. Several studies are trying to identify the mechanisms by which HMGA2 protein is involved in each of these activities, and only recently some new significant insights are emerging from the study of transgenic and knock-out mice. Overexpression of HMGA2 gene leads to the onset of prolactin and GH-hormone induced pituitary adenomas in mice, suggesting a critical role of this protein in pituitary tumorigenesis. This was also confirmed in the human pathology by the finding that HMGA2 amplification and/or overexpression is present in human prolactinomas. This review focuses on recent data that explain the mechanism by which HMGA2 induces the development of pituitary adenomas in mice. This mechanism entails the activation of the E2F1 protein by the HMGA2-mediated displacement of HDAC1 from pRB protein

COLOR DEGRADATION KINETICS OF REHYDRATED ‘BORLOTTO’ BEANS STORED IN DIFFERENT GAS ATMOSPHERES AS MEASURED BY IMAGE ANALYSIS

Rehydrated legume seeds represent an important ingredient for ready-to-cook fresh soups packaged in a modified atmosphere. The aim of this work was to define an image analysis system for the evaluation of ‘Borlotto’ bean color changes during storage in different gas compositions. ‘Borlotto’ bean seeds were rehydrated in water for 12 hours and stored at 5 °C in controlled atmosphere using 4 different gas compositions: 3 % O2, 10 % CO2 in air, 3 % O2 + 10 % CO2, and air as control. An algorithm in Matlab was codified to measure color of the seed red stripes and ground color (L*, a*,b*, Hue angle and Chromaticity). Sensorial analyses based on the hedonic scale (from 5=excellent to 1=very bad) of the seed appearance were also carried out. Seed color and appearance changes over time were monitored initially and after 5, 10 and 15 days of storage at 5 °C. The obtained data were used to model the quality of degradation attributes over time, that were fit into first order kinetics. A gas composition with 3 % O2 + 10 % CO2 induced the least modification on the seed ground color, which received a highest appearance evaluation up to 10 days of storage, also showing that visual appearance changes were mostly affected by the variation of the seed ground color