La struttura del consiglio di amministrazione nel settore bancario europeo: un'indagine empirica

La recente crisi internazionale ha acceso un intenso dibattito sulla composizione degli organi di governo societario delle istituzioni finanziarie. Questo studio si pone l’obiettivo di indagare le determinanti della struttura del consiglio di amministrazione nel settore bancario europeo. Il primo capitolo è dedicato all’analisi dei fattori capaci di condizionare la dimensione del consiglio e la presenza di componenti non esecutivi e di componenti indipendenti. I risultati ottenuti dimostrano l’esistenza di un equilibrio complessivo tra i fattori idiosincratici propri delle singole banche e le caratteristiche dei Paesi in cui esse operano nell’influenzare la dimensione dell’organo amministrativo. Di contro, le peculiarità del contesto di riferimento spiegano la maggior parte della variabilità nelle percentuali di amministratori non esecutivi e di amministratori indipendenti. Con riferimento alle caratteristiche specifiche degli intermediari, vengono identificate relazioni sistematiche tra la struttura del consiglio di amministrazione e l’operatività aziendale o la struttura proprietaria, in funzione del trade-off tra i costi e i benefici associati a configurazioni alternative dell’organo di gestione. Nel secondo capitolo, viene sviluppata l’analisi delle determinanti della presenza di amministratori di genere femminile. Il modello empirico integra le variabili esplicative relative alle caratteristiche delle singole banche con un ampio numero di indicatori della condizione della donna in ciascun Paese, attinenti all’istruzione, alla famiglia, al bilanciamento tra vita privata e lavoro, all’occupazione e al coinvolgimento nella politica e nelle istituzioni pubbliche. Le evidenze dell’analisi fanno emergere con chiarezza che la partecipazione femminile al consiglio delle banche è uno specchio dell’immagine della donna nell’ambiente esterno. In questo senso, i Paesi con costumi più emancipativi e un più efficace sistema di welfare a supporto della parità tra i generi presentano la più elevata partecipazione femminile al consiglio di amministrazione degli intermediari nazionali.The recent financial crisis has brought board of directors of financial institutions into the spotlight. This study investigates the determinants of board structure in the European banking industry. In the first chapter, we analyze factors that can affect the number of board members, the percentage of non executive directors and the percentage of independent directors. We prove the existence of an overall equilibrium between bank-specific and country-specific characteristics in explaining variation in board size. In contrast, country-specific characteristics explain most of the variation in the percentages of non executive directors and independent directors. As regards bank-specific characteristics, we find systematic relationships between board composition and bank’s operating variables or ownership structure variables, according to benefits and costs embedded in different board structures. In the second chapter, we examine the determinants of female participation in the boardroom. In this case, bank-specific characteristics are complemented by country-specific explanatory variables of women’s status covering the areas of education, family life, economic activity and employment, work-life balance, participation in public life and decision making. The results provide evidence that female representation on bank boards is a mirror of the general status of women in the country in which the banks operate. In this sense countries that exhibit more emancipative values, as well as more advanced welfare systems to promote effective equality between women and men, are the ones that present higher percentages of female board directors in their banks

Novel Therapies in HBV Infection

Current treatments for chronic hepatitis B are able to provide a sustained suppression of the viral replication (i.e., persistent undetectability of HBV DNA). This leads to improvement of liver fibrosis and reduction of clinical complications. However, hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) persists in most patients, probably justifying a still increased risk of hepatocellular carcinoma. Indeed, obtaining a complete and sterilizing cure with elimination of the covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) or silencing its activity is still a holy grail. New molecules are under evaluation to suppress viral replication acting on multiple phases of the HBV cycle or improve specific immune response against HBV. Molecules acting on HBV cycle have already showed encouraging results, such as entry inhibitors, small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), capsid assembly modulators (CAMs), nucleic acid polymers (NAPs). Also, promising results have been observed with immune-modulators, therapeutic vaccines, and other immune-based approaches. Among these, toll-like (TLR) or anti-programmed receptor agonists antibody 1 of the cell death protein (PD1) (e.g., nivolumab) are most promising. This paper describes newer drugs appearing on the horizon, including antiviral drugs targeting different steps of the HBV life cycle and therapeutic approaches based on immune-modulation

First spaceborne GNSS-Reflectometry observations of hurricanes from the UK TechDemoSat-1 mission

We present the first examples of GNSS-Reflectometry observations of hurricanes using spaceborne data from the UK TechDemoSat-1 (TDS-1) mission. We confirm that GNSS-R signals can detect ocean condition changes in very high near-surface ocean wind associated with hurricanes. TDS-1 GNSS-R reflections were collocated with IBTrACS hurricane data, MetOp ASCAT A/B scatterometer winds and two re-analysis products. Clear variations of GNSS-R reflected power (σ0) are observed as reflections travel through hurricanes, in some cases up to and through the eye wall. The GNSS-R reflected power is tentatively inverted to estimate wind speed using the TDS-1 baseline wind retrieval algorithm developed for low to moderate winds. Despite this, TDS-1 GNSS-R winds through the hurricanes show closer agreement with IBTrACS estimates than winds provided by scatterometers and reanalyses. GNSS-R wind profiles show realistic spatial patterns and sharp gradients which are consistent with expected structures around the eye of tropical cyclones

Elastic and inelastic electron transport through alkane-based molecular junctions

Doctoral Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor in Physics by Giuseppe Foti.In this thesis the electronic and transport properties of alkane-based molecular junctions are addressed by means of density functional theory (DFT) in combination with the nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) formalism. The chemical nature of the anchoring groups and the local geometry of the metal/molecule interface are found to control the electrostatics of band alignment and thus to strongly influence the conductance of the molecular junction. The inelastic tunneling spectra (IETS) of thiol-functionalized alkanes are calculated at different level of approximation and compared, providing at the same time useful guidance for computationally more efficient calculations. The calculated IETS is also used to unambiguously distinguish the highly conducting covalent Au-C bond of alkane chains to a gold surface from another binding scenario where a dimethyl-tin group is used. Finally, inelastic transport through a single electronic level weakly coupled to the leads is explored by means of the master equation approach.I acknowledge the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) for financing my PhD; I am also indebted to the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) as well as to the Univeristy of the Basque Country through the Department of Materials Physics for the financial support.Peer Reviewe

Role of k-point sampling in the supercell approach to inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy simulations of molecular monolayers

Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 (CC-BY).While the role of sampling of the electron momentum k in supercell calculations of the elastic electron transmission is well understood, its influence in the case of inelastic electron tunneling (IET) has not yet been systematically explored. Here we compare ab initio IET spectra of molecular monolayers in the commonly used Γ-point approximation to rigorously k-converged results. We study four idealized molecular junctions with either alkanedithiolates or benzenedithiolates, and explore variations due to varying molecular tilt angle, density, as well as chemical identity of the monolayer. We show that the Γ-point approximation is reasonable for a range of systems, but that a rigorous convergence is needed for accurate signal amplitudes. We also describe an approximative scheme which reduces the computational cost of the k-averaged calculation in our implementation.We acknowledge the support of the Basque Departamento de Educacion and the UPV/EHU (Grant No. IT-756-13), the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO Grants No. MAT2013-46593-C6-2-P and FIS2013-48286-C2-2-P), and the European Union Integrated Project PAMS (Contract No. 610446).Peer Reviewe

Temporal variability of GNSS-Reflectometry ocean wind speed retrieval performance during the UK TechDemoSat-1 mission

This paper presents the temporal evolution of Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) ocean wind speed retrieval performance during three years of the UK TechDemoSat-1 (TDS-1) mission. TDS-1 was launched in July 2014 and provides globally distributed spaceborne GNSS-R data over a lifespan of over three years, including several months of 24/7 operations. TDS-1 wind speeds are computed using the NOC Calibrated Bistatic Radar Equation algorithm version 0.5 (C-BRE v0.5), and are evaluated against ERA5 high resolution re-analysis data over the period 2015–2018. Analyses reveal significant temporal variability in TDS-1 monthly wind speed retrieval performance over the three years, with the best performance (~2 m∙s−1) achieved in the early part of the mission (May 2015). The temporal variability of retrieval performance is found to be driven by several non-geophysical factors, including TDS-1 platform attitude uncertainty and spatial/temporal changes in GPS transmit power from certain satellites. Evidence is presented of the impact of the GPS Block IIF Flex mode on retrieved GNSS-R wind speed after January 2017, which results in significantly underestimated ocean winds over a large region covering the North Atlantic, northern Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the Sea of Okhotsk. These GPS transmit power changes are shown to induce large negative wind speed biases of up to 3 m∙s−1. Analyses are also presented of the sensitivity of TDS-1 wind speed retrieval to platform attitude uncertainty using statistical simulations. It is suggested that a 4° increase in attitude uncertainty can produce up to 1 m∙s−1 increase in RMSE, and that TDS-1 attitude data do not fully reflect actual platform attitude. We conclude that the lack of knowledge about the GNSS-R nadir antenna gain map and TDS-1 platform-attitude limits the ability to determine the achievable wind speed retrieval performance with GNSS-R on TDS-1. The paper provides recommendations that accurate attitude knowledge and a good characterisation of GNSS-R nadir antenna patterns should be prioritised for future GNSS-R missions

Sensitivity of GNSS-R spaceborne observations to soil moisture and vegetation

Global navigation satellite systems-reflectometry (GNSS-R) is an emerging remote sensing technique that makes use of navigation signals as signals of opportunity in a multistatic radar configuration, with as many transmitters as navigation satellites are in view. GNSS-R sensitivity to soil moisture has already been proven from ground-based and airborne experiments, but studies using space-borne data are still preliminary due to the limited amount of data, collocation, footprint heterogeneity, etc. This study presents a sensitivity study of TechDemoSat-1 GNSS-R data to soil moisture over different types of surfaces (i.e., vegetation covers) and for a wide range of soil moisture and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) values. Despite the scattering in the data, which can be largely attributed to the delay-Doppler maps peak variance, the temporal and spatial (footprint size) collocation mismatch with the SMOS soil moisture, and MODIS NDVI vegetation data, and land use data, experimental results for low NDVI values show a large sensitivity to soil moisture and a relatively good Pearson correlation coefficient. As the vegetation cover increases (NDVI increases) the reflectivity, the sensitivity to soil moisture and the Pearson correlation coefficient decreases, but it is still significant.Postprint (author's final draft

Tutori, ortesi, protesi, ausili. Testo-Atlante per le Professioni dell'Area Sanitaria

“... un testo aggiornato, completo e di rapida consultazione per comprendere indicazioni e modalità di utilizzo di tutori, ortesi, protesi e ausili; una iconografia dettagliata che consente di visualizzare immediatamente forma e impiego degli stessi...” (dalla prefazione del Prof. Giulio Maccauro) Un testo-atlante che non esaurisce la sua funzione didattica al termine del corso di studi, ma che rimane come utile e maneggevole strumento di consultazione e di formazione nella pratica quotidiana di qualsiasi Professionista dell’Area Sanitaria. Con 164 figure a colori. Maggiori dettagli nel PDF scaricabile (indice, prefazione completa, pagine campione) e sul sito dell’editore UniversItalia.Braces, orthoses, prostheses, assistive devices. Text-Atlas for Healthcare Professionals "... an updated, complete and quick reference text to understand indications and methods of use of braces, orthoses, prostheses and assistive devices; a detailed iconography that allows you to immediately visualize their form and use..." (from the preface by Prof. Giulio Maccauro) A text-atlas that does not exhaust its didactic function at the end of the course of study but remains a useful and handy tool for consultation and training in the daily practice of any Healthcare Professional. With 164 colour figures. Further details in the downloadable PDF (index, full preface, sample pages) and on the website of the publisher UniversItalia

A GNSS-R geophysical model function: Machine learning for wind speed retrievals

A machine learning technique is implemented for retrieving space-borne Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) wind speed. Conventional approaches commonly fit a function in a predefined form to matchup data in a least-squares (LS) sense, mapping GNSS-R observations to wind speed. In this study, a feedforward neural network is trained for TechDemoSat-1 (TDS-1) wind speed inversion. The input variables, along with the derived bistatic radar cross-section $σ⁰, are selected after investigating the wind speed dependence and the model performance. When compared to an LS-based approach, the derived model shows a significant improvement of 20% in the root mean square error (RMSE). The proposed neural network demonstrates an ability to model a variety of effects degrading the retrieval accuracy such as the different levels of the effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of GPS satellites. For example, the derived Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of the satellite with SVN 34 is decreased by 32% using the machine-learning-based approach