DIVISON OF LABOUR, SOCIAL NETWORKS AND INTANGIBLE RESOURCES: THE ITALIAN CASE OF NETWORK BUSINESS CREATION

The paper underlines the division of labour principle for understanding the development of the entrepreneurial process within a social network; the principal background premise is that the two crucial factors affecting the entrepreneur when he is creating a new business are his previous employment (and so his skills, competencies, knowledge) and the advice and assistance he receives by his social environments. The aim of the paper is to specify, therefore, a conceptual proposal, based upon the analysis of the division of labour principle, evidencing that intangible resources as social network capital and human entrepreneurial capital are the critical levers for the creation of new business within a reticular business environment. For enhancing empirically such proposal, the “Industrial District Model”, particularly spread in the Italian economy, provides a useful example of how these assumptions work in a real industrial network.Division of Labour; Social Networks; Human Capital; Social Capital; Business Creation; Industrial Districts.

DIVISON OF LABOUR, SOCIAL NETWORKS AND INTANGIBLE RESOURCES: THE ITALIAN CASE OF NETWORK BUSINESS CREATION

The paper underlines the division of labour principle for understanding the development of the entrepreneurial process within a social network; the principal background premise is that the two crucial factors affecting the entrepreneur when he is creating a new business are his previous employment (and so his skills, competencies, knowledge) and the advice and assistance he receives by his social environments. The aim of the paper is to specify, therefore, a conceptual proposal, based upon the analysis of the division of labour principle, evidencing that intangible resources as social network capital and human entrepreneurial capital are the critical levers for the creation of new business within a reticular business environment. For enhancing empirically such proposal, the “Industrial District Model”, particularly spread in the Italian economy, provides a useful example of how these assumptions work in a real industrial network.

XNOR Neural Engine: a Hardware Accelerator IP for 21.6 fJ/op Binary Neural Network Inference

Binary Neural Networks (BNNs) are promising to deliver accuracy comparable to conventional deep neural networks at a fraction of the cost in terms of memory and energy. In this paper, we introduce the XNOR Neural Engine (XNE), a fully digital configurable hardware accelerator IP for BNNs, integrated within a microcontroller unit (MCU) equipped with an autonomous I/O subsystem and hybrid SRAM / standard cell memory. The XNE is able to fully compute convolutional and dense layers in autonomy or in cooperation with the core in the MCU to realize more complex behaviors. We show post-synthesis results in 65nm and 22nm technology for the XNE IP and post-layout results in 22nm for the full MCU indicating that this system can drop the energy cost per binary operation to 21.6fJ per operation at 0.4V, and at the same time is flexible and performant enough to execute state-of-the-art BNN topologies such as ResNet-34 in less than 2.2mJ per frame at 8.9 fps.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, 3 listings. Accepted for presentation at CODES'18 and for publication in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Circuits and Systems (TCAD) as part of the ESWEEK-TCAD special issu

STRATEGIC AND VIRTUAL NETWORKS – A POSSIBLE INTEGRATION

One of the best known features of the Italian entrepreneurial system is undoubtedly the industrial district, a network of small and medium size enterprises; the object of this survey is to study the integration between the strategic network, identified by the relationship between the companies in a district, and the virtual Internet network.Industrial Districts; Net Economy; Shoes Maker Industry

Governance, Reti d’Imprese e Distretti Industriali: Considerazioni Metodologiche

Il paper propone un'integrazione metodologica tra la teoria Williamsoniana dei costi di trnasazione e la Resource-based View nello studio delle problematiche relative alla governance nelle reti esterne di imprese, che porti all'utilizzo di una metodologia di ricerca bifronte; dopo un'introduzione letteraria sui tre campi di studio qui analizzati (reti d'impresa e la fattispecie dei distretti industriali, teoria dei costi di transazione, Resource-based View), nella parte conclusiva si presenteranno una serie di evidenze teoriche ed empiriche che possano far prevalere una metodologia di ricerca extended per il distretto industriale, una delle principali una delle principali tipologie di reti esterne presenti nell'economia italiana. Si ritiene, infatti, che questo, a causa della forte caratterizzazione sociale, della struttura industriale e delle risorse e competenze strategiche che lo contraddistinguono, si presti efficacemente sia a valutazione prossime alla TCE che ad indagini scaturenti da variabili proprie della RBV.Distretti Industriali; Resource-based View; Transaction Costs Economy

Axion-like particles from primordial black holes shining through the Universe

We consider a cosmological scenario in which the very early Universe experienced a transient epoch of matter domination due to the formation of a large population of primordial black holes (PBHs) with masses $M \lesssim 10^{9}\,\textrm{g}$, that evaporate before Big Bang nucleosynthesis. In this context, Hawking radiation would be a non-thermal mechanism to produce a cosmic background of axion-like particles (ALPs). We assume the minimal scenario in which these ALPs couple only with photons. In the case of ultralight ALPs ($m_a \lesssim 10^{-9}\,\textrm{eV}$) the cosmic magnetic fields might trigger ALP-photon conversions, while for masses $m_a \gtrsim 10\,\textrm{eV}$ spontaneous ALP decay in photon pairs would be effective. We investigate the impact of these mechanisms on the cosmic X-ray background, on the excess in X-ray luminosity in Galaxy Clusters, and on the process of cosmic reionization.Comment: (33 pages, 12 pdf figures

Binary domain generalization for sparsifying binary neural networks

Binary neural networks (BNNs) are an attractive solution for developing and deploying deep neural network (DNN)-based applications in resource constrained devices. Despite their success, BNNs still suffer from a fixed and limited compression factor that may be explained by the fact that existing pruning methods for full-precision DNNs cannot be directly applied to BNNs. In fact, weight pruning of BNNs leads to performance degradation, which suggests that the standard binarization domain of BNNs is not well adapted for the task. This work proposes a novel more general binary domain that extends the standard binary one that is more robust to pruning techniques, thus guaranteeing improved compression and avoiding severe performance losses. We demonstrate a closed-form solution for quantizing the weights of a full-precision network into the proposed binary domain. Finally, we show the flexibility of our method, which can be combined with other pruning strategies. Experiments over CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100 demonstrate that the novel approach is able to generate efficient sparse networks with reduced memory usage and run-time latency, while maintaining performance.Comment: Accepted as conference paper at ECML PKDD 202

Sonoelastography in the diagnosis of tendinopathies: An added value

BACKGROUND: sonoelastography helps in the detection of abnormalities not yet evident on B-mode exam. METHODS: in this observational study, we report a collection of cases of symptomatic patients without alterations at ultrasound imaging but with evidence of pathological findings at sonoelastography. Patients, with clinical history suggestive for tendinopathies or surgically treated, and negative at the ultrasound exam, were submitted to sonoelastography. Out of 846, 632 patients with positive ultrasound exam were excluded. Sonoelastography was therefore performed in the remaining 214. RESULTS: the examination was positive in 168 cases: 78 patients were affected with shoulder diseases, while elbow pathology was observed in 31 subjects; patellar, Achilles and plantar fascia disorders were reported in 19, 27, and 13 patients, respectively. CONCLUSION: sonoelastography can reveal tendon abnormalities of clinical relevance in a high percentage of cases, where the ultrasound exam was negative, making the method a complementary tool to ultrasound evaluation

Digital transformation in healthcare: Analyzing the current state-of-research

Abstract Digital transformation in healthcare is of increasing relevance for both scholars and practitioners in the field. Our article attempts to assess the research question how multiple stakeholders implement digital technologies for management and business purposes. To answer this question, we perform a systematic literature review about the state of the art of digital transformation in healthcare. Our findings show that prior research falls into five clusters: operational efficiency by healthcare providers; patient-centered approaches; organizational factors and managerial implications; workforce practices; and socio-economic aspects. These clusters are linked together into a model showing how these various forms of technology implementation lead to operational efficiencies for services providers. Various directions for future research and management implications are offered