Ownership or Performance: What Determines Board of Directors' Turnover in Italy?

This paper analyses the turnover of board of directors members on a sample of companies listed on the Milan Stock Exchange in the period 1988-1996. Our aim is to investigate if board members change more frequently when company performance is poor, as the literature suggests, if this relationship is similar for C.E.O.s and other board members, and if and how the ownership structure of Italian companies affects these relationships. We use three different measures of board of directors turnovers: turnover A is the turnover of all board members; turnover B is the turnover of the President, Vice-President, C.E.O. and General Manager; finally turnover C is the turnover of C.E.O.s only. We find that changes in ownership affect turnover and that the relationship between turnover and performance is stronger in companies that have experienced a change in the controlling shareholder.Board of Directors, Corporate governance, Financial agency

Pediatric non alcoholic fatty liver disease: old and new concepts on development, progression, metabolic insight and potential treatment targets

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the leading cause of chronic liver disease in children. NAFLD has emerged to be extremely prevalent, and predicted by obesity and male gender. It is defined by hepatic fat infiltration >5% hepatocytes, in the absence of other causes of liver pathology. It includes a spectrum of disease ranging from intrahepatic fat accumulation (steatosis) to various degrees of necrotic inflammation and fibrosis (non-alcoholic steatohepatatis [NASH]). NAFLD is associated, in children as in adults, with severe metabolic impairments, determining an increased risk of developing the metabolic syndrome. It can evolve to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, with the consequent need for liver transplantation. Both genetic and environmental factors seem to be involved in the development and progression of the disease, but its physiopathology is not yet entirely clear. In view of this mounting epidemic phenomenon involving the youth, the study of NAFLD should be a priority for all health care systems. This review provides an overview of current and new clinical-histological concepts of pediatric NAFLD, going through possible implications into patho-physiolocical and therapeutic perspectives

Errors, Correlations and Fidelity for noisy Hamilton flows. Theory and numerical examples

We analyse the asymptotic growth of the error for Hamiltonian flows due to small random perturbations. We compare the forward error with the reversibility error, showing their equivalence for linear flows on a compact phase space. The forward error, given by the root mean square deviation $\sigma(t)$ of the noisy flow, grows according to a power law if the system is integrable and according to an exponential law if it is chaotic. The autocorrelation and the fidelity, defined as the correlation of the perturbed flow with respect to the unperturbed one, exhibit an exponential decay as $\exp\left(-\sigma^2(t)\right)$. Some numerical examples such as the anharmonic oscillator and the H\'enon Heiles model confirm these results. We finally consider the effect of the observational noise on an integrable system, and show that the decay of correlations can only be observed after a sequence of measurements and that the multiplicative noise is more effective if the delay between two measurements is large.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figure

Integration of Strain Sensors on Additively Manufactured Implantable Devices

The development of personalized healthcare is rapidly growing thanks to the support of low-power electronics, advanced fabrication processes and secured data transmission protocols. Long-acting drug delivery systems able to sustain the release of therapeutics in a controllable manner can provide several advantages in the treatment of chronic diseases. Various systems under development control drug release from an implantable reservoir via concentration driven diffusion through nanofluidic membranes. Given the high drug concentration in the reservoir, an inward osmotic fluid transport occurs across the membrane, which counters the outward diffusion of drugs. The resulting osmotic pressure buildup may be sufficient to cause the failure of implants with associated risks to patients. Confidently assessing the osmotic pressure buildup requires testing in vivo. Here, using metal and polymer AM (additive manufacturing) processes, we designed and developed implantable drug reservoirs with embedded strain sensors to directly measure the osmotic pressure in drug delivery implants in vitro and in vivo

Electrochemical corrosion behavior of LDX 2101® duplex stainless steel in a fluoride‐containing environment

The effect of fluoride on the electrochemical corrosion behavior of an LDX 2101® duplex stainless steel (DSS) was studied. Open‐circuit potential (EOC) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements were carried out in artificial saliva and with the addition of fluoride (1 wt% NaF). The electrochemical corrosion behavior of the AISI 316L austenitic stainless steel (SS) was also evaluated for comparison. Both open‐circuit potential and EIS results indicate that DSS and austenitic SS undergo spontaneous passivation due to spontaneously formed oxide film passivating the metallic surface, in the simulated aggressive environments. However, LDX 2101® exhibits superior corrosion resistance as compared with AISI 316L, and this improvement is ascribed to the formation of a passive film which shows a higher protective effect than the one formed on AISI 316L

Literature and Psychoanalysis: Two lenses upon the primary scene

Literature, as well as mythology, is not only an object of inquiry, but also a fundamental source of knowledge for psychoanalysis. In this paper, I will observe the primary scene through two different lenses, that of literature and that of psychoanalysis. In the context of an analytic group therapy, a primary scene acquires new meanings in the après coup. The primary scene is thus a fundamental riddle that inhibits or stimulates our search for knowledge and our epistemophilic impulse. In the literary theory debate, some authors draw a distinction between two constitutive elements of a story, the fabula and the syuzhet. The former is the series of events in their reciprocal and internal relations, whereas the latter is the literary structure or distribution of events in the story. On the basis of the assessment of some clinical material, I will consider whether the primary scene could be conceived as a fabula that expands itself each time according to the different ways of the syuzhet

Which Surgical Strategy in Sepsis from Retro Peritoneal Colic Perforation

In the last decade, attention has been paid to severe abdominal infections which, due to their severity and difficulty in treatment, cause death in 30-60% of cases

Genome-wide identification of coding and non-coding conserved sequence tags in human and mouse genomes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The accurate detection of genes and the identification of functional regions is still an open issue in the annotation of genomic sequences. This problem affects new genomes but also those of very well studied organisms such as human and mouse where, despite the great efforts, the inventory of genes and regulatory regions is far from complete. Comparative genomics is an effective approach to address this problem. Unfortunately it is limited by the computational requirements needed to perform genome-wide comparisons and by the problem of discriminating between conserved coding and non-coding sequences. This discrimination is often based (thus dependent) on the availability of annotated proteins.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper we present the results of a comprehensive comparison of human and mouse genomes performed with a new high throughput grid-based system which allows the rapid detection of conserved sequences and accurate assessment of their coding potential. By detecting clusters of coding conserved sequences the system is also suitable to accurately identify potential gene loci.</p> <p>Following this analysis we created a collection of human-mouse conserved sequence tags and carefully compared our results to reliable annotations in order to benchmark the reliability of our classifications. Strikingly we were able to detect several potential gene loci supported by EST sequences but not corresponding to as yet annotated genes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Here we present a new system which allows comprehensive comparison of genomes to detect conserved coding and non-coding sequences and the identification of potential gene loci. Our system does not require the availability of any annotated sequence thus is suitable for the analysis of new or poorly annotated genomes.</p