Change management and new expertise in AEC firms: improvement in environmental competence

The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of the change management inherent Architecture, Engineering and Construction firms, focusing the attention on the transformation made by environmental issues and their related drivers. Over the last years, building sector has become increasingly complex, due to the heavy demand of a wide range of requirements and to the globalization of the market. This leads on one side the innovation of digital tools, as a result of the development of Information and Communication Technology – ICT, and on the other the division of labour in AEC firms, that is socially spread with an even more highly specialization. The fragmentation can take place in two directions: along what is conventionally defined as the vertical dimension of the process (i.e. the sequence of operations that proceed from inception to implementation phase) as well as along the horizontal dimension (i.e. operations occurring at any given stage). The paper shows the results of the analysis carried out on some of the AEC firms established at international level, highlighting the inner structure, organization, competences and tools used in practice. The configuration of the process structure and the consequent division of labour turn out to be established by a set of internal conditions, generated by the project itself as well as the available technology. Furthermore, the decision to structure internal firm hierarchies or to have external equipment (both experts and tools) depends on the cost that the firms should undertake in order to acquire knowledge, services or products that are external to their sphere of governance. The overview gives an evidence that the explosion of product/service options and the connected specialized systems for the whole building, from exterior cladding to computer-controlled HVAC, require even more a highly amount of knowledge and skills and the demand of new competences and expertise. In particular, the study shows the increasingly request in AEC firms of experts and tools, to deal with the challenging environmental topics. Firms themselves are taking advantage by the integration of environmental topics and goals, as proven by the fact that in the top ten global AEC firms seven of them are considered environmentally friendly (source: ENR). The paper highlights that many drivers are pushing effort in that direction: on one hand, policy and legislation at international and national level, incentive programs and also voluntary certification such as Green Building Rating System; and on the other hand design firms themselves, stimulated by competiveness or, in few case, by their philosophy

High Instantaneous Spring Stocking Rates to Improve Year Round Herbage Utilization in Argentine Dairy Production

In much of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 60% of the year’s pasture production occurs during spring. This trial was carried out to test the minimum area necessary for grazing in the period of maximum pasture growth in the 3 to 4 months of spring, so that in turn the maximum potential area for forage conservation could be estimated. At the two levels of herbage allowance aimed for (achieving 18.1 and 36.6 kgDM/cow/d), herbage intake was 11.1 and 13.4 kgDM/cow/d and milk production 20.9 and 22.3 l/cow/d respectively. While these differences were not significant, the trial demonstrated a potential of 70 % of pasture area could be available for forage conservation in a normal spring, which compares with 5 to 15 % with some of the best milk producers

The Worst Case GARCH-Copula CVaR Approach for Portfolio Optimisation: Evidence from Financial Markets.

Portfolio optimisation aims to efficiently find optimal proportions of portfolio assets, given certain constraints, and has been well-studied. While portfolio optimisation ascertains asset combinations most suited to investor requirements, numerous real-world problems impact its simplicity, e.g., investor preferences. Trading restrictions are also commonly faced, and must be met. However, in adding constraints to Markowitz's basic mean-variance model, problem complexity increases, causing difficulties for exact optimisation approaches to find large problem solutions inside reasonable timeframes. This paper addresses portfolio optimisation complexities by applying the Worst Case GARCH-Copula Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) approach. In particular, the GARCH-copula methodology is used to model the portfolio dependence structure, and the Worst Case CVaR (WCVaR) is considered as an alternative risk measure, able to provide a more accurate evaluation of financial risk compared to traditional approaches. Copulas model the marginal of each asset separately (which may be any distribution) and also the interdependencies between assets. This allows an accurate risk to investment assessment to be applied, in order to compare it with the traditional methods. In this paper we present two case studies to evaluate the performance of the WCVaR and compare it against the VaR measure. The first case study focuses on the time series of the closing prices of six major market indexes, while the second case study considers a large dataset of the share prices of the Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC) oil-based companies. Results show that the values of WCVaR are always higher than those of VaR, demonstrating that the WCVaR approach provides a more accurate assessment of financial risk

Water Use Efficiency in Chilean and Argentine Humid Temperate Grass-Legume Pastures

At two sites in Argentina and Chile five levels of water input were applied to four sown pastures of varying ages during spring and summer. The pastures consisted principally of C3 grasses and legumes, some of which were sown such as Lolium perenne, Trifolium repens, Dactylis glomerata. Dry matter (DM) production was measured and related to the estimated total evapotranspiration (ET): responses were both highly linear. Both responses to ET and absolute yields were higher at the Argentinian than at the Chilean site: respectively 10.7 and 15.2 kg DM/mm water evapotranspired. Nevertheless the calculated indices of sensitivity (Ky) of Doorenbos and Kassam (1979) were similar for the two sites, indicating a similar priority for irrigation in terms of expected responses

Internationalisation, cultural distance and country characteristics: a Bayesian analysis of SME's financial performance

Relying on the accounting data of a panel of 403 Italian manufacturing SMEs collected over a period of 5 years, we find results suggesting that multinationality per se does not impact on the economic performance of international small and medium sized firms. It is the characteristics of the country selected i.e. the political hazard, the financial stability and the economic performance that significantly influence SMEs financial performance. The management implication for small and medium sized firms selecting and entering new geographic markets is significant, since our results show that for SMEs it is the market selection process that really matters and not the degree of multinationality

Tolerance of chronic hypercapnia by the European eel Anguilla anguilla

European eels were exposed for 6 weeks to water CO2 partial pressures (PCO\ub7) from ambient (approx.0.8\ub7mmHg), through 15\ub11\ub7mmHg and 30\ub11\ub7mmHg to 45\ub11\ub7mmHg in water with a total hardness of240\ub7mg\ub7l\u20131 as CaCO3, pH 8.2, at 23\ub11\ub0C. Arterial plasma PCO\ub7 equilibrated at approximately 2\ub7mmHg above water PCO\ub7 in all groups, and plasma bicarbonate accumulated up to 72\ub7mmol\ub7l\u20131 in the group at a water PCO\ub7 of 45\ub7mmHg. This was associated with an equimolar loss of plasma Cl\u2013, which declined to 71\ub7mmol\ub7l\u20131 at the highest water PCO\ub7. Despite this, extracellular acid\u2013base compensation was incomplete; all hypercapnic groups tolerated chronic extracellular acidoses and reductions in arterial blood O2 content (CaO\ub7), of progressive severity with increasing PCO\ub7. All hypercapnic eels, however, regulated the intracellular pH of heart and white muscle to the same levels as normocapnic animals. Hypercapnia had no effect on such indicators of stress as plasma catecholamine or cortisol levels, plasma osmolality or standard metabolic rate. Furthermore, although CaO\ub7 was reduced by approximately 50% at the highest PCO\ub7, there was no effect of hypercapnia on the eels\u2019 tolerance of hypoxia, aerobic metabolic scope or sustained swimming performance. The results indicate that, at the levels tested, chronic hypercapnia was not a physiological stress for the eel, which can tolerate extracellular acidosis and extremely low Cl\u2013 levels while compensating tissue intracellular pH, and which can meet the O2 requirements of routine and active metabolism despite profound hypoxaemia

Foodborne Salmonellosis in Italy: Characterization of Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium and Monophasic Variant 4,[5],12:i- Isolated from Salami and Human Patients.

Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (STm) and its monophasic variant 4,[5],12:i:- (VMSTm) have been responsible for an increased number of foodborne infections in humans in Europe in recent years. The aim of this study was to investigate the origin of three foodborne salmonellosis outbreaks that occurred in Pavia Province (Lombardy region, northern Italy) in 2010. Phenotypic and genetic characteristics of the STm and VMSTm isolates from patients and from food that were recovered in the framework of the three outbreaks were evaluated through serotyping, phage typing, antimicrobial susceptibility testing, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and multiple-locus variable-number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA). Salami from three artisan producers, which had all purchased meat from the same slaughterhouse, was the food source of infection in outbreak I. STm isolates were recovered from salami and patients with symptoms of gastroenteritis. These isolates had the same PFGE type and the same rare MLVA profile (3-18-9-NA-211). The same molecular profiles were found in an STm isolate from a salami, which likely was the source of another family outbreak (II). A VMSTm strain with common phenotypic and molecular profiles was isolated from three hospitalized patients and identified as the cause of another putative outbreak (III). During the following 3 years (2011 through 2013), 360 salami produced in Pavia Province were monitored for the presence of S. enterica . In 2011, no STm and VMSTm isolates were recovered from 159 salami tested. During 2012 and 2013, 13.9% of 201 tested salami harbored S. enterica , and half of the isolates were VMSTm, mainly in salami from those artisan producers involved in the previous outbreaks. These isolates were genetically variable, especially in terms of MLVA profiles. The data collected suggest that from 2012, VMSTm has replaced STm in the environments of the salami producers monitored in this study, and these data confirm the dominance of this emergent serovar along the pork supply chain