The EU’s Proposed Reform of Directors’ Duties and the Missing Link to Soft Law

In this paper, we investigate whether reform of EU company law is needed to make corporate governance more sustainable. We also consider some issues to which the EU proposals on company law and sustainability paid scant attention, such as the role of corporate governance codes and other types of soft law, mainly of international origin, in promoting sustainable governance. In addition, we underline that in recent years the EU has adopted several measures which offer better prospects for sustainable governance than the reform of directors' duties the EU is currently debating. We conclude that the failure to take corporate governance codes and the existing regulatory framework into account could seriously impair pending reforms of directors' duties and their link to sustainability

A method for the assessment and compensation of positioning errors in industrial robots

Industrial Robots (IR) are currently employed in several production areas as they enable flexible automation and high productivity on a wide range of operations. The IR low positioning performance, however, has limited their use in high precision applications, namely where positioning errors assume importance for the process and directly affect the quality of the final products. Common approaches to increase the IR accuracy rely on empirical relations which are valid for a single IR model. Also, existing works show no uniformity regarding the experimental procedures followed during the IR performance assessment and identification phases. With the aim to overcome these restrictions and further extend the IR usability, this paper presents a general method for the evaluation of IR pose and path accuracy, primarily focusing on instrumentation and testing procedures. After a detailed description of the experimental campaign carried out on a KUKA KR210 R2700 Prime robot under different operating conditions (speed, payload and temperature state), a novel online compensation approach is presented and validated. The position corrections are processed with an industrial PC by means of a purposely developed application which receives as input the position feedback from a laser tracker. Experiments conducted on straight paths confirmed the validity of the proposed approach, which allows remarkable reductions (in the order of 90%) of the orthogonal deviations and in-line errors during the robot movements

MAC Europe 1991 campaign: AIRSAR/AVIRIS data integration for agricultural test site classification

During summer 1991, multi-sensor data were acquired over the Italian test site 'Otrepo Pavese', an agricultural flat area in Northern Italy. This area has been the Telespazio pilot test site for experimental activities related to agriculture applications. The aim of the investigation described in the following paper is to assess the amount of information contained in the AIRSAR (Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar) and AVIRIS (Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer) data, and to evaluate classification results obtained from each sensor data separately and from the combined dataset. All classifications are examined by means of the resulting confusion matrices and Khat coefficients. Improvements of the classification results obtained by using the integrated dataset are finally evaluated

Perenniality, more than genotypes, shapes biological and chemical rhizosphere composition of perennial wheat lines

Perennial grains provide various ecosystem services compared to the annual counterparts thanks to their extensive root system and permanent soil cover. However, little is known about the evolution and diversification of perennial grains rhizosphere and its ecological functions over time. In this study, a suite of -OMICSs - metagenomics, enzymomics, metabolomics and lipidomics - was used to compare the rhizosphere environment of four perennial wheat lines at the first and fourth year of growth in comparison with an annual durum wheat cultivar and the parental species Thinopyrum intermedium. We hypothesized that wheat perenniality has a greater role in shaping the rhizobiome composition, biomass, diversity, and activity than plant genotypes because perenniality affects the quality and quantity of C input – mainly root exudates – hence modulating the plant-microbes crosstalk. In support of this hypothesis, the continuous supply of sugars in the rhizosphere along the years created a favorable environment for microbial growth which is reflected in a higher microbial biomass and enzymatic activity. Moreover, modification in the rhizosphere metabolome and lipidome over the years led to changes in the microbial community composition favoring the coexistence of more diverse microbial taxa, increasing plant tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Despite the dominance of the perenniality effect, our data underlined that the OK72 line rhizobiome distinguished from the others by the increase in abundance of Pseudomonas spp., most of which are known as potential beneficial microorganisms, identifying this line as a suitable candidate for the study and selection of new perennial wheat lines

High prevalence of patent foramen ovale in migraine with aura

In this study we evaluated the presence of patent foramen ovale (PFO) in a cohort of 25 consecutive patients suffering from migraine with aura (MA) during an attack presenting to the emergency ward of an Italian hospital. Patients underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with contrast medium, routine coagulation tests, contrast transcranial echocolour–coded sonography (c–TCCS) and transoesophageal echocardiography (TEE). Of the enrolled patients, 88.7% showed a PFO according to the c–TCCS test, whereas only in 72% TEE confirmed the presence of PFO. This discordance could be due to the fact that c–TCCS is more sensitive even with shunts with minimal capacity also located in the pulmonary vasculature. After surgical treatment of the PFO, MA disappeared within two months. Also, the treatment with warfarin as well as with acetylsalicylic acid and flunarizine was able to dramatically reduce the frequency of migraine attacks. These data indicate a higher prevalence of PFO in MA vs. normal population (OR=2.92) and could suggest that the presence of arteriovenous (AV) shunts could represent a trigger for MA attacks as well as for stroke, but more studies are needed to confirm this preliminary hypothesis

Immunohistochemical evidence of a cytokine and chemokine network in three patients with Erdheim-Chester disease: Implications for pathogenesis.

OBJECTIVE: Erdheim-Chester disease (ECD) is a rare form of non-Langerhans' cell histiocytosis (LCH) of unknown etiology, characterized by diffuse histiocyte infiltration of bones and soft tissue. The purpose of this study was to assess cell proliferation and expression of cytokines, chemokines, and chemokine receptors that may potentially be important in histiocyte accumulation in ECD lesions. METHODS: Biopsies were performed on 3 patients with ECD. The diagnosis of the disease was based on clinical signs including typical radiologic osteosclerosis, and on the detection of foamy CD68+,CD1a- non-Langerhans' cell histiocytes on histologic examination. The expression of the proliferation marker Ki-67 as well as of selected chemokine/chemokine receptor pairs and cytokines was analyzed by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: In all samples, Ki-67 was undetectable in CD68+ histiocytes. Conversely, these cells expressed the chemokines CCL2 (monocyte chemotactic protein 1), CCL4/macrophage inflammatory protein 1beta (MIP-1beta), CCL5/RANTES, CCL20/MIP-3alpha, and CCL19/MIP-3beta, and their counter-receptors CCR1, CCR2, CCR3, CCR5, CCR6, and CCR7. Moreover, ECD histiocytes expressed interferon-gamma-inducible 10-kd protein (CXCL10), which is specifically induced by interferon-gamma, and interleukin-6 and RANKL, which are both implicated in bone remodeling. Finally, all cases showed a Th1-type lymphocyte infiltrate. CONCLUSION: Our data indicate that, similar to LCH, ECD lesions are characterized by a complex cytokine and chemokine network, which may orchestrate histiocyte activation and accumulation through an autocrine loop and contribute to the pathogenesis of the disease