How to measure Corporate Social Responsibility

Compliance with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standards may require capacity that varies from one aspect to the other and companies in different industries may encounter different difficulties. Since CSR is a multidimensional concept, latent variable models may be usefully employed to provide a unidimensional measure of the ability of a firm to fulfil CSR standards. A methodology based on Item Response Theory has been implemented on the KLD sustainability dataset. Results show that companies in the industries Oil & Gas, Industrials, Basic Materials and Telecommunications have a higher difficulty to meet the CSR standards. Criteria based on Environment, Community relations and Product quality have a large capacity to select the firms with the best CSR performance, while Governance does not exhibit similar behavior. A stock selection based on the ranking of the firms according to our CSR measure outperforms, in terms of risk-adjusted returns, stock selection based on other criteria.Socially Responsible Investment, CSR ability, latent variable model, item response theory

Showering Cosmogenic Muons in A Large Liquid Scintillator

We present the results of FLUKA simulations of the propagation of cosmogenic muons in a 20 kton spherical liquid scintillator detector underneath 700 to 900 meters of rock. A showering muon is one which deposits at least 3 GeV in the detector in addition to ionization energy. We find that 20 percent of muons are showering and a further 10 percent of muon events are muon bundles of which more than one muon enters the detector. In this range the showering and bundle fractions are robust against changes in the depth and topography, thus the total shower and bundle rate for a given experiment can be obtained by combining our results with an estimate for the total muon flux. One consequence is that a straightforward adaptation of the full detector showering muon cuts used by KamLAND to JUNO or RENO 50 would yield a nearly vanishing detector efficiency.Comment: 24 pages, 18 figures, v4: Improved precision of bundle rate

Wage incentive profiles in dual labour markets

We propose a modified version of the Shapiro-Stiglitz’s (1984) efficiency wage model by introducing temporary contracts in the standard setup. New theoretical insights emerge on the incentive problem faced by workers and firms. We argue that the existence of temporary contracts broaden the incentive menu available to employers and that the optimal incentive structure can be sustained as an equi- librium outcome only if permanent contracts do not disappear. We also provide an alternative explanation of the wage penalty suffered by temporary workers even if standard models of efficiency wages would predict higher compensations for workers facing a higher job loss risk.Dual labour market, efficiency wages, wage differentials

Vetoing Cosmogenic Muons in A Large Liquid Scintillator

At upcoming medium baseline reactor neutrino experiments the spallation 9Li background will be somewhat larger than the inverse beta decay reactor neutrino signal. We use new FLUKA simulations of spallation backgrounds to optimize a class of veto strategies and find that surprisingly the optimal veto for the mass hierarchy determination has a rejection efficiency below 90%. The unrejected background has only a modest effect on the physics goals. For example $\Delta\chi^2$ for the hierarchy determination falls by 1.4 to 3 points depending on the muon tracking ability. The optimal veto strategy is essentially insensitive to the tracking ability, consisting of 2 meter radius, 1.1 second cylindrical vetoes of well tracked muons with showering energies above 3 to 4 GeV and 0.7 second full detector vetoes for poorly tracked muons above 15 to 18 GeV. On the other hand, as the uncertainty in theta12 will be dominated by the uncertainty in the reactor neutrino spectrum and not statistical fluctuations, the optimal rejection efficiency for the measurement of theta12 is 93% in the case of perfect tracking.Comment: 29 pages, 25 figure

Characterization of dust activity on Mars from MY27 to MY32 by PFS-MEX observations

We present spatial and temporal distributions of dust on Mars from Ls = 331 in MY26 until Ls = 80 in MY33 retrieved from the measurements taken by the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) aboard Mars Express. In agreement with previous observations, large dust opacity is observed mostly in the southern hemisphere spring/summer and particularly over regions of higher terrain and large topographic variation. We present a comparison with dust opacities obtained from Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) - Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) measurements. We found good consistency between observations of two instruments during overlapping interval (Ls = 331 in MY26 until Ls = 77 in MY27). We found a different behavior of the dust opacity with latitude in the various Martian years (inter-annual variations). A global dust storm occurred in MY28. We observe a different spatial distribution, a later occurrence and dissipation of the dust maximum activity in MY28 than in other Martian years. A possible precursor signal to the global dust storm in MY 28 is observed at Ls = 200 - 235 especially over west Hellas. Heavy dust loads alter atmospheric temperatures. Due to the absorption of solar radiation and emission of infrared radiation to space by dust vertically non-uniformly distributed, a strong heating of high atmospheric levels (40 - 50 km) and cooling below around 30 km are observed.Comment: in press in Icarus. 47 pages, 15 figure

Hepatitis C virus relies on lipoproteins for its life cycle

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects over 150 million people worldwide. In most cases, HCV infection becomes chronic causing liver disease ranging from fibrosis to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Viral persistence and pathogenesis are due to the ability of HCV to deregulate specific host processes, mainly lipid metabolism and innate immunity. In particular, HCV exploits the lipoprotein machineries for almost all steps of its life cycle. The aim of this review is to summarize current knowledge concerning the interplay between HCV and lipoprotein metabolism. We discuss the role played by members of lipoproteins in HCV entry, replication and virion production