Typical Products and Marketing Strategies for Sicilian Olive Oils

The research analyses the Sicilian Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) olive oils chain in the contest of Sicilian rural development and as an instrument aimed to add value to agricultural production. Olive oil is a characteristic product of Southern Italian and Mediterranean agriculture and one of the main agro-food production of some Southern Italian Regions; it plays a leading role in Sicilian agricultural production and it can be considered the mort representative typical products of Sicilian rural environment, rural culture and eno-gastronomic tradition. Origin labelled oils are a small but important part of extra virgin olive oil chain process. Even if the present production areas of Sicilian PDO olive oils cover a large part of the region and almost the whole region constitutes a wide quality oil production area, the sold amounts of these products result still lower than the potential. To propose a strategy aimed to improve Sicilian typical oil market, we analysed demand and supply, opportunities and threats. Improving proposals are classified according to supply chain subjects and marketing mix steps.Marketing,

Circadian rhythms and memory formation: regulation by chromatin remodeling

Epigenetic changes, such as DNA methylation or histone modification, can remodel the chromatin and regulate gene expression. Remodeling of chromatin provides an efficient mechanism of transducing signals, such as light or nutrient availability, to regulate gene expression. CLOCK:BMAL1 mediated activation of clock-controlled genes (CCGs) is coupled to circadian changes in histone modification at their promoters. Several chromatin modifiers, such as the deacetylases SIRT1 and HDAC3 or methyltransferase MLL1, have been shown to be recruited to the promoters of the CCGs in a circadian manner. Interestingly, the central element of the core clock machinery, the transcription factor CLOCK, also possesses histone acetyltransferase activity. Rhythmic expression of the CCGs is abolished in the absence of these chromatin modifiers. Recent research has demonstrated that chromatin remodeling is at the cross-roads of circadian rhythms and regulation of metabolism and aging. It would be of interest to identify if similar pathways exist in the epigenetic regulation of memory formation

The BioPrompt-box: an ontology-based clustering tool for searching in biological databases

Background: High-throughput molecular biology provides new data at an incredible rate, so that the increase in the size of biological databanks is enormous and very rapid. This scenario generates severe problems not only at indexing time, where suitable algorithmic techniques for data indexing and retrieval are required, but also at query time, since a user query may produce such a large set of results that their browsing and understanding becomes humanly impractical. This problem is well known to the Web community, where a new generation of Web search engines is being developed, like Vivisimo. These tools organize on-the-fly the results of a user query in a hierarchy of labeled folders that ease their browsing and knowledge extraction. We investigate this approach on biological data, and propose the so called The BioPrompt-boxsoftware system which deploys ontology-driven clustering strategies for making the searching process of biologists more efficient and effective. Results: The BioPrompt-box (Bpb) defines a document as a biological sequence plus its associated meta-data taken from the underneath databank - like references to ontologies or to external databanks, and plain texts as comments of researchers and (title, abstracts or even body of) papers. Bpboffers several tools to customize the search and the clustering process over its indexed documents. The user can search a set of keywords within a specific field of the document schema, or can execute Blastto find documents relative to homologue sequences. In both cases the search task returns a set of documents (hits) which constitute the answer to the user query. Since the number of hits may be large, Bpbclusters them into groups of homogenous content, organized as a hierarchy of labeled clusters. The user can actually choose among several ontology-based hierarchical clustering strategies, each offering a different view of the returned hits. Bpbcomputes these views by exploiting the meta-data present within the retrieved documents such as the references to Gene Ontology, the taxonomy lineage, the organism and the keywords. Of course, the approach is flexible enough to leave room for future additions of other meta-information. The ultimate goal of the clustering process is to provide the user with several different readings of the (maybe numerous) query results and show possible hidden correlations among them, thus improving their browsing and understanding. Conclusion: Bpb is a powerful search engine that makes it very easy to perform complex queries over the indexed databanks (currently only UNIPROT is considered). The ontology-based clustering approach is efficient and effective, and could thus be applied successfully to larger databanks, like GenBank or EMBL

A package for analytic simulation of econometric models

Some analytic simulation techniques for the analysis of the reduced form and of the dynamic properties of econometric models are described. Comparisons are made with analytical methods available for linear models.Econometric models; structural form; reduced form; analytic simulation; stochastic simulation; impact multipliers; dynamic multipliers; forecast errors; asymptotic standard errors

Simulation properties of alternative methods of estimation: an application to a model of the Italian economy

In this paper the results of six different estimation methods appliead to a linear aggregated model of the Italian economy are at first displayed. Afterwards, the inherent dynamic characteristics and the simulation properties of the six sets of estimates are analyzed. In no case the obtained results show a clear cut prevalence of one estimation method on the others, at least as far as the used indicators are concerned.Econometric models; estimation methods; simulation

Monte Carlo methods in econometrics: a package for the stochastic simulation

In this paper, a package implemented at the Scientific Center of IBM Italy in Pisa for the stochastic simulation of linear and non-linear econometric models is presented. After a survey on the adopted methodologies, the input requirements and the produced output are described in some details, using as a sample the Klein model-l. To finish, the performances of the program are analyzed in terms of storage requirements and computation time.Monte Carlo; econometric models; stochastic simulation

Divergences in the results of stochastic and deterministic simulation of an Italian non linear econometric model

The importance of the simulation (both deterministic and stochastic) in the validation process of a non linear econometric model is underlined. Synthetic results of a large set of simulations on a non linear model of the Italian economy are presented. The benefits and the risks of the stochastic simulation are discussed, with particular emphasis on the problem of the existence of divergences in the results of the two methods of simulation.Stochastic simulation; nonlinear econometric model; divergences of results; model of the Italian economy

The asymptotic distribution of impact multipliers for a non-linear structural econometric model,

The problem of deriving asymptotic statistical properties of impact multipliers from a consistent estimate of a structural non-linear econometric model is discussed. The theoretical aspects, which generalize the results derived by Goldberger, Nagar and Odeh for linear models, are analyzed in detail, as well as the numerical (computational) aspects. Numerical results are finally displayed for an econometric model well known in the literature.Asymptotic standard errors; impact multipliers; econometric models