8,377 research outputs found
Pirate or subscriber? An exploratory study on italian consumers' music habits
Purpose of the paper: This paper analyzes Italian consumers’ music habits in
terms of online piracy behaviors and their interest toward subscription-based music
services (SBMS), i.e. services that for a small monthly fee give users legal access to vast
music libraries across multiple devices. The objective is to try and profile a piracy-prone
consumer and explore if SBMS could be a viable alternative to online music piracy in
Italy, where the general piracy rate is very high.
Methodology: The study is based on an empirical quantitative analysis through the
collection of 505 questionnaires completed by Italian consumers.
Findings: The paper highlights how Italian consumers reflect the ‘attitude-behavior
gap’ in music consumption, as they perceive online music piracy as ethically wrong, yet
they still show low preference for the legal, reasonably priced choice (such as SBMS).
Younger, male, lower education, students have the highest propensity towards online
piracy. In addition, consumers’ awareness, familiarity and interest in subscriptionbased
music services are still very low.
Research limitations: The limitations of the paper are linked mainly to the adapted
scales, to the omission of alternative determinants of attitude towards piracy, to the
composition of the sample and for analyzing only two subscription-based music services
(Napster and Spotify).
Managerial implications: The results call for greater efforts by music industry
actors and public institutions to educate Italian consumers about the consequences of
their online piracy behavior and the possible solutions offered by SBMS.
Originality of the paper: This paper is the first to focus on Italian consumers’
music habits, their attitude and behavior towards online piracy and their interest
toward subscription-based music services as a viable alternative
Nuclear response for the Skyrme effective interaction with zero-range tensor terms. II. Sum rules and instabilities
The formalism of linear response theory for Skyrme forces including tensor
terms presented in article [1] is generalized for the case of a Skyrme energy
density functional in infinite matter. We also present analytical results for
the odd-power sum rules, with particular attention to the inverse energy
weighted sum rule, , as a tool to detect instabilities in Skyrme
functionals.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Thermal neutron captures on and He
We report on a study of the and n\,^3He radiative captures at thermal
neutron energies, using wave functions obtained from either chiral or
conventional two- and three-nucleon realistic potentials with the
hyperspherical harmonics method, and electromagnetic currents derived in chiral
effective field theory up to one loop. The predicted and n\,^3He cross
sections are in good agreement with data, but exhibit a significant dependence
on the input Hamiltonian. A comparison is also made between these and new
results for the and n\,^3He cross sections obtained in the conventional
framework for both potentials and currents.Comment: 4 pages, 4 eps figures; references added; corrections to text and
abstract as suggested by referee adde
Tools for incorporating a D-wave contribution in Skyrme energy density functionals
The possibility of adding a D-wave term to the standard Skyrme effective interaction has been widely considered in the past. Such a term has been shown to appear in the next-to-next-to-leading order of the Skyrme pseudo-potential. The aim of the present article is to provide the necessary tools to incorporate this term in a fitting procedure: first, a mean-field equation written in spherical symmetry in order to describe spherical nuclei and second, the response function to detect unphysical instabilities. With these tools it will be possible to build a new fitting procedure to determine the coupling constants of the new functional
E-ABR in patients with cochlear implant: A comparison between patients with malformed cochlea and normal cochlea
OBJECTIVES: This study aims to compare the electrical auditory brainstem response (EABR) following cochlear implant (CI) surgery in pediatric subjects with cochlear malformation and a normal cochlea, in order to assess the sensitivity of EABR and to evaluate the surgery outcome. MATERIALS and METHODS: A total of 26 pediatric subjects who were deaf and scheduled for CI surgery were enrolled into this case control study. Group A (n=20) included subjects with a normo-conformed cochlea. Group B (n=6) included subjects with cochlear malformation. Subjects were evaluated with EABR immediately (T0) and 6 months (T1) post-CI surgery. The EABR Waves III and V average amplitude and latency were compared across time, separately for each group, and across groups, separately for each time. RESULTS: Auditory brainstem response (ABR) could only be recorded in Group A. We were able to record EABR from all subjects at T0 and T1, and waves III and V were present in all the recorded signals. There were no statistically significant differences between T0 and T1 in EABR Waves III and V in terms of average amplitude and latency in neither group. When comparing Groups A and B, the only statistically significant difference was the average amplitude of wave V, both at T0 and T1. CONCLUSION: EABR is a valid tool to measure the auditory nerve integrity after CI surgery in patients with a normal and malformed cochlea, as shown by its ability to measure waves III and V when ABR is absent. The EABR testing should be performed before and after CI surgery, and EABR should be used as a measure of outcome, especially in patients with a malformed cochlea
How Power-to-Gas strategy could reduce national Natural Gas consumption over the energy crisis period
Europe is facing an energy crisis caused by the dramatic rise in gas prices. This situation is damaging the European economy and urgent measures to reduce gas consumption are crucial in the short term. This paper aims to analyse the potential contribution of the Power-to-Gas strategy to reduce the Italian consumption of Natural Gas (NG) in the context of the current energy crisis. To do so, the Italian energy system has been modelled by means the EnergyPLAN software. The electrolysers' installation in the Italian energy systems has been simulated in combination with different levels of additional RES installation. The hydrogen production and the NG abatement potential have been calculated in each simulated scenario. Furthermore, the Natural Gas Abatement Cost (NGAC) has been assessed. By installing 1.5 GW of electrolysers, along with an additional 25 GW of renewables, about 140 ktonH2/year can be produced only by exploiting the RES excess. The total NG reduction due to both the RES generation and the hydrogen injection is more than 60 TWh/year. The NG abatement cost varies between 45 and 54 €/MWh. At current gas prices, it is therefore extremely cheaper to invest in a drastic reduction of natural gas than to buy the same amount of gas on the wholesale market. Therefore, the current energy crisis can be an opportunity to accelerate the energy transition process. The proposed solutions allow a substantial reduction in gas consumption with the consequent reduction in emissions and the country's energy dependency
Discrete surface growth process as a synchronization mechanism for scale free complex networks
We consider the discrete surface growth process with relaxation to the
minimum [F. Family, J. Phys. A {\bf 19} L441, (1986).] as a possible
synchronization mechanism on scale-free networks, characterized by a degree
distribution , where is the degree of a node and
his broadness, and compare it with the usually applied
Edward-Wilkinson process [S. F. Edwards and D. R. Wilkinson, Proc. R. Soc.
London Ser. A {\bf 381},17 (1982) ]. In spite of both processes belong to the
same universality class for Euclidean lattices, in this work we demonstrate
that for scale-free networks with exponents this is not true.
Moreover, we show that for these ubiquitous cases the Edward-Wilkinson process
enhances spontaneously the synchronization when the system size is increased,
which is a non-physical result. Contrarily, the discrete surface growth process
do not present this flaw and is applicable for every .Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Local chiral interactions and magnetic structure of few-nucleon systems
The magnetic form factors of H, H, and He, deuteron
photodisintegration cross sections at low energies, and deuteron threshold
electrodisintegration cross sections at backward angles in a wide range of
momentum transfers, are calculated with the chiral two-nucleon (and
three-nucleon) interactions including intermediate states that have
recently been constructed in configuration space. The =3 wave
functions are obtained from hyperspherical-harmonics solutions of the
Schr\"odinger equation. The electromagnetic current includes one- and two-body
terms, the latter induced by one- and two-pion exchange (OPE and TPE,
respectively) mechanisms and contact interactions. The contributions associated
with intermediate states are only retained at the OPE level, and are
neglected in TPE loop (tree-level) corrections to two-body (three-body) current
operators. Expressions for these currents are derived and regularized in
configuration space for consistency with the interactions. The low-energy
constants that enter the contact few-nucleon systems. The predicted form
factors and deuteron electrodisintegration cross section are in excellent
agreement with experiment for momentum transfers up to 2--3 fm. However,
the experimental values for the deuteron photodisintegration cross section are
consistently underestimated by theory, unless use is made of the Siegert form
of the electric dipole transition operator. A complete analysis of the results
is provided, including the clarification of the origin of the aforementioned
discrepancy.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figure
Jamming in complex networks with degree correlation
We study the effects of the degree-degree correlations on the pressure
congestion J when we apply a dynamical process on scale free complex networks
using the gradient network approach. We find that the pressure congestion for
disassortative (assortative) networks is lower (bigger) than the one for
uncorrelated networks which allow us to affirm that disassortative networks
enhance transport through them. This result agree with the fact that many real
world transportation networks naturally evolve to this kind of correlation. We
explain our results showing that for the disassortative case the clusters in
the gradient network turn out to be as much elongated as possible, reducing the
pressure congestion J and observing the opposite behavior for the assortative
case. Finally we apply our model to real world networks, and the results agree
with our theoretical model
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