Fee Structure, Financing, and Investment Decisions: The Case of REITs

We propose a model to show how the fee structure of listed Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) can increase instead of decrease Management Company opportunistic behaviors. Distinguishing between performance fees paid on the fund market value and management fees paid either on the Net Asset Value (NAV) or on the Gross Asset Value (GAV), we show that only the former aligns the Management Company and shareholder interests. In particular, we demonstrate that management fees lead Management Companies to make suboptimal financing and investment decisions in order to maximize their own wealth at the expense of shareholders. We test the predictions of the model empirically using a panel of Italian listed REITs.Real Estate Investment Trusts, Fees, Debt, Investment

Current meat quality challenges for the poultry industry – a review

Poultry meat consumption has increased substantially over the last decades and the lifestyle changes have also dramatically modified the way, in which poultry meat is marketed and consumed. Therefore food technologies have become part of the poultry industry and today much of the production is marketed in the form of cut-up and processed products. The global success of chicken meat is made possible by its affordability, nutritional and sensory properties, ease of preparation as well as the absence of religious restraints. Poultry meat consumption is expected to further increase in the near future. However, in addition to well-known issues such as microbiological hazards associated with poultry meat consumption, welfare problems as indirect effects of artificial selection for high growth-rate, negative consumer attitudes towards intensive production systems, also increased consumers’ perception of undifferentiated products and progressive loss of nutritional biodiversity of the meat should be not overlooked

Homogeneous deformations of toric pairs

We extend the Altmann–Mavlyutov construction of homogeneous deformations of affine toric varieties to the case of toric pairs (X,∂X), where X is an affine or projective toric variety and ∂X is its toric boundary. As an application, we generalise a result due to Ilten to the case of Fano toric pairs

On Mirror Symmetry for Fano varieties and for singularities

In this thesis we discuss some aspects of Mirror Symmetry for Fano varieties and toric singularities. We formulate a conjecture that relates the quantum cohomology of orbifold del Pezzo surfaces to a power series that comes from Fano polygons. We verify this conjecture in some cases, in joint work with A. Oneto. We generalise the Altmann–Mavlyutov construction of deformations of toric singularities: from Minkowski sums of polyhedra we construct deformations of affine toric pairs. Moreover, we propose an approach to the study of deformations of Gorenstein toric singularities of dimension 3 in the context of the Gross–Siebert program. We construct deformations of polarised projective toric varieties by deforming their affine cones. This method is explicit in terms of Cox coordinates and it allows us to give explicit equations for a construction, due to Ilten, which produces a deformation between two toric Fano varieties when their corresponding polytopes are mutation equivalent. We also provide examples of Gorenstein toric Fano 3-folds which are locally smoothable, but not globally smoothable.Open Acces

Some examples of non-smoothable Gorenstein Fano toric threefolds

We present a combinatorial criterion on reflexive polytopes of dimension 3 which gives a local-to-global obstruction for the smoothability of the corresponding Fano toric threefolds. As a result, we show examples of singular Gorenstein Fano toric threefolds which have compound Du Val, hence smoothable, singularities but are not smoothable.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

A 2d-Numerical Study on Slot Jet Applied to a Wind Turbine as a Circulation Control Technique

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version.A study on the feasibility of the Circulation Control (CC) technique for wind turbines is proposed. The CC was born in aeronautic field to improve the lift force on the wings, allowing the short take-off and landing of aircraft. It consists in blowing air at a relatively high speed over a rounded trailing edge. The thin jet of air remains attached to the convex curved surface, imposing a certain curvature to the outer streamlines, and, hence, increasing the lift force of the airfoil. Aim of this study is to numerically investigate the advantages on a wind turbine, based on the S809 airfoil, taking into account the energy related considerations, as the cost of the jet production. The paper, after a thorough evaluation of the increase of the generated power, finds that this technique could be promising in the energy harvesting aim

Effect of Sodium Chloride Replacement with Potassium Chloride on Quality Traits of Bicarbonate-Marinated Turkey Breast Meat

This study aims to evaluate the possibility to formulate low-sodium bicarbonate-marinated turkey breast meat. In total, 60 meat cuts (100 7 50 7 30mm) were divided into four treatments: B1 (0.5% sodium bicarbonate and 0% sodium chloride replacement), B2 (0.5% sodium bicarbonate and 15% sodium chloride replacement), B3 (0.5% sodium bicarbonate and 30% sodium chloride replacement), and B4 (0.5% sodium bicarbonate and 45% sodium chloride replacement). The results showed that sodium replacement up to 45% had no impact on texture (as represented by Allo-Kramer shear values) and water activity. After cooking, Group B1 exhibited the highest L* value (72.1) and the lowest b* (6.6) when compared to other groups. In conclusion, replacing sodium chloride with potassium chloride up to 45% in the presence of sodium bicarbonate did not affect negatively several quality traits (sensory traits, composition, and texture, etc.)