The economic value of olive plantation in rural areas. A study on a hill region between Italy and Slovenia

This study was undertaken with the primary purpose of assessing the welfare gain to local residents resulting from olive trees. A secondary but important aim was to underline the multifunctional role of olive farming. In fact, we know that olive plantation has potentially socially benefits. In particular, it has potentially a lot of positive social effects in rural areas depending on plantation characteristics and farming practices. Therefore, the first section of this paper reviews the main features connected to the multifunctional role of olive farming. Multifunctional role of olive farming is well known in the EU, but it is still needed the institutional intervention in favour of farmers, due to the structural difficulties of olive production sector. Later sections concentrate on a survey carried out in order to estimate the economic value of the rural landscape, focusing in particular on olive trees in a hill region between Italy and Slovenia. From the conducted survey we gauged citizens’ WTP to introduce olive trees in the landscape. Survey data was collected by means of questionnaires. We applied the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) in order to assess the citizens’ Willingness To Pay (WTP) for specific rural landscape features. The paper ends with some conclusions about the positive results obtained in olive plantation valuation questions.olive plantation, multifunctionality, willingness to pay, rural landscape valuation, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Determinanti e strategie del post-vendita

L'articolo prende spunto dalle evidenze emerse da una ricerca condotta sul tema dei processi post-vendita nel contesto delle imprese operanti in diversi settori di beni durevoli. In particolare, l'articolo, dopo aver messo in luce il ruolo dei servizi post-vendita nel processo di creazione di valore aziendale, presenta ed analizza le diverse possibili configurazioni strategiche che tali attivit\ue0 possono assumere

For what they are, not for what they bring: The signaling value of gender for financial resource acquisition in academic spin-offs

Due to the novelty of their technology base and the multiple goals pursued by their entrepreneurial teams, academic spin-offs (ASOs) suffer information asymmetries with investors that impair their ability to raise finance. In line with the signaling theory, we expect that observable features of an ASO can mitigate such information asymmetries, especially in conditions of higher uncertainty about the venture. We put forward that a larger share of capital owned by female shareholders adds to such uncertainty due to their outsider condition in academic entrepreneurship and the negative bias of investors against female entrepreneurs. Through a multi-level Tobit regression on a sample of Italian ASOs, we find that the amount of private investment is negatively associated with the degree of female ownership and positively associated with the investment of the parent university and full professors. The latter two factors moderate the relationship between the degree of female ownership and private investment so that it becomes less negative. The results provide evidence of the persisting gender gap in entrepreneurial finance and highlight the role of parent universities in closing such a gap

The dark side of leadership: A systematic review of creativity and innovation

It is believed that workplace creativity and innovation are fostered by positive leader behaviours and positive workplace relationships and hindered by the opposite. However, some challenge this view, arguing that creativity and innovation can actually be fostered when employees experience what is increasingly referred to as the dark side of leadership and workplace mistreatment. Research on this area is sparse, contradictory and overly confusing. We begin by defining the dark side of leadership and then provide a comprehensive systematic review of 145 empirical studies on the topic. We review research on a broad range of constructs related to leadership and workplace mistreatment, such as abusive supervision, authoritarian leadership, destructive leadership, narcissistic leadership and relationship conflict. Our review reports the main effects, summarizes the results of the mediating and moderating variables, and highlights methodological shortcomings of the past literature. On this basis, several recommendations are made to advance this field of research

Gene expression response of the alga Fucus virsoides (Fucales, Ochrophyta) to glyphosate solution exposure

Fucus virsoides is an ecologically important canopy-forming brown algae endemic to the Adriatic Sea. Once widespread in marine coastal areas, this species underwent a rapid population decline and is now confined to small residual areas. Although the reasons behind this progressive disappearance are still a matter of debate, F. virsoides may suffer, like other macroalgae, from the potential toxic effects of glyphosate-based herbicides. Here, through a transcriptomic approach, we investigate the molecular basis of the high susceptibility of this species to glyphosate solution, previously observed at the morphological and eco-physiological levels. By simulating runoff event in a factorial experiment, we exposed F. virsoides to glyphosate (Roundup\uae 2.0), either alone or in association with nutrient enrichment, highlighting significant alterations of gene expression profiles that were already visible after three days of exposure. In particular, glyphosate exposure determined the near-complete expression shutdown of several genes involved in photosynthesis, protein synthesis and stress response molecular pathways. Curiously, these detrimental effects were partially mitigated by nutrient supplementation, which may explain the survival of relict population in confined areas with high nutrient inputs. Our results show that glyphosate impairs the expression of genes involved in photosynthesis and protein synthesis in F. virsoides

CDK-dependent nuclear localization of B-Cyclin Clb1 promotes FEAR activation during meiosis I in budding yeast

Cyclin-dependent kinases (CDK) are master regulators of the cell cycle in eukaryotes. CDK activity is regulated by the presence, post-translational modification and spatial localization of its regulatory subunit cyclin. In budding yeast, the B-cyclin Clb1 is phosphorylated and localizes to the nucleus during meiosis I. However the functional significance of Clb1's phosphorylation and nuclear localization and their mutual dependency is unknown. In this paper, we demonstrate that meiosis-specific phosphorylation of Clb1 requires its import to the nucleus but not vice versa. While Clb1 phosphorylation is dependent on activity of both CDK and polo-like kinase Cdc5, its nuclear localization requires CDK but not Cdc5 activity. Furthermore we show that increased nuclear localization of Clb1 during meiosis enhances activation of FEAR (Cdc Fourteen Early Anaphase Release) pathway. We discuss the significance of our results in relation to regulation of exit from meiosis I

Stochastic model of hysteresis

The methods of the probability theory have been used in order to build up a new model of hysteresis. It turns out that the reversal points of the control parameter (e. g., the magnetic field) are Markov points which determine the stochastic evolution of the process. It has been shown that the branches of the hysteresis loop are converging to fixed limit curves when the number of cyclic back-and-forth variations of the control parameter between two consecutive reversal points is large enough. This convergence to limit curves gives a clear explanation of the accommodation process. The accommodated minor loops show the return-point memory property but this property is obviously absent in the case of non-accommodated minor loops which are not congruent and generally not closed. In contrast to the traditional Preisach model the reversal point susceptibilities are non-zero finite values. The stochastic model can provide a good approximation of the Raylaigh quadratic law when the external parameter varies between two sufficiently small values.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figure

Reentry vehicles: evaluation of plasma effects on RF propagation

In the frame of communication technology relevant to the re-entry vehicles, the communication black-out occurring in the presence of plasma is one of the main challenging issues. The re-entry plasma is a complex physical system, where the ionization derives from a shock-wave and non-equilibrium phenomena. As discussed elsewhere, the time scales of plasma dynamics (including its evolution along mission trajectory) and radio wave propagation are well separated so that radio wave propagation is solved at an appropriate number of time "snapshots" in which plasma dynamics is held unchanged and considered as known. In this activity, a consistent effort has been devoted to model the electromagnetic problem. For the involved range of oprative frequencies and expected densities, the plasma can be considered as an inhomogeneous dielectric. The associated electromagnetic problem is solved in two steps, via use of the field equivalence principle. The vehicle-plasma system is substituted by equivalent (Love's) currents on its boundary, radiating in free space; the fields at the boundary are obtained by solving the propagation problem from the antenna, installed on the spacecraft, up to the plasma boundary, through the Eikonal approximation. Radiation is then obtained without further approximations. Unlike other well-known numerical methods (e.g. FEM), this technique is not intrinsecally limited by the electrical dimension of the vehicle-plasma system. This enables to analyze high frequency problems. Since the formation of the re-entry plasma critically depends on the re-entry vehicle shape and kinematics, the related model has been directly derived from the output data of the Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations. All the results of the above mentioned activities have been collected in a new software, the AIPT (Antenna In Plasma Tool, integrated into ADF-EMS Antenna Design Framework Electromagnetic Satellite) able to predict the electromagnetic propagation in the presence of plasma