Entrepreneurship, Firm Size and the Structure of the Italian Economy

Since World War II, Italy\u27s economic growth has been one of the highest in the world. The objective of this study is to examine the structure of the Italian economy and causes of this growth. It was found that small and medium-sized firms, most of them family-owned, have been the dynamic force behind the country?s extraordinary economic performance. The vital role of the family and that of the entrepreneur – as the supreme spirit of enterprise and initiative - has been paramount in this process. Production by small and medium-sized firms have concentrated in a specific geographical area called “industrial districts†and are capable of great cooperation with other firms, leading to increased production, efficiency and employment. In addition, it was found that small Italian firms have been very successful in the age of globalization, better able to take advantage of their small size by means of flexible strategies to innovate, invest and increase their export. Contrary to conventional wisdom, modernization theories (so widespread in the 1950s and 1960s) indicate that large firms have been models for growth in other industrialized countries and have exerted a passive role in the structure and development of the Italian economy

Translation and Rotation Invariant Multiscale Image Registration

The most recent research involved registering images in the presence of translations and rotations using one iteration of the redundant discrete wavelet transform. We extend this work by creating a new multiscale transform to register two images with translation or rotation differences, independent of scale differences between the images. Our two-dimensional multiscale transform uses an innovative combination of lowpass filtering and the continuous wavelet transform to mimic the two-dimensional redundant discrete wavelet transform. This allows us to obtain multiple subbands at various scales while maintaining the desirable properties of the redundant discrete wavelet transform. Whereas the discrete wavelet transform produces results only at dyadic scales, our new multiscale transform produces data at all integer scales. This added flexibility improves registration accuracy without greatly increasing computational complexity and permits accurate registration even in the presence of scale differences

A Study of Breast Cancer Comorbidities and Apoptosis in T47D Breast Cancer Cells

There is evidence that the over the counter postmenopausal phytoestrogen supplement, Promensil, has antiproliferative effects on cells of the T47D breast cancer cell line. This project aims to examine if the antiproliferative effects of Promensil on the T47D breast cancer cell line may be due to activation of caspase-3, causing apoptosis of the cells. To complement this project, a retrospective evaluation of comorbidities among 202 rural breast cancer patients was conducted. Data showed that their comorbidities are consistent with those identified in larger national studies and include hypertension, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, and cardiac history