On Hopf's Lemma and the Strong Maximum Principle

In this paper we consider Hopf's Lemma and the Strong Maximum Principle for supersolutions to a class of non elliptic equations. In particular we prove a sufficient condition for the validity of Hopf's Lemma and of the Strong Maximum Principle and we give a condition which is at once necessary for the validity of Hopf's Lemma and sufficient for the validity of the Strong Maximum Principle.Comment: 27 pages,4 figure

Global attractors for nonlinear viscoelastic equations with memory

We study the asymptotic properties of the semigroup S(t) arising from a nonlinear viscoelastic equation with hereditary memory on a bounded three-dimensional domain written in the past history framework of Dafermos. We establish the existence of the global attractor of optimal regularity for S(t) for a wide class of nonlinearities as well as within the most general condition on the memory kernel

Introduction to the Special Issue: Genome-Wide Association Studies

Introduction to the Special Issue: Genome-Wide Association StudiesComment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-STS310 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Analysis and Valuation of Hospital Foodservice Quality-the Perugia case-study

The hospital catering is characterized for the necessity to satisfy the nutritional and dietetic principles, and the several therapeutic requirements of the patient.The main problem is to coordinate the production with the always various number of the requirements. On the other hand,emerging of competition forms in the sanitary field,based on the possibility of chosen of the structure cure from the customer and on the prices and tariffs system,has open new spaces for the recovery of a strategic perspective of the public sanitary companies respect private sector. Always mainly,the hospital companies must centralize own ttention so is minimal the difference between planned quality, distributed quality and perceived quality. The present work offers,through a public opinion pull on a specific case, a first attempt to tie the satisfaction or not satisfaction of a consumer regarding the sanitary service,on the base of some qualitatative variable. The innovation of this work consist of a index series created from the hospital documents and patient judgment (questionnaire) to establish a gap between planned and perceived quality

Network inference in matrix-variate Gaussian models with non-independent noise

Inferring a graphical model or network from observational data from a large number of variables is a well studied problem in machine learning and computational statistics. In this paper we consider a version of this problem that is relevant to the analysis of multiple phenotypes collected in genetic studies. In such datasets we expect correlations between phenotypes and between individuals. We model observations as a sum of two matrix normal variates such that the joint covariance function is a sum of Kronecker products. This model, which generalizes the Graphical Lasso, assumes observations are correlated due to known genetic relationships and corrupted with non-independent noise. We have developed a computationally efficient EM algorithm to fit this model. On simulated datasets we illustrate substantially improved performance in network reconstruction by allowing for a general noise distribution

Constraints on Modified Gravity from ACT and SPT

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and the South Pole Telescope (SPT) have recently provided new and precise measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy damping tail. This region of the CMB angular spectra, thanks to the angular distortions produced by gravitational lensing, can probe the growth of matter perturbations and provide a test for general relativity. Here we make use of the ACT and SPT power spectrum measurements (combined with the recent WMAP9 data) to constrain f(R) gravity theories. Adopting a parametrized approach, we obtain an upper limit on the lengthscale of the theory of B_0 < 0.86 at 95% c.l. from ACT, while we get a significantly stronger bound from SPT with B_0 < 0.14 at 95% c.l..Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, some sentences correcte

A set of key questions to assess the stress among bank employees and its reliability: Bank Employee Stress Test (BEST8)

The aims of the present study are: to realize a tool, clear and helpful, to assess the occupational distress level in bank employees in Italy; secondly to assess the reliability of the tool. Eight sentences were considered after a consensus meeting that involved different professional figures. 70 questionnaires were collected. The overall Cronbach’s alpha was 0.596, a sufficient reliability was found. The elimination of one sentences (“I haven’t time to dedicate myself to my hobbies/activities/stuff”) increases alpha’s value from 0.596 to 0.620, and thus reach fully sufficient score. The claim “The pace of change on work place exceeds my capacity for adaptation” maximises the change of the level of reliability (Inter item Correlation = 0.528)