The Intangible Assets Investments: Accounting Treatment and Risks for Capital Investors and Management

In the knowledge-based economy, the fundamental determinants of the company’s value, in the present, have an intangible nature. The intangible investments are the most important factors of the enterprise success. Wealth, growth and welfare are driven nowadays by intangible investments. The knowledge economy is characterized by huge investments in human capital and informational technology. The current accounting regulation does not allow companies to capitalize a big part of investments in intangibles (produced by a company) and to report these as assets in the financial reports. There are inconsistencies regarding the book-keeping treatment of the two categories of intangible assets: internally generated and externally, acquired from the outside of the company.investments, intangible assets, valuation, book value, investors, managers.

Stochastic Modeling and Statistical Properties of Biological Systems Inferred from Omics Data

In this thesis we aim to describe the dynamic processes that govern the evolution of two very different ecological systems. First, we consider the ensemble of bacteria that populate the intestine (Gut Microbiota, GM), which has been proven to have great impact on human health, being associated to several metabolic and immunological diseases. Then, we deal with the set of protein domains enclosed in the genome of living organisms. In general, the neutrality hypothesis, that was proposed by Hubbell as the Ockham’s razor for ecology, is a respectable approximation for both the GM and the protein domains ecosystems. In the first case, a birth-death model that takes into account demographic noise is able to describe the population dynamics if we relax the neutrality assumption and consider two non-interacting niches in which species equivalence holds. Interestingly, the biodiversity index derived from our modeling predicts healthy aging with better accuracy than common indices. When constructing the empirical Relative Species Abundances distribution (RSA) for GM, a fundamental step regards the clustering of particular DNA sequences (16S rRNA). This is a critical task that enables to redefine the concept of species according to the phylogenetic tree. Here we introduce LOC-kNN, that is a parameter-free clustering algorithm recently developed by d’Errico et al, and we adapt it for this purpose. LOC-kNN detects clusters as density peaks based on the dataset topography and, besides still having difficulties in detecting small clusters, shows promising performances. Finally, for what concerns the protein domains ecosystem, environmental noise should also be taken into account. This has a multiplicative effect and, together with the introduction of the Gompertzian death hypothesis, predicts a Poisson Log-Normal RSA. The model fits well the protein domain RSA and captures the dynamics of genome evolution, manifesting good agreement with the phylogenetic distances among bacteria

When Instability Becomes Permanent: Uncertainty in the Labor Market as a Determinant of Redistribution Preferences

Treballs Finals del Màster d'Economia, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2016-2018, Tutor : Pilar Sorribas NavarroAlthough existing research reveals interesting relations explaining redistribution demand, little is known about the impact of the contract type and the macroeconomic context in shaping redistribution preferences of individuals. We analyze the Spanish dual labor market to provide causal evidence of the effect of temporal contracts in determining preferences for redistribution. To do so, exact matching is applied to Spanish data from the European Social Survey for the period 2002-2014. Furthermore, we analyze the heterogeneous effect of the contract type by studying the impact of the economic crisis starting in 2008. Our results give causal support to the insurance theory by showing that the fact of holding a temporal contract increases preferences for redistribution. Nevertheless, this effect disappears when the effect of the adverse macroeconomic context is considered. The riskier economic context makes risk perception of individuals holding permanent contracts increase, which results in stronger demand for redistribution. This macroeconomic effect determining preferences for redistribution appears to be stronger than the individual determinant of holding a specific contract type

Soil as nutrition environment in relation to nutritional requirements in apple

The studies and research on which the present paper relies aimed at assessing the soil in the fruit-tree plantation of the Didactic Station of the Banat University of Agricultural Science and Veterinary Medicine in Timisoara (Romania) as nutrition medium for apple-trees to allow fertilisation schemes that ensure the bioavailability of nutrients and of optimal nutrition. On fruit-tree plantations, soil is of interest in plant nutrition due to its larger edaphic volume over a 0-40 cm depth. Therefore, we carried out the soil analysis and characterisation over the edaphic volume, i.e. over the two levels of interest from the point of view of water and nutrient supply for apple-trees. The soil on the fruit-tree plantation is characterised as a heterogeneous nutrition environment if we take into account the features of the two horizons of nutrient and water supply. The different physicochemical features are due to the acting factors and conditions. Over the horizon 0-20 cm, there is a higher amount of organic matter, higher aeration, and more intense oxidation phenomena; the horizon is subjected to some physicochemical and biological changes. The soil on the fruittree plantation is characterized by a neuter reaction in the horizon 0-20 cm (pH = 6.90) and by low acid level over the horizon 20-40 cm (pH = 6.39). Humus content (H) is about 1.95% over the horizon 0-20 cm and 1.73% over the horizon 20-40 cm. Total nitrogen content Nt is 1.16 % and 1.13%, respectively. Mobile phosphorus supply reaches 32.55 ppm in the upper horizon of the soil and 29.4 ppm in the horizon 20-40 cm. Assailable potassium reaches between 172.0 ppm in the upper horizon 0-20 cm and 161.5 ppm in the horizon 20-40 cm. Soil reaction is neuter to low acid, which makes macro-element bio-availability relatively good. There are good conditions for the development of some low-solubility compounds (calcium phosphates), which recommends the supply of mobile phosphorus through proper fertilization

Mycobacterium ulcerans mouse model refinement for pre-clinical profiling of vaccine candidates

Buruli Ulcer is a neglected tropical disease leading to extensive disabilities and morbidity in West Africa. In this paper we sought to characterize various strains of Mycobacterium ulcerans (M.ulcerans) with different origins and laboratory passage records while refining a mouse model for Buruli ulcer. We described, compared and followed the kinetics of the histo-pathological outcome of infection of a collection of strains at various anatomical sites of infection in order to find a suitable model for further immunization studies. Moreover we compared the outcome of infection in C57Bl/6 and Balbc/J mice. Specifically we described thoroughly one M. ulcerans strain characterized by slow growth rate and limited tissue necrosis, which presents close ressemblance with the infection kinetics in humans. This strain caused macrophages as well as T and B cells infiltration, correlating with mycobacterial proliferation at the site of infection as well as in the draining lymph nodes, making it a suitable strain to screen vaccine candidates efficacy

Estimage: a webserver hub for the computation of methylation age

Methylage is an epigenetic marker of biological age that exploits the correlation between the methylation state of specific CG dinucleotides (CpGs) and chronological age (in years), gestational age (in weeks), cellular age (in cell cycles or as telomere length, in kilobases). Using DNA methylation data, methylage is measurable via the so called epigenetic clocks. Importantly, alterations of the correlation between methylage and age (age acceleration or deceleration) have been stably associated with pathological states and occur long before clinical signs of diseases become overt, making epigenetic clocks a potentially disruptive tool in preventive, diagnostic and also in forensic applications. Nevertheless, methylage dependency from CpGs selection, mathematical modelling, tissue specificity and age range, still makes the potential of this biomarker limited. In order to enhance model comparisons, interchange, availability, robustness and standardization, we organized a selected set of clocks within a hub webservice, EstimAge (Estimate of methylation Age, http://estimage.iac.rm.cnr.it), which intuitively and informatively enables quick identification, computation and comparison of available clocks, with the support of standard statistics

On the Shape of the General Error Locator Polynomial for Cyclic Codes

General error locator polynomials were introduced in 2005 as an alternative decoding for cyclic codes. We now present a conjecture on their sparsity, which would imply polynomial-time decoding for all cyclic codes. A general result on the explicit form of the general error locator polynomial for all cyclic codes is given, along with several results for specific code families, providing evidence to our conjecture. From these, a theoretical justification of the sparsity of general error locator polynomials is obtained for all binary cyclic codes with t <= 2 and n < 105, as well as for t = 3 and n < 63, except for some cases where the conjectured sparsity is proved by a computer check. Moreover, we summarize all related results, previously published, and we show how they provide further evidence to our conjecture. Finally, we discuss the link between our conjecture and the complexity of bounded-distance decoding of the cyclic codes