Entrepreneurship in project management systems: proposal of a model and preliminary empirical evidence

This study analyzes the manifestation of the dimensions of Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) and Project Management Systems (PMS). We used a qualitative approach to conduct exploratory research through a study in literature and a pilot case in a software company. Data was collected from semi structured interviews, documents, and records on file, then triangulated and treated with content analysis. The model proposed for the relationship between the types of PMS (ad hoc, Classic PM, innovation, entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship) and the dimensions of EO (innovativeness, risk-taking, proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy), was partially corroborated by empirical studies. New studies are suggested to validate the applicability and setup of the model.

The impact of culture and corporate governance in dividend policy: evidence from emerging and developed countries

The present research aims to analyse the impact of corporate governance and cultural dimensions in dividend policy. The corporate governance and dividend policy have a close relationship, in that both are evidenced in literature to mitigate agency problems. Cultural factors are also related to agency problems. The existence of agency problems and their solutions differs across countries and it is related to the implementation of the mechanisms of governance. So, cultural factors may have influence on corporate governance and dividend policy. Our sample consists in 1 232 companies belonging to the main indices of 38 countries classified as emerging or developed. To measure the quality of firm level corporate governance, we use the ASSET4 Corporate Governance Performance Index, developed by Thomson Reuters, and as proxy of culture we use three cultural dimensions developed by Geert Hofstede, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and indulgence. We obtained significant empirical evidence that firms with high quality of corporate governance pay higher dividends. With regard to cultural factors, we confirm that in countries with high levels of masculinity and uncertainty avoidance, the dividend payout ratio is lower. On the other hand, countries with high level of indulgence have higher dividend payout ratio. However, we verify that the impact of cultural effects is minimized when the firms have a high quality level of corporate governance. Additionally, we found that the impact of corporate governance and cultural factors in dividend policy differs when dealing with emerging or developed countries.

Using multivariate sequential patterns to improve survival prediction in intensive care burn unit

Resuscitation and stabilization are key issues in Intensive Care Burn Units and early survival predictions help to decide the best clinical action during these phases. Current survival scores of burns focus on clinical variables such as age or the body surface area. However, the evolution of other parameters (e.g. diuresis or fluid balance) during the first days is also valuable knowledge. In this work we suggest a methodology and we propose a Temporal Data Mining algorithm to estimate the survival condition from the patient’s evolution. Experiments conducted on 480 patients show the improvement of survival prediction.

Revisión sistemática utilidad de asa y calcio con o sin vitamina d en la prevención de cáncer colorrectal y la recurrencia de pólipos adenomatosos en paciente con riesgo de padecer esta patología

Introducción: El cáncer colorrectal es una patología con alto impacto en la salud pública, debido a su prevalencia, incidencia, severidad, costo e impacto en la salud mental y física del individuo y la familia. Ensayos clínicos realizados en pacientes con antecedente de infarto al miocardio que consumían ácido acetil salicílico (asa), calcio con y sin vitamina D, mostraron asociación entre el consumo de estos medicamentos y disminución en la incidencia en cáncer colorrectal y pólipos adenomatosos. Objetivo: Evaluar la literatura sobre el uso de asa, calcio con y sin vitamina D con relación a su impacto en la prevención del cáncer colorrectal y pólipos adenomatosos. Métodos: Se realizó revisión sistemática buscando ensayos clínicos realizados en pacientes con factores de riesgo para cáncer colorrectal y pólipos adenomatosos que usaron asa, calcio con y sin vitamina D fueron incluidos. Resultados: se escogieron 105 para la revisión sistemática. Conclusiones: Es necesario desarrollar más estudios que lleven a evaluar el efecto protector de la aspirina, calcio y vitamina D. En los artículos revisados la aspirina a dosis de 81 a 325 mg día se correlaciona con reducción de riesgo de aparición de CRC aunque la dosis ideal, el tiempo de inicio y la duración de la ingesta continua no son claros. Hacen falta estudios que comparen poblaciones con ingesta de asa a diferentes dosis.

Imaginarios sociales de adolescentes y docentes en torno al cuerpo, la corporalidad y la actividad física. Estudio cualitativo en un colegio de Bogotá, 2014-2015.

Problema. Esta investigación se aproxima al entorno escolar con el propósito de avanzar en la comprensión de los imaginarios de los adolescentes y docentes en torno al cuerpo, la corporalidad y la AF, como un elemento relevante en el diseño de programas y planes efectivos para fomento de la práctica de AF. Objetivo. Analizar los imaginarios sociales de docentes y adolescentes en torno a los conceptos de cuerpo, corporalidad y AF. Métodos. Investigación de corte cualitativo, descriptivo e interpretativo. Se realizaron entrevistas semi-estructuradas a docentes y a estudiantes entre los 12 y 18 años de un colegio público de Bogotá. Se realizó análisis de contenido. Se compararon los resultados de estudiantes por grupos de edades y género. Resultados. Docentes y estudiantes definen el cuerpo a partir de las características biológicas, las diferencias sexuales y las funciones vitales. La definición de corporalidad en los estudiantes se encuentra ligada con la imagen y la apariencia física; los docentes la entienden como la posibilidad de interactuar con el entorno y como la materialización de la existencia. La AF en los estudiantes se asocia con la práctica de ejercicio y deporte, en los docentes se comprende como una práctica de autocuidado que permite el mantenimiento de la salud. Conclusiones. Para promover la AF tempranamente como una experiencia vital es necesario intervenir los espacios escolares. Hay que vincular al cuerpo a los procesos formativos con el propósito de desarrollar la autonomía corporal, este aspecto implica cambios en los currículos.

Descripción de la prevalencia del boarding en la fundación santa fe de bogotá.

Introducción: El boarding es el fenómeno que ocurre cuando existen pacientes hospitalizados en urgencias sin una cama de hospitalización a la cual trasladarse, en la literatura mundial se ha identificado como un factor que repercute en la calidad y seguridad de la atención en urgencias. Este trabajo busca describir la prevalencia de dicho fenómeno en el servicio de urgencias de la Fundación Santa fe de Bogotá Metodología: Estudio observacional de prevalencia. Se incluyeron pacientes del mes de octubre de 2015 atendidos por especialistas en medicina de emergencias de la Fundación Santa fe de Bogotá. Se tomaron datos del turno realizado (mañana, tarde y noche), y datos del servicio de urgencias para su descripción. Resultados: La mediana de ocupación por boarding en urgencias fue del 68% con un rango intercuartil de 54-75%; en términos de tiempo en minutos, la mediana fue de 1054 minutos, con un rango intercuartil de 621-1490. Existen diferencias numéricas del tiempo en minutos de acuerdo el turno (mañana: 992,77 DE 519, tarde:1584,13 DE 1000,27 noche:1304,13 DE 2126,43). Discusión: El tiempo de boarding reportado para urgencias de la Fundación Santa fe de Bogotá es comparativamente mayor al descrito en la literatura mundial, se deben explorar en estudios analíticos posteriores los factores o variables que se asocien a la presencia de este fenómeno.

Genetic Algorithms for Parameter Estimation in Circadian Model

This paper proposes an algorithm to estimate two parameter values vs, transcription of frq gene, and vd, maximum rate of FRQ protein degradation for an existing 3rd order Neurospora model in literature. Details of the algorithm with simulation results are shown in this paper.

“Biomarkers in a One Health perspective: current knowledge of their ability to merge human and animal health

Biomarkers are nowadays essential tools to be one step ahead for fighting disease, enabling an enhanced focus on disease prevention and on the probability of its occurrence. Research in a multidisciplinary approach has been an important step towards the repeated discovery of new biomarkers. Biomarkers are defined as biochemical measurable indicators of the presence of disease or as indicators for monitoring disease progression. Currently, biomarkers have been used in several domains such as oncology, neurology, cardiovascular, inflammatory and respiratory disease, and several endocrinopathies. Bridging biomarkers in a One Health perspective has been proven useful in almost all of these domains. In oncology, humans and animals are found to be subject to the same environmental and genetic predisposing factors: examples include the existence of mutations in BR-CA1 gene predisposing to breast cancer, both in human and dogs, with increased prevalence in certain dog breeds and human ethnic groups. Also, breast feeding frequency and duration has been related to a decreased risk of breast cancer in women and bitches. When it comes to infectious diseases, this parallelism is prone to be even more important, for as much as 75% of all emerging diseases are believed to be zoonotic. Examples of successful use of biomarkers have been found in several zoonotic diseases such as Ebola, dengue, leptospirosis or West Nile virus infections. Acute Phase Proteins (APPs) have been used for quite some time as biomarkers of inflammatory conditions. These have been used in human health but also in the veterinary field such as in mastitis evaluation and PRRS (porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome) diagnosis. Advantages rely on the fact that these biomarkers can be much easier to assess than other conventional disease diagnostic approaches (example: measured in easy to collect saliva samples). Another domain in which biomarkers have been essential is food safety: the possibility to measure exposure to chemical contaminants or other biohazards present in the food chain, which are sometimes analytical challenges due to their low bioavailability in body fluids, is nowadays a major breakthrough. Finally, biomarkers are considered the key to provide more personalized therapies, with more efficient outcomes and fewer side effects. This approach is expected to be the correct path to follow also in veterinary medicine, in the near future.

Experimental Project on the Safety and the Optimization of the Use of Glyphosate-Based Herbicides in the Grain Sector.

INTRODUCTION: Glyphosate is the most widely applied pesticide worldwide and it is an active ingredient of all glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs), including in the formulation “Roundup” . It is unclear if the glyphosate present in ground water can be absorbed and translocated in different parts of the pants, particularly wheat plants. This indeed represents an important aspect for productivity (being this a powerful herbicide) and organic certification of the products (the use of glyphosate is not admitted in organic farming and the ubiquitous contamination of glyphosate in water might in theory affect the level of glyphosate in the plants). Overall, epidemiological, in vivo and in vitro studies available in literature present conflicting findings on the safety of glyphosate. METHODS: The work performed for this PhD thesis aimed to experimentally test the root absorption and the eventual translocation of the glyphosate herbicide in the different parts of the wheat plant (Triticum durum) starting from ground water. Furthermore we aimed to experimentally test the effects of the exposure to GBHs at doses of glyphosate considered to be “safe”, the US ADI of 1.75 mg/kg bw/day, defined as the chronic Reference Dose (cRfD) determined by the US EPA, in in vivo models (Sprague-Dawley rats) and in vitro models (Caco2 and L929). RESULTS: All the experimental absorption studies on wheat plants performed have given negative results in terms of the presence of glyphosate or AMPA in the grain of durum wheat. On the other hand the experimental safety studies on in vitro and in vivo models highlighted different effects at doses currently considered safe for humans and with no effects in animals. CONCLUSION: Overall the integration of the findings from absorption in plants and safety studies will serve as solid evidence-base for risk assessment and productive strategies for agriculture.

Sleep disorders in Multiple System Atrophy: a longitudinal study

Introduction: A higher frequency of sleep and breathing disorders in Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) populations is documented in literature. The analysis of disease progression and prognosis in patients with sleep and breathing disorders could shed light on specific neuropathology and pathophysiology of MSA. Objective: To characterize sleep disorders and their longitudinal modifications during disease course in MSA patients, and to determine their prognostic value. Methods: This is a retrospective and prospective cohort study including 182 MSA patients (58.8% males). Type of onset was defined by the first reported motor or autonomic symptom/sign related to MSA. The occurrence of symptoms/signs and milestones of disease progression and their latency were collected. REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) and stridor were video-polysomnography (VPSG)-confirmed. VPSG recordings were analysed in a standardized fashion during the disease course. Survival data were based on time to death from the first symptom of disease. Results: Isolated RBD represented the first MSA symptom in 30% of patients, preceding disease onset according to international criteria with a median of 3(1–5) years. Patients developing early stridor or presenting with RBD at disease onset showed a more rapid and severe disease progression. These features had independent negative prognostic value for survival. Sleep architecture was characterized by peculiar features which could represent negative markers in MSA prognosis. Patients with stridor treated with tracheostomy showed a reduced risk of death. Conclusions: This is one of the first studies focusing on longitudinal progression of sleep in MSA. Sleep disorders are key features of disease, playing a role in presentation, prognosis and progression. In our MSA cohort, RBD represented the most frequent mode of disease presentation. Moreover, some specific clinical and instrumental sleep features could represent a hallmark of MSA and could be involved in prognosis and, in particular, in sudden death and death during sleep.

Design and Development of Network Monitoring Strategies in P4-enabled Programmable Switches

Network monitoring is of paramount importance for effective network management: it allows to constantly observe the network’s behavior to ensure it is working as intended and can trigger both automated and manual remediation procedures in case of failures and anomalies. The concept of SDN decouples the control logic from legacy network infrastructure to perform centralized control on multiple switches in the network, and in this context, the responsibility of switches is only to forward packets according to the flow control instructions provided by controller. However, as current SDN switches only expose simple per-port and per-flow counters, the controller has to do almost all the processing to determine the network state, which causes significant communication overhead and excessive latency for monitoring purposes. The absence of programmability in the data plane of SDN prompted the advent of programmable switches, which allow developers to customize the data-plane pipeline and implement novel programs operating directly in the switches. This means that we can offload certain monitoring tasks to programmable data planes, to perform fine-grained monitoring even at very high packet processing speeds. Given the central importance of network monitoring exploiting programmable data planes, the goal of this thesis is to enable a wide range of monitoring tasks in programmable switches, with a specific focus on the ones equipped with programmable ASICs. Indeed, most network monitoring solutions available in literature do not take computational and memory constraints of programmable switches into due account, preventing, de facto, their successful implementation in commodity switches. This claims that network monitoring tasks can be executed in programmable switches. Our evaluations show that the contributions in this thesis could be used by network administrators as well as network security engineers, to better understand the network status depending on different monitoring metrics, and thus prevent network infrastructure and service outages.

Determinazione gascromatografica di composti organici volatili e semi-volatili (VOCs e SVOCs) in poliolefine ed effetti delle condizioni di lavorazione

A relevant problem of polyolefins processing is the presence of volatile and semi-volatile compounds (VOCs and SVOCs) such as linear chains alkanes found out in final products. These VOCs can be detected by customers from the unpleasant smelt and can be an environmental issue, at the same time they can cause negative side effects during process. Since no previously standardized analytical techniques for polymeric matrix are available in bibliography, we have implemented different VOCs extraction methods and gaschromatographic analysis for quali-quantitative studies of such compounds. In literature different procedures can be found including microwave extraction (MAE) and thermo desorption (TDS) used with different purposes. TDS coupled with GC-MS are necessary for the identification of different compounds in the polymer matrix. Although the quantitative determination is complex, the results obtained from TDS/GC-MS show that by-products are mainly linear chains oligomers with even number of carbon in a C8-C22 range (for HDPE). In order to quantify these linear alkanes by-products, a more accurate GC-FID determination with internal standard has been run on MAE extracts. Regardless the type of extruder used, it is difficult to distinguish the effect of the various processes, which in any case entails having a lower-boiling substance content, lower than the corresponding virgin polymer. The two HDPEs studied can be distinguished on the basis of the quantity of analytes found, therefore the production process is mainly responsible for the amount of VOCs and SVOCs observed. The extruder technology used by Sacmi SC allows to obtain a significant reduction in VOCs compared to the conventional screw system. Thus, the result is significantly important as a lower quantity of volatile substances certainly leads to a lower migration of such materials, especially when used for food packaging.

Study on health status and remediation potential of Phragmites australis employed in an Emilia Romagna (IT) Constructed Wetland to assess zonal variability of the facility.

Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud. is a hydrophyte particularly resistant to harsh conditions, e.g. drought, high salinity, contaminants, such as heavy metals and toxic molecules, and high nutrients concentrations. These resistances render the plant suitable for water depuration, where its particular metabolism is exploited to remove pollutants and excessive nutrients from the environment. In constructed wetlands, this principle is applied to phyto-purify wastewater with various origins, such as industrial, agricultural and household, with the aim to improve its quality to an extent which would render its reuse possible. In the framework of a pre-existing project of Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences (DiSTAl), this work integrates the knowledge and data relative to an Emilia Romagna (IT) constructed wetland plant, in order to expand the knowledge about this particular facility and of the system in general. By assaying antioxidants, both non- enzymatic and enzymatic, chlorophylls content and net photosynthetic rates, and by measuring the elemental composition of the specimens, the health status and the elemental uptake of the wetland plants sampled in different areas were investigated. The results were compared amongst the examined specimens with the aim to detect areas where there may be a higher stress due to a different wastewater composition, potentially varying along the constructed route. In addition, different parameters regarding the extraction and assay protocols were investigated, in order to optimise the procedure and to select the best conditions to perform the analyses, as well as to integrate information missing in literature or found as contradictory.

Automatic detection of the inferior alveolar nerve in CT scans with CenterNet

The inferior alveolar nerve (IAN) lies within the mandibular canal, named inferior alveolar canal in literature. The detection of this nerve is important during maxillofacial surgeries or for creating dental implants. The poor quality of cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) and computed tomography (CT) scans and/or bone gaps within the mandible increase the difficulty of this task, posing a challenge to human experts who are going to manually detect it and resulting in a time-consuming task.Therefore this thesis investigates two methods to automatically detect the IAN: a non-data driven technique and a deep-learning method. The latter tracks the IAN position at each frame leveraging detections obtained with the deep neural network CenterNet, fined-tuned for our task, and temporal and spatial information.

A 3D biomimetic in vitro model: a novel strategy to investigate glioma biology

Gliomas are one of the most frequent primary malignant brain tumors. Acquisition of stem-like features likely contributes to the malignant nature of high-grade gliomas and may be responsible for the initiation, growth, and recurrence of these tumors. In this regard, although the traditional 2D cell culture system has been widely used in cancer research, it shows limitations in maintaining the stemness properties of cancer and in mimicking the in vivo microenvironment. In order to overcome these limitations, different three-dimensional (3D) culture systems have been developed to mimic better the tumor microenvironment. Cancer cells cultured in 3D structures may represent a more reliable in vitro model due to increased cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) interaction. Several attempts to recreate brain cancer tissue in vitro are described in literature. However, to date, it is still unclear which main characteristics the ideal model should reproduce. The overall goal of this project was the development of a 3D in vitro model able to reproduce the brain ECM microenvironment and to recapitulate pathological condition for the study of tumor stroma interactions, tumor invasion ability, and molecular phenotype of glioma cells. We performed an in silico bioinformatic analysis using GEPIA2 Software to compare the expression level of seven matrix protein in the LGG tumors with healthy tissues. Then, we carried out a FFPE retrospective study in order to evaluate the percentage of expression of selected proteins. Thus, we developed a 3D scaffold composed by Hyaluronic Acid and Collagen IV in a ratio of 50:50. We used two astrocytoma cell lines, HTB-12 and HTB-13. In conclusion, we developed an in vitro 3D model able to reproduce the composition of brain tumor ECM, demonstrating that it is a feasible platform to investigate the interaction between tumor cells and the matrix.