Search results for " SAVING"

Determinants of interest margins in Spanish credit institutions before and after the 2008 financial crash

2017

As interest margins of credit institutions affect economic performance of countries, finding out which are the main determinants of their evolution is a research task of great interest at current times. This is the purpose of the present paper as regards to the Spanish case over the period 2004-2012. Based on the econometric contributions by Ho and Saunders (1981) and some of its extensions, the authors develop a model that includes as explanatory variables the factors usually examined in the literature and other singular variables that might be relevant. Particularly, the rate of leverage, the quality of their assets measured according to their risk, and the profit obtained from the sellin…

Sales Channels and Media Digitalization Impact on People Voluntary Savings for Retirement

2019

Due to the implementation of new technologies and orientation on digital solutions the communication and sales channels have changed dramatically. Information and client service on-line availability presents strong advantages for business, state agencies as well as customers. However, lack of personal interaction during the communication and sales process can make it difficult for people to understand and even frustrate their desire for a product or service. The purpose of the research is to analyse the digitalization impact on voluntary savings for retirement in Latvia and make comparisons with other countries. The voluntary pension schemes are the part of pension system and its third pill…

Low-Flow Anaesthesia

2000

Healthcare reform has placed increasing pressure on anaesthetists to consider the costs of current anaesthesia strategies. Although the cost of anaesthesia constitutes only a small proportion of total healthcare costs, anaesthetic drug expenditures have been a focus of cost-containment efforts. Low-flow anaesthesia is a simple method of reducing the fresh gas flow rate for anaesthetic gases during inhalational anaesthesia. A knowledge of the pharmacokinetic behaviour of inhaled anaesthetics and the use of modern equipment and monitoring technology meet the requirements for safe application of this anaesthetic technique. Millions of patients receive general anaesthesia each year, and thus th…

Marble quarrying: an energy and waste intensive activity in the production of building materials

2008

Marble represents an important component of Italian buildings, where it is often utilized as a covering for bottom surfaces, despite its relatively high price. Moreover, it characterizes several public buildings, for which it is by far the most important decorative material, also because of its structural features and its long durability. Unfortunately, marble quarrying is an energy intensive activity that requires relevant amounts of electric and thermal energy sources; in addition, the extraction of the marble blocks from the mountain sides does involve a noticeable quantity of explosives, particularly in sites where traditional working methods are utilized. Another important feature of t…

Rainwater Reuse in Urban Areas: A Mathematical Model and a Long-Term Modelling Approach

2018

Natural water resources are becoming increasingly limited due to global-scale climate change and water availability issues have become so severe that they must be addressed. Given these issues, reuse of wastewater and rainwater provides a promising way to cope with water shortages. This paper describes an investigation into the efficiency of rainwater usage systems. A conceptual model was built to assess the behaviour of rainwater tanks and their effectiveness in coping with water shortages. The study is based on a long-term simulation (12 years) of different rainwater reuse tank schemes. The associated reductions in residential freshwater demand (water reuse efficiency) and wet-weather run…

(Un)Routinization of the Environmental Performance Measures – A Case Study; BSC Rules but Does not Routinize

2009

This study focuses on the (un)routinization of environmental performance measures (EPMs). It studies how new environmental measures were implemented within the new environmental management system (EMS) and how they became connected with the financial measures, like cost savings and profitability. By doing so, they were connected to the taken-for-granted profit orientation of the case company in order to overcome these values and to make them succeed in organization. Later on these new measures were also included in the new BSC. In conditions of the profit oriented taken-for-granted values, the BSC locked the rule status of the environmental measures, but it locked them at the operational le…

Valutazione comparativa delle sequenze fast Spin-echo e Spin-echo T2-dipendenti nella dimostrazione delle lesioni demielinizzanti encefaliche in cors…

1997

We compared T2-weighted fast spin-echo (FSE) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and conventional spin-echo (CSE) T2-weighted imaging in the detection of brain lesions of multiple sclerosis (MS). 20 patients with clinically definite MS underwent brain imaging with both FSE and CSE T2-weighted imaging. There was no significant difference in total number of lesions detected on FSE vs CSE (1354 vs 1378). Slightly more periventricular and subcortical lesions were detected using CSE than FSE, whereas more posterior cranial fossa lesions were detected by FSE. There was no statistically significant difference in the signal intensity (SI) ratio of MS lesions to that of surrounding normal white matter …

A system-level power saving approach for cellular networks with microcells/picocells

2011

Network power consumption reduction has recently become an active research topic. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to save power consumption of a three-cell microcellular network. When the traffic load in the middle cell is low, it can be switched-off and its users are covered. This is enabled by increasing the transmission power of one sector antenna in the two neighboring cells. Numerical results show that by increasing antenna transmission power of the two sectors, the overall network power consumption can be reduced.

Assessing opportunities for water savings in large-scale pressurized irrigation systems using actual evapotranspiration retrieved by surface energy b…

Remote sensing allows the observation of large land stretches and the acquisition of worthwhile information that can be used efficaciously in agro-hydrologic systems. Satellite imagery associated to computational models provide a reliable resource in estimating evapotranspiration (ET) fluxes based on surface energy balance. On irrigated crops, quantifying the spatial distribution of actual ET enables a broad range of applications such as irrigation management, monitoring water distribution, assessing crop water status and irrigation system performance. The general objective of the research was to propose a methodology to estimate ET by using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images and surface e…

Integration of green roofs&walls in urban areas

2020

Growing urbanization is associated with the emergence of environmental problems, such as the reduction of natural resources, the atmosphere pollution and the increase of the heat islands phenomenon in cities. The integration of vegetation in the urban areas, through the creation of green hanging systems, represents a possible solution to improve the energy sustainability of buildings, to combat meteoric excesses, to improve stormwater management and to reduce pollutant levels. These energy and environmental benefits are related to the properties of evapotranspiration, shading and thermal insulation of the vegetation. The work reports the results of the main studies concerning the use of han…