Search results for " services"
showing 10 items of 1957 documents
The role of the building sector for reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gases: An Italian case study
2013
The paper presents one of the first Italian experiences assessing the effectiveness of sustainable production and consumption strategies. The authors developed an energy and environmental extended input–output model, combined with the life cycle assessment, to analyse the role of the building sector in the reduction of Italian energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In detail, the model allows to assess the energy and environmental benefits arising from the Italian tax deduction policy for energy retrofit actions of buildings. Moreover, the authors defined an original model to assess the indirect rebound effect caused by the energy retrofit actions. The outcomes of the research point out that…
A New Aid Modality for Africa: Old Age Cash Transfers
2010
This paper examines the issue of foreign aid and cash transfers to individuals in low-income economies typically found in Africa. Old-age conditional cash transfers and new mobile banking technology can cope with the well-documented problems related to moral hazard and high transaction costs with such policy interactions. Cash transfers can stimulate old and retired individuals’ demand for the consumption goods and services, and thereby affect product prices and wages. Developing economies being characterised by underemployment and gross substitution between consumption and leisure, these transfers can stimulate the labour supply and increase capacity utilisation and the production of labou…
The mediating role of feelings of guilt in the relationship between burnout and the consumption of tobacco and alcohol
2014
Earlier studies have shown that feelings of guilt appear to be involved in the burnout process. However, the exact nature of the relationship between burnout, feelings of guilt, and tobacco and alcohol use is unclear. The purpose of this study was to analyze the role of feelings of guilt in the relationship between burnout and the consumption of tobacco and alcohol. Role conflict, Role clarity, and Feedback were included as predictors of burnout. The sample of this cross-sectional study consisted of 260 Chilean administration and customer service workers. Hypotheses were tested using a path model. The hypothesized model (i.e., Indolence to guilt to tobacco/alcohol use) showed an adequate da…
Internal Public Audit in the Financial Crisis Context
2013
Abstract The financial crisis effects have left their mark on the area of internal audit, but the attention on the responsibility that internal auditors could have in preventing the onset of such a crisis is quite low. Audit plays a vital role in the entities functioning by contributing to economic credibility. In this paper we have presented the role and objectives of internal audit, the organization and activity of internal audit in local government in Romania, the outsourced system and how it helped in preventing and/or managing the economic downturn.
Towards More Efficient Incentives for Agri-environment Measures in Degraded and Eroded Vineyards
2015
Evaluating the economic damage caused by soil erosion is important. In addition to increasing the awareness of the problem among farmers and policy makers, evaluation of the economic damage caused by erosion can promote the implementation of more sustainable soil management practices. In the present study, we describe a new approach to evaluate incentives for the adoption of agri-environment measure (AEM) in degraded and eroded vineyards. To estimate this incentive, the replacement cost (RC) and the loss of income are calculated when the vineyard is managed with conventional tillage versus a cover crop (AEM). Our findings show that the incentive could range from the loss of income due to AE…
Endpoint Admission Control over Assured Forwarding PHBs and Its Performance over RED Implementations
2001
The Assured Forwarding Per Hop Behavior (AF PHB) has been devised by the IETF Differentiated Services (DiffServ) working group to provide drop level differentiation. The intent of AF is to support services with different loss requirements, but with no strict delay and jitter guarantees. Another suggested use of AF is to provide differentiated support for traffic conforming to an edge conditioning/policing scheme with respect to nonconforming traffic. Scope of this paper is twofold. First, we show that, quite surprisingly, a standard AF PHB class is semantically capable of supporting per flow admission control. This is obtained by adopting the AF PHB as core routers forwarding mechanism in c…
Does abdominal obesity influence immunological response to SARS-CoV-2 infection?
2021
Several hundred studies, 40 systematic reviews, and nearly 20 meta-analyses had been published by early 2021, confirming an increased need for medical services for people living with overweight or ...
COVID-19, an opportunity for developing countries?
2020
The COVID-19 outbreak was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as global pandemic in March 2020. Considering the necessity to implement rapid response to control the pandemic and the fragility and the state of need of low income countries, it will be mandatory to develop a global approach in order to reduce the spread of infection and the creation of community viral reservoirs. So far, we could hypothesize a worst case scenario in which when the COVID-19 outbreak hits a peak in Africa and in low-income countries, the majority of such countries will be unprepared, with low resources allocated for affording the viral emergency and the consequences will be catastrophic with no lesso…
A constrained genetic algorithm to optimize a maintenance global service
2014
It is herein developed an approach to optimize the maintenance services policy related to a Global Service Contract. In particular, the latter requires the performing of corrective maintenance and replacements of the failed components on a set of equal vehicles of a logistic Company. The tackled problem concerns the determination of an effective opportunistic maintenance policyon the basis of which when a fault occurs, it is replaced the failed component and, depending on the age of the others components, also replacements of others suitable components are performed, even if they are not yet broken, thus saving a substantial amount of system downtime. The problem is mathematically formulate…
Reproducible research practices, openness and transparency in health economic evaluations: study protocol for a cross-sectional comparative analysis
2020
INTRODUCTION: There has been a growing awareness of the need for rigorously and transparent reported health research, to ensure the reproducibility of studies by future researchers. Health economic evaluations, the comparative analysis of alternative interventions in terms of their costs and consequences, have been promoted as an important tool to inform decision-making. The objective of this study will be to investigate the extent to which articles of economic evaluations of healthcare interventions indexed in MEDLINE incorporate research practices that promote transparency, openness and reproducibility. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This is the study protocol for a cross-sectional comparative ana…