Search results for "Interest"
showing 10 items of 624 documents
Three dimensional reconstruction of intracoronary ultrasound images: roadmapping with simultaneously digitised coronary angiograms
2002
Three dimensional reconstruction of intracoronary ultrasound images offers a better appreciation of the axial relationship of vessel features and permits volumetric assessment, both of which depend critically on the spatial accuracy of the technique. This in turn is dependent on precise longitudinal orientation of the transducer in the vessel. The authors have developed a system which utilises simultaneously digitised fluoroscopic tracking of the radio-opaque transducer to orient the corresponding 2D ICUS images. This system may offer improved spatial accuracy of the three dimensional reconstruction and a means of precise identification of the 2D ICUS image which corresponds with a selected…
2017
Social media has become an important tool for sport organisations to interact with fans. In particular for sports that have smaller marketing budgets and that do not receive mainstream media coverage on a daily basis, social media platforms provide unique communication and marketing opportunities to overcome such challenges. This study investigates the motives of fans to communicate on the Facebook page of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF). It is the first study that focuses on the use of social media in the context of an international sport federation. Knowledge about the gratifications sought by fans while interacting on social media is important for organisations to develo…
GEL DOSIMETERS FOR RADIOTHERAPY APPLICATIONS: RESULTS OF A “RESEARCH PROJECT OF NATIONAL INTEREST” (PRIN)
2016
Introduction: Gel dosimeters for three-dimensional mapping of radiotherapy doses were introduced at Yale University in the mid-1980’s. Soon after, research and development in this field also started in Italy. Early work was done at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità and at the Universities of Pisa and Milan. Several institutes now collaborate on this topic with the goal of developing new formulations of hydrogel matrices with improved characteristics of stability, sensitivity and spatial resolution compared to those of earlier Fricke-gel and polymer-gel systems. Materials and methods: Contrary to earlier gels based on natural gelling agents, such as porcine skin gelatin and/or agarose, which …
Rôle des institutions de microfinance dans le financement de l’entrepreneuriat féminin
2020
Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) are responsible for lending money to people who do not have sufficient collateral to access the formal banking system. These organizations participate in the development of entrepreneurship by funding women's projects. Several actors, who intervene around this contractual relationship between MFIs and women, may follow different objectives and interests, which can be a source of inefficiency. This contribution examines the determinants of the credit supply of MFIs intended for female entrepreneurship in the 8 countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA). Our results show that if the volume of subsidies, equity and indebtedness of MFIs ha…
The Blue Flag Programme AS Pro-Environmental Behaviour Instrument for Coastal Destinations: Towards Municipal Coastal Governance and Communication
2021
The research focuses on evaluation of the Blue Flag programme implementation in Latvia since the year 1998, when the programme’s operations started. It includes analysis and an overview of both the national and local level impacts and the results of the programme implementation. With regard to national level, approach and experience, the overview focuses on effectiveness and the role of the Blue Flag programme as a supporting instrument for successful implementation of environmental legislation. This programme is also analysed as a communication instrument in promoting environmental policies within 500 km long of coastline areas, which in Latvia are announced the national interest territori…
The Euro-Dollar Exchange Rate: Is it Fundamental?
2002
In this paper we have applied two approaches to the study of the dollar real exchange rate in relation with the Euro-area currencies. First, using dynamic panel techniques, we estimate an error correction model for the dollar real exchange rate versus seven developed countries, four of them Euro-area members. Second, we aggregate the European variables and estimate a model for the Euro-dollar real exchange rate using time series techniques. After identification and model selection, the same specification can be adopted in the two cases, in an eclectic model including real interest rate and productivity differentials, together with relative fiscal policy and net foreign asset positions. This…
Enhancing TIR Image Resolution via Bayesian Smoothing for IRRISAT Irrigation Management Project
2013
Accurate estimation of physical quantities depends on the availability of High Resolution (HR) observations of the Earth surface. However, due to the unavoidable tradeoff between spatial and time resolution, the acquisition instants of HR data hardly coincides with those required by the estimation algorithms. A possible solution consists in constructing a synthetic HR observation at a given time k by exploiting Low Resolution (LR) and HR data acquired at different instants. In this work we recast this issue as a smoothing problem, thus focusing on cases in which observations acquired both before and after time k are available. The proposed approach is validated on a region of interest for t…
The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and Financial Integration: a first assessment for selected countries
2009
In this paper, we try to provide a first assessment on the extent of financial integration and convergence between selected European and Southern Mediterranean countries involved in the Barcelona process. In particular, we implement a simple test of capital mobility based on the verification of the international real interest parity hypothesis between domestic rates against the real rate of Germany, used as the European reference country, and against the real rate of the US. We repeat the test before and after the introduction of the Euro, and then measure the speed of real interest rate convergence.
Distributed and proximity-constrained C-means for discrete coverage control
2018
In this paper we present a novel distributed coverage control framework for a network of mobile agents, in charge of covering a finite set of points of interest (PoI), such as people in danger, geographically dispersed equipment or environmental landmarks. The proposed algorithm is inspired by C-Means, an unsupervised learning algorithm originally proposed for non-exclusive clustering and for identification of cluster centroids from a set of observations. To cope with the agents' limited sensing range and avoid infeasible coverage solutions, traditional C-Means needs to be enhanced with proximity constraints, ensuring that each agent takes into account only neighboring PoIs. The proposed co…