Search results for "SCA"

A Multidimensional Ethics Scale for Indian Managers' Moral Decision Making

2010

This paper analyses the role of traditional moral theories in managers’ moral decision making using the multidimensional ethics scale (MES) developed and refined by Reidenbach and Robin (1988, 1990). This study extends their work by examining the applicability of the scale to subjects from India, other than the country in which the scale was developed. The research question is: what kind of ethical dimensions do Indian managers reveal when they are making moral decisions. Factor analysis is done to investigate the role of five moral philosophies (justice, deontology, relativism, utilitarianism, and egoism) in their ethical decision-making. The results show that the scale holds for the diffe…

A visualization technique for accessing solution pool in interactive methods of multiobjective optimization

2015

<pre>Interactive methods of <span>multiobjective</span> optimization repetitively derive <span>Pareto</span> optimal solutions based on decision maker's preference information and present the obtained solutions for his/her consideration. Some interactive methods save the obtained solutions into a solution pool and, at each iteration, allow the decision maker considering any of solutions obtained earlier. This feature contributes to the flexibility of exploring the <span>Pareto</span> optimal set and learning about the optimization problem. However, in the case of many objective functions, the accumulation of derived solutions makes accessing the sol…

Genome-wide analysis of Italian sheep diversity reveals a strong geographic pattern and cryptic relationships between breeds

2014

Summary Italy counts several sheep breeds, arisen over centuries as a consequence of ancient and recent genetic and demographic events. To finely reconstruct genetic structure and relationships between Italian sheep, 496 subjects from 19 breeds were typed at 50K single nucleotide polymorphism loci. A subset of foreign breeds from the Sheep HapMap dataset was also included in the analyses. Genetic distances (as visualized either in a network or in a multidimensional scaling analysis of identical by state distances) closely reflected geographic proximity between breeds, with a clear north–south gradient, likely because of high levels of past gene flow and admixture all along the peninsula. Sa…

Is Environmental Sustainability Also “Economically Efficient”? The Case of the “SOStain” Certification for Sicilian Sparkling Wines

2022

The Italian wine industry is strongly committed to sustainability. Among the numerous sustainability certifications and programs implemented in Italy for the wine sector, SOStain is the oldest at the regional level. The SOStain Foundation promotes the voluntary application of a sustainability program, developed in 2010 in Sicily (Southern Italy). The requirements of the SOStain specifications are connected to the new CAP 2023–2027 objectives; therefore, companies preparing for the new challenges of future winemaking might be interested in joining the SOStain Foundation for greening production practices. The objective of this study was to learn producers’ and consumers’ opinions about motiva…

La formalisation fractale des tissus urbains

1998

The article concerns the fractal approach as it can bring new results making more understandable the morphology of agglomerate urban patterns. A new paradigm is developed, in order to improve the study of urban organizations according to optimization criteria. Specific fractal and multifractal methods are explicitated and applied to the knowledge of some big metropolitan areas and towns in Franche-Comté (France).

IL RUOLO DELLE AREE AGRICOLE NELLA PROGETTAZIONE TERRITORIALE. Gli aspetti sociali come forma di rivitalizzazione del territorio.

2014

La tesi indaga il tema della multifunzionalità applicata all’agricoltura come strumento per riattivare territori abbandonati, degradati, a rischio di uso improprio o di nuova edificazione. L’agricoltura ha sempre avuto un rapporto fondamentale con l’Uomo e con gli insediamenti. Il rapporto tra centri abitati e aree agricole è stato un rapporto di unione e di contrapposizione. Nel passaggio da agricoltura di sussistenza a quella di tipo intensivo e specializzato sono stati coinvolti gli spazi, le tecniche, gli strumenti, le opere legate all’attività agricola e, infine, il rapporto con il territorio. L’agricoltura, benché produca beni di prima necessità, nei decenni scorsi è stata considerata…

Analysing SET over time using multilevel multidimensional explanatory IRT models

2013

This contribution makes an attempt to analyze students' ratings of university teaching on a broad prospective, trying to adjust the final assessment from a wide range of factors which jointly may influence the process under evaluation: academic year peculiarities, course characteristics, students' characteristics and item dimensionality. From a methodological point of view, by setting complex Item Response models as special case of Generalized Linear or Mixed Models a large flexibility is introduced in the specification of ad hoc modelling approaches for the analysis of students' ratings.

Objects as artifacts: synchronic convergence in multilingual contexts

2011

In this paper, I propose a shift in analytic focus from language to artifacts – that is, to personally meaningful objects that surface in interaction and generate talk – as a means of accounting for the historical dimension of the relationship between form and meaning. Artifacts activate memories and feelings from other times and places, informing ways of speaking in the conversational here-and-now. By applying discourse analysis to a conversation recorded during fieldwork at a social center for Spanish senior citizens in Paris, I show how various timescales – that is, the microgenetic scale of unfolding talk, the “series of connected discourse events” over weeks, months or even years, and …

Multiple factor analysis: principal component analysis for multitable and multiblock data sets

2013

Conceptualizing ecosystem tipping points within a physiological framework

2017

Connecting the nonlinear and often counterintuitive physiological effects of multiple environmental drivers to the emergent impacts on ecosystems is a fundamental challenge. Unfortunately, the disconnect between the way “stressors” (e.g., warming) is considered in organismal (physiological) and ecological (community) contexts continues to hamper progress. Environmental drivers typically elicit biphasic physiological responses, where performance declines at levels above and below some optimum. It is also well understood that species exhibit highly variable response surfaces to these changes so that the optimum level of any environmental driver can vary among interacting species. Thus, specie…