Search results for "STANDARDS"
showing 10 items of 394 documents
La elección del momento oportuno de la política ambiental en un mercado duopolístico
2015
[EN] In this paper the strategic use of innovation by two polluting firms to influence environ-mental policy is evaluated. The analysis is carried out by comparing two alternative policy regimes for two policy instruments: Taxes and standards. The first of the regimes assumes that the regulator commits to an ex-ante level of the policy instrument. In the second one, there is no commitment. The results show that when there is no commitment and a tax is used to control emissions, the strategic behavior of firms can be welfare improving if the efficiency of the clean technology is relatively low. If this is not the case, the strategic behavior of the duopolists has a detrimental effect on welf…
Diagnóstico económico-financiero de la empresa cooperativa. Un estudio comparado de los años 2004 y 2007
2013
En este trabajo nos proponemos analizar la evolución económico-financiera de las sociedades cooperativas en los últimos años, especialmente los años 2004 y 2007 por considerar que en el primero de ellos las empresas, en general, gozaban de una cierta estabilidad que desaparece con los efectos de la crisis económica, y 2007 como año en el que sus efectos empiezan a ser percibidos globalmente en el tejido empresarial. En primer lugar evaluaremos la importancia de estas empresas en España. A continuación, tomando como referencia los datos financieros de una muestra de empresas de los años 2004 y 2007, realizaremos un análisis estadístico de significatividad de las diferencias en rentabilidad, …
Recommendations for standardization and phenotype definitions in genetic studies of osteoarthritis: the TREAT-OA consortium
2011
Objective: To address the need for standardization of osteoarthritis (OA) phenotypes by examining the effect of heterogeneity among symptomatic (SOA) and radiographic osteoarthritis (ROA) phenotypes. Methods: Descriptions of OA phenotypes of the 28 studies involved in the TREAT-OA consortium were collected. We investigated whether different OA definitions result in different association results by creating various hip OA definitions in one large population based cohort (the Rotterdam Study I (RSI)) and testing those for association with gender, age and body mass index using one-way ANOVA. For ROA, we standardized the hip-, knee- and hand ROA definitions and calculated prevalence's of RO…
European Political Science and Global Knowledge
2018
In this chapter, the author maintains that rankings of universities and their social carriers participate in the relatively successful practical realization of the academic standards they seek to codify and of the shaping of reality according to the criteria they promote. In this sense, global university rankings are becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, a prediction that becomes true through positive feedback of varying intensity. They have succeeded in establishing through quantitative objectification certain types of equivalences between scientific excellence and numerical indicators. The reasons for their success are their performative efficiency (‘scientific’, quantitative) and the prac…
Thermal sensation and cell adaptability
2013
Whole person adaptive comfort is discussed with reference to recent findings in molecular scale systems biology. The observations are upscaled to hypotheses relating to less traditional interpretations of thermal processes, which have new implications for indoor climate management and design. Arguments are presented for a revision of current focus, model and paradigm. The issue is seen as a problem of integrating theoretical development, conceptual modeling and as an investigation of the extent to which environments and acclimatization can be used to achieve individual fitness and health, not only at the subjective comfort level, as hitherto promoted. It is argued that there are many questi…
Usability analysis and visualization of Web 2.0 applications
2008
Nowadays companies and home users use Web sites offering services ranging from Web sites up to complex Web applications. Often the ergonomics of these applications remains unconsidered and they turn out to be hard to use. In order to examine the usability from within the Web applications, information about the usage of the application is collected. The techniques that have been used in the past for Web 1.0 are no longer adequate. Ajax programs (Web 2.0) are more flexible and require other techniques. This paper shows techniques for collection, analysis, processing and visualization of data for Web 2.0 applications.
Analysis of operator human errors in hydrogen refuelling stations: Comparison between human rate assessment techniques
2013
Abstract The use of hydrogen as an energy carrier for road transport appears to be an optimal solution for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, the development of this technology depends on the growth and diffusion of production, storage and refuelling infrastructures together with accurate risk analyses to appropriately design the safety and management systems used in these plants. Moreover, to improve safety standards, it is also important to focus attention on the estimation of hazards related to human factors, as this is one of the major causes leading to accidental events, especially in complex industrial technology. The paper reports a case study relevant to operat…
Interlingual translation of the International Financial Reporting Standards as institutional work
2017
The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) have been widely adopted well beyond English-speaking jurisdictions. Using the Finnish translation of the IFRS as a primary object of investigation, this article analyses the way in which the standards are translated into another language. Drawing on interviews with translators and translation review committee members and on an analysis of archival materials, it provides an empirically grounded understanding of practical problems of linguistic equivalence, and the institutional work required to maintain the IFRS as a global, translingual institution. Accordingly, the article highlights the constructed and negotiated nature of the lingui…
MRI as the new reference standard in quantifying liver steatosis: the need for international guidelines.
2012
We read with great interest the paper by Raptis et al 1 regarding the quantification of liver steatosis by chemical-shift MRI. Chemical-shift imaging takes advantage of the difference in resonance frequency between water and fat (more precisely methylene, the most abundant group in triglycerides) to differentiate them. The dual-echo (in-phase/out-of-phase) MR technique used by the authors and derived from one of their previously published papers2 neglects T2* decay and assumes that the signal difference is due to fat–water interference alone.3 Yet, liver iron …
Towards an international language for incontinence-associated dermatitis (IAD): design and evaluation of psychometric properties of the Ghent Global …
2018
Background Incontinence-associated dermatitis (IAD) is a specific type of irritant contact dermatitis with different levels of severity. An internationally accepted instrument to assess the severity of IAD in adults with established diagnostic accuracy, agreement, and reliability is needed to support clinical practice and research.Objectives To design and psychometrically evaluate the Ghent Global IAD Categorisation Tool (GLOBIAD).Methods The design was based on expert consultation using a three-round Delphi procedure with 34 experts from 13 countries. The instrument was tested using IAD photographs reflecting different severity levels in a sample of 823 health professionals in 30 countries…