Search results for "VALUATION"

A Geographical Self-Organizing Approach for Vehicular Networks

2012

Cooperative vehicular networks have always been considered as the perfect way to bring more comfort to the passengers and more safety to the human life. Thus, research community and governmental organizations are interested to study and deploy these networks. The vehicular networks principle is connecting vehicles to each other and to existing infrastructure. However, their industrialization faces some challenges: (i) high mobility, (ii) frequently partitioned network, (iii) geographically constrained topology, and (iv) scalability. Therefore, in contrast to traditional networks, vehicular network protocols focus on both achieving adequate QoS level and reducing overhead. Achieving these tw…

Metagenomic, microbiological, chemical and sensory profiling of Caciocavallo Podolico Lucano cheese

2023

In this study, Caciocavallo Podolico Lucano (CPL) cheese was deeply characterized for its bacterial community, chemical composition and sensory aspects. The entire cheese making process (from milk collection to ripened cheese) was performed by strictly applying the traditional protocol for CPL production in four dairy factories (A–D) representative of the production area. The vat made of wood represents the main transformation tool for CPL cheese production and the biofilms hosted onto the internal surfaces of all vats analyzed in this study were dominated by lactic acid bacteria. Total mesophilic microorganisms present in bulk milk (4.7–5.0 log CFU/ml) increased consistently after contact …

Isolation and characterisation of autochthonous Saccharomyces cerevisiae from 'Pago' Merlot wines of Utiel-Requena (Spain) origin

2022

[EN] Background and Aims To achieve both the control of the undesirable yeasts and the improvement of the characteristics of Merlot 'Pago' wines, Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast diversity was investigated in a spontaneous 'Pago' Merlot fermentation from the Utiel-Requena region (Spain). Isolates of S. cerevisiae were characterised by a holistic procedure using the same Merlot grape must from which they were isolated. Methods and Results Yeasts were identified by internal transcribed spacer analysis and typed by HinfI mDNA restriction analysis. Growth and metabolic characteristics of the isolates were determined by laboratory-scale (50 L) fermentations of Merlot must and the composition of th…

Influence of cheese composition on the aroma content, release and perception

2022

Le nombre de sujets dans les panels d'analyse sensorielle : une approche base de données

2012

The costs associated with sensory evaluation increase with the number of panelists to be enrolled. Classical power computation can be used to derive the minimal number of subjects of a sensory panel in order to control both type I (α risk) and type II (β risk) errors. However, this power computation requires estimates of the size of the product effect to be sought and of the residual variability of the ANOVA model used. Generally, both product effect size and residual variability are difficult to estimate a priori by the sensory analyst. This work offers estimations of these two parameters thanks to the analysis of hundreds descriptive andhedonic studies collected respectively in two databa…

SINGLE FACTOR STOCHASTIC MODELS WITH SEASONALITY APPLIED TO UNDERLYING WEATHER DERIVATIVES VARIABLES

2003

This paper estimates single factor stochastic models describing daily air temperature behaviour. We modify classical financial models to reflect temperature seasonality and fit them to a time series representing temperatures in Spain. The estimated models are used in Montecarlo simulations to obtain heating and cooling degree-days, which are used as an underlying reference in weather derivatives. The final goal of this work is to obtain an insight into weather derivative valuation, and so making it easier to manage economic activity risks closely related to temperature (i.e. oil, gas and electricity prices and volumes). En este trabajo se estiman modelos estocásticos unifactoriales que desc…

Nursing home vouchers in Spain: the Valencian experience

2002

The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the innovative nursing home voucher scheme that was introduced by the Valencia Autonomous Region of Spain in the early 1990s to implement targets laid down by the national plan for the development of older people's services. The article begins with a review of the evolution of Spanish social services, and especially the nursing home sector, and then summarises the genesis, objectives and characteristics of the voucher scheme. The main part of the paper reports a performance analysis and economic evaluation of the programme. On the basis of detailed information over four years, it is concluded that nursing home vouchers have contributed to the in…

Experimental Performance Evaluation of Cloud-Based Analytics-as-a-Service

2016

An increasing number of Analytics-as-a-Service solutions has recently seen the light, in the landscape of cloud-based services. These services allow flexible composition of compute and storage components, that create powerful data ingestion and processing pipelines. This work is a first attempt at an experimental evaluation of analytic application performance executed using a wide range of storage service configurations. We present an intuitive notion of data locality, that we use as a proxy to rank different service compositions in terms of expected performance. Through an empirical analysis, we dissect the performance achieved by analytic workloads and unveil problems due to the impedance…

Handling stakeholder uncertain judgments in strategic transport service analyses

2013

Abstract The quality level of services has to be constantly controlled, especially under conditions of competition increasing and limited resources. However, considering that service performance analyses are based on stakeholders' judgments, they can be characterized by possible uncertainties related to incompleteness for partial ignorance, imprecision for subjectivity and even vagueness. Therefore, under these conditions, unreliable results can be obtained by widely used service analysis methodologies. In the present paper, a methodology based on a recent extension of the SERVQUAL model, and that uses in combined manner the fuzzy set theory and the analytic hierarchy process method is prop…

Assessing mental health therapeutic communities functioning

2019

Empirical and clinical evidence shows that therapeutic communities produce changes in people’s mental health and well-being. Treatment in communities has effects on improving interpersonal relationships, acceptance among members, ability to recognize other people’s feelings, symptomatology, life satisfaction and self-esteem. This paper aims to investigate which factors can explain the treatment effectiveness, measured by an index which incorporates the point of view of the communities staff members, by means of a beta regression model with random intercept. The results show the influence of some organizational dimension as well as staff roles, providing a meaningful insights into the functi…