The impact of sales promotions on store performance: a structural vector autoregressive approach

The present paper analyses the impact of sales promotions on store performance, in the short and long term, from the retailer's point of view. Relationships among promoted and regular sales in the hypermarkets of a large-scale retail chain of national importance, are investigated by means of a structural vector autoregressive model (SVAR). Statistically significant effects of sales promotions in the heavy household section on store sales are found in the short-run; these promotions produce additional sales and thus act as an attractive factor. Promotions in textile category, on the contrary, produce an immediate negative effect on net sales. In the long run, negative statistically significant effects on regular sales are detected when promotions are repeatedly implemented within perishables category.     

Physical exercise,nutrition and hormones: three pillars to fight sarcopenia

Background: Sarcopenia is a pathophysiological condition diffused in elderly people; it represents a social issue due to the longer life expectancy and the growing aging population. It affects negatively quality of life and it represents a risk factor for other pathologies, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. No silver bullet exists to hinder sarcopenia, but it may be counteracted by physical exercise, nutrition, and a proper endocrine milieu. Indeed, we aim to analyze the scientific literature to give to clinician effective advices to counteract sarcopenia.

Main text: Physical exercise, proper nutrition, optimized hormonal homeostasis represent the three pillars to fight sarcopenia. Physical exercise represents the most effective remedy to face sarcopenia, in particular if it is combined with a proper diet and with an adequate endocrine milieu. Consistency in training, adequate daily protein intake and eugonadism seems to be the keys to fight sarcopenia. The combination of these three pillars might act synergistically.

Conclusions: Optimization of these factors may increase their efficiency; however, scientific data may be sometimes confusing so far. Therefore, we aim to give practical advices to clinician to identify and to highlight the most important aspects in each of these three factors that should be addressed.     

Microsimulating the Evolution of Italian Pension Benefits: the Role of Retirement Choices and Lowest Pensions Indexing

A few years after the introduction of the Amato and Dini laws, a renewed debate on reforming the Italian pension system and on modifying its structure and technical parameters is taking place. The present work simulates individual reactions to systemic changes, distinguishing among the different typologies of workers the categories of dependent (private and public) and self‐employed ones. This approach allows us to perform a general micro‐analysis of the effects of past reforms on family pension income distribution and average individual pension benefits. Furthermore, it makes it possible to assess the consequences of legislator's choices such as the indexation of the lowest pensions (‘assegni sociali’ and ‘pensioni integrate al minimo’) to wages or to inflation. Finally, a Monte Carlo analysis projects future inequality and poverty trends with a remarkable accuracy and allows to verify the robustness of our results.     

Head Canting in Paintings: An Historical Study

Head canting, a lateral shift of the head toward the shoulder axis, was examined in 1498 figures in the complete works of 11 painters from the XIV to the XX century: Martini, van Eyck Hubert and Jan, Holbein, Carracci, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Degas, Cèzanne, Klimt, and Modigliani. All figures (up to 9 in any one painting) that were not in complete profile and that were not depicted bowing or shifting their bodies were selected for analysis. Our analysis found a higher frequency (49%) of head canting in paintings than previously reported in naturalistic settings. Head canting was significantly higher in female figures than male figures. If a figure's head was facing laterally, head canting was more likely to be to the contralateral side. Head canting was lower in older figures than in children, youths, and adults. The highest level of head canting was seen in religious and mythological figures. Head canting was lower in figures of artists and professionals and virtually absent in depictions of nobles. Figures in pose were depicted with less head canting than those in natural settings. Head canting was lower in figures gazing toward the observer. Single-figure portraits head canted less than subjects in multiple-figure paintings. Author analysis revealed that head canting was pronounced in painters of religious subjects and in modern painters, whereas its degree was reduced in official portrait painters. These results are discussed in terms of dominance theory.     

Public policies on water provision and early childhood education and care (ECEC): do they reduce and redistribute unpaid work?

Governments need to provide public finance to support services to reduce and redistribute unpaid work. However, while the financial costs of the required public investment are up front and highly visible; the (many) benefits are diffuse, spread over time, and include non-monetary as well as monetary benefits. This article focuses on two experiences from developing countries, in the water sector in Tanzania and early education and child care in Mexico and Chile. These experiences provide us with evidence of impact, enabling activists and policymakers to develop analysis to use in advocacy and policy formulation, including the modes of provision that are more likely to ensure equitable outcomes.     

Parameter estimation in the classical occupancy model

Under the classical occupancy model, balls are randomly and independently allocated into cells (by assuming that each arrangement of balls is equally probable) in such a way that the random variable of interest is the empty cell number. In some practical applications the total cell number is known and the target parameter turns out to be the number of balls which is estimated on the basis of the observed empty cell count. For instance, the classical occupancy model is commonly adopted for airborne-microorganism abundance estimation, a topic of central importance in environmental microbiology, in aerobiology and in occupational medicine. The classical occupancy model is also applied to the analysis of US National AIDS surveillance data (which are inflated by duplicate reporting) in order to estimate the true population size of AIDS cases. Since many inaccuracies and misunderstandings are present in applied literature, the aim of the present paper is to introduce a formal analysis of the inferential issues connected with the estimation of the number of balls.     

Empirical investigation about statistical properties of abundance estimates based on line-intercept and network sampling of tracks

Line-intercept sampling (Becker, 1991) and network sampling (Becker et al., 1998) seem to be the most appropriate procedures for estimating animal abundance in a study area on the basis of tracks. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the statistical properties of these alternative procedures by constructing confidence intervals for abundance and comparing the interval performances in terms of width and coverage.     

The Tempered Discrete Linnik distribution

We introduce a new family of integer-valued distributions by considering a tempered version of the Discrete Linnik law. The proposal is actually a generalization of the well-known Poisson–Tweedie law. The suggested family is extremely flexible since it contains a wide spectrum of distributions ranging from light-tailed laws (such as the Binomial) to heavy-tailed laws (such as the Discrete Linnik). The main theoretical features of the Tempered Discrete Linnik distribution are explored by providing a series of identities in law, which describe its genesis in terms of mixture Poisson distribution and compound Negative Binomial distribution—as well as in terms of mixture Poisson–Tweedie distribution. Moreover, we give a manageable expression and a suitable recursive relationship for the corresponding probability function. Finally, an application to scientometric data—which deals with the scientific output of the researchers of the University of Siena—is considered.     

Levels of uric acid in erectile dysfunction of different aetiology

Erectile dysfunction is a common disease characterized by endothelial dysfunction. The aetiology of ED is often multifactorial but evidence is being accumulated in favor of the proper function of the vascular endothelium that is essential to achieving and maintaining penile erection. Uric acid itself causes endothelial dysfunction via decreased nitric oxide production. This study aims to evaluate the serum uric acid (SUA) levels in 180 ED patients, diagnosed with the International Index of Erectile Function-5 (IIEF-5) and 30 non-ED control. Serum uric acid was analyzed with a commercially available kit using ModularEVO (Roche, Monza, Italy). Within-assay and between-assay variations were 3.0% and 6.0%, respectively. Out of the ED patients, 85 were classified as arteriogenic (A-ED) and 95 as non-arteriogenic (NA-ED) with penile-echo-color-Doppler. Uric acid levels (median and range in mg/dL) in A-ED patients (5.8, 4.3–7.5) were significantly higher (p?p?相似文献   

‘Just what is there now,that is what there is’—the effects of theater improvisation training on clinical social workers’ perceptions and interventions

Flexibility, Therapeutic Presence (TP), and collaborative tendency are core capacities in clinical social work as well as in theater improvisation. This mixed-methods pilot study studied the effects of theater improvisation training on 35 graduate-level social work students, who participated in an experiential, semester-long ‘theater improvisation skills for clinicians’ course, compared to a control group of a similar cohort. These variables were measured before, after, and at a three-month follow-up to the course. Additionally, Follow-up semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 course graduates. Quantitative results showed a significant increase in flexibility and TP immediately following the course compared to the controls, which was not maintained at the three-month follow-up. The qualitative findings indicated an increase in flexibility, open-mindedness, TP, and self-awareness following the training. Triangulation of both sets of data suggests that improvisation training contributed to changes in participants’ general attitudes and perceptions regarding their clinical work. However, longer training is needed in order for these skills to effectively impact their clinical work. The findings suggest that improvisation skills can help clinical social workers increase their flexibility and TP, as well as other important alliance abilities. Implications for teaching and research are discussed.