Papers by paola palmitesta
Interacting with Computers
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of social media offered a possible way to address the diffi... more During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of social media offered a possible way to address the difficulties of social relationships for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as well as a way to ease the problems of their caregivers. To gather information on the feasibility of this solution, we conducted an online questionnaire about the first lockdown period in Italy (March–May 2020) with 29 caregivers of ASD individuals. The questionnaire investigated their living conditions, the way time was spent during isolation, the availability of technological equipment, the perceived level of anxiety and the perceived utility of social media. The results showed that the difficulties of using social media had not been overcome, even at this time of greatest need. However, caregivers who take care of ASD people with high levels of anxiety perceived social media as more useful. This result invites further reflection on how to implement social media effectively for people with ASD.
Behaviour & Information Technology, Nov 30, 2022
Metron
The computer intensive starship procedure by Owen allows to obtain the best transformation to nor... more The computer intensive starship procedure by Owen allows to obtain the best transformation to normality using the global optimization of some measure of non-normality. In this paper, we propose to apply the procedure to estimate a cumulative distribution function in the Johnson translation system by means of the optimization of sampling statistics derived by the minimum distance and non-linear least squares methods. As global optimization method we consider a stochastic optimization method, specifically the simulated annealing, as an alternative to the method proposed by Owen and Li which is based on the Slifker and Shapiro criterion. The application of the starship procedure to a simulated sample shows that the simulated annealing algorithm inserted in the procedure supplies results better than the results obtained with the Slifker and Shapiro criterion. Moreover the problems of convergence that occur with traditional optimization methods are not present
Alvino, Angela Malandrino, Paola Palmitesta, Alessandro Zorzi, Domenico Corrado, Marco Bonifazi F... more Alvino, Angela Malandrino, Paola Palmitesta, Alessandro Zorzi, Domenico Corrado, Marco Bonifazi Flavio D'Ascenzi, Antonio Pelliccia, Benedetta Maria Natali, Valerio Zacà, Matteo Cameli, Federico Highly Trained Female Athletes Morphological and Functional Adaptation of Left and Right Atria Induced by Training in Print ISSN: 1941-9651. Online ISSN: 1942-0080 Copyright © 2014 American Heart Association, Inc. All rights reserved. TX 75231 is published by the American Heart Association, 7272 Greenville Avenue, Dallas, Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging published online January 27, 2014; Circ Cardiovasc Imaging. http://circimaging.ahajournals.org/content/early/2014/01/27/CIRCIMAGING.113.001345 World Wide Web at: The online version of this article, along with updated information and services, is located on the http://circimaging.ahajournals.org/content/suppl/2014/01/27/CIRCIMAGING.113.001345.DC1.html Data Supplement (unedited) at:
Scandinavian journal of rheumatology, Jan 16, 2016
Diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH) is a disease characterized by calcification and o... more Diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH) is a disease characterized by calcification and ossification of ligaments and entheseal sites (1). Although the exact cause of DISH remains unknown, ...
Science and Engineering Ethics, 2022
With the spread of the pandemic and the introduction of measures aimed at its containment, it is ... more With the spread of the pandemic and the introduction of measures aimed at its containment, it is necessary to understand in specific national contexts how home quarantine has affected the psychophysical well-being of academics, and their ability to maintain integrity. To this end we constructed an online questionnaire to investigate the levels of stress, well-being, and work-life balance in relationship with living and working conditions. Moreover, the questionnaire was designed to obtain information about the perceived occurrence, increase or decrease of misconduct in research (e.g., research misconduct by colleagues) and professional relationships (e.g., misbehaviors between colleagues, from students and toward students). The questionnaire was administered online by contacting faculty at three universities in Tuscany, Italy, asking them to relate their experience during the first lockdown (March–May 2020). Faculty members were invited to complete the questionnaire by their institu...
A method normally used in empirical financial studies to estimate the parameters of a general aut... more A method normally used in empirical financial studies to estimate the parameters of a general autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model is the quasi-maximum likelihood, which maximizes the likelihood function assuming conditional normality, also if it can be a false assumption. When it is possible to assume a nonnormal distribution of errors for this kind of models, it has been shown that there is a loss of efficiency of quasi-maximum likelihood estimators in finite samples with respect to maximum likelihood estimators. In this paper we study, with an empirical application to the daily returns of NASDAQ stock market index, the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of the asymmetric power ARCH model, a generalization of the general autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model, with skew distributions for the innovation process. The distributions considered are the Student-t, the exponential power and the generalized secant hyperbolic distributions, with repa...
Research Papers in Economics, 2004
Many problems in Finance, such as risk management, optimal asset allocation, and derivative prici... more Many problems in Finance, such as risk management, optimal asset allocation, and derivative pricing, require an understanding of the volatility and correlations of assets returns. In these cases, it may be necessary to represent empirical data with a parametric distribution. In the literature, many distributions can be found to represent univariate data, but few can be extended to multivariate populations. The most widely used multivariate distribution in the aggregation of dependent risks in a portfolio is the Normal distribution, which has the drawbacks of inflexibility and frequent inappropriateness. Here, we consider modelling assets and measuring portfolio risks using the family of Koehler-Symanowski multivariate distributions with specific marginals, as, for example, the generalized lambda distribution. This family of distributions can be defined using the cdf along with interaction terms in the independence case. This family can be derived using a particular transformation of...
In this paper we propose to model the dependence of multiple time series returns with a multivari... more In this paper we propose to model the dependence of multiple time series returns with a multivariate extension of the generalized secant hyperbolic distribution (GSH) using the NORTA (NORmal-to-Anything) approach and the Koehler and Symanowski copula function. The two methodologies permit to generate random vectors with marginals distributed as a GSH distribution and given correlation matrix, which can be used to measure the risk of a portfolio using the Monte Carlo method.
Some studies report high levels of perceived stress by university students in relation to academi... more Some studies report high levels of perceived stress by university students in relation to academic misconduct [1]. Therefore, it seemed interesting to evaluate how and to what extent the social containment measures that have been put in place to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic can influence the relationship between stress and ethical/unethical behaviors in the population of university students. 282 students from 3 Universities in Italy, filled in an online questionnaire aimed at detecting socio-demographic information, the level of perceived stress, the degree of interference between home life and study activities, the perception of unethical behavior. Results show a high level of stress and more serious issues with relationships with other students. In addition, problems in obtaining adequate online informational support appear to increase perceptions of misconduct during exams and in relationships with professors. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Sw...
The aim of this study is to shed some light on the complex relationship between cognitive, socio-... more The aim of this study is to shed some light on the complex relationship between cognitive, socio-affective and contextual (i.e. the technology and the way in which it is used) factors, which intervene in the context of prosocial and antisocial behavior, both in the real and virtual world. Results coming from a survey with a sample of 264 subjects show that those who perform victimization on the Internet are more likely to be more dependent on the use of the Internet and stay on social networks for more time in a day. In addition, while the aggressive behavior and the disengagement seem to be more correlated with a detachment towards the victim and therefore to a lower level of affective empathy, the helping behavior seems to be characterized by a greater cognitive capacity and a greater understanding of the other.
Metron-International Journal of Statistics, 2006
Summary - The Gini index represents a special case of the generalized Gini indices, which allow t... more Summary - The Gini index represents a special case of the generalized Gini indices, which allow to choose a level of inequality aversion and to stress the different proportions of the income distribution. In order to apply these indices to income sample data, it is necessary to use reliable inferential procedures. In fact, even if often in income studies we have large samples for which the precision of estimates is not of primary interest, it has been noticed that standard errors are very high. Motivated by these reasons, in this paper inferential procedures for generalized Gini indices are studied, specifically for S- and E-Gini indices, defined by means of the asymptotic distribution of their estimators and using bootstrap technique. To do this, the level of coverage of confidence intervals of the indices has been validated using Monte Carlo simulations, assuming as a model for the size distribution of incomes the generalized beta of the second kind, which is very flexible, with t...
In the analysis of multidimensional extreme observations we are often interested in understanding... more In the analysis of multidimensional extreme observations we are often interested in understanding the dependence structure of the marginals, in order to define measures to be used, for example, in risk management. With this aim, many models have been built using copula functions developed both with a nonparametric approach and with families of parametric models. A limit in the use of copula functions in this context is due to the fact that there isn't a finite parametric model which can express all the possible shapes of the multivariate extreme-value copula. In this paper we propose a different model to estimate the dependence structure of the extreme values based on the analysis of independent components with sources distributed as the generalized extreme-value random variable. This approach do not need the knowledge of the multivariate extreme-value distribution which could have generated sample data and put aside the marginals, as in copula structure analysis method; respect...
Forecasting temporal dependence in second order moments of returns is a relevant problem in many ... more Forecasting temporal dependence in second order moments of returns is a relevant problem in many contexts of financial econometrics. It is commonly accepted that financial volatilities move together over time across assets and markets. For this reason in this paper we propose an approach based on the analysis of independent temporal components to model the multivariate volatility. We have assumed that the underlying factors or sources of the model are AR-APARCH processes with errors interpreted by the Meixner distribution. An application with two sets of real data shows the use of the model in the analysis of parallel financial series.
Safety may depends crucially on making moral judgments. To date we have a lack of knowledge about... more Safety may depends crucially on making moral judgments. To date we have a lack of knowledge about the possibility of intervening in the processes that lead to moral judgments in relation to the behavior of artificial agents. The study reported here involved 293 students from the University of Siena who made moral judgments after reading the description of an event in which a person or robot killed other people or robots. The study was conducted through an online questionnaire. The results suggest that moral judgments essentially depend on the type of victim and that are different if they involve human or artificial agents. Furthermore, some characteristics of the evaluators, such as the greater or lesser disposition to attribute mental states to artificial agents, have an influence on these evaluations. On the other hand, the level of familiarity with these systems seems to have a limited effect.
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Papers by paola palmitesta