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Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) represent a cornerstone in the treatment of diabetes and obesity and have emerged as a promising option for other metabolic disorders, including hepatic steatosis. Recent evidence highlights the direct and indirect anti-inflammatory properties of GLP-1, suggesting a potential additional therapeutic strategy for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). However, side effects of GLP-1 RAs, particularly those affecting the gastrointestinal system, may limit their use in patients with IBD. The rising prevalence of IBD worldwide and the ageing of the IBD population will likely increase the number of patients with metabolic comorbidities who may potentially benefit from a combination treatment with GLP-1 RAs. A profound comprehension of the physiological function of intestinal homeostasis and permeability is essential to more accurately evaluate the prospective application of GLP-1 RAs in patients with ongoing inflammation. While preclinical studies support this hypothesis, robust clinical evidence remains limited. This narrative review aims to provide a synthesis of current knowledge regarding the anti-inflammatory properties of GLP-1, with a particular focus on safety concerns and potential future directions for its use in IBD management.

Background/Objectives: Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs), which include Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), are chronic conditions requiring long-term therapy to maintain remission and improve quality of life. Despite the approval of numerous drugs, IBD continues to present treatment challenges. This review aims to summarize novel therapeutic target agents in phases II and III of development, including sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor modulators (S1P), anti-interleukin-23 (IL-23), and other small molecules and monoclonal antibodies currently under investigation (e.g., anti-TL1A, obefazimod, NX-13, RIPK-inhibitors). Methods: A comprehensive literature search was conducted up to December 2024 to identify relevant articles published in English over the past three–five years, focusing on phase II/III studies for UC and CD. The search included databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and the ClinicalTrials.gov portal. Results: Clinical trials underline the potential of novel immunomodulators, including anti-TL1A, obefazimod, NX-13, RIPK inhibitors, and anti-IL-23p19 agents, as promising therapeutic options for IBD. Anti-IL23p19 therapies, such as risankizumab and mirikizumab, alongside guselkumab, exemplify this class’s growing clinical relevance. While some are already in clinical use, others are nearing approval. Conclusions: Ongoing research into long-term safety and the development of personalized treatment strategies remains pivotal to enhance outcomes. Patient stratification and the strategic positioning of these therapies within the expanding treatment landscape are critical for optimizing their clinical impact.

Even if the economy nowadays is still locked into a linear model of production, tighter environmental standards, resource scarcity and changing consumer expectations are forcing organizations to find alternatives to lighten their impacts. The concept of Circular Economy (CE) is to an increasing extent treated as a solution to this series of challenges. That said, the multitude of approaches and definitions around CE and Life Cycle Extension Strategies (LCES) makes it difficult to provide (Small and Medium Enterprise) SMEs with a consistent understanding of the topic. This paper aims at bridging this gap by providing a systematic literature review of the most prominent papers related to the CE and lifetime extension, with a particular focus on the equipment and machinery sector. A taxonomy was used to define and cluster a subset of selected papers to build a homogeneous approach for understanding the multiple strategies used in the industry, and the standards in maintenance and remanufacturing strategies. As a final research step, we also propose a Strategy Characterization Framework (SCF) to build the ground for the selection of the best strategy to be applied for production equipment life cycle extension on several industrial use cases.

Purpose This paper looks at state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from the angle of the market for corporate control and analyzes in detail the reported rationales of a sample of 355 mergers and acquisition (M&A) deals performed by SOEs as acquirers over the period 2002-2012. The purpose of this paper, after having created a taxonomy of deal motivations, is to empirically test two alternative hypotheses: deviation vs convergence of M&A deal rationales between state-owned and private enterprises. Design/methodology/approach The data set is obtained by combining firm-level information from two sources, Zephyr and Orbis (Bureau Van Dijk). A recursive algorithm is developed to infer the ownership nature of the enterprises at the time the deal took place and then the authors double-checked the identity of the global ultimate owner by visual inspection of all the available information. Motivations are analyzed through a case-by-case analysis and classified into several categories, thereby providing a taxonomy of rationales behind SOE M&As and discussing their differences and similarities relative to private firms. Findings More than 60 percent of the deals performed by SOEs as acquirers are driven by \"shareholder value maximization\" motives, similarly to private enterprise acquirers. The other 40 percent of deals are almost equally spread among three rationales that specifically relate to the role of modern state capitalism in the economy. \"Financial distress\" motivation, which is the only one clearly deviating from the objectives of profit maximization typical of private ownership, is far less important than the others. Research limitations/implications The paper does not analyze the case studies in detail. Neither does it correlate the evidence with the quality of corporate governance or the quality of institutions in the country. This would be interesting in order to discover whether the alignment of objectives between public and private enterprises is enhanced by certain features of public sector management, as suggested by the OECD (2015) Guidelines. Practical implications The paper suggests some policy implications in terms of reforms of the corporate governance of the SOEs and accountability of their management against clearly stated public missions. It also calls for the need for citizens to be informed in a transparent way about the rationales of major M&A deals when a SOE is on the acquirer side, and the consistency of such rationales with the mission assigned by governments to the enterprises they own. Finally, it underlines that regulatory concerns raised in many countries by the rise of cross-border SOE M&As are in most of the cases unfounded. Originality/value Existing literature has mainly focused on private corporate M&A deals or has just disregarded the ownership status of the acquiring firm. This paper focuses on the motivations for SOE deals in order to elaborate a taxonomy of SOE deal rationales and to identify the differences and similarities between private corporate firms.

Recently, features and techniques from speech processing have started to gain increasing attention in the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) community, in the context of vibration analysis. In particular, the Cepstral Coefficients (CCs) proved to be apt in discerning the response of a damaged structure with respect to a given undamaged baseline. Previous works relied on the Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs). This approach, while efficient and still very common in applications, such as speech and speaker recognition, has been followed by other more advanced and competitive techniques for the same aims. The Teager-Kaiser Energy Cepstral Coefficients (TECCs) is one of these alternatives. These features are very closely related to MFCCs, but provide interesting and useful additional values, such as e.g., improved robustness with respect to noise. The goal of this paper is to introduce the use of TECCs for damage detection purposes, by highlighting their competitiveness with closely related features. Promising results from both numerical and experimental data were obtained.

Purpose This paper looks at state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from the angle of the market for corporate control and analyzes in detail the reported rationales of a sample of 355 mergers and acquisition (M&A) deals performed by SOEs as acquirers over the period 2002-2012. The purpose of this paper, after having created a taxonomy of deal motivations, is to empirically test two alternative hypotheses: deviation vs convergence of M&A deal rationales between state-owned and private enterprises. Design/methodology/approach The data set is obtained by combining firm-level information from two sources, Zephyr and Orbis (Bureau Van Dijk). A recursive algorithm is developed to infer the ownership nature of the enterprises at the time the deal took place and then the authors double-checked the identity of the global ultimate owner by visual inspection of all the available information. Motivations are analyzed through a case-by-case analysis and classified into several categories, thereby providing a taxonomy of rationales behind SOE M&As and discussing their differences and similarities relative to private firms. Findings More than 60 percent of the deals performed by SOEs as acquirers are driven by “shareholder value maximization” motives, similarly to private enterprise acquirers. The other 40 percent of deals are almost equally spread among three rationales that specifically relate to the role of modern state capitalism in the economy. “Financial distress” motivation, which is the only one clearly deviating from the objectives of profit maximization typical of private ownership, is far less important than the others. Research limitations/implications The paper does not analyze the case studies in detail. Neither does it correlate the evidence with the quality of corporate governance or the quality of institutions in the country. This would be interesting in order to discover whether the alignment of objectives between public and private enterprises is enhanced by certain features of public sector management, as suggested by the OECD (2015) Guidelines. Practical implications The paper suggests some policy implications in terms of reforms of the corporate governance of the SOEs and accountability of their management against clearly stated public missions. It also calls for the need for citizens to be informed in a transparent way about the rationales of major M&A deals when a SOE is on the acquirer side, and the consistency of such rationales with the mission assigned by governments to the enterprises they own. Finally, it underlines that regulatory concerns raised in many countries by the rise of cross-border SOE M&As are in most of the cases unfounded. Originality/value Existing literature has mainly focused on private corporate M&A deals or has just disregarded the ownership status of the acquiring firm. This paper focuses on the motivations for SOE deals in order to elaborate a taxonomy of SOE deal rationales and to identify the differences and similarities between private corporate firms.

Delinking of economic growth and environmental impact has become an increasingly topical issue across the world and affects regulation and management practices in several industries. The waste management sector is a particularly interesting case: waste volumes are predicted to continue rising unless action is taken to reduce this problem.

\"The road\" is anthropologically linked to the history of the human being, and therefore also to the economic history. Specifically, \"the road\" is important quantitative element as a factor in the opportunity cost in the traffic of goods, commodities and people but also, on a more abstract level, important qualitative element: better or worse traffic impacts on the substantive and practical transport trucks, on carried goods and on driving workers. We want to relate this study with a qualitative element of the carrier, in this case waste, such as the quality of this work to a quantitative element, i.e. the urban surface, the distance traveled, the density and the degree of traffic of a municipality. This study would examine whether there is an economical semantic relevance between what and how the path is and, once the possibility and feasibility of significance is established, it would want to test the kind of semantic rank, if space and quality of work have a significant correlation and how much i is significant. This work is focused on the garbage truck drivers and the link between waste collection path and drivers' task. The last step will be to verify whether this semantic space-quality of work in the waste industry has the same significance if we consider a different carried on object with other typologies of drivers: public transport drivers, couriers, taxi drivers. This study would focus on the variables that can affect the propensity of accidents of the drivers in bus and refuse sector: geographical and territorial, social and personal (like density of population, density of vehicles, knowledge degree or expertise). First of all, how much is significant the length of the path, i.e. how much the urban streets involve the risk of accident. Moreover, how much the technological innovation could contribute to decrease the frequency and the size of accidents for garbage truck drivers. Finally, how much the personal characteristics and behaviours could affect kilometres-accident risk relationship.

The paper contributes to the empirical literature on M&A deals performed by SOEs with a detailed analysis of the reported rationales from a sample of SOE-led acquisitions over the last decade. The sample includes 355 worldwide M&A deals performed by SOEs as acquirers over the period 2002-2012. The data set was obtained by combining firm-level information from two sources, Zephyr and Orbis (Bureau Van Dijk). The analysis is on a case-by-case basis for the rationales of the sample. Overall, the most important message arising from our analysis is that rescue of firms in financial distress is a relatively minor one role played by contemporary SOEs in spite of the Great Recession, while shareholder value maximization and long term strategic goals are more frequently the objective of the observed deals.

This paper provides a specific application of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) theory in order to explain the correlation between income and household waste generation. The model highlights an U-shaped path of income-refuse relationship that verifies the existence of EKC depending on the effort of household recycling and consumption. The existence of delinking can derive by income and other socio economic variables that affect the shape of the curve. This model would be a particular application of the theory of delinking with the intent to be empirically implemented.