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The problem of automatic recognition of human activity is one of the most important and challenging areas of research in computer vision because of the wide range of possible applications, for example surveillance, advanced human‐computer interactions, monitoring. This paper presents statistical computer vision approaches to automatically recognize different human activities.

The human activity recognition process has three steps: firstly human blobs are segmented by motion analysis; then the human body posture is estimated and, finally a temporal model of the detected posture series is generated by discrete hidden Markov models to identify the activity.

The system was tested on image sequences acquired in a real archaeological site while some people simulated both legal and illegal actions. Four kinds of activity were automatically classified with a high percentage of correct detections.

The proposed approach provides efficient solutions to some of the most common problems in the human activity recognition research field: high detailed image requirement, sequence alignment and intensive user interaction in the training phase. The main constraint of this framework is that the posture estimation approach is not completely view independent.

Results of time performance tests were very encouraging for the use of the proposed method in real time surveillance applications.

The proposed framework can work using low cost cameras with large view focal lenses. It does not need any a priori knowledge of the scene and no intensive user interaction is required in the early training phase.

This study focuses on the main problems of the design and implementation of e-procurement in Italian Universities. We look at the main features of e-procurement in a university environment, through an analysis of various documents and reports, together with interviews with some of the key actors involved. The most important aspects of its adoption and the consequences for process management and organization itself are highlighted. The results of those phases of the project that have already been implemented (the "pilot projects") are discussed. We conclude by drawing up an overall assessment of the actual status of the project.

The Italian legislature GAVE to the Italian Competition Authority has an increasingly prominent role for the consumer protection over the years, especially giving the possibility to impose fines against companies. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the Italian system of consumer protection, studying the impact of these fines on the Italian agrifood companies till 2012.

Grounded theory approach was used in order to formulate new hypothesis from emerging data. Information and data were collected through several sources: interviews with key informants of ICA, secondary data from ICA database, a survey run among companies that received a penalty from ICA during the period 2007-2012, companies website, LexisNexis database and National print and web media titles.

From the analysis it emerges that there is an accurate system planned for avoiding and limiting misleading practices. Firms in fact have been capable to adapt to the set of imposed rules and to reduce the efficacy of the proposed dissuasive system.

The originality of this study regards the way in which the consumer protection was investigated, in fact it takes into account the relationships between ICA and IAP, two of the most important players of consumer protection in Italy. Moreover, the study is focussed on the agrifood sector. The authors give some recommendations for future interventions focussing on the length of time of the process, which could have a positive impact on the effectiveness of sanctions.

This paper aims to analyse the economics of financing banking supervision and attempts to respond to two questions: What are the most common financing practices? Can the differences in current financing practices be explained by country‐specific factors, using a path‐dependence approach?

The paper performs an empirical analysis that identifies the determinants of the financing structure of banks' prudential supervision using a sample of 90 banking supervisors (central banks and financial authorities).

The paper concludes that supervisors in central banks are more likely to be publicly funded, while financial authorities are more likely to be funded via a levy on the regulated banks. The financing rule is also explained by the structure of the financial systems. Public funding is more likely in bank‐oriented structures. Finally, the geographical factor is also significant: European bank supervisors are more oriented towards the private funding regime.

In general, the paper does not find evidence of the role of the political factor, the size of the economy, the level of development and the legal tradition.

The paper analyses the financial governance of banking supervision in a sample of 90 countries world‐wide. The empirical analysis focuses on the financing rules and identifies factors that explain the differences between supervisory authorities.