376 research outputs found
Patents and small business risk: longitudinal evidence from the global financial crisis
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to shed light on the relationship between patent applications and long-term risk for small firms across the global financial crisis of 2008. During a crisis, firm risk often skyrockets, and small and medium enterprises face significant dangers to their business continuity. However, managers have a set of strategies that could be implemented to increase a firm’s resilience, sustaining competitive advantages and improving access to financial resource. The authors focused on the investigating the impact of patenting activities on small business risk in a time of crisis. Design/methodology/approach: This is a quantitative study based on a sample of Italian firms that applied for a patent in 2005. The changes in corporate credit ratings over a five-year period are related to different proxies of patent activity using multivariate regression analysis. Findings: Firms that filed for a patent were more resilient, compared to the control sample, during the financial crisis. Innovative activities resulting in patent application seem to deliver strategic resources useful to tackle the crisis rather than increase riskiness. The moderating effect of patents on risk sensitivity is stronger for small firms and when the number of patents or the patent intensity is larger. Originality/value: Limited evidence is available on how patent applications are related to risks for small firms during an economic crisis. The authors highlight that the innovative efforts resulting in patent applications can support small business resilience. The authors also point out that the implementation of patent information in small firms' credit score modeling is still an uncommon practice, while it is useful in estimating firm risk in a way more robust to exogenous credit shocks
Controlling the dynamics of an open many-body quantum system with localized dissipation
We experimentally investigate the action of a localized dissipative potential
on a macroscopic matter wave, which we implement by shining an electron beam on
an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We measure the losses induced by the
dissipative potential as a function of the dissipation strength observing a
paradoxical behavior when the strength of the dissipation exceeds a critical
limit: for an increase of the dissipation rate the number of atoms lost from
the BEC becomes lower. We repeat the experiment for different parameters of the
electron beam and we compare our results with a simple theoretical model,
finding excellent agreement. By monitoring the dynamics induced by the
dissipative defect we identify the mechanisms which are responsible for the
observed paradoxical behavior. We finally demonstrate the link between our
dissipative dynamics and the measurement of the density distribution of the BEC
allowing for a generalized definition of the Zeno effect. Due to the high
degree of control on every parameter, our system is a promising candidate for
the engineering of fully governable open quantum systems
Estimate of turbulent fluxes with eddy-covariance technique in a complex topography: A case study in the Italian Alps
A sensitivity analysis to different eddy—covariance data processing algorithms is presented for a dataset collected in an
Alpine environment with complex topography. In Summer 2012 a micrometeorological station was installed at Cividate
Camuno (274 m a.s.l., Oglio river basin, Central Italian Alps), in a flat and rectangular grass-covered lawn. The grass was
0.6 m tall during most of the field campaign. The station is equipped with traditional devices, four multiplexed TDR
probes, and an eddy--covariance apparatus sampling at 20 Hz (Gill WindMaster Sonic Anemometer and Licor Li7500 Gas
Analyzer), at about 3 m above the ground. The local winds regime is strongly affected by the morphology of the valley,
and the topography is complex also due to the heterogeneity of the surrounding-areas land—cover. Using EddyPro
software, the sensitivity of the turbulent fluxes estimate was assessed addressing three major issues of the data processing
procedure, i.e. the choice of the computational averaging period, of the axis rotation method and of the data detrending
criterion. Once identified three test periods of consecutive days without rainfall, the fluxes of momentum, sensible heat
and latent heat were computed at the averaging period of 30, 60 and 120 min respectively. At each averaging period, both
the triple rotation method, the double rotation method and the planar fit method were applied. Particularly the latter was
applied both fitting a unique plane for all the wind directions and fitting multiple planes, one for each sector of the wind
rose. Regarding the detrending criteria, data were processed with a block average and a linear detrend, the latter with
time constant of 5, 30, 60 and 120 min respectively. Therefore, for each test period about 50 estimates of the fluxes were
provided. As a result the obtained fluxes were compared. Even if with different flux quality, their pattern is quite stable
with regard to the applied estimate procedures, but with sensitively different average values
Family business growth around the world
Growth is important for the long-term success of a business. Regrettably, the impact of family influence on firm growth is largely neglected. We examine whether family firms have a higher growth rate than their nonfamily counterparts. Based on a large sample of firms across 43 countries over a 10-year period, we show that family firms on average have higher growth rates than nonfamily firms, and this positive effect is greater for family firms operating in strong national institutional environments which are less corrupt, more democratic, more subject to rule of law, and have effective government policies. We also find that the positive effect of family influence on firm growth varies significantly across different types of family firms and different business cycles. These findings show that family control has an economically significant impact on growth rates and important implications for both family firm theory and practice
Universality in Three- and Four-Body Bound States of Ultracold Atoms
Under certain circumstances, three or more interacting particles may form
bound states. While the general few-body problem is not analytically solvable,
the so-called Efimov trimers appear for a system of three particles with
resonant two-body interactions. The binding energies of these trimers are
predicted to be universally connected to each other, independent of the
microscopic details of the interaction. By exploiting a Feshbach resonance to
widely tune the interactions between trapped ultracold lithium atoms, we find
evidence for two universally connected Efimov trimers and their associated
four-body bound states. A total of eleven precisely determined three- and
four-body features are found in the inelastic loss spectrum. Their relative
locations on either side of the resonance agree well with universal theory,
while a systematic deviation from universality is found when comparing features
across the resonance.Comment: 16 pages including figures and Supplementary Online Materia
Board of Directors' characteristics and environmental SDGs adoption: an international study
Drivers of environmentally conscious firm behaviour have gained increasing attention over past decades. The Board of Directors holds a central role in corporate decision-making, and previous empirical evidence suggests that its characteristics could influence corporate environmental performance. This paper contributes to the literature with the first evidence of the influence certain board characteristics have on whether a firm ulti-mately supports one or more environmental SDGs. Our focus is on board size, gender diversity, board independence and CEO duality. Logistic and fractional regressions on 4417 globally listed firms highlight that board size, the share of female directors, and the share of independent directors are significant drivers of support for environmental SDGs. The results and insights revealed in this study should be helpful to policymakers, investors and corporations in evaluating the effectiveness of corporate governance characteristics and fostering corporate contributions to the 2030 Agenda
Parametric amplification and noise-squeezing in room temperature atomic vapours
We report on the use of parametric excitation to coherently manipulate the
collective spin state of an atomic vapour at room temperature. Signatures of
the parametric excitation are detected in the ground-state spin evolution.
These include the excitation spectrum of the atomic coherences, which contains
resonances at frequencies characteristic of the parametric process. The
amplitudes of the signal quadratures show amplification and attenuation, and
their noise distribution is characterized by a strong asymmetry, similarly to
those observed in mechanical oscillators. The parametric excitation is produced
by periodic modulation of the pumping beam, exploiting a Bell-Bloom-like
technique widely used in atomic magnetometry. Notably, we find that the
noise-squeezing obtained by this technique enhances the signal-to-noise ratio
of the measurements up to a factor of 10, and improves the performance of a
Bell-Bloom magnetometer by a factor of 3
Spatio-temporal Fermionization of Strongly Interacting 1D Bosons
Building on the recent experimental achievements obtained with scanning
electron microscopy on ultracold atoms, we study one-dimensional Bose gases in
the crossover between the weakly (quasi-condensate) and the strongly
interacting (Tonks-Girardeau) regime. We measure the temporal two-particle
correlation function and compare it with calculations performed using the Time
Evolving Block Decimation algorithm. More pronounced antibunching is observed
when entering the more strongly interacting regime. Even though this mimics the
onset of a fermionic behavior, we highlight that the exact and simple duality
between 1D bosons and fermions does not hold when such dynamical response is
probed. The onset of fermionization is also reflected in the density
distribution, which we measure \emph{in situ} to extract the relevant
parameters and to identify the different regimes. Our results show agreement
between experiment and theory and give new insight into the dynamics of
strongly correlated many-body systems
- …