Restructuring, firm performance and control mechanisms

Restructurings are the order of the day. Various major companies have just experienced or are in the midst of a major restructuring. This paper presents an overview of the literature on restructuring, firm performance and control mechanisms. To study the phenomena coherently, the concept of an overall restructuring process is presented. Theoretically restructuring has not yet been defined in the framework of the restructuring process formula. Neither have different forms of restructuring found their places within such a structure. Empirically several issues of the process have been studied but on a rather partial basis and mainly in statistical approaches only. Attention for all-inclusive case studies came from Donaldson (1984, 1994). This paper aims at laying the foundation of doing case study research studies with respect to Dutch firms in the 1990s.Corporate Control;Corporate Performance;Organizational Structure;business economics

Israeli acute paralysis virus infection leads to an enhanced RNA interference response and not its suppression in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris

RNA interference (RNAi) is the primary antiviral defense system in insects and its importance for pollinator health is indisputable. In this work, we examined the effect of Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) infection on the RNAi process in the bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, and whether the presence of possible functional viral suppressors could alter the potency of the host's immune response. For this, a two-fold approach was used. Through a functional RNAi assay, we observed an enhancement of the RNAi system after IAPV infection instead of its suppression, despite only minimal upregulation of the genes involved in RNAi. Besides, the presence of the proposed suppressor 1A and the predicted OrfX protein in IAPV could not be confirmed using high definition mass spectrometry. In parallel, when bumblebees were infected with cricket paralysis virus (CrPV), known to encode a suppressor of RNAi, no increase in RNAi efficiency was seen. For both viruses, pre-infection with the one virus lead to a decreased replication of the other virus, indicating a major effect of competition. These results are compelling in the context of Dicistroviridae in multi-virus/multi-host networks as the effect of a viral infection on the RNAi machinery may influence subsequent virus infections

SDDV: scalable data dissemination in vehicular ad hoc networks

An important challenge in the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) is the scalability of data dissemination. Under dense traffic conditions, the large number of communicating vehicles can easily result in a congested wireless channel. In that situation, delays and packet losses increase to a level where the VANET cannot be applied for road safety applications anymore. This paper introduces scalable data dissemination in vehicular ad hoc networks (SDDV), a holistic solution to this problem. It is composed of several techniques spread across the different layers of the protocol stack. Simulation results are presented that illustrate the severity of the scalability problem when applying common state-of-the-art techniques and parameters. Starting from such a baseline solution, optimization techniques are gradually added to SDDV until the scalability problem is entirely solved. Besides the performance evaluation based on simulations, the paper ends with an evaluation of the final SDDV configuration on real hardware. Experiments including 110 nodes are performed on the iMinds w-iLab.t wireless lab. The results of these experiments confirm the results obtained in the corresponding simulations

Fumonisin B1 in Bt and non-Bt maize: A meta-analysis

Fumonisins are a class of mycotoxins that are of interest due to their occurrence in feed and food grains at concentrations which may be adverse to the health of humans and animals. The presence and mitigation of fumonisin has been a topic of widespread study, but the meta-effect of Bt maize as a method of mitigation has not been fully established in terms of the probable incidence and magnitude of mitigation achieved regionally over time. A systematic review of agronomic data and subsequent meta-analysis were used to develop a more complete understanding of fumonisin B1 (FB1) levels regionally over several years as a means of quantifying the value of Bt maize adoption for reducing fumonisin concentrations in grain and derived foods and feeds. The magnitude and significance of the observed meta-effects were estimated for sets of meta-data representing varied degrees of statistical integrity. Variance weighted data indicated a 14% decrease in FB1 concentrations in Bt maize, whereas a replication weighted approach for the same data indicated a 67% decrease. While all analyses showed the positive effect of Bt maize to reduce FB1 concentrations in grain relative to comparable non-Bt maize, the effect size for variance-weighted data was smaller than for the less statistically robust data sets

Erop los intensifiëren

De Nederlandse taal barst van de mogelijkheden om werkwoorden te intensifiëren - of te intensiveren, voor wie dat liever hoort. Van wie heel erg stevig drinkt, kun je onder andere zeggen dat hij zuipt als een Tempelier, zuipt dat het een aard heeft, zich een stuk in de kraag zuipt, zich in een halve coma zuipt, tegen de klippen op zuipt of erop los zuipt. In dit eerste van twee delen gaan we grondig in op de gebruiksgrammatica van dergelijke opties

Exploring the Modularity and Structure of Robots Evolved in Multiple Environments

Traditional techniques for the design of robots require human engineers to plan every aspect of the system, from body to controller. In contrast, the field of evolu- tionary robotics uses evolutionary algorithms to create optimized morphologies and neural controllers with minimal human intervention. In order to expand the capability of an evolved agent, it must be exposed to a variety of conditions and environments. This thesis investigates the design and benefits of virtual robots which can reflect the structure and modularity in the world around them. I show that when a robot’s morphology and controller enable it to perceive each environment as a collection of independent components, rather than a monolithic entity, evolution only needs to optimize on a subset of environments in order to maintain performance in the overall larger environmental space. I explore previously unused methods in evolutionary robotics to aid in the evolution of modularity, including using morphological and neurological cost. I utilize a tree morphology which makes my results generalizable to other mor- phologies while also allowing in depth theoretical analysis about the properties rel- evant to modularity in embodied agents. In order to better frame the question of modularity in an embodied context, I provide novel definitions of morphological and neurological modularity as well as create the sub-goal interference metric which mea- sures how much independence a robot exhibits with regards to environmental stimu- lus. My work extends beyond evolutionary robotics and can be applied to the opti- mization of embodied systems in general as well as provides insight into the evolution of form in biological organisms