207 research outputs found
The Determinants of Interfirm Trust: Evidence from Supplier Automaker Relationships in the U.S., Japan and Korea
This paper has been accepted for presentation at the Academy of Management Meetings,
Cincinnati, 1996.The determinants of interfirm trust are examined in 453 supplier automaker relationships in the
U.S., Japan, and Korea. The findings indicate high supplier trust emerges when (1) suppliers
receive assistance from the automaker, (2) the automaker has a track record of maintaining a
continuing (repeated) exchange relationship with the supplier. Although there were some
differences across institutional environments, notably higher trust in Japan, the findings are robust
across the three institutional environments. Indeed, in a sample of U.S. suppliers that worked
with both U.S. and Japanese automakers in the United States, we found that Japanese automakers
were more effective than U.S. automakers at building trusting relations with U.S. suppliers.
Thus, firm level practices appear to be more important than the institutional environment in the
development of interfirm trust.
A central issue in the literature on strategic alliances and interfirm cooperation is how firms create
trust and control opportunism, particularly when the transactors have made investments in
transaction specific assets.
Under these conditions, trust has been described as an important antecedent to interorganizational
cooperation and economic efficiency (Sako, 1991; Smith, Carroll, and Ashford, 1995). In fact,
recent research suggests that trust in supplier buyer relations may be an important source of
competitive advantage because it: (1) lowers transaction costs and allows for greater flexibility to
respond to changing market conditions (Dore, 1983; Sako, 1991; Barney & Hansen, 1995; Dyer,
forthcoming), (2) facilitates investments in special purpose assets and technologies which enhance
productivity (Asanuma, 1989; Lorenz, 1988; Dyer, 1994), and (3) leads to superior information
sharing routines which improve coordination and joint efforts to minimize inefficiencies (Fruin,
1992; Clark & Fujimoto, 1991; Nishiguchi, 1994). Moreover, some scholars claim that national
economic efficiency is highly correlated with the existence of a high trust institutional environment
(North, 1990; Casson, 1991; Hill, 1995; Fukuyama, 1995). For example, Fukuyama (1995:7)
argues that the economic success of a nation, "as well as its ability to compete, is conditioned by
the level of trust inherent in the society." The findings from these, and other, studies have
increased our attention on the important role of trust in economic exchanges.
A natural response to these studies has been to exhort companies to build trust with their trading
partners (Business Week, 1986, 1992) and to call for increased research on the role of trust in
coordinating economic activity (Smith, Carroll, and Ashford, 1995). However, before an explicit
strategy for developing trust can be developed, or considered feasible, the determinants of trust
must be identified. Despite considerable academic and managerial interest in trust between trading
partners, to date there has been little empirical research on the antecedents or determinants of
interorganizational trust (i.e. between supplier buyer). Further, there has been little research on
whether the determinants of trust differ in different institutional (i.e. country) environments.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of supplier trust in a sample of
supplier/automaker relationships in the United States, Japan, and Korea. Given the recent attention
on the importance of trust in exchange relationships, an examination of the determinants of trust is,
by itself, a valuable undertaking. However, due to the globalization of industries and a dramatic
increase in international joint ventures, a study of the determinants of trust in different institutional
environments is particularly valuable. Such a study is useful because it allows for an examination
of those factors that are important determinants of trust both within, as well as across, countries.The International Motor Vehicle Program at MI
The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment
The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in
operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from
this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release
Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first
two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14
is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all
data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14
is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation
Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the
Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2),
including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine
learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes
from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous
release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of
the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the
important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both
targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS
website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to
data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is
planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be
followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14
happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov
2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections
only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected
Prevention of Rectal SHIV Transmission in Macaques by Daily or Intermittent Prophylaxis with Emtricitabine and Tenofovir
Using a repeat-exposure macaque model, Walid Heneine and colleagues find that pre-exposure prophylaxis with combination antiretroviral drugs provides protection against rectal challenge with a SHIV virus
Interobserver reliability of classification and characterization of proximal humeral fractures: a comparison of two and three-dimensional CT
Interobserver reliability for the classification of proximal humeral fractures is limited. The aim of this study was to test the null hypothesis that interobserver reliability of the AO classification of proximal humeral fractures, the preferred treatment, and fracture characteristics is the same for two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) computed tomography (CT). Members of the Science of Variation Group--fully trained practicing orthopaedic and trauma surgeons from around the world--were randomized to evaluate radiographs and either 2-D CT or 3-D CT images of fifteen proximal humeral fractures via a web-based survey and respond to the following four questions: (1) Is the greater tuberosity displaced? (2) Is the humeral head split? (3) Is the arterial supply compromised? (4) Is the glenohumeral joint dislocated? They also classified the fracture according to the AO system and indicated their preferred treatment of the fracture (operative or nonoperative). Agreement among observers was assessed with use of the multirater kappa (κ) measure. Interobserver reliability of the AO classification, fracture characteristics, and preferred treatment generally ranged from "slight" to "fair." A few small but statistically significant differences were found. Observers randomized to the 2-D CT group had slightly but significantly better agreement on displacement of the greater tuberosity (κ = 0.35 compared with 0.30, p < 0.001) and on the AO classification (κ = 0.18 compared with 0.17, p = 0.018). A subgroup analysis of the AO classification results revealed that shoulder and elbow surgeons, orthopaedic trauma surgeons, and surgeons in the United States had slightly greater reliability on 2-D CT, whereas surgeons in practice for ten years or less and surgeons from other subspecialties had slightly greater reliability on 3-D CT. Proximal humeral fracture classifications may be helpful conceptually, but they have poor interobserver reliability even when 3-D rather than 2-D CT is utilized. This may contribute to the similarly poor interobserver reliability that was observed for selection of the treatment for proximal humeral fractures. The lack of a reliable classification confounds efforts to compare the outcomes of treatment methods among different clinical trials and reports
Proteção ao conhecimento: análise dos impactos positivos e negativos do vazamento de conhecimento em empresas no Brasil e no Reino Unido
Scientists' warning on climate change and insects
Climate warming is considered to be among the most serious of anthropogenic stresses to the environment, because it not only has direct effects on biodiversity, but it also exacerbates the harmful effects of other human-mediated threats. The associated consequences are potentially severe, particularly in terms of threats to species preservation, as well as in the preservation of an array of ecosystem services provided by biodiversity. Among the most affected groups of animals are insects—central components of many ecosystems—for which climate change has pervasive effects from individuals to communities. In this contribution to the scientists' warning series, we summarize the effect of the gradual global surface temperature increase on insects, in terms of physiology, behavior, phenology, distribution, and species interactions, as well as the effect of increased frequency and duration of extreme events such as hot and cold spells, fires, droughts, and floods on these parameters. We warn that, if no action is taken to better understand and reduce the action of climate change on insects, we will drastically reduce our ability to build a sustainable future based on healthy, functional ecosystems. We discuss perspectives on relevant ways to conserve insects in the face of climate change, and we offer several key recommendations on management approaches that can be adopted, on policies that should be pursued, and on the involvement of the general public in the protection effort
A Low T Regulatory Cell Response May Contribute to Both Viral Control and Generalized Immune Activation in HIV Controllers
HIV-infected individuals maintaining undetectable viremia in the absence of therapy (HIV controllers) often maintain high HIV-specific T cell responses, which has spurred the development of vaccines eliciting HIV-specific T cell responses. However, controllers also often have abnormally high T cell activation levels, potentially contributing to T cell dysfunction, CD4+ T cell depletion, and non-AIDS morbidity. We hypothesized that a weak T regulatory cell (Treg) response might contribute to the control of viral replication in HIV controllers, but might also contribute to generalized immune activation, contributing to CD4+ T cell loss. To address these hypotheses, we measured frequencies of activated (CD38+ HLA-DR+), regulatory (CD4+CD25+CD127dim), HIV-specific, and CMV-specific T cells among HIV controllers and 3 control populations: HIV-infected individuals with treatment-mediated viral suppression (ART-suppressed), untreated HIV-infected “non-controllers” with high levels of viremia, and HIV-uninfected individuals. Despite abnormally high T cell activation levels, controllers had lower Treg frequencies than HIV-uninfected controls (P = 0.014). Supporting the propensity for an unusually low Treg response to viral infection in HIV controllers, we observed unusually high CMV-specific CD4+ T cell frequencies and a strong correlation between HIV-specific CD4+ T cell responses and generalized CD8+ T cell activation levels in HIV controllers (P≤0.001). These data support a model in which low frequencies of Tregs in HIV controllers may contribute to an effective adaptive immune response, but may also contribute to generalized immune activation, potentially contributing to CD4 depletion
Varieties of living things: Life at the intersection of lineage and metabolism
publication-status: Publishedtypes: Articl
PaLM 2 Technical Report
We introduce PaLM 2, a new state-of-the-art language model that has better
multilingual and reasoning capabilities and is more compute-efficient than its
predecessor PaLM. PaLM 2 is a Transformer-based model trained using a mixture
of objectives. Through extensive evaluations on English and multilingual
language, and reasoning tasks, we demonstrate that PaLM 2 has significantly
improved quality on downstream tasks across different model sizes, while
simultaneously exhibiting faster and more efficient inference compared to PaLM.
This improved efficiency enables broader deployment while also allowing the
model to respond faster, for a more natural pace of interaction. PaLM 2
demonstrates robust reasoning capabilities exemplified by large improvements
over PaLM on BIG-Bench and other reasoning tasks. PaLM 2 exhibits stable
performance on a suite of responsible AI evaluations, and enables
inference-time control over toxicity without additional overhead or impact on
other capabilities. Overall, PaLM 2 achieves state-of-the-art performance
across a diverse set of tasks and capabilities.
When discussing the PaLM 2 family, it is important to distinguish between
pre-trained models (of various sizes), fine-tuned variants of these models, and
the user-facing products that use these models. In particular, user-facing
products typically include additional pre- and post-processing steps.
Additionally, the underlying models may evolve over time. Therefore, one should
not expect the performance of user-facing products to exactly match the results
reported in this report
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