What Determines Firm Size?

Motivated by theories of the firm, which we classify as technological' or organizational,' we analyze the determinants of firm size across industries and across countries in a sample of 15 European countries. We find that, on average, firms facing larger markets are larger. At the industry level, we find firms in the utility sector are large, perhaps because they enjoy a natural, or officially sanctioned, monopoly. Capital intensive industries, high wage industries, and industries that do a lot of R&D have larger firms, as do industries that require little external financing. At the country level, the most salient findings are that countries with efficient judicial systems have larger firms, and, correcting for institutional development, there is little evidence that richer countries have larger firms. Interestingly, institutional development, such as greater judicial efficiency, seems to be correlated with lower dispersion in firm size within an industry. The effects of interactions (between an industry's characteristics and a country's environment) on size are perhaps the most novel results in the paper, and are best able to discriminate between theories. As the judicial system improves, the difference in size between firms in capital intensive industries and firms in industries that use little physical capital diminishes, a finding consistent with size of firms in industries dependent on external finance is larger in countries with better financial markets, suggesting that financial constraints limit average firm size.

Targeting of anionic membrane species by lanthanide(III) complexes: towards improved MRI contrast agents for apoptosis

No abstract available

Pseudospectra of the heat operator Pencil

This article undertakes an analysis of the one-dimensional heat equation, wherein the Dirichlet condition is applied at the left end and Neumann condition at the right end. The heat equation is restructured as a non-self-adjoint $2\times 2$ unbounded block operator matrix pencil. The spectral, pseudospectral, and $(n,\epsilon)$-pseudospectral enclosures of the $2\times 2$ unbounded block operator matrix pencil are explored to scrutinize the heat operator pencil. The plots of the discretized equation are depicted to illustrate the observations

Bacteriostatic effect of Coumarin 2-(3,4- Dihydroxyphenyl)-3,5,7-Trihydroxy-4H-Chromen-4-One Isolated from the root extract of Strychnos nux vomica.

Introduction and Aim: Strychnos nux-vomica (S. nux-vomica) being Loganiaceae is a well-known herb in India as well in Srilanka, Northern and Southeast Asia America. The present investigation has been carried out to evaluate the bacteriostatic effects of 2-(3,4- dihydroxyphenyl)-3,5,7-trihydroxy-4H-chromen-4-one isolated from root ethyl acetate extract of S. nux-vomica. Materials and Methods: Structure elucidation was carried out using 1HNMR.The bacteriostatic effect of isolated compound at 75 and 100 µg/ml was evaluated using agar well diffusion method against MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, B. subtilis, B. cereus, P.aeruginosa, E.coli, S. typhi. Result: Based on the result, we noted that, MRSA was most susceptible bacterial strain with 5.4mm and 11.3mm zone of inhibitions recorded at 75 and 100µg/ml respectively. Result is compared with known standard gentamycin sulphate. Conclusion: In accordance to the result of the investigation, here we conclude that, the isolated compound is coumarin derivative compound and it exhibit significant activity against MRSA

Anti Biofilm Activity and Time-Kill Study of Silver Nanoparticles of Strychnos nux vomica Root Ethyl Acetate extractagainst Clinically Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Mutants

Introduction and Aim: The development of biofilms is a crucial component of adherent pathogens and is regarded as one of the indirect mechanisms by which bacteria are resistant to different types of current antibiotics. The time kill studies are also important to evaluate the drug efficiency towards particular bacteria. The current investigation is carried out to determine the antibiofilm and time dependent death initiation ability of silver nano particles (AgNo’s) prepared using S. nux-vomica root ethyl acetate extract. Materials and Methods: Crystal violet assay was used to determine the antibiofilm assay using 1 X MIC, 2 X MIC, and 4 X MIC concentrations of prepared AgNo’s. Ampicillin is used as reference drug. time kill study is also carried out using 1 X MIC, 2 X MIC, and 4 X MIC concentrations of prepared AgNo’s. Results: Antibiofilm activity results of AgNP’s prepared using ethyl acetate extract of S. nux-vomica root revealed to exhibit concentration dependent biofilm inhibition of S. aureus mutant strains.  As per the results, we noticed that the tested AgNP’s are more significant MMSA with inhibition percentage 44.7%, 85.1%, and 83.4% recorded at 1 X MIC, 2 X MIC, and 4 X MIC respectively. Based on the result, we noticed that AgNo’s was significantly killed MMSACFU at 1 × MIC after 5h of treatment time of interval with 31.9%. However, the death rate percentage of MMSA was steadily raised to 56.5% at 8h treatment time and dropped to 44.8% after 9h of treatment. Conclusion: we conclude that, S. nux-vomica root ethyl acetate extract AgNo’s were very significant against MMSA and MRSA and slightly effective against VRSA

ANALYSIS OF FACIAL MARKS TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN IDENTICAL TWINS USING NOVEL METHOD

Reliable and accurate verification of people is extremely important in a number of business transactions as well as access to privileged information. The biometrics-based methods assume that the physical characteristics of an individual (as captured by a sensor) used for verification are sufficiently unique to distinguish one person from another. But the increase in twin births has created a requirement for biometric systems to accurately determine the identity of a person who has an identical twin. Identical twins have the closest genetics-based relationship and, therefore, the maximum similarity between fingerprints is expected to be found among identical twins. They can’t be discriminated based on DNA. As one of the most successful applications of image analysis and understanding, face recognition has recently received significant attention, especially during the past several years. Identical twin face recognition is a difficult task due to the existence of a high degree of correlation in overall facial appearance. In this paper, we study the usability of facial marks as biometric signatures to distinguish between identical twins. We propose a multi scale automatic facial mark detector based on a gradient-based operator known as the fast radial symmetry transform. The transform detects bright or dark regions with high radial symmetry at different scales. Next, the detections are tracked across scales to determine the prominence of facial marks. Extensive experiments are performed both on manually annotated and on automatically detected facial marks to evaluate the usefulness of facial marks as biometric signatures. The results of our analysis signify the usefulness of the distribution of facial marks as a biometric signature

Comparative Study of Artificial Neural Network based Classification for Liver Patient

The extensive accessibility of new computational methods and tools for data analysis and predictive modeling requires medical informatics researchers and practitioners to steadily select the most appropriate strategy to cope with clinical prediction problems. Data mining offers methodological and technical solutions to deal with the analysis of medical data and construction of prediction models. Patients with Liver disease have been continuously increasing because of excessive consumption of alcohol, inhale of harmful gases, intake of contaminated food, pickles and drugs. Therefore, in this study, Liver patient data is considered and evaluated by univariate analysis and a feature selection method for predicator attributes determination. Further comparative study of artificial neural network based predictive models such as BP, RBF, SOM, SVM are provided. Keywords: Medical Informatics, Classification, Liver Data, Artificial Neural Networ