The Impact of Foreign Ownership on Innovation Performance in Transition Economies, Using China as an Example

Foreign ownership refers to the complete or majority control of a business owned by foreign citizens or companies whose headquarters are in another country. This kind of ownership structure can provide companies in transition economies with various benefits. Foreign headquarters can supply domestic firms with more funds. Beyond mere financial contributions, foreign headquarters can also continuously transfer advanced knowledge and managerial know-how to local subsidiaries. Different types of talents may be allocated to these companies as well, which can be helpful to local economic development. Innovation has been a quite heated topic in many transition economies in recent years. Especially in China, where citizens always make money at a cost of their resources and the environment, now people have increasingly realized the importance of innovation. Much light has been shed on traditional factors that can have an impact on innovation, such as firm size, firm profitability and so on. Thus, the more recently discovered factor, foreign ownership, becomes the emphasis of this article. Although many scholars have investigated into the relationship between foreign ownership and firm-level innovation, the results have turned out to be inconsistent. Furthermore, most research on this topic is done based on data in developed countries, while not so much emphasis has been laid on transition economies. Nowadays, transition economies, such as China and India, have been constantly rising in importance. As a result, the author is going to dig deeper into the relationship between innovation and foreign ownership in transition economies, using China as an example. In this article, the author has gathered quantitative data from authorized websites such as CNINF, the only website which is designated by China Securities Regulatory Commission to disclose information about Chinese listed firms, and SIPO, which represents the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China. Negative binomial regression is used to discover the relationship between innovation performance and foreign ownership, and some significantly positive effects have been discovered

Bus Travel Time Deviation Analysis Using Automatic Vehicle Location Data and Structural Equation Modeling

To investigate the influences of causes of unreliability and bus schedule recovery phenomenon on microscopic segment-level travel time variance, this study adopts Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to specify, estimate, and measure the theoretical proposed models. The SEM model establishes and verifies hypotheses for interrelationships among travel time deviations, departure delays, segment lengths, dwell times, and number of traffic signals and access connections. The finally accepted model demonstrates excellent fitness. Most of the hypotheses are supported by the sample dataset from bus Automatic Vehicle Location system. The SEM model confirms the bus schedule recovery phenomenon. The departure delays at bus terminals and upstream travel time deviations indeed have negative impacts on travel time fluctuation of buses en route. Meanwhile, the segment length directly and negatively impacts travel time variability and inversely positively contributes to the schedule recovery process; this exogenous variable also indirectly and positively influences travel times through the existence of signalized intersections and access connections. This study offers a rational approach to analyzing travel time deviation feature. The SEM model structure and estimation results facilitate the understanding of bus service performance characteristics and provide several implications for bus service planning, management, and operation

Analytic initial relative orbit solution for angles-only space rendezvous using hybrid dynamics method

A closed-form solution to the angles-only initial relative orbit determination (IROD) problem for space rendezvous with non-cooperated target is developed, where a method of hybrid dynamics with the concept of virtual formation is introduced to analytically solve the problem. Emphasis is placed on developing the solution based on hybrid dynamics (i.e., Clohessy-Wiltshire equations and two-body dynamics), obtaining formation geometries that produce relative orbit state observability, and deriving the approximate analytic error covariance for the IROD solution. A standard Monte Carlo simulation system based on two-body dynamics is used to verify the feasibility and evaluate the performance proposed algorithms. The sensitivity of the solution accuracy to the formation geometry, observation numbers is presented and discussed

Myc-induced liver tumors in transgenic zebrafish can regress in tp53 null mutation

10.1371/journal.pone.0117249PLoS ONE101e011724

Shrinkage deformation of different shape of foamed concrete specimen

In construction field, the most important element is concrete. Majority of construction in Malaysia use the concrete and the improvement of concrete technology is very important. Example of concrete technology improvement is foamed concrete. Foamed concrete is additional of foaming agent in the concrete mixture to control the concrete density and the foamed concrete do not used the course aggregate. The foaming agent used to trap the air to reduce the concrete density. The strength of foamed concrete is lower than normal concrete and it is suitable to be used at the uncritical structure in the construction. The foamed agent also expose to crack effected by drying shrinkage. Some of the factors causes the drying shrinkage are investigated. Two factors of drying shrinkage investigated in this study are different density of foamed concrete and different shapes of concrete specimens. Prism sized 100mm x 100mm x 500mm, cylinder sized 150mm 0 x 300mm and 150mm cube for 1200 kg/m3 and 1600 kg/m3 density were produced throughout this experiment. The uses of prism and cylinder specimens are because it is normal shape of concrete structure with different surface expose to environmental for shrinkage observation. The cube was used for compressive strength test to prove the targeted density. The result of compressive strength test shows the increments of concrete density produced high strength of concrete. On the other hand, the increments of concrete density reduce the shrinkage value as well as the reduction of surface exposes to the environmental