Does Corporate Social Responsibility Reduce the Costs of High Leverage? Evidence from Capital Structure and Product Market Interactions

Research on capital structure and product market interactions shows that high leverage is associated with substantial losses in market share due to unfavorable actions by customers and competitors. We examine whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects firms’ interactions with customers and competitors, and whether it can reduce the costs of high leverage. We find that CSR reduces losses in market share when firms are highly leveraged. By reducing adverse behavior by customers and competitors, CSR helps highly leveraged firms keep customers and guard against rivals’ predation. Our results support the stakeholder value maximization view of CSR

Higher-order squeezing for the codirectional Kerr nonlinear coupler

In this Letter we study the evolution of the higher-order squeezing, namely, $n$th-order single-mode squeezing, sum- and difference-squeezing for the codirectional Kerr nonlinear coupler. We show that the amount of squeezing decreases when $n$, i.e. the squeezing order, increases. For specific values of the interaction parameters squeezing factors exhibit a series of revival-collapse phenomena, which become more pronounced when the value of $n$ increases. Sum-squeezing can provide amounts of squeezing greater than those produced by the $n$th higher-order ($n\geq 2$) squeezing for the same values of interaction parameters and can map onto amplitude-squared squeezing. Further, we prove that the difference-squeezing is not relevant measure for obtaining information about squeezing from this device.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Completing the picture of the Roper resonance

We employ a continuum approach to the three valence-quark bound-state problem in relativistic quantum field theory to predict a range of properties of the proton's radial excitation and thereby unify them with those of numerous other hadrons. Our analysis indicates that the nucleon's first radial excitation is the Roper resonance. It consists of a core of three dressed-quarks, which expresses its valence-quark content and whose charge radius is 80% larger than the proton analogue. That core is complemented by a meson cloud, which reduces the observed Roper mass by roughly 20%. The meson cloud materially affects long-wavelength characteristics of the Roper electroproduction amplitudes but the quark core is revealed to probes with $Q^2 \gtrsim 3 m_N^2$.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Experimental study of the delayed threshold phenomenon in a semiconductor laser

An experimental study of the delayed threshold phenomenon in a Vertical Extended Cavity Semiconductor Emitting Laser is carried out. Under modulation of the pump power, the laser intensity exhibits a hysteresis behavior in the vicinity of the threshold. The temporal width of this hysteresis is measured as a function of the modulation frequency, and is proved to follow the predicted scaling law. A model based on the rate equations is derived and used to analyze the experimental observations. A frequency variation of the laser around the delayed threshold and induced by the phase-amplitude coupling is predicted and estimated

Topology of 2D and 3D Rational Curves

In this paper we present algorithms for computing the topology of planar and space rational curves defined by a parametrization. The algorithms given here work directly with the parametrization of the curve, and do not require to compute or use the implicit equation of the curve (in the case of planar curves) or of any projection (in the case of space curves). Moreover, these algorithms have been implemented in Maple; the examples considered and the timings obtained show good performance skills.Comment: 26 pages, 19 figure

PU-Ray: Point Cloud Upsampling via Ray Marching on Implicit Surface

While the recent advancements in deep-learning-based point cloud upsampling methods improve the input to autonomous driving systems, they still suffer from the uncertainty of denser point generation resulting from end-to-end learning. For example, due to the vague training objectives of the models, their performance depends on the point distributions of the input and the ground truth. This causes problems of domain dependency between synthetic and real-scanned point clouds and issues with substantial model sizes and dataset requirements. Additionally, many existing methods upsample point clouds with a fixed scaling rate, making them inflexible and computationally redundant. This paper addresses the above problems by proposing a ray-based upsampling approach with an arbitrary rate, where a depth prediction is made for each query ray. The method simulates the ray marching algorithm to achieve more precise and stable ray-depth predictions through implicit surface learning. The rule-based mid-point query sampling method enables a uniform output point distribution without requiring model training using the Chamfer distance loss function, which can exhibit bias towards the training dataset. Self-supervised learning becomes possible with accurate ground truths within the input point cloud. The results demonstrate the method's versatility across different domains and training scenarios with limited computational resources and training data. This allows the upsampling task to transition from academic research to real-world applications.Comment: 13 pages (10 main + 3 supplement), 19 figures (10 main + 9 supplement), 6 table

4,4′-[(1,3,4-Thia­diazole-2,5-di­yl)bis­(thio­methyl­ene)]dibenzonitrile

The title mol­ecule, C18H12N4S3, consists of three essentially planar fragments, viz. two methyl-substituted benzonitrile rings and a substituted thia­diazole ring. The dihedral angles between the substituted benzonitrile rings and the central thia­diazole ring are 28.29 (10) and 78.83 (6)°, and the dihedral angle between the two benzonitrile rings is 72.89 (7)°

Similarity measures for mid-surface quality evaluation

Mid-surface models are widely used in engineering analysis to simplify the analysis of thin-walled parts, but it can be difficult to ensure that the mid-surface model is representative of the solid part from which it was generated. This paper proposes two similarity measures that can be used to evaluate the quality of a mid-surface model by comparing it to a solid model of the same part. Two similarity measures are proposed; firstly a geometric similarity evaluation technique based on the Hausdorff distance and secondly a topological similarity evaluation method which uses geometry graph attributes as the basis for comparison. Both measures are able to provide local and global similarity evaluation for the models. The proposed methods have been implemented in a software demonstrator and tested on a selection of representative models. They have been found to be effective for identifying geometric and topological errors in mid-surface models and are applicable to a wide range of practical thin-walled designs