How do Market Concentration and Mimetic Behavior Influence Strategic Renewal?

In the increasingly dynamic and competitive business environment of today, incumbent firms are facing rapid and profound changes in macro social, economic, political and technological conditions. Such a turbulent setting may disrupt the inertia of the incumbent firms, from a wide range of industries, and urge them to make drastic and often irreversible strategic decisions. Such vital strategic decisions include strategic renewal which, as the literature sustains, is a necessary requirement to remain competitive, but difficult to achieve. This paper aims to develop understanding on major areas of strategic renewal from the point of view of some aspects of the institutional environment. Its goal is to establish the relationship between different market conditions and the way companies react in terms of strategic renewal and change. Moreover it statistically investigates the degree to which companies decide to “run” in their own rhythm or just imitate other incumbent companies in the industry.strategic renewal, mimetic behavior, market concentration, exploitation, exploration.

Full Paper: Ontology-Based Dialogue System for Domain-Specific Knowledge Acquisition

Building task-oriented dialogue systems for solving specific tasks within companies represents a challenging research objective especially when the specific expertise of the company is not yet machine-readable formalized. Aiming to collect the specific knowledge in a company-scope knowledge graph, we design the architecture of a dialog system integrating the natural language processing modules with the specific concepts described in the domain ontology and the com- pany’s graph of instances. The described system helps growing the knowledge graph with the specific company data, while also providing the NLP building blocks for a future dialog system specifically tuned for the requirements of the target company processes

Acceleration of bit-true simulations for word length optimization using high-level synthesis tools

El propósito del presente trabajo n de grado es proporcionar al diseñador de circuitos digitales un sistema que ejecute la optimización de anchos de palabra a un circuito digital, me diante simulaciones bit-true aceleradas por dispositivos hardware FPGA. Estas simulaciones bit-true se basan en la ejecución iterada del algoritmo a optimizar dadas unas restricciones en los anchos de palabra de cada variable, con la nalidad de explorar las posibles combinacio nes de anchos de palabra, que minimicen los recursos del circuito digital y cumplan el error máximo soportado. Para facilitar un nivel más alto de abstracción y una mejor metodología de diseño de aceleradores hardware, este sistema se ha diseñado utilizando herramientas de sín tesis de alto nivel, que de nen un sistema acelerador utilizando un lenguaje de programación común como es C++. Los resultados indican una aceleración de hasta un 5.25x en algoritmos de alta carga computacional como puede ser un ltro de respuesta nita al impulso, ahorrando días o semanas de tiempo de ejecución. Por otro lado, es razonable concluir que al utilizar el lenguaje de programación C++, el sistema se hace más accesible y entendible que utilizando lenguajes de descripción de hardware habituales para la programación de FPGA como Verilog o VHDL

High field EPR spectroscopy studies in polymers and small molecule glass-formers

In recent years, an increased interest in the Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) spectroscopy technique has been observed. As in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), there is a tendency in EPR to go to higher microwave frequencies (95 GHz and higher) to obtain enhanced spectral resolution and sensitivity. In this thesis, the potentialities of high field high frequency EPR (HF2 EPR) are exploited in the study of the dynamics of a paramagnetic probe guest molecules (spin probe) in disordered matrices such as polymers and molecular glass formers. The high magnetic fields involved, offer a unique angular sensitivity to the reorientation motion, while by increasing the microwave frequency the dynamics appear more and more in the slow motion regime. The information from the slow motion HF2 EPR spectra analysis, are obtained from the line shifts rather than the lines widths. Moreover a multi-frequency approach is adopted (95 GHz, 190 GHz and 285 GHz) which offers great advantages in the dynamics studies. In fact the motional model chosen in order to describe the reorientation of the spin probe molecules must satisfactorily fit the three sets of spectra. The focus of this work was to investigate the characteristics temperatures of the polystyrene (PS) well below the glass transition temperature Tg down to cryogenic temperatures as well as the characteristics temperatures in the molecular liquid ortho-terphenyl (OTP), and in the polymer polybutadiene (PB) both above Tg. The slow motion spectra of a small, stiff, spherical spin probe in glassy polystyrene (PS) were obtained. A fully analytical and numerical simulation analysis was carried out. Two different regimes separated by a crossover region were evidenced. Below 180 K the spin probe is trapped, the rotational times are nearly temperature independent with no apparent distribution. In the temperature range, 180-220 K a large increase of the rotational mobility is observed with a widening of the distribution of correlation times which exhibits two components: i) a delta-like temperature-independent component representing the fraction of spin probe w still trapped; ii) a strongly temperature-dependent component representing the fraction of un-trapped spin probe 1-w undergoing activated motion over an exponential distribution of barriers heights. Above 180 K a steep decrease of w is evidenced. The de-trapping of spin probe and the onset of its large increase of the rotational mobility at 180 K are interpreted as signature of the onset of the fast motion detected by neutron scattering in PS at 175 ± 25 K. By the analytical evaluation of the frequency shift an alternative approach to characterize the spin probe dynamics is found that confirms the results from full numerical simulation. In the temperature range T>Tg, an optimal choice of the spin probes allowed the investigation of the molecular glass former ortho-therphenyl (OTP) and polymer polybutadiene (PB) by studying the slow motion regime of HF2 EPR spectra. As a function of temperature, the frequency shift of the HF2 EPR spectra exhibit several well distinct regimes with a characteristic cusp-like behaviour. The cusp is found to be very close to the so-called critical temperature Tc which is predicted by the mode coupling theory developed by Götze and co-workers

Convective Air Drying Characteristics for Thin Layer Carrots

Introduction: Carrot is one of the most commonly used vegetables for human nutrition due to high vitamin and fibre content. Drying is one of the oldest methods of food preservation, and it represents a very important aspect of food processing. Sun drying is the most common method used to preserve agricultural products in most tropical countries; this technique is extremely weather dependent, and has the problems of contamination with dust, soil, sand particles and insects. Also, the required drying time can be quite long. Therefore, using solar and hot-air dryers, which are far more rapid, providing uniformity and hygiene are inevitable for industrial food drying processes. Aim: This paper presents a kinetic study of convective drying without pre-treatment of carrot. The effects of the temperature of the drying agent, the speed of the drying agent and the thickness of the kinetics of drying the sample of carrots were investigated. Materials and methods: The experiments were carried out with the aid of an installation for drying food products, that is capable of ensuring the temperature of the drying agent (air) in the range of +25 ... +125 °C. The drying process was conducted at temperature of 45 °C in first hour of process, 2 hours at 55 °C, and 3 hours at 60 °C. The air velocity was setup  at 1.0 - 2.5 m/s. Carrots were divided into segments of a thickness of 0.4 cm. Two mathematical models available in the literature were fitted to the experimental data. Results: The drying rate increases with temperature and decreases with the sample diameter. The Page model is given better prediction than the Henderson and Pabis model and satisfactorily described drying characteristics of carrot slices. Conclusions: The most important characteristics of carrot required for simulation and optimization of the drying were studied. The values of calculated effective diffusivity for drying at 45, 55 and 60oC of air temperature and 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 m/s of air flow velocity. The effective diffusivity increases as air-flow rate and temperature increases. Page’s empirical model showed a good fit curves than the Henderson and Pabis model

Determining IT Student Profile Using Data Mining and Social Network Analysis

To become higher competitive a university needs to develop a viable students’ absorption strategy on the labor market. A key to the successful development of such a strategy rests to synchronize jobs descriptions with profiles and behavior of IT students. In order to generate this synchronization, it is essential to identify a way to improve university curricula, learning and teaching process based on the students’ profile and on the labor market needs. In this manner, universities could offer IT companies information about their IT students’ profile and behavior. Our paper proposes a data mining and social network analysis to examine IT students’ skills and behavior in order to generate their actual profile. The results contribute to the development of knowledge concerning the IT graduates’ profile and based on this, a solution that might match the university curricula with the labor market requirements. Finally, the results attempt to provide IT companies with information with the aim of better understanding the IT students’ profile and to create a realistic description of the job in the recruitment software on the digital market

The Behavior of a 1.4301 Stainless Steel Subjected to Cryogenic Temperatures

AbstractUsually equipments that work at low and cryogenic temperatures are made of stainless steel due to their good mechanical and anti corrosion properties. The best stainless steels for this kind of applications are the ones that present an austenitic microstructure. The austenitic microstructure is the most plastic phase of the Fe-Fe3C alloys but this gives it a very good resilience at low temperature. This paper analysis the behavior of a 1.4301 stainless steel subjected to prolonged exposure to cryogenic temperatures and thermal cycles of cooling to cryogenic temperatures and heating to room temperature. The cryogenic temperatures were obtained by immersing the samples in liquid air which has a temperature of -196°C. The samples were analyzed using scanning electron microscopy, optical microscopy and x-ray diffraction