Network complementaries in the international expansion of emerging market firms

Can domestic political capital be transferable to more or less similar institutional contexts abroad? Motivated by contradictory results in two streams of research, this study seeks to combine the insights from two theoretical arguments and conceptualize the role of domestic political ties in international expansion as a dual problem of securing key resources from home governments and looking for opportunities in foreign markets and matching resources to capture them. We adopt the notion of network complementarity to examine the complementarity effect of domestic political ties and foreign ties on international expansion. The implication is that EMNE research that concentrates on either looking for foreign opportunities or securing domestic resources, but not both, is likely to be incomplete when international expansion is being studied. Using a longitudinal panel dataset of Chinese international new ventures expanding to 105 foreign markets, we find a positive interactive effect of domestic political ties and foreign ties on Chinese MNEs’ internationalization. This positive interactive effect on internationalization is found to be stronger for expanding to developing host markets than to developed host markets. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on domestic political ties, the international expansion literature, the network complementarity literature, and the international entrepreneurship literature

The impact of imitation strategy and R&D resources on incremental and radical innovation: evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms

This study proposes and tests a theoretical framework that relates a firm’s imitation strategy and its interaction with R&D resources to incremental and radical innovation. The analysis of a panel dataset of 1381 Chinese manufacturing firms in the period 2008–2014 shows that imitation strategy is positively related to incremental innovation but has an inverted U-shaped relationship with radical innovation. More interestingly, R&D resources serve as a critical boundary condition of the imitation strategy–innovation link—they strengthen the link between imitation strategy and incremental innovation but weaken the link between imitation strategy and radical innovation

The crystal structure of yeast mitochondrial ThrRS in complex with the canonical threonine tRNA.

In mitochondria of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a single aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (aaRS), MST1, aminoacylates two isoacceptor tRNAs, tRNA1 (Thr) and tRNA2 (Thr), that harbor anticodon loops of different size and sequence. As a result of this promiscuity, reassignment of the CUN codon box from leucine to threonine is facilitated. However, the mechanism by which a single aaRS binds distinct anticodon loops with high specificity is not well understood. Herein, we present the crystal structure of MST1 in complex with the canonical tRNA2 (Thr) and non-hydrolyzable analog of threonyl adenylate. Our structure reveals that the dimeric arrangement of MST1 is essential for binding the 5'-phosphate, the second base pair of the acceptor stem, the first two base pairs of the anticodon stem and the first nucleotide of the variable arm. Further, in contrast to the bacterial ortholog that 'reads' the entire anticodon sequence, MST1 recognizes bases in the second and third position and the nucleotide upstream of the anticodon sequence. We speculate that a flexible loop linking strands β4 and β5 may be allosteric regulator that establishes cross-subunit communication between the aminoacylation and tRNA-binding sites. We also propose that structural features of the anticodon-binding domain in MST1 permit binding of the enlarged anticodon loop of tRNA1 (Thr)

Experimental investigation of hydrodynamic and heat transfer effects on scaling in an agitated tank

Scale formation on process equipment is a major problem in the mineral industry because of lost production from equipment downtime required in de-scaling maintenance and its high cleaning cost. Scale formation in the Bayer process mainly occurs from crystallisation of Bayer liquor which is not fully understood. This study investigated the hydrodynamic and heat transfer effects on crystallisation scale growth and its suppression, using a novel experimental approach in a newly fabricated lab-scale agitation tank. A series of experiments were undertaken using laboratory-made potassium nitrate (KNO3) aqueous solutions. Experiments were conducted with different size impellers at varying rotational speeds using various concentrations of KNO3solutions. It was observed that the impeller agitation speed plays a critical role in the scale growth and suppression mechanisms as the scale growth rate is enhanced at the lower and is reduced at the higher agitation rate. The effects of baffles on scale growth rate and suppression and the bottom settled scale accumulation rate were also examined. The wall scale growth rate decreased with time ranging from 58.06% to 6.79% and the corresponding bottom settled scale increased ranging from 4.19% to 80.2% depending on the agitation rate, impeller size, solution concentration and tank conditions. © 2018 Elsevier B.V

Learning from improvisation in New Ventures

The rapid pace of digitalization forces new ventures to cope with external changes they cannot foresee. Improvisation is a crucial way for companies to respond effectively to sudden changes. However, the mechanisms underlying the improvisation–performance link are not fully understood. This paper focuses on how improvisation affects a firm's performance. We identify two mediators for this relationship: entrepreneurial learning and routines. Our sample includes 243 new ventures in China. The results of structural equation modelling show that learning from improvisation in start-ups contributes to establishing new routines that serve as drivers of firm performance. We discuss the implications for practice and future research.</p

Status of soil nematode communities during natural regeneration of a subtropical forest in southwestern China

Forest recovery has been extensively evaluated using plant communities but fewer studies have been conducted on soil fauna. This study reports the status of soil nematode communities during natural re-establishment after deforestation in a subtropical forest in southwestern China. Soil nematode communities of two secondary succession stages, shrub-grassland and secondary forest, were compared with those of virgin forest. Shrub-grassland had higher herbivore relative abundance but lower fungivore and bacterivore relative abundance than forests. Between secondary and virgin forest, the latter had higher abundance of bacterivores. Shrub-grassland had lower nematode diversity, generic richness, maturity index and trophic diversity index than virgin forest, whereas there were no differences in these indices between secondary forest and virgin forest. The small differences in nematode community structures between secondary forest and virgin forest suggest that soil nematode communities recovered to a level close to that of the undisturbed forest after up to 50 years of natural succession

Aquatic plastisphere: Interactions between plastics and biofilms

Because of the high production rates, low recycling rates, and poor waste management of plastics, an increasing amount of plastic is entering the aquatic environment, where it can provide new ecological niches for microbial communities and form a so-called plastisphere. Recent studies have focused on the one-way impact of plastic substrata or biofilm communities. However, our understanding of the two-way interactions between plastics and biofilms is still limited. This review first summarizes the formation process and the co-occurrence network analysis of the aquatic plastisphere to comprehensively illustrate the succession pattern of biofilm communities and the potential consistency between keystone taxa and specific environmental behavior of the plastisphere. Furthermore, this review sheds light on mutual interactions between plastics and biofilms. Plastic properties, environmental conditions, and colonization time affect biofilm development. Meanwhile, the biofilm communities, in turn, influence the environmental behaviors of plastics, including transport, contaminant accumulation, and especially the fragmentation and degradation of plastics. Based on a systematic literature review and cross-referencing from these disciplines, the current research focus, and future challenges in exploring aquatic plastisphere development and biofilm-plastic interactions are proposed

How can using an iPad and an app assist in heart failure self-care and therefore wellbeing?

This paper describes the development and trialling of Fluid Watchers Pacific Rim: an iPad application designed to provide monitoring and self-care for Indigenous Australians with heart failure. The project is based on evidence that IT-supported education can be successful in decreasing re-hospitalisation and improving self-management skills. This project is the first demonstration that an iPad application can be developed to provide health care support for Indigenous Australian patients.In this paper, the authors describe an Action Research methodology, which involved health experts, an IT team and Indigenous heart failure patients in three cycles of development. They also describe the steps they took to ensure community participation and ownership of the project. The Fluid Watchers Pacific Rim trial provides positive initial findings which suggest that Indigenous heart failure patients enjoy using the application and improve their knowledge and self-care. The authors are currently developing a Randomised Control Trial to fully evaluate the application

A sustainable connectivity model of the Internet access technologies in rural and low-income areas

The Internet has evolved as a critical booster for the economic, social and technical development of human society. Almost half of the world’s population is unfortunately missing out due to the lack of access to the Internet. Such users are mainly those living in rural and low-income areas. Various strategies and approaches for improving the Internet’s accessibility are available, each with a different set of benefits, costs, and risks. It is important to choose solutions from these feasible options that promise to promote the efficiency as well as the sustainability of the ‘Internet Ecosystem’. In this paper, we propose a new model of sustainable connectivity that integrates three factors (affordability, social shareability, and geographical network coverage) that must be considered in the selection and design of Internet access solutions. In addition, we develop a hypergraph-based network graph solution that illustrates the relationship among the three factors. Then, we use Coloured Petri Nets (CPNs) to model and simulate the possible Internet access solutions and also interplay those three factors to study how they impact the overall network connectivity performance. Our initial results have revealed how sustainable Internet connectivity behaves as a function of the affordability, social interaction, and geographical network coverage and investigates how these factors could be leveraged to provide different network connectivity and Internet access solutions. © ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2018

Environmental Knowledge-Driven Over-the-Horizon Propagation Loss Prediction Based on Short- and Long- Parallel Double-Flow TrellisNets

Accurate perceptual knowledge of atmospheric characteristics in the propagation path is of great significance for the design of communication systems. However, the atmosphere above the ocean is inhomogeneous, which brings challenges to accurate prediction of propagation loss. Moreover, the atmospheric refractive index distribution model calculated from atmospheric data requires at least two stations with near-sea meteorological data. In real maritime over-the-horizon communication or detection, only one station transmits and receives meteorological data, and the received meteorological data and propagation loss have large temporal noise. To address these issues, first, a denoising model based on the one-dimensional convolution autoencoder (1DCAE) is constructed to filter out the temporal noise of input environmental meteorological data and propagation loss. Second, to accurately predict the influence of environmental factors on the prediction of propagation loss, a deep-learning framework called short- and long- term parallel double-flow TrellisNets (SL-TrellisNets) is proposed to predict the loss. Finally, the extensive experiments demonstrated that the root mean square and mean absolute errors of the proposed 1DCAE are dramatically reduced. Our proposed SL-TrellisNets outperforms the other state-of-the-art techniques in terms of propagation loss prediction. In addition, we analyzed the impact of the environmental factors on the accuracy of over-the-horizon propagation loss prediction.</p