641 research outputs found
Strategy Planning for Technological Discontinuities in a Changing Regulatory Environment
This paper describes an approach to the analysis of publicly available financial data for individual industries. These methods enable the analyst to assess past practices and the historical rate of technological diffusion during the transition period of discontinuous technological change. This assessment can provide a basis of comparison for current changes in their industry. These methods are applied to small rural telephone companies during the period of 1960 to 1996. Annual data is presented detailing the change from aerial distribution cable to buried cable by the roughly 600 rural telephone companies financed through loans from the Rural Utilities Services, a branch of the US Department of Agriculture. This change took place at a time when these companies were regulated public utilities. As such they were guaranteed profit and were not subject to competition. With the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the expectation of nationwide competition in telecommunications services, these firms will be faced with a much more volatile environment, in which firms can fail. Measuring past events through this approach can accentuate critical business practices. This analysis of longitudinal data can provide the rural telephone companies assessment of the change in technology diffusion based on the new competitive forces, and provide direction to management as it attempts to sail in this new uncharted territor
Analysis of Intangible Factors in Waste Minimization Projects
Continual population growth and rising standards of living that accelerate the consumption of limited resources, are forcing society to encourage conservation of these resources. These resources not only include raw material, but also the areas to dispose of the wastes. As a result, communities are driving industries towards waste minimization by limiting waste generation and landfill availability. Firms\u27\u27 environmentally friendly strategies can gain competitive advantage by leading in environmental practices. This advantage emanates from the reduction of risk of environmental regulatory overreaction, as well as improved asset utilization and landfill utilization. However, these intangible benefits are difficult to identify and evaluate particularly with tools that were developed when intangibles were less critical. Many firms simply institute policies that force the tactical decision-makers to make environmentally friendly decisions. However, these policies can commit the firm to act in ways that are not in their best interest, since actions that absorb too many of the firm\u27\u27s resources without sufficient beneficial impact, can generate competitive disadvantages. This paper surveys the available analytical tools that are available to support effective decision-making dealing with intangible costs and benefits. It provides ways to identify some of the intangible benefits and address the value they generate. This paper looks at a case study, where there was an opportunity to reuse a large volume of oven bricks, showing how two companies addressed this opportunit
Sod-Seeding Alfalfa into Cool-season Grasses and Grass-Alfalfa Mixtures Using Glyphosate or Paraquat
Sod-seeding alfalfa into swards of smooth and meadow bromegrass, tail and intermediate wheatgrass, and orchardgrass and mixtures of these grasses with alfalfa using glyphosate or paraquat to suppress the existing vegetation was evabrated. Glyphosate (1.7 kg/ha) or paraquat (0.6 kg/ha) was applied 12 days prior to sod-seeding alfalfa (645 PLS/mz). Glyphosate completely suppressed or killed ail the grasses and as a result, excellent stands of aifaifa were obtained producing 5.8 to 6.4 Mg/ha the establishment year at Mead, Neb., without irrigation. The grass-alfalfa mixtures were also converted into pure stands of alfalfa by using glyphosate. Glyphosate suppressed but did not kill the existing alfalfa. Sodseeding in pure stands of grasses following paraquat application produced stands that were approximately 50% grass and 50% alfalfa. Paraquat bad a limited suppressive effect on alfalfa and sod-seeded alfalfa did not become established in plots containing old alfalfa
Characteristics of ferroelectric-ferroelastic domains in N{\'e}el-type skyrmion host GaVS
GaVS is a multiferroic semiconductor hosting N{\'e}el-type magnetic
skyrmions dressed with electric polarization. At T = 42K, the compound
undergoes a structural phase transition of weakly first-order, from a
non-centrosymmetric cubic phase at high temperatures to a polar rhombohedral
structure at low temperatures. Below T, ferroelectric domains are formed
with the electric polarization pointing along any of the four axes. Although in this material the size and the shape of the
ferroelectric-ferroelastic domains may act as important limiting factors in the
formation of the N{\'e}el-type skyrmion lattice emerging below T=13\:K, the
characteristics of polar domains in GaVS have not been studied yet.
Here, we report on the inspection of the local-scale ferroelectric domain
distribution in rhombohedral GaVS using low-temperature piezoresponse
force microscopy. We observed mechanically and electrically compatible lamellar
domain patterns, where the lamellae are aligned parallel to the (100)-type
planes with a typical spacing between 100 nm-1.2 m. We expect that the
control of ferroelectric domain size in polar skyrmion hosts can be exploited
for the spatial confinement and manupulation of N{\'e}el-type skyrmions
Critical dimensions for random walks on random-walk chains
The probability distribution of random walks on linear structures generated
by random walks in -dimensional space, , is analytically studied
for the case . It is shown to obey the scaling form
, where is
the density of the chain. Expanding in powers of , we find that
there exists an infinite hierarchy of critical dimensions, ,
each one characterized by a logarithmic correction in . Namely, for
, ; for ,
; for , ; for , ; for , , {\it etc.\/} In particular, for
, this implies that the temporal dependence of the probability density of
being close to the origin .Comment: LATeX, 10 pages, no figures submitted for publication in PR
Adaptation of aphid stylectomy for analyses of proteins and mRNAs in barley phloem sap
Sieve tubes are transport conduits not only for photoassimilates but also for macromolecules and other compounds that are involved in sieve tube maintenance and systemic signalling. In order to gain sufficient amounts of pure phloem exudates from barley plants for analyses of the protein and mRNA composition, a previously described stylectomy set-up was optimized. Aphids were placed in sealed cages, which, immediately after microcauterization of the stylets, were flooded with water-saturated silicon oil. The exuding phloem sap was collected with a capillary connected to a pump. Using up to 30 plants and 600 aphids (Rhopalosiphum padi) in parallel, an average of 10 μl of phloem sap could be obtained within 6 h of sampling. In first analyses of the macromolecular content, eight so far unknown phloem mRNAs were identified by cDNA-amplified fragment length polymorphism. Transcripts in barley phloem exudates are related to metabolism, signalling, and pathogen defence, for example coding for a protein kinase and a pathogen- and insect-responsive WIR1A (wheat-induced resistance 1A)-like protein. Further, one-dimensional gel electrophoresis and subsequent partial sequencing by mass spectrometry led to the identification of seven major proteins with putative functions in stress responses and transport of mRNAs, proteins, and sugars. Two of the discovered proteins probably represent isoforms of a new phloem-mobile sucrose transporter. Notably, two-dimensional electrophoresis confirmed that there are >250 phloem proteins awaiting identification in future studies
Generalized model for dynamic percolation
We study the dynamics of a carrier, which performs a biased motion under the
influence of an external field E, in an environment which is modeled by dynamic
percolation and created by hard-core particles. The particles move randomly on
a simple cubic lattice, constrained by hard-core exclusion, and they
spontaneously annihilate and re-appear at some prescribed rates. Using
decoupling of the third-order correlation functions into the product of the
pairwise carrier-particle correlations we determine the density profiles of the
"environment" particles, as seen from the stationary moving carrier, and
calculate its terminal velocity, V_c, as the function of the applied field and
other system parameters. We find that for sufficiently small driving forces the
force exerted on the carrier by the "environment" particles shows a
viscous-like behavior. An analog Stokes formula for such dynamic percolative
environments and the corresponding friction coefficient are derived. We show
that the density profile of the environment particles is strongly
inhomogeneous: In front of the stationary moving carrier the density is higher
than the average density, , and approaches the average value as an
exponential function of the distance from the carrier. Past the carrier the
local density is lower than and the relaxation towards may
proceed differently depending on whether the particles number is or is not
explicitly conserved.Comment: Latex, 32 pages, 4 ps-figures, submitted to PR
Nueva cita de Horvathinia pelocoroides Montandon (Hemiptera: belostomatidae) para la Provincia de Corrientes, Argentina
Se cita a Horvathinia pelocoroides para Laguna lberá (Corrientes, Argentina) capturada con red en su ambiente natural, se describen parcialmente las condiciones climáticas y del ambiente
Industrial Structure and Political Outcomes: The Case of the 2016 US Presidential Election
This paper analyzes the US presidential election of 2016, examining the patterns of industrial structure and party competition in both the major party primaries and the general election. It attempts to identify the new, historically specific factors that led to the upheavals, especially the steady growth of a “dual economy” that locks more and more Americans out of the middle class. It draws extensively on a newly assembled, more comprehensive database to identify the specific political forces that coalesced around each candidate, including the various stages of the Trump campaign
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