Pre-Evaluating Efficiency Analysis of Mergers and Acquisitions of Full-Service Carriers in Korea

In November 2020, Korean Air signs an agreement to acquire and merges with 63.88% of Asiana Airlines’ shares, which is conditionally approved by the Korea Fair Trade Commission to address exclusivity concerns. The conditions require both airlines to return certain take-off or landing positions and revise their licenses for 26 international and 8 domestic routes within 10 years. This paper collects passenger traffic data from 2009 to 2019 using Korean data analysis, retrieval, and transfer systems employed by both airlines. Data envelopment analysis is utilized to assess their performance assuming the merger and acquisition. The analysis reveals that Korean Air’s super-efficiency performance in 2011 is the highest among all decision making units (DMUs). The best super-efficiency performance is achieved not only by individual companies but also by the combined enterprise in 2019

Multiple Group Testing Procedures for Analysis of High-Dimensional Genomic Data

In genetic association studies with high-dimensional genomic data, multiple group testing procedures are often required in order to identify disease/trait-related genes or genetic regions, where multiple genetic sites or variants are located within the same gene or genetic region. However, statistical testing procedures based on an individual test suffer from multiple testing issues such as the control of family-wise error rate and dependent tests. Moreover, detecting only a few of genes associated with a phenotype outcome among tens of thousands of genes is of main interest in genetic association studies. In this reason regularization procedures, where a phenotype outcome regresses on all genomic markers and then regression coefficients are estimated based on a penalized likelihood, have been considered as a good alternative approach to analysis of high-dimensional genomic data. But, selection performance of regularization procedures has been rarely compared with that of statistical group testing procedures. In this article, we performed extensive simulation studies where commonly used group testing procedures such as principal component analysis, Hotelling's T2 test, and permutation test are compared with group lasso (least absolute selection and shrinkage operator) in terms of true positive selection. Also, we applied all methods considered in simulation studies to identify genes associated with ovarian cancer from over 20,000 genetic sites generated from Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation27K Beadchip. We found a big discrepancy of selected genes between multiple group testing procedures and group lasso

Service-led Catch-Up in the Indian Economy: Alternative Hypotheses on Tertiarization and the Leapfrogging Thesis

The experience of India in economic catch-up is unique when compared to other countries. First, the catch-up process of India was not only service-led, but also accompanied by a decoupling between manufacturing and services. Second, productivity performance in the service sector was higher than in the manufacturing sector in terms of the level as well as growth rate. Finally, exports in IT services led the tertiarization of the Indian economy. From this perspective, the trajectory of the Indian catch-up can be characterized as path-creating. Existing hypotheses on tertiarization do not fully account for such aspects of the uniqueness of the Indian experience. The leapfrogging argument in Neo-Schumpeterian economics provides a more plausible explanation of the Indian experience. The ICT revolution and the shift from hardware systems to client-server systems have created new markets for the global services trade. This paradigm shift lowered the costs of entry, including fixed investments, for Indian IT service firms and helped close the experience and skill gaps quickly. The industry-specific characteristics of the IT services industry and the country-specific advantages of India further lowered the costs of entry. With steady strategic and organizational innovations, Indian IT service firms succeeded in securing competitive advantages in the global market

THE EFFECTS OF LOCAL SHAREHOLDERS ON FIRM PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE FROM CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

This paper shows that local institutional shareholders tend to improve firm performance through corporate social investments. Using an extensive U.S. mutual fund-firm dataset, we find that local mutual funds tend to promote corporate social responsibility (CSR). In addition, the social investments are positively associated with firm performance. Finally, it is evident that CSR mediates the relation between local ownership and firm performance. Consistent with instrumental stakeholder theory, our findings suggest that local shareholders help firms develop reputational and relationship capital through CSR and lead to higher firm performance

Investigation of scaling effect on power factor of permanent magnet Vernier machines for wind power application

This study investigates the scaling effect on power factor of surface mounted permanent magnet Vernier (SPM-V) machines with power ratings ranging from 3 kW, 500 kW, 3 MW to 10 MW. For each power rating, different slot/pole number combinations have been considered to study the influence of key parameters including inter-pole magnet leakage and stator slot leakage on power factor. A detailed analytical modelling, incorporating these key parameters, is presented and validated with two-dimensional finite-element analysis for different power ratings and slot/pole number combinations. The study has revealed that with scaling (increasing power level), significant increase in electrical loading combined with the increased leakage fluxes, i.e. (i) magnet leakage flux due to large coil pitch to rotor pole pitch ratio, (ii) magnet inter-pole leakage flux and (iii) stator slot leakage flux, reduces the ratio of armature flux linkage to permanent magnet flux linkage and thereby has a detrimental effect on the power factor. Therefore, unlike conventional SPM machines, the power factor of SPM-V machines is found to be significantly reduced at high power ratings

Toward a More Illuminating View of Religious Language, Religious Truth, and God: Examination of and Critical Reflection on D. Z. Phillips’ Philosophy of Religion

In the present dissertation, I examine, critically reflect on, and evaluate D. Z. Phillips’ view of philosophy, religious language, religious truth, and God. One of the focuses is given to his attempts to overcome the dichotomy between the view of religious language as fact-asserting (realist) and as attitude-expressive (anti-realist), and between the understanding of religious truth as propositional truth and as personal truth. However, my focus is not limited to that issue alone. I attempt to grasp Phillips’ view of religious language, religious truth, and God as thoroughly as possible, since his view has been—too frequently—grossly misunderstood, and has attracted—often undue—criticisms from various sides. After that, on the basis of my understanding of Phillips, I make some suggestions for a more illuminating view of religious language, religious truth, and God. Phillips’ philosophical method, or way of doing philosophy is known as descriptive and contemplative. I examine central notions in his philosophy, such as description, contemplation, grammar, neutrality, and possibility. I also discuss scholarly debates on the relation between description and contemplation and the alleged shift in Phillips’ way of doing philosophy. In terms of religious language, Phillips’ several contentions are examined. He attempts to maintain the balance between the distinctiveness of religious language and its relation to other, non-religious aspects of human life. One of his central contentions regarding religious language is that the meaning of language is determined in the context of its use. For Phillips, the distinctiveness of religious language is shown in its specific characters, such as absolute (regulative), pictorial, grammatical, and expressive (confessional). While his view is often accused of attitude-expressivist, Phillips strongly rejects it. His position on the inexpressibility of God and the limits of human language and on the distinction between the literal and the metaphorical is also investigated. In regard to Phillips’ notion of religious truth, I explore its two major features. First, truth is context-dependent: not only the meaning but also the criteria of truth are to be found within the context in question. Second, religious truth is personal in the sense that it is a matter of personal decision and that it regulates a believer’s whole life. Despite the charge of relativism, his view does not necessarily lead to individualistic relativism, by virtue of the criteria of community and what we already know. Also, in terms of the charge of arbitrariness, Phillips’ account of our shared reactions to the world reveals not the arbitrariness but the contingency of our epistemic framework. For the reality of God, Phillips provides two kinds of analysis. First, in terms of the negative analysis—what the reality of God does not mean—he persistently emphasizes the difference between the reality of God and the reality of physical objects, and rejects metaphysical conceptions of God. Second, in terms of the positive analysis—what the reality of God does mean—Phillips argues that the existence of God is necessary existence; that God’s reality is synonymous with God’s divinity; and that the reality of God is spiritual reality. Also, Phillips rejects the charge of being Feuerbachian reductionist and attempts to go beyond the dichotomy between realism and nonrealism. The final chapter consists of two parts. In the first part, I address common criticisms of Phillips’ notion of the neutrality of contemplative philosophy. First, he has been criticized that despite his claim to neutrality, he is in reality a revisionist or a reformer who prescribes rather than describes. However, Wittgensteinian description, which Phillips employs, does have prescriptive force and thus the charge of revision or prescription could be less serious than is often thought. In terms of Phillips’ allegedly “one-sided diet,” I suggest, his Kierkegaardian-Weilian reading of Christianity needs not be taken as the grammar of religious beliefs; rather, Phillips offers it as an alternative account in his positive task of showing what religious belief does or may mean. Nevertheless, Phillips’ relying too much on that form of spirituality sometimes makes his accounts of religious beliefs less persuasive. Second, in terms of the question of whether neutrality is as attainable, desirable, or essential to philosophy as Phillips thinks it to be, his critics tend to take his notion of neutrality as a view from nowhere. However, I argue, the neutrality of contemplative philosophy is better understood as “trying to go nowhere.” Insofar as “a perch above the fray” of contemplative philosophy is construed as a third perspective from which a philosopher is looking for a way of describing the pros and cons of both the affirmation and the rejection of a position, contemplative philosophy is still a usable way of doing philosophy. In the second part, I suggest in what direction Phillips’ view can be further developed. First, a view of religious language based upon Phillips’ philosophy needs to involve more philosophical reflections on the structural inadequacies of human language, the ways in which language works in our talk of God, and, in this regard, the metaphorical character of religious language. Second, in terms of religious truth, I suggest two ways of deciding on the truth or rationality of a whole framework or worldview as such, despite the radical contingency of our epistemic framework: first, we can criticize or reject a framework by means of our context-internal criteria; second, the verification of the truth of a given worldview is experiential or practical. Finally, in terms of God, I argue that we need to pay more careful attention to and elucidate the grammar of the trinitarian conception of God, which is central to Christian religion

A Fast Eye Size Evaluation Method for High Speed Signal

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Violations of Moral Standards versus Emotional Reactions: How is Outrage Generated?

Outrage has often been interpreted as a shorthand for “moral outrage,” anger upon a moral standard being violated (Batson et al., 2007). We ask whether a violation of a moral standard is necessary for producing outrage or whether other variables can also produce it. By presenting participants with a series of potentially outrage-inducing scenarios and measuring their emotional responses, we seek to identify the predictors of outrage. We find that anger and disgust are the strongest predictors of level of outrage compared to sense of threat, level of surprise, level of uncomfortableness, severity of the moral violation, and how much one values the moral being violated. Mediation analyses suggest that moral violations do not mediate the effects of anger and disgust on outrage. However, anger and disgust do mediate the effect of moral violations on outrage. Our findings suggest that moral violations elicit anger and disgust, which in turn produce feelings of outrage

Automatic Detection and Segmentation of Thrombi in Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms Using a Mask Region-Based Convolutional Neural Network with Optimized Loss Functions

The detection and segmentation of thrombi are essential for monitoring the disease progression of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) and for patient care and management. As they have inherent capabilities to learn complex features, deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been recently introduced to improve thrombus detection and segmentation. However, investigations into the use of CNN methods is in the early stages and most of the existing methods are heavily concerned with the segmentation of thrombi, which only works after they have been detected. In this work, we propose a fully automated method for the whole process of the detection and segmentation of thrombi, which is based on a well-established mask region-based convolutional neural network (Mask R-CNN) framework that we improve with optimized loss functions. The combined use of complete intersection over union (CIoU) and smooth L1 loss was designed for accurate thrombus detection and then thrombus segmentation was improved with a modified focal loss. We evaluated our method against 60 clinically approved patient studies (i.e., computed tomography angiography (CTA) image volume data) by conducting 4-fold cross-validation. The results of comparisons to multiple other state-of-the-art methods suggested the superior performance of our method, which achieved the highest F1 score for thrombus detection (0.9197) and outperformed most metrics for thrombus segmentation