Effects of policy reforms on firm innovation

The regulatory environment in a country is an important factor that affects firm performance. This study investigates the impact of a particular regulation—license requirements for certain firm activities—on the innovation performance of Indian firms in the 1990s. Using a unique firm-level panel data set, it shows that the removal of license requirements led to an eight percentage points higher innovation rate within two years following the reform. We measure innovation as the introduction of new product varieties that had not been produced by the firm before. It takes a longer time for firms to innovate in industries in which they were not producing before. The findings of this study are also robust to the inclusion of controls for other policy reforms that occurred during the period of licensing reform. They also persist in tests with different subgroups of firms and with the use of alternative estimation methods

Vibration Mitigation of Railway Bridge Using Magnetorheological Damper

The purpose of this study is to analyze the railway bridge vibrations and control their negative effects through semi-active magnetorheological (MR) damper. Dynamic analysis of a railway bridge subjected to the moving load is performed. The real structural parameters are used, and the six-axle train is simulated as moving loads. The railway bridge is modeled as Euler-Bernoulli beam theory, and it is discretized through Galerkin method. To mitigate the bridge vibrations, MR damper with a fuzzy logic-based controller (FLC) is positioned at the ends of the bridge. The simulations of the system are performed by MatLab software. Finally, the results are examined both in the time and frequency domains

Effects of Licensing Reform on Firm Innovation: Evidence from India

The regulatory environment in a country is an important factor affecting firm performance. This study investigates the impact of a particular regulation, namely license requirements for certain firm activities, on the innovation performance of Indian firms. Using a firm level panel data set, it shows that removal of license requirements led to roughly eight percentage points faster innovation rates within two years following the reform where innovation is measured as introduction of new product varieties that had not existed in the market. When the residual increase in sales revenues even after controlling for product innovation is called as process innovation, substantial improvements in process innovation are also observed. The results are robust to inclusion of controls for the other policy reforms that occurred during the period of licensing reform, and persist in different subcategories of firms

Theoretical and Experimental Investigation of (e, 2e) Ionization of Argon 3p in Asymmetric Kinematics at Intermediate Energy

The field of electron-impact ionization of atoms, or (e, 2e), has provided significant detailed information about the physics of collisions. For ionization of hydrogen and helium, essentially exact numerical methods have been developed which can correctly predict what will happen. For larger atoms, we do not have theories of comparable accuracy. Considerable attention has been given to ionization of inert gases and, of the inert gases, argon seems to be the most difficult target for theory. There have been several studies comparing experiment and perturbative theoretical approaches over the last few decades, and generally qualitative but not quantitative agreement is found for intermediate energy incident electrons. Recently a nonperturbative method, the B-spline R-matrix (BSR) method, was introduced which appears to be very promising for ionization of heavier atoms. We have recently performed an experimental and theoretical investigation for ionization of argon, and we found that, although the BSR gave reasonably good agreement with experiment, there were also some cases of significant disagreement. The previous study was performed for 200-eV incident electrons and ejected electron energies of 15 and 20 eV. The purpose of the present work is to extend this study to a much larger range of ejected electron energies (15-50 eV) to see if theory gets better with increasing energy as would be expected for a perturbative calculation. The experimental results are compared with both the BSR and two different perturbative calculations

Theoretical and Experimental Investigation of (e, 2e) Ionization of Argon 3p in Asymmetric Kinematics at Intermediate Energy

The field of electron-impact ionization of atoms, or (e, 2e), has provided significant detailed information about the physics of collisions. For ionization of hydrogen and helium, essentially exact numerical methods have been developed which can correctly predict what will happen. For larger atoms, we do not have theories of comparable accuracy. Considerable attention has been given to ionization of inert gases and, of the inert gases, argon seems to be the most difficult target for theory. There have been several studies comparing experiment and perturbative theoretical approaches over the last few decades, and generally qualitative but not quantitative agreement is found for intermediate energy incident electrons. Recently a nonperturbative method, the B-spline R-matrix (BSR) method, was introduced which appears to be very promising for ionization of heavier atoms. We have recently performed an experimental and theoretical investigation for ionization of argon, and we found that, although the BSR gave reasonably good agreement with experiment, there were also some cases of significant disagreement. The previous study was performed for 200-eV incident electrons and ejected electron energies of 15 and 20 eV. The purpose of the present work is to extend this study to a much larger range of ejected electron energies (15-50 eV) to see if theory gets better with increasing energy as would be expected for a perturbative calculation. The experimental results are compared with both the BSR and two different perturbative calculations

Assessment of the requisites of microbiology based infectious disease training under the pressure of consultation needs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Training of infectious disease (ID) specialists is structured on classical clinical microbiology training in Turkey and ID specialists work as clinical microbiologists at the same time. Hence, this study aimed to determine the clinical skills and knowledge required by clinical microbiologists.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study was carried out between June 1, 2010 and September 15, 2010 in 32 ID departments in Turkey. Only patients hospitalized and followed up in the ID departments between January-June 2010 who required consultation with other disciplines were included.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 605 patients undergoing 1343 consultations were included, with pulmonology, neurology, cardiology, gastroenterology, nephrology, dermatology, haematology, and endocrinology being the most frequent consultation specialties. The consultation patterns were quite similar and were not affected by either the nature of infections or the critical clinical status of ID patients.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results of our study show that certain internal medicine subdisciplines such as pulmonology, neurology and dermatology appear to be the principal clinical requisites in the training of ID specialists, rather than internal medicine as a whole.</p

The Evaluation of the Osteogenic Cell Activities on Titanium Surface Modified with the Atmospheric Cold Plasma

Diş eksikliklerinin tedavisinde dental implant uygulamaları günümüzde sıklıkla tercih edilmektedir. Ancak dental implantların kemik ile entegrasyonu (osseointegrasyon) için beklenmesi gereken sürenin uzun olması bu tedavi yönteminin en önemli dezavantajı olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Literatürde, osseointegrasyon için beklenen sürenin kısaltılması amacıyla yapılmış çok sayıda çalışma karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Osseointegrasyon süresinin kısaltılması amacıyla yüzey hidrofilitesini arttırarak hücre tutunma oranını yükselten Atmosferik Soğuk Plazma (ASP) uygulaması titanyum implantlar için uygulanmakta ve olumlu sonuçlar alındığı iddia edilmektedir. Bu çalışmada yüzey temas açısını düşürmek ve osteoblast hücrelerin yüzeye tutulumunu artırmak için titanyum disklerin yüzeyine ASP uygulandı. Farklı zaman aralıklarında uygulanan ASP öncesinde ve sonrasında temas açısı ölçümleri yapıldı. ASP uygulamasının osteoblast hücre hareketi üzerine etkileri immünohistokimyasal ve SEM analizi ile değerlendirildi. Uygulama sonrasında temas açısı değerlerinde anlamlı bir şekilde düşüş meydana geldi. Atmosferik soğuk plazma uygulaması osteblast hücreler üzerinde oksidatif stres meydana getirmeden disk yüzeyinde çoğlamasıını ve tutulumunu artırdı.Dental implants became very popular in daily dentistry practice especially in recent decade. However, a long period of osseointegration is the most undesired disadvantage of this method. Several studies have been published related to shorten the osseointegration time. Atmospheric Cold Plasma (ACP) treatment is applied to titanium implants for shortening the osseointegration time by increasing the surface hydrophilicty and cell adhesion rate. In this study, ACP was applied to the surface of the titanium disc to increase hydrophilicty and osteoblast cell adhesion. Contact angle measurements were performed before and after ACP application. The effects of ACP applicaion on osteoblast cells action were evaluated by immunohistochemistry and SEM analysis. The contact angle measurments were decreased after the ACP application significantly. ACP treatment increased the adhesion and proliferation on titanium disc surface without causing oxidative stress on osteoblastic cells

KENTSEL DÖNÜŞÜM VE TARİHİ KORUMA

Sanayileşme ile birlikte kentlerin dinamik getirdiği değişimlerle hem kentler üzerinde değişin kent dokuları oluşmuştur. Kentler, sosyal ekonomik kültürel ve beşeri faktörlerin birbirleriyle etkileşimleri iç ve dış faktörlerin bütünleşmesiyle beraber süreklilik kavramı etrafında var olmaya devam eden canlı organizmalar gibidir. Bu bağlamda, tarihi kent mekânlarının korunması, sürdürülebilirliği ve kendini tanıtması açısından son derece önemlidir. Bitirme projesinde tarihi kentsel mekânların kentsel dönüşüm uygulamalarıyla ne derece günümüze aktarıldığını birkaç örnek göstererek incelenmektedir. Farklı ülkelerin ve ülkemizde kentsel dönüşüm ve tarihi alan yenilemelerinin kentsel mekânı dönüştürmede gerek yasal gerek paydaşlar olmak üzere incelenmesi ve etkileri saptanmıştır. Kültürel mirası koruma çalışmaları, toplumsal ve ekonomik gelişmelerin getirdiği değişikliklerle uyumlaştırılmalı, uygun planlama yaklaşımlarıyla karşılanmalıdır. Bu açıdan kültür varlıklarının korunmasında farklı uzmanlık alanları ile iş birliği içinde olunmalıdır