Entrepreneurship in a Transition Economy: An Examination of Venture Creation in Hungary

This study examines entrepreneurs and new ventures in a transition economy, Hungary, and identifies what variables distinguish between Hungarian entrepreneurs and their new ventures in the pre-1988 transition period from that which followed. The variables that discriminate most strongly are their business strategies. The newer firms had a concentration strategy while the older firms had a new product development strategy. Other variables that discriminated between the groups include reacting to the political environment, satisfaction with firm performance, encouragement from investors, recent investment in building improvement, and family history of entrepreneurship. The newer entrepreneurs had more family role models of entrepreneurship

Alliances and Networks: Cooperative Strategies for Small Businesses

Research on large firms shows that cooperative strategies have the potential to improve performance by helping firms gain access to necessary resources, enter new markets, and spread the risk over several partners. Interviews with thirty-four small business managers show small firms also can profit from using a cooperative network. Highly-allied small businesses entered alliances to gain resources and based their alliances on a distinctive competence. The highly allied businesses grew more rapidly than the less allied firms. Mutual goals and joint decision making were viewed as critical to the high level of satisfaction achieved

Formalized Planning in Small Business: Increasing Strategic Choices

A study of 188 small businesses was conducted to examine three distinct relationships in the planning process planning formality in relation to strategic decision processes, planning formality in relation to the strategies adopted, and planning formality in relation to firm performance. The results demonstrated that firms with formal planning emphasized more aspects of the strategic choice process, adopted a wider range of competitive and cooperative strategies, and grew more rapidly than did non-formal planners

Broadband matched-field processing: coherent and incoherent approaches

Matched-field based methods always involve the comparison of the output of a physical model and the actual data. The method of comparison and the nature of the data varies according to the problem at hand, but the result becomes always largely conditioned by the accurateness of the physical model and the amount of data available. The usage of broadband methods has become a widely used approach to increase the amount of data and to stabilize the estimation process. Due to the difficulties to accurately predict the phase of the acoustic field the problem whether the information should be coherently or incoherently combined across frequency has been an open debate in the last years. This paper provides a data consistent model for the observed signal, formed by a deterministic channel structure multiplied by a perturbation random factor plus noise. The cross-frequency channel structure and the decorrelation of the perturbation random factor are shown to be the main causes of processor performance degradation. Different Bartlett processors, such as the incoherent processor [Baggeroer et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 80, 571-587 (1988)], the coherent normalized processor [Z.-H. Michalopoulou, IEEE J. Ocean Eng. 21, 384-392 (1996)] and the matched-phase processor [Orris et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 107, 2563-2375 (2000)], are reviewed and compared to the proposed cross-frequency incoherent processor. It is analytically shown that the proposed processor has the same performance as the matched-phase processor at the maximum of the ambiguity surface, without the need for estimating the phase terms and thus having an extremely low computational cost. (C) 2003 Acoustical Society of America

Field quality of quadrupole R&D models for the LHC IR

Superconducting quadrupole magnets operating in superfluid helium at 1.9 K, with 70 mm bore and nominal field gradient of 205 T/m at collision optics, are being developed by the US LHC Accelerator Project for the Interaction Regions of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A magnet model program to validate and optimize the design is underway. This paper reports results of field quality measurements of four model magnets. (3 refs)

Quench performance of Fermilab high gradient quadrupole short models for the LHC Interaction Regions

Fermilab and LBNL are in the midst of superconducting magnet R&D program to test and optimize the design of quadrupoles to be used in the LHC Interaction Region inner triplets. The magnets are required to deliver a 215 T/m gradient across a 70 mm aperture. Five quadrupole short models have been fabricated and four of them have been tested. This paper describes the last model design details and reports the results of the magnet quench performance study. (5 refs)

Hexachlorophene as a topically applied chemical for prophylaxis against Schistosoma mansoni infections in mice

Treatment of mouse tail skins with hexachlorophene (1.25% w/v) in absolute methanol or 70% isopropanol suppressed Schistosoma mansoni infections by more than 95% even when the application was performed up to three days prior to exposure to cercarial suspensions by tail immersion. Treatment with concentrations of 0.313% or higher one day prior to exposure provided at least 98% protection when the treated surface was not subjected to water washes of greater duration than 1/2 hour. Tail immersion application of 1.25% hexachlorophene one day prior to exposure still provided 87-92% protection after 3 hours water wash. Wipe application of 1.25% hexachlorophene three days prior to exposure still provided 93% protection following 3 hours water wash. High cercarial recoveries from exposure tubes at the end of exposure periods indicated high antipenetrant activity for hexachlorophene. Sufficient hexachlorophene leached from treated tail skins into the surrounding water to affect subsequently added cercariae so that they were no longer infective to untreated mice