The effect of unions on investment and innovation decisions theory and empirical evidence

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the effect of unions on investment and innovation decisions, both at the theoretical and the empirical level. The theoretical analysis deals with the choice of adoption of a new technology in the presence of an oligopolistic product market. A duopoly is considered for the ease of exposition. Unions are assumed to affect innovation decisions only via wage bargaining. The results show that environments where unions have a relatively strong (and not very spread) bargaining power tend to harm, ceteris paribus, innovation. If, instead, there is enough spread between unions in terms of their bargaining power, so that only one firm innovates, this firm is, ceteris paribus, the one facing the less powerful union. A firm may be the only one to innovate when facing the more powerful union, if this union is relatively more concerned with employment than the "rival". In general, environments where unions prize the defense of employment above pay rises tend to be more conducive to innovation. These results show the effectiveness of the "rent-seeking" mechanism outlined by Grout. Finally, there are cases where no firm would innovate should the labour market be competitive (non-unionised), while one firm would adopt the new technology, ceteris paribus, when firms face unions. The main results of the analysis are robust to the consideration of collusion in the product market. The generalisation to a model in which firms choose the quantity of capital also confirms the main results. The empirical analysis is based on data from a sample of British nonagricultural quoted companies over the period 1982-89. Data on investment have been constructed from the budget data and matched with information on unionisation and indutrial relations at the company level. Panel data estimation techniques (mostly Random Effects) have been employed. The results show that union recognition has, ceteris paribus, a significantly negative effect on the companies' propensity to invest. This negative impact is robust to the consideration of product market conditions, but seems to be concentrated in the first part of the period under study (1982-85). No separate effect on investment is detected for the presence of closed shop arrangements. There is evidence that the higher the union density at the company level, the lower the investment performance, but the results show also some evidence of non-linear effects. Finally, there is some evidence that companies that have partially derecognised during the eighties have benefited in terms of investment over the short-run

Targeting MAPK in Cancer 2.0

Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways are prominently involved in the onset and progression of cancer [...

Impact of ERK5 on the Hallmarks of Cancer

Extracellular signal-regulated kinase 5 (ERK5) belongs to the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) family that consists of highly conserved enzymes expressed in all eukaryotic cells and elicits several biological responses, including cell survival, proliferation, migration, and differentiation. In recent years, accumulating lines of evidence point to a relevant role of ERK5 in the onset and progression of several types of cancer. In particular, it has been reported that ERK5 is a key signaling molecule involved in almost all the biological features of cancer cells so that its targeting is emerging as a promising strategy to suppress tumor growth and spreading. Based on that, in this review, we pinpoint the hallmark-specific role of ERK5 in cancer in order to identify biological features that will potentially benefit from ERK5 targeting

Continuous close-range 3D object pose estimation

In the context of future manufacturing lines, removing fixtures will be a fundamental step to increase the flexibility of autonomous systems in assembly and logistic operations. Vision-based 3D pose estimation is a necessity to accurately handle objects that might not be placed at fixed positions during the robot task execution. Industrial tasks bring multiple challenges for the robust pose estimation of objects such as difficult object properties, tight cycle times and constraints on camera views. In particular, when interacting with objects, we have to work with close-range partial views of objects that pose a new challenge for typical view-based pose estimation methods. In this paper, we present a 3D pose estimation method based on a gradient-ascend particle filter that integrates new observations on-the-fly to improve the pose estimate. Thereby, we can apply this method online during task execution to save valuable cycle time. In contrast to other view-based pose estimation methods, we model potential views in full 6- dimensional space that allows us to cope with close-range partial objects views. We demonstrate the approach on a real assembly task, in which the algorithm usually converges to the correct pose within 10-15 iterations with an average accuracy of less than 8mm

SkiROS2: A skill-based Robot Control Platform for ROS

The need for autonomous robot systems in both the service and the industrial domain is larger than ever. In the latter, the transition to small batches or even "batch size 1" in production created a need for robot control system architectures that can provide the required flexibility. Such architectures must not only have a sufficient knowledge integration framework. It must also support autonomous mission execution and allow for interchangeability and interoperability between different tasks and robot systems. We introduce SkiROS2, a skill-based robot control platform on top of ROS. SkiROS2 proposes a layered, hybrid control structure for automated task planning, and reactive execution, supported by a knowledge base for reasoning about the world state and entities. The scheduling formulation builds on the extended behavior tree model that merges task-level planning and execution. This allows for a high degree of modularity and a fast reaction to changes in the environment. The skill formulation based on pre-, hold- and post-conditions allows to organize robot programs and to compose diverse skills reaching from perception to low-level control and the incorporation of external tools. We relate SkiROS2 to the field and outline three example use cases that cover task planning, reasoning, multisensory input, integration in a manufacturing execution system and reinforcement learning.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. Accepted at 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS

Representasi Pesan Moral Dalam Film Imperfect The Series : (Analisis Semiotika Roland Barthes)

Discussions about films as a tool to convey messages are indispensable in public entertainment. With the development of the film world, Web series has recently become the talk of the community. One of the most popular is the series "Imperfect The Series" directed by Naya Anindita with a comedy-drama genre. The storyline is about boarding children with different personalities, regional origins and their purpose in boarding houses. Imperfect the Series. The semiotic theory of Roland Barthes is used by the author for research and the use of a qualitative descriptive approach is shown by dialogue, the behavior of the characters in one of the scenes. Based on the results of research and data analysis, it is obtained that there are two types of code mixing contained in the dialogue between characters. in the film Imperfect the series, namely the inner code mixing and outer code mixing. Friendship occurs because of the support of trust, acceptance and intimacy with each other. Acceptance is caused by good communication. Communication interpersonal is also an exchange namely the act of conveying and receiving messages reciprocally. The foundation of trust includes respecting each other and accepting differences. It is hoped that this research can serve as a reference for similar research in the future. &nbsp

The AHEAD Portal: A Gateway to European Historical Earthquake Data

The description of the seismicity of the European region is today fragmented into an increasing number of earthquake archives, databases, and catalogs related to individual countries or even to part of them. Therefore, the compilation of a comprehensive, European earthquake history requires dealing with a puzzle of partially overlapping, only partially public catalogs, the background of which is compiled according to varied schemes. One of the consequences is that earthquakes in the frontier areas are often interpreted in a conflicting way by the catalogs of the bordering countries. In the framework of the European Commission (EC), 2006–2010 Network of Research Infrastructures for European Seismology (NERIES) Project, the task of Networking Activity 4 (NA4) was defined precisely to conceive and develop solutions to bridge over these differences. NA4 promoted the cooperation among existing national online archives, and contributed establishing new regional online archives compiled according to common standards. As a result, a first release of the distributed European archive of historical earthquake data, for the time-window 1000–1899 and for the large earthquakes, was published in 2010. Special attention was devoted to retrieve the earthquake background information, that is, the results of historical earthquake investigation—referenced to as studies in the following -in terms of a paper, a report, a book chapter, a map, etc. As the most useful studies are those supplying a set of macroseismic data points (MDPs)- that is a list of localities (name and coordinates) with a macroseismic intensity assessment and the related macroseismic scale—a dedicated effort was addressed to make such data available. The Archive of Historical Earthquake Data (AHEAD) distributed archive was improved and updated in the frame of the 2010–2012 EC Project Seismic Hazard Harmonization in Europe (SHARE), Task 3.1 European earthquake database, with the contribution of a number of European institutions. For the time window 1000–1899, it was AHEAD (AHEAD Working Group) that supported the compilation of the SHARE European Earthquake Catalog (SHEEC; Stucchi et al., 2013). This paper describes the AHEAD portal (http://www.emidius.eu/AHEAD/; last accessed March 2014), and how it was conceived to network the local components of the distributed archive. Although local historical macroseismic databases usually supply one set of information for each earthquake, at a European scale an earthquake still might be described by several studies, available from different archives. The AHEAD portal inventories and gives access to multiple sets of information concerning each earthquake, and allows users to get comprehensive information about individual earthquakes, providing the answers to the following questions: 1. which sets of earthquake parameters (time, location, magnitude, magnitude type, maximum intensity, etc.) are available for each earthquake? 2. what is the background information, or supporting material, upon which each set of earthquake parameter determination is based

The European Archive of Historical Earthquake Data (AHEAD): compilation, results, and perspectives.

Historical seismic catalogues in Europe have been mostly compiled on a national basis starting from historical data collected and interpreted according to different procedures and varied levels of formalization. With few exceptions, the macroseismic data that stand behind the catalogues are not available, or simply never existed. The present-day knowledge on past seismicity in Europe is consequently far from being homogeneous. This situation affected the past efforts for the compilation of homogeneous, continent-wide catalogues and still restrains the ongoing initiatives on this topic. To overcome this situation, the NERIES NA4 project realized the European Archive of Historical Earthquake Data (AHEAD). AHEAD collects and puts together in a critical way the background information supporting European earthquakes between the years 1000 and 1963. The collected information consists of the most significant, or recent, material supporting an earthquake, such as: i) studies that interpret the historical records in terms of Macroseismic Data-Points (MDPs); ii) studies that provide the historical records but not interpreted in terms of MDPs; iii) parameters from catalogues, only. AHEAD contains entries related to more than 10.000 earthquakes, and the inventoried material is made available through the web. It also provides in a standardized database the MDPs that support about the 60% of the listed earthquakes. For a large number of them such MDPs have been released for the first time by partner institutions in the framework of NERIES NA4. AHEAD is conceived as an interactive tool for representing and improving the knowledge on historical earthquakes, with the aim of making it homogeneous at a European level. Through the archive researchers can easily: 1) trace back the information supporting each earthquake in order to reappraise and improve the knowledge of it; 2) compare the different studies on each earthquake and select a preferred one. This is, for example, the procedure followed for the selection of data upon which the NERIES NA4 European Earthquake Catalogue has been compiled. 3) help keeping the archive as much up-to-date as possible, commenting studies, data, and parameters and feeding it with fresh studies