Redesigning Teams and Incentives in a Merger: An Experiment with Managers and Students

After a merger, company officials face the challenge of making compensation schemes uniform and of redesigning teams with managers from companies with different incentives, work habits, and recruiting methods. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between executive pay and performance after a merger by dissociating the respective influence of shifts, which occur in both compensation incentives and team composition. The results of a real task experiment conducted with managers within a large pharmaceutical company not only show that changes in compensation incentives affect performance, but also suggest that the sorting effect of incentives in the previous companies impact cooperation and efficiency after the merger. Replicating this experiment with students showed differences in strategy rather than in substance between the two groups of subjects with magagers appearing performance driven, while students are more cost driven.executive and team-based compensation, subject pool effects, real task experiment, incentives, sorting, mergers

Experimental Investigation of a New High Temperature Heat Pump Using Water as Refrigerant for Industrial Heat Recovery

Currently, improving energy efficiency becomes a main challenge for all industrial energy systems. This challenge involves an improved recovery of wasted heat generated by several industrial processes. Large energy savings and potential environmental benefits are associated with the use of industrial heat pump mainly at high temperature levels. A laboratory flexible industrial scale heat recovery system is able to reproduce the operating conditions of real case simulating energetic losses and requirements in high temperature industrial applications. The integrated heat pump is an electrically-driven vapor compression using a twin screw compressor. Water vapor has been adopted as a working fluid using a modified screw compressor to carry out a dry compression process at high temperature levels. This heat pump generates vapor using flash evaporation. A purging valve is implemented in order to eliminate non-condensable gases present in system. Experimental simulation of the start-up phase has been presented showing the non-condensable purging process and the evolution of some parameters of the heat pump. Several scenarios of industrial processes for high-temperature heat recovery (heat sources between 80°C and 90°C) and heat upgrading are numerically simulated. The presented results show the global energy savings and the environmental benefits of using water as refrigerant at high temperature levels

Optical dipole force on ladder-like three-level atomic systems driven by chirped few-cycle-pulse laser fields

We report a study on the optical dipole force in a ladder like three level atomic systems in the context of coherent population transfer with the chirped few-cycle-pulse laser fields. The phenomenon of coherent population transfer is investigated by numerically solving the appropriate density matrix equations beyond the rotating wave approximation. On the other hand, optical dipole force is calculated by numerically solving the force equation and density matrix equations self-consistently. By analysing the centre-of-mass motion, it is shown that the optical dipole force with chirped pulses may be used for focusing and defocusing of atoms in an atomic beam similar to the near or non-resonant optical dipole force. Moreover, the robustness of the population transfer against the variation of the pulse parameters and the effect of the variation of the Rabi frequencies and the chirp rates on the optical dipole force are also investigated. The proposed scheme may open new perspectives in the focusing and de-focusing of atoms and molecules in an atomic beam, since this scheme mitigates the demand for the generation of transform-limited pulse laser fields at arbitrary frequencies

Laser performance of perylenebis (dicarboximide) dyes with long secondary alkyl chains

The laser performance and related photophysical properties of two very soluble perylene dyes with long chain secondary alkyl groups were investigated in cyclohexane solution. With a dye laser as pump source a tuning range of 555–580 nm was obtained at an optimum concentration of 3×10–4 M. The quantum efficiencies (=0.29 and 0.21) were better than 1/2 that of rhodamine 6G. No photodegradation was observed over an excitation period of several hours

Amélioration de la détermination des propriétés de résistance de l'interface béton-rocher et des discontinuités des fondations rocheuses des barrages poids

CIGB 2018, 26è Congrès des Grands Barrages, Vienne, AUTRICHE, 01-/07/2018 - 07/07/2018La détermination des caractéristiques mécaniques régissant la stabilité d'un barrage existant peut s'avérer complexe notamment en ce qui concerne les discontinuités présentes en fondation et à l'interface barrage-fondation. Ces caractéristiques sont la résistance à la traction, la cohésion et l'angle de frottement. Fort de ce constat, IRSTEA et EDF ont lancé des travaux de recherche ces dernières années de manière d'une part à créer des données utiles à la compréhension des mécanismes de rupture et d'autre part à proposer des méthodologies d'estimation des caractéristiques mécaniques utilisables directement par l'ingénierie. Le présent article donne les principaux résultats des essais de traction et de cisaillement sur des interfaces béton-rocher. Ces résultats pourraient faire l'objet d'échange et de partage avec les ingénieries intéressées par le sujet. L'article présente également des méthodologies de détermination des caractéristiques de discontinuités rocheuses en cisaillement ainsi que des caractéristiques de résistance à la traction de l'interface béton-rocher. Des perspectives sont proposées quant à de futures actions de recherche prometteuses telles que la caractérisation de la cohésion apparente des discontinuités rocheuses et l'estimation de la géométrie du contact barrage-fondation par des méthodes non-destructives

Re‐evaluation of phosphoric acid–phosphates – di‐, tri‐ and polyphosphates (E 338–341, E 343, E 450–452) as food additives and the safety of proposed extension of use

The Panel on Food Additives and Flavourings added to Food (FAF) provided a scientific opinion re‐evaluating the safety of phosphates (E 338–341, E 343, E 450–452) as food additives. The Panel considered that adequate exposure and toxicity data were available. Phosphates are authorised food additives in the EU in accordance with Annex II and III to Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008. Exposure to phosphates from the whole diet was estimated using mainly analytical data. The values ranged from 251 mg P/person per day in infants to 1,625 mg P/person per day for adults, and the high exposure (95th percentile) from 331 mg P/person per day in infants to 2,728 mg P/person per day for adults. Phosphate is essential for all living organisms, is absorbed at 80–90% as free orthophosphate excreted via the kidney. The Panel considered phosphates to be of low acute oral toxicity and there is no concern with respect to genotoxicity and carcinogenicity. No effects were reported in developmental toxicity studies. The Panel derived a group acceptable daily intake (ADI) for phosphates expressed as phosphorus of 40 mg/kg body weight (bw) per day and concluded that this ADI is protective for the human population. The Panel noted that in the estimated exposure scenario based on analytical data exposure estimates exceeded the proposed ADI for infants, toddlers and other children at the mean level, and for infants, toddlers, children and adolescents at the 95th percentile. The Panel also noted that phosphates exposure by food supplements exceeds the proposed ADI. The Panel concluded that the available data did not give rise to safety concerns in infants below 16 weeks of age consuming formula and food for medical purposes

Rapports entre agriculture et écosystèmes

[eng] Relationships between ecosystems and farming - It is logical to study the relationships between ecosystems and farming, for farming can be regarded as a particular type of ecosystem since man has stepped in to domesticate it, to change them profoundly and even to create totally artificial ones — agro- systems. This domestication of natural ecosystems has consisted in simplifying them so as to concentrate the productivity of the ecosystem on one chosen plant and maintaining it at a more or less unvarying high level. On the other hand the stability of agro-ecosystems is not as gerat which explains their stability which is marked by less resistance to external accidents or perturbations and also by the need continually to take compensatory measures in order to attain stability, the chief characteristic of ecosystems. [fre] II est logique d'étudier les relations entre écosystèmes et agriculture. En effet, l'agriculture peut être regardée comme un type particulier d'écosystèmes du fait que l'homme est intervenu pour les domestiques, pour les transformer profondément et même pour en créer d'entièrement artificiels, que l'on désigne généralement sous le vocable d'agro-systèmes. La domestication des écosystèmes naturels a consisté à les simplifier de manière à concentrer la productivité de l'écosystème sur une seule plante choisie, et à le maintenir à un niveau élevé et plus ou moins constant. En contrepartie, la stabilité des agro-écosystèmes est beaucoup moins grande, ce qui explique leur fragilité. Celle-ci se marque par une moindre résistance aux accidents ou perturbations extérieures et aussi par la nécessité de prendre continuellement des mesures compensatoires afin d'atteindre la stabilité, caractéristique dominante des écosystèmes.