Ownership and control in a competitive industry

We study a differentiated product market in which an investor initially owns a controlling stake in one of two competing firms and may acquire a non-controlling or a controlling stake in a competitor, either directly using her own assets, or indirectly via the controlled firm. While industry profits are maximized within a symmetric two product monopoly, the investor attains this only in exceptional cases. Instead, she sometimes acquires a noncontrolling stake. Or she invests asymmetrically rather than pursuing a full takeover if she acquires a controlling one. Generally, she invests indirectly if she only wants to affect the product market outcome, and directly if acquiring shares is profitable per se. --differentiated products,separation of ownership and control,private benefits of control

Effective hybrid stochastic local search algorithms for biobjective permutation flowshop scheduling

SCOPUS: cp.kinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Hierarchical iterated local search for the quadratic assignment problem

SCOPUS: cp.kinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Control Theoretical Challenges in Systems Biology

In M. Dorigo, L. Gambardella, F. Mondada, T. St¨utzle, M. Birratari, and C. Blum, editors, ANTS’2004, Fourth International Workshop on Ant Algorithms and Swarm Intelligence, Springer Verlag, Berlin, Germany.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Training Church Members In The Theory And Practice Of Preaching In The Spanish District Of Tri-City In The Upper Columbia Conference

Problem. One of the challenges of a multi-church district is that the pastor cannot preach at each church, each Sabbath. The Spanish district of Tri-City is comprised of three churches (Pasco/Kennewick/Richland). Some elders are reluctant to speak when the pastor is absent at one of these three churches. In addition, my preliminary research shows that attendance is lower at these churches when the pastor is absent. The reason for this absenteeism, according to some members, is poor preaching. Accordingly, the challenge is to develop qualified preachers who can preach at those churches within the district when the pastor is absent. Method. Three training seminars in the theory and practice of preaching were given in the Spanish District of Tri-City. The first one was for the whole district; it took place in the Spanish church of Pasco. The second one was given in the Spanish company of Richland. Finally, the third one was led in the Spanish church of Kennewick. Results. As a result of this training seminar, eleven church members graduated and are now active in the preaching roll of their churches. Consequently, now it is much easier to make the preaching roll for the District of Tri-City in the Upper Columbia Conference. In addition to that, now these churches have new leaders, more spiritual gifts are being employed, and other church members are being inspired to serve the Lord. Indeed, the pastor experiences great relief when he is absent for fulfilling his duties in other congregations and each local church is now better fed. Conclusions. Bringing the seminar to each church was more beneficial than having only one class for the whole district, hence more people were reached. Interestingly enough, newly church members were more willing to learn and to be evaluated than old ones. Besides, five out of 11 graduates were women. Although it is true that the number of male participants was greater, it is also true that in the last two sessions, the number of female participants was greater than males. In addition to that, five out of 11 of these preachers were new preachers

The near-IR counterpart to the high-mass X-ray binary X1908+075

We report the near-IR identification of the likely counterpart to X1908+075, a highly-absorbed Galactic X-ray source recently suspected to belong to the rare class of OB supergiant-neutron star binary systems (Wen et al. 2000, ApJ, 532, 1119; Levine et al. 2004, ApJ, submitted, astro-ph/0404428). The Einstein and HEAO 1 satellites have localized this X-ray source with an uncertainty of about 50''