798 research outputs found
Use of IC information in Japanese financial firms
Purpose â The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of: how Japanese financial firms (JFF) acquire and use company intellectual capital (IC) information in their common routine equity investment decisions, how this activity contributes to knowledge creation in the JFFs, and how investee company knowledge creation is affected by the JFFs.<p></p>
Design/methodology/approach â The research employed a multi-case design, using four JFF cases. The investigation was performed in terms of Nonaka and Toyama's âtheory of the knowledge creating firmâ.<p></p>
Findings â IC information contributed to earnings estimates and company valuation. Emotional information contributed to JFF feelings and confidence in their information use and valuation. JFF knowledge was an important component of the key interacting and informed contexts used by JFFs. This generated opportunities to improve disclosure and accountability between JFFs and their investee companies. Common patterns of behaviour across the JFFs were counterbalanced by variety and differences noted in JFF behaviour.<p></p>
Practical implications â The findings provide important insights into how JFF knowledge creating patterns could limit or progress a common language of communication between companies and markets on the subject of IC. This could impact on the quality of corporate disclosure and accountability processes.<p></p>
Originality/value â The paper demonstrates that there is a need for further use of qualitative studies of financial market behavior. Especially in the area of understanding the communication of IC between firms and financial markets, the potential of using sociology of finance approaches appears to be considerable
Continuities in the use of the intellectual capital statement approach:elements of an institutional theory analysis
Single-photon tunneling
Strong evidence of a single-photon tunneling effect, a direct analog of
single-electron tunneling, has been obtained in the measurements of light
tunneling through individual subwavelength pinholes in a thick gold film
covered with a layer of polydiacetylene. The transmission of some pinholes
reached saturation because of the optical nonlinearity of polydiacetylene at a
very low light intensity of a few thousands photons per second. This result is
explained theoretically in terms of "photon blockade", similar to the Coulomb
blockade phenomenon observed in single-electron tunneling experiments. The
single-photon tunneling effect may find many applications in the emerging
fields of quantum communication and information processing.Comment: 4 pages, 4figure
Barley plasma membrane intrinsic proteins (PIP aquaporins) as water and CO2 transporters
We identified barley aquaporins and demonstrated that one, HvPIP2;1, transports water and CO2. Regarding water homeostasis in plants, regulations of aquaporin expression were observed in many plants under several environmental stresses. Under salt stress, a number of plasma membrane-type aquaporins were down-regulated, which can prevent continuous dehydration resulting in cell death. The leaves of transgenic rice plants that expressed the largest amount of HvPIP2;1 showed a 40% increase in internal CO2 conductance compared with leaves of wild-type rice plants. The rate of CO2 assimilation also increased in the transgenic plants. The goal of our plant aquaporin research is to determine the key aquaporin species responsible for water and CO2 transport, and to improve plant water relations, stress tolerance, CO2 uptake or assimilation, and plant productivity via molecular breeding of aquaporins.</p
Risk factors for delay in symptomatic presentation: a survey of cancer patients
Background: Delay in symptomatic presentation leading to advanced stage at diagnosis may contribute to poor cancer survival. To inform public health approaches to promoting early symptomatic presentation, we aimed to identify risk factors for delay in presentation across several cancers.
Methods: We surveyed 2371 patients with 15 cancers about nature and duration of symptoms using a postal questionnaire. We calculated relative risks for delay in presentation (time from symptom onset to first presentation >3 months) by cancer, symptoms leading to diagnosis and reasons for putting off going to the doctor, controlling for age, sex and deprivation group.
Results: Among 1999 cancer patients reporting symptoms, 21% delayed presentation for >3 months. Delay was associated with greater socioeconomic deprivation but not age or sex. Patients with prostate (44%) and rectal cancer (37%) were most likely to delay and patients with breast cancer least likely to delay (8%). Urinary difficulties, change of bowel habit, systemic symptoms (fatigue, weight loss and loss of appetite) and skin symptoms were all common and associated with delay. Overall, patients with bleeding symptoms were no more likely to delay presentation than patients who did not have bleeding symptoms. However, within the group of patients with bleeding symptoms, there were significant differences in risk of delay by source of bleeding: 35% of patients with rectal bleeding delayed presentation, but only 9% of patients with urinary bleeding. A lump was a common symptom but not associated with delay in presentation. Twenty-eight percent had not recognised their symptoms as serious and this was associated with a doubling in risk of delay. Embarrassment, worry about what the doctor might find, being too busy to go to the doctor and worry about wasting the doctorâs time were also strong risk factors for delay, but were much less commonly reported (<6%).
Interpretation: Approaches to promote early presentation should aim to increase awareness of the significance of cancer symptoms and should be designed to work for people of the lowest socioeconomic status. In particular, awareness that rectal bleeding is a possible symptom of cancer should be raised
Accounting for photodegradation dramatically improves prediction of carbon losses in dryland systems
Traditional models of decomposition fail to capture litter mass loss patterns in dryland systems. This shortcoming has stimulated research into alternative drivers of decomposition, including photodegradation. Here, we use aboveground litter decomposition data for dryland (arid) sites from the Long-term Intersite Decomposition Experiment Team data set to test hypotheses (models) about the mechanisms and impacts of photodegradation. Incorporating photodegradation into a traditional biotic decomposition model substantially improved model predictions for mass loss at these dryland sites, especially after four years. The best model accounted for the effects of solar radiation via photodegradation loss from the intermediate cellulosic and lignin pools and direct inhibition of microbial decomposition. Despite the concurrent impacts of photodegradation and inhibition on mass loss, the best photodegradation model increased mass loss by an average of 12% per year compared to the biotic-only decomposition model. The best model also allowed soil infiltration into litterbags to reduce photodegradation and inhibition of microbial decomposition by shading litter from solar radiation. Our modeling results did not entirely support the popular hypothesis that initial lignin content increases the effects of photodegradation on litter mass loss; surprisingly, higher initial lignin content decreased the rate of cellulosic photodegradation. Importantly, our results suggest that mass loss rates due to photodegradation may be comparable to biotic decomposition rates: Mass loss due to photodegradation alone resulted in litter mass losses of 6â15% per year, while mass loss due to biotic decomposition ranged from 20% per year during early-stage decomposition to 3% per year during late-stage decomposition. Overall, failing to account for the impacts of solar radiation on litter mass loss under-predicted long-term litter mass loss by approximately 26%. Thus, not including photodegradation in dryland decomposition models likely results in large underestimations of carbon loss from dryland systems
INTERLAYER COUPLING AND THE METAL-INSULATOR TRANSITION IN Pr-SUBSTITUTED Bi(2)Sr(2)CaCu(2)O(8+y)
Substitution of rare-earth ions for Ca in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+y is known to cause a
metal-insulator transition. Using resonant photoemission we study how this
chemical substitution affects the electronic structure of the material. For the
partial Cu-density of states at E_F and in the region of the valence band we
observe no significant difference between a pure superconducting sample and an
insulating sample with 60% Pr for Ca. This suggests that the states responsible
for superconductivity are predomi- nately O-states. The partial Pr-4f density
of states was extracted utilizing the Super- Koster-Kronig Pr 4d-4f resonance.
It consists of a single peak at 1.36eV binding energy. The peak shows a
strongly assymetric Doniach-Sunjic line- shape indicating the presence of a
continuum of electronic states with sharp cut off at E_F even in this
insulating sample. This finding excludes a bandgap in the insulating sample and
supports the existance of a mobility gap caused by spatial localization of the
carriers. The presence of such carriers at the Pr-site, between the CuO_2
planes shows that the electronic structure is not purely 2-dimensional but that
there is a finite interlayer coupling. The resonance enhancement of the
photoemission cross section, at the Pr-4d threshold, was studied for the Pr-4f
and for Cu-states. Both the Pr-4f and the Cu-states show a Fano-like resonance.
This resonance of Cu-states with Pr-states is another indication of coupling
between the the Pr-states and those in the CuO_2 plane. Because of the
statistical distribution of the Pr-ions this coupling leads to a non-periodic
potential for the states in the CuO_2 plane which can lead to localization and
thus to the observed metal-insulator transition.Comment: Gziped uuencoded postscript file including 7 figures Scheduled for
publication in Physical Review B, May 1, 1995
The No-Hair Conjecture in 2D Dilaton Supergravity
We study two dimensional dilaton gravity and supergravity following
hamiltonian methods. Firstly, we consider the structure of constraints of 2D
dilaton gravity and then the 2D dilaton supergravity is obtained taking the
squere root of the bosonic constraints. We integrate exactly the equations of
motion in both cases and we show that the solutions of the equation of motion
of 2D dilaton supergravity differs from the solutions of 2D dilaton gravity
only by boundary conditions on the fermionic variables, i.e. the black holes of
2D dilaton supergravity theory are exactly the same black holes of 2D bosonic
dilaton gravity modulo supersymmetry transformations. This result is the
bidimensional analogue of the no-hair theorem for supergravity.Comment: Plain Tex, 19pp, IPNO-TH 93/2
Births in two different delivery units in the same clinic â A prospective study of healthy primiparous women
Background: Earlier studies indicate that midwife-led birth settings are associated with modest benefits, including reduced medical interventions and increased maternal satisfaction. The generalizability of these studies to birth settings with low intervention rates, like those generally found in Norway, is not obvious. The aim of the present study was to compare intervention rates associated with labour in low-risk women who begin their labour in a midwife-led unit and a conventional care unit. Methods: Eligible participants were low-risk primiparas who met the criteria for delivery in the midwife-led ward regardless of which cohort they were allocated to. The two wards are localised at the same floor. Women in both cohorts received the same standardized public antenatal care by general medical practitioners and midwifes who were not involved in the delivery. After admission of a woman to the midwife-led ward, the next woman who met the inclusion criteria, but preferred delivery at the conventional delivery ward, was allocated to the conventional delivery ward cohort. Among the 252 women in the midwife-led ward cohort, 74 (29%) women were transferred to the conventional delivery ward during labour. Results: Emergency caesarean and instrumental delivery rates in women who were admitted to the midwife-led and conventional birth wards were statistically non-different, but more women admitted to the conventional birth ward had episiotomy. More women in the conventional delivery ward received epidural analgesia, pudental nerve block and nitrous oxide, while more women in the midwife-led ward received opiates and non-pharmacological pain relief. Conclusion: We did not find evidence that starting delivery in the midwife-led setting offers the advantage of lower operative delivery rates. However, epidural analgesia, pudental nerve block and episiotomies were less often while non-pharmacological pain relief was often used in the midwifeled ward
The pp -> pp pi pi pi reaction channels in the threshold region
The cross section for prompt neutral and charged three pion production in pp
interactions was measured at excess energies in the range 160 - 217 MeV. That
comprises the first measurement of the pp->pp pi0pi0pi0 reaction and the
comparison with the pp->pp pi+pi-pi0 reaction, in a very direct way. The
experiment was performed above the eta meson production threshold and the cross
section normalization was obtained from a concurrent measurement of the
reaction pp->pp eta with the eta decaying into 3 pions. Since the same final
states are selected, the measurement has a low systematical error. The measured
cross section ratio sigma(pp->pp pi+pi-pi0)/sigma(pp->pp pi0\pi0\pi0) is
compared to predictions of dominance of different isobars in the intermediate
state.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures New discussion on the pp->pp3pi reaction
mechanis
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