EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE ON THE MOTIVES FOR MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS IN EIGHT FOOD INDUSTRIES

This paper investigates the motives for mergers and acquisitions in eight U.S. food products industries from1977-92. Results show that acquired plants were highly productive before mergers and realized an increase in productivity growth in the post-merger period.Food product industries, mergers and acquisitions, labor productivity., Agribusiness,

AJAE Appendix: Mergers and Acquisitions and Productivity in the U.S. Meat Products Industries

The material contained herein is supplementary to the article named in the title and published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Volume 88, Number 3, August 2006.Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,

Integrated reconfigurable control and guidance based on evaluation of degraded performance

The present paper is focused on analysing an integrated reconfigurable control and guidance approach for recovering a small fixed-wing UAV from different actuator faults, which cover locked in place (stuck) and loss of effectiveness. The model of the UAV Aerosonde is used to develop a reconfigurable control system based on the control allocation technique for a variety of faults, such as locked-in-place control surfaces. It is shown through simulation that the developed technique is successful to recover the aircraft from various faults but cannot guarantee success on the planned mission. For mission scenarios where performance degradation is such that the prescribed trajectory cannot be achieved, a reconfigurable guidance system is developed, which is capable of adapting parameters such as the minimum turning radius and the look-ahead distance for obstacle avoidance, to allow the vehicle to dynamically generate a path which guides the aircraft around the no-fly zones taking into account the post-fault reduced performance. Path following is performed by means of a non-linear lateral guidance law and a collision avoidance algorithm is implemented as well. Finally, the integration of control reconfiguration and guidance adaptation is carried out to maximise probabilities of post-failure success in the mission. A methodology is developed, using an error based control allocation parameter, as a measure of performance degradation, which links both reconfiguration and guidance systems. The developed method, although approximate, is proven to be an efficient way of allocating the required degree of reconfiguration in guidance commands when an accurate prediction of the actual performance is not available

Structural determination of archaeal UDP-N-acetylglucosamine 4-epimerase from Methanobrevibacter ruminantium M1 in complex with the bacterial cell wall intermediate UDP-N-acetylmuramic acid

The crystal structure of UDP-N-acetylglucosamine 4-epimerase (UDP-GlcNAc 4-epimerase; WbpP; EC 5.1.3.7), from the archaeal methanogen Methanobrevibacter ruminantium strain M1, was determined to a resolution of 1.65 Å. The structure, with a single monomer in the crystallographic asymmetric unit, contained a conserved N-terminal Rossmann fold for nucleotide binding and an active site positioned in the C-terminus. UDP-GlcNAc 4-epimerase is a member of the short-chain dehydrogenase/reductase superfamily, sharing sequence motifs and structural elements characteristic of this family of oxidoreductases and bacterial 4-epimerases. The protein was co-crystallized with coenzyme NADH and UDP-N-acetylmuramic acid, the latter an unintended inclusion and well known product of the bacterial enzyme MurB and a critical intermediate for bacterial cell wall synthesis. This is a non-native UDP sugar amongst archaea and was most likely incorporated from the Eschericha coli expression host during purification of the recombinant enzyme

Isobar of an ideal Bose gas within the grand canonical ensemble

We investigate the isobar of an ideal Bose gas confined in a cubic box within the grand canonical ensemble, for a large yet finite number of particles, N. After solving the equation of the spinodal curve, we derive precise formulae for the supercooling and the superheating temperatures which reveal an N^{-1/3} or N^{-1/4} power correction to the known Bose-Einstein condensation temperature in the thermodynamic limit. Numerical computations confirm the accuracy of our analytical approximation, and further show that the isobar zigzags on the temperature-volume plane if N is greater than or equal to 14393. In particular, for the Avogadro's number of particles, the volume expands discretely about 10^5 times. Our results quantitatively agree with a previous study on the canonical ensemble within 0.1% error.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures; Reference added. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.