How is Innovation fostered under different Institutional Setup: Comparing the Electronics Cluster in Shenzhen and Dongguan, China

The primary focus of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on how innovation is generated and fostered under different institutional setup. Two different institutional setups which evolve from planned economy to market economy in China during the transition, i.e. top-down and bottom-up institutions to promote industrial development, are discussed in the context of our study area, i.e. Dongguan and Shenzhen in Pearl River Delta, China. Drawing on the firm survey data collected in the electronics industry of Dongguan and Shenzhen, this paper explores the factors that foster the innovation activities respectively under these two different institutional setups. The results shows that the flexible institutions organized from bottom up targeting at attracting process trade, which is dominant in Dongguan, restricts the scope of interaction and learning related to innovation and would probably lock-in the city in low-end production activities if the existing institutional setup cannot be broken up. On the other hand, institutional setup favoring the agglomeration of knowledge-related and knowledge-intensive institutes and ex-ante strategic support organized from top down in Shenzhen economic special zone contributes to the reciprocal and systematic interaction between firms as well as knowledge institutions. Finally, policy implication is further discussed by comparing the territorial innovation system in Europe and America where innovation institutions are mature, concluding that the capacity of public and private institutions should be strengthened to form the stable systematic interaction to foster innovation in the long run.

Cell Cycle Control by Xenopus p28^(Kix1) a Developmentally Regulated Inhibitor of Cyclin-dependent Kinases

We have isolated Xenopus p28^(Kix1), a member of the p21^(CIP1)/p27^(KIP1)/p57^(KIP2) family of cyclin-dependent kinase (Cdk) inhibitors. Members of this family negatively regulate cell cycle progression in mammalian cells by inhibiting the activities of Cdks. p28 shows significant sequence homology with p21, p27, and p57 in its N-terminal region, where the Cdk inhibition domain is known to reside. In contrast, the C-terminal domain of p28 is distinct from that of p21, p27, and p57. In co-immunoprecipitation experiments, p28 was found to be associated with Cdk2, cyclin E, and cyclin A, but not the Cdc2/cyclin B complex in Xenopus egg extracts. Xenopus p28 associates with the proliferating cell nuclear antigen, but with a substantially lower affinity than human p21. In kinase assays with recombinant Cdks, p28 inhibits pre-activated Cdk2/cyclin E and Cdk2/cyclin A, but not Cdc2/cyclin B. However, at high concentrations, p28 does prevent the activation of Cdc2/cyclin B by the Cdk-activating kinase. Consistent with the role of p28 as a Cdk inhibitor, recombinant p28 elicits an inhibition of both DNA replication and mitosis upon addition to egg extracts, indicating that it can regulate multiple cell cycle transitions. The level of p28 protein shows a dramatic developmental profile: it is low in Xenopus oocytes, eggs, and embryos up to stage 11, but increases approximately ~ 100-fold between stages 12 and 13, and remains high thereafter. The induction of p28 expression temporally coincides with late gastrulation. Thus, although p28 may play only a limited role during the early embryonic cleavages, it may function later in development to establish a somatic type of cell cycle. Taken together, our results indicate that Xenopus p28 is a new member of the p21/p27/p57 class of Cdk inhibitors, and that it may play a role in developmental processes

A Bayesian-Based Approach for Public Sentiment Modeling

Public sentiment is a direct public-centric indicator for the success of effective action planning. Despite its importance, systematic modeling of public sentiment remains untapped in previous studies. This research aims to develop a Bayesian-based approach for quantitative public sentiment modeling, which is capable of incorporating uncertainty and guiding the selection of public sentiment measures. This study comprises three steps: (1) quantifying prior sentiment information and new sentiment observations with Dirichlet distribution and multinomial distribution respectively; (2) deriving the posterior distribution of sentiment probabilities through incorporating the Dirichlet distribution and multinomial distribution via Bayesian inference; and (3) measuring public sentiment through aggregating sampled sets of sentiment probabilities with an application-based measure. A case study on Hurricane Harvey is provided to demonstrate the feasibility and applicability of the proposed approach. The developed approach also has the potential to be generalized to model various types of probability-based measures

Enhanced Welding Operator Quality Performance Measurement: Work Experience-Integrated Bayesian Prior Determination

Measurement of operator quality performance has been challenging in the construction fabrication industry. Among various causes, the learning effect is a significant factor, which needs to be incorporated in achieving a reliable operator quality performance analysis. This research aims to enhance a previously developed operator quality performance measurement approach by incorporating the learning effect (i.e., work experience). To achieve this goal, the Plateau learning model is selected to quantitatively represent the relationship between quality performance and work experience through a beta-binomial regression approach. Based on this relationship, an informative prior determination approach, which incorporates operator work experience information, is developed to enhance the previous Bayesian-based operator quality performance measurement. Academically, this research provides a systematic approach to derive Bayesian informative priors through integrating multi-source information. Practically, the proposed approach reliably measures operator quality performance in fabrication quality control processes.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, i3CE 201

Maximizing the number of independent sets of a fixed size

Let $i_t(G)$ be the number of independent sets of size $t$ in a graph $G$. Engbers and Galvin asked how large $i_t(G)$ could be in graphs with minimum degree at least $\delta$. They further conjectured that when $n\geq 2\delta$ and $t\geq 3$, $i_t(G)$ is maximized by the complete bipartite graph $K_{\delta, n-\delta}$. This conjecture has drawn the attention of many researchers recently. In this short note, we prove this conjecture.Comment: 5 page

Firm valuation : case study on consulting engineering companies

Being in the stage of maturity business cycles, engineering consulting companies are seeking for growth via internationalization and outsourcing contractors, which led to consolidation in this business. The primary underlying motivation of this dissertation is to value the Finnish engineering and technology company DJ, and its two acquisition targets companies Citec and Pörner. Under a scheme of acquisition, the standalone values of the three private companies were obtained with assumptions of different growth scenarios and understandings of this industry and companies' strategies. The second motivation is to assess DJ's future respective categories' sales and whole enterprise value by implementing different companies' strategies. The focus of the valuations is on the side of DJ. Since the valuations happened in the preliminary phase of acquisition, more attention was paid to standalone values than synergies values. A wide selection of literature reviews in the related field was included in the dissertation. We also utilized the secondary data such as industry organizations and experts' opinions, and companies' annual reports as bases of our valuation. A standard discounted cash flow method was adopted in this dissertation, followed by peer valuation and sensitivity analysis. The result shows, DJ's enterprise Value (EV) is around 134 Million Euro based on 10%/a organic growth and 8% EBIT of annual sales until 2020 strategy; by implementing an alternative strategy which enables respective target categories sales growth ratios, meanwhile applying 2014-2016 growth rate 10%/a, 2017-2019 growth rate 7.5%/a, and 2020-2022 growth rate 5%/a, the enterprise value is 146 Million Euro until 2020, and 161 Million Euro until 2022. As regards to the targets, under dissimilar assumptions, Pörner's enterprise value is 61 million EURO and Citec's is 45 million EURO. Furthermore, the result suggests one real example in Finnish engineering consulting trend, in line with existing studies: diversification into new-fangled service (or customer) markets is the essential motive for engineering consulting companies to commence a merger or acquisition transaction

SHARED TOURISM EXPERIENCE OF INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES AND THEIR CAREGIVERS

While leisure travel has been shown to play an important role in the lives of individuals with disabilities and their caregivers, research devoted to the shared tourism experience of this travel companionship is limited. This study provided a depiction of the shared memorable tourism experiences of Chinese individuals with disabilities and their caregivers. Following a phenomenological approach, sixteen paired in-depth interviews were conducted in Guangdong, China. Five themes emerged as key components of shared memorable tourism experiences: activities, emotions, outcomes, socially oriented contextual factors, and programing/service contextual factors, with attention given to resistance strategies against social exclusion adopted by Chinese individuals with disabilities and their caregivers. The identified three level experience mechanism with regard to shared tourism experiences of disabled individuals and their caregivers are expected to facilitate the provision of better service towards this particular market segment and to bring academic and industry attention to a much neglected populatio

Topological methods on solvability, multiplicity and bifurcation of a nonlinear fractional boundary value problem

In this paper, we first prove new properties of the $(a, q)$-stably solvable maps for a class of decomposable operators in the form of $LF$, where $L$ is a bounded linear operator and $F$ is nonlinear. This class of maps is important in applications as many differential equations can be written as $LF(u)=u$. Secondly, three different approaches, the $(a, q)$-stably solvable maps, fixed point index and iterative method are applied to study a nonlinear fractional boundary value problem involving a parameter $\lambda$. We obtain intervals of $\lambda$ that correspond to at least two, one and no positive solutions, respectively. Thirdly, convergence of the eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenvectors for the associated Hammerstein-type integral operator are proved. This paper seems to be the first to apply the theory of $(a, q)$-stably solvable operators in studying boundary value problems