Institutional Change, Obsolescing Legitimacy, and Multinational Corporations: The Case of the Central American Banana Industry

This paper studies the practice of integration of influential host country actors to a multinational corporation as a strategy to decrease problems of legitimacy to the foreign firm before the host country's society. By developing the concept of obsolescing legitimacy, we argue that this strategy provides legitimacy to the foreign firm only in the absence of institutional changes in the host country. Once these changes take place, an alliance by the multinational to an elite or a political system no longer ruling the host country will become a liability and will generate problems of legitimacy for the multinational. We illustrate our argument with the case of the US multinational United Fruit Company in Central America.

Unintended complication of intracranial subdural hematoma after percutaneous epidural neuroplasty.

Percutaneous epidural neuroplasty (PEN) is a known interventional technique for the management of spinal pain. As with any procedures, PEN is associated with complications ranging from mild to more serious ones. We present a case of intracranial subdural hematoma after PEN requiring surgical evacuation. We review the relevant literature and discuss possible complications of PEN and patholophysiology of intracranial subdural hematoma after PEN

On nonparametric likelihood methods for weakly and strongly dependent time series

This dissertation investigates and develops three different nonparametric likelihood methods for time series. For handling dependent data, current statistical methodology often relies on selecting parametric distributional models to accurately represent the data-generating process, which can be challenging. The three nonparametric likelihood methods considered are a blockwise empirical likelihood (EL), a block bootstrap, and a frequency domain bootstrap. Each method differs in form for building a nonparametric likelihood, but all methods involve setting empirical probabilities on observed data. An additional theme of this dissertation is the type or strength of the dependence in a stationary time process. The behavior of statistical methods can change dramatically between SRD and LRD cases, which complicates the development of appropriate resampling methods. The dissertation consists of four chapters. Chatper 1 provides Introduction to explain the relationship about three manuscripts from Chatper 2, 3 and 4. Chapter 2 considers a new blockwise empirical likelihood (BEL) method for stationary, weakly dependent time processes, called a progressive block empirical likelihood (PBEL). Unlike the standard BEL originally proposed by Kitamura~(1997), the PBEL method does not require any block length selections. Because the performance of the standard BEL can depend critically on the block length choice, the PBEL method in contrast enjoys a type of robustness against block selection issues. Chapters 3 and 4 consider different bootstrap problems for stationary, linear time series which could exhibit LRD. Chapter 3 investigates the large-sample properties of a block bootstrap method for estimating the distribution of sample means. The results establish the validity of the block bootstrap under either LRD or SRD. Additionally, for estimating the variance of a sample mean under LRD, explicit expressions are provided for the large-sample bias and variance of block bootstrap estimators along with formulas for the theoretically optimal block sizes under LRD. Perhaps surprisingly, optimal blocks become shorter in length as the strength of the LRD increases. Chapter 4 develops a frequency domain bootstrap (FDB) method for a problem involving Whittle estimation (Whittle, 1953), which is a popular technique for fitting parametric spectral density models to time series. For linear LRD time processes, the resulting Whittle estimators are known to have normal limit laws. However, convergence to normality can be slow under LRD and the finite-sample distributions of Whittle estimators tend to be asymmetric. As a remedy, the FDB method can be used for calibrating confidence intervals in place of a normal approximation

Cytotoxicity and acute toxicity evaluation of hydrogen-rich Gynostemma pentaphyllum Makino distillate

Hydrogen-rich Gynostemma pentaphyllum Makino distillate (HRGD) consists of Gynostemma pentaphyllum Makino steam distillate with hydrogen gas. Although both G. pentaphyllum Makino and hydrogen-rich water are well known for their biological and medical benefits, there is a lack of information on their safety and toxicity in vivo acute oral toxicity test and in vitro cytotoxicity method. The current study aimed to assess the cytotoxicity and acute oral toxicity of HRGD as a part of a safety evaluation using rat and human cell models. HRGD was administered orally once by gavage to male and female Sprague-Dawley rats at doses of 0, 2500, and 5000 mg/kg. Cytotoxicity assay was conducted in vitro at various concentrations in 10 different human normal and cancer cell lines; TK6 (human normal lymphomablastoid cells), Chang (human hepatic cells), 16HBE14o- (human bronchial epithelial cells), URotsa (human urothelium cells), MCF (human breast cancer cells), Hela (human cervical cancer cells), A375 (human malignant melanoma cells), HCT116 (human colon cancer cells), HepG2 (human liver cancer cells) and A549 (human non-small cell lung adenocarcinoma cells). From a 14-day study in rats, we observed no compound-related changes in mortality, clinical signs, body weight, food/water consumption, organ weight and gross pathology in all dose group. The result of in vivo acute toxicity shows that no observed adverse effect level of HRGD was below 5000 mg/kg for both sexes of rats, and the minimal lethal dose was considered to be more than 5000 mg/kg. HRGD also had no in vitro cytotoxicity against all tested cells. The present study data indicated that HRGD may contain bioactive compounds of potential therapeutic significance that are relatively safe from toxic effects