Stability and Change in the Strategic Decisions of Multinational Enterprise

This dissertation investigates some of the antecedents and consequences of stability and change in multinational enterprises (MNEs). It focuses on the strategic level decisions of MNEs in their international activities. Essay 1 studies the role of the development and deployment of decision rules, as an organizational capability, since they may lead to consistency and stability in MNEs’ international strategies. By focusing on recurring and high-stakes strategic resource allocation decisions, the study disentangles the time and space dimensions of the deployment of capabilities. The findings indicate a positive effect on performance for MNEs’ spatial consistency across subsidiaries for expatriation (as a repetitive decision), and a negative effect for spatial consistency in equity ownership (as a quasi-repetitive decision). The study also observes a positive effect on performance for temporal persistence in expatriation. Regarding the consequences of stability and change, Essays 2 and 3 investigate the MNE’s evolution in the global space and the knowledge it acquires and amasses in its knowledge-base. This knowledge-base transcends the learning lessons originating from a firm’s home country to a broader evolved home-base which incorporates all foreign subsidiaries of the MNE and its home country. Distance as a highly popular concept in international business is then revisited and reconceptualized. Essays 2 and 3 argue that the internationalization process of the firm shifts its reliance on the original home country as a source of knowledge, to the broader domain of the MNE’s activities and the portfolio of its locations. It may either rely on the knowledge from all its subsidiary locations, or on the learnings from the most similar location in the portfolio to the focal host country. These two approaches lead to theoretical development of two (multilevel) distance constructs at the MNE level: average distance measure based on a composition approach and minimum distance measure using a compilation approach. The former has already been introduced in the literature and the latter is a newly introduced and developed measure in this dissertation. Essay 3 provides a comparative analysis to compare the predictive power of the new and extant distance measures. Overall, the findings of this dissertation indicate the superiority (and complementarity) of the two MNE-level distance measures

Stapes Management in Tympanosclerosis

Background: Stapes management in tympanosclerosis has always been controversial. There are evidences supporting stapes mobilization, but there are concerns regarding refixation and recurrence of conductive hearing loss; therefore, supporting stapedectomy.Methods: In this retrospective study, clinical records, operative notes, and audiologic data of patients with stapes fixation (1994–2011) were analyzed. Audiometric findings are reported according to the recommendations of the Committee on Hearing and Equilibrium 1995 Guidelines for the Evaluation of Results of Treatment of Conductive Hearing Loss.Results: In the present study, 66 patients were enrolled (23 male, 43 female). Stapedectomy and stapes mobilization both had good hearing results (12.1 dB vs. 10.6 dB reduction in ABG) and there was no significant difference. Overall, 63.6% of patients had achieved good results (mobilization: 57.9%, stapedectomy: 71.4%). The difference in success rate between the two groups was not statistically significant.Conclusions: Stapedectomy and mobilization of stapes both seem to be efficacious and safe in the treatment of stapes involvement in tympanosclerosis. The hearing improvement is long lasting in both procedures

Fault detection and isolation using viability theory and interval observers

This paper proposes the use of interval observers and viability theory in fault detection and isolation (FDI). Viability theory develops mathematical and algorithmic methods for investigating the viability constraints characterisation of dynamic evolutions of complex systems under uncertainty. These methods can be used for checking the consistency between observed and predicted behaviour by using simple sets that approximate the exact set of possible behaviour (in the parameter or state space). In this paper, FDI is based on checking for an inconsistency between the measured and predicted behaviours using viability theory concepts and sets. Finally, an example is provided in order to show the usefulness of the proposed approachPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Fenugreek seed extract treats peripheral neuropathy in pyridoxine induced neuropathic mice

Trigonella foenum graecum commonly known as Fenugreek exerts normoglycemic and insulinotropic effects in humans by compounds from its seed and leaf extracts. Some studies reported that treating pregnant mice with fenugreek seed could cause toxic effects on the nervous system of its pubs during developmental growth, while in some other studies neuroprotective properties were considered for it. Safety of anti-diabetic drugs for nervous system is very important because peripheral neuropathy is a common complication of diabetes and hazardous drugs could worsen it. In this study, the effect of treatment with fenugreek seed extract on the function of sciatic nerves of neuropathic mice was evaluated. Neuropathy was induced in male mice by pyridoxine intoxication. After that, animals were treated with 0.2, 2 and 20 mg/kg of hydro-alcoholic extract of fenugreek seeds for 10 days, tail flick, electrophysiological and histological assays were performed to evaluate the effect of fenugreek seed extract on function of the peripheral nerves. Our data showed that fenugreek has anti neuropathic effect and restores the function of nerve fibers. Results of electrophysiological recordings stated that the highest rate of healing was occurred in 20 mg/kg fenugreek extract treated animals. In conclusion, findings of the present study demonstrate that treatment with fenugreek seed extract can potentially facilitate healing from pyridoxine induced peripheral neuropathy in mice

Accidental Chronic Poisoning with Methotrexate; Report of Two Cases

Methotrexate has been used widely in dermatology, oncology and rheumatology fields. However, methotrexate-induced mucocutaneous lesions may occur in rare cases. In this case presentation, we report two cases of accidental poisoning with methotrexate. They had accidentally used methotrexate instead of digoxin. This case report emphasizes that early diagnosis and appropriate management is critical in order to improve outcome. 

Investigate the Effects of Iranian Traditional Music and Western Classical Music on Physical Performance, the Normal Profile of Mood States and Rate of Perceived Exertion

Background: The present study examines the effects of Iranian traditional music and Western classical music during 20 min of pedaling on an ergometer, along with the normal factors of profile of mood states and rate of perceived exertion. Methods: Seventeen non-athlete participants (11 men and six women) with a mean age of 26±1.5 cycled in three conditions: exposure to Iranian traditional music; exposure to classical music; and control conditions (silence). Participant’s normal mood states before and after each test, rate of perceived exertion and cycling speed during the test and distance traveled at the end of each test were recorded.Results: The results showed that participants in exposure to classical music, and also in the face of Iranian traditional music, pedal a greater distance than the control condition (silence). Also, conditions of exposure to classical music and exposure to Iranian traditional music reduced rate of perceived exertion of participants compared to control conditions (silence). There was no significant difference in the speed of participant’s cycling during exposure to music and in the control condition (silence). Conclusions: Individual’s mood during the physical test under the musical conditions was better than control condition, and classical music had a more prominent role in participant’s mood

Investigate the Effects of Iranian Traditional Music and Western Classical Music on Physical Performance, the Normal Profile of Mood States and Rate of Perceived Exertion

Background: The present study examines the effects of Iranian traditional music and Western classical music during 20 min of pedaling on an ergometer, along with the normal factors of profile of mood states and rate of perceived exertion. Methods: Seventeen non-athlete participants (11 men and six women) with a mean age of 26±1.5 cycled in three conditions: exposure to Iranian traditional music; exposure to classical music; and control conditions (silence). Participant’s normal mood states before and after each test, rate of perceived exertion and cycling speed during the test and distance traveled at the end of each test were recorded.Results: The results showed that participants in exposure to classical music, and also in the face of Iranian traditional music, pedal a greater distance than the control condition (silence). Also, conditions of exposure to classical music and exposure to Iranian traditional music reduced rate of perceived exertion of participants compared to control conditions (silence). There was no significant difference in the speed of participant’s cycling during exposure to music and in the control condition (silence). Conclusions: Individual’s mood during the physical test under the musical conditions was better than control condition, and classical music had a more prominent role in participant’s mood

Fused Breadth-First Probabilistic Traversals on Distributed GPU Systems

Probabilistic breadth-first traversals (BPTs) are used in many network science and graph machine learning applications. In this paper, we are motivated by the application of BPTs in stochastic diffusion-based graph problems such as influence maximization. These applications heavily rely on BPTs to implement a Monte-Carlo sampling step for their approximations. Given the large sampling complexity, stochasticity of the diffusion process, and the inherent irregularity in real-world graph topologies, efficiently parallelizing these BPTs remains significantly challenging. In this paper, we present a new algorithm to fuse massive number of concurrently executing BPTs with random starts on the input graph. Our algorithm is designed to fuse BPTs by combining separate traversals into a unified frontier on distributed multi-GPU systems. To show the general applicability of the fused BPT technique, we have incorporated it into two state-of-the-art influence maximization parallel implementations (gIM and Ripples). Our experiments on up to 4K nodes of the OLCF Frontier supercomputer ($32,768$ GPUs and $196$K CPU cores) show strong scaling behavior, and that fused BPTs can improve the performance of these implementations up to 34$\times$ (for gIM) and ~360$\times$ (for Ripples).Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure