11th International Congress on Knowledge, Economy and Management

Conference Note

Monopoly, Diversification through Adjacent Technologies, and Market Structure

The theoretical literature on technological competition has been mostly concerned with various aspects of innovative activity in a single market. By contrast, this paper studies the adoption of a sequence of product innovations in two markets characterized by a common technology base, and illustrates the effects of technological rivalry and preemption. Under a perfect information scenario, it is shown in a two incumbent model that if the innovation is drastic (total replacement of the old product), under certain conditions the fear of being preempted by the entrant forces the firms to diversify their product lines by adopting the innovations across each other's markets. On the other hand, with non-drastic innovation (partial replacement of the old product), it is more likely for the firms to diversify in their own product lines. Out of a class of equilibria characterized under non-drastic innovation, one is optimal in which innovations are adopted in the firms' own markets. In the Pareto inferior equilibria, the firms either adopt innovations in each other's market so that incumbency changes hands or jointly adopt both innovations in two separate product lines. Perfect Bayesian equilibria are characterized under an asymmetric information scenario where one of the firms is assumed to have complete information about the relevant costs of adopting an innovation in a separate product line. If the priors are based on pessimism, it is more often subject to exploitation by the informed firm leading to pooling equilibrium, while optimistism more often leads to diversification and to a competitive market structure in both product lines under a separating equilibrium. In all the cases considered, both innovations are adopted, and in most cases they are adopted by the high cost entrant. The former is socially desirable, but the latter is not. More competitiveness necessarily implies wasteful expenditure by the high cost firm. Lack of competitiveness and technological rivalry, on the other hand, imply that maximum product diversity may not be achieved.tehnological rivalry; preemption; adoption of innovations; upgrading

Predictive value of systemic immune-inflammation index in determining mortality in COVID-19 patients

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether systemic immune-inflammation index (SD) could predict mortality in patients with novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) disease. Methods: This two-center, retrospective study included a total of 191 patients with confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 via nucleic acid test (NAT). The SII was calculated based on the complete blood parameters (neutrophil x platelet/lymphocyte) during hospitalization. The relationship between the SII and other inflammatory markers and mortality was investigated. Results: The mortality rate was 18.3%. The mean age was 54.32 +/- 17.95 years. The most common symptoms were fever (70.7%) and dry cough (61.3%), while 8 patients (4.2%) were asymptomatic. The most common comorbidities were hypertension (37.7%), diabetes (23.0%), chronic renal failure (14.7%), and heart failure (7.9%) which all significantly increased the mortality rate (p618.8 was associated with a 4.68-fold higher mortality. Conclusion: Similar to NLR and PLR, the SII is a proinflammatory marker of systemic inflammation and can be effectively used in independent predicting COVID-19 mortality

14th Eurasia Business and Economics Society Conference

Conference Note

Composition-induced structural transitions in mixed rare-gas clusters

The low-energy structures of mixed Ar--Xe and Kr--Xe Lennard-Jones clusters are investigated using a newly developed parallel Monte Carlo minimization algorithm with specific exchange moves between particles or trajectories. Tests on the 13- and 19- atom clusters show a significant improvement over the conventional basin-hopping method, the average search length being reduced by more than one order of magnitude. The method is applied to the more difficult case of the 38-atom cluster, for which the homogeneous clusters have a truncated octahedral shape. It is found that alloys of dissimilar elements (Ar--Xe) favor polytetrahedral geometries over octahedra due to the reduced strain penalty. Conversely, octahedra are even more stable in Kr--Xe alloys than in Kr_38 or Xe_38, and they show a core-surface phase separation behavior. These trends are indeed also observed and further analysed on the 55-atom cluster. Finally, we correlate the relative stability of cubic structures in these clusters to the glassforming character of the bulk mixtures.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables PRB vol 70, in pres

Enhanced Concrete Bridge Assessment Using Artificial Intelligence and Mixed Reality

Conventional methods for visual assessment of civil infrastructures have certain limitations, such as subjectivity of the collected data, long inspection time, and high cost of labor. Although some new technologies (i.e. robotic techniques) that are currently in practice can collect objective, quantified data, the inspector\u27s own expertise is still critical in many instances since these technologies are not designed to work interactively with human inspector. This study aims to create a smart, human-centered method that offers significant contributions to infrastructure inspection, maintenance, management practice, and safety for the bridge owners. By developing a smart Mixed Reality (MR) framework, which can be integrated into a wearable holographic headset device, a bridge inspector, for example, can automatically analyze a certain defect such as a crack that he or she sees on an element, display its dimension information in real-time along with the condition state. Such systems can potentially decrease the time and cost of infrastructure inspections by accelerating essential tasks of the inspector such as defect measurement, condition assessment and data processing to management systems. The human centered artificial intelligence (AI) will help the inspector collect more quantified and objective data while incorporating inspector\u27s professional judgment. This study explains in detail the described system and related methodologies of implementing attention guided semi-supervised deep learning into mixed reality technology, which interacts with the human inspector during assessment. Thereby, the inspector and the AI will collaborate/communicate for improved visual inspection

Chemistry Teachers’ Level of Scientific Explanation about Change of State and their Beliefs about Scientific Explanation

The purpose of this study is to examine the capability of chemistry teachers’ scientific explanation on the subject of change of state related to daily life and their beliefs about scientific basis. The sample of this study constituted forty-six chemistry teachers working at different high schools in Gaziantep. The study was conducted following the phenomenographic research method. Within the scope of the study, a test consisting of open-ended questions was conducted to determine the teachers’ capability to make scientific explanations and their beliefs about scientific explanations. Study findings showed that the chemistry teachers participating in this study had inadequacies in making scientific explanations and that their beliefs about scientific explanations were unsatisfactory