Investing in New Technology - A Case Study of a Food Processing Company

The increased turbulence, complexity and competitiveness of organizational environments have made identification, evaluation and implementation of new technological investments critical determinants of organizational productivity, competition and survival. This paper examines new technology investment decision-making process on two levels combining traditional innovation adoption and diffusion approaches by network and interaction approach of IMP-Group. Conducting this we aim to crossfertilize the chosen approaches and produce more comprehensive and integrated understanding to conceptualize investment decision-making processes on new technology. The empirical part of the study investigates an investment process in which a food processing company invested in a new microbiological quality assurance method. The internationalization of food processing industry combined with a growing amount of global raw material sourcing is posing increasing challenges for companies, authorities and governments in terms of guaranteeing the safety of food. Since improved food safety is both time consuming and expensive, food producers find it difficult to cover the resulting costs of testing. These circumstances offer an interesting and fruitful context in which to study investment decision-making process on new technology

Comparing Innovation Adoption and Organizational Buying Behavior Approaches in a Context of Technological Investment Decision-Making

The statement by Cyert, Simon and Trow [1, p. 237] that “Decision-Making – choosing one course of action rather than another, finding an appropriate solution to a new problem posed by a changing world – is commonly asserted to be the heart of executive activity in business.” holds true still after fifty years although a lot has changed in business from those days. New products are launched more frequently to markets and technological innovations alter structures of competition and disturb equilibrium of markets. These dynamics can pose not only opportunities but also threats for firms, depending upon the timing of adoption. The most innovative companies may gain competitive advantage over competitors by adopting and implementing performance improving technologies. On the other hand, the non-adopters may suffer from the improved performance of the adopters. This paper examines conceptually a process of decision-making on new technology discussing organizational buying behavior approach and innovation adoption approach in regard to general decision-making approach and finally combines these fields in order to conceptualize and understand better the process of decision-making on new technological investment

Numerical and experimental verification of a theoretical model of ripple formation in ice growth under supercooled water film flow

Little is known about morphological instability of a solidification front during the crystal growth of a thin film of flowing supercooled liquid with a free surface: for example, the ring-like ripples on the surface of icicles. The length scale of the ripples is nearly 1 cm. Two theoretical models for the ripple formation mechanism have been proposed. However, these models lead to quite different results because of differences in the boundary conditions at the solid-liquid interface and liquid-air surface. The validity of the assumption used in the two models is numerically investigated and some of the theoretical predictions are compared with experiments.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figure

Climate change projections for variables affecting road networks in Europe

Global climate change will affect road networks during this century. The effects will be different in various parts of the world due to differences in local climate change and in the structure and properties of roads. In this paper, climate change projections are presented for climate variables that are most likely to affect the long-term performance of road networks in Europe. We apply four regional climate simulations up to the year 2100 using two plausible future emission scenarios. The results show that the changing climate will require significant adaptation measures in the near future in order to maintain the operability of the European road network

Modeling the momentum distributions of annihilating electron-positron pairs in solids

Measuring the Doppler broadening of the positron annihilation radiation or the angular correlation between the two annihilation gamma quanta reflects the momentum distribution of electrons seen by positrons in the material.Vacancy-type defects in solids localize positrons and the measured spectra are sensitive to the detailed chemical and geometric environments of the defects. However, the measured information is indirect and when using it in defect identification comparisons with theoretically predicted spectra is indispensable. In this article we present a computational scheme for calculating momentum distributions of electron-positron pairs annihilating in solids. Valence electron states and their interaction with ion cores are described using the all-electron projector augmented-wave method, and atomic orbitals are used to describe the core states. We apply our numerical scheme to selected systems and compare three different enhancement (electron-positron correlation) schemes previously used in the calculation of momentum distributions of annihilating electron-positron pairs within the density-functional theory. We show that the use of a state-dependent enhancement scheme leads to better results than a position-dependent enhancement factor in the case of ratios of Doppler spectra between different systems. Further, we demonstrate the applicability of our scheme for studying vacancy-type defects in metals and semiconductors. Especially we study the effect of forces due to a positron localized at a vacancy-type defect on the ionic relaxations.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review B on September 1 2005. Revised manuscript submitted on November 14 200

Phonological development of Finnish speaking children at 3;6 and associations to previous and simultaneous lexical ability

Previous studies of Finnish children's phonological development focus mainly on children under 2;0. Earlier findings have suggested that phonological and lexical development are strongly associated at an early age. However, less is known about the longitudinal association. This study describes the phonological skills of Finnish-speaking children at 3;6 and compares them with early lexicon size at 2;0 and lexical ability at 3;6 (N = 67). The children's phonological development was measured using The Finnish Phonology Test. Lexical development was evaluated using the Finnish, long-form version of the Communicative Development Inventory at 2;0 and the Boston naming test at 3;6 At 3;6, all children mastered the vowels and diphthongs fully, and most of the children also mastered the consonants, with the exception of the phonemes/d/and/r/. Phonotactic skills had also been acquired well at this group level, although the word-medial and, especially, word-initial consonant clusters were still challenging. The percentage of phonemes correct was 95. Both paradigmatic and phonotactic skills at 3;6 were significantly associated with lexicon size at 2;0. In addition phonotactic skills correlated with naming ability at 3;6. Lexical development at 2;0 explained 21% of the variance in the phonological development at 3;6, whereas, the explaining value of simultaneous lexical skill was limited (9%). Present findings propose that associations between lexical and phonological skills weaken as phonological skills become more honed.Peer reviewe

High frequency mechanical excitation of a silicon nanostring with piezoelectric aluminum nitride layers

A strong trend for quantum based technologies and applications follows the avenue of combining different platforms to exploit their complementary technological and functional advantages. Micro and nano-mechanical devices are particularly suitable for hybrid integration due to the easiness of fabrication at multi-scales and their pervasive coupling with electrons and photons. Here, we report on a nanomechanical technological platform where a silicon chip is combined with an aluminum nitride layer. Exploiting the AlN piezoelectricity, Surface Acoustic Waves are injected in the Si layer where the material has been localy patterned and etched to form a suspended nanostring. Characterizing the nanostring vertical displacement induced by the SAW, we found an external excitation peak efficiency in excess of 500 pm/V at 1 GHz mechanical frequency. Exploiting the long term expertise in silicon photonic and electronic devices as well as the SAW robustness and versatility, our technological platform represents a strong candidate for hybrid quantum systems

Anthropogenic aerosol forcing - insights from multiple estimates from aerosol-climate models with reduced complexity

This study assesses the change in anthropogenic aerosol forcing from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s. Both decades had similar global-mean anthropogenic aerosol optical depths but substantially different global distributions. For both years, we quantify (i) the forcing spread due to model-internal variability and (ii) the forcing spread among models. Our assessment is based on new ensembles of atmosphere-only simulations with five state-of-the-art Earth system models. Four of these models will be used in the sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6; Eyring et al., 2016). Here, the complexity of the anthropogenic aerosol has been reduced in the participating models. In all our simulations, we prescribe the same patterns of the anthropogenic aerosol optical properties and associated effects on the cloud droplet number concentration. We calculate the instantaneous radiative forcing (RF) and the effective radiative forcing (ERF). Their difference defines the net contribution from rapid adjustments. Our simulations show a model spread in ERF from -0.4 to -0.9 W m(-2). The standard deviation in annual ERF is 0.3 W m(-2), based on 180 individual estimates from each participating model. This result implies that identifying the model spread in ERF due to systematic differences requires averaging over a sufficiently large number of years. Moreover, we find almost identical ERFs for the mid-1970s and mid-2000s for individual models, although there are major model differences in natural aerosols and clouds. The model-ensemble mean ERF is -0.54 W m(-2) for the pre-industrial era to the mid-1970s and -0.59 W m(-2) for the pre-industrial era to the mid-2000s. Our result suggests that comparing ERF changes between two observable periods rather than absolute magnitudes relative to a poorly constrained pre-industrial state might provide a better test for a model's ability to represent transient climate changes.Peer reviewe

Scaling in the correlation energies of two-dimensional artificial atoms

We find an unexpected scaling in the correlation energy of artificial atoms, i.e., harmonically confined two-dimensional quantum dots. The scaling relation is found through extensive numerical examinations including Hartree-Fock, variational quantum Monte Carlo, density-functional, and full configuration-interaction calculations. We show that the correlation energy, i.e., the true ground-state total energy subtracted by the Hartree-Fock total energy, follows a simple function of the Coulomb energy, confimenent strength and, the number of electrons. We find an analytic expression for this function, as well as for the correlation energy per particle and for the ratio between the correlation and total energies. Our tests for independent diffusion Monte Carlo and coupled-cluster results for quantum dots -- including open-shell data -- confirm the generality of the obtained scaling. As the scaling is also well applicable to $\gtrsim$ 100 electrons, our results give interesting prospects for the development of correlation functionals within density-functional theory.Comment: Accepted to Journal of Physics: Condensed Matte

Point defect balance in epitaxial GaSb

Positron annihilation spectroscopy in both conventional and coincidence Doppler broadening mode is used for studying the effect of growth conditions on the point defect balance in GaSb:Bi epitaxial layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Positron annihilation characteristics in GaSb are also calculated using density functional theory and compared to experimental results. We conclude that while the main positron trapping defect in bulk samples is the Ga antisite, the Ga vacancy is the most prominent trap in the samples grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The results suggest that the p–type conductivity is caused by different defects in GaSb grown with different methods.Peer reviewe