Análisis de la relación entre la estrategia de diversificación y el desempeño de la empresa: el rol del ciclo económico

[EN] The relationship between corporate strategies and firm performance has been one of the key debates in the discipline of Strategic Management. There are studies that analyse the moderating role that certain variables may play in that relationship. These variables tend to refer to aspects within the firm or, at the very least, within the competitive environment in which a firm operates. Nevertheless, the empirical evidence on the part the general environment plays from an economic perspective is much less common, and focuses on large corporations and on periods of economic growth. Accordingly, using a panel of 1,828 Spanish manufacturing firms of different sizes, an analysis is conducted of the differences in Return On Assets (ROA), Growth in Sales (GS) and Labor Productivity (LP) between specialised firms, those with related diversification, and those with unrelated diversification, between 2002 and 2011, in which there was a period of growth alternated with another one of economic recession. Although some superiority is noted of related diversification and specialisation over unrelated diversification, the differences between strategies are less significant in periods of economic recession, and vary according to the dimension of performance considered. These results reveal the need to consider the economic cycle as a contingent factor that affects the impact corporate strategies have on firm performance.[ES] La relación entre las estrategias corporativas y el desempeño empresarial ha sido uno de los debates centrales en la disciplina de la dirección estratégica. Diversos estudios analizan el rol moderador que juegan diversas variables en esta relación. Dichas variables tienden a referirse a aspectos internos de la empresa o, si acaso, a aspectos del entorno competitivo en el que la empresa opera. Sin embargo, es más escasa la evidencia empírica sobre el rol que desempeña el entorno general y suele enfocarse en grandes empresas y en períodos de crecimiento económico. En consecuencia, utilizando un panel de 1.828 empresas manufactureras españolas de diferentes tamaños, se realiza un análisis de las diferencias de rentabilidad sobre activos, crecimiento de ventas y productividad laboral entre empresas especializadas, con diversificación relacionada y con diversificación no relacionada, entre los años 2002 y 2011, en los cuales hubo un período de crecimiento alternado con otro de recesión económica. Aunque se destaca cierta superioridad de la diversificación relacionada y la especialización sobre la diversificación no relacionada, las diferencias entre estrategias son menos significativas en los períodos de recesión económica y varían de acuerdo a la dimensión de desempeño considerada. Estos resultados revelan la necesidad de considerar el ciclo económico como un factor contingente que afecta el impacto que las estrategias corporativas tienen sobre el desempeño de la empresa.This paper has been supported by Project ECO2015-67434-R of Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain) and for the Excellent Research Group “Strategor” of URJC-Bank of Santander

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En el lomo: 7

Braquiterapia en el cáncer de mama.

La radioterapia es un tratamiento fundamental del cáncer de mama. Frente a la técnica clásica de Irradiación Completa de la Mama, que se mantiene como opción estándar aceptada, ha surgido un interés creciente por la irradiación parcial de la mama (APBI -Accelerated Partial Breast Irradiation-) mediante diferentes técnicas. Los últimos estudios subrayan la no inferioridad de la APBI mediante braquiterapia multicatéter instersticial frente a la radioterapia externa con boost en el lecho tumoral, siempre y cuando se lleve a cabo una adecuada selección de las pacientes candidatas. La APBI se convierte así en una alternativa razonable a la técnica estándar en mujeres que cumplan los siguientes criterios de inclusión: ≥50 años, con tumores ≤3cm, márgenes quirúrgicos negativos y sin invasión linfovascular. Entre las principales ventajas de esta técnica destacan la reducción de la toxicidad, la mejora del resultado cosmético y la satisfacción de las pacientes. No obstante, se requieren más estudios acerca de la toxicidad y diferentes modalidades de APBI, así como un seguimiento a largo plazo de estas pacientes para que los resultados sean comparables con los de seguimientos prolongados de mujeres tratadas con Irradiación Completa.Grado en Medicin

Vitiligo-like lesions located over In-transit metastases of malignant melanoma as a clinical marker of complete response to pembrolizumab.

Anti-programmed cell death (PD)-1 therapies in metastatic tumors have a high incidence of immune adverse events, including cutaneous manifestations such as vitiligo-like lesions. This side effect is associated with increased survival and it is a clinical marker of response to treatment. This case report is a graphic representation of the appearance of vitiligo-like lesions over in-transit metastases of malignant melanoma linked to a complete response to treatment with pembrolizumab

Modified atmosphere packaging and dark/light refrigerated storage in green leafy vegetables have impact on nutritional value

The consumption of zeaxanthin (Z) through a vegetable-rich diet is recommended to reduce the progression of age-related macular degeneration. Due to Z’s intrinsic dynamic character that results from its participation in the photoprotective xanthophyll cycle involving the carotenoids violaxanthin, antheraxanthin and zeaxanthin (VAZ), post-harvest handling practices and storage usually retain low amounts of this bioactive compound (compared to the rest of phytochemicals that are, in general, more stable). Thus, the aim of this work was to investigate in important consumed leafy vegetables the effects of different storage conditions on carotenoids (mainly Z) including i) packaging under three modified atmospheres (MAs), ii) light refrigerated supermarket storage and iii) dark refrigerated domestic storage. The results showed that an MA with low O2 and high CO2 enhanced the Z content under light. Moreover, both light and dark refrigerated storage showed dynamic and circadian pigment changes that enhanced the total VAZ pool. These results can contribute to generating practical recommendations for industries, supermarkets, and consumers when high Z content is a nutritional target.RE received a Juan de la Cierva-incorporación grant IJCI-2014-21452. JB is a holder of a PhD fellowship from the Public University of Navarre. This research was supported by research BFU 2010-15021 and CTM2014- 53902-C2-2-P from the Ministry of Education and Science of Spain and the ERDF (FEDER) and research project UPV/EHU IT-1018-16. Technical and human support by Eroski supermarkets and “Fundación Tecnova” is gratefully acknowledged

A New Multi-Objective Approach for Molecular Docking Based on RMSD and Binding Energy

Ligand-protein docking is an optimization problem based on predicting the position of a ligand with the lowest binding energy in the active site of the receptor. Molecular docking problems are traditionally tackled with single-objective, as well as with multi-objective approaches, to minimize the binding energy. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-objective formulation that considers: the Root Mean Square Deviation (RMSD) difference in the coordinates of ligands and the binding (intermolecular) energy, as two objectives to evaluate the quality of the ligand-protein interactions. To determine the kind of Pareto front approximations that can be obtained, we have selected a set of representative multi-objective algorithms such as NSGA-II, SMPSO, GDE3, and MOEA/D. Their performances have been assessed by applying two main quality indicators intended to measure convergence and diversity of the fronts. In addition, a comparison with LGA, a reference single-objective evolutionary algorithm for molecular docking (AutoDock) is carried out. In general, SMPSO shows the best overall results in terms of energy and RMSD (value lower than 2A for successful docking results). This new multi-objective approach shows an improvement over the ligand-protein docking predictions that could be promising in in silico docking studies to select new anticancer compounds for therapeutic targets that are multidrug resistant.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Spanish export market share in the past decade

Artículo de revist

Valoración de la empresa AGAVAL S.A para llevar a cabo el proceso de compra

En el siguiente trabajo determinamos el valor de la compañía AGAVAL S.A. con el objetivo de identificar el valor óptimo por el cual se pueda negociar su adquisición a partir de los estados financieros de los periodos 2009 – 2012 obtenidos de la página web de la Superintendencia de Sociedades. Para realizar la valoración se utilizó la metodología de Flujos de Caja Descontados. Basados en esta información y teniendo en cuenta variables económicas como la inflación y el PIB (Producto Interno Bruto), se proyectaron los estados financieros para los siguientes 9 años (2013 -2019) y se calcularon los Flujos de Caja esperados para este periodo. Finalmente, a los resultados obtenidos se les realizo un análisis de sensibilidad con la herramienta Crystal Ball con el fin de tener diferentes escenarios de valoración, esto nos ayudará a determinar un precio de compra justo a ofrecer por esta compañía.In this paper we determinate the value of the company AGAVAL S.A. in order to identify the optimal value to negotiate its acquisition using the financial statements of the years 2009 - 2012 obtained from the website of the Superintendency of Companies. To make the valuation we used the Discounted Cash Flow methodology. Based on this information and economic variables such as inflation and GDP (Gross Domestic Product), we make the projection of the financial statements for the next 9 years (2013 -2019 ) and cash flows expected for this period were calculated. Finally, we perform a sensitivity analysis to the results with Crystal Ball tool in order to have different valuation scenarios, this will help us determine a purchase price for this company

Development of an Emergency Radio Beacon for Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Emergency locator transmitters (ELTs) used to locate manned aircrafts are not well suited to find and recover small crashed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). ELTs utilize an international satellite system for search and rescue (Cospas-Sarsat System), which should leverage its expensive resources to save lives as a priority. Besides, ELTs are too big and heavy to be used within small UAVs. Some of the existing solutions for this problem are based on receivers that detect signal strength, which may be a long and tedious process not suitable for user needs. Others do not have enough range or require radio license and expensive amateur radio receivers. This paper presents an emergency radio beacon specifically designed to locate small UAVs. It is triggered automatically in the event of a crash and allows finding and recovering a crashed UAV in a fast and simple way. It meets not only the required specifications of user-friendliness, size and weight of this kind of application, but also it is a high precision and low cost device. Besides, it has enough range and endurance. The experiments carried out show the operation of the proposed system

Análisis de un programa de calidad en un servicio de Oncología - Cáncer de mama

Trabajo de investigación en el que se presenta un minucioso análisis del estado de la investigación en sistemas de gestión de calidad en servicios de oncología dirigido a pacientes con patología mamaria. Asimismo se incluyen instrumentos de evaluación de la satisfacción de los pacientes con el desarrollo del tratamiento y la intervención de los distintos agentes implicados. La calidad del análisis y de los materiales utilizados hacen que este trabajo sea una guía para estudiantes de la titulación de enfermerí