The Six-Tier Communication Gap for Multinational Corporations after Mergers and Acquisitions: Lessons Learned from the Case of Duracell and Nanfu

The importance of cultural factors as antecedents of post-acquisition integration has been recognized in previous research. Nevertheless, there are not many case studies on the post–merger and acquisition (M&A) integration process of USA-based multinational corporations (MNCs) acquiring Chinese companies. This article summarizes lessons in communication learned from the integration process between Duracell and Nanfu, the two battery giants from the US and China. In 2003, the Gillette Company, who owned Duracell, acquired Nanfu. In 2005, Gillette was acquired by Procter and Gamble (P&G), and the management of Nanfu remains to be coordinated by Duracell. This case embodies the interplay of two national cultures (China and the US) and four organizational cultures (P&G, Gillette, Duracell, and Nanfu). Data from interviews and participant observations with American and Chinese managers and engineers, and Chinese consumers indicate a complex post-acquisition integration process. The article proposes a six-tier American-Chinese communication gap to be overcome for any MNCs in their post-acquisition integration after cross-border transactions between the US and China: Directness vs. Subtleness; Aggressiveness vs. Modesty; Courtesy vs. Command; Different connotations of the same concepts; Competitive vs. Obliging Conflict Management Styles; “Rule-based” vs. “Good will-based” working atmosphere. The case study on the Duracell-Nanfu case demonstrates that MNCs need to provide comprehensive intercultural training for its multinational teams for more effective communication and higher productivity after M&As

The 2007 Chinese Pet Food Crisis: On U.S. Media’s Coverage and U.S. Pet-owners Reactions

In the midst of U.S. citizens’ growing concern of food quality, few issues have shocked the American conscience as the 2007 pet food crisis. The crisis, caused by the contamination of mainly pet food with ingredients imported from China, resulted in the largest recall in U.S. history. Poisonous chemicals such as “melamine,” “aminopterin,” and “cyanuric acid” were identified in pet food products imported from China. The pet food contamination was eventually extended to the feed for fish, pigs, and chicken, animals destined to be part of human food supply. This research showed that most American families own cats and dogs as pets, and pets are mainly treated as children and companion. Such humanification of pets increases American pet owners concern for their pets’ health and wellness. U.S. Media’s coverage on Chinese government actions on this issue was analyzed

International Faculty\u27s Perceptions of Their Professional Experiences: Results from a Recent Survey

The current study examined international faculty\u27s perceptions of their professional experiences at a regional university in the Southeastern United States. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data. Overall, results present a very positive picture of how these foreign born faculty members are functioning at the university. Most are satisfied with a number of areas in their professional responsibilities; are confident about their English skills; enjoy positive interaction with their students and colleagues; and view their international experiences and global perspectives as valuable assets in their professional life

Algorithm design for smart vision sensors.

The goal of this thesis is to provide algorithm design for smart vision sensors. Two algorithms are developed in this thesis. The first one is based on the correlation analysis method for images and can be implemented to find the 2-dimensional position of a target. In particular, the problem of finding the deviations along both X and Y directions is formulated as a matching process between the saved template, which represents the reference position, and the picture of a real static target captured by a \u27vision\u27 element such as a CCD camera, through correlation analysis of the 2-D spatial shift. It is an efficient and simple method for deviation identification of target position with high noise rejection ability. Using this method, 2-D position deviation can be found very accurately with high reliability. The second algorithm, which is based on locating the critical points of a planar shape, can be applied to identifying the pattern and finding the 2-dimensional position deviation and rotation angle of a target. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2001 .G36. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 40-06, page: 1586. Adviser: Xiang Chen. Thesis (M.A.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2001

Bench-to-bedside review: Sepsis, severe sepsis and septic shock – does the nature of the infecting organism matter?

International guidelines concerning the management of patients with sepsis, septic shock and multiple organ failure make no reference to the nature of the infecting organism. Indeed, most clinical signs of sepsis are nonspecific. In contrast, in vitro data suggest that there are mechanistic differences between bacterial, viral and fungal sepsis, and imply that pathogenetic differences may exist between subclasses such as Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. These differences are reflected in different cytokine profiles and mortality rates associated with Gram-positive and Gram-negative sepsis in humans. They also suggest that putative anti-mediator therapies may act differently according to the nature of an infecting organism. Data from some clinical trials conducted in severe sepsis support this hypothesis. It is likely that potential new therapies targeting, for example, Toll-like receptor pathways will require knowledge of the infecting organism. The advent of new technologies that accelerate the identification of infectious agents and their antimicrobial sensitivities may allow better tailored anti-mediator therapies and administration of antibiotics with narrow spectra and known efficacy

Determining Singularity-Free Inner Workspace through Offline Conversion of Assembly Modes for a 3-RRR PPM

The existing singularity avoidance methods have deficiencies, such as the conditionality of the online conversion of the assembly modes (AMs) and the kinematically redundant manipulator with the predicament of the prototype design and added complexity of the mechanism. To address these issues, a method to determine a singularity-free inner workspace through offline conversion of the AMs of the 3-RRR planar parallel manipulator (PPM) is presented. Based on the geometric relations among rods of the manipulator during the occurrence of singularity, and the singular points at or near the boundary of the workspace are permitted, the AMs and ranges of the orientation angle of the moving platform corresponding to the inner singularity-free workspace are determined through a three-dimensional search method. The simulation and experimental comparisons indicate that singular-free paths related to the constant or variable orientation angle of the moving platform can be planned on the singularity-free inner workspace

Suppression of MHC class I surface expression by calreticulin's P-domain in a calreticulin deficient cell line

AbstractCalreticulin (CRT) is an important chaperone protein, comprising an N-domain, P-domain and C-domain. It is involved in the folding and assembly of multi-component protein complexes in the endoplasmic reticulum, and plays a critical role in MHC class I antigen processing and presentation. To dissect the functional role and molecular basis of individual domains of the protein, we have utilized individual domains to rescue impaired protein assembly in a CRT deficient cell line. Unexpectedly, both P-domain fragment and NP domain of CRT not only failed to rescue defective cell surface expression of MHC class I molecules but further inhibited their appearance on the surface of cells. Formation of the TAP-associated peptide-loading complex and trafficking of the few detectable MHC class I molecules were not significantly impaired. Instead, this further suppression of MHC class I molecules on the cell surface appears due to the complex missing antigenic peptides, the third member of fully assembled MHC class I molecules. Therefore the P-domain of calreticulin appears to play a significant role in antigen presentation by MHC class I molecules

Rethinking the Detection Head Configuration for Traffic Object Detection

Multi-scale detection plays an important role in object detection models. However, researchers usually feel blank on how to reasonably configure detection heads combining multi-scale features at different input resolutions. We find that there are different matching relationships between the object distribution and the detection head at different input resolutions. Based on the instructive findings, we propose a lightweight traffic object detection network based on matching between detection head and object distribution, termed as MHD-Net. It consists of three main parts. The first is the detection head and object distribution matching strategy, which guides the rational configuration of detection head, so as to leverage multi-scale features to effectively detect objects at vastly different scales. The second is the cross-scale detection head configuration guideline, which instructs to replace multiple detection heads with only two detection heads possessing of rich feature representations to achieve an excellent balance between detection accuracy, model parameters, FLOPs and detection speed. The third is the receptive field enlargement method, which combines the dilated convolution module with shallow features of backbone to further improve the detection accuracy at the cost of increasing model parameters very slightly. The proposed model achieves more competitive performance than other models on BDD100K dataset and our proposed ETFOD-v2 dataset. The code will be available.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figures, 7 table

Contractile Force of Human Extraocular Muscle: A Theoretical Analysis

Aim. The length-contractile force relationships of six human extraocular muscles (EOMs) in primary innervations should be determined during eye movement modeling and surgery of clinical EOMs. This study aims to investigate these relationships. Method. The proposal is based on the assumption that six EOMs have similar constitutive relationships, with the eye suspended in the primary position. The constitutive relationships of EOMs are obtained by optimizing from previous experimental data and the theory of mechanical equilibrium using traditional model. Further, simulate the existing experiment of resistance force, and then compare the simulated results with the existing experimental results. Finally, the mechanical constitutive relationships of EOMs are obtained. Results. The results show that the simulated resistance forces from the other four EOMs except for the horizontal recti well agree with previous experimental results. Conclusion. The mechanical constitutive relationships of six EOMs in primary innervations are obtained, and the rationality of the constitutive relationships is verified. Whereafter, the active stress-strain relationships of the six EOMs in the primary innervations are obtained. The research results can improve the eye movement model to predict the surgical amounts of EOMs before EOM surgery more precisely