Factors Influencing Corporate Governance in post-Socialist Companies: an Analytical Framework

In explaining the corporate governance performance of post-socialist companies, this article identifies four factors of influence: (1) pressure from majority shareholders, (2) pressure from outside minority shareholders, (3) pressure resulting from internationalization/ globalization and (4) pressure exerted by the state in the form of legal regulation. If all four factors have an impact on corporate governance performance, their interaction has to be explained. On the basis of research conducted thus far, this article suggests an analytical framework for the examination of corporate governance performance of postsocialist companies. Case studies of oil and gas firms from Central and Eastern Europe illustrate how the above factors influence a companyís corporate governance performance.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64362/1/wp896.pd

Memory-based deep reinforcement learning in endless imperfect information games

Memory capabilities in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) agents have become increasingly crucial, especially in tasks characterized by partial observability or imperfect information. However, the field faces two significant challenges: the absence of a universally accepted benchmark and limited access to open-source baseline implementations. We present "Memory Gym", a novel benchmark suite encompassing both finite and endless versions of the Mortar Mayhem, Mystery Path, and Searing Spotlights environments. The finite tasks emphasize strong dependencies on memory and memory interactions, while the remarkable endless tasks, inspired by the game "I packed my bag", act as an automatic curriculum, progressively challenging an agent's retention and recall capabilities. To complement this benchmark, we provide two comprehensible and open-source baselines anchored on the widely-adopted Proximal Policy Optimization algorithm. The first employs a recurrent mechanism through a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) cell, while the second adopts an attention-based approach using Transformer-XL (TrXL) for episodic memory with a sliding window. Given the dearth of readily available transformer-based DRL implementations, our TrXL baseline offers significant value. Our results reveal an intriguing performance dynamic: TrXL is often superior in finite tasks, but in the endless environments, GRU unexpectedly marks a comeback. This discrepancy prompts further investigation into TrXL's potential limitations, including whether its initial query misses temporal cues, the impact of stale hidden states, and the intricacies of positional encoding

Already arrived in Brussels? Interest representation of Trade Unions from the new EU Member States at the EU level

This working paper presents the interview results of the research project "Already arrived in Brussels? Interest representation of trade unions from the new EU member states at the EU level". The project has been carried out by the Research Centre for East European Studies at the university of Bremen in collaboration with the Sociological Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Sociological Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the Koszalin Institute of Comparative European Studies. Brigitte Krech was responsible for the conduct of interviews in Brussels. The project has received financial support from the Otto Brenner Foundation (Frankfurt/M.)

Sexual Abuse in Preschool Aged Children: Teaching Childcare Professionals to Identify Signs and Symptoms

Identifying sexual abuse in young children is difficult, but crucial to a child’s immediate well-being and long-term well-being. Because many children spend a large percentage of their day in childcare settings, the aim of this study was to help teach early childhood educators to identify and report sexual abuse. To accomplish this, the researcher designed a training program about sexual abuse and how to report it. The training program was then forwarded via e-mail to ten experts in the childcare field who had previously expressed interest in the study. These experts responded to a survey and provided many other suggestions. After receiving the feedback, the original program was edited and prepared for a pilot group

Media Control as Source of Political Power: Differentiating Reach and Impact

This article analyses the control of business and state actors over mass media in Russia. First, the most important media sources for political news are identified for the last two decades. While constantly increasing state control is clearly visible for these media, the impact on audiences is more complex. Therefore, second, different forms of media impact on political views of the Russian population are discussed based on a review of related academic studies

Riveting in metal airplane construction. Part III : strength of riveted joints in duralumin (continued)

This report includes strength of riveted joints in duralumin, descriptions of test procedure and results of tests. Tabulated data includes: curshing strength by failure for various conditions, shearing strength of hole edge zone in direction of tearing, tearing strengths of plates weakened by rivet holes, and enlargement of holes at beginning of break