Culture in international business research: a bibliometric study in four top IB journals

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conduct a study on the articles published in the four top international business (IB) journals to examine how four cultural models and concepts – Hofstede’s (1980), Hall’s (1976), Trompenaars’s (1993) and Project GLOBE’s (House et al., 2004) – have been used in the extant published IB research. National cultures and cultural differences provide a crucial component of the context of IB research. Design/methodology – This is a bibliometric study on the articles published in four IB journals over the period from 1976 to 2010, examining a sample of 517 articles using citations and co-citation matrices. Findings – Examining this sample revealed interesting patterns of the connections across the studies. Hofstede’s (1980) and House et al.’s (2004) research on the cultural dimensions are the most cited and hold ties to a large variety of IB research. These findings point to a number of research avenues to deepen the understanding on how firms may handle different national cultures in the geographies they operate. Research limitations – Two main limitations are faced, one associated to the bibliometric method, citations and co-citations analyses and other to the delimitation of our sample to only four IB journals, albeit top-ranked. Originality/value – The paper focuses on the main cultural models used in IB research permitting to better understand how culture has been used in IB research, over an extended period.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Progenitors of Recent Core-Collapse Supernovae

We present the results of our analysis of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and deep ground-based images to isolate the massive progenitor stars of the two recent core-collapse supernovae 2008 bk and 2008 cn. The identification of the progenitors is facilitated in one of these two cases by high-precision astrometry based on our HST imaging of SNe at late times

On the progenitor and early evolution of the type II supernova 2009kr

We report the identification of a source coincident with SN 2009kr in HST pre-explosion images. The object appears to be a single point source with an intrinsic colour V-I = 1.1 and M_V = -7.6. If this is a single star it would be a yellow supergiant of log L/L_{sol} \sim 5.1 and a mass of 15 (+5/-4) M_{sol}. The spatial resolution does not allow us yet to definitively determine if the progenitor object is a single star, a binary system, or a compact cluster. We show that the early lightcurve is flat, similar to IIP SNe, but that the the spectra are somewhat peculiar, displaying unusual P-Cygni profiles. The evolution of the expanding ejecta will play an important role in understanding the progenitor object.Comment: Submitted to ApJ Letter

Mapping the repository landscape : harnessing similarity with RepoSim and RepoSnipy

The rapid growth of scientific software development has led to the emergence of large and complex codebases, making it challenging to search, find, and compare software repositories within the scientific research community. In this paper, we propose a solution by leveraging deep learning techniques to learn embeddings that capture semantic similarities among repositories. Our approach focuses on identifying repositories with similar semantics, even when their code fragments and documentation exhibit different syntax. To address this challenge, we introduce two complementary open-source tools: RepoSim and RepoSnipy. RepoSim is a command-line toolbox designed to represent repositories at both the source code and documentation levels. It utilizes the UniXcoder pre-trained language model, which has demonstrated remarkable performance in code-related understanding tasks. RepoSnipy is a web-based neural semantic search engine that utilizes the powerful capabilities of RepoSim and offers a user-friendly search interface, allowing researchers and practitioners to query public repositories hosted on GitHub and discover semantically similar repositories. RepoSim and RepoSnipy empower researchers, developers, and practitioners by facilitating the comparison and analysis of software repositories. They not only enable efficient collaboration and code reuse but also accelerate the development of scientific software.Postprin

From Coulomb blockade to the Kondo regime in a Rashba dot

We investigate the electronic transport in a quantum wire with localized Rashba interaction. The Rashba field forms quasi-bound states which couple to the continuum states with an opposite spin direction. The presence of this Rashba dot causes Fano-like antiresonances and dips in the wire's linear conductance. The Fano lineshape arises from the interference between the direct transmission channel along the wire and the hopping through the Rashba dot. Due to the confinement, we predict the observation of large charging energies in the local Rashba region which lead to Coulomb-blockade effects in the transport properties of the wire. Importantly, the Kondo regime can be achieved with a proper tuning of the Rashba interaction, giving rise to an oscillating linear conductance for a fixed occupation of the Rashba dot.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; presentation improved, discussions extended. Published versio

Laminar: A New Serverless Stream-based Framework with Semantic Code Search and Code Completion

This paper introduces Laminar, a novel serverless framework based on dispel4py, a parallel stream-based dataflow library. Laminar efficiently manages streaming workflows and components through a dedicated registry, offering a seamless serverless experience. Leveraging large lenguage models, Laminar enhances the framework with semantic code search, code summarization, and code completion. This contribution enhances serverless computing by simplifying the execution of streaming computations, managing data streams more efficiently, and offering a valuable tool for both researchers and practitioners.Comment: 13 pages, 10 Figures, 6 Table

The Ultrasonic/Shear-Force Microscope: A Metrology Tool for Surface Science and Technology

This paper describes recent results obtained with the Ultrasonic/Shear-Force Microscope (SUNM), an analytical tool suitable for investigating the quite different dynamic displayed by fluid-like films when subjected to mesoscopic confinement and while in intimate contact with two sliding solid boundaries. The SUNM uses two sensory modules to concurrently but independently monitor the effects that fluid-mediated interactions exert on two sliding bodies: the microscope’s sharp probe (attached to a piezoelectric sensor) and the analyzed sample (attached to an ultrasonic transducer). This dual capability allows correlating the fluid-like film’s viscoelastic properties with changes in the probe’s resonance frequency and the generation of sound. A detailed monitoring of sliding friction by ultrasonic means and with nanometer resolution is unprecedented, which opens potential uses of the versatile microscope as a surface and subsurface material characterization tool. As a surface metrology tool, the SUNM presents a potential impact in diverse areas ranging from fundamental studies of nanotribology, confinement-driven solid to liquid phase transformation of polymer films, characterization of industrial lubricants, and the study of elastic properties of bio-membranes. As a sub-surface metrology tool, the SUNM can be used in the investigation of the elastic properties of low- and high-k dielectric materials, piezoelectric and ferroelectric films, as well as quality control in the construction of micro- and nano-fluidics devices

A Massive Progenitor of the Luminous Type IIn Supernova 2010jl

The bright, nearby, recently discovered supernova SN2010jl is a member of the rare class of relatively luminous Type~IIn events. Here we report archival HST observations of its host galaxy UGC5189A taken roughly 10yr prior to explosion, as well as early-time optical spectra of the SN. The HST images reveal a bright, blue point source at the position of the SN, with an absolute magnitude of -12.0 in the F300W filter. If it is not just a chance alignment, the source at the SN position could be (1) a massive young (less than 6 Myr) star cluster in which the SN resided, (2) a quiescent, luminous blue star with an apparent temperature around 14,000K, (3) a star caught during a bright outburst akin to those of LBVs, or (4) a combination of option 1 and options 2 or 3. Although we cannot confidently choose between these possibilities with the present data, any of them imply that the progenitor of SN2010jl had an initial mass above 30Msun. This reinforces mounting evidence that many SNe IIn result from very massive stars, that massive stars can produce visible SNe without collapsing quietly to black holes, and that massive stars can retain their H envelopes until shortly before explosion. Standard stellar evolution models fail to account for these observed properties.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Ap