Global Links and Local Bonds: The Role of Ownership and Size in Productivity Growth

This paper examines direct and indirect contributions of foreign firms and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to aggregate productivity growth. We focus our attention on foreign firms and small firms for three reasons. First, industrial policy in almost all countries is oriented towards supporting SMEs and attracting foreign investment. Second, these two categories of firms contribute to micro-heterogeneity in all industries. Third, the recent industrial dynamics literature on foreign investment and small firms emphasizes the potential benefits of foreign firms and SMEs in generating new technologies, and creating new jobs. Using the data for Turkish manufacturing plants, we estimate production functions for all ISIC 4-digit level industries for the 1983-2001 period. We decompose productivity growth into its components (structural change, entry and exit, technical change, efficiency change, and scale effects) by firm ownership and size. The decomposition analysis by firm ownership and size allows us to understand the sources of productivity contributions by foreign firms and small firms.Productivity dynamics, decomposition, foreign direct investment, small and medium sized enterprises

Educational Games in Higher Education

Technological innovations change the learning environments and transform the traditional methods. Educational computer game is one of the most popular emerging educational technologies. In this chapter, documentation method is used to analyze studies about educational games in higher education, in light of a deep literature review. A case study design based on the qualitative research paradigm is employed for organizing the literature review data around categories. An educational game is designed about learning computer hardware, named Computer Hardware Game (CHG). CHG is a game aiming convenience and permanence of learning with providing a close-up view of the computer hardware in three dimensions. The CHG was used in the computer hardware course of the Department of Computer Technologies at Suleyman Demirel University

Global links and local bonds. The role of ownership and size in productivity growth

This paper examines direct and indirect contributions of foreign firms and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to aggregate productivity growth. We focus our attention on foreign firms and small firms for three reasons. First, industrial policy in almost all countries is oriented towards supporting SMEs and attracting foreign investment. Second, these two categories of firms contribute to micro-heterogeneity in all industries. Third, the recent industrial dynamics literature on foreign investment and small firms emphasizes the potential benefits of foreign firms and SMEs in generating new technologies, and creating new jobs. Using the data for Turkish manufacturing plants, we estimate production functions for all ISIC 4-digit level industries for the 1983-2001 period. We decompose productivity growth into its components (structural change, entry and exit, technical change, efficiency change, and scale effects) by firm ownership and size. The decomposition analysis by firm ownership and size allows us to understand the sources of productivity contributions by foreign firms and small firms

A preliminary study of the effect of phytoadditive carvacrol on the trace elements (Cu, Mn and Zn) content in fish tissues

Phytoadditives have gained increasing interest as feed additives for fish. The aim of the present study was to determine whether selected dietary phytoadditive can influence the bioavailability of several trace elements (Cu, Mn and Zn), which play an important role in the physiological processes. The experiments were carried out at a commercial trout farm. A total of 420 juvenile rainbow trout (mean weight ± SD = 10.79±0.57), Oncorhynchus mykiss, were randomly allocated into four different treatments with three replicates each. Fish were kept in raceways (3X0.8X0.4 m) at 10±1°C with a natural photoperiod. Proper amount of carvacrol was sprayed on 1 kg of commercial trout diet to prepare four diets with 0 (Control, C0), 1 (C1), 3 (C3) and 5 (C5) carvacrol g/kg diet. Fish were fed to apparent satiation three times per day. The feeding trial lasted four weeks. Then, in different type of fish tissues (muscle, liver and pyloric caeca) from fish fed with diets enriched in carvacrol, beneficial elements (Cu, Mn and Zn) were analysed by atomic adsorption spectrophotometer. Results showed that the levels of Cu, Zn and Mn were especially significantly increase by C1 diet in all tissues (muscle, liver and pyloric caeca) except muscle and pyloric caeca Zn. The results of this experiment indicate that the carvacrol had the ability to potentiate the trace element retention. Although bioaccumulations of Cu, Zn and Mn in the muscle, liver and pyloric caeca are well demonstrated, the exact mechanisms of phytoadditives are still only partially understood. More investigations are required to detail the mechanisms involved in phytoadditives this enhancement

Determination of the Odour Adsorption Behaviour of Wool

In this study, the adsorption/desorption behaviours of water vapor on wool, as well as of the redolents, such as acetic acid and benzaldehyde, have been investigated. For this purpose, static and dynamic experiments were carried out. Static experiments were conducted to model stagnant environments. In the experiments, wool came into contact with the material to be adsorbed or dry air and the weight increase/decrease was recorded for a certain period of time. The results obtained showed that the wool adsorbed the benzaldehyde very little, whereas the adsorbed amount and the rate were abundantly increased for acetic acid under the same conditions. From these findings, the adsorption capacity of wool for the redolents was tentatively ranked in accordance with their adsorbed amounts as acetic acid>water>benzaldehyde

Thermodynamic Analysis and Optimization of Cascade Condensing Temperature of a CO2(R744)/R404A Cascade Refrigeration System

Synthetic refrigerants are widely used in refrigeration applications. However, it is shown that such refrigerants have negative impacts on the ozone layer of atmosphere. Recently, natural refrigerants such as carbon dioxide and various hydrocarbon compounds are proposed to replace synthetic refrigerants in the industrial refrigeration systems. Carbon dioxide is one of the most promising and environment-friendly refrigerant solution due to its thermo-physical properties, low ozone depletion value and low global warming potential. In this study thermodynamic analysis of a two stage sub-critical cascade refrigeration system using CO2 and R404a refrigerants in low temperature and high temperature cycles is presented. The energy and exergy analysis of the system and its components are performed to determine optimum operating conditions for condensing temperature of the cascade condenser and to maximize the coefficient of performance (COP) and second law efficiency of the system. The required equations are the mass, energy and exergy balances for the cascade refrigeration system. The optimum condensing temperature of the cascade condenser is computed at the first phase of the study. Then correlations are developed to maximize COP of the system according to condensing temperatures of both high and low temperature cycles

Il était une fois… C’era una volta… De la narrativité verbale à la narrativité non verbale des interactions mères-bébés

Inspirées par Jérôme Bruner (1990) qui préconise la prise en compte de l’activité narrative comme une capacité précoce de l’esprit humain organisant les expériences sous formes de narrations, nous portons notre attention sur les premiers échanges parlés entre mères et nourrissons parmi des populations européennes. Le bébé communique expressivement avant ses premières paroles. Les études minutieuses sur le bébé de moins de 6 mois en interaction nous montrent que le bébé est capable de communiquer, notamment avec sa mère, dès les premières semaines de vie (Malloch, 1999 ; Gratier, 2001). Avant l’acquisition du langage, il s’agit d’une communication précoce à travers une musicalité partagée et interactionnelle

Issue Report Validation in an Industrial Context

Effective issue triaging is crucial for software development teams to improve software quality, and thus customer satisfaction. Validating issue reports manually can be time-consuming, hindering the overall efficiency of the triaging process. This paper presents an approach on automating the validation of issue reports to accelerate the issue triaging process in an industrial set-up. We work on 1,200 randomly selected issue reports in banking domain, written in Turkish, an agglutinative language, meaning that new words can be formed with linear concatenation of suffixes to express entire sentences. We manually label these reports for validity, and extract the relevant patterns indicating that they are invalid. Since the issue reports we work on are written in an agglutinative language, we use morphological analysis to extract the features. Using the proposed feature extractors, we utilize a machine learning based approach to predict the issue reports' validity, performing a 0.77 F1-score.Comment: Accepted for publication in Proceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE'23

The Trail, 1988-09-08

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