Rapid internationalization and long-term performance: The knowledge link

Drawing on the knowledge-based view and organizational learning theory, we develop and test a set of hypotheses to provide a first attempt at analyzing the effect of speed of internationalization on long-term performance. Using a panel-data sample of Spanish listed firms (1986-2010), we find that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between speed of internationalization and long-term performance. We also find that whereas technological knowledge steepens this relationship, the diversity of prior international experience flattens it. Our results contribute to the existing IB literature on the performance of FDI, cross-country knowledge transferability, and nonsequential entry

Rapid learning of an abstract language-specific category: Polish children's acquisition of the instrumental construction

Rapid acquisition of linguistic categories or constructions is sometimes regarded as evidence of innate knowledge. In this paper, we examine Polish children's early understanding of an idiosyncratic, language-specific construction involving the instrumental case – which could not be due to innate knowledge. Thirty Polish-speaking children aged 2 ; 6 and 3 ; 2 participated in a elicited production experiment with novel verbs that were demonstrated as taking nouns in the instrumental case as patients. Children heard the verbs in sentences with either masculine or feminine nouns (which take different endings in the instrumental case), and were tested with new nouns of the same and of the opposite gender. In both age groups, a substantial majority of children succeeded in generalizing from one gendered form of the instrumental case to the other (especially to the masculine), thus indicating that they have some kind of abstract understanding of the instrumental case in this construction. This relatively early abstract knowledge of an idiosyncratic construction casts doubt on the view that early acquisition requires innate linguistic knowledge

Rapid Electroosmosis Measurements

A cell has been designed and built that allows for rapid measurement of volume moved in a definite time by electroosmosis. The cell is simple to use and is not very elaborate. Using a water jacket, the cell temperature can be controlled to ± 0.1° C. Measurements are presented for acetonitrile, dimethylformamide, and nitrobenzene at 25° C for applied voltages of 25, 50, 75, and 100 volts

Bus rapid transit

Effective public transit is central to development. For the vast majority of developing city residents, public transit is the only practical means to access employment, education, and public services, especially when such services are beyond the viable distance of walking or cycling. Unfortunately, the current state of public transit services in developing cities often does little to serve the actual mobility needs of the population. Bus services are too often unreliable, inconvenient and dangerous. In response, transport planners and public officials have sometimes turned to extremely costly mass transit alternatives such as rail-based metros. Due to the high costs of rail infrastructure, cities can only construct such systems over a few kilometres in a few limited corridors. The result is a system that does not meet the broader transport needs of the population. Nevertheless, the municipality ends up with a long-term debt that can affect investment in more pressing areas such as health, education, water, and sanitation. However, there is an alternative between poor public transit service and high municipal debt. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) can provide high-quality, metro-like transit service at a fraction of the cost of other options. This document provides municipal officials, non-governmental organizations, consultants, and others with an introduction to the concept of BRT as well as a step-by-step process for successfully planning a BRT system

PCPro a Novel Technology for Rapid Prototyping and Rapid Manufacturing

PCPro stands for Precise Cast Prototyping, which is a combination of casting technologies and milling. This method was developed at Fraunhofer IWS in Dresden, Germany. It is patented in Germany [1] and is applied in the USA under US 10/794,936. The main goal for this development was to shorten the process chain for making plastic prototypes accompanied by higher quality. The casting technology was integrated in a machining center in order to enable a high degree of automation and to avoid an external casting system. This means that Rapid Manufacturing can be easily implemented using such an automated combination of casting and machining. This article describes the PCPro method by means of the fabrication of sample parts. The advantages and the limitations in comparison to common Rapid Prototyping and Rapid Manufacturing process chains will be discussed. In addition, the manufacturing of a prototype machine is presented.Mechanical Engineerin

Rapid Manufactured Textiles

Rapid Manufacturing (RM) is increasingly becoming a viable manufacturing process due to dramatic advantages that are achievable in the area of design complexity. Through the exploration of the design freedom, this paper introduces the concept of manufacturing textiles for potential smart and high performance textile applications. This paper discusses the current limitations associated with the manufacture of textiles through RM and presents a novel methodology for the generation of 3D conformal RM textile articles. The paper concludes that through RM it is entirely possible to manufacture a structure that incorporates drape and free movement properties directly comparable to conventional textiles.Mechanical Engineerin

Sensitivity and Specificity of Rapid Diagnostic Test with Microscopic Gold Standard to Identify Plasmodium Species

Malaria is a main health problem in islands area which is under developed and isolated. Nation-wide, in 2014 Maluku province was recorded to have Annual Malaria Incident (AMI) value of 30.4%, positive incidents of 13.30%, ABER 3.76%, SPR 21.50%, and Annual Paracite Incident (API) 8.10%, while South Buru Regency has a value of Annual Malaria Incident (AMI) of 14.49%, 494 positive incidents, ABER 1.12%, SPR 60.91%, and Annual Paracite Incident (API) 6.86%. The purpose of this study was to identify Plasmodium species in malaria incidents in NamroleSubdistrict, South Buru Regency, Maluku Province. Observational research with a sample of 64 respondents for symptomatic and asymptomatic malaria. The instrument for the research was Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) and microscopic Gold Standard. Result: Malaria examination by using RDT suggested 3 kinds of parasites, i.e., P. falciparum, P. Vivax, and a mix between P. falciparum and P. vivax. Most parasites found were P. falciparum 56.3%. The accuracy of RDT examination was proven with microscopic test and the result suggested that the RDT sensitivity was 100% and the specifivity was 63.3%. Positive predictive value was 92.9% and negative predictive value was 100%, both were for positive likelihood ration of 2.75%. While for negative likelihood ration of 0%, the value of degree of conformity (Kappa) between RDT and microscopic is 0%. RDT has one benefit that it can be use to conduct malaria diagnosis rapidly, particularly in isolated areas. The benefit of Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) was that it could be used in remote and isolated areas to conduct diagnosis. RDT is highly effective and efficient

Rapid learning of visual ensembles

open3siWe recently demonstrated that observers are capable of encoding not only summary statistics, such as mean and variance of stimulus ensembles, but also the shape of the ensembles. Here, for the first time, we show the learning dynamics of this process, investigate the possible priors for the distribution shape, and demonstrate that observers are able to learn more complex distributions, such as bimodal ones. We used speeding and slowing of response times between trials (intertrial priming) in visual search for an oddly oriented line to assess internal models of distractor distributions. Experiment 1 demonstrates that two repetitions are sufficient for enabling learning of the shape of uniform distractor distributions. In Experiment 2, we compared Gaussian and uniform distractor distributions, finding that following only two repetitions Gaussian distributions are represented differently than uniform ones. Experiment 3 further showed that when distractor distributions are bimodal (with a 30° distance between two uniform intervals), observers initially treat them as uniform, and only with further repetitions do they begin to treat the distributions as bimodal. In sum, observers do not have strong initial priors for distribution shapes and quickly learn simple ones but have the ability to adjust their representations to more complex feature distributions as information accumulates with further repetitions of the same distractor distribution.openChetverikov, Andrey; Campana, Gianluca; Kristjánsson, ÁrniChetverikov, Andrey; Campana, Gianluca; Kristjánsson, Árn