Empirical study of supervised gene screening

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ma Shuangge

2006-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Microarray studies provide a way of linking variations of phenotypes with their genetic causations. Constructing predictive models using high dimensional microarray measurements usually consists of three steps: (1 unsupervised gene screening; (2 supervised gene screening; and (3 statistical model building. Supervised gene screening based on marginal gene ranking is commonly used to reduce the number of genes in the model building. Various simple statistics, such as t-statistic or signal to noise ratio, have been used to rank genes in the supervised screening. Despite of its extensive usage, statistical study of supervised gene screening remains scarce. Our study is partly motivated by the differences in gene discovery results caused by using different supervised gene screening methods. Results We investigate concordance and reproducibility of supervised gene screening based on eight commonly used marginal statistics. Concordance is assessed by the relative fractions of overlaps between top ranked genes screened using different marginal statistics. We propose a Bootstrap Reproducibility Index, which measures reproducibility of individual genes under the supervised screening. Empirical studies are based on four public microarray data. We consider the cases where the top 20%, 40% and 60% genes are screened. Conclusion From a gene discovery point of view, the effect of supervised gene screening based on different marginal statistics cannot be ignored. Empirical studies show that (1 genes passed different supervised screenings may be considerably different; (2 concordance may vary, depending on the underlying data structure and percentage of selected genes; (3 evaluated with the Bootstrap Reproducibility Index, genes passed supervised screenings are only moderately reproducible; and (4 concordance cannot be improved by supervised screening based on reproducibility.

An empirical and model study on automobile market in Taiwan

Science.gov (United States)

Tang, Ji-Ying; Qiu, Rong; Zhou, Yueping; He, Da-Ren

2006-03-01

We have done an empirical investigation on automobile market in Taiwan including the development of the possession rate of the companies in the market from 1979 to 2003, the development of the largest possession rate, and so on. A dynamic model for describing the competition between the companies is suggested based on the empirical study. In the model each company is given a long-term competition factor (such as technology, capital and scale) and a short-term competition factor (such as management, service and advertisement). Then the companies play games in order to obtain more possession rate in the market under certain rules. Numerical simulation based on the model display a competition developing process, which qualitatively and quantitatively agree with our empirical investigation results.

Localization in random bipartite graphs: Numerical and empirical study

Science.gov (United States)

Slanina, František

2017-05-01

We investigate adjacency matrices of bipartite graphs with a power-law degree distribution. Motivation for this study is twofold: first, vibrational states in granular matter and jammed sphere packings; second, graphs encoding social interaction, especially electronic commerce. We establish the position of the mobility edge and show that it strongly depends on the power in the degree distribution and on the ratio of the sizes of the two parts of the bipartite graph. At the jamming threshold, where the two parts have the same size, localization vanishes. We found that the multifractal spectrum is nontrivial in the delocalized phase, but still near the mobility edge. We also study an empirical bipartite graph, namely, the Amazon reviewer-item network. We found that in this specific graph the mobility edge disappears, and we draw a conclusion from this fact regarding earlier empirical studies of the Amazon network.

Connecting theoretical and empirical studies of trait-mediated interactions

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Bolker, B.; Holyoak, M.; Křivan, Vlastimil; Rowe, L.; Schmitz, O.

2003-01-01

Roč. 84, č. 5 (2003), s. 1101-1114 ISSN 0012-9658 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z5007907 Keywords : community models * competition * empirical study Subject RIV: EH - Ecology, Behaviour Impact factor: 3.701, year: 2003

Empirical Studies on Legitimation Strategies: A Case for International Business Research Extension

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Turcan, Romeo V.; Marinova, Svetla Trifonova; Rana, Mohammad Bakhtiar

2012-01-01

The paper focuses on legitimation and legitimation strategies applied by companies. Following the process of systematic review, we analyze empirical studies exploring legitimation and legitimation strategies from different theoretical perspectives. Using the key findings by reconnoitering and com...... and comparing the theoretical background, approaches, methodologies, and findings of these empirical studies, we outline potential directions for research in the legitimation strategies of firms engaged in international business operations....

Theoretical Semi-Empirical AM1 studies of Schiff Bases

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Arora, K.; Burman, K.

2005-01-01

The present communication reports the theoretical semi-empirical studies of schiff bases of 2-amino pyridine along with their comparison with their parent compounds. Theoretical studies reveal that it is the azomethine group, in the schiff bases under study, that acts as site for coordination to metals as it is reported by many coordination chemists. (author)

Visual Design Principles: An Empirical Study of Design Lore

Science.gov (United States)

Kimball, Miles A.

2013-01-01

Many books, designers, and design educators talk about visual design principles such as balance, contrast, and alignment, but with little consistency. This study uses empirical methods to explore the lore surrounding design principles. The study took the form of two stages: a quantitative literature review to determine what design principles are…

Equifinality in empirical studies of cultural transmission.

Science.gov (United States)

Barrett, Brendan J

2018-01-31

Cultural systems exhibit equifinal behavior - a single final state may be arrived at via different mechanisms and/or from different initial states. Potential for equifinality exists in all empirical studies of cultural transmission including controlled experiments, observational field research, and computational simulations. Acknowledging and anticipating the existence of equifinality is important in empirical studies of social learning and cultural evolution; it helps us understand the limitations of analytical approaches and can improve our ability to predict the dynamics of cultural transmission. Here, I illustrate and discuss examples of equifinality in studies of social learning, and how certain experimental designs might be prone to it. I then review examples of equifinality discussed in the social learning literature, namely the use of s-shaped diffusion curves to discern individual from social learning and operational definitions and analytical approaches used in studies of conformist transmission. While equifinality exists to some extent in all studies of social learning, I make suggestions for how to address instances of it, with an emphasis on using data simulation and methodological verification alongside modern statistical approaches that emphasize prediction and model comparison. In cases where evaluated learning mechanisms are equifinal due to non-methodological factors, I suggest that this is not always a problem if it helps us predict cultural change. In some cases, equifinal learning mechanisms might offer insight into how both individual learning, social learning strategies and other endogenous social factors might by important in structuring cultural dynamics and within- and between-group heterogeneity. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Role of Ethnographic Studies in Empirical Software Engineering

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sharp, Helen; Dittrich, Yvonne; Souza, Cleidson R. B. de

2016-01-01

Ethnography is a qualitative research method used to study people and cultures. It is largely adopted in disciplines outside software engineering, including different areas of computer science. Ethnography can provide an in-depth understanding of the socio-technological realities surrounding ever...... as a useful and usable approach to empirical software engineering research. Throughout the paper, relevant examples of ethnographic studies of software practice are used to illustrate the points being made.......Ethnography is a qualitative research method used to study people and cultures. It is largely adopted in disciplines outside software engineering, including different areas of computer science. Ethnography can provide an in-depth understanding of the socio-technological realities surrounding...... everyday software development practice, i.e., it can help to uncover not only what practitioners do, but also why they do it. Despite its potential, ethnography has not been widely adopted by empirical software engineering researchers, and receives little attention in the related literature. The main goal...

Nekateri vidiki povezanosti vodenja z mobingom na delovnem mestu = Some Aspects of Links between Leadership and Mobbing at Work

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aleša Svetic

2010-12-01

Full Text Available The article presents the results of an empirical research into some aspectsof links between leadership and mobbing. On the basis of findingsin the literature and our own experience, our empirical research– conducted on 184 employees in Slovenian companies – studies theconnection between the recognition of mobbing and the standpoints ofthe interviewed towards the way the leadership is conducted. The researchhas shown that there are no statistically important differencesbetween the recognition of mobbing at work and the standpoints of theinterviewed towards leadership.

Choice of Foreign Market Entry Mode - Cognitions from Empirical and Theoretical Studies

OpenAIRE

Zhao, Xuemin; Decker, Reinhold

2004-01-01

This paper analyzes critically five basic theories on market entry mode decision with respect to existing strengths and weaknesses and the results of corresponding empirical studies. Starting from conflictions both in theories and empirical studies dealing with the entry mode choice problem we motivate a significant need of further research in this important area of international marketing. Furthermore we provide implications for managers in practice and outline emerging trends in market entr...

Empirical data and moral theory. A plea for integrated empirical ethics.

Science.gov (United States)

Molewijk, Bert; Stiggelbout, Anne M; Otten, Wilma; Dupuis, Heleen M; Kievit, Job

2004-01-01

Ethicists differ considerably in their reasons for using empirical data. This paper presents a brief overview of four traditional approaches to the use of empirical data: "the prescriptive applied ethicists," "the theorists," "the critical applied ethicists," and "the particularists." The main aim of this paper is to introduce a fifth approach of more recent date (i.e. "integrated empirical ethics") and to offer some methodological directives for research in integrated empirical ethics. All five approaches are presented in a table for heuristic purposes. The table consists of eight columns: "view on distinction descriptive-prescriptive sciences," "location of moral authority," "central goal(s)," "types of normativity," "use of empirical data," "method," "interaction empirical data and moral theory," and "cooperation with descriptive sciences." Ethicists can use the table in order to identify their own approach. Reflection on these issues prior to starting research in empirical ethics should lead to harmonization of the different scientific disciplines and effective planning of the final research design. Integrated empirical ethics (IEE) refers to studies in which ethicists and descriptive scientists cooperate together continuously and intensively. Both disciplines try to integrate moral theory and empirical data in order to reach a normative conclusion with respect to a specific social practice. IEE is not wholly prescriptive or wholly descriptive since IEE assumes an interdepence between facts and values and between the empirical and the normative. The paper ends with three suggestions for consideration on some of the future challenges of integrated empirical ethics.

Strategic Management Tools and Techniques: A Comparative Analysis of Empirical Studies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Albana Berisha Qehaja

2017-01-01

Full Text Available There is no doubt that strategic management tools and techniques are important parts of the strategic management process. Their use in organizations should be observed in a practice-based context. This paper analyzes the empirical studies on the usage of strategic management tools and techniques. Hence, the main aim of this study is to investigate and analyze which enterprises, according to their country development level, use more strategic management tools and techniques and which of these are used the most. Also, this paper investigates which strategic management tools and techniques are used globally according to the results of empirical studies. The study presents a summary of empirical studies for the period 1990–2015. The research results indicate that more strategic tools and techniques are used in developed countries, followed by developing countries and fewest in countries in transition. This study is likely to contribute to the field of strategic management because it summarizes the most used strategic tools and techniques at the global level according to varying stages of countries’ economic development. Also, the findings from this study may be utilized to maximize the full potential of enterprises and reduce the cases of entrepreneurship failures, through creating awareness of the importance of using strategic management tools and techniques.

Empathy at the confluence of neuroscience and empirical literary studies

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Burke, M.; Mangen, Anne; Kuzmicova, Anezka; Schilhab, Theresa

2016-01-01

The objective of this article is to review extant empirical studies of empathy in narrative reading in light of (a) contemporary literary theory, and (b) neuroscientific studies of empathy, and to discuss how a closer interplay between neuroscience and literary studies may enhance our understanding

Mobile Systems Development: An Empirical Study

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hosbond, J. H.

As part of an ongoing study on mobile systems development (MSD), this paper presents preliminary findings of research-in-progress. The debate on mobility in research has so far been dominated by mobile HCI, technological innovations, and socio-technical issues related to new and emerging mobile...... work patterns. This paper is about the development of mobile systems.Based on an on-going empirical study I present four case studies of companies each with different products or services to offer and diverging ways of establishing and sustaining a successful business in the mobile industry. From...... the case studies I propose a five-layered framework for understanding the structure and segmentation of the industry. This leads to an analysis of the different modes of operation within the mobile industry, exemplified by the four case studies.The contribution of this paper is therefore two-fold: (1) I...

Salt intrusion study in Cochin estuary - Using empirical models

Digital Repository Service at National Institute of Oceanography (India)

Jacob, B.; Revichandran, C.; NaveenKumar, K.R.

been applied to the Cochin estuary in the present study to identify the most suitable model for predicting the salt intrusion length. Comparison of the obtained results indicate that the model of Van der Burgh (1972) is the most suitable empirical model...

Empirical research in medical ethics: How conceptual accounts on normative-empirical collaboration may improve research practice

Science.gov (United States)

2012-01-01

Background The methodology of medical ethics during the last few decades has shifted from a predominant use of normative-philosophical analyses to an increasing involvement of empirical methods. The articles which have been published in the course of this so-called 'empirical turn' can be divided into conceptual accounts of empirical-normative collaboration and studies which use socio-empirical methods to investigate ethically relevant issues in concrete social contexts. Discussion A considered reference to normative research questions can be expected from good quality empirical research in medical ethics. However, a significant proportion of empirical studies currently published in medical ethics lacks such linkage between the empirical research and the normative analysis. In the first part of this paper, we will outline two typical shortcomings of empirical studies in medical ethics with regard to a link between normative questions and empirical data: (1) The complete lack of normative analysis, and (2) cryptonormativity and a missing account with regard to the relationship between 'is' and 'ought' statements. Subsequently, two selected concepts of empirical-normative collaboration will be presented and how these concepts may contribute to improve the linkage between normative and empirical aspects of empirical research in medical ethics will be demonstrated. Based on our analysis, as well as our own practical experience with empirical research in medical ethics, we conclude with a sketch of concrete suggestions for the conduct of empirical research in medical ethics. Summary High quality empirical research in medical ethics is in need of a considered reference to normative analysis. In this paper, we demonstrate how conceptual approaches of empirical-normative collaboration can enhance empirical research in medical ethics with regard to the link between empirical research and normative analysis. PMID:22500496

An update on the "empirical turn" in bioethics: analysis of empirical research in nine bioethics journals.

Science.gov (United States)

Wangmo, Tenzin; Hauri, Sirin; Gennet, Eloise; Anane-Sarpong, Evelyn; Provoost, Veerle; Elger, Bernice S

2018-02-07

A review of literature published a decade ago noted a significant increase in empirical papers across nine bioethics journals. This study provides an update on the presence of empirical papers in the same nine journals. It first evaluates whether the empirical trend is continuing as noted in the previous study, and second, how it is changing, that is, what are the characteristics of the empirical works published in these nine bioethics journals. A review of the same nine journals (Bioethics; Journal of Medical Ethics; Journal of Clinical Ethics; Nursing Ethics; Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics; Hastings Center Report; Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics; Christian Bioethics; and Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal) was conducted for a 12-year period from 2004 to 2015. Data obtained was analysed descriptively and using a non-parametric Chi-square test. Of the total number of original papers (N = 5567) published in the nine bioethics journals, 18.1% (n = 1007) collected and analysed empirical data. Journal of Medical Ethics and Nursing Ethics led the empirical publications, accounting for 89.4% of all empirical papers. The former published significantly more quantitative papers than qualitative, whereas the latter published more qualitative papers. Our analysis reveals no significant difference (χ2 = 2.857; p = 0.091) between the proportion of empirical papers published in 2004-2009 and 2010-2015. However, the increasing empirical trend has continued in these journals with the proportion of empirical papers increasing from 14.9% in 2004 to 17.8% in 2015. This study presents the current state of affairs regarding empirical research published nine bioethics journals. In the quarter century of data that is available about the nine bioethics journals studied in two reviews, the proportion of empirical publications continues to increase, signifying a trend towards empirical research in bioethics. The growing volume is mainly attributable to two

An Automated Defect Prediction Framework using Genetic Algorithms: A Validation of Empirical Studies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Juan Murillo-Morera

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Today, it is common for software projects to collect measurement data through development processes. With these data, defect prediction software can try to estimate the defect proneness of a software module, with the objective of assisting and guiding software practitioners. With timely and accurate defect predictions, practitioners can focus their limited testing resources on higher risk areas. This paper reports the results of three empirical studies that uses an automated genetic defect prediction framework. This framework generates and compares different learning schemes (preprocessing + attribute selection + learning algorithms and selects the best one using a genetic algorithm, with the objective to estimate the defect proneness of a software module. The first empirical study is a performance comparison of our framework with the most important framework of the literature. The second empirical study is a performance and runtime comparison between our framework and an exhaustive framework. The third empirical study is a sensitivity analysis. The last empirical study, is our main contribution in this paper. Performance of the software development defect prediction models (using AUC, Area Under the Curve was validated using NASA-MDP and PROMISE data sets. Seventeen data sets from NASA-MDP (13 and PROMISE (4 projects were analyzed running a NxM-fold cross-validation. A genetic algorithm was used to select the components of the learning schemes automatically, and to assess and report the results. Our results reported similar performance between frameworks. Our framework reported better runtime than exhaustive framework. Finally, we reported the best configuration according to sensitivity analysis.

The Role of Light and Music in Gambling Behaviour: An Empirical Pilot Study

Science.gov (United States)

Spenwyn, Jenny; Barrett, Doug J. K.; Griffiths, Mark D.

2010-01-01

Empirical research examining the situational characteristics of gambling and their effect on gambling behaviour is limited but growing. This experimental pilot investigation reports the first ever empirical study into the combined effects of both music and light on gambling behaviour. While playing an online version of roulette, 56 participants…

an empirical study of poverty in calabar and its environs.

African Journals Online (AJOL)

DJFLEX

2009-06-17

Jun 17, 2009 ... AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF POVERTY IN CALABAR AND ITS. ENVIRONS. ... one of the poorest nations in the world (CBN, 2001). Specifically, these .... rural development in poor regions, inadequate access to education ...

Does age impact self-actualization needs?—an empirical study ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Thus, although this study supports the existence of needs, the chronology of their dominance may not be as per Maslow's hierarchy pyramid. This empirical study establishes that there may not be progressive increase in self-actualization need as age progresses. Keywords: Maslow, need priorities, age, self-actualization ...

Complex decision-making: initial results of an empirical study

OpenAIRE

Pier Luigi Baldi

2011-01-01

A brief survey of key literature on emotions and decision-making introduces an empirical study of a group of university students exploring the effects of decision-making complexity on error risk. The results clearly show that decision-making under stress in the experimental group produces significantly more errors than in the stress-free control group.

An Empirical Study about China: Gender Equity in Science Education.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Jianjun; Staver, John R.

A data base representing a random sample of more than 10,000 grade 9 students in an SISS (Second IEA Science Study) Extended Study (SES), a key project supported by the China State Commission of Education in the late 1980s, was employed in this study to investigate gender equity in student science achievement in China. This empirical data analysis…

Empirical evidence of design-related bias in studies of diagnostic tests

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lijmer, J. G.; Mol, B. W.; Heisterkamp, S.; Bonsel, G. J.; Prins, M. H.; van der Meulen, J. H.; Bossuyt, P. M.

1999-01-01

CONTEXT: The literature contains a large number of potential biases in the evaluation of diagnostic tests. Strict application of appropriate methodological criteria would invalidate the clinical application of most study results. OBJECTIVE: To empirically determine the quantitative effect of study

Complex decision-making: initial results of an empirical study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pier Luigi Baldi

2011-09-01

Full Text Available A brief survey of key literature on emotions and decision-making introduces an empirical study of a group of university students exploring the effects of decision-making complexity on error risk. The results clearly show that decision-making under stress in the experimental group produces significantly more errors than in the stress-free control group.

Decoupling among CSR policies, programs, and impacts : An empirical study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Graafland, Johan; Smid, Hugo

2016-01-01

There are relatively few empirical studies on the impacts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and programs. This article addresses the research gap by analyzing the incidence of, and the conditions that affect, decoupling (defined as divergence) among CSR policies, implementation of

bite ofthe face

African Journals Online (AJOL)

1992-12-09

Dec 9, 1992 ... orbicularis oris muscle were obtained. SAfrMedJ1994; 84: 37-39. Case report. A 46-year-old ... the left cheek, including facial muscle, tissue loss from the left alar rim of the nose, and a severely tom nasal ... This artery was badly torn and partially avulsed. (4). FIG. 3. Identification of the vessels. The wound ...

Empirical Philosophy of Science

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mansnerus, Erika; Wagenknecht, Susann

2015-01-01

knowledge takes place through the integration of the empirical or historical research into the philosophical studies, as Chang, Nersessian, Thagard and Schickore argue in their work. Building upon their contributions we will develop a blueprint for an Empirical Philosophy of Science that draws upon...... qualitative methods from the social sciences in order to advance our philosophical understanding of science in practice. We will regard the relationship between philosophical conceptualization and empirical data as an iterative dialogue between theory and data, which is guided by a particular ‘feeling with......Empirical insights are proven fruitful for the advancement of Philosophy of Science, but the integration of philosophical concepts and empirical data poses considerable methodological challenges. Debates in Integrated History and Philosophy of Science suggest that the advancement of philosophical...

An Empirical Study of Audit Expectation Gap in Hungary

OpenAIRE

Judit Füredi-Fülöp

2015-01-01

The audit expectation gap has preoccupied the finance and accounting profession for a long time. Considerable research has been conducted into this issue and attempts have been made to provide an accurate definition of the audit expectation gap, model this concept and assess the possibilities of its narrowing. Also, a number of studies investigate whether there is an audit expectation gap in several researched regions. The objectives of empirical studies on the structure and nature of the aud...

STONING TO DEATH (RECM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE / TEORIK VE PRATIK OLARAK OSMANLI’DA RECM CEZASI: BAZI BATI ANADOLU SEHIRLERINDEKI UYGULAMALAR

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dr. Abdülmecit MUTAF

2008-09-01

Full Text Available Adultery which thretens the future of society and is seen asagainst morality is forbidden in Islamic law as is the case in most ofthe jurisprudence. Those who are married and commit this crime arepunished with a penalty called recm if they.are single they arepunished with a penalty called tazir. These penalties for adultery wereadopted exactly by the Ottoman law which is based on the Islamiclaw. In some cases punishments which were not explained in theIslamic law were regulated by kanunnames. There were debates aboutwhether the application of the kanunname regulations were carried outaccording to the Islamic law and whether the recm as punishment wasexecuted in the Ottoman Empire. When we look at both the sourcesand the court registers, we can conclude that the Ottoman law adoptedthe recm punishment same as the one in the Islamic law. On the otherhand, since zina is treated with caution in Islamic law, the attitutes of the Ottoman law towards recm were shaped with tolerance in thisregards.

Climate change, income and happiness: An empirical study for Barcelona

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Sekulova, F.; van den Bergh, J.C.J.M.

2013-01-01

The present article builds upon the results of an empirical study exploring key factors which determine life satisfaction in Barcelona. Based on a sample of 840 individuals we first look at the way changes in income, notably income reductions, associated with the current economic situation in Spain,

Educational Inequality and Income Inequality: An Empirical Study on China

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Jun; Huang, Xiao; Li, Xiaoyu

2009-01-01

Based on the endogenous growth theory, this paper uses the Gini coefficient to measure educational inequality and studies the empirical relationship between educational inequality and income inequality through a simultaneous equation model. The results show that: (1) Income inequality leads to educational inequality while the reduction of…

Matrix effect studies with empirical formulations in maize saplings

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bansal, Meenakshi; Deep, Kanan; Mittal, Raj

2012-01-01

In X-ray fluorescence, the earlier derived matrix effects from fundamental relations of intensities of analyte/matrix elements with basic atomic and experimental setup parameters and tested on synthetic known samples were found empirically related to analyte/matrix elemental amounts. The present study involves the application of these relations on potassium and calcium macronutrients of maize saplings treated with different fertilizers. The novelty of work involves a determination of an element in the presence of its secondary excitation rather than avoiding the secondary fluorescence. Therefore, the possible utility of this process is in studying the absorption for some intermediate samples in a lot of a category of samples with close Z interfering constituents (just like Ca and K). Once the absorption and enhancement terms are fitted to elemental amounts and fitted coefficients are determined, with the absorption terms from the fit and an enhancer element amount known from its selective excitation, the next iterative elemental amount can be directly evaluated from the relations. - Highlights: ► Empirical formulation for matrix corrections in terms of amounts of analyte and matrix element. ► The study applied on K and Ca nutrients of maize, rice and potato organic materials. ► The formulation provides matrix terms from amounts of analyte/matrix elements and vice versa.

Using MultiMedia Content to Present Business Ethics: An Empirical Study

Science.gov (United States)

Stanwick, Peter A.

2010-01-01

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine whether presenting a multimedia case study enhances the learning experience of students in an undergraduate management class. A questionnaire was administered before and after the presentation of the case study and the results showed that the multimedia case did indeed enhance the learning…

Supply chain strategy: empirical case study in Europe and Asia:

OpenAIRE

Sillanpää, Ilkka; Sillanpää, Sebastian

2014-01-01

The purpose of this case study research is to present a literature review of supply chain strategy approaches, develop supply chain strategy framework and to validate a framework in empirical case study. Literature review and case study research are the research methods for this research. This study presents the supply chain strategy framework which merges together business environment, corporate strategy, supply chain demand and supply chain strategy. Research argues that all the different c...

Assessment of empirical antibiotic therapy optimisation in six hospitals: an observational cohort study.

Science.gov (United States)

Braykov, Nikolay P; Morgan, Daniel J; Schweizer, Marin L; Uslan, Daniel Z; Kelesidis, Theodoros; Weisenberg, Scott A; Johannsson, Birgir; Young, Heather; Cantey, Joseph; Srinivasan, Arjun; Perencevich, Eli; Septimus, Edward; Laxminarayan, Ramanan

2014-12-01

Modification of empirical antimicrobials when warranted by culture results or clinical signs is recommended to control antimicrobial overuse and resistance. We aimed to assess the frequency with which patients were started on empirical antimicrobials, characteristics of the empirical regimen and the clinical characteristics of patients at the time of starting antimicrobials, patterns of changes to empirical therapy at different timepoints, and modifiable factors associated with changes to the initial empirical regimen in the first 5 days of therapy. We did a chart review of adult inpatients receiving one or more antimicrobials in six US hospitals on 4 days during 2009 and 2010. Our primary outcome was the modification of antimicrobial regimen on or before the 5th day of empirical therapy, analysed as a three-category variable. Bivariate analyses were used to establish demographic and clinical variables associated with the outcome. Variables with p values below 0·1 were included in a multivariable generalised linear latent and mixed model with multinomial logit link to adjust for clustering within hospitals and accommodate a non-binary outcome variable. Across the six study sites, 4119 (60%) of 6812 inpatients received antimicrobials. Of 1200 randomly selected patients with active antimicrobials, 730 (61%) met inclusion criteria. At the start of therapy, 220 (30%) patients were afebrile and had normal white blood cell counts. Appropriate cultures were collected from 432 (59%) patients, and 250 (58%) were negative. By the 5th day of therapy, 12·5% of empirical antimicrobials were escalated, 21·5% were narrowed or discontinued, and 66·4% were unchanged. Narrowing or discontinuation was more likely when cultures were collected at the start of therapy (adjusted OR 1·68, 95% CI 1·05-2·70) and no infection was noted on an initial radiological study (1·76, 1·11-2·79). Escalation was associated with multiple infection sites (2·54, 1·34-4·83) and a positive

Matchmaking in organizational change : does every employee value participatory leadership? An empirical study

OpenAIRE

Rogiest, Sofie; Segers, Jesse; Witteloostuijn, van, Arjen

2018-01-01

Abstract: Although leadership is generally considered an important lever to increase commitment during organizational change, empirical research has yet to unravel many of the underlying mechanisms. In this paper, we propose that the impact of participative leadership on affective commitment to change will be contingent on employees orientation toward leadership. In our empirical study in two police organizations, we find evidence that followers orientation toward leadership is a useful inter...

Empirical study on the feasibility of measures for public self-protection capability enhancement

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Goersch, Henning G.; Werner, Ute

2011-01-01

The empirical study on the feasibility of measures for public self-protection capability enhancement covers the following issues with several sections: (1) Introduction: scope of the study; structure of the study. (2) Issue coherence: self-protection; reduction and prevention of damage by personal emergency preparedness, personal emergency preparedness in Germany. (3) Solution coherence: scientific approaches, development of practical problem solution approaches, proposal of a promotion system. (4) Empirical studies: Promotion system evaluation by experts; questioning of the public; Delphi-study on minimum standards in emergency preparedness; local networks in emergency preparedness. (5) Evaluation of models for personal emergency preparedness (M3P). (6) Integration of all research results into the approach of emergency preparedness: scope; recommendations, conclusions.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – A clinically empirical approach to its definition and study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Papanicolaou Dimitris A

2005-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The lack of standardized criteria for defining chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS has constrained research. The objective of this study was to apply the 1994 CFS criteria by standardized reproducible criteria. Methods This population-based case control study enrolled 227 adults identified from the population of Wichita with: (1 CFS (n = 58; (2 non-fatigued controls matched to CFS on sex, race, age and body mass index (n = 55; (3 persons with medically unexplained fatigue not CFS, which we term ISF (n = 59; (4 CFS accompanied by melancholic depression (n = 27; and (5 ISF plus melancholic depression (n = 28. Participants were admitted to a hospital for two days and underwent medical history and physical examination, the Diagnostic Interview Schedule, and laboratory testing to identify medical and psychiatric conditions exclusionary for CFS. Illness classification at the time of the clinical study utilized two algorithms: (1 the same criteria as in the surveillance study; (2 a standardized clinically empirical algorithm based on quantitative assessment of the major domains of CFS (impairment, fatigue, and accompanying symptoms. Results One hundred and sixty-four participants had no exclusionary conditions at the time of this study. Clinically empirical classification identified 43 subjects as CFS, 57 as ISF, and 64 as not ill. There was minimal association between the empirical classification and classification by the surveillance criteria. Subjects empirically classified as CFS had significantly worse impairment (evaluated by the SF-36, more severe fatigue (documented by the multidimensional fatigue inventory, more frequent and severe accompanying symptoms than those with ISF, who in turn had significantly worse scores than the not ill; this was not true for classification by the surveillance algorithm. Conclusion The empirical definition includes all aspects of CFS specified in the 1994 case definition and identifies persons with

Corporate Diversification and Firm Performance: an Empirical Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Olu Ojo

2009-05-01

Full Text Available The importance of diversification and performance in then strategic management literature is widely accepted among academics and practitioners . However, the proxies for performance and diversification that have been employed in past strategy research has not been unanimously agreed upon. Given the current state of confusion that exists with regard to the impact of corporate diversification on firm performance in selected Nigerian companies. The reason for increased interest in diversification has always been on the possibility that diversification is related to corporate performance. However , while this topic is rich in studies, empirical evidence semerging from various studies about the effect of diversification on performance have so far yield mixed results that are inconclusive and contradictory. In addition , despite the existence of these studies, very litlle attention has been given to the companies in developing countries including Nigeria. This means that there is a major gap in the relevant literature on developing countries which has to be covered by research. This research attempts to fill this gap by studying the situation of the Nigeria companies and providing more empirical evidence on the effects of corporate diversification on firm performance based on individual company-level data. Survey research design was adopted in this study with the application of simple random sampling tehnique in selecting our case study companies as well as our respondents. Primary data were collected through questionnaire. Data were analysed through descriptive statistics and correlation and coefficient of determination were used to test our hypothese. It was discovered that diversification impacted performance of these companies posivitely and we recommend that these companies should engage in geographical diversification in addition to other forms of diversification they are currently involved in for maximum performance.

What Happened to Remote Usability Testing? An Empirical Study of Three Methods

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Stage, Jan; Andreasen, M. S.; Nielsen, H. V.

2007-01-01

The idea of conducting usability tests remotely emerged ten years ago. Since then, it has been studied empirically, and some software organizations employ remote methods. Yet there are still few comparisons involving more than one remote method. This paper presents results from a systematic...... empirical comparison of three methods for remote usability testing and a conventional laboratorybased think-aloud method. The three remote methods are a remote synchronous condition, where testing is conducted in real time but the test monitor is separated spatially from the test subjects, and two remote...

Empirical Studies on Financial Markets: Private Equity, Corporate Bonds and Emerging Markets

NARCIS (Netherlands)

G.J. de Zwart (Gerben)

2008-01-01

textabstractThis dissertation consists of five empirical studies on financial markets. Each study can be read independently and covers a specific market, either private equity, corporate bonds or emerging markets. The first study documents that risk factors cannot account for the significant excess

Using ERP and WfM Systems for Implementing Business Processes: An Empirical Study

Science.gov (United States)

Aversano, Lerina; Tortorella, Maria

Software systems mainly considered from enterprises for dealing with a business process automation belong to the following two categories: Workflow Management Systems (WfMS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The wider diffusion of ERP systems tends to favourite this solution, but there are several limitations of most ERP systems for automating business processes. This paper reports an empirical study aiming at comparing the ability of implementing business processes of ERP systems and WfMSs. Two different case studies have been considered in the empirical study. It evaluates and analyses the correctness and completeness of the process models implemented by using ERP and WfM systems.

A study on online monitoring system development using empirical models

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

An, Sang Ha

2010-02-15

Maintenance technologies have been progressed from a time-based to a condition-based manner. The fundamental idea of condition-based maintenance (CBM) is built on the real-time diagnosis of impending failures and/or the prognosis of residual lifetime of equipment by monitoring health conditions using various sensors. The success of CBM, therefore, hinges on the capability to develop accurate diagnosis/prognosis models. Even though there may be an unlimited number of methods to implement models, the models can normally be classified into two categories in terms of their origins: using physical principles or historical observations. I have focused on the latter method (sometimes referred as the empirical model based on statistical learning) because of some practical benefits such as context-free applicability, configuration flexibility, and customization adaptability. While several pilot-scale systems using empirical models have been applied to work sites in Korea, it should be noticed that these do not seem to be generally competitive against conventional physical models. As a result of investigating the bottlenecks of previous attempts, I have recognized the need for a novel strategy for grouping correlated variables such that an empirical model can accept not only statistical correlation but also some extent of physical knowledge of a system. Detailed examples of problems are as follows: (1) missing of important signals in a group caused by the lack of observations, (2) problems of signals with the time delay, (3) problems of optimal kernel bandwidth. In this study an improved statistical learning framework including the proposed strategy and case studies illustrating the performance of the method are presented.

Continued Use of a Chinese Online Portal: An Empirical Study

Science.gov (United States)

Shih, Hung-Pin

2008-01-01

The evolution of the internet has made online portals a popular means of surfing the internet. In internet commerce, understanding the post-adoption behaviour of users of online portals can help enterprises to attract new users and retain existing customers. For predicting continued use intentions, this empirical study focused on applying and…

An empirical operationalization study of DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for premature ejaculation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Waldinger, M. D.; Hengeveld, M. W.; Zwinderman, A. H.; Olivier, B.

1998-01-01

The DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for premature ejaculation remain to be investigated by a clinical study. A prospective study was therefore conducted to investigate the DSM-IV definition and to provide an empirical operationalization of premature ejaculation. In this study 140 men suffering from

Structural properties of silicon clusters: An empirical potential study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gong, X.G.; Zheng, Q.Q.; He Yizhen

1993-09-01

By using our newly proposed empirical interatomic potential for silicon, the structure and some dynamical properties of silicon cluster Si n (10 ≤ n ≤ 24) have been studied. It is found that the obtained results are close to those from ab-initio methods. From present results, we can gain a new insight into the understanding of the experimental data on the Si n clusters. (author). 20 refs, 6 figs

Intrapreneur organizational culture and gender manager: an empirical study on SMES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Monica García Solarte

2015-07-01

Full Text Available The aim of this research is to empirically identify the relationship between the gender manager of the SMEs and the characteristics of the intrapreneurculture. The empirical study was conducted using a sample of 600 SMEs in the region of Murcia (Spain. The intrapreneur culture is analyzed considering theclassification of Galvez and Garcia (2011. The results show that companies The results show that companies directed by women promoted greater extentthan men intrapreneur characteristics of culture such as: autonomy and risk taking, teamwork, compensation and support to management. The implicationsof our research are relevant and can help public authorities and managers to the analysis and development of policies that promote gender equity withinorganizations.

For a new dialogue between theoretical and empirical studies in evo-devo

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Giuseppe eFusco

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Despite its potentially broad scope, current evo-devo research is largely dominated by empirical developmental studies, whereas comparably little role is played by theoretical research. I argue that this represents an obstacle to a wider appreciation of evo-devo and its integration within a more comprehensive evolutionary theory, and that this situation is causally linked to a limited exchange between theoretical and experimental studies in evo-devo. I discuss some features of current theoretical work in evo-devo, highlighting some possibly concurring impediments to an effective dialogue with experimental studies. Finally, I advance two suggestions for enhancing fruitful cross-fertilization between theoretical and empirical studies in evo-devo: i to broaden the scope of evo-devo beyond its current conceptualization, teaming up with other variational approaches to the study of evolution, and ii to develop more effective forms of scientific interaction and communication.

YOUTH STUDIES – A SPECIFIC GENRE OF THE EMPIRICAL PARADIGM IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Agnė Dorelaitienė

2017-09-01

Full Text Available The article presents the situation of youth in contemporary society. Neoliberal economy, ageing society, rapid globalisation, technological changes, increase of social risk have prompted specific, historically unfamiliar, and fairly difficult to forecast social change. Social adaptation and construction of own identity are becoming challenging to youth as a specific social group in this period of great uncertainty, risk, and opportunities. Youth studies are referred to as one of the means to help understand the youth phenomenon and form the respective policy. Aim of the article is to reveal the role of youth studies as a specific interdisciplinary genre of the empirical-analytic paradigm in social sciences. Research objectives: (1 To identify the traditions of youth studies and differences between them; (2. To reveal the specific character of youth studies as an empirical paradigm in the contemporary context. Analysis of scientific sources and document analysis are used for achievement of the goal and objectives. Since the 20th century, youth studies have been developing as an independent research discipline and tradition. Perception of the notion of a young person has been changing along with development of the paradigmatic and methodological research traditions. Modernity has doubtlessly contributed to a young person finding his/her place in other age groups and putting an emphasis on the importance of youth as a specific social group. Recently, youth has been viewed as both the risk and the opportunity group. Although qualitative research, in particular, where youth emancipation is aspired, prevails in the contemporary research tradition, the empirical-analytic paradigm has not lost its relevance. The research has demonstrated that empirical-analytic paradigm is a specific genre of the youth studies characterised by quantitative approach and strong link to politics and practical situation of the phenomenon.

Lessons from empirical studies in product and service variety management.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrew C.L. Lyons

2013-07-01

Full Text Available For many years, a trend for businesses has been to increase market segmentation and extend product and service-variety offerings in order to provid more choice for customers and gain a competitive advantags. However, there have been relatively few variety-related, empirical studies that have been undertaken. In this research, two empirical studies are presented that address the impact of product and service variety on business and business function performance. In the first (service-variety study, the focus concerns the relationship between service provision offered by UK-based, third-party logistics (3PL providers and the operational and financial performance of those providers. Here, the results of a large survey identify the  most important services offered by 3PLs and the most important aspects of 3PL operational performance. Also, the research suggests that the range of service variety offered by 3PLs does not directly influence the 3PLs’ financial performance. The second (product-variety study presents the findings from an analysis of data from 163 manufacturing plants where the impact of product variety on the performance of five business functions is examined. An increase in product variety was found to influence business functions differently depending on the combination of customisation and variety offered to customers

Does Branding Need Web Usability? A Value-Oriented Empirical Study

Science.gov (United States)

Bolchini, Davide; Garzotto, Franca; Sorce, Fabio

Does usability of a web-based communication artifact affect brand, i.e., the set of beliefs, emotions, attitudes, or qualities that people mentally associate to the entity behind that artifact? Intuitively, the answer is “yes”: usability is a fundamental aspect of the quality of the experience with a website, and a “good” experience with a “product” or its reifications tends to translate into “good” brand perception. To date, however, the existence of a connection between web usability and brand perception is shown through anecdotic arguments, and is not supported by published systematic research. This paper discusses a study that empirically investigates this correlation in a more rigorous, analytical, and replicable way. Our main contribution is twofold: on the one hand, we provide empirical evidence to the heuristic principle that web usability influences branding, and we do that through four between subjects controlled experiments that involved 120 subjects. On the other hand, we inform the study with a systematic value-oriented approach to the user experience, and thus provide a conceptual framework that can be reused in other experimental settings, either for replicating our study, or for designing similar studies focusing on the correlation of web branding vs. design factors other than usability.

Beyond Clinical Case Studies in Psychoanalysis: A Review of Psychoanalytic Empirical Single Case Studies Published in ISI-Ranked Journals

Science.gov (United States)

Meganck, Reitske; Inslegers, Ruth; Krivzov, Juri; Notaerts, Liza

2017-01-01

Single case studies are at the origin of both theory development and research in the field of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. While clinical case studies are the hallmark of psychoanalytic theory and practice, their scientific value has been strongly criticized. To address problems with the subjective bias of retrospective therapist reports and uncontrollability of clinical case studies, systematic approaches to investigate psychotherapy process and outcome at the level of the single case have been developed. Such empirical case studies are also able to bridge the famous gap between academic research and clinical practice as they provide clinically relevant insights into how psychotherapy works. This study presents a review of psychoanalytic empirical case studies published in ISI-ranked journals and maps the characteristics of the study, therapist, patient en therapies that are investigated. Empirical case studies increased in quantity and quality (amount of information and systematization) over time. While future studies could pay more attention to providing contextual information on therapist characteristics and informed consent considerations, the available literature provides a basis to conduct meta-studies of single cases and as such contribute to knowledge aggregation. PMID:29046660

An Empirical Study of Security Issues Posted in Open Source Projects

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zahedi, Mansooreh; Ali Babar, Muhammad; Treude, Christoph

2018-01-01

When developers gain thorough understanding and knowledge of software security, they can produce more secure software. This study aims at empirically identifying and understanding the security issues posted on a random sample of GitHub repositories. We tried to understand the presence of security...

Wireless and empire geopolitics radio industry and ionosphere in the British Empire 1918-1939

CERN Document Server

Anduaga, Aitor

2009-01-01

Although the product of consensus politics, the British Empire was based on communications supremacy and the knowledge of the atmosphere. Focusing on science, industry, government, the military, and education, this book studies the relationship between wireless and Empire throughout the interwar period.

Empirical Studies on English Vocabulary Learning Strategies in Mainland China over the Past Two Decades

OpenAIRE

Zhongxin Dai; Yao Zhou

2015-01-01

Wen and Wang (2004) reviewed the empirical studies over the past two decades (from 1984 to 2003) on learning strategies that Chinese EFL learners used. This article, following their methodological framework, reviews about 45 empirical studies on Chinese EFL learners’ English vocabulary learning strategies, conducted by Mainland Chinese scholars over the past two decades. The review shows that more than half of the Chinese scholars are interested in questionnaire investigation of EFL learners’...

Visual Semiotics & Uncertainty Visualization: An Empirical Study.

Science.gov (United States)

MacEachren, A M; Roth, R E; O'Brien, J; Li, B; Swingley, D; Gahegan, M

2012-12-01

This paper presents two linked empirical studies focused on uncertainty visualization. The experiments are framed from two conceptual perspectives. First, a typology of uncertainty is used to delineate kinds of uncertainty matched with space, time, and attribute components of data. Second, concepts from visual semiotics are applied to characterize the kind of visual signification that is appropriate for representing those different categories of uncertainty. This framework guided the two experiments reported here. The first addresses representation intuitiveness, considering both visual variables and iconicity of representation. The second addresses relative performance of the most intuitive abstract and iconic representations of uncertainty on a map reading task. Combined results suggest initial guidelines for representing uncertainty and discussion focuses on practical applicability of results.

Energy structure, marginal efficiency and substitution rate: An empirical study of China

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Han Zhiyong; Fan Ying; Jiao Jianling; Yan Jisheng; Wei Yiming

2007-01-01

Energy efficiency is an important factor in developing energy policies as it represents the extent to which resources support economic output. In recent literature, relevant studies have mainly focused on aggregate energy efficiency, but rarely touched on the marginal efficiency of diverse energy resources and their comparative substitution rate. During 1978-2003, China's energy efficiency continually increased; and consequently became a hot topic in contemporary literature. However, there is no empirical study on the relationship between energy structure and energy efficiency. In order to close the gap, this paper reports the empirical study of the impact of China's energy structure on its energy efficiency from 1978 to 2003. The work covered primary estimation of the marginal efficiency of coal and petroleum in China, as well as the comparative substitution rate. Results indicate that the substitution rate between petroleum and coal is a factor of 5.38

An Empirical Study on Capital Structure Determinants of Selected ASEAN Countries

OpenAIRE

Ngo, Hoang Anh

2013-01-01

Capital structure has been a controversial topic for decades. Conflicting arguments in theories and mixed findings in empirical work require further studies on this subject. More importantly, most previous studies have focused on developed countries and little attention is paid to emerging economies, especially ASEAN. Therefore, this study attempts to fill the gap by examining effects of capital structure's determinants on different measures of leverage of listed manufacturing companies in se...

A comparative study of semi-empirical interionic potentials for alkali halides - II

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Khwaja, F.A.; Naqvi, S.H.

1985-08-01

A comprehensive study of some semi-empirical interionic potentials is carried out through the calculation of the cohesive energy, relative stability and pressure induced solid-solid phase transformations in alkali halides. The theoretical values of these properties of the alkali halides are obtained using a new set of van der Waals coefficients and zero-point energy in the expression for interionic potential. From the comparison of the present calculations with some previous sophisticated ab-initio quantum-mechanical calculations and other semi-empirical approaches, it is concluded that the present calculations in the simplest central pairwise interaction description with the new values of the van der Waals coefficients and zero-point energy are in better agreement with the experimental data than the previous calculations. It is also concluded that in some cases the better choice of the interionic potential alone in the simplest semi-empirical picture of interaction gives an agreement of the theoretical predictions with the experimental data much superior to the ab-initio quantum mechanical approaches. (author)

Evolution of viral virulence: empirical studies

Science.gov (United States)

Kurath, Gael; Wargo, Andrew R.

2016-01-01

The concept of virulence as a pathogen trait that can evolve in response to selection has led to a large body of virulence evolution theory developed in the 1980-1990s. Various aspects of this theory predict increased or decreased virulence in response to a complex array of selection pressures including mode of transmission, changes in host, mixed infection, vector-borne transmission, environmental changes, host vaccination, host resistance, and co-evolution of virus and host. A fundamental concept is prediction of trade-offs between the costs and benefits associated with higher virulence, leading to selection of optimal virulence levels. Through a combination of observational and experimental studies, including experimental evolution of viruses during serial passage, many of these predictions have now been explored in systems ranging from bacteriophage to viruses of plants, invertebrates, and vertebrate hosts. This chapter summarizes empirical studies of viral virulence evolution in numerous diverse systems, including the classic models myxomavirus in rabbits, Marek's disease virus in chickens, and HIV in humans. Collectively these studies support some aspects of virulence evolution theory, suggest modifications for other aspects, and show that predictions may apply in some virus:host interactions but not in others. Finally, we consider how virulence evolution theory applies to disease management in the field.

Empirical study on how social media promotes product innovation

OpenAIRE

Idota, Hiroki; Bunno, Teruyuki; Tsuji, Masatsugu

2014-01-01

Social media such as SNS, Twitter, and the blogs has been spreading all over the world, and a large number of firms recognize social media as new communication tools for obtaining information on consumer needs and market for developing new goods and services and promoting marketing. In spite of increasing its use in the reality, academic research on whether or how social media contributes to promoting product innovation is not enough yet. This study thus attempts to analyze empirically how so...

Motivation and Emotions in Competition Systems for Education: An Empirical Study

Science.gov (United States)

Muñoz-Merino, Pedro J.; Molina, Manuel Fernández; Muñoz-Organero, Mario; Kloos, Carlos Delgado

2014-01-01

A lack of student motivation is a problem in many courses in electrical engineering. Introducing competition between students can enhance their motivation, but it can also generate negative emotions. This paper presents an empirical study of students in a telecommunications engineering degree; it measured their level of motivation, and their…

Performance-Based Service Quality Model: An Empirical Study on Japanese Universities

Science.gov (United States)

Sultan, Parves; Wong, Ho

2010-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to develop and empirically test the performance-based higher education service quality model. Design/methodology/approach: The study develops 67-item instrument for measuring performance-based service quality with a particular focus on the higher education sector. Scale reliability is confirmed using the Cronbach's alpha.…

College Education and Attitudes toward Democracy in China: An Empirical Study

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Gang; Wu, Liyun; Han, Rongbin

2015-01-01

The modernization theory contends that there is a link between education and democracy. Yet few empirical studies have been done to investigate the role of higher education on promoting democratic values in the Chinese context. Using China General Social Survey 2006, this paper generates several findings which are not completely consistent with…

Franchised fast food brands: An empirical study of factors influencing growth

OpenAIRE

Christopher A. Wingrove; Boris Urban

2017-01-01

Orientation: Franchising is a popular and multifaceted business arrangement that captures a sizeable portion of the restaurant industry worldwide. Research purpose: The study empirically investigated the influence of various site location and branding factors on the growth of franchised fast food restaurant brands across the greater Gauteng region. Motivation of the study: Researching which factors influence the growth of franchised fast food restaurant brands is important for an emer...

Empirical Music Aesthetics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Grund, Cynthia M.

The toolbox for empirically exploring the ways that artistic endeavors convey and activate meaning on the part of performers and audiences continues to expand. Current work employing methods at the intersection of performance studies, philosophy, motion capture and neuroscience to better understand...... musical performance and reception is inspired by traditional approaches within aesthetics, but it also challenges some of the presuppositions inherent in them. As an example of such work I present a research project in empirical music aesthetics begun last year and of which I am a team member....

The effects of performance measurement and compensation on motivation: An empirical study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Herpen, M.; van Praag, C.M.; Cools, K.

2003-01-01

The design and implementation of a performance measurement and compensation system can strongly affect the motivation of employees. Building on economic and psychological theory this study develops a conceptual model that is used to empirically test this effect. Our survey results demonstrate a

Empirical psychology, common sense, and Kant's empirical markers for moral responsibility.

Science.gov (United States)

Frierson, Patrick

2008-12-01

This paper explains the empirical markers by which Kant thinks that one can identify moral responsibility. After explaining the problem of discerning such markers within a Kantian framework I briefly explain Kant's empirical psychology. I then argue that Kant's empirical markers for moral responsibility--linked to higher faculties of cognition--are not sufficient conditions for moral responsibility, primarily because they are empirical characteristics subject to natural laws. Next. I argue that these markers are not necessary conditions of moral responsibility. Given Kant's transcendental idealism, even an entity that lacks these markers could be free and morally responsible, although as a matter of fact Kant thinks that none are. Given that they are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions, I discuss the status of Kant's claim that higher faculties are empirical markers of moral responsibility. Drawing on connections between Kant's ethical theory and 'common rational cognition' (4:393), I suggest that Kant's theory of empirical markers can be traced to ordinary common sense beliefs about responsibility. This suggestion helps explain both why empirical markers are important and what the limits of empirical psychology are within Kant's account of moral responsibility.

Volatility in the Housing Market: Evidence on Risk and Return in theLondon Sub-market

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Steve Cook

2017-10-01

Full Text Available The impact of volatility in housing market analysis is reconsidered via examinaton ofthe risk-return relationship in the London housing market is examined. In addition to providing thefirst empirical results for the relationship between risk (as measured by volatility and returns forthis submarket, the analysis offers a more general message to empiricists via a detailed and explicitevaluation of the impact of empirical design decisions upon inferences. In particular, the negativerisk-return relationship discussed frequently in the housing market literature is examined and shown todepend upon typically overlooked decisions concerning components of the empirical framework fromwhich statistical inferences are drawn.

Empirical Hamiltonians

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Peggs, S.; Talman, R.

1987-01-01

As proton accelerators get larger, and include more magnets, the conventional tracking programs which simulate them run slower. The purpose of this paper is to describe a method, still under development, in which element-by-element tracking around one turn is replaced by a single man, which can be processed far faster. It is assumed for this method that a conventional program exists which can perform faithful tracking in the lattice under study for some hundreds of turns, with all lattice parameters held constant. An empirical map is then generated by comparison with the tracking program. A procedure has been outlined for determining an empirical Hamiltonian, which can represent motion through many nonlinear kicks, by taking data from a conventional tracking program. Though derived by an approximate method this Hamiltonian is analytic in form and can be subjected to further analysis of varying degrees of mathematical rigor. Even though the empirical procedure has only been described in one transverse dimension, there is good reason to hope that it can be extended to include two transverse dimensions, so that it can become a more practical tool in realistic cases

An Empirical Study of Gender Gap in Children Schooling in Nigeria ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

An Empirical Study of Gender Gap in Children Schooling in Nigeria. Olanrewaju Olaniyan. Abstract. African Journal of Economic Policy Vol10(1) 2003: 117-131. Full Text: EMAIL FULL TEXT EMAIL FULL TEXT · DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT · http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajep.v10i1.24245 · AJOL African ...

ACCOUNTING MANIPULATION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY REGARDING MANAGERS’ BEHAVIOR

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Balaciu Diana Elisabeta

2014-07-01

Full Text Available The study analyses managers’ behaviour from Romania when dealing with creative accounting. For this we realized an empirical study within the Arad county space, having as main objective the identification of the managers’ perception regarding the usefulness of accounting information and of other factors considered when making decisions. Another aspect was to interpret the managers’ tendency towards manipulation or strategic management of results. The empirical research was carried out between December 2013 and January 2014, and the research method used was the survey, and as an instrument of the research we used the questionnaire. The questionnaires were posted on a website but some of them were applied directly in the field to ensure a response rate of at least 30%. For the analysis and confirmation of the feasibility of the questionnaire and of the measurement scale, we used Cronbach Alpha method. The results obtained after statistically processing the answers received from respondents and after testing the research hypotheses show that there is an increased interest of the managers from the investigated Arad firms to improve the quality of the financial accounting information and to give the users as beautiful an image as possible of the company’s performances; it is noticed their inclination to the manipulation of the accounting figures. On the other hand the results obtained demonstrate that, despite the fact that most of the managers from the sample consider that using ethics is a priority in making decisions, this idea is not an obstacle for more than a half to change an accounting policy that would affect the true image but would be favorable to the image of the company The utility of such research contributes to the insurance of the premises for the development of future research, looking to test the reaction of the professional accountants in our country, regarding the phenomenon of creative accounting.

Model dependences of the deactivation of phytoplankton pigment excitation energy on environmental conditions in the sea

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mirosława Ostrowska

2012-11-01

Full Text Available A semi-empirical, physical models have been derived of the quantum yield ofthe deactivation processes (fluorescence, photosynthesis and heat productionof excited states in phytoplankton pigment molecules. Besides some alreadyknown models (photosynthesis and fluorescence, this novel approachincorporates the dependence of the dissipation yield of the excitation energyin phytoplankton pigment molecules on heat. The quantitative dependences ofthe quantum yields of these three processes on three fundamental parameters ofthe marine environment are defined: the chlorophyll concentration in the surface water layer Ca(0 (the basin trophicity,the irradiance PAR(z and the temperature temp(z at the study site.The model is complemented with two other relevant models describing thequantum yield of photosynthesis and of natural Sun-Induced Chlorophyll a Fluorescence (SICF in the sea, derived earlier by the author or with herparticipation on the basis of statistical analyses of a vast amount ofempirical material. The model described in the present paper enables theestimation of the quantum yields of phytoplankton pigment heat production forany region and season, in waters of any trophicity at different depths fromthe surface to depths of ca 60 m. The model can therefore be used to estimatethe yields of these deactivation processes in more than half the thickness ofthe euphotic zone in oligotrophic waters and in the whole thickness (anddeeper of this zone in mesotrophic and eutrophic waters. In particular theserelationships may be useful for a component analysis of the budget of lightenergy absorbed by phytoplankton pigments, namely, its utilization influorescence, photochemical quenching and nonphotochemical radiationlessdissipation - i.e. direct heat production.

High-frequency volatility combine forecast evaluations: An empirical study for DAX

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wen Cheong Chin

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This study aims to examine the benefits of combining realized volatility, higher power variation volatility and nearest neighbour truncation volatility in the forecasts of financial stock market of DAX. A structural break heavy-tailed heterogeneous autoregressive model under the heterogeneous market hypothesis specification is employed to capture the stylized facts of high-frequency empirical data. Using selected averaging forecast methods, the forecast weights are assigned based on the simple average, simple median, least squares and mean square error. The empirical results indicated that the combination of forecasts in general shown superiority under four evaluation criteria regardless which proxy is set as the actual volatility. As a conclusion, we summarized that the forecast performance is influenced by three factors namely the types of volatility proxy, forecast methods (individual or averaging forecast and lastly the type of actual forecast value used in the evaluation criteria.

Understanding Functional Reuse of ERP Requirements in the Telecommunication Sector: an Empirical Study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Daneva, Maia

2014-01-01

This paper is an empirical study on the application of Function Points (FP) and a FP-based reuse measurement model in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects in three organizations in the telecommunication sector. The findings of the study are used to compare the requirements reuse for one

Empirical Studies on the Use of Social Software in Global Software Development - a Systematic Mapping Study

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Giuffrida, Rosalba; Dittrich, Yvonne

2013-01-01

of empirical studies on the usage of SoSo are available in related fields, there exists no comprehensive overview of what has been investigated to date across them. Objective: The aim of this review is to map empirical studies on the usage of SoSo in Software Engineering projects and in distributed teams...... for collaborative work, fostering awareness, knowledge management and coordination among team members. Contrary to the evident high importance of the social aspects offered by SoSo, socialization is not the most important usage reported. Conclusions: This review reports how SoSo is used in GSD and how it is capable...... of supporting GSD teams. Four emerging themes in global software engineering were identified: the appropriation and development of usage structures; understanding how an ecology of communication channels and tools are used by teams; the role played by SoSo either as a subtext or as an explicit goal; and finally...

Empirical studies on changes in oil governance

Science.gov (United States)

Kemal, Mohammad

Regulation of the oil and gas sector is consequential to the economies of oil-producing countries. In the literature, there are two types of regulation: indirect regulation through taxes and tariffs or direct regulation through the creation of a National Oil Company (NOC). In the 1970s, many oil-producing countries nationalized their oil and gas sectors by creating and giving ownership rights of oil and gas resources to NOCs. In light of the success of Norway in regulating its oil and gas resources, over the past two decades several countries have changed their oil governance by changing the rights given to NOC from ownership right to mere access rights like other oil companies. However, empirical literature on these changes in oil governance is quite thin. Thus, this dissertation will explore three research questions to investigate empirically these changes in oil governance. First, I investigate empirically the impact of the changes in oil governance on aggregate domestic income. By employing a difference-in-difference method, I will show that a country which changed its oil governance increases its GDP per-capita by 10%. However, the impact is different for different types of political institution. Second, by observing the changes in oil governance in Indonesia , I explore the impact of the changes on learning-by-doing and learning spillover effect in offshore exploration drilling. By employing an econometric model which includes interaction terms between various experience variables and changes in an oil governance dummy, I will show that the change in oil governance in Indonesia enhances learning-by-doing by the rigs and learning spillover in a basin. Lastly, the impact of the changes in oil governance on expropriation risk and extraction path will be explored. By employing a difference-in-difference method, this essay will show that the changes in oil governance reduce expropriation and the impact of it is different for different sizes of resource stock.

An empirical study on entrepreneurs' personal characteristics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ahmad Ahmadkhani

2012-04-01

Full Text Available The personality of an entrepreneur is one of the most important characteristics of reaching success by creating jobs and opportunities. In this paper, we demonstrate an empirical study on personal characteristics of students who are supposed to act as entrepreneur to create jobs in seven fields of accounting, computer science, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, metallurgy engineering, electrical engineering and drawing. There are seven aspects of accepting reasonable risk, locus of control, the need for success, mental health conditions, being pragmatic, tolerating ambiguity, dreaming and the sense of challenging in our study to measure the level of entrepreneurship. We uniformly distribute 133 questionnaires among undergraduate students in all seven groups and analyze the results based on t-student test. Our investigation indicates that all students accept reasonable amount of risk, they preserve sufficient locus of control and they are eager for success. In addition, our tests indicate that students believe they maintain sufficient level of mental health care with strong sense of being pragmatic and they could handle ambiguity and challenges.

The Need for Large-Scale, Longitudinal Empirical Studies in Middle Level Education Research

Science.gov (United States)

Mertens, Steven B.; Caskey, Micki M.; Flowers, Nancy

2016-01-01

This essay describes and discusses the ongoing need for large-scale, longitudinal, empirical research studies focused on middle grades education. After a statement of the problem and concerns, the essay describes and critiques several prior middle grades efforts and research studies. Recommendations for future research efforts to inform policy…

Corpus-Aided Business English Collocation Pedagogy: An Empirical Study in Chinese EFL Learners

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Lidan

2017-01-01

This study reports an empirical study of an explicit instruction of corpus-aided Business English collocations and verifies its effectiveness in improving learners' collocation awareness and learner autonomy, as a result of which is significant improvement of learners' collocation competence. An eight-week instruction in keywords' collocations,…

The Patronage Behaviour of Islamic Bank's Customers: Empirical Studies in Aceh

OpenAIRE

Abd. Majid, M. Shabri; Zulhanizar, Said

2016-01-01

This study is aimed at empirically exploring the pertinent factors, which customers and non-customer perceive as germane to their selection of Islamic bank in Aceh, Indonesia. A sample of 300 customers and non-customer of Bank Aceh Syariah were selected based on the convenience sampling technique. Using the logistic regression technique, the study documented that the customers’ selection of the banks were influenced by the factors of banks’ characteristic, services and trust, shari’ah complia...

Exchange Rate Exposures and Strategies of Industrial Companies: An Empirical Study

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Aabo, Tom

2001-01-01

This article investigates empirically the potential and actual exchange rate exposure strategies of industrial companies in relation to identifying and quantifying the neutral financial positions in an optimal hedging strategy.......This article investigates empirically the potential and actual exchange rate exposure strategies of industrial companies in relation to identifying and quantifying the neutral financial positions in an optimal hedging strategy....

Comparing empirical results of transaction avoidance rules studies

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Dijck, G.

2008-01-01

Empirical legal research in the UK and in the Netherlands has provided data on the extent to which the transaction avoidance rules (avoidance powers, actio Pauliana) generate practical problems. This article’s goal is to explore the similarities and differences of the data. To achieve this, existing

Teacher's Role In Enhancing Self-esteem Of Students With Dyslexia In The Lower Secondary Level

OpenAIRE

Palany, Poongkody

2008-01-01

Self-esteem has been one ofthe most researched issues in educational psychology. In recent times, there has been a growing interest regarding the affective aspect of dyslexia. Empirical evidence suggests that students with dyslexia manifest lower self-esteem. Therefore, it was deemed vital to further explore what has been and can be done to address the issue, especially by teachers who play an important role in the lives ofchildren with dyslexia. The aim of the present study was to investigat...

An empirical study of the relationship between restaurant image and customer loyalty

OpenAIRE

Oh, Heung Chul

1995-01-01

The primary objective of this study was to empirically determine the relationship between restaurant images and loyalties toward seven competing casual dinner house restaurant chains, and to understand the nature of their competition by matching patronage behavior toward alternative restaurant chains with perceptions of alternative restaurants on particular image attributes.

An Empirical Study on the Job Satisfaction of College Graduates in China

Science.gov (United States)

Changjun, Yue

2014-01-01

This study used nationwide, randomly sampled data from the Peking University Institute of Economics of Education 2011 survey of college graduates to conduct an empirical analysis of their job satisfaction. The results indicate that work-related factors have a significant effect on the job satisfaction of college graduates, while nonwork factors…

Empirical studies on the cross-section of corporate bond and stock markets

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Zundert, Jeroen

2018-01-01

This dissertation contains five empirical studies on the efficiency of corporate bond and stock markets. In Chapter 2, the pricing of interest rate risk in the stock market is analyzed. Over the long run, 1927 to 2015, the price of bearing interest rate risk is positive as expected, but there is

IMPROVING THE ECOLOGICALAND ECONOMIC INDICES OFTHE COMPANY ON THE BASIS OFTHE BESTAVAILABLE TECHNIQUES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anna Gunkova

2018-01-01

Full Text Available It is shown that the modern society pays much attention to the issue of environmental security. On the basis of literary sources it is noted that there is a trend to strengthening the role of environmentally oriented management methods, guidelines for the modernization of production, implementation of environmental management systems and environmental certification. Environmental certification helps the company to properly allocate resources for environmental protection and provides the state with the accurate data and the receipt of payments in budgets of all levels for negative impact on the environment. The structural changes are based on the requirements of the environmental legislation, new requirements to ecological regulation. The authors confirm the need for transition to the Best available techniques (BAT, which significantly improve environmental and economic performance of the enterprise. Implementation of BAT requires the effective replacement of obsolete resource-intensive production and modern technology. Such transitions affect the size of payments for negative impact on the environment and the volume of economic incentives from the state. It is noted that Russia applies the European experience as a basis of creating guidebooks on the best available techniques. The definition of technology as the best available techniques is determined by the resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation. Indicators and information generated in the BREF are also required in carrying out the environmental monitoring and control. Changes in these indicators reflect the quality of the technology used. Implementation of BAT requires significant investments, the priority should be conservation projects that eliminate the most acute environmental problems and maximize environmental benefits. The increased interest of enterprises in the application of environmental technologies is not only based on obtaining favorable conditions for state support, but are also aimed at improving the company’s image, increasing economic capacity and competitiveness.

Inglorious Empire

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Khair, Tabish

2017-01-01

Review of 'Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India' by Shashi Tharoor, London, Hurst Publishers, 2017, 296 pp., £20.00......Review of 'Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India' by Shashi Tharoor, London, Hurst Publishers, 2017, 296 pp., £20.00...

Comparing Web Applications with Desktop Applications: An Empirical Study

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pop, Paul

2002-01-01

In recent years, many desktop applications have been ported to the world wide web in order to reduce (multiplatform) development, distribution and maintenance costs. However, there is little data concerning the usability of web applications, and the impact of their usability on the total cost...... of developing and using such applications. In this paper we present a comparison of web and desktop applications from the usability point of view. The comparison is based on an empirical study that investigates the performance of a group of users on two calendaring applications: Yahoo!Calendar and Microsoft...... Calendar. The study shows that in the case of web applications the performance of the users is significantly reduced, mainly because of the restricted interaction mechanisms provided by current web browsers....

Empirical Research In Engineering Design

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ahmed, Saeema

2007-01-01

Increasingly engineering design research involves the use of empirical studies that are conducted within an industrial environment [Ahmed, 2001; Court 1995; Hales 1987]. Research into the use of information by designers or understanding how engineers build up experience are examples of research...... of research issues. This paper describes case studies of empirical research carried out within industry in engineering design focusing upon information, knowledge and experience in engineering design. The paper describes the research methods employed, their suitability for the particular research aims...

Practical implications of empirically studying moral decision making

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Heinzelmann, N.; Ugazio, G.; Tobler, P.N.

2012-01-01

This paper considers the practical question of why people do not behave in the way they ought to behave. This question is a practical one, reaching both into the normative and descriptive domains of morality. That is, it concerns moral norms as well as empirical facts. We argue that two main

Empirical agent-based modelling challenges and solutions

CERN Document Server

Barreteau, Olivier

2014-01-01

This instructional book showcases techniques to parameterise human agents in empirical agent-based models (ABM). In doing so, it provides a timely overview of key ABM methodologies and the most innovative approaches through a variety of empirical applications.  It features cutting-edge research from leading academics and practitioners, and will provide a guide for characterising and parameterising human agents in empirical ABM.  In order to facilitate learning, this text shares the valuable experiences of other modellers in particular modelling situations. Very little has been published in the area of empirical ABM, and this contributed volume will appeal to graduate-level students and researchers studying simulation modeling in economics, sociology, ecology, and trans-disciplinary studies, such as topics related to sustainability. In a similar vein to the instruction found in a cookbook, this text provides the empirical modeller with a set of 'recipes'  ready to be implemented. Agent-based modeling (AB...

Trade liberalization, social policies and health: an empirical case study.

Science.gov (United States)

McNamara, Courtney

2015-10-12

This study investigates the health impacts of a major liberalization episode in the textile and clothing (T&C) sector. This episode triggered substantial shifts in employment across a wide range of countries. It is the first study to empirically link trade liberalization to health via changes in employment and offers some of the first empirical insights on how trade liberalization interacts with social policies to influence health. Data from 32 T&C reliant countries were analysed in reference to the pre- and post-liberalization periods of 2000-2004 and 2005-2009. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was used to examine the association between countries' a) level of development b) labour market and welfare state protections c) T&C employment changes and d) changes in adult female and infant mortality rates. Process tracing was used to further investigate these associations through twelve in-depth country studies. Results from the fsQCA relate changes in employment after the phase-out to both changing adult female and infant mortality rates. Findings from the in-depth country studies suggest that the worsening of adult female mortality rates is related to workers' lack of social protection, both in the context of T&C employment growth and loss. Overall, it is found that social protection is often inaccessible to the type of workers who may be the most vulnerable to processes of liberalization and that many workers are particularly vulnerable due to the structure of social protection policies. Social policies are therefore found to both moderate pathways to health and influence the type of health-related pathways resulting from trade liberalizing policies.

Inter-firm Networks, Organizational Learning and Knowledge Updating: An Empirical Study

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Su-rong; Wang, Wen-ping

In the era of knowledge-based economy which information technology develops rapidly, the rate of knowledge updating has become a critical factor for enterprises to gaining competitive advantage .We build an interactional theoretical model among inter-firm networks, organizational learning and knowledge updating thereby and demonstrate it with empirical study at last. The result shows that inter-firm networks and organizational learning is the source of knowledge updating.

Empirical Studies of Exchange Rates: Price Behavior, Rate Determinationand Market Efficiency

OpenAIRE

Richard M. Levich

1983-01-01

Theoretical and empirical research completed over the last decade has dramatically increased our understanding of exchange rate behavior. The major insight to come from this decade of research is that foreign exchange is a financial asset. In an asset pricing framework, current exchange rates reflect the expected values of future exogenous variables. The purpose of this paper is to survay the empirical evidence on exchange rate behavior, market efficiency and related topics. Section 2 present...

Impact of Company Size on Manufacturing Improvement Practices: An empirical study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Syan, C S; Ramoutar, K

2014-01-01

There is a constant search for ways to achieve a competitive advantage through new manufacturing techniques. Best performing manufacturing companies tend to use world-class manufacturing (WCM) practices. Although the last few years have witnessed phenomenal growth in the use of WCM techniques, their effectiveness is not well understood specifically in the context of less developed countries. This paper presents an empirical study to investigate the impact of company size on improving manufacturing performance in manufacturing organizations based in Trinidad and Tobago (T and T). Empirical data were collected via a questionnaire survey which was send to 218 manufacturing firms in T and T. Five different company sizes and seven different industry sectors were studied. The analysis of survey data was performed with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The study signified facilitating and impeding factors towards improving manufacturing performance. Their relative impact/importance is dependent on varying company size and industry sectors. Findings indicate that T and T manufacturers are still practicing traditional approaches, when compared with world class manufacturers. In the majority of organizations, these practices were not 100% implemented even though they started the implementation process more than 5 years ago. The findings provided some insights in formulating more optimal operational strategies, and later develop action plans towards more effective implementation of WCM in T and T manufacturers

Impact of Company Size on Manufacturing Improvement Practices: An empirical study

Science.gov (United States)

Syan, C. S.; Ramoutar, K.

2014-07-01

There is a constant search for ways to achieve a competitive advantage through new manufacturing techniques. Best performing manufacturing companies tend to use world-class manufacturing (WCM) practices. Although the last few years have witnessed phenomenal growth in the use of WCM techniques, their effectiveness is not well understood specifically in the context of less developed countries. This paper presents an empirical study to investigate the impact of company size on improving manufacturing performance in manufacturing organizations based in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). Empirical data were collected via a questionnaire survey which was send to 218 manufacturing firms in T&T. Five different company sizes and seven different industry sectors were studied. The analysis of survey data was performed with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The study signified facilitating and impeding factors towards improving manufacturing performance. Their relative impact/importance is dependent on varying company size and industry sectors. Findings indicate that T&T manufacturers are still practicing traditional approaches, when compared with world class manufacturers. In the majority of organizations, these practices were not 100% implemented even though they started the implementation process more than 5 years ago. The findings provided some insights in formulating more optimal operational strategies, and later develop action plans towards more effective implementation of WCM in T&T manufacturers.

Interactions between Obsessional Symptoms and Interpersonal Ambivalences in Psychodynamic Therapy: An Empirical Case Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Cornelis, Shana; Desmet, Mattias; Van Nieuwenhove, Kimberly L H D; Meganck, Reitske; Willemsen, Jochem; Inslegers, Ruth; Feyaerts, Jasper

2017-01-01

The classical symptom specificity hypothesis (Blatt, 1974) particularly associates obsessional symptoms to interpersonal behavior directed at autonomy and separation from others. Cross-sectional group research, however, has yielded inconsistent findings on this predicted association, and a previous empirical case study (Cornelis et al., in press; see Chapter 2) documented obsessional pathology to be rooted in profound ambivalences between autonomous and dependent interpersonal dynamics. Therefore, in the present empirical case study, concrete operationalizations of the classical symptom specificity hypothesis are contrasted to alternative hypotheses based on the observed complexities in Chapter 2. Dynamic associations between obsessional symptoms and interpersonal functioning is further explored, aiming at further contribution to theory building (i.e., through suggestions for potential hypothesis-refinement; Stiles, 2009). Similar to the first empirical case study (Chapter 1), Consensual Qualitative Research for Case studies is used to quantitatively and qualitatively describe the longitudinal, clinical interplay between obsessional symptoms and interpersonal dynamics throughout the process of supportive-expressive psychodynamic therapy. In line with findings from Chapter 1, findings reveal close associations between obsessions and interpersonal dynamics, and therapist interventions focusing on interpersonal conflicts are documented as related to interpersonal and symptomatic alterations. Observations predominantly accord to the ambivalence-hypothesis rather than to the classical symptom specificity hypothesis. Yet, meaningful differences are observed in concrete manifestations of interpersonal ambivalences within significant relationships. Findings are again discussed in light of conceptual and methodological considerations; and limitations and future research indications are addressed.

Interactions between Obsessional Symptoms and Interpersonal Ambivalences in Psychodynamic Therapy: An Empirical Case Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shana Cornelis

2017-06-01

Full Text Available The classical symptom specificity hypothesis (Blatt, 1974 particularly associates obsessional symptoms to interpersonal behavior directed at autonomy and separation from others. Cross-sectional group research, however, has yielded inconsistent findings on this predicted association, and a previous empirical case study (Cornelis et al., in press; see Chapter 2 documented obsessional pathology to be rooted in profound ambivalences between autonomous and dependent interpersonal dynamics. Therefore, in the present empirical case study, concrete operationalizations of the classical symptom specificity hypothesis are contrasted to alternative hypotheses based on the observed complexities in Chapter 2. Dynamic associations between obsessional symptoms and interpersonal functioning is further explored, aiming at further contribution to theory building (i.e., through suggestions for potential hypothesis-refinement; Stiles, 2009. Similar to the first empirical case study (Chapter 1, Consensual Qualitative Research for Case studies is used to quantitatively and qualitatively describe the longitudinal, clinical interplay between obsessional symptoms and interpersonal dynamics throughout the process of supportive-expressive psychodynamic therapy. In line with findings from Chapter 1, findings reveal close associations between obsessions and interpersonal dynamics, and therapist interventions focusing on interpersonal conflicts are documented as related to interpersonal and symptomatic alterations. Observations predominantly accord to the ambivalence-hypothesis rather than to the classical symptom specificity hypothesis. Yet, meaningful differences are observed in concrete manifestations of interpersonal ambivalences within significant relationships. Findings are again discussed in light of conceptual and methodological considerations; and limitations and future research indications are addressed.

Determinants of user acceptance of internet banking: An empirical study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hessam Zandhessami

2014-07-01

Full Text Available The boom of Internet usage and the significant funding dynamism in electronic banking have attracted the attention of researchers towards Internet banking. In the past, the traditional focus of Internet banking research has been on technological development, but it is now switching to user-focused research. This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine determinants of user acceptance of internet banking. The proposed study uses Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL technique to measure the relationships between different factors in a case study of Iranian firm. The results indicate that trust is the most important factor for development of internet banking.

The Role of Empirical Research in Bioethics

Science.gov (United States)

Kon, Alexander A.

2010-01-01

There has long been tension between bioethicists whose work focuses on classical philosophical inquiry and those who perform empirical studies on bioethical issues. While many have argued that empirical research merely illuminates current practices and cannot inform normative ethics, others assert that research-based work has significant implications for refining our ethical norms. In this essay, I present a novel construct for classifying empirical research in bioethics into four hierarchical categories: Lay of the Land, Ideal Versus Reality, Improving Care, and Changing Ethical Norms. Through explaining these four categories and providing examples of publications in each stratum, I define how empirical research informs normative ethics. I conclude by demonstrating how philosophical inquiry and empirical research can work cooperatively to further normative ethics. PMID:19998120

Evidence for the Effectiveness of Jungian Psychotherapy: A Review of Empirical Studies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christian Roesler

2013-10-01

Full Text Available Since the 1990s several research projects and empirical studies (process and outcome on Jungian Psychotherapy have been conducted mainly in Germany and Switzerland. Prospective, naturalistic outcome studies and retrospective studies using standardized instruments and health insurance data as well as several qualitative studies of aspects of the psychotherapeutic process will be summarized. The studies are diligently designed and the results are well applicable to the conditions of outpatient practice. All the studies show significant improvements not only on the level of symptoms and interpersonal problems, but also on the level of personality structure and in every day life conduct. These improvements remain stable after completion of therapy over a period of up to six years. Several studies show further improvements after the end of therapy, an effect which psychoanalysis has always claimed. Health insurance data show that, after Jungian therapy, patients reduce health care utilization to a level even below the average of the total population. Results of several studies show that Jungian treatment moves patients from a level of severe symptoms to a level where one can speak of psychological health. These significant changes are reached by Jungian therapy with an average of 90 sessions, which makes Jungian psychotherapy an effective and cost-effective method. Process studies support Jungian theories on psychodynamics and elements of change in the therapeutic process. So finally, Jungian psychotherapy has reached the point where it can be called an empirically proven, effective method.

An Empirical Case Study of a Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Initiative in Georgia

Science.gov (United States)

Schober, Daniel J.; Fawcett, Stephen B.; Thigpen, Sally; Curtis, Anna; Wright, Renee

2012-01-01

Objective: This empirical case study describes Prevent Child Abuse Georgia's effort to prevent child sexual abuse (CSA) by educating communities throughout the state on supporting preventive behaviour. The initiative consisted of three major components: (1) dissemination of CSA prevention messages and materials; (2) a statewide helpline that…

An Empirical Review of Research Methodologies and Methods in Creativity Studies (2003-2012)

Science.gov (United States)

Long, Haiying

2014-01-01

Based on the data collected from 5 prestigious creativity journals, research methodologies and methods of 612 empirical studies on creativity, published between 2003 and 2012, were reviewed and compared to those in gifted education. Major findings included: (a) Creativity research was predominantly quantitative and psychometrics and experiment…

Empirical studies of design software: Implications for software engineering environments

Science.gov (United States)

Krasner, Herb

1988-01-01

The empirical studies team of MCC's Design Process Group conducted three studies in 1986-87 in order to gather data on professionals designing software systems in a range of situations. The first study (the Lift Experiment) used thinking aloud protocols in a controlled laboratory setting to study the cognitive processes of individual designers. The second study (the Object Server Project) involved the observation, videotaping, and data collection of a design team of a medium-sized development project over several months in order to study team dynamics. The third study (the Field Study) involved interviews with the personnel from 19 large development projects in the MCC shareholders in order to study how the process of design is affected by organizationl and project behavior. The focus of this report will be on key observations of design process (at several levels) and their implications for the design of environments.

Reflective equilibrium and empirical data: third person moral experiences in empirical medical ethics.

Science.gov (United States)

De Vries, Martine; Van Leeuwen, Evert

2010-11-01

In ethics, the use of empirical data has become more and more popular, leading to a distinct form of applied ethics, namely empirical ethics. This 'empirical turn' is especially visible in bioethics. There are various ways of combining empirical research and ethical reflection. In this paper we discuss the use of empirical data in a special form of Reflective Equilibrium (RE), namely the Network Model with Third Person Moral Experiences. In this model, the empirical data consist of the moral experiences of people in a practice. Although inclusion of these moral experiences in this specific model of RE can be well defended, their use in the application of the model still raises important questions. What precisely are moral experiences? How to determine relevance of experiences, in other words: should there be a selection of the moral experiences that are eventually used in the RE? How much weight should the empirical data have in the RE? And the key question: can the use of RE by empirical ethicists really produce answers to practical moral questions? In this paper we start to answer the above questions by giving examples taken from our research project on understanding the norm of informed consent in the field of pediatric oncology. We especially emphasize that incorporation of empirical data in a network model can reduce the risk of self-justification and bias and can increase the credibility of the RE reached. © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

On the Sophistication of Naïve Empirical Reasoning: Factors Influencing Mathematicians' Persuasion Ratings of Empirical Arguments

Science.gov (United States)

Weber, Keith

2013-01-01

This paper presents the results of an experiment in which mathematicians were asked to rate how persuasive they found two empirical arguments. There were three key results from this study: (a) Participants judged an empirical argument as more persuasive if it verified that integers possessed an infrequent property than if it verified that integers…

Empirical Bayes ranking and selection methods via semiparametric hierarchical mixture models in microarray studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Noma, Hisashi; Matsui, Shigeyuki

2013-05-20

The main purpose of microarray studies is screening of differentially expressed genes as candidates for further investigation. Because of limited resources in this stage, prioritizing genes are relevant statistical tasks in microarray studies. For effective gene selections, parametric empirical Bayes methods for ranking and selection of genes with largest effect sizes have been proposed (Noma et al., 2010; Biostatistics 11: 281-289). The hierarchical mixture model incorporates the differential and non-differential components and allows information borrowing across differential genes with separation from nuisance, non-differential genes. In this article, we develop empirical Bayes ranking methods via a semiparametric hierarchical mixture model. A nonparametric prior distribution, rather than parametric prior distributions, for effect sizes is specified and estimated using the "smoothing by roughening" approach of Laird and Louis (1991; Computational statistics and data analysis 12: 27-37). We present applications to childhood and infant leukemia clinical studies with microarrays for exploring genes related to prognosis or disease progression. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An empirical study on primary school teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education in Jakarta, Indonesia

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kurniawati, Farida; Minnaert, A.E.M.G.; Mangunsong, F.; Ahmed, W.

2012-01-01

Empirical research revealed that teachers’ attitudes play a crucial role in successful implementation of inclusive education. This study aimed to examine primary school teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education in Jakarta, Indonesia. Respondents completed the attitude scale which comprised the

Empirical studies on usability of mHealth apps: a systematic literature review.

Science.gov (United States)

Zapata, Belén Cruz; Fernández-Alemán, José Luis; Idri, Ali; Toval, Ambrosio

2015-02-01

The release of smartphones and tablets, which offer more advanced communication and computing capabilities, has led to the strong emergence of mHealth on the market. mHealth systems are being used to improve patients' lives and their health, in addition to facilitating communication between doctors and patients. Researchers are now proposing mHealth applications for many health conditions such as dementia, autism, dysarthria, Parkinson's disease, and so on. Usability becomes a key factor in the adoption of these applications, which are often used by people who have problems when using mobile devices and who have a limited experience of technology. The aim of this paper is to investigate the empirical usability evaluation processes described in a total of 22 selected studies related to mHealth applications by means of a Systematic Literature Review. Our results show that the empirical evaluation methods employed as regards usability could be improved by the adoption of automated mechanisms. The evaluation processes should also be revised to combine more than one method. This paper will help researchers and developers to create more usable applications. Our study demonstrates the importance of adapting health applications to users' need.

Abnormal Time Experiences in Major Depression: An Empirical Qualitative Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Stanghellini, Giovanni; Ballerini, Massimo; Presenza, Simona; Mancini, Milena; Northoff, Georg; Cutting, John

2017-01-01

Phenomenological psychopathology, through theoretical and idiographic studies, conceptualizes major depressive disorder (MDD) as a disorder of time experience. Investigations on abnormal time experience (ATE) in MDD adopting methodologies requested by the standards of empirical sciences are still lacking. Our study aimed to provide a qualitative analysis, on an empirical ground and on a large scale, of narratives of temporal experiences of persons affected by MDD. We interviewed 550 consecutive patients affected by affective and schizophrenic disorders. Clinical files were analysed by means of consensual qualitative research. Out of 100 MDD patients, 96 reported at least 1 ATE. The principal categories of ATE are vital retardation - the experience of a stagnation of endogenous vital processes (37 patients), the experience of present and future dominated by the past (29 patients), and the experience of the slackening of the flow oftime (25 patients). A comparison with ATE in schizophrenia patients showed that in MDD, unlike in schizophrenia, there is no disarticulation of time experience (disorder of temporal synthesis) but rather a disorder of conation or inhibition of becoming. The interview style was not meant to make a quantitative assessment ("false negatives" cannot be excluded). Our findings confirm the relevance of distinctive features of ATE in MDD, support the hypothesis of an intrinsic disordered temporal structure in depressive symptoms, and may have direct implications in clinical practice, especially in relation to differential diagnosis, setting the boundaries between "true" and milder forms of depression, and neurobiological research. © 2016 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Service delivery innovation architecture: An empirical study of antecedents and outcomes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rajeev Verma

2014-06-01

Full Text Available The research examines service delivery innovation architecture and its role in achieving sustainable competitive advantage of firms. The study develops and empirically examines an antecedent based model of service delivery innovation. We collected data from 203 service sector professionals working in Mexican financial and information technology firms, and tested the proposed relationship. Further, the study investigates the moderating role of customer orientation on innovation driven performance outcomes. Results show that customer orientation strengthens the service delivery–performance relationship. This paper aims to contribute to the strategic planning of service firms by guiding their resource allocation to ensure sustainable growth.

Model and Empirical Study on Several Urban Public Transport Networks in China

Science.gov (United States)

Ding, Yimin; Ding, Zhuo

2012-07-01

In this paper, we present the empirical investigation results on the urban public transport networks (PTNs) and propose a model to understand the results obtained. We investigate some urban public traffic networks in China, which are the urban public traffic networks of Beijing, Guangzhou, Wuhan and etc. The empirical results on the big cities show that the accumulative act-degree distributions of PTNs take neither power function forms, nor exponential function forms, but they are described by a shifted power function, and the accumulative act-degree distributions of PTNs in medium-sized or small cities follow the same law. In the end, we propose a model to show a possible evolutionary mechanism for the emergence of such network. The analytic results obtained from this model are in good agreement with the empirical results.

Empiric guideline-recommended weight-based vancomycin dosing and mortality in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia: a retrospective cohort study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hall Ronald G

2012-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background No studies have evaluated the effect of guideline-recommended weight-based dosing on in-hospital mortality of patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia. Methods This was a multicenter, retrospective, cohort study of patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia receiving at least 48 hours of empiric vancomycin therapy between 01/07/2002 and 30/06/2008. We compared in-hospital mortality for patients treated empirically with weight-based, guideline-recommended vancomycin doses (at least 15 mg/kg/dose to those treated with less than 15 mg/kg/dose. We used a general linear mixed multivariable model analysis with variables identified a priori through a conceptual framework based on the literature. Results A total of 337 patients who were admitted to the three hospitals were included in the cohort. One-third of patients received vancomycin empirically at the guideline-recommended dose. Guideline-recommended dosing was not associated with in-hospital mortality in the univariable (16% vs. 13%, OR 1.26 [95%CI 0.67-2.39] or multivariable (OR 0.71, 95%CI 0.33-1.55 analysis. Independent predictors of in-hospital mortality were ICU admission, Pitt bacteremia score of 4 or greater, age 53 years or greater, and nephrotoxicity. Conclusions Empiric use of weight-based, guideline-recommended empiric vancomycin dosing was not associated with reduced mortality in this multicenter study.

Empirical Studies on English Vocabulary Learning Strategies in Mainland China over the Past Two Decades

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zhongxin Dai

2015-02-01

Full Text Available Wen and Wang (2004 reviewed the empirical studies over the past two decades (from 1984 to 2003 on learning strategies that Chinese EFL learners used. This article, following their methodological framework, reviews about 45 empirical studies on Chinese EFL learners’ English vocabulary learning strategies, conducted by Mainland Chinese scholars over the past two decades. The review shows that more than half of the Chinese scholars are interested in questionnaire investigation of EFL learners’ preferences for vocabulary learning. The reports of the questionnaire investigations indicate that most Chinese EFL learners prefer rote learning of vocabulary to learning vocabulary in context or through language use. The experimental studies suggest that strategies-based instruction results in the learners’ vocabulary achievement. Cognitive and metacognitive strategies are the two groups of strategies that Chinese researchers show particular interest in.

An empirical study of business effect and industry effect in Galicia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Susana Iglesias

2007-07-01

Full Text Available This work is a contribution to the analysis of the influence that industry and business factors have on the variability of the organizational performance. A linear hierarchical model with fixed effects is applied to a sample of Galician firms. The results show that the portion of such variability explained by the business factor is clearly greater than that explained by the industry factor. These results, in favour of the business effect, are similar to other obtained in previous empirical studies.

An empirical study of factors affecting inflation in Republic of Tajikistan

OpenAIRE

Qurbanalieva, Nigina

2013-01-01

This paper investigates the core factors affecting the price level in republic of Tajikistan by using ‘auto regressive distributed lags’ and Johansen-Juselius cointegration models. The empirical analysis is based on a dataset of demand pull and cost push inflation indicators. We used the monthly data for a period of 2005 to 2012. The findings of this study reveal that in the long run exchange rate, world wheat prices, world oil prices and labor supply Granger cause the price level. Neverthele...

An empirical study exploring body perception and apparel fit preferences for South African women

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Pandarum, R

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This empirical study examines the body shapes and apparel fit incongruities experienced by a convenience sample of South African women (n=155), aged 20 to 65 years. Also examined was the extent to which apparel manufactured using the currently...

The emotional involvement in the workplace: An empirical study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ana María Lucia-Casademunt

2012-06-01

Full Text Available Purpose: In a multitude of studies, it is verified that the generation of positive attitudes for employees such as job satisfaction or job involvement, have a positive influence on productivity levels of companies. The current investigation focus on the identification of employee-profile -who is emotionally involved with their work activity- through the use of a set of individual, job related and attitudinal factors.Design/methodology: A review of the literature about the main factors that affect the job involvement particularly on its emotional dimension has been completed. For its measurement at the empirical level, various items related to psychological well being of employees included in the IV European Working Conditions Survey-2010 are used. Moreover, those items are identified in Job Involvement Questionnaire (Lodahl & Kejner, 1965. Since then, an empirical and multidimensional study is carried out by applying a logistic regression model on the sample of 11,149 employees obtained with European survey cited previously.Findings: The logistic regression model identifies the factors, which are directly related to emotional involvement at the workplace. Ultimately, is raised a definitive model that define the European employee-profile -who is emotionally involved at the workplace-: a rather aged person who has been working at his/her present place of employment for several years in a medium-sized company where possibly there exist a good working relationship between workers and their superiors –social support-. These employees are “white-collar” workers, have career advancement opportunities in the organizational hierarchy. They perform variety, flexible and complex tasks, which leads to satisfaction in terms of pay and working conditions.Research limitations/implications: Emotional involvement has been measured through self-awareness and, therefore, the corresponding bias in the key variable must be assumed. In addition, the casual

Integration of least angle regression with empirical Bayes for multi-locus genome-wide association studies

Science.gov (United States)

Multi-locus genome-wide association studies has become the state-of-the-art procedure to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with traits simultaneously. However, implementation of multi-locus model is still difficult. In this study, we integrated least angle regression with empirical B...

An empirical study to measure the relationship between management style and conflict management

OpenAIRE

Saeed Moghaddas Pour; Alireza Bakhshi Zadeh; Elham Barati

2012-01-01

Leadership plays an important role among five main components of management. These days, many organizations try to resolve any existing conflicts through adapting an appropriate leadership strategy. During the past few years, there are increasing interests in examining the relationship between management style and conflict management. The proposed study of this paper performs an empirical study to find the relationship between relationship-oriented leadership style and solution-oriented strat...

An empirical study of desired versus actual compensation practices in determining intrapreneurial behaviour

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ugochukwu O. Madu

2014-08-01

Full Text Available Orientation: Past research recognises that human resources management practices may influence innovative behaviour, particularly as compensation systems can be used as a tool to increase intrapreneurial activity. Research purpose: The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between actual versus desired compensation practices and elevated intrapreneurial behaviour. This is in line with research that focuses on how to promote business innovation, rather than merely research whether innovation is desirable for businesses or not. Motivation for the study: Recognising that entrepreneurial actions are the bedrock of intrapreneurial behaviour and that these behaviours may be critical to the long-term vitality of a firm and economy, it is important to facilitate the empirical study of them in an underresearched, emerging market environment. Moreover, compensation such as reward preferences and variable pay schemes remain controversial in terms of their costs versus contributions, and these constructs deserve more empirical research. Research approach, design and method: The study employed a quantitative research design, using a cross-sectional and empirical approach with primary data sources. A structured webbased instrument rendered a sample of 209 respondents from a diverse set of businesses. Canonical correlational analysis was carried out to test the hypotheses. Main findings: The results reveal that a gap exists between an employee’s perception of desired compensation practices and the actual compensation practices. The results further highlight that non-outcome-based measures like pay risk, job risk and expectations of success play a role in determining whether employees decide to be intrapreneurial or not. Practical/managerial implications: Due to the potential impact rewards have on intrapreneurial behaviour, it is necessary to design relevant compensation systems as part of organisational architecture in order to foster

Gambling behavior and problems among older adults: a systematic review of empirical studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Tse, Samson; Hong, Song-Iee; Wang, Chong-Wen; Cunningham-Williams, Renee M

2012-09-01

With the rapid aging of the population and the increased availability of gambling facilities over the past three decades, older adults may gamble more and may be increasingly at risk for problem gambling (PG) or pathological gambling disorder (PGD). To facilitate a better understanding of gambling behavior among older adults that will inform preventive strategies, this article systematically examined empirical studies on issues related to older adults' gambling. This article reviewed 75 empirical studies including data on the distribution and determinants of PG and PGD and the outcomes of gambling. This review used the broad term of "disordered gambling" as a means to explain a continuum of problems caused by PG and PGD. The analyses covered seven topics concerning older adults' gambling behaviors: Participation rates for gambling, prevalence rates of disordered gambling, motivation for initially beginning to gamble, risk and protective factors for disordered gambling, and negative and positive health outcomes from gambling. Based on research gaps identified in the review, this article proposes six recommendations for future studies focusing on well-being of older adults who gamble, research method issues, and taking into account older adults' inspirations and adjustment to the aging process in the 21st century.

Environmental management in Slovenian industrial enterprises - Empirical study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vesna Čančer

2002-01-01

Full Text Available timulated with the firm belief that environmental management helps enterprises to achieve business success, expressed by a majority of managers in the sample enterprises, we present the results of an empirical study in the Slovene processing industry. The purpose of our research work is to identify, analyse and present the importance of the environment in business decision-making, the role of environmental management in strategic decision-making and its distribution across the business functions; environmental performance in business processes; the use of the methods for environmentally oriented business decision-making and the developmental tendencies of environmental management in Slovene enterprises of the processing industry. We define the key drivers of environmental management and their effect on the environmental behaviour of these enterprises. We present and interpret data indicating that environmental management is caused not only by compliance and regulation, but also by competition and enterprises’ own initiative.

The emerging empirics of evolutionary economic geography

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Boschma, R.A.; Frenken, K.

2011-01-01

Following last decade’s programmatic papers on Evolutionary Economic Geography, we report on recent empirical advances and how this empirical work can be positioned vis-a`-vis other strands of research in economic geography. First, we review studies on the path dependent nature of clustering, and

The emerging empirics of evolutionary economic geography

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Boschma, R.A.; Frenken, K.

2010-01-01

Following last decade’s programmatic papers on Evolutionary Economic Geography, we report on recent empirical advances and how this empirical work can be positioned vis-à-vis other strands of research in economic geography. First, we review studies on the path dependent nature of clustering, and how

The emerging empirics of evolutionary economic geography.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Boschma, R.A.; Frenken, K.

2011-01-01

Following last decade’s programmatic papers on Evolutionary Economic Geography, we report on recent empirical advances and how this empirical work can be positioned vis-a`-vis other strands of research in economic geography. First, we review studies on the path dependent nature of clustering, and

What 'empirical turn in bioethics'?

Science.gov (United States)

Hurst, Samia

2010-10-01

Uncertainty as to how we should articulate empirical data and normative reasoning seems to underlie most difficulties regarding the 'empirical turn' in bioethics. This article examines three different ways in which we could understand 'empirical turn'. Using real facts in normative reasoning is trivial and would not represent a 'turn'. Becoming an empirical discipline through a shift to the social and neurosciences would be a turn away from normative thinking, which we should not take. Conducting empirical research to inform normative reasoning is the usual meaning given to the term 'empirical turn'. In this sense, however, the turn is incomplete. Bioethics has imported methodological tools from empirical disciplines, but too often it has not imported the standards to which researchers in these disciplines are held. Integrating empirical and normative approaches also represents true added difficulties. Addressing these issues from the standpoint of debates on the fact-value distinction can cloud very real methodological concerns by displacing the debate to a level of abstraction where they need not be apparent. Ideally, empirical research in bioethics should meet standards for empirical and normative validity similar to those used in the source disciplines for these methods, and articulate these aspects clearly and appropriately. More modestly, criteria to ensure that none of these standards are completely left aside would improve the quality of empirical bioethics research and partly clear the air of critiques addressing its theoretical justification, when its rigour in the particularly difficult context of interdisciplinarity is what should be at stake.

Quantitative analyses of empirical fitness landscapes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Szendro, Ivan G; Franke, Jasper; Krug, Joachim; Schenk, Martijn F; De Visser, J Arjan G M

2013-01-01

The concept of a fitness landscape is a powerful metaphor that offers insight into various aspects of evolutionary processes and guidance for the study of evolution. Until recently, empirical evidence on the ruggedness of these landscapes was lacking, but since it became feasible to construct all possible genotypes containing combinations of a limited set of mutations, the number of studies has grown to a point where a classification of landscapes becomes possible. The aim of this review is to identify measures of epistasis that allow a meaningful comparison of fitness landscapes and then apply them to the empirical landscapes in order to discern factors that affect ruggedness. The various measures of epistasis that have been proposed in the literature appear to be equivalent. Our comparison shows that the ruggedness of the empirical landscape is affected by whether the included mutations are beneficial or deleterious and by whether intragenic or intergenic epistasis is involved. Finally, the empirical landscapes are compared to landscapes generated with the rough Mt Fuji model. Despite the simplicity of this model, it captures the features of the experimental landscapes remarkably well. (paper)

An Empirical Study of Atmospheric Correction Procedures for Regional Infrasound Amplitudes with Ground Truth.

Science.gov (United States)

Howard, J. E.

2014-12-01

This study focusses on improving methods of accounting for atmospheric effects on infrasound amplitudes observed on arrays at regional distances in the southwestern United States. Recordings at ranges of 150 to nearly 300 km from a repeating ground truth source of small HE explosions are used. The explosions range in actual weight from approximately 2000-4000 lbs. and are detonated year-round which provides signals for a wide range of atmospheric conditions. Three methods of correcting the observed amplitudes for atmospheric effects are investigated with the data set. The first corrects amplitudes for upper stratospheric wind as developed by Mutschlecner and Whitaker (1999) and uses the average wind speed between 45-55 km altitudes in the direction of propagation to derive an empirical correction formula. This approach was developed using large chemical and nuclear explosions and is tested with the smaller explosions for which shorter wavelengths cause the energy to be scattered by the smaller scale structure of the atmosphere. The second approach isa semi-empirical method using ray tracing to determine wind speed at ray turning heights where the wind estimates replace the wind values in the existing formula. Finally, parabolic equation (PE) modeling is used to predict the amplitudes at the arrays at 1 Hz. The PE amplitudes are compared to the observed amplitudes with a narrow band filter centered at 1 Hz. An analysis is performed of the conditions under which the empirical and semi-empirical methods fail and full wave methods must be used.

Empirical study of the impact of corruption on entrepreneurship in transition economies

OpenAIRE

Duong, Phuong Thanh

2015-01-01

In this study, we attempt to understand the current level of corruption and the development of entrepreneurship in transition economies. Based on that knowledge, we strike to develop concrete empirical results revealing the impacts of corruption on entrepreneurship in these special economies. After that, recommendations to address the issues are proposed. In particular, we focus on promoting structural and institutional reforms emphasizing on the importance of the privatization process. Our i...

Anterior temporal face patches: A meta-analysis and empirical study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rebecca J. Von Der Heide

2013-02-01

Full Text Available Studies of nonhuman primates have reported face sensitive patches in the ventral anterior temporal lobes (ATL. In humans, ATL resection or damage causes an associative prosopagnosia in which face perception is intact but face memory is compromised. Some fMRI studies have extended these findings using famous and familiar faces. However, it is unclear whether these regions in the human ATL are in locations comparable to those reported in non-human primates, typically using unfamiliar faces. We present the results of two studies of person memory: a meta-analysis of existing fMRI studies and an empirical fMRI study using optimized imaging parameters. Both studies showed left-lateralized ATL activations to familiar individuals while novel faces activated the right ATL. Activations to famous faces were quite ventral, similar to what has been reported in monkeys. These findings suggest that face memory-sensitive patches in the human ATL are in the ventral/polar ATL.

Autobiography After Empire

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rasch, Astrid

of the collective, but insufficient attention has been paid to how individuals respond to such narrative changes. This dissertation examines the relationship between individual and collective memory at the end of empire through analysis of 13 end of empire autobiographies by public intellectuals from Australia......Decolonisation was a major event of the twentieth century, redrawing maps and impacting on identity narratives around the globe. As new nations defined their place in the world, the national and imperial past was retold in new cultural memories. These developments have been studied at the level......, the Anglophone Caribbean and Zimbabwe. I conceive of memory as reconstructive and social, with individual memory striving to make sense of the past in the present in dialogue with surrounding narratives. By examining recurring tropes in the autobiographies, like colonial education, journeys to the imperial...

Empirical Evidence from Kenya

African Journals Online (AJOL)

FIRST LADY

2011-01-18

Jan 18, 2011 ... Empirical results reveal that consumption of sugar in. Kenya varies ... experiences in trade in different regions of the world. Some studies ... To assess the relationship between domestic sugar retail prices and sugar sales in ...

Information Assurance in Saudi Organizations - An Empirical Study

Science.gov (United States)

Nabi, Syed Irfan; Mirza, Abdulrahman A.; Alghathbar, Khaled

This paper presents selective results of a survey conducted to find out the much needed insight into the status of information security in Saudi Arabian organizations. The purpose of this research is to give the state of information assurance in the Kingdom and to better understand the prevalent ground realities. The survey covered technical aspects of information security, risk management and information assurance management. The results provide deep insights in to the existing level of information assurance in various sectors that can be helpful in better understanding the intricate details of the prevalent information security in the Kingdom. Also, the results can be very useful for information assurance policy makers in the government as well as private sector organizations. There are few empirical studies on information assurance governance available in literature, especially about the Middle East and Saudi Arabia, therefore, the results are invaluable for information security researchers in improving the understanding of information assurance in this region and the Kingdom.

Empirical scholarship in contract law: possibilities and pitfalls

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Russell Korobkin

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Professor Korobkin examines and analyzes empirical contract law scholarship over the last fifteen years in an attempt to guide scholars concerning how empiricism can be used in and enhance the study of contract law. After defining the parameters of the study, Professor Korobkin categorizes empirical contract law scholarship by both the source of data and main purpose of the investigation. He then describes and analyzes three types of criticisms that can be made of empirical scholarship, explains how these criticisms pertain to contract law scholarship, and considers what steps researchers can take to minimize the force of such criticisms.

Pluvials, Droughts, Energetics, and the Mongol Empire

Science.gov (United States)

Hessl, A. E.; Pederson, N.; Baatarbileg, N.

2012-12-01

The success of the Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous land empire the world has ever known, is a historical enigma. At its peak in the late 13th century, the empire influenced areas from the Hungary to southern Asia and Persia. Powered by domesticated herbivores, the Mongol Empire grew at the expense of agriculturalists in Eastern Europe, Persia, and China. What environmental factors contributed to the rise of the Mongols? What factors influenced the disintegration of the empire by 1300 CE? Until now, little high resolution environmental data have been available to address these questions. We use tree-ring records of past temperature and water to illuminate the role of energy and water in the evolution of the Mongol Empire. The study of energetics has long been applied to biological and ecological systems but has only recently become a theme in understanding modern coupled natural and human systems (CNH). Because water and energy are tightly linked in human and natural systems, studying their synergies and interactions make it possible to integrate knowledge across disciplines and human history, yielding important lessons for modern societies. We focus on the role of energy and water in the trajectory of an empire, including its rise, development, and demise. Our research is focused on the Orkhon Valley, seat of the Mongol Empire, where recent paleoenvironmental and archeological discoveries allow high resolution reconstructions of past human and environmental conditions for the first time. Our preliminary records indicate that the period 1210-1230 CE, the height of Chinggis Khan's reign is one of the longest and most consistent pluvials in our tree ring reconstruction of interannual drought. Reconstructed temperature derived from five millennium-long records from subalpine forests in Mongolia document warm temperatures beginning in the early 1200's and ending with a plunge into cold temperatures in 1260. Abrupt cooling in central Mongolia at this time is

Firms and Financial Markets : Empirical Studies on the Informational Value of Dividends, Governance and Financial Reporting

NARCIS (Netherlands)

H.C. van Beusichem (Henry)

2016-01-01

textabstractThis dissertation contains three empirical studies that contribute to our understanding of dividend, governance and transparency policies of Dutch listed firms. The first study describes the dividend policy decisions of Dutch firms in the twentieth century. The fraction of

Empirical study on social groups in pedestrian evacuation dynamics

Science.gov (United States)

von Krüchten, Cornelia; Schadschneider, Andreas

2017-06-01

Pedestrian crowds often include social groups, i.e. pedestrians that walk together because of social relationships. They show characteristic configurations and influence the dynamics of the entire crowd. In order to investigate the impact of social groups on evacuations we performed an empirical study with pupils. Several evacuation runs with groups of different sizes and different interactions were performed. New group parameters are introduced which allow to describe the dynamics of the groups and the configuration of the group members quantitatively. The analysis shows a possible decrease of evacuation times for large groups due to self-ordering effects. Social groups can be approximated as ellipses that orientate along their direction of motion. Furthermore, explicitly cooperative behaviour among group members leads to a stronger aggregation of group members and an intermittent way of evacuation.

Safety certification of airborne software: An empirical study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dodd, Ian; Habli, Ibrahim

2012-01-01

Many safety-critical aircraft functions are software-enabled. Airborne software must be audited and approved by the aerospace certification authorities prior to deployment. The auditing process is time-consuming, and its outcome is unpredictable, due to the criticality and complex nature of airborne software. To ensure that the engineering of airborne software is systematically regulated and is auditable, certification authorities mandate compliance with safety standards that detail industrial best practice. This paper reviews existing practices in software safety certification. It also explores how software safety audits are performed in the civil aerospace domain. The paper then proposes a statistical method for supporting software safety audits by collecting and analysing data about the software throughout its lifecycle. This method is then empirically evaluated through an industrial case study based on data collected from 9 aerospace projects covering 58 software releases. The results of this case study show that our proposed method can help the certification authorities and the software and safety engineers to gain confidence in the certification readiness of airborne software and predict the likely outcome of the audits. The results also highlight some confidentiality issues concerning the management and retention of sensitive data generated from safety-critical projects.

DETERMINING EFFICIENCY OF INVESTMENT BANKS AFTERFINANCIALCRISISBY BOOTSTRAPDATA ENVELOPMENTANALYSIS (BDEA :A CASE OF TURKEY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Funda H. Sezgin

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA is a mathematical programming formulationbased technique that provides an efficient frontier to suggest an estimate of therelative efficiency of each decision making unit (DMU in a problem set. DEA isdeveloped around the concept of evaluating the efficiency of a decision alternativebased on its performance of creating outputs in means of input consumption.Besides its advantages,criticisms about the potential bias of efficiency estimatesof DEA has been arised. One criticism about DEA is on the sampling variation ofthe estimated frontier which may affect the accuracy of results. The bootstrapmethod is a statistical resampling method used to perform inference complexproblems. The basic idea of the bootstrap method is to approximate the samplingdistributions of the estimator by using the empirical distribution of resampledestimates obtained from a Monte Carlo resampling. DEA estimators introducedan approach based on “bootstrap techniques” to correct and estimate the bias ofthe DEA efficiency indicators.The purpose of this study is to measure theefficiency of small amount ofinvestment banksin Turkeyafter thefinancialcrisis in 2010with theBootstrapDEA(BDEA.

Psychological Vulnerability to Completed Suicide: A Review of Empirical Studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Conner, Kenneth R.; Duberstein, Paul R.; Conwell, Yeates; Seidlitz, Larry; Caine, Eric D.

2001-01-01

This article reviews empirical literature on psychological vulnerability to completed suicide. Five constructs have been consistently associated with completed suicide: impulsivity/aggression; depression; anxiety; hopelessness; and self-consciousness/social disengagement. Current knowledge of psychological vulnerability could inform social…

Empirical likelihood

CERN Document Server

Owen, Art B

2001-01-01

Empirical likelihood provides inferences whose validity does not depend on specifying a parametric model for the data. Because it uses a likelihood, the method has certain inherent advantages over resampling methods: it uses the data to determine the shape of the confidence regions, and it makes it easy to combined data from multiple sources. It also facilitates incorporating side information, and it simplifies accounting for censored, truncated, or biased sampling.One of the first books published on the subject, Empirical Likelihood offers an in-depth treatment of this method for constructing confidence regions and testing hypotheses. The author applies empirical likelihood to a range of problems, from those as simple as setting a confidence region for a univariate mean under IID sampling, to problems defined through smooth functions of means, regression models, generalized linear models, estimating equations, or kernel smooths, and to sampling with non-identically distributed data. Abundant figures offer vi...

An empirical analysis of Diaspora bonds

OpenAIRE

AKKOYUNLU, Şule; STERN, Max

2018-01-01

Abstract. This study is the first to investigate theoretically and empirically the determinants of Diaspora Bonds for eight developing countries (Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Sri-Lanka) and one developed country - Israel for the period 1951 and 2008. Empirical results are consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model. The most robust variables are the closeness indicator and the sovereign rating, both on the demand-side. The spread is ...

Firms and financial markets: empirical studies on the information value of dividends, governance and financial reporting

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Beusichem, Herman Clasinus

2016-01-01

This dissertation contains three empirical studies that contribute to our understanding of dividend, governance and transparency policies of Dutch listed firms. The first study describes the dividend policy decisions of Dutch firms in the twentieth century. The fraction of dividend-paying firms has

Symbiotic empirical ethics: a practical methodology.

Science.gov (United States)

Frith, Lucy

2012-05-01

Like any discipline, bioethics is a developing field of academic inquiry; and recent trends in scholarship have been towards more engagement with empirical research. This 'empirical turn' has provoked extensive debate over how such 'descriptive' research carried out in the social sciences contributes to the distinctively normative aspect of bioethics. This paper will address this issue by developing a practical research methodology for the inclusion of data from social science studies into ethical deliberation. This methodology will be based on a naturalistic conception of ethical theory that sees practice as informing theory just as theory informs practice - the two are symbiotically related. From this engagement with practice, the ways that such theories need to be extended and developed can be determined. This is a practical methodology for integrating theory and practice that can be used in empirical studies, one that uses ethical theory both to explore the data and to draw normative conclusions. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Empirical Test Case Specification

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kalyanova, Olena; Heiselberg, Per

This document includes the empirical specification on the IEA task of evaluation building energy simulation computer programs for the Double Skin Facades (DSF) constructions. There are two approaches involved into this procedure, one is the comparative approach and another is the empirical one. I....... In the comparative approach the outcomes of different software tools are compared, while in the empirical approach the modelling results are compared with the results of experimental test cases....

An Empirical Study of AI Population Dynamics with Million-agent Reinforcement Learning

OpenAIRE

Yang, Yaodong; Yu, Lantao; Bai, Yiwei; Wang, Jun; Zhang, Weinan; Wen, Ying; Yu, Yong

2017-01-01

In this paper, we conduct an empirical study on discovering the ordered collective dynamics obtained by a population of artificial intelligence (AI) agents. Our intention is to put AI agents into a simulated natural context, and then to understand their induced dynamics at the population level. In particular, we aim to verify if the principles developed in the real world could also be used in understanding an artificially-created intelligent population. To achieve this, we simulate a large-sc...

IT-enabled dynamic capability on performance: An empirical study of BSC model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Adilson Carlos Yoshikuni

2017-05-01

Full Text Available ew studies have investigated the influence of “information capital,” through IT-enabled dynamic capability, on corporate performance, particularly in economic turbulence. Our study investigates the causal relationship between performance perspectives of the balanced scorecard using partial least squares path modeling. Using data on 845 Brazilian companies, we conduct a quantitative empirical study of firms during an economic crisis and observe the following interesting results. Operational and analytical IT-enabled dynamic capability had positive effects on business process improvement and corporate performance. Results pertaining to mediation (endogenous variables and moderation (control variables clarify IT’s role in and benefits for corporate performance.

An empirical study of Malaysian firms' capital structure

OpenAIRE

Zain, Sharifah Raihan Syed Mohd

2003-01-01

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/821 on 27.03.2017 by CS (TIS) It is sometimes purported that one of the factors affecting a firm's value is its capital structure. The event of the 1997 Asian financial crisis was expected to affect the firms' gearing level as the firms' earnings deteriorated and the capital market collapsed. The main objective of this research is to examine empirically the determinants of the capital structure of Malaysian firms. The main additional aim is ...

Essays in empirical microeconomics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Péter, A.N.

2016-01-01

The empirical studies in this thesis investigate various factors that could affect individuals' labor market, family formation and educational outcomes. Chapter 2 focuses on scheduling as a potential determinant of individuals' productivity. Chapter 3 looks at the role of a family factor on

Empiric Antibiotic Use and Susceptibility in Infants With Bacterial Infections: A Multicenter Retrospective Cohort Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Feldman, Elana A; McCulloh, Russell J; Myers, Angela L; Aronson, Paul L; Neuman, Mark I; Bradford, Miranda C; Alpern, Elizabeth R; Balamuth, Frances; Blackstone, Mercedes M; Browning, Whitney L; Hayes, Katie; Korman, Rosalynne; Leazer, Rianna C; Nigrovic, Lise E; Marble, Richard; Roben, Emily; Williams, Derek J; Tieder, Joel S

2017-07-20

To assess hospital differences in empirical antibiotic use, bacterial epidemiology, and antimicrobial susceptibility for common antibiotic regimens among young infants with urinary tract infection (UTI), bacteremia, or bacterial meningitis. We reviewed medical records from infants <90 days old presenting to 8 US children's hospitals with UTI, bacteremia, or meningitis. We used the Pediatric Health Information System database to identify cases and empirical antibiotic use and medical record review to determine infection, pathogen, and antimicrobial susceptibility patterns. We compared hospital-level differences in antimicrobial use, pathogen, infection site, and antimicrobial susceptibility. We identified 470 infants with bacterial infections: 362 (77%) with UTI alone and 108 (23%) with meningitis or bacteremia. Infection type did not differ across hospitals ( P = .85). Empirical antibiotic use varied across hospitals ( P < .01), although antimicrobial susceptibility patterns for common empirical regimens were similar. A third-generation cephalosporin would have empirically treated 90% of all ages, 89% in 7- to 28-day-olds, and 91% in 29- to 89-day-olds. The addition of ampicillin would have improved coverage in only 4 cases of bacteremia and meningitis. Ampicillin plus gentamicin would have treated 95%, 89%, and 97% in these age groups, respectively. Empirical antibiotic use differed across regionally diverse US children's hospitals in infants <90 days old with UTI, bacteremia, or meningitis. Antimicrobial susceptibility to common antibiotic regimens was similar across hospitals, and adding ampicillin to a third-generation cephalosporin minimally improves coverage. Our findings support incorporating empirical antibiotic recommendations into national guidelines for infants with suspected bacterial infection. Copyright © 2017 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Empiric Study about the Mix Fiscal Policy – Economic Development

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alexandru Sergiu Ocnean

2006-11-01

Full Text Available Economic development is one of the primary objectives of any government. Fiscal policy represents one of the most effective tools that government authorities could use in order to influence the economy. Having this in mind, this paper focuses on the connection between economic development and fiscal policy and proposes an empirical study based on a sample of 21 European countries. Using a simple pool data model, we tried to distinguish the relations between the evolution of GDP per capita, as a proxy for economic development, and the evolution of three fiscal policy variables, namely the tax burden, the public expenditure to GDP ratio and the budget deficit to GDP ratio.

Empiric Study about the Mix Fiscal Policy – Economic Development

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alexandru Sergiu Ocnean

2006-09-01

Full Text Available Economic development is one of the primary objectives of any government. Fiscal policy represents one of the most effective tools that government authorities could use in order to influence the economy. Having this in mind, this paper focuses on the connection between economic development and fiscal policy and proposes an empirical study based on a sample of 21 European countries. Using a simple pool data model, we tried to distinguish the relations between the evolution of GDP per capita, as a proxy for economic development, and the evolution of three fiscal policy variables, namely the tax burden, the public expenditure to GDP ratio and the budget deficit to GDP ratio.

Empirical Support for Perceptual Conceptualism

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nicolás Alejandro Serrano

2018-03-01

Full Text Available The main objective of this paper is to show that perceptual conceptualism can be understood as an empirically meaningful position and, furthermore, that there is some degree of empirical support for its main theses. In order to do this, I will start by offering an empirical reading of the conceptualist position, and making three predictions from it. Then, I will consider recent experimental results from cognitive sciences that seem to point towards those predictions. I will conclude that, while the evidence offered by those experiments is far from decisive, it is enough not only to show that conceptualism is an empirically meaningful position but also that there is empirical support for it.

MULTIFRACTAL ANALYSIS OFTHE DYNAMICS OF TURKISHEXCHANGE RATE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ezgi Gülbaş

2013-01-01

Full Text Available We perform a comparative study of applicability of the Multifractal DetrendedFluctuation Analysis (MFDFA and the Wavelet Transform Modulus Maxima(WTMM method in properly detecting ofmono- and multifractal character ofdata. After summarizing the theory behind both methods, we apply both methodson USD/TRY currency. The results show thatour data has multifractal nature butnot at high level and multifractality ispoorer if WTMM method is used. We alsoinvestigated whether other Eastern European country currencies, such as RussianRubble and Hungarian Forint have multifractal characters by using MFDFAmethod. Therefore, forecasters have often encountered in trying to predict theseexchange rates with models that do notincorporate any notion of inhomogeneitywill have little predictive power.

An Empirical Study of Relationships between Student Self-Concept and Science Achievement in Hong Kong

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Jianjun; Oliver, Steve; Garcia, Augustine

2004-01-01

Positive self-concept and good understanding of science are important indicators of scientific literacy endorsed by professional organizations. The existing research literature suggests that these two indicators are reciprocally related and mutually reinforcing. Generalization of the reciprocal model demands empirical studies in different…

Narration and Escalation. An Empirical Study of Conflict Narratives

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Evelyn Gius

2016-06-01

Full Text Available This article describes the methodology and the outcomes of an empirical study of conflict narratives. The narratological analysis deployed narratological catego­ries in the structuralist tradition based on Genette and was conducted with the help of the text annotation tool CATMA. The analysis aimed at covering as many narratological phenomena as possible by establishing 14 fields of narrato­logical phenomena that were annotated in a corpus of 39 factual narratives about situations at the workplace with and without conflicts. The evaluation of approximately 28,000 annotations brought to light a series of interrelations be­tween narratological phenomena and the presence or absence of conflicts in the narratives. Additionally, this approach led to the identification of some over­sights of narrative theory by detecting hitherto unnoticed interrelations among narratological concepts.

Empirical research through design

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Keyson, D.V.; Bruns, M.

2009-01-01

This paper describes the empirical research through design method (ERDM), which differs from current approaches to research through design by enforcing the need for the designer, after a series of pilot prototype based studies, to a-priori develop a number of testable interaction design hypothesis

Comparative study of atrial fibrillation and AV conduction in mammals

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Meijler, F.L.; Tweel, I. van der

1987-01-01

Atrial fibrillation is one ofthe most common cardiac arrhythmias in humans. It a1so occurs quite frequent1y in dogs and horses. Comparative study of this arrhythmia may contribute to better understanding of the pathophysiologica1 mechanisms involved. In this study, we present a quantitative

Evaluating Method Engineer Performance: an error classification and preliminary empirical study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Steven Kelly

1998-11-01

Full Text Available We describe an approach to empirically test the use of metaCASE environments to model methods. Both diagrams and matrices have been proposed as a means for presenting the methods. These different paradigms may have their own effects on how easily and well users can model methods. We extend Batra's classification of errors in data modelling to cover metamodelling, and use it to measure the performance of a group of metamodellers using either diagrams or matrices. The tentative results from this pilot study confirm the usefulness of the classification, and show some interesting differences between the paradigms.

Collective design in 3D printing: A large scale empirical study of designs, designers and evolution

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Özkil, Ali Gürcan

2017-01-01

This paper provides an empirical study of a collective design platform (Thingiverse); with the aim of understanding the phenomenon and investigating how designs concurrently evolve through the large and complex network of designers. The case study is based on the meta-data collected from 158 489 ...

Some empirical evidence on business-IT alignment processes in the public sector: A case study report

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Santana Tapia, R.G.; van Oene, L.

2008-01-01

An empirical study that explores business-IT alignment processes in a networked organization among the province Overijssel, the municipalities Zwolle and Enschede, the water board district Regge & Dinkel and Royal Grolsch N.V. in The Netherlands, is summarized in this report. The aim of the study

EMPIRICAL STUDY REGARDING SUSTAINABILITY OF ROMANIAN PENSION SYSTEM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Oprean Delia

2013-07-01

Full Text Available This paper is part of a broad, applied scientific research, based on popular empirical procedures (such as natural observation. Positivistic and constructive research methodology used was based on the consensual-inductive system (Locke, which is why we studied the different views of specialists on sustainability of pensions in Romania, necessary to formulate the problem of generating relevant information. Research strategies used were the comparative and longitudinal ones, as we analyzed the time evolution of qualitative indicators VUAN (unitary value of net asset specific to pension funds Pillar II and Pillar III of Romania, concomitant with the number of participants in these funds, as to determine their direct relationship with the need for sustainability in this area. The hypotheses regarding causal relationship efficiency – participants - sustainability and needed measures for pension reform were built in this paper inductively (by analyzing the sustainability issues of pensions in time, causally (by explaining the cause and effect phenomenon studied, deductively, logically and subjectively (due to the existence and perpetuation of conflict premise between generations and social inequality between employees and pensioners. The qualitative approach of the phenomenon studied by collecting information (using mediated data collection technique has allowed the relevant findings and practical solutions necessary for all those involved in this concerted action of pensions, which affects us all.

Systematic risk and liquidity : an empirical study comparing Norwegian equity certificates before and after the regulation in 2009

OpenAIRE

Hatlevik, Håkon; Einvik, Christian

2014-01-01

In 2009, the Norwegian savings banks industry was subject to a regulation change, which resulted in a modification of the instrument issued by these banks. Thus, in this empirical study we compare the systematic risk and liquidity of equity certificates issued by Norwegian savings banks before and after the regulation change. We go about estimating systematic risk and liquidity using regression analysis. In order to estimate systematic risk we use the empirical model of the CAPM often referre...

Does Globalization Promote Good Governance in Africa? An Empirical Study Across 51 countries

OpenAIRE

Asongu, Simplice

2017-01-01

This study investigates the effect of globalisation on governance in 51 African countries for the period 1996-2011. Four bundled governance indicators and four globalisation (political, economic, social and general) variables are used. The empirical evidence is based on Instrumental Variable Quantile Regressions. The motivation for the estimation technique is that blanket governance-globalisation policies are not likely to succeed unless they are contingent on initial levels of governance and...

Goodness! The empirical turn in health care ethics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Willems, D.; Pols, J.

2010-01-01

This paper is intended to encourage scholars to submit papers for a symposium and the next special issue of Medische Antropologie which will be on empirical studies of normative questions. We describe the ‘empirical turn’ in medical ethics. Medical ethics and bioethics in general have witnessed a

Using an Empirical Binomial Hierarchical Bayesian Model as an Alternative to Analyzing Data from Multisite Studies

Science.gov (United States)

Hardin, J. Michael; Anderson, Billie S.; Woodby, Lesa L.; Crawford, Myra A.; Russell, Toya V.

2008-01-01

This article explores the statistical methodologies used in demonstration and effectiveness studies when the treatments are applied across multiple settings. The importance of evaluating and how to evaluate these types of studies are discussed. As an alternative to standard methodology, the authors of this article offer an empirical binomial…

A sensitivity analysis of centrifugal compressors' empirical models

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yoon, Sung Ho; Baek, Je Hyun

2001-01-01

The mean-line method using empirical models is the most practical method of predicting off-design performance. To gain insight into the empirical models, the influence of empirical models on the performance prediction results is investigated. We found that, in the two-zone model, the secondary flow mass fraction has a considerable effect at high mass flow-rates on the performance prediction curves. In the TEIS model, the first element changes the slope of the performance curves as well as the stable operating range. The second element makes the performance curves move up and down as it increases or decreases. It is also discovered that the slip factor affects pressure ratio, but it has little effect on efficiency. Finally, this study reveals that the skin friction coefficient has significant effect on both the pressure ratio curve and the efficiency curve. These results show the limitations of the present empirical models, and more reasonable empirical models are reeded

Assessing and improving the quality of modeling : a series of empirical studies about the UML

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lange, C.F.J.

2007-01-01

Assessing and Improving the Quality of Modeling A Series of Empirical Studies about the UML This thesis addresses the assessment and improvement of the quality of modeling in software engineering. In particular, we focus on the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which is the de facto standard in

The Market Orientation and Performance Relationship: An Empirical Study in Private Universities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sefnedi Sefnedi

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This study examines the empirical link between three dimensions of market orientation, namely, student orientation, competitor orientation and inter-functional coordination, and private university performance in Kopertis X. The study was based on an empirical investigation of private universities located in Indonesia’s provinces of West Sumatera, Riau, Jambi, and Riau Islands. The primary data for the study were collected from a self-administered mail survey of 237 questionnaires from the private university resulting in a sample of 114 usable responses being returned. From the application of the multiple regression analysis it was concluded that all three dimensions of market orientation had a significant impact on private university performance. Student orientation as a predictor variable is the strongest predictor of private university performance then followed by competitor orientation, and inter-functional coordination. Bahasa Indonesia Abstrak: Penelitian ini menguji hubungan empiris antara tiga dimensi orientasi pasar, yaitu, orientasi mahasiswa, orientasi pesaing dan koordinasi antar-fungsional dan kinerja perguruan tinggi swasta di Kopertis X. Penelitian ini didasarkan pada penyelidikan empiris pada universitas swasta yang berada di provinsi Sumatera Barat, Riau, Jambi, dan Kepulaian Riau. Data primer dikumpulkan dari survei dimana dari 237 kuesioner yang disebarkan pada universitas swasta, diperoleh 114 kuesioner yang dikembalikan dan dapat digunakan sebagai sampel. Berdasarkan hasil analisis regresi berganda dapat disimpulkan bahwa ketiga dimensi orientasi pasar memiliki dampak yang signifikan terhadap kinerja perguruan tinggi swasta. Orientasi mahasiswa sebagai variabel prediktor terkuat terhadap kinerja perguruan tinggi swasta kemudian diikuti oleh orientasi pesaing, dan koordinasi antar-fungsional.

QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND INTEGRATED TOTAL QUALITY IN SPANISH MINING: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

OpenAIRE

ESCANCIANO, CARMEN; IGLESIAS-RODRÍGUEZ, FRANCISCO-JAVIER

2012-01-01

This paper presents the results of an empirical study conducted in Spain among mining companies that hold ISO 9001 certification. This study aimed at reflecting upon quality management in Spanish mining; and discovering whether the certification of a quality management system provides companies with a framework for integrating total quality management with other management systems, such as environmental management or occupational health and safety management. En este artículo se presentan ...

Data envelopment analysis in service quality evaluation: an empirical study

Science.gov (United States)

Najafi, Seyedvahid; Saati, Saber; Tavana, Madjid

2015-09-01

Service quality is often conceptualized as the comparison between service expectations and the actual performance perceptions. It enhances customer satisfaction, decreases customer defection, and promotes customer loyalty. Substantial literature has examined the concept of service quality, its dimensions, and measurement methods. We introduce the perceived service quality index (PSQI) as a single measure for evaluating the multiple-item service quality construct based on the SERVQUAL model. A slack-based measure (SBM) of efficiency with constant inputs is used to calculate the PSQI. In addition, a non-linear programming model based on the SBM is proposed to delineate an improvement guideline and improve service quality. An empirical study is conducted to assess the applicability of the method proposed in this study. A large number of studies have used DEA as a benchmarking tool to measure service quality. These models do not propose a coherent performance evaluation construct and consequently fail to deliver improvement guidelines for improving service quality. The DEA models proposed in this study are designed to evaluate and improve service quality within a comprehensive framework and without any dependency on external data.

Life Writing After Empire

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

A watershed moment of the twentieth century, the end of empire saw upheavals to global power structures and national identities. However, decolonisation profoundly affected individual subjectivities too. Life Writing After Empire examines how people around the globe have made sense of the post...... in order to understand how individual life writing reflects broader societal changes. From far-flung corners of the former British Empire, people have turned to life writing to manage painful or nostalgic memories, as well as to think about the past and future of the nation anew through the personal...

Empirical Studies on Actively Managed Mutual Funds: New Insights into the Costs and Benefits of Portfolio Disclosure

NARCIS (Netherlands)

T.C. Dyakov (Teodor)

2014-01-01

markdownabstract__Abstract__ Dyakov’s dissertation bundles three empirical studies on actively managed mutual funds. His studies provide new knowledge of the costs and benefits of portfolio disclosure and shed more light into the question whether mutual fund investors have an information

ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES AND MORAL VIRTUES OF ENTREPRENEUR: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF SLOVENIAN ENTREPRENEURS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vasilij Mate

2013-05-01

Full Text Available This article examines the self-reflexion of Slovenian entrepreneurs to their own business activity, with a focus on their core values and virtues, which would consequently affect the performance, growth and development of entrepreneurship in Slovenia. The article starts with a theoretical understanding of organizational values and moral virtues of entrepreneurs and review of the recent empirical studies as the basis on which it is possible to achieve the explanation of the attitude of Slovenian entrepreneurs towards entrepreneurship. We have conducted our own empirical quantitative study on the representative sample of Slovenian entrepreneurs (n =114. Using the obtained results, we tried to verify the six hypotheses. We were particularly interested in those hypotheses that presuppose the entrepreneur who highly appreciates and respects the values and virtues of an ethical businesspearson in practice, will be more economically successful. Based on the results of our research we indicated that the Slovenian entrepreneurs are largely aware of the relevant organizational values and moral virtues, although this is not always obvious in their actions in everyday business practices. The article concludes with an interpretation of the results and discussion of the prospects and challenges for further exploration of the topics covered.

Antecedents of positive self-disclosure online: an empirical study of US college students’ Facebook usage

OpenAIRE

Chen H

2017-01-01

Hongliang Chen Department of Communication, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA Abstract: This study investigates the factors predicting positive self-disclosure on social networking sites (SNSs). There is a formidable body of empirical research relating to online self-disclosure, but very few studies have assessed the antecedents of positive self-disclosure. To address this literature gap, the current study tests the effects of self-esteem, life satisfact...

Empirical Study towards the Drivers of Sustainable Economic Growth in EU-28 Countries

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel Ştefan Armeanu

2017-12-01

Full Text Available This study aims at empirically investigating the drivers of sustainable economic growth in EU-28 countries. By means of panel data regression models, in the form of fixed and random effects models, alongside system generalized method of moments, we examine several drivers of real gross domestic product (GDP growth rate, as follows: higher education, business environment, infrastructure, technology, communications, and media, population lifestyle, and demographic changes. As regards higher education, the empirical results show that expenditure per student in higher education and traditional 18–22 year-old students are positively linked with sustainable economic growth, whereas science and technology graduates negatively influence real GDP growth. In terms of business environment, total expenditure on research and development and employment rates of recent graduates contributes to sustainable development, but corruption perceptions index revealed a negative association with economic growth. As well, the results provide support for a negative influence of infrastructure abreast technological measures on economic growth. Besides, we found a negative connection between old-age dependency ratio and sustainable economic growth.

Giddens à la carte? Appraising empirical applications of structuration theory in management and organization studies

NARCIS (Netherlands)

den Hond, F.; Boersma, F.K.; Heres, L.; Kroes, E.H.J.; van Oirschot, E.

2012-01-01

There is an increasing interest in the application of Structuration Theory in the fields of management and organization studies. Based upon a thorough literature review, we have come up with a data-set to assess how Structuration Theory has been used in empirical research. We use three key concepts

A behavioural approach to financial portfolio selection problem: an empirical study using heuristics

OpenAIRE

Grishina, Nina

2014-01-01

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University The behaviourally based portfolio selection problem with investor's loss aversion and risk aversion biases in portfolio choice under uncertainty are studied. The main results of this work are developed heuristic approaches for the prospect theory and cumulative prospect theory models proposed by Kahneman and Tversky in 1979 and 1992 as well as an empirical comparative analysis of these models ...

ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES AND MORAL VIRTUES OF ENTREPRENEUR: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF SLOVENIAN ENTREPRENEURS

OpenAIRE

Vasilij Mate; Dejan Jelovac; Anita Kralj

2013-01-01

This article examines the self-reflexion of Slovenian entrepreneurs to their own business activity, with a focus on their core values and virtues, which would consequently affect the performance, growth and development of entrepreneurship in Slovenia. The article starts with a theoretical understanding of organizational values and moral virtues of entrepreneurs and review of the recent empirical studies as the basis on which it is possible to achieve the explanation of the attitude of Sloveni...

Time-varying volatility in Malaysian stock exchange: An empirical study using multiple-volatility-shift fractionally integrated model

Science.gov (United States)

Cheong, Chin Wen

2008-02-01

This article investigated the influences of structural breaks on the fractionally integrated time-varying volatility model in the Malaysian stock markets which included the Kuala Lumpur composite index and four major sectoral indices. A fractionally integrated time-varying volatility model combined with sudden changes is developed to study the possibility of structural change in the empirical data sets. Our empirical results showed substantial reduction in fractional differencing parameters after the inclusion of structural change during the Asian financial and currency crises. Moreover, the fractionally integrated model with sudden change in volatility performed better in the estimation and specification evaluations.

Peran dan Fungsi Komisi Pemilihan Umum Kota Medan Dalam Penyelenggaraan Pemilihan Umum Presiden Tahun 2009

OpenAIRE

Sihombing, Jessy Jujur

2014-01-01

The background to this study is the central role as the organizer of the National Election Commissionelections. This researchfocuseshowthe success of theelectiondepends onthe performance ofthe President oftheNational Election Commission. In this case particularly in view, organizing the presidential elections can take placein the areaof successwas due tothe roleandfunction of thevery central of Regional Election Commission. This study focuses Election Commissionasthe foundation ofthe success ...

Instructional Skills for On-the-Job Training and Experiential Learning: An Empirical Study of Japanese Firms

Science.gov (United States)

Matsuo, Makoto

2014-01-01

Despite the effectiveness of on-the-job training (OJT), few systematic empirical studies have been conducted on how OJT trainers instruct trainees in firms. The primary goal of this study was to investigate the characteristics of the trainer's instructional skills for OJT using survey data collected from 715 employees covering 22 firms. Results…

Empirical ethics, context-sensitivity, and contextualism.

Science.gov (United States)

Musschenga, Albert W

2005-10-01

In medical ethics, business ethics, and some branches of political philosophy (multi-culturalism, issues of just allocation, and equitable distribution) the literature increasingly combines insights from ethics and the social sciences. Some authors in medical ethics even speak of a new phase in the history of ethics, hailing "empirical ethics" as a logical next step in the development of practical ethics after the turn to "applied ethics." The name empirical ethics is ill-chosen because of its associations with "descriptive ethics." Unlike descriptive ethics, however, empirical ethics aims to be both descriptive and normative. The first question on which I focus is what kind of empirical research is used by empirical ethics and for which purposes. I argue that the ultimate aim of all empirical ethics is to improve the context-sensitivity of ethics. The second question is whether empirical ethics is essentially connected with specific positions in meta-ethics. I show that in some kinds of meta-ethical theories, which I categorize as broad contextualist theories, there is an intrinsic need for connecting normative ethics with empirical social research. But context-sensitivity is a goal that can be aimed for from any meta-ethical position.

Linking customisation of ERP systems to support effort: an empirical study

Science.gov (United States)

Koch, Stefan; Mitteregger, Kurt

2016-01-01

The amount of customisation to an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system has always been a major concern in the context of the implementation. This article focuses on the phase of maintenance and presents an empirical study about the relationship between the amount of customising and the resulting support effort. We establish a structural equation modelling model that explains support effort using customisation effort, organisational characteristics and scope of implementation. The findings using data from an ERP provider show that there is a statistically significant effect: with an increasing amount of customisation, the quantity of telephone calls to support increases, as well as the duration of each call.

Human needs as predictors for organizational commitment and job involvement: An exploratory empirical study

OpenAIRE

Park, Yang-Kyu; Lee, Chul-in; Kabst, Rüdiger

2008-01-01

While the literature on the determinants of organizational commitment (OC) and job involvement (JI) is vast, little has been studied about the impact of human needs. In search for the institutional stars, this study examines whether human needs can serve a predictor for both high OC and high JI. Exploratory empirical results based on quantile regressions suggest that the needs for achievement, belonging, and power are more important than others in predicting OC and JI. In addition, the basic ...

Risk and Protective Factors of Internet Addiction: A Meta-Analysis of Empirical Studies in Korea

OpenAIRE

Koo, Hoon Jung; Kwon, Jung-Hye

2014-01-01

Purpose A meta-analysis of empirical studies performed in Korea was conducted to systematically investigate the associations between the indices of Internet addiction (IA) and psychosocial variables. Materials and Methods Systematic literature searches were carried out using the Korean Studies Information Service System, Research Information Sharing Service, Science Direct, Google Scholar, and references in review articles. The key words were Internet addiction, (Internet) game addiction, and...

Organisational learning capabilities as determinants of social innovation: An empirical study in South Africa

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Boris Urban

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Orientation: A critical reading of the human resource management (HRM literature finds limited contributions to understanding the organisational determinants of social enterprises and how these may contribute to higher levels of social innovativeness. Although innovation is a key theme in organisational research it has been acknowledged that the field needs more theory-based examinations of different types of innovativeness. Research purpose: To determine how different organisational capabilities are related to social innovation. Motivation for the study: Many social enterprises in developing countries do not have the requisite capabilities to efficiently manage all their programmes, which presents a major threat to organisational sustainability. Research design, approach and method: The empirical analysis is a cross-sectional study based on primary survey data. Hypotheses are tested using correlational and regression analysis. Main findings: The results show that the organisational learning capabilities of knowledge conversion, risk management, organisational dialogue and participative decision-making all have a significant and positive relationship with social innovation. Practical/managerial implications: Managers and practitioners can leverage the different organisational learning capabilities to improve social innovations in their social enterprises. Contribution/value-add: The study is one of the first in an African market context to empirically investigate social enterprises in terms of social innovation and organisational learning perspectives.

On the Empirical Evidence of Mutual Fund Strategic Risk Taking

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Goriaev, A.P.; Nijman, T.E.; Werker, B.J.M.

2001-01-01

We reexamine empirical evidence on strategic risk-taking behavior by mutual fund managers.Several studies suggest that fund performance in the first semester of a year influences risk-taking in the second semester.However, we show that previous empirical studies implicitly assume that idiosyncratic

Empire as a Geopolitical Figure

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Parker, Noel

2010-01-01

This article analyses the ingredients of empire as a pattern of order with geopolitical effects. Noting the imperial form's proclivity for expansion from a critical reading of historical sociology, the article argues that the principal manifestation of earlier geopolitics lay not in the nation...... but in empire. That in turn has been driven by a view of the world as disorderly and open to the ordering will of empires (emanating, at the time of geopolitics' inception, from Europe). One implication is that empires are likely to figure in the geopolitical ordering of the globe at all times, in particular...... after all that has happened in the late twentieth century to undermine nationalism and the national state. Empire is indeed a probable, even for some an attractive form of regime for extending order over the disorder produced by globalisation. Geopolitics articulated in imperial expansion is likely...

Evaluation of empirical atmospheric diffusion data

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Horst, T.W.; Doran, J.C.; Nickola, P.W.

1979-10-01

A study has been made of atmospheric diffusion over level, homogeneous terrain of contaminants released from non-buoyant point sources up to 100 m in height. Current theories of diffusion are compared to empirical diffusion data, and specific dispersion estimation techniques are recommended which can be implemented with the on-site meteorological instrumentation required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A comparison of both the recommended diffusion model and the NRC diffusion model with the empirical data demonstrates that the predictions of the recommended model have both smaller scatter and less bias, particularly for groundlevel sources

Organizational design and knowledge performance: An empirical study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Enrique Claver-Cortés

2008-07-01

Full Text Available The paper analyzes how the traditional variables that define a firm’s organizational structure (formalization, complexity, and centralization influence knowledge performance (the degree to which a firm generates knowledge and uses it to reach a competitive advantage. Three hypotheses are tested using a sample of 164 large Spanish firms. The results show that organizational complexity and centralization exert a positive and a negative influence, respectively, on knowledge performance, which confirms the two hypotheses related to these variables. However, the analysis reveals no empirical evidence to confirm the hypothesis that formalization and knowledge performance are related positively.

Managerial Career Patterns: A Review of the Empirical Evidence

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vinkenburg, C.J.; Weber, T.

2012-01-01

Despite the ubiquitous presence of the term "career patterns" in the discourse about careers, the existing empirical evidence on (managerial) career patterns is rather limited. From this literature review of 33 published empirical studies of managerial and similar professional career patterns found

An empirical study on empowering private bank workers using EFQM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jafar Beikzad

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Empowering workers play an essential role on increasing productivity in any organization. The service industries such as insurance companies or banks mostly rely on their own people to retain their customers and incomes. The recent increasing trend on the number of private banks in Iran has increased competition among existing banks. The banking industry strives to empower its employees as much as possible in an attempt to maintain market share by not losing its customers. In this paper, we present an empirical study to detect the most important factors empowering bank employees. The study is implemented for a recently established private bank with 228 people with 32 questions where 15 questions are focused on empowering employees. The results are analyzed using statistical tests and descriptive methods. The results indicate that leadership, academic qualification, appropriate policy and strategy, cooperation and processes play important role on empowering and enabling bank's employee.

Roughness-reflectance relationship of bare desert terrain: An empirical study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shoshany, M.

1993-01-01

A study of the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) in relation to surface roughness properties was conducted in arid land near Fowlers Gap Research Station, New South Wales, Australia. Such empirical study is necessary for investigating the possibility of determining terrain geomorphological parameters from bidirectional reflectance data. A new apparatus was developed to take accurate hemispherical directions radiance measurements (HDRM). A digitizer for three-dimensional in situ roughness measurements was also developed. More than 70 hemispherical data sets were collected for various illumination conditions and surface types of desert stony pavements and rocky terrain slopes. In general, it was found that most of the surfaces exhibited an anisotropic reflection, combining a major component of backscattering. The BRDF of different surface types in relation to their roughness properties as determined by the field digitizer were then examined. Results showed that sites that are considered to differ significantly from a geomorphological point of view would not necessarily form a different BRDF

An empirical study of the information premium on electricity markets

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Benth, Fred Espen; Biegler-König, Richard; Kiesel, Rüdiger

2013-01-01

Due to the non-storability of electricity and the resulting lack of arbitrage-based arguments to price electricity forward contracts, a significant time-varying risk premium is exhibited. Using EEX data during the introduction of emission certificates and the German “Atom Moratorium” we show that a significant part of the risk premium in electricity forwards is due to different information sets in spot and forward markets. In order to show the existence of the resulting information premium and to analyse its size we design an empirical method based on techniques relating to enlargement of filtrations and the structure of Hilbert spaces. - Highlights: ► Electricity is non-storable and the classical spot–forward-relationship is invalid. ► Future information will cause an information premium for forward contracts. ► We model this premium mathematically using enlargement of filtrations. ► We develop a statistical method testing for the information premium empirically. ► We apply the test to the 2nd phase of the EUETS and the German “Atom Moratorium”

An empirical study for measuring the success index of banking industry

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mohsen Mardani

2012-08-01

Full Text Available Measuring organization performance plays an important role for developing better strategic plans. In today's competitive environment, organizations attempt for the product quality or offering the service, delivery, reliability capability and the customer satisfaction. These properties are not measurable only by traditional financial criteria and we need a method, which could consider non-financial factors as well. The present study of this paper proposed a hybrid of balanced score card (BSC and data envelopment analysis (DEA method for an empirical study of banking sector. The study proposes a model for assessing the Tose`eTa`avon bank performance, which is an example of governmental credit and financial services institutes. The study determines different important factors associated with each four components of BSC and uses analytical hierarchy process to rank the measures. In each part of BSC implementation, we use DEA for ranking different units of bank and efficient and inefficient units are determined.

An Empirical Study on Using Visual Embellishments in Visualization.

Science.gov (United States)

Borgo, R; Abdul-Rahman, A; Mohamed, F; Grant, P W; Reppa, I; Floridi, L; Chen, Min

2012-12-01

In written and spoken communications, figures of speech (e.g., metaphors and synecdoche) are often used as an aid to help convey abstract or less tangible concepts. However, the benefits of using rhetorical illustrations or embellishments in visualization have so far been inconclusive. In this work, we report an empirical study to evaluate hypotheses that visual embellishments may aid memorization, visual search and concept comprehension. One major departure from related experiments in the literature is that we make use of a dual-task methodology in our experiment. This design offers an abstraction of typical situations where viewers do not have their full attention focused on visualization (e.g., in meetings and lectures). The secondary task introduces "divided attention", and makes the effects of visual embellishments more observable. In addition, it also serves as additional masking in memory-based trials. The results of this study show that visual embellishments can help participants better remember the information depicted in visualization. On the other hand, visual embellishments can have a negative impact on the speed of visual search. The results show a complex pattern as to the benefits of visual embellishments in helping participants grasp key concepts from visualization.

Empirical Study on Learners' Self-Efficacy in ESL/EFL Context

Science.gov (United States)

Shi, Lihong

2016-01-01

With the popularity of learner-oriented approach in language teaching, research on learners is gaining more and more importance. This paper attempts to review the empirical researches on self-efficacy in the ESL/EFL settings during the past 10 years with the purpose of depicting the extent to which the self-efficacy research in ESL/EFL has…

Theological reflections on empire

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Allan A. Boesak

2009-11-01

Full Text Available Since the meeting of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in Accra, Ghana (2004, and the adoption of the Accra Declaration, a debate has been raging in the churches about globalisation, socio-economic justice, ecological responsibility, political and cultural domination and globalised war. Central to this debate is the concept of empire and the way the United States is increasingly becoming its embodiment. Is the United States a global empire? This article argues that the United States has indeed become the expression of a modern empire and that this reality has considerable consequences, not just for global economics and politics but for theological refl ection as well.

Persistent puhnonary hypertension ofthe neonate in a developing ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

the study period. Their clinical characteristics are dis- played in Tables IT and ITl. Comparison of the clinical, ventilatory and laboratory findings of the survivors v. the non-survivors .... Fio, = fractional concentration of inspired oxygen; PEEP = positive end expiratory ... had multi-organ failure and was assessed as having a.

Poisson and Gaussian approximation of weighted local empirical processes

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Einmahl, J.H.J.

1995-01-01

We consider the local empirical process indexed by sets, a greatly generalized version of the well-studied uniform tail empirical process. We show that the weak limit of weighted versions of this process is Poisson under certain conditions, whereas it is Gaussian in other situations. Our main

Empirical research on international environmental migration: a systematic review.

Science.gov (United States)

Obokata, Reiko; Veronis, Luisa; McLeman, Robert

2014-01-01

This paper presents the findings of a systematic review of scholarly publications that report empirical findings from studies of environmentally-related international migration. There exists a small, but growing accumulation of empirical studies that consider environmentally-linked migration that spans international borders. These studies provide useful evidence for scholars and policymakers in understanding how environmental factors interact with political, economic and social factors to influence migration behavior and outcomes that are specific to international movements of people, in highlighting promising future research directions, and in raising important considerations for international policymaking. Our review identifies countries of migrant origin and destination that have so far been the subject of empirical research, the environmental factors believed to have influenced these migrations, the interactions of environmental and non-environmental factors as well as the role of context in influencing migration behavior, and the types of methods used by researchers. In reporting our findings, we identify the strengths and challenges associated with the main empirical approaches, highlight significant gaps and future opportunities for empirical work, and contribute to advancing understanding of environmental influences on international migration more generally. Specifically, we propose an exploratory framework to take into account the role of context in shaping environmental migration across borders, including the dynamic and complex interactions between environmental and non-environmental factors at a range of scales.

Reframing Serial Murder Within Empirical Research.

Science.gov (United States)

Gurian, Elizabeth A

2017-04-01

Empirical research on serial murder is limited due to the lack of consensus on a definition, the continued use of primarily descriptive statistics, and linkage to popular culture depictions. These limitations also inhibit our understanding of these offenders and affect credibility in the field of research. Therefore, this comprehensive overview of a sample of 508 cases (738 total offenders, including partnered groups of two or more offenders) provides analyses of solo male, solo female, and partnered serial killers to elucidate statistical differences and similarities in offending and adjudication patterns among the three groups. This analysis of serial homicide offenders not only supports previous research on offending patterns present in the serial homicide literature but also reveals that empirically based analyses can enhance our understanding beyond traditional case studies and descriptive statistics. Further research based on these empirical analyses can aid in the development of more accurate classifications and definitions of serial murderers.

Evaluation of empirical atmospheric diffusion data

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Horst, T.W.; Doran, J.C.; Nickola, P.W.

1979-10-01

A study has been made of atmospheric diffusion over level, homogeneous terrain of contaminants released from non-buoyant point sources up to 100 m in height. Current theories of diffusion are compared to empirical diffusion data, and specific dispersion estimation techniques are recommended which can be implemented with the on-site meteorological instrumentation required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A comparison of both the recommended diffusion model and the NRC diffusion model with the empirical data demonstrates that the predictions of the recommended model have both smaller scatter and less bias, particularly for ground-level sources.

Managerial Career Patterns: A Review of the Empirical Evidence

Science.gov (United States)

Vinkenburg, Claartje J.; Weber, Torsten

2012-01-01

Despite the ubiquitous presence of the term "career patterns" in the discourse about careers, the existing empirical evidence on (managerial) career patterns is rather limited. From this literature review of 33 published empirical studies of managerial and similar professional career patterns found in electronic bibliographic databases, it is…

Gender and Subject Choice: An Empirical Study on Undergraduate Students' Majors in Phnom Penh

Science.gov (United States)

Dom, Vannak; Yi, Gihong

2018-01-01

The empirical study on 610 undergraduate students between the age of 16 to 25 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, was set to examine the relationship of gender and subject choice. The findings have revealed that women were overrepresented in non-science subjects and their gender identity has strong connection with subject choice (*** p < 0.001). The study…

Integrating technology readiness into the expectation-confirmation model: an empirical study of mobile services.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Shih-Chih; Liu, Ming-Ling; Lin, Chieh-Peng

2013-08-01

The aim of this study was to integrate technology readiness into the expectation-confirmation model (ECM) for explaining individuals' continuance of mobile data service usage. After reviewing the ECM and technology readiness, an integrated model was demonstrated via empirical data. Compared with the original ECM, the findings of this study show that the integrated model may offer an ameliorated way to clarify what factors and how they influence the continuous intention toward mobile services. Finally, the major findings are summarized, and future research directions are suggested.

An empirical study on primary school teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education in Jakarta, Indonesia

OpenAIRE

Kurniawati, Farida; Minnaert, A.E.M.G.; Mangunsong, F.; Ahmed, W.

2012-01-01

Empirical research revealed that teachers’ attitudes play a crucial role in successful implementation of inclusive education. This study aimed to examine primary school teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education in Jakarta, Indonesia. Respondents completed the attitude scale which comprised the theory-driven cognitive, affective and behavioral components of attitude. The findings show that teachers are in favor of inclusion and their attitudes seem to be related to their teaching experie...

Empirical studies on the pricing of bonds and interest rate derivatives

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Driessen, J.J.A.G.

2001-01-01

Nowadays, both large financial and non-financial institutions use models for the term structure of interest rates for risk management and pricing purposes. This thesis focuses on these two important applications of term structure models. In the first part, the empirical performance of several term

Successful intelligence and giftedness: an empirical study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mercedes Ferrando

Full Text Available The aim of our research is to look into the diversity within gifted and talented students. This is important to better understand their complexity and thus offer a more appropriate educational programs. There are rather few empirical works which attempt to identify high abilities profiles (giftedness and talent that actually exist beyond the theoretical level. The present work intends to single out the different patterns or profiles resulting from the combination of the successful intelligence abilities (analytical, synthetic and practical, as defined by Stenberg. A total of 431 students from the Region of Murcia participated in this study. These students performed the Aurora Battery tasks (Chart, Grigorenko, & Sternberg, 2008, designed to measure the analytical, practical and creative intelligence. Analytically gifted students (n=27, practically gifted (n=33 and creatively gifted (n= 34 were identified, taking as criteria scores equal to or higher than 120 IQ on each intelligence. Different Q-factor analyses were carried out for the three groups of students, in such a way that students were grouped according to their similarities. A total of 10 profiles showing how successful intelligence abilities are combined were obtained, something that has made possible to support the theory put forward by Sternberg (2000: the analytical, practical and creative talent profiles, as well as the resulting combinations, the analytical-practical, analytical-creative, practical-creative profiles, along with the consummate balance talent (high performance in the three types of intelligence.

Conference Report: Rechtsextremismusforschung – aktuelle Tendenzen empirischer Untersuchungen [Research on Right-wing Extremism—Latest Trends in Empirical Studies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Janina Söhn

2004-01-01

Full Text Available During this workshop scholars presented new, mainly empirical studies which explored different aspects of right-wing extremism in Germany. While a number of talks focused on political strategies and modern forms of organization of local neo-Nazi scenes, political elites and the music industry, others had chosen a biographical view on the personal development of young right-wing extremists. Studies on the local context of and conditions for right-wing extremist actions were complemented by representative survey data on political attitudes of German citizens. Apart from discussions about the phenomenon of right-wing extremism itself, participants had the opportunity to exchange their experience of doing empirical qualitative research in a dangerous field. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0401215

Birds of the Mongol Empire

OpenAIRE

Eugene N. Anderson

2016-01-01

The Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous empire the world has ever known, had, among other things, a goodly number of falconers, poultry raisers, birdcatchers, cooks, and other experts on various aspects of birding. We have records of this, largely in the Yinshan Zhengyao, the court nutrition manual of the Mongol empire in China (the Yuan Dynasty). It discusses in some detail 22 bird taxa, from swans to chickens. The Huihui Yaofang, a medical encyclopedia, lists ten taxa used medicinally. Ma...

Constraints and Dedication as Drivers for Relationship Commitment: An Empirical Study in a Health-Care Context

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Odekerken-Schröder, G.J.; Bloemer, J.M.M.

2002-01-01

The objective of this study is to empirically determine the role of constraints and dedication as drivers of relationship commitment as most of the existing work is of a conceptual nature only. We assess how and to which extent these two drivers fit into the established relationships between overall

Two Studies of the Empirical Basis of Two Learning Resource-Oriented Motivational Strategies for Gifted Educators

Science.gov (United States)

Vladut, Anamaria; Vialle, Wilma; Ziegler, Albert

2016-01-01

Two learning resource-oriented motivational strategies for gifted educators are introduced: a homeostatic orientation that aims for balance and an allostatic orientation that aims at growth. In order to establish the empirical basis of these motivational strategies, two studies were conducted with samples of students from a specialized…

A DISTANCE EDUCATION MODEL FOR JORDANIAN STUDENTS BASED ON AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ahmad SHAHER MASHHOUR

2007-04-01

Full Text Available Distance education is expanding worldwide. Numbers of students enrolled in distance education are increasing at very high rates. Distance education is said to be the future of education because it addresses educational needs of the new millennium. This paper represents the findings of an empirical study on a sample of Jordanian distance education students into a requirement model that addresses the need of such education at the national level. The responses of the sample show that distance education is offering a viable and satisfactory alternative to those who cannot enroll in regular residential education. The study also shows that the shortcomings of the regular and the current form of distance education in Jordan can be overcome by the use of modern information technology.

Empirično preverjanje modela povezav med poreklom izdelka in zaznano vrednostjo blagovne znamke = Empirical Testing of Associations Between Effects of Country-of- Origin and Perceived Brand Name Value

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tina Vukasovič

2010-12-01

Full Text Available The article investigates the importance of perceived brand name valuefrom an external point of view of perception of the Slovenian consumers.Based on the stratified survey and quantitative research we note therelationship between the origin of the product, marketing mix elements,and the perceived brand name value. Emphasis is placed onestablishing how the origin of the product impacts on the perceivedbrand name value and what its impact is on the perceived brand namevalue in comparison with selected marketing mix elements. The articlepresents the model of conceptual relationships between the originof the product and perceived brand name value, which was tested witha structural model of relationships between the origin of the productand perceived brand name value. We developed a measuring instrumentand procedures for checking the reliability and validity of thestructural model of perceived brand name value of the product. Theconceptual model and the relationships within the model were evaluatedby means of the modelling with linear structural equations on aselected sample of respondents, which enabled verification of the conceptualmodel with empirical data. It has been found that the origin ofthe product has at least such a statistically significant influence on theperceived brand name value as the selected marketing mix elements(advertising, product, distribution, and price.

An empirical study on the performance of spectral manifold learning techniques

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mysling, Peter; Hauberg, Søren; Pedersen, Kim Steenstrup

2011-01-01

In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in spectral manifold learning techniques. Despite the interest, only little work has focused on the empirical behavior of these techniques. We construct synthetic data of variable complexity and observe the performance of the techniques as they ...

Five loaves and two fishes: An empirical study in psychological type and biblical hermeneutics among Anglican preachers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Leslie J. Francis

2010-08-01

Full Text Available The sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking (SIFT method of biblical hermeneutics and liturgical preaching has its roots in three fields: a theology of individual differences situated within the doctrine of creation, an application of Jungian psychological-type theory and empirical observation. The present study tested the empirical foundations for this method by examining the psychological-type profile of two groups of Anglican preachers (24 licensed readers in England and 22 licensed clergy in Northern Ireland and by examining the content of their preaching according to their dominant psychological-type preferences. These data provided further support for the psychological principles underpinning the SIFT method of biblical hermeneutics and liturgical preaching.

A Multicenter Evaluation of Prolonged Empiric Antibiotic Therapy in Adult ICUs in the United States.

Science.gov (United States)

Thomas, Zachariah; Bandali, Farooq; Sankaranarayanan, Jayashri; Reardon, Tom; Olsen, Keith M

2015-12-01

The purpose of this study is to determine the rate of prolonged empiric antibiotic therapy in adult ICUs in the United States. Our secondary objective is to examine the relationship between the prolonged empiric antibiotic therapy rate and certain ICU characteristics. Multicenter, prospective, observational, 72-hour snapshot study. Sixty-seven ICUs from 32 hospitals in the United States. Nine hundred ninety-eight patients admitted to the ICU between midnight on June 20, 2011, and June 21, 2011, were included in the study. None. Antibiotic orders were categorized as prophylactic, definitive, empiric, or prolonged empiric antibiotic therapy. Prolonged empiric antibiotic therapy was defined as empiric antibiotics that continued for at least 72 hours in the absence of adjudicated infection. Standard definitions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were used to determine infection. Prolonged empiric antibiotic therapy rate was determined as the ratio of the total number of empiric antibiotics continued for at least 72 hours divided by the total number of empiric antibiotics. Univariate analysis of factors associated with the ICU prolonged empiric antibiotic therapy rate was conducted using Student t test. A total of 660 unique antibiotics were prescribed as empiric therapy to 364 patients. Of the empiric antibiotics, 333 of 660 (50%) were continued for at least 72 hours in instances where Centers for Disease Control and Prevention infection criteria were not met. Suspected pneumonia accounted for approximately 60% of empiric antibiotic use. The most frequently prescribed empiric antibiotics were vancomycin and piperacillin/tazobactam. ICUs that utilized invasive techniques for the diagnosis of ventilator-associated pneumonia had lower rates of prolonged empiric antibiotic therapy than those that did not, 45.1% versus 59.5% (p = 0.03). No other institutional factor was significantly associated with prolonged empiric antibiotic therapy rate. Half of all

A Guide to Visual Multi-Level Interface Design From Synthesis of Empirical Study Evidence

CERN Document Server

Lam, Heidi

2010-01-01

Displaying multiple levels of data visually has been proposed to address the challenge of limited screen space. Although many previous empirical studies have addressed different aspects of this question, the information visualization research community does not currently have a clearly articulated consensus on how, when, or even if displaying data at multiple levels is effective. To shed more light on this complex topic, we conducted a systematic review of 22 existing multi-level interface studies to extract high-level design guidelines. To facilitate discussion, we cast our analysis findings

An empirical study of marketing communications effectiveness in Slovenian market

OpenAIRE

Jerman, Damjana; Završnik, Bruno

2017-01-01

This paper deals with the value or more specifically, the contribution of marketing communications strategy to effectiveness of marketing communications and hypothesizes that marketing communications strategy correlate with the effectiveness of marketing communications. The paper consists of two parts: the theoretical framework for the role of marketing communications strategy for the effectiveness of the marketing communications and the empirical analysis, based on the primary data collected...

Empirical analysis of uranium spot prices

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Morman, M.R.

1988-01-01

The objective is to empirically test a market model of the uranium industry that incorporates the notion that, if the resource is viewed as an asset by economic agents, then its own rate of return along with the own rate of return of a competing asset would be a major factor in formulating the price of the resource. The model tested is based on a market model of supply and demand. The supply model incorporates the notion that the decision criteria used by uranium mine owners is to select that extraction rate that maximizes the net present value of their extraction receipts. The demand model uses a concept that allows for explicit recognition of the prospect of arbitrage between a natural-resource market and the market for other capital goods. The empirical approach used for estimation was a recursive or causal model. The empirical results were consistent with the theoretical models. The coefficients of the demand and supply equations had the appropriate signs. Tests for causality were conducted to validate the use of the causal model. The results obtained were favorable. The implication of the findings as related to future studies of exhaustible resources are: (1) in some cases causal models are the appropriate specification for empirical analysis; (2) supply models should incorporate a measure to capture depletion effects

Empirical Evaluation of Two Best-Practices for Energy-Efficient Software Development

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Procaccianti, G.; Fernandez, H.J.; Lago, P.

2016-01-01

Background. Energy efficiency is an increasingly important property of software. A large number of empirical studies have been conducted on the topic. However, current state-of-the-Art does not provide empirically-validated guidelines for developing energy-efficient software. Aim. This study aims at

Empirical philosophy of science

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wagenknecht, Susann; Nersessian, Nancy J.; Andersen, Hanne

2015-01-01

A growing number of philosophers of science make use of qualitative empirical data, a development that may reconfigure the relations between philosophy and sociology of science and that is reminiscent of efforts to integrate history and philosophy of science. Therefore, the first part...... of this introduction to the volume Empirical Philosophy of Science outlines the history of relations between philosophy and sociology of science on the one hand, and philosophy and history of science on the other. The second part of this introduction offers an overview of the papers in the volume, each of which...... is giving its own answer to questions such as: Why does the use of qualitative empirical methods benefit philosophical accounts of science? And how should these methods be used by the philosopher?...

Effects of Consumer-Perceived Convenience on Shopping Intention in Mobile Commerce: An Empirical study

OpenAIRE

Wen-Jang ("Kenny") Jih

2007-01-01

Wireless communication and Internet services are converging to provide an unprecedented level of convenience for online shopping. Although the concept of consumer-perceived convenience has been extensively discussed in marketing and consumer behavior literature, there still is a lack of empirical validation in the context of mobile commerce. This study was conducted to examine the effect of convenience on customers’ intention of shopping via their mobile communication devices. The primary d...

The State of Affairs of Mission Studies/World Christianity in Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Iversen, Hans Raun

2014-01-01

/world Christianity at the old universities in Aarhus and Copenhagen. The final words are on the role ofThe Danish Missionary Council and especially its study committee where teachers from all the four schools and universities meet on a regular basis with representatives ffom the missionary societies...

An Empirical Study Based on the SPSS Variance Analysis of College Teachers' Sports Participation and Satisfaction

OpenAIRE

Yunqiu Liang

2013-01-01

The study on University Teachers ' sports participation and their job satisfaction relationship for empirical research, mainly from the group to participate in sports activities situation on the object of study, investigation and mathematical statistics analysis SPSS. Results show that sports groups participate in job satisfaction higher than those in groups of job satisfaction; sports participation, different job satisfaction is also different. Recommendations for college teachers to address...

An empirical study on identifying critical success factors on chaos management

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Naser Azad

2012-08-01

Full Text Available Chaos management is one of the most necessary efforts on managing business units. Many organizations fail to cope with undesirable circumstances, which may happen without any prior notice and as a result, they may face with significant financial losses. In this paper, we present an empirical study to determine critical success factors, which could help handle any possible chaos in organizations. The proposed study of this paper is implemented for a set of travel agencies located in Tehran, Iran. Chronbach alpha is calculated as 0.821, which is well above the minimum desirable level. In addition, we have also performed factor analysis, which yields a KMO value of 0.576 with the level of significance of 0.000. The results indicate that there are six important factors including effective management strategy, internal environmental factors, creative and innovative attitudes, external environmental factors and top level management thoughts.

An empirical investigation of Australian Stock Exchange data

Science.gov (United States)

Bertram, William K.

2004-10-01

We present an empirical study of high frequency Australian equity data examining the behaviour of distribution tails and the existence of long memory. A method is presented allowing us to deal with Australian Stock Exchange data by splitting it into two separate data series representing an intraday and overnight component. Power-law exponents for the empirical density functions are estimated and compared with results from other studies. Using the autocorrelation and variance plots we find there to be a strong indication of long-memory type behaviour in the absolute return, volume and transaction frequency.

The effect of loss functions on empirical Bayes reliability analysis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Camara Vincent A. R.

1998-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of the present study is to investigate the sensitivity of empirical Bayes estimates of the reliability function with respect to changing of the loss function. In addition to applying some of the basic analytical results on empirical Bayes reliability obtained with the use of the “popular” squared error loss function, we shall derive some expressions corresponding to empirical Bayes reliability estimates obtained with the Higgins–Tsokos, the Harris and our proposed logarithmic loss functions. The concept of efficiency, along with the notion of integrated mean square error, will be used as a criterion to numerically compare our results. It is shown that empirical Bayes reliability functions are in general sensitive to the choice of the loss function, and that the squared error loss does not always yield the best empirical Bayes reliability estimate.

Empirical microeconomics action functionals

Science.gov (United States)

Baaquie, Belal E.; Du, Xin; Tanputraman, Winson

2015-06-01

A statistical generalization of microeconomics has been made in Baaquie (2013), where the market price of every traded commodity, at each instant of time, is considered to be an independent random variable. The dynamics of commodity market prices is modeled by an action functional-and the focus of this paper is to empirically determine the action functionals for different commodities. The correlation functions of the model are defined using a Feynman path integral. The model is calibrated using the unequal time correlation of the market commodity prices as well as their cubic and quartic moments using a perturbation expansion. The consistency of the perturbation expansion is verified by a numerical evaluation of the path integral. Nine commodities drawn from the energy, metal and grain sectors are studied and their market behavior is described by the model to an accuracy of over 90% using only six parameters. The paper empirically establishes the existence of the action functional for commodity prices that was postulated to exist in Baaquie (2013).

Investigating Low-Carbon City: Empirical Study of Shanghai

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xuan Yang

2018-04-01

Full Text Available A low-carbon economy is an inevitable choice for achieving economic and ecological sustainable development. It is of significant importance to analyze a city’s low-carbon economy development level scientifically and reasonably. In order to achieve this goal, we propose an urban low-carbon economic development level evaluation model based on the matter-element extension method. First, we select some indicators from the existing indicator system based on past research and experience. Then, a matter-element model is established on the basis of weight to evaluate the level of a city’s low-carbon, the critical value of each index is determined through the classical domain and the section domain, calculating the correlation degree of a single index and a comprehensive index. Finally, we analyze the low-carbon economy development status and future development trends according to the analysis results. In this study, we select Shanghai as an empirical study—the results show that Shanghai is a city with a low-carbon level and there is a trend of further improvement in Shanghai’s low-carbon economy. But its low carbon construction and low carbon technology investment are relatively low. In summary, this method can provide another angle for evaluating a city’s low-carbon economy.

Innovation in Information Technology: Theoretical and Empirical Study in SMQR Section of Export Import in Automotive Industry

Science.gov (United States)

Edi Nugroho Soebandrija, Khristian; Pratama, Yogi

2014-03-01

This paper has the objective to provide the innovation in information technology in both theoretical and empirical study. Precisely, both aspects relate to the Shortage Mispacking Quality Report (SMQR) Claims in Export and Import in Automotive Industry. This paper discusses the major aspects of Innovation, Information Technology, Performance and Competitive Advantage. Furthermore, In the empirical study of PT. Astra Honda Motor (AHM) refers to SMQR Claims, Communication Systems, Analysis and Design Systems. Briefly both aspects of the major aspects and its empirical study are discussed in the Introduction Session. Furthermore, the more detail discussion is conducted in the related aspects in other sessions of this paper, in particular in Literature Review in term classical and updated reference of current research. The increases of SMQR claim and communication problem at PT. Astra Daihatsu Motor (PT. ADM) which still using the email cause the time of claim settlement become longer and finally it causes the rejected of SMQR claim by supplier. With presence of this problem then performed to design the integrated communication system to manage the communication process of SMQR claim between PT. ADM with supplier. The systems was analyzed and designed is expected to facilitate the claim communication process so that can be run in accordance with the procedure and fulfill the target of claim settlement time and also eliminate the difficulties and problems on the previous manual communication system with the email. The design process of the system using the approach of system development life cycle method by Kendall & Kendall (2006)which design process covers the SMQR problem communication process, judgment process by the supplier, claim process, claim payment process and claim monitoring process. After getting the appropriate system designs for managing the SMQR claim, furthermore performed the system implementation and can be seen the improvement in claim communication

ADAPTATION PROCESS TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN AGRICULTURE- AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ghulam Mustafa

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Climatic variations affect agriculture in a process with no known end means. Adaptations help to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, adaptation has never been considered as a process. Current study empirically identified the adaptation process and its different stages. Moreover, little is known about the farm level adaptation strategies and their determinants. The study in hand found farm level adaptation strategies and determinants of these strategies. The study identified three stages of adaptation i.e. perception, intention and adaptation. It was found that 71.4% farmers perceived about climate change, 58.5% intended to adapt while 40.2% actually adapted. The study further explored that farmers do adaptations through changing crop variety (56.3%, changing planting dates (44.6%, tree plantation (37.5%, increase/conserve irrigation (39.3% and crop diversification (49.2%. The adaptation strategies used by farmers were autonomous and mostly determined perception to climate change. It was also noted that the adaptation strategies move in a circular process and once they are adapted they remained adapted for a longer period of time. Some constraints slow the adaptation process so; we recommend farmers should be given price incentives to speed-up this process.

Youths’ Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Intentions. Empirical Study on Students with Entrepreneurship Education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nițu–Antonie Renata

2013-12-01

Full Text Available The research aimed to identify the psychological and behavioural characteristics as potential triggers of youths’ entrepreneurial intentions within the context of rational action and planned behaviour theory. The empirical study proposed nine antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions for Romanian students with entrepreneurial higher education background. The results emphasized that behavioural variables (favourable subjective norms and attitude development, perceived behavioural control influence entrepreneurial intentions in a higher degree than the psychological ones (propensity to risk-taking, self-confidence, need for achievement, innovativeness. Moreover, some psychological variables (locus of control and tolerance of ambiguity have been identified as having insignificant influence on entrepreneurial intentions of the respondent students.

Evaluating Process Quality Based on Change Request Data - An Empirical Study of the Eclipse Project

Science.gov (United States)

Schackmann, Holger; Schaefer, Henning; Lichter, Horst

The information routinely collected in change request management systems contains valuable information for monitoring of the process quality. However this data is currently utilized in a very limited way. This paper presents an empirical study of the process quality in the product portfolio of the Eclipse project. It is based on a systematic approach for the evaluation of process quality characteristics using change request data. Results of the study offer insights into the development process of Eclipse. Moreover the study allows assessing applicability and limitations of the proposed approach for the evaluation of process quality.

Final Empirical Test Case Specification

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kalyanova, Olena; Heiselberg, Per

This document includes the empirical specification on the IEA task of evaluation building energy simulation computer programs for the Double Skin Facades (DSF) constructions. There are two approaches involved into this procedure, one is the comparative approach and another is the empirical one....

Empire vs. Federation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gravier, Magali

2011-01-01

The article discusses the concepts of federation and empire in the context of the European Union (EU). Even if these two concepts are not usually contrasted to one another, the article shows that they refer to related type of polities. Furthermore, they can be used at a time because they shed light...... on different and complementary aspects of the European integration process. The article concludes that the EU is at the crossroads between federation and empire and may remain an ‘imperial federation’ for several decades. This could mean that the EU is on the verge of transforming itself to another type...

Interviewer and respondent interaction in survey interviews : Empirical evidence from behavior coding studies and question wording experiments

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ongena, Yfke

2010-01-01

This book sheds light on verbal interaction problems in survey interviews. It is shown how behavior coding, i.e., coding the utterances of interviewer and respondent while they are answering survey questions, can be used to detect interactional problems. Several empirical studies using behavior

Augmented Reality-Based Simulators as Discovery Learning Tools: An Empirical Study

Science.gov (United States)

Ibáñez, María-Blanca; Di-Serio, Ángela; Villarán-Molina, Diego; Delgado-Kloos, Carlos

2015-01-01

This paper reports empirical evidence on having students use AR-SaBEr, a simulation tool based on augmented reality (AR), to discover the basic principles of electricity through a series of experiments. AR-SaBEr was enhanced with knowledge-based support and inquiry-based scaffolding mechanisms, which proved useful for discovery learning in…

Generalized empirical likelihood methods for analyzing longitudinal data

KAUST Repository

Wang, S.

2010-02-16

Efficient estimation of parameters is a major objective in analyzing longitudinal data. We propose two generalized empirical likelihood based methods that take into consideration within-subject correlations. A nonparametric version of the Wilks theorem for the limiting distributions of the empirical likelihood ratios is derived. It is shown that one of the proposed methods is locally efficient among a class of within-subject variance-covariance matrices. A simulation study is conducted to investigate the finite sample properties of the proposed methods and compare them with the block empirical likelihood method by You et al. (2006) and the normal approximation with a correctly estimated variance-covariance. The results suggest that the proposed methods are generally more efficient than existing methods which ignore the correlation structure, and better in coverage compared to the normal approximation with correctly specified within-subject correlation. An application illustrating our methods and supporting the simulation study results is also presented.

Incorporating Functional Genomic Information in Genetic Association Studies Using an Empirical Bayes Approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Spencer, Amy V; Cox, Angela; Lin, Wei-Yu; Easton, Douglas F; Michailidou, Kyriaki; Walters, Kevin

2016-04-01

There is a large amount of functional genetic data available, which can be used to inform fine-mapping association studies (in diseases with well-characterised disease pathways). Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) prioritization via Bayes factors is attractive because prior information can inform the effect size or the prior probability of causal association. This approach requires the specification of the effect size. If the information needed to estimate a priori the probability density for the effect sizes for causal SNPs in a genomic region isn't consistent or isn't available, then specifying a prior variance for the effect sizes is challenging. We propose both an empirical method to estimate this prior variance, and a coherent approach to using SNP-level functional data, to inform the prior probability of causal association. Through simulation we show that when ranking SNPs by our empirical Bayes factor in a fine-mapping study, the causal SNP rank is generally as high or higher than the rank using Bayes factors with other plausible values of the prior variance. Importantly, we also show that assigning SNP-specific prior probabilities of association based on expert prior functional knowledge of the disease mechanism can lead to improved causal SNPs ranks compared to ranking with identical prior probabilities of association. We demonstrate the use of our methods by applying the methods to the fine mapping of the CASP8 region of chromosome 2 using genotype data from the Collaborative Oncological Gene-Environment Study (COGS) Consortium. The data we analysed included approximately 46,000 breast cancer case and 43,000 healthy control samples. © 2016 The Authors. *Genetic Epidemiology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Collective Labour Supply, Taxes, and Intrahousehold Allocation: An Empirical Approach

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bloemen, H.G.

2017-01-01

Most empirical studies of the impact of labour income taxation on the labour supply behaviour of households use a unitary modelling approach. In this paper we empirically analyze income taxation and the choice of working hours by combining the collective approach for household behaviour and the

The Apocalyptic Empire of America L’Empire apocalyptique américain

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Akça Ataç

2009-10-01

Full Text Available En général, les études traitant de « l’Empire » américain tendent à chercher à comprendre celui-ci à partir de termes concrets tels que la frontière, l’intervention militaire, le commerce international. Néanmoins, les Empires sont d’abord le résultat de profondes traditions intellectuelles intangibles qui encouragent et justifient les actions entreprises dans le cadre de politiques impériales. Dans le cas de l’Amérique, les fondements intellectuels du nouvel idéal impérial sont ancrés dans la vision apocalyptique transportée dans les bagages des premiers colons puritains. Si l’on ne prend pas en compte cet ancrage apocalyptique, on ne peut saisir, dans leur totalité, les principes fondamentaux de « l’Empire » américain. On devrait examiner des termes qui entrent en résonance avec le discours impérial tels que « mission » et « destinée » ainsi que de l’engagement explicite dans la rhétorique présidentielle en faveur de « l’amélioration » du monde à n’importe quel prix du point de vue de cette croyance apocalyptique éternelle. Cet article essaie d’élucider l’origine et l’essence de la vision apocalyptique américaine en portant une attention particulière sur son influence dans la genèse du concept d’Empire américain.

Gaming addiction, definition, and measurement: a large-scale empirical study

OpenAIRE

Spekman, MLC; Konijn, EA; Roelofsma, PHMP; Griffiths, MD

2013-01-01

Aims: Although the general public appears to have embraced the term 'video game addiction', the scientific debate as to whether 'gaming addiction' can actually be considered an addiction similar to substance addictions of DSM-IV is still unsettled. To date, research on gaming addiction has focused on problematic behavior from the gaming activity itself and there has been little empirical research related to pathological personality patterns that usually are associated with substance addiction...

Psychological Models of Art Reception must be Empirically Grounded

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nadal, Marcos; Vartanian, Oshin; Skov, Martin

2017-01-01

We commend Menninghaus et al. for tackling the role of negative emotions in art reception. However, their model suffers from shortcomings that reduce its applicability to empirical studies of the arts: poor use of evidence, lack of integration with other models, and limited derivation of testable...... hypotheses. We argue that theories about art experiences should be based on empirical evidence....

The effects of performance measurement and compensation on motivation : an empirical study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Herpen, M.; van Praag, M.; Cools, K.

2005-01-01

This paper analyzes empirically the relationship between pay and performance. Economic and psychological theories predict that the design and implementation of a performance measurement and compensation system affect the motivation of employees. Our survey results demonstrate a positive relationship

The effects of performance measurement and compensation on motivation : An empirical study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Van Herpen, M; Van Praag, M; Cools, K

This paper analyzes empirically the relationship between pay and performance. Economic and psychological theories predict that the design and implementation of a performance measurement and compensation system affect the motivation of employees. Our survey results demonstrate a positive relationship

Experimental and semi-empirical and DFT calculational studies on (E)-2-((2-morpholinoethyliminio)methyl)-4-nitrophenolate

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Alpaslan, Y. B.; Agar, E.; Ersahin, F.; Iskeleli, N. O.; Oeztekin, E.

2010-01-01

The molecular and crystal structure of the title compound, C 1 3H 1 7N 3 O 4 , has been determined by X-ray single crystal diffraction technique. The compound crystallizes in the triclinic, space group P-1 with unit cell dimensions a=5.3520(4), b=10.9011(8), c=12.4537(9)A 0 , Mr=279.30, V=675.91(9)A 03 , Z=2, R1=0.037 and wR 2 =0.097. The molecule adopts a zwitterionic form, stabilized by an intramolecular N + -H 2 O- type ionic weak hydrogen bond. The molecule pack via intermolecular N-H 2 O hydrogen bonds which, together with an intramolecular N + -H 2 O- bond. Calculational studies were performed by using AM1, PM3, semi-empirical and DFT methods. Geometry optimizations of compound have been carried out by using three semi-empirical methods and DFT method and bond lengths, bond and torsion angles of title compound have been determined. Atomic charge distribution have been obtained from DFT. In order to determine conformational flexibility on the molecule, molecular energy profile of the title compound was obtained with respect to the selected torsion angle T(C2-C1-C7-N1), which is varied from -180 0 degree to +180 0 degree in every 10 via PM3 semi-empirical method.

An empirical study of real estate stock return behavior on the Nordic markets : – A 2003-2013 study

OpenAIRE

Mäki, David; Lundström, Martin

2013-01-01

The financial crisis has made the stock markets a very turbulent place. Investors have therefore begun searching for stable and profitable investments. Nordic real estate has for decades steadily increased in value and the stocks of real estate companies are said to be less risky than the market. This has led to a view of them being a safe haven for risk adverse investors. Very few empirical studies have been done on how these supposedly safe stocks actually behave in the Nordic countries. Th...

[Determinants of equity in financing medicines in Argentina: an empirical study].

Science.gov (United States)

Dondo, Mariana; Monsalvo, Mauricio; Garibaldi, Lucas A

2016-01-01

Medicines are an important part of household health spending. A progressive system for financing drugs is thus essential for an equitable health system. Some authors have proposed that the determinants of equity in drug financing are socioeconomic, demographic, and associated with public interventions, but little progress has been made in the empirical evaluation and quantification of their relative importance. The current study estimated quantile regressions at the provincial level in Argentina and found that old age (> 65 years), unemployment, the existence of a public pharmaceutical laboratory, treatment transfers, and a health system orientated to primary care were important predictors of progressive payment schemes. Low income, weak institutions, and insufficient infrastructure and services were associated with the most regressive social responses to health needs, thereby aggravating living conditions and limiting development opportunities.

Design Models as Emergent Features: An Empirical Study in Communication and Shared Mental Models in Instructional

Science.gov (United States)

Botturi, Luca

2006-01-01

This paper reports the results of an empirical study that investigated the instructional design process of three teams involved in the development of an e-­learning unit. The teams declared they were using the same fast-­prototyping design and development model, and were composed of the same roles (although with a different number of SMEs).…

Supply strategy configuration in fragmented production systems: An empirical study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Claudia Chackelson

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Purpose: Companies survive in saturated markets trying to be more productive and more efficient. In this context, it becomes critical for companies to manage the entire supply network to optimize overall performance.  Hence, the supply strategy plays an important role because it influences the way in which production and logistics network has to be configured and managed. This paper explores the benefits obtained configuring different supply strategies adapted to customer needs.Design/methodology/approach: For this purpose a case research from a Tier 2 point of view of the supply chain has been conducted. Findings and Originality/value: The case research demonstrates that a higher service level, less holding costs and increase turnovers can be obtained implementing the adequate supply strategy. Originality/value: There is a scarcity of research specifically focused on applied Supply Chain Principles within network configuration processes. Moreover, there are few empirical studies of global Tier 2 with multiple decoupling points into its supply chain network.

JOURN AL OFTHE CAMEROON ACADEMY OFSCIENCES

African Journals Online (AJOL)

implications in education for Information professionals have been drawn and relationships to the ... REVUE DE LACADEMIE DES SCIENCES Dt} CAMEROUN Vol.2 No.1 (2002) ..... ematical equality between the goals and the achievements.

Review essay: empires, ancient and modern.

Science.gov (United States)

Hall, John A

2011-09-01

This essay drews attention to two books on empires by historians which deserve the attention of sociologists. Bang's model of the workings of the Roman economy powerfully demonstrates the tributary nature of per-industrial tributary empires. Darwin's analysis concentrates on modern overseas empires, wholly different in character as they involved the transportation of consumption items for the many rather than luxury goods for the few. Darwin is especially good at describing the conditions of existence of late nineteenth century empires, noting that their demise was caused most of all by the failure of balance of power politics in Europe. Concluding thoughts are offered about the USA. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2011.

Test of Weak Form Efficiency: An Empirical Study of the Malaysian Foreign Exchange Market

OpenAIRE

Lim, Pei Mun

2011-01-01

This paper empirically tests the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) in the weak sense for the Malaysian foreign exchange market. The hypothesis is tested using two ways. First is by testing the random walk hypothesis based on individual unit root test and second is by testing the profitability of simple technical trading rules. The study covers the high frequency daily data from January 1997 to December 2010 and the spot exchange rates are quoted as Malaysian Ringgit per unit of US Dollar. Due...

Research on Evaluation Use: A Review of the Empirical Literature from 1986 to 2005

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Kelli; Greenseid, Lija O.; Toal, Stacie A.; King, Jean A.; Lawrenz, Frances; Volkov, Boris

2009-01-01

This paper reviews empirical research on the use of evaluation from 1986 to 2005 using Cousins and Leithwood's 1986 framework for categorizing empirical studies of evaluation use conducted since that time. The literature review located 41 empirical studies of evaluation use conducted between 1986 and 2005 that met minimum quality standards. The…

PROBLEMS WITH WIREDU'S EMPIRICALISM Martin Odei Ajei1 ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

In his “Empiricalism: The Empirical Character of an African Philosophy”,. Kwasi Wiredu sets out ... others, that an empirical metaphysical system contains both empirical ..... realms which multiple categories of existents inhabit and conduct their being in .... to a mode of reasoning that conceives categories polarized by formal.

Impact of empirical treatment in extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella spp. bacteremia. A multicentric cohort study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Peralta Galo

2012-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The objective of this study is to analyze the factors that are associated with the adequacy of empirical antibiotic therapy and its impact in mortality in a large cohort of patients with extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL - producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella spp. bacteremia. Methods Cases of ESBL producing Enterobacteriaceae (ESBL-E bacteremia collected from 2003 through 2008 in 19 hospitals in Spain. Statistical analysis was performed using multivariate logistic regression. Results We analyzed 387 cases ESBL-E bloodstream infections. The main sources of bacteremia were urinary tract (55.3%, biliary tract (12.7%, intra-abdominal (8.8% and unknown origin (9.6%. Among all the 387 episodes, E. coli was isolated from blood cultures in 343 and in 45.71% the ESBL-E was multidrug resistant. Empirical antibiotic treatment was adequate in 48.8% of the cases and the in hospital mortality was 20.9%. In a multivariate analysis adequacy was a risk factor for death [adjusted OR (95% CI: 0.39 (0.31-0.97; P = 0.04], but not in patients without severe sepsis or shock. The class of antibiotic used empirically was not associated with prognosis in adequately treated patients. Conclusion ESBL-E bacteremia has a relatively high mortality that is partly related with a low adequacy of empirical antibiotic treatment. In selected subgroups the relevance of the adequacy of empirical therapy is limited.

An Empirical Study Analyzing Job Productivity in Toxic Workplace Environments.

Science.gov (United States)

Anjum, Amna; Ming, Xu; Siddiqi, Ahmed Faisal; Rasool, Samma Faiz

2018-05-21

Purpose: This empirical study aims to determine the effects of a toxic workplace environment, which can negatively impact the job productivity of an employee. Methodology: Three hundred questionnaires were randomly distributed among the staff members of seven private universities in Pakistan with a final response rate of 89%. For analysis purposes, AMOS 22 was used to study the direct and indirect effects of the toxic workplace environment on job productivity. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted to ensure the convergent and discriminant validity of the factors, while the Hayes mediation approach was used to verify the mediating role of job burnout between the four dimensions of toxic workplace environment and job productivity. A toxic workplace with multiple dimensions, such as workplace ostracism, workplace incivility, workplace harassment, and workplace bullying, was used in this study. Findings: By using the multiple statistical tools and techniques, it has been proven that ostracism, incivility, harassment, and bullying have direct negative significant effects on job productivity, while job burnout was shown to be a statistical significant mediator between the dimensions of a toxic workplace environment and job productivity. Finally, we concluded that organizations need to eradicate the factors of toxic workplace environments to ensure their prosperity and success. Practical Implications: This study encourages managers, leaders, and top management to adopt appropriate policies for enhancing employees’ productivity. Limitations: This study was conducted by using a cross-sectional research design. Future research aims to expand the study by using a longitudinal research design.

A novel random-pulser concept for empirical reliability studies of complex systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Priesmeyer, H.G.

1985-01-01

The concept of a computer-controlled pseudo-random pulser is described, which is able to produce pulse sequences obeying statistical distributions, used in probability assessments of safety technology. It shall be used in empirical investigations of the reliability of complex systems. (orig.) [de

The Patronage Behaviour of Islamic Bank’s Customers: Empirical Studies in Aceh

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Shabri Abd. Majid

2016-07-01

Full Text Available This study is aimed at empirically exploring the pertinent factors, which customers and non-customer perceive as germane to their selection of Islamic bank in Aceh, Indonesia. A sample of 300 customers and non-customer of Bank Aceh Syariah were selected based on the convenience sampling technique. Using the logistic regression technique, the study documented that the customers’ selection of the banks were influenced by the factors of banks’ characteristic, services and trust, shari’ah compliance, and physical objects. Of these factors, banks’ characteristic and shari’ah compliance were found to be the most pertinent factors perceived by the customers and non-customer to their selection of Islamic bank in Aceh, Indonesia. These findings imply that to attract more customers, the Islamic bank should enhance their unique characteristics and products’ compliance.DOI:10.15408/aiq.v8i2.3139

Benefit and risk information in prescription drug advertising: review of empirical studies and marketing implications.

Science.gov (United States)

Kopp, S W; Bang, H K

2000-01-01

As pharmaceutical companies began to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers as well as to physicians, understanding the impact of benefit and risk information in drug advertising on physicians and consumers has become more critical. This paper reviews previous empirical studies that examined the content of benefit and risk information in drug advertising and its potential effects on physicians' subsequent prescribing behaviors. It also reviews studies that investigated how consumers process information on a drug's efficacy and side effects. Based on the findings of these studies, implications are discussed for effective marketing information development as well as for government regulation.

Empirical Testing of a Theoretical Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model: An Exploratory Study of Educational Wikis

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Xun

2010-01-01

This study extended the technology acceptance model and empirically tested the new model with wikis, a new type of educational technology. Based on social cognitive theory and the theory of planned behavior, three new variables, wiki self-efficacy, online posting anxiety, and perceived behavioral control, were added to the original technology…

Searching for Logistics and Regulatory Determinants Affecting Overseas Direct Purchase: An Empirical Cross-National Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hyuksoo Cho

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Cross-border e-commerce has been very successful in the last decade. Merchants and consumers have been encouraged to participate in e-commerce, including B2C or B2B. B2C is not limited to a domestic market anymore. Consumers across countries are interested in overseas direct purchases. They are willing to purchase products from major online shopping sites such as Amazon and eBay. We aim at gaining a better understanding of overseas direct purchases. Determinants of overseas direct purchases based on cross-national data are identified. Accordingly, we investigate logistics and regulatory determinants. Furthermore, external environments such as regulatory institutions and globalization are discussed in terms of overseas direct purchases. This study incorporates theoretical foundations into empirical findings. Specifically, the institutional theory and the resource-based view are applied to explain the internal and external determinants to increase overseas direct purchases. We conduct an empirical test using panel data for each country to identify the various determinants associated with overseas direct purchases.

Predicting acid dew point with a semi-empirical model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xiang, Baixiang; Tang, Bin; Wu, Yuxin; Yang, Hairui; Zhang, Man; Lu, Junfu

2016-01-01

Highlights: • The previous semi-empirical models are systematically studied. • An improved thermodynamic correlation is derived. • A semi-empirical prediction model is proposed. • The proposed semi-empirical model is validated. - Abstract: Decreasing the temperature of exhaust flue gas in boilers is one of the most effective ways to further improve the thermal efficiency, electrostatic precipitator efficiency and to decrease the water consumption of desulfurization tower, while, when this temperature is below the acid dew point, the fouling and corrosion will occur on the heating surfaces in the second pass of boilers. So, the knowledge on accurately predicting the acid dew point is essential. By investigating the previous models on acid dew point prediction, an improved thermodynamic correlation formula between the acid dew point and its influencing factors is derived first. And then, a semi-empirical prediction model is proposed, which is validated with the data both in field test and experiment, and comparing with the previous models.

Evidence-based Nursing Education - a Systematic Review of Empirical Research

Science.gov (United States)

Reiber, Karin

2011-01-01

The project „Evidence-based Nursing Education – Preparatory Stage“, funded by the Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg within the programme Impulsfinanzierung Forschung (Funding to Stimulate Research), aims to collect information on current research concerned with nursing education and to process existing data. The results of empirical research which has already been carried out were systematically evaluated with aim of identifying further topics, fields and matters of interest for empirical research in nursing education. In the course of the project, the available empirical studies on nursing education were scientifically analysed and systematised. The over-arching aim of the evidence-based training approach – which extends beyond the aims of this project - is the conception, organisation and evaluation of vocational training and educational processes in the caring professions on the basis of empirical data. The following contribution first provides a systematic, theoretical link to the over-arching reference framework, as the evidence-based approach is adapted from thematically related specialist fields. The research design of the project is oriented towards criteria introduced from a selection of studies and carries out a two-stage systematic review of the selected studies. As a result, the current status of research in nursing education, as well as its organisation and structure, and questions relating to specialist training and comparative education are introduced and discussed. Finally, the empirical research on nursing training is critically appraised as a complementary element in educational theory/psychology of learning and in the ethical tradition of research. This contribution aims, on the one hand, to derive and describe the methods used, and to introduce the steps followed in gathering and evaluating the data. On the other hand, it is intended to give a systematic overview of empirical research work in nursing education. In order to preserve a

Software Development Management: Empirical and Analytical Perspectives

Science.gov (United States)

Kang, Keumseok

2011-01-01

Managing software development is a very complex activity because it must deal with people, organizations, technologies, and business processes. My dissertation consists of three studies that examine software development management from various perspectives. The first study empirically investigates the impacts of prior experience with similar…

Semi-empirical corrosion model for Zircaloy-4 cladding

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nadeem Elahi, Waseem; Atif Rana, Muhammad

2015-01-01

The Zircaloy-4 cladding tube in Pressurize Water Reactors (PWRs) bears corrosion due to fast neutron flux, coolant temperature, and water chemistry. The thickness of Zircaloy-4 cladding tube may be decreased due to the increase in corrosion penetration which may affect the integrity of the fuel rod. The tin content and inter-metallic particles sizes has been found significantly in the magnitude of oxide thickness. In present study we have developed a Semiempirical corrosion model by modifying the Arrhenius equation for corrosion as a function of acceleration factor for tin content and accumulative annealing. This developed model has been incorporated into fuel performance computer code. The cladding oxide thickness data obtained from the Semi-empirical corrosion model has been compared with the experimental results i.e., numerous cases of measured cladding oxide thickness from UO 2 fuel rods, irradiated in various PWRs. The results of the both studies lie within the error band of 20μm, which confirms the validity of the developed Semi-empirical corrosion model. Key words: Corrosion, Zircaloy-4, tin content, accumulative annealing factor, Semi-empirical, PWR. (author)

Birds of the Mongol Empire

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eugene N. Anderson

2016-09-01

Full Text Available The Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous empire the world has ever known, had, among other things, a goodly number of falconers, poultry raisers, birdcatchers, cooks, and other experts on various aspects of birding. We have records of this, largely in the Yinshan Zhengyao, the court nutrition manual of the Mongol empire in China (the Yuan Dynasty. It discusses in some detail 22 bird taxa, from swans to chickens. The Huihui Yaofang, a medical encyclopedia, lists ten taxa used medicinally. Marco Polo also made notes on Mongol bird use. There are a few other records. This allows us to draw conclusions about Mongol ornithology, which apparently was sophisticated and detailed.

Economic reasons behind the decline of the Ottoman empire

OpenAIRE

Duranoglu, Erkut; Okutucu, Guzide

2009-01-01

This study addresses the economic reasons of the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary to the previous researches, by undertaking both global and domestic developments, the paper examines the decline of the empire from an economical point of perspective. Although international developments such as industrialization in European countries, pressure on the Ottomans in terms of integrating with the world economy, global economic factors like depressions and war...

Feature Evaluation for Building Facade Images - AN Empirical Study

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, M. Y.; Förstner, W.; Chai, D.

2012-08-01

The classification of building facade images is a challenging problem that receives a great deal of attention in the photogrammetry community. Image classification is critically dependent on the features. In this paper, we perform an empirical feature evaluation task for building facade images. Feature sets we choose are basic features, color features, histogram features, Peucker features, texture features, and SIFT features. We present an approach for region-wise labeling using an efficient randomized decision forest classifier and local features. We conduct our experiments with building facade image classification on the eTRIMS dataset, where our focus is the object classes building, car, door, pavement, road, sky, vegetation, and window.

Empirical and theoretical challenges in aboveground-belowground ecology

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

W.H. van der Putten,; R.D. Bardgett; P.C. de Ruiter

2009-01-01

of the current conceptual succession models into more predictive models can help targeting empirical studies and generalising their results. Then, we discuss how understanding succession may help to enhance managing arable crops, grasslands and invasive plants, as well as provide insights into the effects...... and environmental settings, we explore where and how they can be supported by theoretical approaches to develop testable predictions and to generalise empirical results. We review four key areas where a combined aboveground-belowground approach offers perspectives for enhancing ecological understanding, namely...

Governance and Human Development: Empirical Evidence from ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

This study empirically investigates the effects of governance on human development in Nigeria. Using annual time series data covering the period 1998 to 2010, obtained from various sources, and employing the classical least squares estimation technique, the study finds that corruption, foreign aid and government ...

Transition States from Empirical Force Fields

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Frank; Norrby, Per-Ola

2003-01-01

This is an overview of the use of empirical force fields in the study of reaction mechanisms. EVB-type methods (including RFF and MCMM) produce full reaction surfaces by mixing, in the simplest case, known force fields describing reactants and products. The SEAM method instead locates approximate...

Cash Flows versus Accounting Earnings in Managing Exchange Rate Exposures: An Empirical Study of Non-Financial Companies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Aabo, Tom

Financial theory argues that companies should manage cash flows and not accounting earnings when they hedge exchange rate exposures. Still, empirical evidence shows that a number of companies choose to manage accounting earnings. This empirical study of Danish, non-financial companies finds (1......) that when hedging the majority of companies expect to add value to their company by avoiding financial distress (reduce down side risk), (2) that when hedging managing cash flows versus managing accounting earnings as a first priority splits the companies in two, (3) a lack of difference (except...... for profitability) in company characteristics between the group of companies that manage cash flows versus the group of companies that manage accounting earnings as a first priority. The decision in real business on whether to manage cash flows or accounting earnings when hedging exchange rate exposures seems...

Lessons Learned on Benchmarking from the International Human Reliability Analysis Empirical Study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Boring, Ronald L.; Forester, John A.; Bye, Andreas; Dang, Vinh N.; Lois, Erasmia

2010-01-01

The International Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) Empirical Study is a comparative benchmark of the prediction of HRA methods to the performance of nuclear power plant crews in a control room simulator. There are a number of unique aspects to the present study that distinguish it from previous HRA benchmarks, most notably the emphasis on a method-to-data comparison instead of a method-to-method comparison. This paper reviews seven lessons learned about HRA benchmarking from conducting the study: (1) the dual purposes of the study afforded by joining another HRA study; (2) the importance of comparing not only quantitative but also qualitative aspects of HRA; (3) consideration of both negative and positive drivers on crew performance; (4) a relatively large sample size of crews; (5) the use of multiple methods and scenarios to provide a well-rounded view of HRA performance; (6) the importance of clearly defined human failure events; and (7) the use of a common comparison language to 'translate' the results of different HRA methods. These seven lessons learned highlight how the present study can serve as a useful template for future benchmarking studies.

Lessons Learned on Benchmarking from the International Human Reliability Analysis Empirical Study

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ronald L. Boring; John A. Forester; Andreas Bye; Vinh N. Dang; Erasmia Lois

2010-06-01

The International Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) Empirical Study is a comparative benchmark of the prediction of HRA methods to the performance of nuclear power plant crews in a control room simulator. There are a number of unique aspects to the present study that distinguish it from previous HRA benchmarks, most notably the emphasis on a method-to-data comparison instead of a method-to-method comparison. This paper reviews seven lessons learned about HRA benchmarking from conducting the study: (1) the dual purposes of the study afforded by joining another HRA study; (2) the importance of comparing not only quantitative but also qualitative aspects of HRA; (3) consideration of both negative and positive drivers on crew performance; (4) a relatively large sample size of crews; (5) the use of multiple methods and scenarios to provide a well-rounded view of HRA performance; (6) the importance of clearly defined human failure events; and (7) the use of a common comparison language to “translate” the results of different HRA methods. These seven lessons learned highlight how the present study can serve as a useful template for future benchmarking studies.

Macro-evolutionary studies of cultural diversity: a review of empirical studies of cultural transmission and cultural adaptation.

Science.gov (United States)

Mace, Ruth; Jordan, Fiona M

2011-02-12

A growing body of theoretical and empirical research has examined cultural transmission and adaptive cultural behaviour at the individual, within-group level. However, relatively few studies have tried to examine proximate transmission or test ultimate adaptive hypotheses about behavioural or cultural diversity at a between-societies macro-level. In both the history of anthropology and in present-day work, a common approach to examining adaptive behaviour at the macro-level has been through correlating various cultural traits with features of ecology. We discuss some difficulties with simple ecological associations, and then review cultural phylogenetic studies that have attempted to go beyond correlations to understand the underlying cultural evolutionary processes. We conclude with an example of a phylogenetically controlled approach to understanding proximate transmission pathways in Austronesian cultural diversity.

An Empirical study on the competitiveness and innovation in four sectors of the Turkish manufacturing industry

OpenAIRE

Ulusoy, Gündüz; Ulusoy, Gunduz; Çetindamar, Dilek; Cetindamar, Dilek; Yeğenoğlu, Hande; Yegenoglu, Hande; Bulut, Çağrı; Bulut, Cagri

2007-01-01

In this paper, we report on some of the results of the Innovations in Manufacturing Industries in Turkey Study (IMITS). This study is an empirical investigation into the innovation performance and competitive strategies of manufacturing firms in Turkey. The data was gathered in nine different cities in Turkey during the period August 2004 – January 2005. The survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews due to the complex nature of the survey and was implemented in 135 manufacturing fi...

An Empirical Study on Washback Effects of the Internet-Based College English Test Band 4 in China

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Chao; Yan, Jiaolan; Liu, Bao

2014-01-01

Based on Bailey's washback model, in respect of participants, process and products, the present empirical study was conducted to find the actual washback effects of the internet-based College English Test Band 4 (IB CET-4). The methods adopted are questionnaires, class observation, interview and the analysis of both the CET-4 teaching and testing…

An Empirical Study Analyzing Job Productivity in Toxic Workplace Environments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amna Anjum

2018-05-01

Full Text Available Purpose: This empirical study aims to determine the effects of a toxic workplace environment, which can negatively impact the job productivity of an employee. Methodology: Three hundred questionnaires were randomly distributed among the staff members of seven private universities in Pakistan with a final response rate of 89%. For analysis purposes, AMOS 22 was used to study the direct and indirect effects of the toxic workplace environment on job productivity. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA was conducted to ensure the convergent and discriminant validity of the factors, while the Hayes mediation approach was used to verify the mediating role of job burnout between the four dimensions of toxic workplace environment and job productivity. A toxic workplace with multiple dimensions, such as workplace ostracism, workplace incivility, workplace harassment, and workplace bullying, was used in this study. Findings: By using the multiple statistical tools and techniques, it has been proven that ostracism, incivility, harassment, and bullying have direct negative significant effects on job productivity, while job burnout was shown to be a statistical significant mediator between the dimensions of a toxic workplace environment and job productivity. Finally, we concluded that organizations need to eradicate the factors of toxic workplace environments to ensure their prosperity and success. Practical Implications: This study encourages managers, leaders, and top management to adopt appropriate policies for enhancing employees’ productivity. Limitations: This study was conducted by using a cross-sectional research design. Future research aims to expand the study by using a longitudinal research design.

Empirical molecular-dynamics study of diffusion in liquid semiconductors

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, W.; Wang, Z. Q.; Stroud, D.

1996-11-01

We report the results of an extensive molecular-dynamics study of diffusion in liquid Si and Ge (l-Si and l-Ge) and of impurities in l-Ge, using empirical Stillinger-Weber (SW) potentials with several choices of parameters. We use a numerical algorithm in which the three-body part of the SW potential is decomposed into products of two-body potentials, thereby permitting the study of large systems. One choice of SW parameters agrees very well with the observed l-Ge structure factors. The diffusion coefficients D(T) at melting are found to be approximately 6.4×10-5 cm2/s for l-Si, in good agreement with previous calculations, and about 4.2×10-5 and 4.6×10-5 cm2/s for two models of l-Ge. In all cases, D(T) can be fitted to an activated temperature dependence, with activation energies Ed of about 0.42 eV for l-Si, and 0.32 or 0.26 eV for two models of l-Ge, as calculated from either the Einstein relation or from a Green-Kubo-type integration of the velocity autocorrelation function. D(T) for Si impurities in l-Ge is found to be very similar to the self-diffusion coefficient of l-Ge. We briefly discuss possible reasons why the SW potentials give D(T)'s substantially lower than ab initio predictions.

Marketing-oriented strategy concept and its empirical testing with large sawmills.

OpenAIRE

Niemelä, Juha S.

1993-01-01

The objectives of this study are both theoretical and empirical. On the theoretical level strategy concept, its operationalization and measurement are analyzed and clarified. On the empirical level marketing strategies and competitive strategies are described by country, and the study also identifies the strategic marketing decisions characterizing different countries or competitive strategies. Furthermore, the relationships between strategies and marketing structures and functions are analyz...

Computing as Empirical Science – Evolution of a Concept

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Polak Paweł

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This article presents the evolution of philosophical and methodological considerations concerning empiricism in computer/computing science. In this study, we trace the most important current events in the history of reflection on computing. The forerunners of Artificial Intelligence H.A. Simon and A. Newell in their paper Computer Science As Empirical Inquiry (1975 started these considerations. Later the concept of empirical computer science was developed by S.S. Shapiro, P. Wegner, A.H. Eden and P.J. Denning. They showed various empirical aspects of computing. This led to a view of the science of computing (or science of information processing - the science of general scope. Some interesting contemporary ways towards a generalized perspective on computations were also shown (e.g. natural computing.

An Empirical Investigation into Nigerian ESL Learners ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

General observations indicate that ESL learners in Nigeria tend to manifest fear and anxiety in grammar classes, which could influence their performance negatively or positively. This study examines empirically some of the reasons for some ESL learners' apprehension of grammar classes. The data for the study were ...

Empirical Evaluation Indicators in Thai Higher Education: Theory-Based Multidimensional Learners' Assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Sritanyarat, Dawisa; Russ-Eft, Darlene

2016-01-01

This study proposed empirical indicators which can be validated and adopted in higher education institutions to evaluate quality of teaching and learning, and to serve as an evaluation criteria for human resource management and development of higher institutions in Thailand. The main purpose of this study was to develop empirical indicators of a…

Empirical questions for collective-behaviour modelling

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

The collective behaviour of groups of social animals has been an active topic of study ... Models have been successful at reproducing qualitative features of ... quantitative and detailed empirical results for a range of animal systems. ... standard method [23], the redundant information recorded by the cameras can be used to.

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS IN THE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY AND THEIR RELATION WITH STRATEGIC BUSINESS ORIENTATION: AN EMPIRICAL-EXPLORATORY STUDY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Manuel Rodenes Adam

2007-05-01

Full Text Available This article presents the results of an empirical-exploratory study applied to companies of the Software Industry (IndSw sector. One of the objectives pursued was to know the Critical Success Factors (CSF of the SWInd and their relation with the business strategic orientation. The CSF identified and analyzed were: Government Support, Human Capital, Marketing, Quality and Innovation. The research results reveal that it is possible to identify the existence of at least two main groups of strategic orientation (cost and differentiation within this sector. The analysis of the relation between business strategic orientation and the CSF emphasizes the following CSF: Human Capital, Quality and Innovation, the remaining factors present a little significant relation. The empirical study was made through multivariate analysis techniques. The analysis of results is based on data collected through the application of a web survey (Internet to Mexican software companies. The survey was applied in July 2005.

[Mes differ by positioning: empirical testing of decentralized dynamics of the self].

Science.gov (United States)

Mizokami, Shinichi

2013-10-01

The present study empirically tested the conceptualization of the decentralized dynamics of the self proposed by Hermans & Kempen (1993), which they developed theoretically and from clinical cases, not from large samples of empirical data. They posited that worldviews and images of the self could vary by positioning even in the same individual, and denied that the ego was an omniscient entity that knew and controlled all aspects of the self (centralized ego). Study 1 tested their conceptualization empirically with 47 university students in an experimental group and 17 as a control group. The results showed that the scores on the Rosenberg's self-esteem scale and images of the Mes in the experimental group significantly varied by positioning, but those in the control group did not. Similar results were found in Study 2 with a sample of 120 university students. These results empirically supported the conceptualization of the decentralized dynamics of the self.

Empirical study on flow experience in China tourism e-commerce market

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jianling Wang

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Purpose: While tourism e-commerce develops rapidly in China, these channels are truly new to both web providers and web consumers, understanding the nature of these media attaches greater importance. This study investigates the mediation effects of flow experience on the relationship between motivation and behavior intention in tourism e-commerce.Design/methodology/approach: Based on the technology acceptance model, an empirical study is designed to test this relationship.we estimated the measurement model with 13 manifest indicators and 4 latent constructs by CFA to assess the reliability and validity of the construct measures, then tested hypotheses by OLS regression and a formal three-step mediation procedure.Findings: Overall, the results reveal that trust is incorporated in motivation and play it’s role together with other motivations; telepresence and concentration are confirmed in flow experience, and both partially mediated the relationship.Research limitations/implications: This study demonstrates that to improve consumers’ usage adoption, marketers should pay much attention to not only consumers’ motivation but also the areas such as flow experience.Originality/value: This study takes flow experience as a new perspective to explore china tourism e-commerce, estimates its measurement and tests its roles between motivation and behavior intention.

Double-dividend analysis with SCREEN: an empirical study for Switzerland

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Frei, Christoph W.; Haldi, Pierre-Andre; Sarlos, Gerard

2005-01-01

This paper presents an empirical study that quantifies the effects of an ecological fiscal reform as recently rejected by the Swiss population. The measure aims to encourage employment and, at the same time, to dissuade from an excessive energy use and thereby decrease energy-induced external costs (CO 2 , etc.). The analysis is based on the model SCREEN, a general equilibrium model using the complementarity format for the hybrid description of economy-wide production possibilities where the electricity sector is represented by a bottom-up activity analysis and the other production sectors are characterised by top-down production functions. A dynamic formulation of the activity analysis of technologies allows for the reproduction of endogenous structural change (see Frei, C.W., Haldi, P.-A., Sarlos, G., 2003. Dynamic formulation of a top-down and bottom-up merging energy policy model. Energy Policy 31 (10), 1017-1031.). The labour market is formulated according to the microeconomically founded efficiency wages and calibrated for Switzerland. The study includes the development of a consistent set of top-down, bottom-up and labour data for Switzerland. The collection of bottom-up data on the electricity sector, just before liberalisation, was not easy. The electricity sector characterising data was prepared, based on original statistics about 140 Swiss electricity companies

An empirical study the relationship between intellectual intelligence and university performance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jamshid Salehi Sadaghiani

2012-08-01

Full Text Available Intellectual capital (IC is normally used to create value for organizations and in today's business environment; the success of each organization depends on managing such assets. During the past few years, many organizations implement IC to increase their competitive advantages. Hospitals are among business units where IC plays an important role on the success of these units. People normally choose hospitals based not only based on their equipments but also based on the specialists and physicians they have. In this paper, we present an empirical study to measure the impact of IC in accounting parts of hospitals. The results of our regression analysis indicates that when there is a unit increase in either of human, customer, structural or intellectual capital individually, we can expect of an increase of 1.278, 1.210, 1.415 and 1.620 units increase in the performance of the university, respectively.

Knowledge-oriented strategies in the metal industry (empirical studies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. Krawczyk-Sołtys

2016-07-01

Full Text Available The aim of this article is an attempt to determine which knowledge-oriented strategies can give metal industry enterprises the best results in achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage. To determine which of these discussed in the literature and implemented in various organizations knowledge-oriented strategies may prove to be the most effective in the metal industry, empirical research has begun. A chosen strategy of knowledge management and supporting strategies are the basis of a choice of methods and means of intended implementation. The choice of a specific knowledge management strategy may also result in the need for changes in an organization, particularly in an information system, internal communication, work organization and human resource management.

Empirical prediction of ash deposition propensities in coal-fired utilities

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Frandsen, F.

1997-01-01

This report contain an outline of some of the ash chemistry indices utilized in the EPREDEPO (Empirical PREdiction of DEPOsition) PC-program, version 1.0 (DEPO10), developed by Flemming Frandsen, The CHEC Research Programme, at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark. DEPO10 is a 1st generation FTN77 Fortran PC-programme designed to empirically predict ash deposition propensities in coal-fired utility boilers. Expectational data (empirical basis) from an EPRI-sponsored survey of ash deposition experiences at coal-fired utility boilers, performed by Battelle, have been tested for use on Danish coal chemistry - boiler operational conditions, in this study. (au) 31 refs.

The effect of loss functions on empirical Bayes reliability analysis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vincent A. R. Camara

1999-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of the present study is to investigate the sensitivity of empirical Bayes estimates of the reliability function with respect to changing of the loss function. In addition to applying some of the basic analytical results on empirical Bayes reliability obtained with the use of the “popular” squared error loss function, we shall derive some expressions corresponding to empirical Bayes reliability estimates obtained with the Higgins–Tsokos, the Harris and our proposed logarithmic loss functions. The concept of efficiency, along with the notion of integrated mean square error, will be used as a criterion to numerically compare our results.

The performance of selected semi-empirical and DFT methods in studying C60 fullerene derivatives

Science.gov (United States)

Sikorska, Celina; Puzyn, Tomasz

2015-11-01

The capability of reproducing the open circuit voltages (V oc) of 15 representative C60 fullerene derivatives was tested using the selected quantum mechanical methods (B3LYP, PM6, and PM7) together with the two one-electron basis sets. Certain theoretical treatments (e.g. PM6) were found to be satisfactory for preliminary estimates of the open circuit voltages (V oc), whereas the use of the B3LYP/6-31G(d) approach has been proven to assure highly accurate results. We also examined the structural similarity of 19 fullerene derivatives by employing principle component analysis (PCA). In order to express the structural features of the studied compounds we used molecular descriptors calculated with semi-empirical (PM6 and PM7) and density functional (B3LYP/6-31G(d)) methods separately. In performing PCA, we noticed that semi-empirical methods (i.e. PM6 and PM7) seem satisfactory for molecules, in which one can distinguish the aromatic and the aliphatic parts in the cyclopropane ring of PCBM (phenyl-C61-buteric acid methyl ester) and they significantly overestimate the energy of the highest occupied molecular orbital (E HOMO). The use of the B3LYP functional, however, is recommended for studying methanofullerenes, which closely resemble the structure of PCBM, and for their modifications.

The performance of selected semi-empirical and DFT methods in studying C60 fullerene derivatives

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sikorska, Celina; Puzyn, Tomasz

2015-01-01

The capability of reproducing the open circuit voltages (V oc ) of 15 representative C 60 fullerene derivatives was tested using the selected quantum mechanical methods (B3LYP, PM6, and PM7) together with the two one-electron basis sets. Certain theoretical treatments (e.g. PM6) were found to be satisfactory for preliminary estimates of the open circuit voltages (V oc ), whereas the use of the B3LYP/6-31G(d) approach has been proven to assure highly accurate results. We also examined the structural similarity of 19 fullerene derivatives by employing principle component analysis (PCA). In order to express the structural features of the studied compounds we used molecular descriptors calculated with semi-empirical (PM6 and PM7) and density functional (B3LYP/6-31G(d)) methods separately. In performing PCA, we noticed that semi-empirical methods (i.e. PM6 and PM7) seem satisfactory for molecules, in which one can distinguish the aromatic and the aliphatic parts in the cyclopropane ring of PCBM (phenyl-C 61 -buteric acid methyl ester) and they significantly overestimate the energy of the highest occupied molecular orbital (E HOMO ). The use of the B3LYP functional, however, is recommended for studying methanofullerenes, which closely resemble the structure of PCBM, and for their modifications. (paper)

The performance of selected semi-empirical and DFT methods in studying C₆₀ fullerene derivatives.

Science.gov (United States)

Sikorska, Celina; Puzyn, Tomasz

2015-11-13

The capability of reproducing the open circuit voltages (V(oc)) of 15 representative C60 fullerene derivatives was tested using the selected quantum mechanical methods (B3LYP, PM6, and PM7) together with the two one-electron basis sets. Certain theoretical treatments (e.g. PM6) were found to be satisfactory for preliminary estimates of the open circuit voltages (V(oc)), whereas the use of the B3LYP/6-31G(d) approach has been proven to assure highly accurate results. We also examined the structural similarity of 19 fullerene derivatives by employing principle component analysis (PCA). In order to express the structural features of the studied compounds we used molecular descriptors calculated with semi-empirical (PM6 and PM7) and density functional (B3LYP/6-31G(d)) methods separately. In performing PCA, we noticed that semi-empirical methods (i.e. PM6 and PM7) seem satisfactory for molecules, in which one can distinguish the aromatic and the aliphatic parts in the cyclopropane ring of PCBM (phenyl-C61-buteric acid methyl ester) and they significantly overestimate the energy of the highest occupied molecular orbital (E(HOMO)). The use of the B3LYP functional, however, is recommended for studying methanofullerenes, which closely resemble the structure of PCBM, and for their modifications.

The China Development Bank and Sustainable Development

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Valentina Levanchuk

2016-11-01

Full Text Available In this article, the author presents an empirical study of sustainable banking in China and examines the flagship China DevelopmentBank (CDB. The CDB is directly supervised by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China and is one ofthe largest state-owned financial institutions in the country. Its overseas lending is growing rapidly; it increasingly acts as aglobal player, influenced by a variety of international actors. Using the mercantilist framework, the author investigates how the CDB’s social policies diverge from those set by the Chinese authorities. The analysis discusses CDB’s policy variations that are not in line with government interests or prescribed directly by governmental bodies. It concludes that the bank has been active in developing and establishing its own corporate strategy for implementing the concept of sustainable development to promote a balanced development of the economy, society and the environment. That strategy contains the norms and rules set by Chinese regulatory agencies with regard to social and environmental areas, as well as important elements ofthe international practice of corporate responsibility and sustainable funding. The CDB is most likely driven by its desire tobe considered internationally a good corporate citizen and often acts independently from governmental guidance, which insome sense undermines mercantilist perceptions.

Essays on empirical likelihood in economics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gao, Z.

2012-01-01

This thesis intends to exploit the roots of empirical likelihood and its related methods in mathematical programming and computation. The roots will be connected and the connections will induce new solutions for the problems of estimation, computation, and generalization of empirical likelihood.

Is it lonely at the top? An empirical study of managers' and nonmanagers' loneliness in organizations.

Science.gov (United States)

Wright, Sarah

2012-01-01

Loneliness is often assumed to be an occupational hazard for senior-ranked members of an organization. However, most of what researchers hear about being "lonely at the top" is anecdote. This article provides empirical evidence from three separate studies assessing loneliness in managers and nonmanagers. Across all three studies, loneliness did not differ by managerial status. Managers were no more or less lonely than their nonmanager counterparts. This suggests that factors beyond seniority may be contributing to loneliness in organizational settings. Ideas for future research are discussed.

Pluvials, droughts, the Mongol Empire, and modern Mongolia

Science.gov (United States)

Pederson, Neil; Hessl, Amy E.; Baatarbileg, Nachin; Anchukaitis, Kevin J.; Di Cosmo, Nicola

2014-01-01

Although many studies have associated the demise of complex societies with deteriorating climate, few have investigated the connection between an ameliorating environment, surplus resources, energy, and the rise of empires. The 13th-century Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in world history. Although drought has been proposed as one factor that spurred these conquests, no high-resolution moisture data are available during the rapid development of the Mongol Empire. Here we present a 1,112-y tree-ring reconstruction of warm-season water balance derived from Siberian pine (Pinus sibirica) trees in central Mongolia. Our reconstruction accounts for 56% of the variability in the regional water balance and is significantly correlated with steppe productivity across central Mongolia. In combination with a gridded temperature reconstruction, our results indicate that the regional climate during the conquests of Chinggis Khan’s (Genghis Khan’s) 13th-century Mongol Empire was warm and persistently wet. This period, characterized by 15 consecutive years of above-average moisture in central Mongolia and coinciding with the rise of Chinggis Khan, is unprecedented over the last 1,112 y. We propose that these climate conditions promoted high grassland productivity and favored the formation of Mongol political and military power. Tree-ring and meteorological data also suggest that the early 21st-century drought in central Mongolia was the hottest drought in the last 1,112 y, consistent with projections of warming over Inner Asia. Future warming may overwhelm increases in precipitation leading to similar heat droughts, with potentially severe consequences for modern Mongolia. PMID:24616521

Pluvials, droughts, the Mongol Empire, and modern Mongolia.

Science.gov (United States)

Pederson, Neil; Hessl, Amy E; Baatarbileg, Nachin; Anchukaitis, Kevin J; Di Cosmo, Nicola

2014-03-25

Although many studies have associated the demise of complex societies with deteriorating climate, few have investigated the connection between an ameliorating environment, surplus resources, energy, and the rise of empires. The 13th-century Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in world history. Although drought has been proposed as one factor that spurred these conquests, no high-resolution moisture data are available during the rapid development of the Mongol Empire. Here we present a 1,112-y tree-ring reconstruction of warm-season water balance derived from Siberian pine (Pinus sibirica) trees in central Mongolia. Our reconstruction accounts for 56% of the variability in the regional water balance and is significantly correlated with steppe productivity across central Mongolia. In combination with a gridded temperature reconstruction, our results indicate that the regional climate during the conquests of Chinggis Khan's (Genghis Khan's) 13th-century Mongol Empire was warm and persistently wet. This period, characterized by 15 consecutive years of above-average moisture in central Mongolia and coinciding with the rise of Chinggis Khan, is unprecedented over the last 1,112 y. We propose that these climate conditions promoted high grassland productivity and favored the formation of Mongol political and military power. Tree-ring and meteorological data also suggest that the early 21st-century drought in central Mongolia was the hottest drought in the last 1,112 y, consistent with projections of warming over Inner Asia. Future warming may overwhelm increases in precipitation leading to similar heat droughts, with potentially severe consequences for modern Mongolia.

Pluvials, droughts, the Mongol Empire, and modern Mongolia

Science.gov (United States)

Pederson, Neil; Hessl, Amy E.; Baatarbileg, Nachin; Anchukaitis, Kevin J.; Di Cosmo, Nicola

2014-03-01

Although many studies have associated the demise of complex societies with deteriorating climate, few have investigated the connection between an ameliorating environment, surplus resources, energy, and the rise of empires. The 13th-century Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in world history. Although drought has been proposed as one factor that spurred these conquests, no high-resolution moisture data are available during the rapid development of the Mongol Empire. Here we present a 1,112-y tree-ring reconstruction of warm-season water balance derived from Siberian pine (Pinus sibirica) trees in central Mongolia. Our reconstruction accounts for 56% of the variability in the regional water balance and is significantly correlated with steppe productivity across central Mongolia. In combination with a gridded temperature reconstruction, our results indicate that the regional climate during the conquests of Chinggis Khan's (Genghis Khan's) 13th-century Mongol Empire was warm and persistently wet. This period, characterized by 15 consecutive years of above-average moisture in central Mongolia and coinciding with the rise of Chinggis Khan, is unprecedented over the last 1,112 y. We propose that these climate conditions promoted high grassland productivity and favored the formation of Mongol political and military power. Tree-ring and meteorological data also suggest that the early 21st-century drought in central Mongolia was the hottest drought in the last 1,112 y, consistent with projections of warming over Inner Asia. Future warming may overwhelm increases in precipitation leading to similar heat droughts, with potentially severe consequences for modern Mongolia.

Integrated empirical ethics: loss of normativity?

Science.gov (United States)

van der Scheer, Lieke; Widdershoven, Guy

2004-01-01

An important discussion in contemporary ethics concerns the relevance of empirical research for ethics. Specifically, two crucial questions pertain, respectively, to the possibility of inferring normative statements from descriptive statements, and to the danger of a loss of normativity if normative statements should be based on empirical research. Here we take part in the debate and defend integrated empirical ethical research: research in which normative guidelines are established on the basis of empirical research and in which the guidelines are empirically evaluated by focusing on observable consequences. We argue that in our concrete example normative statements are not derived from descriptive statements, but are developed within a process of reflection and dialogue that goes on within a specific praxis. Moreover, we show that the distinction in experience between the desirable and the undesirable precludes relativism. The normative guidelines so developed are both critical and normative: they help in choosing the right action and in evaluating that action. Finally, following Aristotle, we plead for a return to the view that morality and ethics are inherently related to one another, and for an acknowledgment of the fact that moral judgments have their origin in experience which is always related to historical and cultural circumstances.

An Empirical Investigation into Programming Language Syntax

Science.gov (United States)

Stefik, Andreas; Siebert, Susanna

2013-01-01

Recent studies in the literature have shown that syntax remains a significant barrier to novice computer science students in the field. While this syntax barrier is known to exist, whether and how it varies across programming languages has not been carefully investigated. For this article, we conducted four empirical studies on programming…

Integrated Management Systems and Workflow-Based Electronic Document Management: An Empirical Study

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pho, Hang Thu; Tambo, Torben

2014-01-01

trustworthiness. Social implications: IMS has a tendency to stay with professionals, e.g. line managers and QA/QC/QMS professionals. The EDMS line of discussion suggests a broader inclusion. Originality/value: Researching IMS as a technological implementation is giving a better platform of aligning the IMS...... (EDMS) is essential, especially at global enterprises where a large amount of documents generated by processes flows through different work cultures. However, there is no "one-size-fits-all" design for EDMS because it depends on organizations' needs, size and resource allocation. This article discusses...... the interrelation between EDMS and IMS in order to suggest a best practice. Design/methodology/approach: This article methodologically based upon a qualitative, interpretivistic, longitudinal empirical study in a wind turbine factory. Findings and Originality/value: IMS improvement and effectiveness has been...

Strategy, Performance Determining Factor of MSMEs: An Empirical Study in Mexico City

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Francisco Ballina Ríos

2016-02-01

Full Text Available The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between the strategy used by the company to compete in the market and its performance, considering two different time points before the economic crisis and in times of crisis. To measure the strategy uses the typology of Miles and Snow (1978 and to measure performance using the model proposed by Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983. For this, an empirical study on a sample of 983 MSMEs Federal District of Mexico. The results show that the strategy is an important factor for the development of MSMEs, both in times of growth and economic crisis, since it significantly influences their growth and profitability. Companies that follow an exploratory strategy, which are those with a greater inclination to innovation, institutions get better performance

Generalized Empirical Likelihood-Based Focused Information Criterion and Model Averaging

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Naoya Sueishi

2013-07-01

Full Text Available This paper develops model selection and averaging methods for moment restriction models. We first propose a focused information criterion based on the generalized empirical likelihood estimator. We address the issue of selecting an optimal model, rather than a correct model, for estimating a specific parameter of interest. Then, this study investigates a generalized empirical likelihood-based model averaging estimator that minimizes the asymptotic mean squared error. A simulation study suggests that our averaging estimator can be a useful alternative to existing post-selection estimators.

Empirical Legality and Effective Reality

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hernán Pringe

2015-08-01

Full Text Available The conditions that Kant’s doctrine establishes are examined for the predication of the effective reality of certain empirical objects. It is maintained that a for such a predication, it is necessary to have not only perception but also a certain homogeneity of sensible data, and b the knowledge of the existence of certain empirical objects depends on the application of regulative principles of experience.

An Empirical Study on the Application of Cooperative Learning to Comprehensive English Classes in a Chinese Independent College

Science.gov (United States)

Meng, Ji

2017-01-01

This research investigated a comparison between the effect of cooperative learning and lecture teaching on Comprehensive English classes in a Chinese Independent College. An empirical study for two semesters was carried out in the forms of pretest, posttest, questionnaire and interviews. While control class was taught in the conventional way,…

An Empirical Investigation to Analyze the Brand Equity and Resonance of Banking Services: Evidence from India

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vikas Gautam

2012-03-01

Full Text Available This study attempts to verify the determinants of brand equityof services based on consumers’ perception of a banking service.The present study is based on customer-based brand equity calledthe Brand Resonance model suggested by Keller (2001, whichcomprises six brand equity constructs, such as: brand resonance;brand judgements; brand feelings; brand performance; brand imagery;brand salience. Exploratory factor analysis was performedto reduce the total number of items to a small number of underlyingfactors, and the results produced six factors, namely: brandresonance; brand judgements; brand feelings; brand performance;brand imagery; brand salience. These alpha coefficients ofthe reliability test were found to be ranging from 0.781 to 0.912for all of the brand equity constructs individually, and for the entirescale the value of alpha was found to be 0.837. Correlationanalysis was performed to find out relationships among variouscomponents of brand equity. From the findings of multiple regressionanalysis it is evident that brand performance emergedas the most important determinant of brand resonance, followedby brand feelings (0.427 and brand judgements (0.306.

Empirical comparison of theories

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Opp, K.D.; Wippler, R.

1990-01-01

The book represents the first, comprehensive attempt to take an empirical approach for comparative assessment of theories in sociology. The aims, problems, and advantages of the empirical approach are discussed in detail, and the three theories selected for the purpose of this work are explained. Their comparative assessment is performed within the framework of several research projects, which among other subjects also investigate the social aspects of the protest against nuclear power plants. The theories analysed in this context are the theory of mental incongruities and that of the benefit, and their efficiency in explaining protest behaviour is compared. (orig./HSCH) [de

Teaching Empirical Software Engineering Using Expert Teams

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kuhrmann, Marco

2017-01-01

Empirical software engineering aims at making software engineering claims measurable, i.e., to analyze and understand phenomena in software engineering and to evaluate software engineering approaches and solutions. Due to the involvement of humans and the multitude of fields for which software...... is crucial, software engineering is considered hard to teach. Yet, empirical software engineering increases this difficulty by adding the scientific method as extra dimension. In this paper, we present a Master-level course on empirical software engineering in which different empirical instruments...... an extra specific expertise that they offer as service to other teams, thus, fostering cross-team collaboration. The paper outlines the general course setup, topics addressed, and it provides initial lessons learned....

Factors affecting management accounting and control systems. A critical review of empirical studies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Joanna Dyczkowska

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Knowledge of management accounting & control systems and factors which may affect the design of such systems has become crucial due to emerging changes both in the external and internal business environment. Therefore it is necessary to conduct comprehensive, long-term basic research in order to prove previously formulated hypotheses in new conditions and fulfil the research gap. Based on critical review of empirical studies published in prestigious scientific journals this paper aims at validating the assumed hypotheses and at generalising research findings on impacts of various determinants on man-agement accounting & control systems. The predominant contingent factors include: type of strategy implemented, national culture, perceived environment uncertainty and integrated information system.

Empirical Likelihood in Nonignorable Covariate-Missing Data Problems.

Science.gov (United States)

Xie, Yanmei; Zhang, Biao

2017-04-20

Missing covariate data occurs often in regression analysis, which frequently arises in the health and social sciences as well as in survey sampling. We study methods for the analysis of a nonignorable covariate-missing data problem in an assumed conditional mean function when some covariates are completely observed but other covariates are missing for some subjects. We adopt the semiparametric perspective of Bartlett et al. (Improving upon the efficiency of complete case analysis when covariates are MNAR. Biostatistics 2014;15:719-30) on regression analyses with nonignorable missing covariates, in which they have introduced the use of two working models, the working probability model of missingness and the working conditional score model. In this paper, we study an empirical likelihood approach to nonignorable covariate-missing data problems with the objective of effectively utilizing the two working models in the analysis of covariate-missing data. We propose a unified approach to constructing a system of unbiased estimating equations, where there are more equations than unknown parameters of interest. One useful feature of these unbiased estimating equations is that they naturally incorporate the incomplete data into the data analysis, making it possible to seek efficient estimation of the parameter of interest even when the working regression function is not specified to be the optimal regression function. We apply the general methodology of empirical likelihood to optimally combine these unbiased estimating equations. We propose three maximum empirical likelihood estimators of the underlying regression parameters and compare their efficiencies with other existing competitors. We present a simulation study to compare the finite-sample performance of various methods with respect to bias, efficiency, and robustness to model misspecification. The proposed empirical likelihood method is also illustrated by an analysis of a data set from the US National Health and

Matchmaking in organizational change : Does every employee value participatory leadership? An empirical study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rogiest, Sofie; Segers, Jesse; van Witteloostuijn, Arjen

2018-01-01

Although leadership is generally considered an important lever to increase commitment during organizational change, empirical research has yet to unravel many of the underlying mechanisms. In this paper, we propose that the impact of participative leadership on affective commitment to change will be

A philosophical experiment: empirical study of knowledge production at the LHC

CERN Multimedia

CERN. Geneva

2013-01-01

How is new knowledge produced in the natural sciences? This question has long been an issue of central relevance for philosophers, historians and sociologists of science, who have fiercely debated whether and how the emergence of new scientific knowledge can be described as following regular patterns, for example as far as the interplay of theory and experiment is concerned. To this aim, more or less recent historical examples have been used as empirical case studies, and widely diverging conclusions have at times been drawn from the same material. The interdisciplinary, DFG-funded project-cluster "Epistemology of the LHC" (University of Wuppertal, Germany) has in the past three years attempted to investigate knowledge production "in real time" by following the interplay of theory and experiment unfold during the first phase of LHC activity and how the knowledge landscape of high energy physics accordingly did (or did not) change. To try and reconstruct some aspects of this epistemic dynamics, the project ...

Comparing On-Line to In-Person Course Delivery: An Empirical Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jammie Price

2007-05-01

Full Text Available Web-based technologies have been used in the classroom for over 15 years, including websites, email, listserves, library reserves, and text books. Among these options, social scientists range widely in their web usage – from simply posting syllabi on-line to delivering a course fully on-line in asynchronous learning networks. Use of web-based technology for instructional purposes is increasing, as is enrollment in distance education courses and on-line course offerings. Many administrators and faculty promote on-line instruction as the solution to managing increased college enrollments, particularly among non-traditional students. However, are the academic outcomes of on-line instruction similar to traditional in-person instruction? Few empirical studies have been done. This is unfortunate. The results of an experiment to evaluate the relative effectiveness of on-line verses an in-person course on sociological research are presented. Unfortunately the on-line participants did much worse than the in-person course.

An Empirical Study Of User Acceptance Of Online Social Networks Marketing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Olumayowa Mulero

2013-07-01

Full Text Available The explosion of Internet usage has drawn the attention of researchers towards online Social Networks Marketing (SNM. Research has shown that a number of the Internet users are distrustful and indecisive, when it comes to the use of social networks marketing system. Therefore, there is a need for researchers to identify some of the factors that determine users’ acceptance of social networks marketing using Technology Acceptance Model (TAM. This study extended the Technology Acceptance Model theoretical framework to predict consumer acceptance of social networks marketing within Western Cape Province of South Africa. The research model was tested using data collected from 470 questionnaires and analysed using linear regression. The results showed that user intentions to use SNM are strongly and positively correlated with user acceptance of using SNM systems. Empirical results confirmed that perceived credibility and perceived usefulness are the strongest determinant in predicting user intentions to use SNM system.

Cooperative Studies in the Utilization and Storage of Excess Weapons-Grade Plutonium

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bolyatko, V. V. [Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (Russia)

1998-01-29

This technical report is a tangible and verifiable deliverable associated with the Nuclear Group subproject “Cooperative Studies in the Utilization and Storage of Excess Weapons-grade Plutonium.” This report is an assessment ofthe work performed by the Russian party from 1 October 1995 through 30 September 1996 regarding milestones defined in the contract between the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI) and the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES). In these interactions, TEES serves as agent of the Amarillo National Resource Center for Plutonium (ANRCP) in the capacity oflead institution for the Nuclear Group of the ANRCP. The official Statement ofWork dated 8 April 1996 enumerates specific milestones and deliverables. In its present form, this report is an edited version ofthe translation submitted to TEES by MEPhI on 7 October 1996. The principal investigators for this subproject are Dr. Paul Nelson of TEES and Dr. Victor Bolyatko of the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute.

Empirical essays on behavioral economics and lifecycle decisions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dillingh, Rik

2016-01-01

This dissertation consists of four empirical essays that study decisions on insurance, consumption and the accumulation and decumulation of wealth. The studies pay due attention to behavioral factors that may limit rationality, such as complexity and intertemporal choice. The first essay looks at

Empirical Essays in Corporate Finance and Financial Reporting

NARCIS (Netherlands)

A.M. van der Poel (Marieke)

2008-01-01

textabstractThe thesis consists of four empirical studies in the areas of corporate finance and financial reporting. The first study examines CEOs’ familiarity with segments and how that familiarity affects their divestiture decisions. The results show that longer-tenured CEOs divest assets about

How Physics Teachers Approach Innovation: An Empirical Study for Reconstructing the Appropriation Path in the Case of Special Relativity

Science.gov (United States)

De Ambrosis, Anna; Levrini, Olivia

2010-01-01

This paper concerns an empirical study carried out with a group of high school physics teachers engaged in the Module on relativity of a Master course on the teaching of modern physics. The study is framed within the general research issue of how to promote innovation in school via teachers' education and how to foster fruitful interactions…

Umayyad Relations with Byzantium Empire

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mansoor Haidari

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This research investigates the political and military relations between Umayyad caliphates with the Byzantine Empire. The aim of this research is to clarify Umayyad caliphate’s relations with the Byzantine Empire. We know that these relations were mostly about war and fight. Because there were always intense conflicts between Muslims and the Byzantine Empire, they had to have an active continuous diplomacy to call truce and settle the disputes. Thus, based on the general policy of the Umayyad caliphs, Christians were severely ignored and segregated within Islamic territories. This segregation of the Christians was highly affected by political relationships. It is worthy of mentioning that Umayyad caliphs brought the governing style of the Sassanid kings and Roman Caesar into the Islamic Caliphate system but they didn’t establish civil institutions and administrative organizations.

An Empirical Study of Synchrophasor Communication Delay in a Utility TCP/IP Network

Science.gov (United States)

Zhu, Kun; Chenine, Moustafa; Nordström, Lars; Holmström, Sture; Ericsson, Göran

2013-07-01

Although there is a plethora of literature dealing with Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) communication delay, there has not been any effort made to generalize empirical delay results by identifying the distribution with the best fit. The existing studies typically assume a distribution or simply build on analogies to communication network routing delay. Specifically, this study provides insight into the characterization of the communication delay of both unprocessed PMU data and synchrophasors sorted by a Phasor Data Concentrator (PDC). The results suggest that a bi-modal distribution containing two normal distributions offers the best fit of the delay of the unprocessed data, whereas the delay profile of the sorted synchrophasors resembles a normal distribution based on these results, the possibility of evaluating the reliability of a synchrophasor application with respect to a particular choice of PDC timeout is discussed.

Empirical training for conditional random fields

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Zhu, Zhemin; Hiemstra, Djoerd; Apers, Peter M.G.; Wombacher, Andreas

2013-01-01

In this paper (Zhu et al., 2013), we present a practi- cally scalable training method for CRFs called Empir- ical Training (EP). We show that the standard train- ing with unregularized log likelihood can have many maximum likelihood estimations (MLEs). Empirical training has a unique closed form MLE

Empiric potassium supplementation and increased survival in users of loop diuretics.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Charles E Leonard

Full Text Available The effectiveness of the clinical strategy of empiric potassium supplementation in reducing the frequency of adverse clinical outcomes in patients receiving loop diuretics is unknown. We sought to examine the association between empiric potassium supplementation and 1 all-cause death and 2 outpatient-originating sudden cardiac death (SD and ventricular arrhythmia (VA among new starters of loop diuretics, stratified on initial loop diuretic dose.We conducted a one-to-one propensity score-matched cohort study using 1999-2007 US Medicaid claims from five states. Empiric potassium supplementation was defined as a potassium prescription on the day of or the day after the initial loop diuretic prescription. Death, the primary outcome, was ascertained from the Social Security Administration Death Master File; SD/VA, the secondary outcome, from incident, first-listed emergency department or principal inpatient SD/VA discharge diagnoses (positive predictive value = 85%.We identified 654,060 persons who met eligibility criteria and initiated therapy with a loop diuretic, 27% of whom received empiric potassium supplementation (N = 179,436 and 73% of whom did not (N = 474,624. The matched hazard ratio for empiric potassium supplementation was 0.93 (95% confidence interval, 0.89-0.98, p = 0.003 for all-cause death. Stratifying on initial furosemide dose, hazard ratios for empiric potassium supplementation with furosemide < 40 and ≥ 40 milligrams/day were 0.93 (0.86-1.00, p = 0.050 and 0.84 (0.79-0.89, p < 0.0001. The matched hazard ratio for empiric potassium supplementation was 1.02 (0.83-1.24, p = 0.879 for SD/VA.Empiric potassium supplementation upon initiation of a loop diuretic appears to be associated with improved survival, with a greater apparent benefit seen with higher diuretic dose. If confirmed, these findings support the use of empiric potassium supplementation upon initiation of a loop diuretic.

Franchised fast food brands: An empirical study of factors influencing growth

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christopher A. Wingrove

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Orientation: Franchising is a popular and multifaceted business arrangement that captures a sizeable portion of the restaurant industry worldwide. Research purpose: The study empirically investigated the influence of various site location and branding factors on the growth of franchised fast food restaurant brands across the greater Gauteng region. Motivation of the study: Researching which factors influence the growth of franchised fast food restaurant brands is important for an emerging market context such as South Africa when considering the marked increase in the consumption of fast foods. Design: A sample of 140 customers was surveyed from 12 leading franchised fast food outlets. Primary data were collected for various items representing site location and brand factors. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Findings: The overall findings showed that convenience and central facilities of a retail location are positively and significantly associated with the growth of the franchise fast food outlet. Practical implications: The study findings have implications for practitioners who need to take into account which factors influence revenue growth, since targeted interventions may be required to implement sustainable strategies by franchisors. Contribution: The findings may serve as a catalyst for this growing and important activity in South Africa and other emerging markets.

Practical implications of empirically studying moral decision-making.

Science.gov (United States)

Heinzelmann, Nora; Ugazio, Giuseppe; Tobler, Philippe N

2012-01-01

This paper considers the practical question of why people do not behave in the way they ought to behave. This question is a practical one, reaching both into the normative and descriptive domains of morality. That is, it concerns moral norms as well as empirical facts. We argue that two main problems usually keep us form acting and judging in a morally decent way: firstly, we make mistakes in moral reasoning. Secondly, even when we know how to act and judge, we still fail to meet the requirements due to personal weaknesses. This discussion naturally leads us to another question: can we narrow the gap between what people are morally required to do and what they actually do? We discuss findings from neuroscience, economics, and psychology, considering how we might bring our moral behavior better in line with moral theory. Potentially fruitful means include nudging, training, pharmacological enhancement, and brain stimulation. We conclude by raising the question of whether such methods could and should be implemented.

The Effects of Interactions between Management Control Systems and Strategy on Firm Performance: An Empirical Study

OpenAIRE

Melek Eker; Semih Eker

2016-01-01

In recent years, there has been growing interest in examining the relationships among management control systems, business strategy and firm performance. In this study, the interactions of management control systems and strategy with their impact on firm performance are examined with an empirical analysis, based on the data from 94 manufacturing firms from the top 500 in Turkey in 2014. The results support the postulate that high interaction between interactive control system (ICS) and differ...

Knowledge Management and its Role in Customer Relationship Marketing Campaigns Empirical study of online CRM tools

OpenAIRE

Al-Hayaly, Ali

2015-01-01

This empirical study aimed at conducting a cross case analysis of a four targeted Web-based CRM companies (Microsoft dynamics, Salesforce.com, Sugarcrm and Oracle on demand), in which this research will recognize the extent of knowledge management implantations used in these selected systems. Then highlighting the enhancement role of knowledge management implantations on these web-based CRM selected systems. Besides conducting the cross mapping the marketing campaigns of these selected system...

Comparative analysis of assessment methods for operational and anesthetic risks in ulcerative gastroduodenal bleeding

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Potakhin S.N.

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Aim of the investigation: to conduct a comparative analysis of methods of evaluation of surgical and anesthetic risks in ulcerative gastroduodenal bleeding. Materials and methods. A retrospective analysis ofthe extent of the surgical and anesthetic risks and results of treatment of 71 patients with peptic ulcer bleeding has been conducted in the study. To evaluate the surgical and anesthetic risks classification trees are used, scale ТА. Rockall and prognosis System of rebleeding (SPRK, proposed by N. V. Lebedev et al. in 2009, enabling to evaluate the probability of a fatal outcome. To compare the efficacy ofthe methods the following indicators are used: sensitivity, specificity and prediction of positive result. Results. The study compared the results ofthe risk assessment emergency operation by using these methods with the outcome ofthe operation. The comparison ofthe prognosis results in sensitivity leads to the conclusion that the scales ТА. Rockall and SPRK are worse than the developed method of classification trees in recognizing patients with poor outcome of surgery. Conclusion. The method of classification trees can be considered as the most accurate method of evaluation of surgical and anesthetic risks in ulcerative gastroduodenal bleeding.

Empirical Phenomenology: A Qualitative Research Approach (The ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Empirical Phenomenology: A Qualitative Research Approach (The Cologne Seminars) ... and practical application of empirical phenomenology in social research. ... and considers its implications for qualitative methods such as interviewing ...

Empirical logic and quantum mechanics

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Foulis, D.J.; Randall, C.H.

1976-01-01

This article discusses some of the basic notions of quantum physics within the more general framework of operational statistics and empirical logic (as developed in Foulis and Randall, 1972, and Randall and Foulis, 1973). Empirical logic is a formal mathematical system in which the notion of an operation is primitive and undefined; all other concepts are rigorously defined in terms of such operations (which are presumed to correspond to actual physical procedures). (Auth.)

Semi-empirical evaluation studies on PCMI for the Fugen fuel rod

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Domoto, Kazushige; Kaneko, Mitsunobu; Takeuchi, Kiyoshi.

1980-03-01

Fugen, 165 MWe prototype of a heavy water moderated boiling water cooled reactor, has been well operated since March 1979. In order to establish PCIOMR for Fugen fuels semi-empirical evaluation code to analyze PCMI during power transient of the fuel rod has been developed. In this paper, followings are described 1) general scope of the development work 2) description of the modelling 3) some results of analysis on out pile and in pile tests. (author)

Holding-based network of nations based on listed energy companies: An empirical study on two-mode affiliation network of two sets of actors

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Huajiao; Fang, Wei; An, Haizhong; Gao, Xiangyun; Yan, Lili

2016-05-01

Economic networks in the real world are not homogeneous; therefore, it is important to study economic networks with heterogeneous nodes and edges to simulate a real network more precisely. In this paper, we present an empirical study of the one-mode derivative holding-based network constructed by the two-mode affiliation network of two sets of actors using the data of worldwide listed energy companies and their shareholders. First, we identify the primitive relationship in the two-mode affiliation network of the two sets of actors. Then, we present the method used to construct the derivative network based on the shareholding relationship between two sets of actors and the affiliation relationship between actors and events. After constructing the derivative network, we analyze different topological features on the node level, edge level and entire network level and explain the meanings of the different values of the topological features combining the empirical data. This study is helpful for expanding the usage of complex networks to heterogeneous economic networks. For empirical research on the worldwide listed energy stock market, this study is useful for discovering the inner relationships between the nations and regions from a new perspective.

Empirical Moral Philosophy and Teacher Education

Science.gov (United States)

Schjetne, Espen; Afdal, Hilde Wågsås; Anker, Trine; Johannesen, Nina; Afdal, Geir

2016-01-01

In this paper, we explore the possible contributions of empirical moral philosophy to professional ethics in teacher education. We argue that it is both possible and desirable to connect knowledge of how teachers empirically do and understand professional ethics with normative theories of teachers' professional ethics. Our argument is made in…

Intuition in Decision Making –Theoretical and Empirical Aspects

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kamila Malewska

2015-11-01

Full Text Available In an economy dominated by information and knowledge, analysis ceases to be the sole and sufficient source of knowledge. Managers seek alternative ways of obtaining and interpreting information and knowledge. Here, managerial intuitive potential begins to play an important role. The aim of this paper is to present the issue of intuition in decision making in both theoretical and empirical terms. The first part presents the essence of intuition and its role in management, especially in decision making. Then, the empirical part attempts to identify the intuitive potential of managers and the extent of its use in practical decision making. The case study method was used in order to achieve this goal. The analysis involved a Polish food company “Fawor” that employs more than 300 workers. These literature and empirical studies in the area of intuition were conducted within the research project „The impact of managerial intuitive potential on the effectiveness of decision making processes”, financed by the National Science Centre, Poland (funds allocated on the basis of decision No. DEC-2014/13/D/HS4/01750

Development of empirical potential functions for the study of molecular geometry, and applications to chlorophyll a dimers

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Oie, Tetsuro [Univ. of Rochester, NY (United States); Univ. of Kansas, Lawrence, KS (United States). Dept. of Chemistry

1980-07-28

A purpose of the present studies is twofold: (1) development of an empirical potential function (EPF) and (2) application of it to the studies of photoreaction center chlorophyll a dimer. The reliable estimate of geometric structures and energies of large molecules by quantum mechanical methods is not possible at the present time. An alternative method is, therefore, needed for the studies of large molecular systems, and Chapter I is dedicated to the development of this tool, i.e., an empirical potential function, which could suffice this purpose. Because of a large number of variable chemical compositions and functional groups characteristically present in a large molecule, it is important to include a large number of structurally diverse molecules in the development of the EPF. In Chapter II, the EPF is applied to study the geometrical structure of a chlorophyll a (Chl a) dimer, which is believed to exist at the photoreaction center of green plants and is known to play an essential role in photosynthetic energy conversion. Although various models have been proposed for this dimer structure, there is still a great need for information concerning the detailed geometric structure of this dimer. Therefore, in this chapter the structural stabilities of various dimer models are examined by the EPF, and detailed and quantitative information on the structure and stability of these models is provided.

ACTUALIZATION OF THE PERSON OF STUDENTS AS BEARERS OF INNOVATION CULTURE IN HIGHER EDUCATION: EMPIRICAL STUDIES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tatyana B. Zagorulya

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of the study is to consider the problem of empirical research aimed at identifying the personality traits of students as bearers of innovation culture: innovative susceptibility, assertiveness, autonomy in decision-making, initiative and responsibility.Methods. In accordance with the object and purpose of the empirical research, empirical methods are used: instructional design model, observation, notes and forming experiments, testing, questionnaire, interview, qualitative analysis of empirical data; block of complementary techniques: «Research of features of response to conflict» (by K. Thomas, «Assertiveness», «Leader. Qualities of a Leader», «Leading representative system».Scientific novelty and results. Scientific novelty consists in the justification of psycho-pedagogical tools for diagnosing the level of development of the innovation culture of students of high school. It is found that students who successfully realizing the potential strength and ability to organize their own life, educational activities and communication on the basis of aggregate conscious goals, values in assertiveness, are outer-directed to innovation taking place in society and in the world. The use of innovative technologies in the educational process, especially creative projects, the decision of cases, holding debates, simulations and role-playing games creates conditions for the development of assertive behavior required in the process of successful adaptation and integration of students in the educational environment of the university, the acquisition of competitiveness in the society. It is concluded that the presence of the students’ considerable potential for the development of an innovation culture, in particular the leading representative of different systems, allowing to develop communication skills and engage in constructive dialogue.Practical significance. Appropriate methods and appropriate tools for diagnosing the level

Measuring mobile patient safety information system success: an empirical study.

Science.gov (United States)

Jen, Wen-Yuan; Chao, Chia-Cheng

2008-10-01

The Health Risk Reminders and Surveillance (HRRS) system was designed to deliver critical abnormal test results of severely ill patients from Laboratory, Radiology, and Pathology departments to physicians within 5 min using cell phone text messages. This paper explores the success of the HRRS system. This study employed an augmented version of the DeLone and McLean IS success model. Seven variables (system quality, information quality, system use, user satisfaction, mobile healthcare anxiety, impact on the individual and impact on the organization) were used to evaluate the success of the HRRS system. The interrelationships between the seven variables were hypothesized and the hypotheses were empirically tested. The results indicate that the information quality of the HRRS system is positively associated with both system use and user satisfaction. In addition, system use is positively associated with user satisfaction, which is also positively associated with mobile healthcare anxiety. Moreover, results indicate that impact on the individual is positively associated with both user satisfaction and mobile healthcare anxiety. Finally, the impact of the organization is positively associated with impact on the individual. The results of the study provide an expanded understanding of the factors that contribute to mobile patient safety information system (IS) success. Implications of the relationship between system use and physician mobile healthcare anxiety are discussed.

Mapping sediment thickness of Islamabad city using empirical ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

A number of studies in recent years have demonstrated that frequency and ... sediment thicknesses derived from empirical relations developed in this study with ... Location map of the study area, the bold light grey line shows the boundary of the Islamabad region. .... frequency disturbances (wind blowing, in case of near tall ...

Motives and chances of firm diversification: theory and empirical evidence

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Briglauer, W.

2001-11-01

It is beyond controversy that the majority of the largest companies in the industrialized countries perform to a certain extent product diversification strategies. Tying up to this finding the underlying work firstly deals with alternative theoretical and empirical definitions of corporate diversification. Subsequently the theoretical part mainly elaborates an industrial economic framework for categorizing motives of firm diversification. Despite of some inevitable degree of arbitrariness, a relatively widespread and sufficient categorization can be presented. With regards to the relevant economic literature most explanations of product diversification can be classified appropriately. Observing diversification activities one would prima facie infer a positive relationship between product diversification and firm performance, but both, theory and empirical evidence, yield ambiguous results. The empirical part provides a list of existing studies, classified according to the theoretical categorization. In an overview some stylised facts are filtered and discussed consecutively. Most notably, it was found that related diversification strategies significantly outperform strategies of unrelated diversification. At the end of the empirical section econometric methods are applied to agricultural and industrial economic (relating to telecommunication markets) data sets. For the agricultural studies a significantly positive relationship between product diversification and firm performance was found. In contrast no significant results were obtained for the telecommunication markets. (author)

An empirical investigation on the effects of spiritual leadership components on organizational learning capacity: A case study of Payame Noor University

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amir Hossein

2013-06-01

Full Text Available This paper presents an empirical investigation on the effects of spiritual leadership components on organizational learning capacity for a case study of Payame Noor University, Iran. The proposed study uses a standard questionnaire for measuring spirituality leadership proposed by Fry (2003 [Fry, L. W. (2003. Toward a theory of spiritual leadership. The leadership quarterly, 14(6, 693-727.] and for measuring the impact of organizational learning capacity, the proposed study uses another questionnaire proposed by Teo et al. (2006 [Teo, H. H., Wang, X., Wei, K. K., Sia, C. L., & Lee, M. K. (2006. Organizational learning capacity and attitude toward complex technological innovations: an empirical study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(2, 264-279.]. The results of our survey have indicated that all components of spiritual leadership, except love and altruism as meaningful, influence spirituality leadership, significantly.

Antecedents of employee electricity saving behavior in organizations: An empirical study based on norm activation model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang, Yixiang; Wang, Zhaohua; Zhou, Guanghui

2013-01-01

China is one of the major energy-consuming countries, and is under great pressure to promote energy saving and reduce domestic energy consumption. Employees constitute an important target group for energy saving. However, only a few research efforts have been paid to study what drives employee energy saving behavior in organizations. To fill this gap, drawing on norm activation model (NAM), we built a research model to study antecedents of employee electricity saving behavior in organizations. The model was empirically tested using survey data collected from office workers in Beijing, China. Results show that personal norm positively influences employee electricity saving behavior. Organizational electricity saving climate negatively moderates the effect of personal norm on electricity saving behavior. Awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, and organizational electricity saving climate positively influence personal norm. Furthermore, awareness of consequences positively influences ascription of responsibility. This paper contributes to the energy saving behavior literature by building a theoretical model of employee electricity saving behavior which is understudied in the current literature. Based on the empirical results, implications on how to promote employee electricity saving are discussed. - Highlights: • We studied employee electricity saving behavior based on norm activation model. • The model was tested using survey data collected from office workers in China. • Personal norm positively influences employee′s electricity saving behavior. • Electricity saving climate negatively moderates personal norm′s effect. • This research enhances our understanding of employee electricity saving behavior

Constraints and Dedication as Drivers for Relationship Commitment: An Empirical Study in a Health-Care Context

OpenAIRE

Gaby Odekerken-Schröder; Bloemer Josée

2002-01-01

The objective of this study is to empirically determine the role of constraints and dedication as drivers of relationship commitment as most of the existing work is of a conceptual nature only. We assess how and to which extent these two drivers fit into the established relationships between overall service quality, satisfaction, trust and commitment. Using LISREL, we estimate the conceptual model based on a sample of customers of health-care centers. The results indicate that both constraint...

Empirical testing of forecast update procedure forseasonal products

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wong, Chee Yew; Johansen, John

2008-01-01

Updating of forecasts is essential for successful collaborative forecasting, especially for seasonal products. This paper discusses the results of a theoretical simulation and an empirical test of a proposed time-series forecast updating procedure. It involves a two-stage longitudinal case study...... of a toy supply chain. The theoretical simulation involves historical weekly consumer demand data for 122 toy products. The empirical test is then carried out in real-time with 291 toy products. The results show that the proposed forecast updating procedure: 1) reduced forecast errors of the annual...... provided less forecast accuracy improvement and it needed a longer time to achieve relatively acceptable forecast uncertainty....

Relationship between TQM Elements and Organizational Performance : An Empirical Study of Manufacturing Sector of Pakistan

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Masood ul Hassan

2013-05-01

Full Text Available This study empirically reveals the influence of the TQM elements comprising leadership, people management, process management, customer focus, information & analysis and strategic planning on the organizational performance in the manufacturing sector of Pakistan. The data were collected through a questionnaire survey from the 160 managers and employees of the manufacturing firms. Results using SPSS support the hypotheses that there is a positive relationship between the TQM elements and performance of Pakistani manufacturing firms. Furthermore, it is also found that customer focus is perceived as a dominant TQM practice for enhancing quality performance. Moreover, this study also provides a valuable knowledge to the top managers. Practical implementations along with the limitations have also been discussed in this study.

Developmental Relationship Programs: An Empirical Study of the Impact of Peer-Mentoring Programs

Science.gov (United States)

Shojai, Siamack; Davis, William J.; Root, Patricia S.

2014-01-01

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the impact and effectiveness of developmental relationships provided through academic intervention programs at a medium-size master's level public university in the Northeastern United States. The programs' curriculum follows the Model of Strategic Learning's four pillars of learning and is administered…

Dialogue for emergent order : an empirical study of the development of the organisational mind in a Dutch manufacturing firm

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Eijnatten, van F.M.; Dijkstra, L.; van Galen, M.C.; Boiset, M.

2001-01-01

This paper contains an empirical study about the introduction of dialogue as a new mode of communication in a Dutch capital-equipment manufacturing firm. The goal of the project is to increase levels of self-organisation, self-reference, and self-transcendence in the company. Over a period of one

Variables Affecting Students' Intrinsic Motivation for School Mathematics: Two Empirical Studies Based on Deci and Ryan's Theory on Motivation.

Science.gov (United States)

Valas, Harald; Sovik, Nils

1993-01-01

Effects of the controlling strategies of the mathematics teacher on student achievement, interest, and mathematics self-concept were demonstrated in a longitudinal study involving 161 seventh graders and 164 eighth graders. This empirical test of the self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan provides insight into student motivation. (SLD)

An Empirical Study on the Relationship between Investor Protection, Government Behavior, and Financial Development

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chien-Chi Chu

2017-11-01

Full Text Available We studied the relationship between investor protection, government behavior, and financial development using data covering six provinces (Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Zhejiang, Henan, and Sichuan and two provincial-level cities (Beijing and Shanghai in China for the period 2005–2014. Using panel data estimation techniques, we found that there is a positive relationship between investor protection and financial development; by contrast, highly-intense government intervention leads to more financial impediments. Moreover, government intervention in education could promote financial development through its contribution to having a higher amount of the fund supply. Our empirical findings have important implications for policy-makers in terms of reforming the capital market regulation.

Statistics and Probability at Secondary Schools in the Federal State of Salzburg: An Empirical Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wolfgang Voit

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Knowledge about the practical use of statistics and probability in today's mathematics instruction at secondary schools is vital in order to improve the academic education for future teachers. We have conducted an empirical study among school teachers to inform towards improved mathematics instruction and teacher preparation. The study provides a snapshot into the daily practice of instruction at school. Centered around the four following questions, the status of statistics and probability was examined. Where did  the current mathematics teachers study? What relevance do statistics and probability have in school? Which contents are actually taught in class? What kind of continuing education would be desirable for teachers? The study population consisted of all teachers of mathematics at secondary schools in the federal state of Salzburg.

Antecedents of positive self-disclosure online: an empirical study of US college students' Facebook usage.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Hongliang

2017-01-01

This study investigates the factors predicting positive self-disclosure on social networking sites (SNSs). There is a formidable body of empirical research relating to online self-disclosure, but very few studies have assessed the antecedents of positive self-disclosure. To address this literature gap, the current study tests the effects of self-esteem, life satisfaction, social anxiety, privacy concerns, public self-consciousness (SC), and perceived collectivism on positive self-disclosure on SNSs. Data were collected online via Qualtrics in April 2013. Respondents were undergraduate students from the University of Connecticut. Using ordinary least squares regression, the current study found that self-esteem and perceived collectivism increased positive self-disclosure, life satisfaction, and privacy concerns decreased positive self-disclosure, and the effects of social anxiety and public SC were not significant.

Empirical Study on Conservative and Representative Heuristics of Hong Kong Small Investors Adopting Momentum and Contrarian Trading Strategies

OpenAIRE

Chow, Sheung-Chi; Hon, Tai-Yuen; Wong, Wing-Keung; Woo, Kai-Yin

2017-01-01

Recently, a new Bayesian approach has been developed to explain some market anomalies. In this paper, we conduct a questionnaire survey to examine whether the theory holds empirically by studying the conservative and representative heuristics by Hong Kong small investors who adopt momentum and/or contrarian trading strategies. In addition, our study provides evidence for the small investors on their time horizon and risk tolerance when facing uncertainty in their investments. Our findings are...

Improving the desolvation penalty in empirical protein pK_a modeling

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Olsson, Mats Henrik Mikael

2012-01-01

Unlike atomistic and continuum models, empirical pk(a) predicting methods need to include desolvation contributions explicitly. This study describes a new empirical desolvation method based on the Born solvation model. The new desolvation model was evaluated by high-level Poisson-Boltzmann...

Two concepts of empirical ethics.

Science.gov (United States)

Parker, Malcolm

2009-05-01

The turn to empirical ethics answers two calls. The first is for a richer account of morality than that afforded by bioethical principlism, which is cast as excessively abstract and thin on the facts. The second is for the facts in question to be those of human experience and not some other, unworldly realm. Empirical ethics therefore promises a richer naturalistic ethics, but in fulfilling the second call it often fails to heed the metaethical requirements related to the first. Empirical ethics risks losing the normative edge which necessarily characterizes the ethical, by failing to account for the nature and the logic of moral norms. I sketch a naturalistic theory, teleological expressivism (TE), which negotiates the naturalistic fallacy by providing a more satisfactory means of taking into account facts and research data with ethical implications. The examples of informed consent and the euthanasia debate are used to illustrate the superiority of this approach, and the problems consequent on including the facts in the wrong kind of way.

Reverse logistics: an empirical study for operational framework

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yusuf, I.

2013-01-01

This paper presents framework of reverse logistics optimizing the stakeholders gain, social gain, economic gain and environmental gain. It identifies the roadblocks that prevail in recycling industry and describes various types of returns and wastes. Framework of the reverse logistics is evolved on the basis of actual happening of the items shown in table 1-4 disposed off from industries shown in table 6. The rejected items require environmental disposal passing through the different phases described in flow of operational framework. An operational framework of reverse logistics is developed studying fifty organizations.. In ad -dition three best practices of reverse logistics are proposed by consolidating the experiential information and rich hands on industrial experience in supply chain and reverse logistics area. The research has proposed the Social, Stakeholder, Economic and Environmental (SSEE) sustained gain model optimizing the benefits of stakeholders and highlights the variety of waste and its operational methodology in Pakistani industry. The proposed framework does not include the hospital waste, radioactive waste, hazardous materials waste, municipal waste, agricultural waste and cold chain waste like meat, milk, etc.The operational framework is existing way of doing that takes the waste materials from point of origin to the point of recycling. A better understanding of this framework may help researchers and front line managers to develop better, more ac -curate models for effective and sustainable utilization of waste materials, benefiting organizations and soci -ety by simultaneously enhancing the cost effectiveness and improving environmental awareness. The paper provides an operational framework of reverse logistics and 2S2E sustained gain model. Specific applications are examined through empirical research. (author)

Protein-Ligand Empirical Interaction Components for Virtual Screening.

Science.gov (United States)

Yan, Yuna; Wang, Weijun; Sun, Zhaoxi; Zhang, John Z H; Ji, Changge

2017-08-28

A major shortcoming of empirical scoring functions is that they often fail to predict binding affinity properly. Removing false positives of docking results is one of the most challenging works in structure-based virtual screening. Postdocking filters, making use of all kinds of experimental structure and activity information, may help in solving the issue. We describe a new method based on detailed protein-ligand interaction decomposition and machine learning. Protein-ligand empirical interaction components (PLEIC) are used as descriptors for support vector machine learning to develop a classification model (PLEIC-SVM) to discriminate false positives from true positives. Experimentally derived activity information is used for model training. An extensive benchmark study on 36 diverse data sets from the DUD-E database has been performed to evaluate the performance of the new method. The results show that the new method performs much better than standard empirical scoring functions in structure-based virtual screening. The trained PLEIC-SVM model is able to capture important interaction patterns between ligand and protein residues for one specific target, which is helpful in discarding false positives in postdocking filtering.

'Nobody tosses a dwarf!' The relation between the empirical and the normative reexamined.

Science.gov (United States)

Leget, Carlo; Borry, Pascal; de Vries, Raymond

2009-05-01

This article discusses the relation between empirical and normative approaches in bioethics. The issue of dwarf tossing, while admittedly unusual, is chosen as a point of departure because it challenges the reader to look with fresh eyes upon several central bioethical themes, including human dignity, autonomy, and the protection of vulnerable people. After an overview of current approaches to the integration of empirical and normative ethics, we consider five ways that the empirical and normative can be brought together to speak to the problem of dwarf tossing: prescriptive applied ethics, theoretical ethics, critical applied ethics, particularist ethics and integrated empirical ethics. We defend a position of critical applied ethics that allows for a two-way relation between empirical and normative theories. Against efforts fully to integrate the normative and the empirical into one synthesis, we propose that the two should stand in tension and relation to one another. The approach we endorse acknowledges that a social practice can and should be judged both by the gathering of empirical data and by normative ethics. Critical applied ethics uses a five stage process that includes: (a) determination of the problem, (b) description of the problem, (c) empirical study of effects and alternatives, (d) normative weighing and (e) evaluation of the effects of a decision. In each stage, we explore the perspective from both the empirical (sociological) and the normative ethical point of view. We conclude by applying our five-stage critical applied ethics to the example of dwarf tossing.

An Empirical Study on the Impact of Individual and Organizational Supply Chain Orientation on Supply Chain Management

OpenAIRE

Taehee Lee; Hyunjeong Nam

2016-01-01

This study empirically identifies individual supply chain orientation (SCO) components as antecedents of organizational SCO and analyzes the causal relationships between organizational SCO and supply chain management (SCM). A survey was conducted with Korean firms and the partial least squares method was used to test the proposed hypotheses. The results show that individual SCO has a significant influence on organizational SCO. Organizational SCO has a significant influence on strategic SCM, ...

Measuring hospital service quality and its influence on patient satisfaction: An empirical study using structural equation modeling

OpenAIRE

Nasim Kazemi; Parisa Ehsani; Farshid Abdi; Mohammad Kazem Bighami

2013-01-01

This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure different dimensions of hospital service quality (HSQ) by gap analysis and patient satisfaction (PS). It also attempts to measure patients’ satisfaction with three dimensions extracted from exploratory factor analysis (EFA) by Principle component analysis method and conformity factor analysis (CFA). In addition, the study analyzes relationship between HSQ and PS in the context of Iranian hospital services, using structural equation mod...

Factors Influencing Beliefs for Adoption of a Learning Analytics Tool: An Empirical Study

Science.gov (United States)

Ali, Liaqat; Asadi, Mohsen; Gasevic, Dragan; Jovanovic, Jelena; Hatala, Marek

2013-01-01

Present research and development offer various learning analytics tools providing insights into different aspects of learning processes. Adoption of a specific tool for practice is based on how its learning analytics are perceived by educators to support their pedagogical and organizational goals. In this paper, we propose and empirically validate…

Toward Developing a Specific Outcome Instrument for Spine Trauma : An Empirical Cross-sectional Multicenter ICF-Based Study by AOSpine Knowledge Forum Trauma

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Oner, F. Cumhur; Sadiqi, Said; Lehr, A. Mechteld; Aarabi, Bizhan; Dunn, Robert N.; Dvorak, Marcel F.; Fehlings, Michael G.; Kandziora, Frank; Post, Marcel W.; Rajasekaran, S.; Vialle, Luiz; Vaccaro, Alexander R.

2015-01-01

Study Design. Empirical cross-sectional multicenter study. Objective. To identify the most commonly experienced problems by patients with traumatic spinal column injuries, excluding patients with complete paralysis. Summary of Background Data. There is no disease or condition-specific outcome

AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF ECONOMIC ALTERNATIVES FOR THE ELDERLY IN ROMANIA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Podoabă Lucia

2013-04-01

Full Text Available This paper is part of an applied, broad, based popular empirical procedures (such as natural observation scientific research. The positivist research methodology used was based on consensual-inductive system (Locke, which is why we studied different specialists’ opinions on the use of EU funds for the elderly in Romania or employer contributions to voluntary private funds, necessary to formulate the problem of generating relevant information. The used research strategies were the comparative and longitudinal ones, as we analyzed the time evolution in time of the number of pensioners and employees in Romania, in the main time with the EU funding for the elderly, to determine Romania's concrete economic alternatives to support this category of populations. Causality assumptions about the relationship efficient use of EU funds-beneficiaries was inductively built in this paper (by analyzing the European funds management issue in Romania, causally (by cause and effect explanation of the studied phenomenon, deductively, logically and subjectively (on the basis of existence and perpetuation of fund premise conflict between strategic absorption of European funds and regional development. The qualitative approach of the phenomenon studied was made by collecting information (using the mediate data collection technique has allowed relevant findings and practical solutions necessary for all those involved in this concerted action for the elderly, which affects us all.

Is Investment in Maize Research Balanced and Justified? An Empirical Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hari Krishna Shrestha

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The objective of this study was to investigate whether the investment in maize research was adequate and balanced in Nepalese context. Resource use in maize research was empirically studied with standard congruency analysis by using Full Time Equivalent (FTE of researchers as a proxy measure of investment. The number of researchers involved in maize was 61 but it was only 21.25 on FTE basis, indicating that full time researchers were very few as compared to the cultivated area of maize in the country. Statistical analysis revealed that the investment in maize research was higher in Tarai and lower in the Hills. Congruency index on actual production basis was found low across the eco-zones and even lower across the geographical regions indicating that the investment in maize research was a mismatch and not justified. While adjusted with the equity factor and the research progress factor in the analysis substantial difference was not found in congruency index. This study recommends that substantial increase in investment in maize research is needed with balanced and justified manner across the eco-zones and the geographical regions. Hills need special attention to increase the investment as maize output value is higher in this eco-zone. Eastern and western regions also need increased investment in maize according to their contribution in the output value.

PENGARUH BAURAN PEMASARAN JASA PENDIDIKAN TERHADAP TINGKAT KEPUASAN SISWA PADA SMA PGRI KURNIA GARUT

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Deden Edwar Yokeu Bernardin

2016-03-01

Full Text Available ABSTRACT  - The research wasconductedat theHigh SchoolMain Page PGRI Kurnia,effortto give satisfaction tothe students, using the toolsisthe marketing mix.Where the marketing mixconsists ofproduct, price, place, promotion, people, physical evidence and process. Base donthe background, andthe phenomenon exists, the author sconducteda study todetermine how much influence marketing mixto the level ofstudent satisfactionon the school PGRI Garut Kurnia either simulta neouslyor partially. Elements ofthe marketing mixwhichmost influence onstudent satisfaction. The research method used path analysis with the help of SPSS17. 0 software. The study was conductedon 72 respondent sintheentire high school students PGRI Kurnia Garut, chosen at random. The influence ofthe marketing mix21.60% (coefficient of determination R20.216, while the other factorsof 78.40%. While partial three of seven independent variables, theelements ofthe marketing mixthat providesthe greatest influence ofthe biggestis the promotion with determination coefficient0.281; pricewith a coefficient of0.254, and the process of the coefficient 0.244. Keywords: marketing mix, satisfaction

Practical Implications of Empirically Studying Moral Decision-Making

Science.gov (United States)

Heinzelmann, Nora; Ugazio, Giuseppe; Tobler, Philippe N.

2012-01-01

This paper considers the practical question of why people do not behave in the way they ought to behave. This question is a practical one, reaching both into the normative and descriptive domains of morality. That is, it concerns moral norms as well as empirical facts. We argue that two main problems usually keep us form acting and judging in a morally decent way: firstly, we make mistakes in moral reasoning. Secondly, even when we know how to act and judge, we still fail to meet the requirements due to personal weaknesses. This discussion naturally leads us to another question: can we narrow the gap between what people are morally required to do and what they actually do? We discuss findings from neuroscience, economics, and psychology, considering how we might bring our moral behavior better in line with moral theory. Potentially fruitful means include nudging, training, pharmacological enhancement, and brain stimulation. We conclude by raising the question of whether such methods could and should be implemented. PMID:22783157

Empirical Essays on Debt, Equity, and Convertible Securities

NARCIS (Netherlands)

P. Verwijmeren (Patrick)

2008-01-01

textabstractThis dissertation consists of four empirical studies on firms’ financing decisions. In the first two studies, we investigate the debt-equity choice for a large number of U.S. firms. We find that firms prefer debt financing over equity financing in case a debt issue allows the firm to

Relevant factors for the impact of social media marketing strategies: Empirical study of the internet travel agency sector

OpenAIRE

Lebherz, Philipp Robert

2011-01-01

Projecte final de carrera fet en col.laboració amb Karlsruher Institut für Technologie English: Final proyect with the topic "relevant factors for the impact of social media marketing strategies - an empirical study of the internet travel agency sector" at Faculty of Informatics and the chair of management. Supervised by Ferran Sabaté and Antonio Cañabate. Student Philipp Lebherz.

Antecedents and Consequences of Individual Performance Analysis of Turnover Intention Model (Empirical Study of Public Accountants in Indonesia)

OpenAIRE

Raza, Hendra; Maksum, Azhar; Erlina; Lumban Raja, Prihatin

2014-01-01

Azhar Maksum This study aims to examine empirically the antecedents of individual performance on its consequences of turnover intention in public accounting firms. There are eight variables measured which consists of auditors' empowerment, innovation professionalism, role ambiguity, role conflict, organizational commitment, individual performance and turnover intention. Data analysis is based on 163 public accountant using the Structural Equation Modeling assisted with an appli...

Trade and Empire

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bang, Peter Fibiger

2007-01-01

This articles seeks to establish a new set of organizing concepts for the analysis of the Roman imperial economy from Republic to late antiquity: tributary empire, port-folio capitalism and protection costs. Together these concepts explain better economic developments in the Roman world than the...

Setting healthcare priorities in hospitals: a review of empirical studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Barasa, Edwine W; Molyneux, Sassy; English, Mike; Cleary, Susan

2015-04-01

Priority setting research has focused on the macro (national) and micro (bedside) level, leaving the meso (institutional, hospital) level relatively neglected. This is surprising given the key role that hospitals play in the delivery of healthcare services and the large proportion of health systems resources that they absorb. To explore the factors that impact upon priority setting at the hospital level, we conducted a thematic review of empirical studies. A systematic search of PubMed, EBSCOHOST, Econlit databases and Google scholar was supplemented by a search of key websites and a manual search of relevant papers' reference lists. A total of 24 papers were identified from developed and developing countries. We applied a policy analysis framework to examine and synthesize the findings of the selected papers. Findings suggest that priority setting practice in hospitals was influenced by (1) contextual factors such as decision space, resource availability, financing arrangements, availability and use of information, organizational culture and leadership, (2) priority setting processes that depend on the type of priority setting activity, (3) content factors such as priority setting criteria and (4) actors, their interests and power relations. We observe that there is need for studies to examine these issues and the interplay between them in greater depth and propose a conceptual framework that might be useful in examining priority setting practices in hospitals. Published by Oxford University Press in association with The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine © The Author 2014; all rights reserved.

The conceptual and empirical relationship between gambling, investing, and speculation.

Science.gov (United States)

Arthur, Jennifer N; Williams, Robert J; Delfabbro, Paul H

2016-12-01

Background and aims To review the conceptual and empirical relationship between gambling, investing, and speculation. Methods An analysis of the attributes differentiating these constructs as well as identification of all articles speaking to their empirical relationship. Results Gambling differs from investment on many different attributes and should be seen as conceptually distinct. On the other hand, speculation is conceptually intermediate between gambling and investment, with a few of its attributes being investment-like, some of its attributes being gambling-like, and several of its attributes being neither clearly gambling or investment-like. Empirically, gamblers, investors, and speculators have similar cognitive, motivational, and personality attributes, with this relationship being particularly strong for gambling and speculation. Population levels of gambling activity also tend to be correlated with population level of financial speculation. At an individual level, speculation has a particularly strong empirical relationship to gambling, as speculators appear to be heavily involved in traditional forms of gambling and problematic speculation is strongly correlated with problematic gambling. Discussion and conclusions Investment is distinct from gambling, but speculation and gambling have conceptual overlap and a strong empirical relationship. It is recommended that financial speculation be routinely included when assessing gambling involvement, and there needs to be greater recognition and study of financial speculation as both a contributor to problem gambling as well as an additional form of behavioral addiction in its own right.

Trade costs in empirical New Economic Geography

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bosker, E.M.; Garretsen, J.H.

Trade costs are a crucial element of New Economic Geography (NEG) models. Without trade costs there is no role for geography. In empirical NEG studies the unavailability of direct trade cost data calls for the need to approximate these trade costs by introducing a trade cost function. In doing so,

Empirically Exploring Higher Education Cultures of Assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Fuller, Matthew B.; Skidmore, Susan T.; Bustamante, Rebecca M.; Holzweiss, Peggy C.

2016-01-01

Although touted as beneficial to student learning, cultures of assessment have not been examined adequately using validated instruments. Using data collected from a stratified, random sample (N = 370) of U.S. institutional research and assessment directors, the models tested in this study provide empirical support for the value of using the…

Relationships between moment magnitude and fault parameters: theoretical and semi-empirical relationships

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Haiyun; Tao, Xiaxin

2003-12-01

Fault parameters are important in earthquake hazard analysis. In this paper, theoretical relationships between moment magnitude and fault parameters including subsurface rupture length, downdip rupture width, rupture area, and average slip over the fault surface are deduced based on seismological theory. These theoretical relationships are further simplified by applying similarity conditions and an unique form is established. Then, combining the simplified theoretical relationships between moment magnitude and fault parameters with seismic source data selected in this study, a practical semi-empirical relationship is established. The seismic source data selected is also to used to derive empirical relationships between moment magnitude and fault parameters by the ordinary least square regression method. Comparisons between semi-empirical relationships and empirical relationships show that the former depict distribution trends of data better than the latter. It is also observed that downdip rupture widths of strike slip faults are saturated when moment magnitude is more than 7.0, but downdip rupture widths of dip slip faults are not saturated in the moment magnitude ranges of this study.

Impact of Globalization on Higher Education: An Empirical Study of Education Policy & Planning of Design Education in Hong Kong

Science.gov (United States)

Lam, Yan Yan

2010-01-01

This paper focuses on the impact of globalization in the domain of higher education, particularly, design education. It reviews how globalization may affect educational policy and planning in Hong Kong by drawing on an empirical study involving senior management, a course leader and a design trainer/facilitator. This paper not only illustrates the…

Empirical study of classification process for two-stage turbo air classifier in series

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Yuan; Liu, Jiaxiang; Li, Gang

2013-05-01

The suitable process parameters for a two-stage turbo air classifier are important for obtaining the ultrafine powder that has a narrow particle-size distribution, however little has been published internationally on the classification process for the two-stage turbo air classifier in series. The influence of the process parameters of a two-stage turbo air classifier in series on classification performance is empirically studied by using aluminum oxide powders as the experimental material. The experimental results show the following: 1) When the rotor cage rotary speed of the first-stage classifier is increased from 2 300 r/min to 2 500 r/min with a constant rotor cage rotary speed of the second-stage classifier, classification precision is increased from 0.64 to 0.67. However, in this case, the final ultrafine powder yield is decreased from 79% to 74%, which means the classification precision and the final ultrafine powder yield can be regulated through adjusting the rotor cage rotary speed of the first-stage classifier. 2) When the rotor cage rotary speed of the second-stage classifier is increased from 2 500 r/min to 3 100 r/min with a constant rotor cage rotary speed of the first-stage classifier, the cut size is decreased from 13.16 μm to 8.76 μm, which means the cut size of the ultrafine powder can be regulated through adjusting the rotor cage rotary speed of the second-stage classifier. 3) When the feeding speed is increased from 35 kg/h to 50 kg/h, the "fish-hook" effect is strengthened, which makes the ultrafine powder yield decrease. 4) To weaken the "fish-hook" effect, the equalization of the two-stage wind speeds or the combination of a high first-stage wind speed with a low second-stage wind speed should be selected. This empirical study provides a criterion of process parameter configurations for a two-stage or multi-stage classifier in series, which offers a theoretical basis for practical production.

An Empirical Taxonomy of Crowdfunding Intermediaries

OpenAIRE

Haas, Philipp; Blohm, Ivo; Leimeister, Jan Marco

2014-01-01

Due to the recent popularity of crowdfunding, a broad magnitude of crowdfunding intermediaries has emerged, while research on crowdfunding intermediaries has been largely neglected. As a consequence, existing classifications of crowdfunding intermediaries are conceptual, lack theoretical grounding, and are not empirically validated. Thus, we develop an empirical taxonomy of crowdfunding intermediaries, which is grounded in the theories of two-sided markets and financial intermediation. Integr...

Experimental and semi-empirical and DFT calculational studies on (e)-2-(1-(2-(4-methylphenylsulfonamido) ethyliminio) ethyl) phenolate

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Alpaslan, G.; Agar, E.; Ersahin, F.; Isik, S.; Erdoenmez, A.

2010-01-01

The molecular and crystal structure of the title compound, C 1 7H 2 0N 2 O 3 S, has been determined by X-ray single crystal diffraction technique. The compound crystallizes in the monoclinic, space group P2 1 /n with unit cell dimensions a=11.4472(6), b=11.1176(4), c=13.4873(7)A 0 , M r =332.41, V=1639.36(13)A 03 , Z=4, R 1 =0.034 and wR 2 =0.097. The molecule adopts a zwitterionic form, stabilized by an intramolecular N + -H 2 O - type ionic weak hydrogen bond. The molecule pack via intermolecular N-H 2 O hydrogen bonds which, together with an intramolecular N + -H 2 O - bond, form an S(6)R 2 4 (4)S(6) motif. Calculational studies were performed by using AM1, PM3 semi-empirical and DFT methods. Geometry optimizations of compound have been carried out by using three semi-empirical methods and DFT method and bond lengths, bond and torsion angles of title compound have been determined. Atomic charge distribution have been obtained from AM1, PM3 and DFT. In order to determine conformational flexibility on the molecule, molecular energy profile of the title compound was obtained with respect to the selected torsion angle T(N1-C9-C10-N2), which is varied from -180 degrees to +180 degrees in every 10 via PM3 semi-empirical method.

FEATURE EVALUATION FOR BUILDING FACADE IMAGES – AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Y. Yang

2012-08-01

Full Text Available The classification of building facade images is a challenging problem that receives a great deal of attention in the photogrammetry community. Image classification is critically dependent on the features. In this paper, we perform an empirical feature evaluation task for building facade images. Feature sets we choose are basic features, color features, histogram features, Peucker features, texture features, and SIFT features. We present an approach for region-wise labeling using an efficient randomized decision forest classifier and local features. We conduct our experiments with building facade image classification on the eTRIMS dataset, where our focus is the object classes building, car, door, pavement, road, sky, vegetation, and window.

Gazprom: the new empire

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Guillemoles, A.; Lazareva, A.

2008-01-01

Gazprom is conquering the world. The Russian industrial giant owns the hugest gas reserves and enjoys the privilege of a considerable power. Gazprom edits journals, owns hospitals, airplanes and has even built cities where most of the habitants work for him. With 400000 workers, Gazprom represents 8% of Russia's GDP. This inquiry describes the history and operation of this empire and show how its has become a masterpiece of the government's strategy of russian influence reconquest at the world scale. Is it going to be a winning game? Are the corruption affairs and the expected depletion of resources going to weaken the empire? The authors shade light on the political and diplomatic strategies that are played around the crucial dossier of the energy supply. (J.S.)

Evaluating guideline adherence regarding empirical vancomycin use in patients with neutropenic fever.

Science.gov (United States)

Chastain, Daniel B; Wheeler, Sarah; Franco-Paredes, Carlos; Olubajo, Babatunde; Hawkins, W Anthony

2018-04-01

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of empirical vancomycin for patients with neutropenic fever (NF) with regard to adherence to treatment guidelines. Adult patients with a diagnosis of neutropenia, who met the definition of NF as per treatment guidelines, were identified. Use of vancomycin was evaluated as part of empirical therapy and again after 72h. Outcomes were assessed using descriptive statistics, the Chi-square or Fisher's exact test, and univariate exact logistic regression analyses. Sixty-four patients were included. Overall, inappropriate empirical vancomycin use was observed in more than 30% of patients. Of 35 patients with indications for empirical vancomycin, only 68% received it. At 72h, appropriate vancomycin continuation, de-escalation, or discontinuation occurred in 21 of 33 patients. On univariate regression, hematological malignancy was associated with appropriate empirical vancomycin prescribing, whether initiating or withholding (odds ratio 4.0, 95% confidence interval 1.31-12.1). No variable was independently associated with inappropriate continuation at 72h. There is poor guideline adherence to vancomycin prescribing as empirical therapy and at 72-h reassessment in patients with NF. Further efforts are needed to foster a more rational use of vancomycin in patients with NF. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Desire for experiential travel, avoidance of rituality and social esteem: An empirical study of consumer response to tourism innovation

OpenAIRE

Chan, Wing Yin; To, Chester Kin-man; Chu, Wai Ching

2016-01-01

This study investigates tourist consumption responses toward tourism innovation. To measure tourist responses, this study posits three key consumption drivers, namely social esteem, desire for experiential travel, and avoidance against rituality of tourism settings (a subscale of need for uniqueness) and models consumers’ affective response within the context of tourism innovation. It involves 295 respondents in an empirical survey. The findings affirm the three drivers toward tourist consump...

Public University Students' Expectations: An Empirical Study Based on the Stakeholders Theory

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Emerson Wagner MAINARDES

2012-02-01

Full Text Available In accordance with the importance that the student stakeholder represents to universities, the objective of this research project was to identify and classify the leading expectations of students at public universities. In order to achieve this, the study adopted both the premises of Stakeholder Theory and the approaches of earlier studies on the management of university stakeholders. This empirical study began with an exploratory study of students, at one university, to identify their expectations this resulting in a list of a total of twenty-five confirmed expectations. This provided the basis for the subsequent quantitative study involving students attending eleven Portuguese public universities. Through recourse to an online questionnaire, we obtained 1,669 correctly completed surveys that provided the input for data analysis deploying descriptive statistical processes and multiple linear regressions. Our findings show that the most important student expectations are the academic level of demand, the university’s connections with the employment market, student personal self-fulfillment and the prevailing university environment. According to students, these expectations should gain priority attention by university managers, once they consider them the most relevant aspects to the relationship between the student and the university.

Casual Empire: Video Games as Neocolonial Praxis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sabine Harrer

2018-01-01

Full Text Available As a media form entwined in the U.S. military-industrial complex, video games continue to celebrate imperialist imagery and Western-centric narratives of the great white explorer (Breger, 2008; Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009; Geyser & Tshalabala, 2011; Mukherjee, 2016. While much ink has been spilt on the detrimental effects of colonial imagery on those it objectifies and dehumanises, the question is why these games still get made, and what mechanisms are at work in the enjoyment of empire-themed play experiences. To explore this question, this article develops the concept of ‘casual empire’, suggesting that the wish to play games as a casual pastime expedites the incidental circulation of imperialist ideology. Three examples – 'Resident Evil V' (2009, 'The Conquest: Colonization' (2015 and 'Playing History: Slave Trade' (2013 – are used to demonstrate the production and consumption of casual empire across multiple platforms, genres and player bases. Following a brief contextualisation of postcolonial (game studies, this article addresses casual design, by which I understand game designers’ casual reproduction of inferential racism (Hall, 1995 for the sake of entertainment. I then look at casual play, and players’ attitudes to games as rational commodities continuing a history of commodity racism (McClintock, 1995. Finally, the article investigates the casual involvement of formalist game studies in the construction of imperial values. These three dimensions of the casual – design, play and academia – make up the three pillars of the casual empire that must be challenged to undermine video games’ neocolonialist praxis.

Empirical study on the feasibility of measures for public self-protection capability enhancement; Empirische Untersuchung der Realisierbarkeit von Massnahmen zur Erhoehung der Selbstschutzfaehigkeit der Bevoelkerung

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Goersch, Henning G.; Werner, Ute

2011-07-01

The empirical study on the feasibility of measures for public self-protection capability enhancement covers the following issues with several sections: (1) Introduction: scope of the study; structure of the study. (2) Issue coherence: self-protection; reduction and prevention of damage by personal emergency preparedness, personal emergency preparedness in Germany. (3) Solution coherence: scientific approaches, development of practical problem solution approaches, proposal of a promotion system. (4) Empirical studies: Promotion system evaluation by experts; questioning of the public; Delphi-study on minimum standards in emergency preparedness; local networks in emergency preparedness. (5) Evaluation of models for personal emergency preparedness (M3P). (6) Integration of all research results into the approach of emergency preparedness: scope; recommendations, conclusions.

Impact of Intellectual Capital on Organisational Performance: An Empirical Study of Companies in the Hang Seng Index (Part 2)

Science.gov (United States)

Chan, Kin Hang

2009-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper, which is written in two parts, is to investigate empirically if intellectual capital (IC) has an impact on the financial aspects of organisational performance as well as attempting to identify the IC components that may be the drivers for the leading financial indicators of listed companies. The study sought…

Impact of Intellectual Capital on Organisational Performance: An Empirical Study of Companies in the Hang Seng Index (Part 1)

Science.gov (United States)

Chan, Kin Hang

2009-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper, which is written in two parts, is to investigate empirically if intellectual capital (IC) has an impact on the financial aspects of organisational performance as well as attempting to identify the IC components that may be the drivers for the leading financial indicators of listed companies. The study sought…

Religiosity, CSR attitudes, and CSR behavior : An empirical study of executives’ religiosity and CSR

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mazereeuw, C.; Graafland, J.J.; Kaptein, M.

In this paper, we examine the relationship between Christian religiosity, attitudes towards corporate social responsibility (CSR), and CSR behavior of executives. We distinguish four types of CSR attitudes and five types of CSR behavior. Based on empirical research conducted among 473 Dutch

“Empire is a state of mind” – Imagining Eurasia in Russia –

OpenAIRE

Vehkasalo, Veera Kaisa

2011-01-01

In this thesis I study the Neo-Eurasianist movement in Russia and the ways the activists of the movement construct Eurasia as a unified entity and an empire. The central research questions of this work are: What is the empire and what are its central motivations and themes? How is the idea of empire constructed or understood, and how can this be interpreted? What could be seen to be the effects of their ways of imagining Eurasia? My material consists of interviews that were collected during t...

Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Langen, P.W.; Lases Figueroa, D.M.; van Donselaar, K.H.; Bozuwa, J.

2017-01-01

In this paper we analyse the intermodal connectivity in Europe. The empirical analysis is to our knowledge the first empirical analysis of intermodal connections, and is based on a comprehensive database of intermodal connections in Europe. The paper focuses on rail and barge services, as they are

Cloud Computing (SaaS Adoption as a Strategic Technology: Results of an Empirical Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pedro R. Palos-Sanchez

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The present study empirically analyzes the factors that determine the adoption of cloud computing (SaaS model in firms where this strategy is considered strategic for executing their activity. A research model has been developed to evaluate the factors that influence the intention of using cloud computing that combines the variables found in the technology acceptance model (TAM with other external variables such as top management support, training, communication, organization size, and technological complexity. Data compiled from 150 companies in Andalusia (Spain are used to test the formulated hypotheses. The results of this study reflect what critical factors should be considered and how they are interrelated. They also show the organizational demands that must be considered by those companies wishing to implement a real management model adopted to the digital economy, especially those related to cloud computing.

Functional Measurement in the Field of Empirical Bioethics

Science.gov (United States)

Mullet, Etienne; Sorum, Paul C.; Teysseire, Nathalie; Nann, Stephanie; Martinez, Guadalupe Elizabeth Morales; Ahmed, Ramadan; Kamble, Shanmukh; Olivari, Cecilia; Sastre, Maria Teresa Munoz

2012-01-01

We present, in a synthetic way, some of the main findings from five studies that were conducted in the field of empirical bioethics, using the Functional Measurement framework. These studies were about (a) the rationing of rare treatments, (b) adolescents' abortions, (c) end-of-life decision-making regarding damaged neonates, (d) end-of-life…

Essays on empirical industrial organization : Entry and innovation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Fernandez Machado, Roxana

2017-01-01

The dissertation contains three essays on empirical industrial organization devoted to studying firms' strategic interaction in different settings. The first essay develops an entry model to address an important matter in the area of urban economics: the development of cities. In particular, it

Comparison of empirical models and laboratory saturated hydraulic ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Numerous methods for estimating soil saturated hydraulic conductivity exist, which range from direct measurement in the laboratory to models that use only basic soil properties. A study was conducted to compare laboratory saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat) measurement and that estimated from empirical models.

Taxation and Foreign Direct Investment: A Synthesis of Empirical Research

OpenAIRE

Ruud A. de Mooij; Sjef Ederveen

2001-01-01

This paper reviews the empirical literature on the impact of company taxes on the allocation of foreign direct investment. We make the outcomes of 25 empirical studies comparable by computing the tax rate elasticity under a uniform definition. Read also the accompanying press release . The mean value of the tax rate elasticity in the literature is around 3.3, i.e. a 1%-point reduction in the host-country tax rate raises foreign direct investment in that country by 3.3%. There exists substanti...

Empirical study on a directed and weighted bus transport network in China

Science.gov (United States)

Feng, Shumin; Hu, Baoyu; Nie, Cen; Shen, Xianghao

2016-01-01

Bus transport networks are directed complex networks that consist of routes, stations, and passenger flow. In this study, the concept of duplication factor is introduced to analyze the differences between uplinks and downlinks for the bus transport network of Harbin (BTN-H). Further, a new representation model for BTNs is proposed, named as directed-space P. Two empirical characteristics of BTN-H are reported in this paper. First, the cumulative distributions of weighted degree, degree, number of routes that connect to each station, and node weight (peak-hour trips at a station) uniformly follow the exponential law. Meanwhile, the node weight shows positive correlations with the corresponding weighted degree, degree, and number of routes that connect to a station. Second, a new richness parameter of a node is explored by its node weight and the connectivity, weighted connectivity, average shortest path length and efficiency between rich nodes can be fitted by composite exponential functions to demonstrate the rich-club phenomenon.

Methods for Calculating Empires in Quasicrystals

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fang Fang

2017-10-01

Full Text Available This paper reviews the empire problem for quasiperiodic tilings and the existing methods for generating the empires of the vertex configurations in quasicrystals, while introducing a new and more efficient method based on the cut-and-project technique. Using Penrose tiling as an example, this method finds the forced tiles with the restrictions in the high dimensional lattice (the mother lattice that can be cut-and-projected into the lower dimensional quasicrystal. We compare our method to the two existing methods, namely one method that uses the algorithm of the Fibonacci chain to force the Ammann bars in order to find the forced tiles of an empire and the method that follows the work of N.G. de Bruijn on constructing a Penrose tiling as the dual to a pentagrid. This new method is not only conceptually simple and clear, but it also allows us to calculate the empires of the vertex configurations in a defected quasicrystal by reversing the configuration of the quasicrystal to its higher dimensional lattice, where we then apply the restrictions. These advantages may provide a key guiding principle for phason dynamics and an important tool for self error-correction in quasicrystal growth.

How rational should bioethics be? The value of empirical approaches.

Science.gov (United States)

Alvarez, A A

2001-10-01

Rational justification of claims with empirical content calls for empirical and not only normative philosophical investigation. Empirical approaches to bioethics are epistemically valuable, i.e., such methods may be necessary in providing and verifying basic knowledge about cultural values and norms. Our assumptions in moral reasoning can be verified or corrected using these methods. Moral arguments can be initiated or adjudicated by data drawn from empirical investigation. One may argue that individualistic informed consent, for example, is not compatible with the Asian communitarian orientation. But this normative claim uses an empirical assumption that may be contrary to the fact that some Asians do value and argue for informed consent. Is it necessary and factual to neatly characterize some cultures as individualistic and some as communitarian? Empirical investigation can provide a reasonable way to inform such generalizations. In a multi-cultural context, such as in the Philippines, there is a need to investigate the nature of the local ethos before making any appeal to authenticity. Otherwise we may succumb to the same ethical imperialism we are trying hard to resist. Normative claims that involve empirical premises cannot be reasonable verified or evaluated without utilizing empirical methods along with philosophical reflection. The integration of empirical methods to the standard normative approach to moral reasoning should be reasonably guided by the epistemic demands of claims arising from cross-cultural discourse in bioethics.

Ownership dynamics with large shareholders : An empirical analysis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Donelli, M.; Urzua Infante, F.; Larrain, B.

2013-01-01

We study the empirical determinants of corporate ownership dynamics in a market where large shareholders are prevalent. We use a unique, hand-collected 20-year dataset on the ownership structure of Chilean companies. Controllers’ blockholdings are on average high -as in continental Europe, for

Merging expert and empirical data for rare event frequency estimation: Pool homogenisation for empirical Bayes models

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Quigley, John; Hardman, Gavin; Bedford, Tim; Walls, Lesley

2011-01-01

Empirical Bayes provides one approach to estimating the frequency of rare events as a weighted average of the frequencies of an event and a pool of events. The pool will draw upon, for example, events with similar precursors. The higher the degree of homogeneity of the pool, then the Empirical Bayes estimator will be more accurate. We propose and evaluate a new method using homogenisation factors under the assumption that events are generated from a Homogeneous Poisson Process. The homogenisation factors are scaling constants, which can be elicited through structured expert judgement and used to align the frequencies of different events, hence homogenising the pool. The estimation error relative to the homogeneity of the pool is examined theoretically indicating that reduced error is associated with larger pool homogeneity. The effects of misspecified expert assessments of the homogenisation factors are examined theoretically and through simulation experiments. Our results show that the proposed Empirical Bayes method using homogenisation factors is robust under different degrees of misspecification.

Analogical scaffolding and the learning of abstract ideas in physics: Empirical studies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Noah S. Podolefsky

2007-09-01

Full Text Available Previously, we proposed a model of student reasoning which combines the roles of representation, analogy, and layering of meaning—analogical scaffolding [Podolefsky and Finkelstein, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 3, 010109 (2007]. The present empirical studies build on this model to examine its utility and demonstrate the vital intertwining of representation, analogy, and conceptual learning in physics. In two studies of student reasoning using analogy, we show that representations couple to students’ existing prior knowledge and also lead to the dynamic formation of new knowledge. Students presented with abstract, concrete, or blended (both abstract and concrete representations produced markedly different response patterns. In the first study, using analogies to scaffold understanding of electromagnetic (EM waves, students in the blend group were more likely to reason productively about EM waves than students in the abstract group by as much as a factor of 3 (73% vs 24% correct, p=0.002. In the second study, examining representation use within one domain (sound waves, the blend group was more likely to reason productively about sound waves than the abstract group by as much as a factor of 2 (48% vs 23% correct, p=0.002. Using the analogical scaffolding model we examine when and why students succeed and fail to use analogies and interpret representations appropriately.

Analogical scaffolding and the learning of abstract ideas in physics: Empirical studies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Noah D. Finkelstein

2007-09-01

Full Text Available Previously, we proposed a model of student reasoning which combines the roles of representation, analogy, and layering of meaning—analogical scaffolding [Podolefsky and Finkelstein, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 3, 010109 (2007]. The present empirical studies build on this model to examine its utility and demonstrate the vital intertwining of representation, analogy, and conceptual learning in physics. In two studies of student reasoning using analogy, we show that representations couple to students’ existing prior knowledge and also lead to the dynamic formation of new knowledge. Students presented with abstract, concrete, or blended (both abstract and concrete representations produced markedly different response patterns. In the first study, using analogies to scaffold understanding of electromagnetic (EM waves, students in the blend group were more likely to reason productively about EM waves than students in the abstract group by as much as a factor of 3 (73% vs 24% correct, p=0.002 . In the second study, examining representation use within one domain (sound waves, the blend group was more likely to reason productively about sound waves than the abstract group by as much as a factor of 2 (48% vs 23% correct, p=0.002 . Using the analogical scaffolding model we examine when and why students succeed and fail to use analogies and interpret representations appropriately.

Empirical Study on Arbitrage Opportunities in China Copper Futures Market

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

无

2007-01-01

No-arbitrage bound is established with no-arbitrage theory considering all kinds of trade costs, different deposit and loan interest rate, margin and tax in fuuaes markets. The empirical results find that there are many lower bound arbitrage opportunities in China copper futures market from August 8th, 2003 to August 16th, 2005. Concretely, no-arbitrage opportunity is dominant and lower bound arbitrage is narrow in normal market segment. Lower bound arbitrage almost always exists with huge magnitude in inverted market segment. There is basically no-arbitrage in normal market because spot volume is enough, so that upper or lower bound arbitrage can be realized. There is mostly lower bound arbitrage in inverted market because spot volume is lack.

Growing the intention to adopt educational innovations: An empirical study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David M. Bourrie

2016-03-01

Full Text Available In order for the Open Access (OA to learning concept to a have wider impact in formal education, it is important that faculty members intent to adopt new educational innovations. However, little is known about which variables influence the intention of faculty members. Therefore, the purposes of this study are to empirically determine: 1 which of the characteristics of the educational innovation significantly influence the intention to adopt educational innovations, 2 which variables influence the readiness of faculty members intention to adopt educational innovations, and 3 how the characteristics of the innovations moderate the relationship between faculty readiness and intention to adopt the innovations. Participants of this study include 335 faculty members in ABET certified computer science and electrical engineering programs in the United States. The results show that ease of use is positively related to the intention of faculty members to adopt an educational innovation. We conclude that Open-CourseWare developers need to ensure that ease of use is emphasized in the CourseWare and they need to propagate these initially in institutions where faculty members have positive attitude to the CourseWare and care about student learning. In addition, a new method of identifying, building, and funding “open access grant” universities that develop easy-to-use educational innovations, make them available on an open access platform, and spread them widely by embedding agents in community colleges, schools, and other educational institutions is essential. Such an initiative may lead to wider adoption of MOOCS and other open access materials.

Empirically Supported Treatment's Impact on Organizational Culture and Climate

Science.gov (United States)

Patterson-Silver Wolf, David A.; Dulmus, Catherine N.; Maguin, Eugene

2012-01-01

Objectives: With the continued push to implement empirically supported treatments (ESTs) into community-based organizations, it is important to investigate whether working condition disruptions occur during this process. While there are many studies investigating best practices and how to adopt them, the literature lacks studies investigating the…

Evaluating guideline adherence regarding empirical vancomycin use in patients with neutropenic fever

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel B. Chastain

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of empirical vancomycin for patients with neutropenic fever (NF with regard to adherence to treatment guidelines. Methods: Adult patients with a diagnosis of neutropenia, who met the definition of NF as per treatment guidelines, were identified. Use of vancomycin was evaluated as part of empirical therapy and again after 72 h. Outcomes were assessed using descriptive statistics, the Chi-square or Fisher’s exact test, and univariate exact logistic regression analyses. Results: Sixty-four patients were included. Overall, inappropriate empirical vancomycin use was observed in more than 30% of patients. Of 35 patients with indications for empirical vancomycin, only 68% received it. At 72 h, appropriate vancomycin continuation, de-escalation, or discontinuation occurred in 21 of 33 patients. On univariate regression, hematological malignancy was associated with appropriate empirical vancomycin prescribing, whether initiating or withholding (odds ratio 4.0, 95% confidence interval 1.31–12.1. No variable was independently associated with inappropriate continuation at 72 h. Conclusions: There is poor guideline adherence to vancomycin prescribing as empirical therapy and at 72-h reassessment in patients with NF. Further efforts are needed to foster a more rational use of vancomycin in patients with NF. Keywords: Antibiotics, Neutropenia, Neutropenic fever, Vancomycin

An Empirical Study of Overlapping Rotor Interference for a Small Unmanned Aircraft Propulsion System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mantas Brazinskas

2016-10-01

Full Text Available The majority of research into full-sized helicopter overlapping propulsion systems involves co-axial setups (fully overlapped. Partially overlapping rotor setups (tandem, multirotor have received less attention, and empirical data produced over the years is limited. The increase in demand for compact small unmanned aircraft has exposed the need for empirical investigations of overlapping propulsion systems at a small scale (Reynolds Number < 250,000. Rotor-to-rotor interference at the static state in various overlapping propulsion system configurations was empirically measured using off the shelf T-Motor 16 inch × 5.4 inch rotors. A purpose-built test rig was manufactured allowing various overlapping rotor configurations to be tested. First, single rotor data was gathered, then performance measurements were taken at different thrust and tip speeds on a range of overlap configurations. The studies were conducted in a system torque balance mode. Overlapping rotor performance was compared to an isolated dual rotor propulsion system revealing interference factors which were compared to the momentum theory. Tests revealed that in the co-axial torque-balanced propulsion system the upper rotor outperforms the lower rotor at axial separation ratios between 0.05 and 0.85. Additionally, in the same region, thrust sharing between the two rotors changed by 21%; the upper rotor produced more thrust than the lower rotor at all times. Peak performance was recorded as a 22% efficiency loss when the axial separation ratio was greater than 0.25. The performance of a co-axial torque-balanced system reached a 27% efficiency loss when the axial separation ratio was equal to 0.05. The co-axial system swirl recovery effect was recorded to have a 4% efficiency gain in the axial separation ratio region between 0.05 and 0.85. The smallest efficiency loss (3% was recorded when the rotor separation ratio was between 0.95 and 1 (axial separation ratio was kept at 0

A Review of Empirical Studies Investigating Antecedents and Consequences of Collective Learning Behaviors in Hospitals

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Florina D. Spânu

2013-01-01

Full Text Available This study is a systematic review of the field research conducted in medical settings investigating collective learning behaviors. The review was driven by several research foci. Our main interest was in identifying antecedents and consequences of collective learning in hospitals. We also report results on the types of research questions addressed, research designs used, and types of medical teams investigated. Twelve studies met our inclusion criteria. Our findings revealed that highly contextualized studies that use different ways of measuring learning, different ways of conceptualizing medical teams, and different research methodologies, discuss similar antecedents. Variables like leadership behaviors, unit interpersonal climate, and hierarchical position were found to play a role in explaining organizational learning in hospitals across studies. We also found that despite an intense public discourse on the link between collective learning processes and patients’ safety and medical organizations’ performance, few studies actually report empirical data supporting this relationship.

Is Economics an Empirical Science? If not, can it become one?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sergio Mario Focardi

2015-07-01

Full Text Available Today’s mainstream economics, embodied in Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE models, cannot be considered an empirical science in the modern sense of the term: it is not based on empirical data, is not descriptive of the real-world economy, and has little forecasting power. In this paper, I begin with a review of the weaknesses of neoclassical economic theory and argue for a truly scientific theory based on data, the sine qua non of bringing economics into the realm of an empirical science. But I suggest that, before embarking on this endeavor, we first need to analyze the epistemological problems of economics to understand what research questions we can reasonably ask our theory to address.. I then discuss new approaches which hold the promise of bringing economics closer to being an empirical science. Among the approaches discussed are the study of economies as complex systems, econometrics and econophysics, artificial economics made up of multiple interacting agents as well as attempts being made inside present main stream theory to more closely align the theory with the real world

Empirically based Suggested Insights into the Concept of False-Self Defense: Contributions From a Study on Normalization of Children With Disabilities.

Science.gov (United States)

Eichengreen, Adva; Hoofien, Dan; Bachar, Eytan

2016-02-01

The concept of the false self has been used widely in psychoanalytic theory and practice but seldom in empirical research. In this empirically based study, elevated features of false-self defense were hypothetically associated with risk factors attendant on processes of rehabilitation and integration of children with disabilities, processes that encourage adaptation of the child to the able-bodied environment. Self-report questionnaires and in-depth interviews were conducted with 88 deaf and hard-of-hearing students and a comparison group of 88 hearing counterparts. Results demonstrate that despite the important contribution of rehabilitation and integration to the well-being of these children, these efforts may put the child at risk of increased use of the false-self defense. The empirical findings suggest two general theoretical conclusions: (1) The Winnicottian concept of the environment, usually confined to the parent-child relationship, can be understood more broadly as including cultural, social, and rehabilitational variables that both influence the parent-child relationship and operate independently of it. (2) The monolithic conceptualization of the false self may be more accurately unpacked to reveal two distinct subtypes: the compliant and the split false self. © 2016 by the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Towards an empirical ethics in care: relations with technologies in health care.

Science.gov (United States)

Pols, Jeannette

2015-02-01

This paper describes the approach of empirical ethics, a form of ethics that integrates non-positivist ethnographic empirical research and philosophy. Empirical ethics as it is discussed here builds on the 'empirical turn' in epistemology. It radicalizes the relational approach that care ethics introduced to think about care between people by drawing in relations between people and technologies as things people relate to. Empirical ethics studies care practices by analysing their intra-normativity, or the ways of living together the actors within these practices strive for or bring about as good practices. Different from care ethics, what care is and if it is good is not defined beforehand. A care practice may be contested by comparing it to alternative practices with different notions of good care. By contrasting practices as different ways of living together that are normatively oriented, suggestions for the best possible care may be argued for. Whether these suggestions will actually be put to practice is, however, again a relational question; new actors need to re-localize suggestions, to make them work in new practices and fit them in with local intra-normativities with their particular routines, material infrastructures, know-how and strivings.

The Methodology of Syndrome Analysis within the Paradigm of “Qualitat ive Research” in Clinical Psychology

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elena I. Pervichko

2012-01-01

Full Text Available This article considers the potential for applying contemporary philosophical theories(which distinguish classical, nonclassical, and postnonclassical types of scientificrationality to the specification of theoretical methodological principles inthe study of clinical psychology. We prove that psychological syndrome analysis(developed by the Vygotsky–Luria–Zeigarnik school, taken as a system of principlesfor organizing research as well as for interpreting its results, conforms to theepistemological complexity of the object of study in clinical psychology, which isunderstood in the postnonclassical scientific view as a self-developing system.We present an example of the formation of a psychosomatic syndrome in 290patients with mitral-valve prolapse, applying methods of qualitative and statisticaldata analysis in a longitudinal clinical-psychological study. We prove that thesyndrome is system-defined and has a multilevel character, and that its structureis determined by several factors: the motivational factor (with the domination ofthe failure-avoidance motive and the unsatisfied self-approval need; the factor ofthe emotional-regulation disorders, represented by both excessive emotional repressionand lack of emotional control; and a psychophysiological factor. We arguethat a psychosomatic syndrome can be used as a means for approaching not onlydiagnostic but also prognostic tasks both in clinical psychology and in medicine.We conclude that the results of our empirical study, conducted within the frameworkof postnonclassical philosophy and using the methods of psychologicalsyndrome analysis, not only expand the scientific background on the nature of aparticular disease (mitral-valve prolapse but also pose further questions whoseinvestigation will broaden our view of the psychological mechanisms of psychosomatic-syndrome genesis.

Empirical Asset Pricing: Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen, and Robert Shiller

OpenAIRE

Campbell, John Y.

2016-01-01

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for 2013 was awarded to Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen, and Robert Shiller for their contributions to the empirical study of asset pricing. Some observers have found it hard to understand the common elements of the laureates research, preferring to highlight areas of disagreement among them. This paper argues that empirical asset pricing is a coherent enterprise, which owes much to the laureates seminal contributions, and that important themes in ...

Research across the disciplines: a road map for quality criteria in empirical ethics research.

Science.gov (United States)

Mertz, Marcel; Inthorn, Julia; Renz, Günter; Rothenberger, Lillian Geza; Salloch, Sabine; Schildmann, Jan; Wöhlke, Sabine; Schicktanz, Silke

2014-03-01

Research in the field of Empirical Ethics (EE) uses a broad variety of empirical methodologies, such as surveys, interviews and observation, developed in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Whereas these empirical disciplines see themselves as purely descriptive, EE also aims at normative reflection. Currently there is literature about the quality of empirical research in ethics, but little or no reflection on specific methodological aspects that must be considered when conducting interdisciplinary empirical ethics. Furthermore, poor methodology in an EE study results in misleading ethical analyses, evaluations or recommendations. This not only deprives the study of scientific and social value, but also risks ethical misjudgement. While empirical and normative-ethical research projects have quality criteria in their own right, we focus on the specific quality criteria for EE research. We develop a tentative list of quality criteria--a "road map"--tailored to interdisciplinary research in EE, to guide assessments of research quality. These quality criteria fall into the categories of primary research question, theoretical framework and methods, relevance, interdisciplinary research practice and research ethics and scientific ethos. EE research is an important and innovative development in bioethics. However, a lack of standards has led to concerns about and even rejection of EE by various scholars. Our suggested orientation list of criteria, presented in the form of reflective questions, cannot be considered definitive, but serves as a tool to provoke systematic reflection during the planning and composition of an EE research study. These criteria need to be tested in different EE research settings and further refined.

Empirical studies of regulatory restructuring and incentives

Science.gov (United States)

Knittel, Christopher Roland

This dissertation examines the actions of firms when faced with regulatory restructuring. Chapter I examines the equilibrium pricing behavior of local exchange telephone companies under a variety of market structures. In particular, the pricing behavior of three services are analyzed: residential local service, business local service, and intraLATA toll service. Beginning in 1984, a variety of market structure changes have taken place in the local telecommunications industry. I analyze differences in the method of price-setting regulation and the restrictions on entry. Specifically, the relative pricing behavior under rate of return and price cap regulation is analyzed, as well as the impact of entry in the local exchange and intraLATA toll service markets. In doing so, I estimate an empirical model that accounts for the stickiness of rates in regulated industries that is based on firm and regulator decision processes in the presence of adjustment costs. I find that, faced with competitive pressures that reduce rates in one service, incumbent firm rates increase in other services, thereby reducing the benefits from competition. In addition, the findings suggest that price cap regulation leads to higher rates relative to rate-of-return regulation. Chapter 2 analyzes the pricing and investment behavior of electricity firms. Electricity and natural gas markets have traditionally been serviced by one of two market structures. In some markets, electricity and natural gas are sold by a dual-product regulated monopolist, while in other markets, electricity and natural gas are sold by separate single-product regulated monopolies. This paper analyzes the relative pricing and investment decisions of electricity firms operating in the two market structures. The unique relationship between these two products imply that the relative incentives of single and dual-product firms are likely to differ. Namely electricity and natural gas are substitutes in consumption while natural

TESTING FORMARKET ANOMALIES IN DIFFERENT SECTORS OFTHE JOHANNESBURG STOCK EXCHANGE

OpenAIRE

Mpho I. Mahlophe; Paul-Francois Muzindutsi

2017-01-01

Thisstudy comparedthe performance of different asset-pricing models and theirability to account for market anomalies in different sectors of the JohannesburgStock Exchange (JSE). The total sample size of the study consisted of 156companies categorised into six differentsectors namely, resources, consumergoods, consumer services, financial, industrial and others.Various asset-pricingmodels such asthe Capital Asset pricing Model(CAPM),the Fama and Frenchthree-factor model an...

Pluvials, Droughts, the Mongol Empire, and Modern Mongolia

Science.gov (United States)

Hessl, A. E.; Pederson, N.; Baatarbileg, N.; Anchukaitis, K. J.

2013-12-01

Understanding the connections between climate, ecosystems, and society during historical and modern climatic transitions requires annual resolution records with high fidelity climate signals. Many studies link the demise of complex societies with deteriorating climate conditions, but few have investigated the connection between climate, surplus energy, and the rise of empires. Inner Asia in the 13th century underwent a major political transformation requiring enormous energetic inputs that altered human history. The Mongol Empire, centered on the city of Karakorum, became the largest contiguous land empire in world history (Fig. 1 inset). Powered by domesticated grazing animals, the empire grew at the expense of sedentary agriculturalists across Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Although some scholars and conventional wisdom agree that dry conditions spurred the Mongol conquests, little paleoenvironmental data at annual resolution are available to evaluate the role of climate in the development of the Mongol Empire. Here we present a 2600 year tree-ring reconstruction of warm-season, self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI), a measure of water balance, derived from 107 live and dead Siberian pine (Pinus sibirica) trees growing on a Holocene lava flow in central Mongolia. Trees growing on the Khorgo lava flow today are stunted and widely spaced, occurring on microsites with little to no soil development. These trees are extremely water-stressed and their radial growth is well-correlated with both drought (scPDSI) and grassland productivity (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)). Our reconstruction, calibrated and validated on instrumental June-September scPDSI (1959-2009) accounts for 55.8% of the variability in the regional scPDSI when 73% of the annual rainfall occurs. Our scPDSI reconstruction places historic and modern social change in Mongolia in the context of the range of climatic variability during the Common Era. Our record

Empirical study of long-range connections in a road network offers new ingredient for navigation optimization models

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Pu; Liu, Like; Li, Xiamiao; Li, Guanliang; González, Marta C.

2014-01-01

Navigation problem in lattices with long-range connections has been widely studied to understand the design principles for optimal transport networks; however, the travel cost of long-range connections was not considered in previous models. We define long-range connection in a road network as the shortest path between a pair of nodes through highways and empirically analyze the travel cost properties of long-range connections. Based on the maximum speed allowed in each road segment, we observe that the time needed to travel through a long-range connection has a characteristic time Th ˜ 29 min, while the time required when using the alternative arterial road path has two different characteristic times Ta ˜ 13 and 41 min and follows a power law for times larger than 50 min. Using daily commuting origin-destination matrix data, we additionally find that the use of long-range connections helps people to save about half of the travel time in their daily commute. Based on the empirical results, we assign a more realistic travel cost to long-range connections in two-dimensional square lattices, observing dramatically different minimum average shortest path but similar optimal navigation conditions.

Empirical study using network of semantically related associations in bridging the knowledge gap.

Science.gov (United States)

Abedi, Vida; Yeasin, Mohammed; Zand, Ramin

2014-11-27

The data overload has created a new set of challenges in finding meaningful and relevant information with minimal cognitive effort. However designing robust and scalable knowledge discovery systems remains a challenge. Recent innovations in the (biological) literature mining tools have opened new avenues to understand the confluence of various diseases, genes, risk factors as well as biological processes in bridging the gaps between the massive amounts of scientific data and harvesting useful knowledge. In this paper, we highlight some of the findings using a text analytics tool, called ARIANA--Adaptive Robust and Integrative Analysis for finding Novel Associations. Empirical study using ARIANA reveals knowledge discovery instances that illustrate the efficacy of such tool. For example, ARIANA can capture the connection between the drug hexamethonium and pulmonary inflammation and fibrosis that caused the tragic death of a healthy volunteer in a 2001 John Hopkins asthma study, even though the abstract of the study was not part of the semantic model. An integrated system, such as ARIANA, could assist the human expert in exploratory literature search by bringing forward hidden associations, promoting data reuse and knowledge discovery as well as stimulating interdisciplinary projects by connecting information across the disciplines.

An Empirical Study of Neural Network-Based Audience Response Technology in a Human Anatomy Course for Pharmacy Students.

Science.gov (United States)

Fernández-Alemán, José Luis; López-González, Laura; González-Sequeros, Ofelia; Jayne, Chrisina; López-Jiménez, Juan José; Carrillo-de-Gea, Juan Manuel; Toval, Ambrosio

2016-04-01

This paper presents an empirical study of a formative neural network-based assessment approach by using mobile technology to provide pharmacy students with intelligent diagnostic feedback. An unsupervised learning algorithm was integrated with an audience response system called SIDRA in order to generate states that collect some commonality in responses to questions and add diagnostic feedback for guided learning. A total of 89 pharmacy students enrolled on a Human Anatomy course were taught using two different teaching methods. Forty-four students employed intelligent SIDRA (i-SIDRA), whereas 45 students received the same training but without using i-SIDRA. A statistically significant difference was found between the experimental group (i-SIDRA) and the control group (traditional learning methodology), with T (87) = 6.598, p < 0.001. In four MCQs tests, the difference between the number of correct answers in the first attempt and in the last attempt was also studied. A global effect size of 0.644 was achieved in the meta-analysis carried out. The students expressed satisfaction with the content provided by i-SIDRA and the methodology used during the process of learning anatomy (M = 4.59). The new empirical contribution presented in this paper allows instructors to perform post hoc analyses of each particular student's progress to ensure appropriate training.

Critical Realism and Empirical Bioethics: A Methodological Exposition.

Science.gov (United States)

McKeown, Alex

2017-09-01

This paper shows how critical realism can be used to integrate empirical data and philosophical analysis within 'empirical bioethics'. The term empirical bioethics, whilst appearing oxymoronic, simply refers to an interdisciplinary approach to the resolution of practical ethical issues within the biological and life sciences, integrating social scientific, empirical data with philosophical analysis. It seeks to achieve a balanced form of ethical deliberation that is both logically rigorous and sensitive to context, to generate normative conclusions that are practically applicable to the problem, challenge, or dilemma. Since it incorporates both philosophical and social scientific components, empirical bioethics is a field that is consistent with the use of critical realism as a research methodology. The integration of philosophical and social scientific approaches to ethics has been beset with difficulties, not least because of the irreducibly normative, rather than descriptive, nature of ethical analysis and the contested relation between fact and value. However, given that facts about states of affairs inform potential courses of action and their consequences, there is a need to overcome these difficulties and successfully integrate data with theory. Previous approaches have been formulated to overcome obstacles in combining philosophical and social scientific perspectives in bioethical analysis; however each has shortcomings. As a mature interdisciplinary approach critical realism is well suited to empirical bioethics, although it has hitherto not been widely used. Here I show how it can be applied to this kind of research and explain how it represents an improvement on previous approaches.

Service Quality of Online Shopping Platforms: A Case-Based Empirical and Analytical Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tsan-Ming Choi

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Customer service is crucially important for online shopping platforms (OSPs such as eBay and Taobao. Based on the well-established service quality instruments and the scenario of the specific case on Taobao, this paper focuses on exploring the service quality of an OSP with an aim of revealing customer perceptions of the service quality associated with the provided functions and investigating their impacts on customer loyalty. By an empirical study, this paper finds that the “fulfillment and responsiveness” function is significantly related to the customer loyalty. Further analytical study is conducted to reveal that the optimal service level on the “fulfillment and responsiveness” function for the risk averse OSP uniquely exists. Moreover, the analytical results prove that (i if the customer loyalty is more positively correlated to the service level, it will lead to a larger optimal service level, and (ii the optimal service level is independent of the profit target, the source of uncertainty, and the risk preference of the OSP.

Empirical evaluation methods in computer vision

CERN Document Server

Christensen, Henrik I

2002-01-01

This book provides comprehensive coverage of methods for the empirical evaluation of computer vision techniques. The practical use of computer vision requires empirical evaluation to ensure that the overall system has a guaranteed performance. The book contains articles that cover the design of experiments for evaluation, range image segmentation, the evaluation of face recognition and diffusion methods, image matching using correlation methods, and the performance of medical image processing algorithms. Sample Chapter(s). Foreword (228 KB). Chapter 1: Introduction (505 KB). Contents: Automate

Empirical direction in design and analysis

CERN Document Server

Anderson, Norman H

2001-01-01

The goal of Norman H. Anderson's new book is to help students develop skills of scientific inference. To accomplish this he organized the book around the ""Experimental Pyramid""--six levels that represent a hierarchy of considerations in empirical investigation--conceptual framework, phenomena, behavior, measurement, design, and statistical inference. To facilitate conceptual and empirical understanding, Anderson de-emphasizes computational formulas and null hypothesis testing. Other features include: *emphasis on visual inspection as a basic skill in experimental analysis to help student

Empirical modeling of dynamic behaviors of pneumatic artificial muscle actuators.

Science.gov (United States)

Wickramatunge, Kanchana Crishan; Leephakpreeda, Thananchai

2013-11-01

Pneumatic Artificial Muscle (PAM) actuators yield muscle-like mechanical actuation with high force to weight ratio, soft and flexible structure, and adaptable compliance for rehabilitation and prosthetic appliances to the disabled as well as humanoid robots or machines. The present study is to develop empirical models of the PAM actuators, that is, a PAM coupled with pneumatic control valves, in order to describe their dynamic behaviors for practical control design and usage. Empirical modeling is an efficient approach to computer-based modeling with observations of real behaviors. Different characteristics of dynamic behaviors of each PAM actuator are due not only to the structures of the PAM actuators themselves, but also to the variations of their material properties in manufacturing processes. To overcome the difficulties, the proposed empirical models are experimentally derived from real physical behaviors of the PAM actuators, which are being implemented. In case studies, the simulated results with good agreement to experimental results, show that the proposed methodology can be applied to describe the dynamic behaviors of the real PAM actuators. Copyright © 2013 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Gaps in studies of global health education: an empirical literature review

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yan Liu

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Background: Global health has stimulated a lot of students and has attracted the interest of many faculties, thereby initiating the establishment of many academic programs on global health research and education. global health education reflects the increasing attention toward social accountability in medical education. Objective: This study aims to identify gaps in the studies on global health education. Design: A critical literature review of empirical studies was conducted using Boolean search techniques. Results: A total of 238 articles, including 16 reviews, were identified. There had been a boom in the numbers of studies on global health education since 2010. Four gaps were summarized. First, 94.6% of all studies on global health education were conducted in North American and European countries, of which 65.6% were carried out in the United States, followed by Canada (14.3% and the United Kingdom (9.2%. Only seven studies (2.9% were conducted in Asian countries, five (2.1% in Oceania, and two (0.8% in South American/Caribbean countries. A total of 154 studies (64.4% were qualitative studies and 64 studies (26.8% were quantitative studies. Second, elective courses and training or programs were the most frequently used approach for global health education. Third, there was a gap in the standardization of global health education. Finally, it was mainly targeted at medical students, residents, and doctors. It had not granted the demands for global health education of all students majoring in medicine-related studies. Conclusions: Global health education would be a potentially influential tool for achieving health equity, reducing health disparities, and also for future professional careers. It is the time to build and expand education in global health, especially among developing countries. Global health education should be integrated into primary medical education. Interdisciplinary approaches and interprofessional collaboration were

Antecedents of positive self-disclosure online: an empirical study of US college students’ Facebook usage

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chen H

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Hongliang Chen Department of Communication, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA Abstract: This study investigates the factors predicting positive self-disclosure on social networking sites (SNSs. There is a formidable body of empirical research relating to online self-disclosure, but very few studies have assessed the antecedents of positive self-disclosure. To address this literature gap, the current study tests the effects of self-esteem, life satisfaction, social anxiety, privacy concerns, public self-consciousness (SC, and perceived collectivism on positive self-disclosure on SNSs. Data were collected online via Qualtrics in April 2013. Respondents were undergraduate students from the University of Connecticut. Using ordinary least squares regression, the current study found that self-esteem and perceived collectivism increased positive self-disclosure, life satisfaction, and privacy concerns decreased positive self-disclosure, and the effects of social anxiety and public SC were not significant. Keywords: positive self-disclosure, self-esteem, life satisfaction, social anxiety, privacy concerns, public self-consciousness, perceived collectivism

Estimating rate of occurrence of rare events with empirical bayes: A railway application

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Quigley, John; Bedford, Tim; Walls, Lesley

2007-01-01

Classical approaches to estimating the rate of occurrence of events perform poorly when data are few. Maximum likelihood estimators result in overly optimistic point estimates of zero for situations where there have been no events. Alternative empirical-based approaches have been proposed based on median estimators or non-informative prior distributions. While these alternatives offer an improvement over point estimates of zero, they can be overly conservative. Empirical Bayes procedures offer an unbiased approach through pooling data across different hazards to support stronger statistical inference. This paper considers the application of Empirical Bayes to high consequence low-frequency events, where estimates are required for risk mitigation decision support such as as low as reasonably possible. A summary of empirical Bayes methods is given and the choices of estimation procedures to obtain interval estimates are discussed. The approaches illustrated within the case study are based on the estimation of the rate of occurrence of train derailments within the UK. The usefulness of empirical Bayes within this context is discussed

Economic openness and trade linkages of China : An empirical study of the determinants of Chinese trade intensities from 1993 to 1999

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Zhang, JH; van Witteloostuijn, A

2004-01-01

In the 1980s, the Chinese regime took a number of piecemeal steps toward economic liberalization. This process accelerated impressively in the 1990s. This paper reports an empirical study into the determinants of the emerging pattern of Chinese trade (export and import) intensities in the

[Systematic review and evidence mapping of empirical studies on health status and medical care among refugees and asylum seekers in Germany (1990-2014)].

Science.gov (United States)

Bozorgmehr, Kayvan; Mohsenpour, Amir; Saure, Daniel; Stock, Christian; Loerbroks, Adrian; Joos, Stefanie; Schneider, Christine

2016-05-01

Owing to a lack of routine statistics on the health status and medical care of asylum seekers, empirical studies play a major role in the mapping of these aspects. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the research landscape in this area, synthesizing knowledge from empirical studies and identifying evidence gaps. A three-tiered search strategy included searching for empirical studies in national/international databases and on the internet, screening reference lists, and contacting experts. Studies meeting predefined inclusion criteria were thematically organized and described in a narrative synthesis. The searches generated 1,190 hits; 52 articles met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 41 were quantitative studies (78.9 %), 10 qualitative (19.2 %), and 1 was a review (1.9 %). A total of 30 primary articles (58.9 %) analyzed mental health aspects, followed by infectious diseases (n = 12, 23.5 %). Qualitative studies, mainly ethnographies and case studies, explored mental health and social determinants of health, providing evidence for the impact of living conditions on health and medical care. Few studies analyzed chronic diseases (n = 3) or childhood illnesses (n = 6). No studies analyzed the health needs or medical care of asylum-seeking women during pregnancy and child birth. In 62.7 % of the primary studies, a single sampling point was used to recruit asylum seekers. Nationwide external validity was given in two quantitative studies. The priority research areas identified are chronic diseases and childhood and maternal health. The divergency and heterogeneity of the studies hamper a comprehensive and comparable acquisition of knowledgeand emphasize the  need for collaborative research to close the existing evidence gaps.

Empirical knowledge in legislation and regulation : A decision making perspective

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Trautmann, S.T.

2013-01-01

This commentary considers the pros and cons of the empirical approach to legislation from the vantage point of empirical decision making research. It focuses on methodological aspects that are typically not considered by legal scholars. It points out weaknesses in the empirical approach that are

An empirical study to measure the relationship between management style and conflict management

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Saeed Moghaddas Pour

2012-10-01

Full Text Available Leadership plays an important role among five main components of management. These days, many organizations try to resolve any existing conflicts through adapting an appropriate leadership strategy. During the past few years, there are increasing interests in examining the relationship between management style and conflict management. The proposed study of this paper performs an empirical study to find the relationship between relationship-oriented leadership style and solution-oriented strategy as well as between leadership style and conflict management. The proposed study distributed a questionnaire among 43 managers who were in different industries in west part of Iran. Most of the people who participated in our survey were male and they were between 25 to 30 years old. The study considers relationship between leadership style and conflict management, which includes the relationship between relationship-oriented and task-oriented leaderships with avoiding conflict management strategy, solution and control based conflict managements. The results confirmed that there is only a meaningful relationship between relationship-oriented leadership with solution-based conflict management. In other words, our survey indicates that when there is a conflict, management can handle the problem using his/her relationship and find appropriate solution to resolve any possible conflict.

New empirical generalizations on the determinants of price elasticity

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bijmolt, THA; Van Heerde, HJ; Pieters, RGM

The importance of pricing decisions for firms has fueled an extensive stream of research on price elasticities. In an influential meta-analytical study, Tellis (1988) summarized price elasticity research findings until 1986. However, empirical generalizations on price elasticity require

“Nobody tosses a dwarf!” The relation between the empirical and normative reexamined

Science.gov (United States)

Leget, C.; Borry, P.; De Vries, R.

2009-01-01

This article discusses the relation between empirical and normative approaches in bioethics. The issue of dwarf tossing, while admittedly unusual, is chosen as point of departure because it challenges the reader to look upon several central bioethical themes – including human dignity, autonomy, and the protection of vulnerable people – with fresh eyes. After an overview of current approaches to the integration of empirical and normative ethics, we consider five ways that the empirical and normative can be brought together to speak to the problem of dwarf tossing: prescriptive applied ethics, theorist ethics, critical applied ethics, particularist ethics and integrated empirical ethics. We defend a position of critical applied ethics that allows for a two-way relation between empirical and normative theories. The approach we endorse acknowledges that a social practice can and should be judged by both the gathering of empirical data and by the normative ethics. Critical applied ethics uses a five stage process that includes: (a) determination of the problem, (b) description of the problem, (c) empirical study of effects and alternatives, (d) normative weighing and (e) evaluation of the effects of a decision. In each stage, we explore the perspective from both the empirical (sociological) and the normative ethical poles that, in our view, should operate as two independent focuses of the ellipse that is called bioethics. We conclude by applying our five stage critical applied ethics to the example of dwarf tossing. PMID:19338523

Comparison between pathogen directed antibiotic treatment and empirical broad spectrum antibiotic treatment in patients with community acquired pneumonia: a prospective randomised study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van der Eerden, M. M.; Vlaspolder, F.; de Graaff, C. S.; Groot, T.; Bronsveld, W.; Jansen, H. M.; Boersma, W. G.

2005-01-01

Background: There is much controversy about the ideal approach to the management of community acquired pneumonia ( CAP). Recommendations differ from a pathogen directed approach to an empirical strategy with broad spectrum antibiotics. Methods: In a prospective randomised open study performed

Comparative Case Study of Diffusion of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing in Two Clinical Settings: Empirically Supported Treatment Status Is Not Enough

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Cook, Joan M.; Biyanova, Tatyana; Coyne, James C.

2009-01-01

An in-depth comparative case study was conducted of two attempts at diffusion of an empirically supported, but controversial, psychotherapy: eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). One Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) treatment setting in which there was substantial uptake was

Building Dynamic Capabilities in Web Startups: An Empirical Study of Norwegian Web Startups

OpenAIRE

Sahlen, Martin Abelson; Gran-Jansen, Sigurd; Rygh, Mathias

2014-01-01

Purpose: This thesis explores how web startups operating in a crowded, fast-moving and highly competitive marketplace can gain competitive advantage through building dynamic capabilities and what these capabilities consist of. Design/methodology/approach: Firstly, insight was obtained through reviewing key themes within classic resource based theory and entrepreneurship theory. Newer empirical research on entrepreneurial success factors, as well as popular science and advice given by expert w...

Gender Influence on Part-time Working: An Empirical Study Upon the EU and Turkey

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aslı Beyhan Acar

2014-04-01

Full Text Available In this empirical study, it’s investigated differences of part-time working rates between men and women in the period of 2000-2012. 17 members of the EU and Turkey -as a candidate country- are participated in the study. Turkey is participated into the study too, because Turkey must adapt the most of the regulations of EU as a candidate member of the Union. The data are collected from OECD and World Bank statistics web site. Beyond that many database indicate part-time employment rates for both common and national definition of part-time working for statistical purpose. According to this it’s aimed to determine whether there is a significant difference between part-time working rates that are based on common and national definition. In the literature, there are some studies that investigate fertility rates and part-time employment rates of women. The correlation of these two variables that are belonged the years 2000-2012 is tested and the findings are indicated in the study. Furthermore, it’s analyzed the rate differences of part-time working for men and women in the period of 2000-2012.

Gender Influence on Part-time Working: An Empirical Study upon the EU and Turkey

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aslı Beyhan Acar

2016-01-01

Full Text Available In this empirical study, it’s investigated differences of part-time working rates between men and women in the period of 2000-2012. 17 members of the EU and Turkey -as a candidate country- are participated in the study. Turkey is participated into the study too, because Turkey must adapt the most of the regulations of EU as a candidate member of the Union. The data are collected from OECD and World Bank statistics web site. Beyond that many database indicate part-time employment rates for both common and national definition of part-time working for statistical purpose. According to this it’s aimed to determine whether there is a significant difference between part-time working rates that are based on common and national definition. In the literature, there are some studies that investigate fertility rates and part-time employment rates of women. The correlation of these two variables that are belonged the years 2000-2012 is tested and the findings are indicated in the study. Furthermore, it’s analyzed the rate differences of part-time working for men and women in the period of 2000-2012.

Research across the disciplines: a road map for quality criteria in empirical ethics research

Science.gov (United States)

2014-01-01

Background Research in the field of Empirical Ethics (EE) uses a broad variety of empirical methodologies, such as surveys, interviews and observation, developed in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Whereas these empirical disciplines see themselves as purely descriptive, EE also aims at normative reflection. Currently there is literature about the quality of empirical research in ethics, but little or no reflection on specific methodological aspects that must be considered when conducting interdisciplinary empirical ethics. Furthermore, poor methodology in an EE study results in misleading ethical analyses, evaluations or recommendations. This not only deprives the study of scientific and social value, but also risks ethical misjudgement. Discussion While empirical and normative-ethical research projects have quality criteria in their own right, we focus on the specific quality criteria for EE research. We develop a tentative list of quality criteria – a “road map” – tailored to interdisciplinary research in EE, to guide assessments of research quality. These quality criteria fall into the categories of primary research question, theoretical framework and methods, relevance, interdisciplinary research practice and research ethics and scientific ethos. Summary EE research is an important and innovative development in bioethics. However, a lack of standards has led to concerns about and even rejection of EE by various scholars. Our suggested orientation list of criteria, presented in the form of reflective questions, cannot be considered definitive, but serves as a tool to provoke systematic reflection during the planning and composition of an EE research study. These criteria need to be tested in different EE research settings and further refined. PMID:24580847

EMPIRICAL STUDY ON THE ROLE OF COLLABORATION IN NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT IN MANUFACTURING COMPANIES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hao Anh Nguyen

2018-06-01

Full Text Available This paper provides new empirical evidence on the effects of internal collaboration (manufacturing involvement and external collaboration (supplier and customer involvement practices on NPD performance and success. Moreover, comparing the collaboration practices and their effects on NPD across 10 countries are provided. Data were collected from high-performance manufacturing (HPM project with the sample of 265 manufacturing companies from 10 countries across the world. Descriptive, variance, correlation and regression analysis were conducted by using SPSS 22.0. Significant linkage between three collaboration practices and NPD performance & NPD success was found by statistical analysis. In addition, the results of this study reveal the significant differences in the implementation of collaboration practices across countries and the effects of those practices on NPD performance and success among countries. This study suggests that high performance and high success rate of NPD process could be achieved by external and internal collaboration in manufacturing companies.

Approaches to the development of cognitive process dimensions in financial literacy: an empirical study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kateřina Berková

2017-10-01

Full Text Available The article explores various approaches to the development of cognitive process dimensions in financial literacy. It is based on the empirical research of the financial literacy levels among 1,207 fifteen-year-old Czech students compared with 18 countries worldwide (OECD, 2014a. Applying the regression model, the study has examined the strength of the relationship between the actual financial competence of 284 Czech students aged 17-18, studying economic disciplines, and their school performance. The research has produced the following conclusions: (a a weak dependence of actual skills on school performance; (b inherently associated consequence of school performance is not corresponding to the actual financial skills; (c a low level of financial competence in the dimensions - Remember, Understand and Apply. Proceeding from the research results, it will be desirable to focus on the transfer of economic methods and foreign practice into the learning process, thereby contributing to the improvement of the current situation in Czech Republic.

ICT Pathways to Poverty Reduction: Empirical Evidence from East ...

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

2014-01-14

Jan 14, 2014 ... This book provides new empirical evidence on access to and use of ... English · Français ... Overall, the study concluded that ICTs make a difference to the ... staff of development agencies working on livelihoods for the poor.

Consumer trust in food safety--a multidisciplinary approach and empirical evidence from Taiwan.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Mei-Fang

2008-12-01

Food scandals that happened in recent years have increased consumers' risk perceptions of foods and decreased their trust in food safety. A better understanding of the consumer trust in food safety can improve the effectiveness of public policy and allow the development of the best practice in risk communication. This study proposes a research framework from a psychometric approach to investigate the relationships between the consumer's trust in food safety and the antecedents of risk perceptions of foods based on a reflexive modernization perspective and a cultural theory perspective in the hope of benefiting the future empirical study. The empirical results from a structural equation modeling analysis of Taiwan as a case in point reveal that this research framework based on a multidisciplinary perspective can be a valuable tool for a growing understanding of consumer trust in food safety. The antecedents in the psychometric research framework comprised reflexive modernization factors and cultural theory factors have all been supported in this study except the consumer's perception of pessimism toward food. Moreover, the empirical results of repeated measures analysis of variance give more detailed information to grasp empirical implications and to provide some suggestions to the actors and institutions involved in the food supply chain in Taiwan.

Fluconazole for empiric antifungal therapy in cancer patients with fever and neutropenia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Peterson Josh F

2006-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Several clinical trials have demonstrated the efficacy of fluconazole as empiric antifungal therapy in cancer patients with fever and neutropenia. Our objective was to assess the frequency and resource utilization associated with treatment failure in cancer patients given empiric fluconazole antifungal therapy in routine inpatient care. Methods We performed a retrospective cohort study of cancer patients treated with oral or intravenous fluconazole between 7/97 and 6/01 in a tertiary care hospital. The final study cohort included cancer patients with neutropenia (an absolute neutrophil count below 500 cells/mm3 and fever (a temperature above 38°C or 100.4°F, who were receiving at least 96 hours of parenteral antibacterial therapy prior to initiating fluconazole. Patients' responses to empiric therapy were assessed by reviewing patient charts. Results Among 103 cancer admissions with fever and neutropenia, treatment failure after initiating empiric fluconazole antifungal therapy occurred in 41% (95% confidence interval (CI 31% – 50% of admissions. Patients with a diagnosis of hematological malignancy had increased risk of treatment failure (OR = 4.6, 95% CI 1.5 – 14.8. When treatment failure occurred the mean adjusted increases in length of stay and total costs were 7.4 days (95% CI 3.3 – 11.5 and $18,925 (95% CI 3,289 – 34,563, respectively. Conclusion Treatment failure occurred in more than one-third of neutropenic cancer patients on fluconazole as empiric antifungal treatment for fever in routine clinical treatment. The increase in costs when treatment failure occurs is substantial.

An empirical study on key factors for purchasing strategy on project based organizations: A case study of gas field development projects

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aboulfazl Kazazi

2012-08-01

Full Text Available One of the primary concerns in development of oil and gas resources is to find the critical success factors associated with different important projects. Purchasing and procurement plays a key role in these projects. There is no doubt that in history of similar studies, there are not much studies to determine key factors. The proposed study of this paper presents an empirical study to find these factors in one of the most important gas filed in Iran is now South Pars Gas Field. The study distributes a questionnaire consists of various questions associated with purchasing activities. We investigate the feedbacks gathered from decision makers using factor analysis. The results of our survey reveal that there are three categories of organizational strategy, the relative importance of strategy and risk according to factor analysis. Each factor consists of many other factors and the relative importance of all factors are investigated.

Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons: Race and Rule between the British and Unites States Empires, 1880-1910. Teaching the JAH.

Science.gov (United States)

OAH Magazine of History, 2002

2002-01-01

Summarizes a teaching document that is part of "Teaching the JAH" (Journal of American History) which corresponds to the article, "Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons: Race and Rule between the British and Unites States Empires, 1880-1910" (Paul A. Kramer). Provides the Web site address for the complete installment. (CMK)

RETAIL STORE IMAGE: A COMPARISON AMONG THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL DIMENSIONS IN A BRAZILIAN STUDY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Janaina de Moura Engracia Giraldi

2008-01-01

Full Text Available The retail store can be the key success factor, the competitive advantage of a retail company. An important element to the retail strategy is the store image; the total sum of customers’ perceptions about a store. The present paper compares the theoretical and empirical dimensions of retail store’s image in a Brazilian study. The type of research used was the quantitative study, and the data collected was analyzed by use of the factor analysis technique, in order to identify the underlying factors to retail store image. In conclusion, it was observed that the form by which the respondents evaluate the image of a specific supermarket in Brazil is simpler than what was foreseen by theory, with nine factors representing the following store image dimensions: quality,price, after sales service, advertising, clientele, assortment, convenience, atmosphere and services. An important practical contribution of the present study refers to the development of a simpler scale, that can be used by retailers in a viable form to obtain data on their perceived image.

The patient perspective of clinical training-an empirical study about patient motives to participate.

Science.gov (United States)

Drevs, Florian; Gebele, Christoph; Tscheulin, Dieter K

2014-10-01

This study introduces a comprehensive model to explain patients' prosocial behavioral intentions to participate in clinical training. Using the helping decision model, the authors analyze the combined impact of factors that affect participation intentions. The model includes intrapersonal and interpersonal appraisals triggered by an awareness of the societal need for clinical training as a practical part of medical education. The results of our empirical study (N=317) show that personal costs and anxiety as negative appraisals and a warm glow as a positive appraisal affect participation intentions and fully mediate the effect of the patient's awareness of the societal need. The study results indicate that communication strategies should address patient beliefs about negative personal consequences of participation rather than highlighting the societal need for practical medical education related to clinical training. Based on the results, medical associations could develop guidelines and provide training for physicians on how to motivate patients to participate in clinical training, resulting in more patient-centered standardized consent discussions. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Advancing Empirical Scholarship to Further Develop Evaluation Theory and Practice

Science.gov (United States)

Christie, Christina A.

2011-01-01

Good theory development is grounded in empirical inquiry. In the context of educational evaluation, the development of empirically grounded theory has important benefits for the field and the practitioner. In particular, a shift to empirically derived theory will assist in advancing more systematic and contextually relevant evaluation practice, as…

The effects of contingency factors on management control systems: an empirical study at CERN

CERN Document Server

Paaso, Ilkka

Contingency theory and management control systems research offer avenues for investigating how contextual factors in organizations affect performance. This quantitative case study investigates how the context of CERN internal services influences the performance consciousness of functional service managers. A literature review recognized four contingency factors relevant for performance consciousness: interdependence, scope, standardization and variation. Data from these factors was measured empirically using a cross-sectional electronic survey and supplemented by data gathered from CERN internal documentation. A quantitative analysis of the data was performed using structural equation modelling. The main findings were congruent with existing literature indicating that a.) high interdependence between work units is associated with decreased variation, increased standardization and increased performance consciousness. b.) high scope is related to increased variation and decreased standardization. Overall, a bet...

Empirical antimicrobial therapy of acute dentoalveolar abscess

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Matijević Stevo

2009-01-01

Full Text Available Background/Aim. The most common cause of acute dental infections are oral streptococci and anaerobe bacteria. Acute dentoalveolar infections are usually treated surgically in combination with antibiotics. Empirical therapy in such infections usually requires the use of penicillin-based antibiotics. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical efficiency of amoxicillin and cefalexin in the empirical treatment of acute odontogenic abscess and to assess the antimicrobial susceptibility of the isolated bacteria in early phases of its development. Methods. This study included 90 patients with acute odontogenic abscess who received surgical treatment (extraction of a teeth and/or abscess incision and were divided into three groups: two surgicalantibiotic groups (amoxicillin, cefalexin and the surgical group. In order to evaluate the effects of the applied therapy following clinical symptoms were monitored: inflammatory swelling, trismus, regional lymphadentytis and febrility. In all the patients before the beginning of antibiotic treatment suppuration was suched out of the abscess and antibiotic susceptibility of isolated bacteria was tested by using the disk diffusion method. Results. The infection signs and symptoms lasted on the average 4.47 days, 4.67 days, and 6.17 days in the amoxicillin, cefalexin, and surgically only treated group, respectively. A total of 111 bacterial strains were isolated from 90 patients. Mostly, the bacteria were Gram-positive facultative anaerobs (81.1%. The most common bacteria isolated were Viridans streptococci (68/111. Antibiotic susceptibility of isolated bacteria to amoxicillin was 76.6% and cefalexin 89.2%. Conclusion. Empirical, peroral use of amoxicillin or cefalexin after surgical treatment in early phase of development of dentoalveolar abscess significantly reduced the time of clinical symptoms duration in the acute odontogenic infections in comparison to surgical treatment only. Bacterial strains

Multiscale empirical interpolation for solving nonlinear PDEs

KAUST Repository

Calo, Victor M.

2014-12-01

In this paper, we propose a multiscale empirical interpolation method for solving nonlinear multiscale partial differential equations. The proposed method combines empirical interpolation techniques and local multiscale methods, such as the Generalized Multiscale Finite Element Method (GMsFEM). To solve nonlinear equations, the GMsFEM is used to represent the solution on a coarse grid with multiscale basis functions computed offline. Computing the GMsFEM solution involves calculating the system residuals and Jacobians on the fine grid. We use empirical interpolation concepts to evaluate these residuals and Jacobians of the multiscale system with a computational cost which is proportional to the size of the coarse-scale problem rather than the fully-resolved fine scale one. The empirical interpolation method uses basis functions which are built by sampling the nonlinear function we want to approximate a limited number of times. The coefficients needed for this approximation are computed in the offline stage by inverting an inexpensive linear system. The proposed multiscale empirical interpolation techniques: (1) divide computing the nonlinear function into coarse regions; (2) evaluate contributions of nonlinear functions in each coarse region taking advantage of a reduced-order representation of the solution; and (3) introduce multiscale proper-orthogonal-decomposition techniques to find appropriate interpolation vectors. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods on several nonlinear multiscale PDEs that are solved with Newton\\'s methods and fully-implicit time marching schemes. Our numerical results show that the proposed methods provide a robust framework for solving nonlinear multiscale PDEs on a coarse grid with bounded error and significant computational cost reduction.

An empirical study to find important factors on building national brand: An Iranian tourism case study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abolghasem Hakimipour

2012-09-01

Full Text Available Building national brand plays an important role on today's economy to attract interested tourists in visiting various countries. There are different factors impacting national brand such as advertisement, natural attraction, etc. In this paper, we perform an empirical investigation to find the impact of ten most important factors on building brand. The study designs and distributes a questionnaire among 384 international tourists who visited Iran during the year of 2010 and it uses factor analysis to group important factors. The results extract four groups; the first factor includes three most important components including satellite advertisement programs, public awareness on economical power and public awareness on specialized symposium and conferences. The second factor includes three other important factors, which are public awareness on human right, advertisement programs through distribution brushers and internet advertisement. The third factor includes two variables, which are public awareness on education and access to educational services and introducing cultural heritage. Finally, the last factor includes introducing natural attraction and advertisement programs through distribution brushers.

An Empirical Study Regarding Radical Innovation, Research and Development Management, and Leadership

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Isada Fumihiko

2017-06-01

Full Text Available The objective of this research is to empirically compare the management that is most suitable for radical innovation with that needed for incremental innovation. The relationship between the results of research and development and management styles was surveyed using a questionnaire. Respondents included research and development leaders in Japanese manufacturing, with special attention given to the differences between radical innovation and incremental innovation. Results verified, in an integrated way, the management and leadership factors, taking into consideration the differences arising from the object under analysis and the environmental factors.

An empirical study on the application of memetics to the teaching of college English writing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Huang Zeyun

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Memes, the replicator of culture and information, and basic unit of culture, are copied, spread, transmitted and finally survives through imitation among vectors. The replication and transmission of memes have some resemblance to the process of second language acquisition. This paper examines the influence of language memes on the development of Chinese college students’ English writing proficiency through an empirical study. The study reveals that students instructed by the framework of teaching writing with memetics obtain an obvious improvement in their overall writing proficiency, compared with those who are instructed by the traditional method, that students’ awareness of using memes is greatly enhanced, and that language memes are significantly correlated to the students’ performance in the post-test writing. Singular language memes can be easily transmitted; memetic genotype prevails in EFL learners’ essay writing.

Political instability and economic growth: an empirical evidence from the Baltic states

OpenAIRE

Ladislava Grochová; Luděk Kouba

2011-01-01

For more than last 20 decades, new political economics has been dealing with theories of economic growth (for example influential contributions by Mancur Olson, Dani Rodrik). However, less attention has been paid to their empirical verification. The new political economics growth theory defines some factors that are necessary for economic growth among which political stability. Our aim is to test the theory focused on political stability empirically in order to enrich the studies with recent ...

Empirically sampling Universal Dependencies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schluter, Natalie; Agic, Zeljko

2017-01-01

Universal Dependencies incur a high cost in computation for unbiased system development. We propose a 100% empirically chosen small subset of UD languages for efficient parsing system development. The technique used is based on measurements of model capacity globally. We show that the diversity o...

Empirical Investigation into the Determinants of Compliance with IFRS 7 Disclosure Requirements

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Atanasko Atanasovski

2015-04-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is to assess the quality of disclosures related to financial instruments provided in annual financial statements of Macedonian listed companies and empirically investigate factors that have the potential to influence the quality of these disclosures in accordance with IFRS 7 requirements. Based on the postulates and the results of the empirical investigations of prior IAS compliance studies I have constructed a disclosure index for each listed company and performed regression analysis with independent variables representing some characteristics of listed companies investigated, such as their size, industry, type of auditor engaged, ownership concentration, profitability and leverage. My regression analysis results supported the conclusion that the level of compliance with IFRS 7 requirements is related to the type of auditor engaged and ownership concentration in investigated companies. The results of my research will contribute the large body of empirical studies on IFRS disclosure and compliance, providing evidence from South- East European Transitional Economy that adopted IFRS as national financial reporting framework.