scholarly journals The Impact of Patents and R&D Cooperation on R&D Investments in a Differentiated Goods Industry

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-133
Author(s):  
Adam Karbowski ◽  
Jacek Prokop

AbstractIn this paper, we consider the impact of patents and R&D cooperation on R&D investments in the oligopolistic industry with differentiated products. Four types of firms’ conduct are investigated: R&D competition without patents, R&D competition with patent protection, R&D cooperation, and the full industry cooperation. The obtained results suggest that patents do not necessarily promote R&D investments due to the existence of so called tournament effects. R&D cooperation stimulates R&D investments, but R&D cooperation provides sufficient incentives to create a full industry cartel. Such a cartel works to the detriment of consumers. Our analysis led us to the conclusion that for a relatively low level of R&D spillovers, the policy-makers should promote R&D competition without patent protection among oligopolistic firms. For a relatively high level of R&D spillovers, R&D cooperation enhances innovation, but the regulator should monitor the market for probable collusion.

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (17) ◽  
pp. 6743-6762 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine M. Naud ◽  
Derek J. Posselt ◽  
Susan C. van den Heever

Abstract The distribution of cloud and precipitation properties across oceanic extratropical cyclone cold fronts is examined using four years of combined CloudSat radar and CALIPSO lidar retrievals. The global annual mean cloud and precipitation distributions show that low-level clouds are ubiquitous in the postfrontal zone while higher-level cloud frequency and precipitation peak in the warm sector along the surface front. Increases in temperature and moisture within the cold front region are associated with larger high-level but lower mid-/low-level cloud frequencies and precipitation decreases in the cold sector. This behavior seems to be related to a shift from stratiform to convective clouds and precipitation. Stronger ascent in the warm conveyor belt tends to enhance cloudiness and precipitation across the cold front. A strong temperature contrast between the warm and cold sectors also encourages greater post-cold-frontal cloud occurrence. While the seasonal contrasts in environmental temperature, moisture, and ascent strength are enough to explain most of the variations in cloud and precipitation across cold fronts in both hemispheres, they do not fully explain the differences between Northern and Southern Hemisphere cold fronts. These differences are better explained when the impact of the contrast in temperature across the cold front is also considered. In addition, these large-scale parameters do not explain the relatively large frequency in springtime postfrontal precipitation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stelios A. Mitilineos ◽  
Stelios M. Potirakis ◽  
Nicolas-Alexander Tatlas ◽  
Maria Rangoussi

STORM is an ongoing European research project that aims at developing an integrated platform for monitoring, protecting, and managing cultural heritage sites through technical and organizational innovation. Part of the scheduled preventive actions for the protection of cultural heritage is the development of wireless acoustic sensor networks (WASNs) that will be used for assessing the impact of human-generated activities as well as for monitoring potentially hazardous environmental phenomena. Collected sound samples will be forwarded to a central server where they will be automatically classified in a hierarchical manner; anthropogenic and environmental activity will be monitored, and stakeholders will be alarmed in the case of potential malevolent behavior or natural phenomena like excess rainfall, fire, gale, high tides, and waves. Herein, we present an integrated platform that includes sound sample denoising using wavelets, feature extraction from sound samples, Gaussian mixture modeling of these features, and a powerful two-layer neural network for automatic classification. We contribute to previous work by extending the proposed classification platform to perform low-level classification too, i.e., classify sounds to further subclasses that include airplane, car, and pistol sounds for the anthropogenic sound class; bird, dog, and snake sounds for the biophysical sound class; and fire, waterfall, and gale for the geophysical sound class. Classification results exhibit outstanding classification accuracy in both high-level and low-level classification thus demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed approach.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-120
Author(s):  
Nguyen Thi Minh Tram ◽  
Bui Thi Thuc Quyen

Nurturing critical thinking (CT) has been acknowledged as a core objective of tertiary education, and drawn attention from academia of teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL), particularly in EFL argumentative writing. It has been claimed that collaborative learning which stimulates the active exchange of ideas within small groups not only increases interest among the participants but also promotes critical thinking. One of the important aspects of learning and teaching through collaboration is the group composition or grouping “who with whom”. The present study was an attempt to investigate the impact of homogeneous and heterogeneous groupings on critical thinking in collaborative writing. Having been required to write an argumentative essay as a pre-test, 75 participants, who were categorized by their prior critical thinking levels, were assigned into three group types: heterogeneous, homogeneous high and homogeneous low groups. As a consequence, four types of students were considered their improvement before and after the experiment: high-level students in heterogeneous groups, lowlevel students in heterogeneous groups, high-level students in homogeneous groups, low-level students in homogeneous groups. The results demonstrated that learners improved their critical thinking level through collaborative writing, whether working with stronger or weaker peers. However, heterogeneous grouping showed superiority over homogeneous grouping at the low level. The results revealed that cooperative learning could be especially beneficial for low students. It is hoped that the findings of the present study will give teachers deep insights into group compositions in collaborative learning courses, and will help them make better group experiences for students.


Author(s):  
N. Sandhya Rani ◽  
M. Sarada Devi

Empowerment of tribal women is one of the central issues in the process of development all over the world. Empowerment is the process that allows one to gain the knowledge and attitude needed to cope with the changing world and the circumstances in which one lives [1]. Women empowerment is a process in which women gain greater share of control over material, human and intellectual resources as well as control over decision-making in their home, community, society and nation. Given the need to analyze the empowerment status of tribal women, the present study aimed to enhance the empowerment status through enhancing decision-making skills of tribal working women in India. The specific objective is to study the impact of intervention on enhancing status of empowerment through decision-making skills of tribal working women in Utnoor Mandal Adilabad district. The total sample population for the study was 50 tribal working women, and data was analyzed using a paired t test. Results revealed that at pretest, majority of the women were at average level of decision-making skills (78%), 12% were at low level and only 10% were at high level. After the intervention, post test results revealed that 74% of the women were high in decision making skills and remaining 26% were at average level. Interestingly, none of the respondents had low level of life skills. Thus, intervention found to be effective among women respondents to develop and enhance their empowerment status through decision-making skills.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 1700-1715
Author(s):  
Hoang Duc Le

This paper investigates the impact of uncertainty on corporate capital structure. Using a sample consists of manufacturing firms listed in the Vietnamese Stock Market during the period from 2010 to 2019, we find that an increase in uncertainty can lead to a reduction in the corporate use of debt. This result is robust when we use a lag model or a System General Method of Moments to deal with the endogeneity problems. Moreover, our result shows that firms decrease their leverage when facing a high level of uncertainty because the increase in leverage during the heightened uncertainty periods may reduce firms’ investment. Given that firms in emerging countries in general and in Vietnam in particular rely significantly on debt financing, the results of our paper suggest that policy makers should have solutions to mitigate the adverse impact of uncertainty on firm leverage.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Pournaghdali ◽  
Bennett L Schwartz

Studies utilizing continuous flash suppression (CFS) provide valuable information regarding conscious and nonconscious perception. There are, however, crucial unanswered questions regarding the mechanisms of suppression and the level of visual processing in the absence of consciousness with CFS. Research suggests that the answers to these questions depend on the experimental configuration and how we assess consciousness in these studies. The aim of this review is to evaluate the impact of different experimental configurations and the assessment of consciousness on the results of the previous CFS studies. We review studies that evaluated the influence of different experimental configuration on the depth of suppression with CFS and discuss how different assessments of consciousness may impact the results of CFS studies. Finally, we review behavioral and brain recording studies of CFS. In conclusion, previous studies provide evidence for survival of low-level visual information and complete impairment of high-level visual information under the influence of CFS. That is, studies suggest that nonconscious perception of lower-level visual information happens with CFS but there is no evidence for nonconscious highlevel recognition with CFS.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-32
Author(s):  
Anna B. Pilewska-Kozak ◽  
Beata B. Dobrowolska ◽  
Anna Majewska ◽  
Grażyna Stadnicka ◽  
Agnieszka K. Pawłowska-Muc ◽  
...  

AbstractAim. The study was to assess the level of stress and the health locus of control in parents of hospitalized newborns.Material and methods. The study covered a group of 150 parents of 126 newborns who were hospitalized in the Neonatal Pathology Ward at the University Children’s Hospital in Lublin. The diagnostic survey method was applied with the use of an original questionnaire as well as some standardized tools: Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) and Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale (MHLC – version B).Results. In more than a half of the subjects (54.0%), a high level of stress was observed. Every fourth (26.1%) parent was characterized by an average level of stress and nearly every fifth (19.3%) by a low level of stress. The highest indicator was characterized by the domain of the internal health control locus. Every fifth parent represented an undifferentiated type - weak or magnifying the impact of others (22.0% and 20.0% respectively). The smallest group of parents (5.3%) belonged to the externally-oriented, strong type. Conclusions. The parents of hospitalized newborns are characterized mainly by high and average levels of stress and low level of severity of health control location within each of its domains. The highest indicator of internal locus control and the influence of others are characterized by parents with low and average levels of stress. The dominant type of locus of health control that characterizes parents is the undifferentiated type – weak and magnifying the impact of others.


Author(s):  
Kevin Hendra William ◽  
Kristoko Dwi Hutomo

Natural Disasters are natural phenomena that occur at any moment that can cause loss. Indonesia is an archipelagic country located at the meeting of four tectonic plates and volcanic belts. This condition causes Indonesia to be prone to natural disasters. Therefore, it is necessary to make a natural disaster-prone index map model minimize the impact of natural disasters. In this research, the researchers used a Polygon Thiessen method for it was one of the mapping methods to determine a natural disaster based on Indonesia's vast surface and many disasters. The BNPB and Polygon Thiessen data comparison shows that BNPB data has a low level of vulnerability of 302, a moderate level of vulnerability of 148, and a high level of vulnerability of 58. In contrast, the Thiessen polygon has a low level of vulnerability of 297, a moderate vulnerability of 158, and a high vulnerability of 59. Comparing BNPB data and the Thiessen Polygon method found five differences from 40 data in the Papua region. Suggestions for further research to create an application-based information system so that it can be accessed in real-time.


Author(s):  
Halimi Poniran ◽  
Noor Nasyikin Md Zain ◽  
Noor Malinda Mohamed Mohan ◽  
Fazilah Tamsir ◽  
Noor Ayuernie Ibrahim

Extent of computer usage in public and private sectors had been greatly increased in recent decades carrying the risk of several health hazards. Due to the impact of computer ergonomic hazards on office workers, this study is conducted to evaluate the awareness and determinants of computer ergonomic hazards among office workers in Klang Valley. A total of 340 office workers from 4 district areas were selected using online survey. Independent sample t-test and standard multiple regression was used to analyse the data. The finding of this study reveals that the respondents possess a high level of awareness of computer ergonomics hazards especially the long hours of computer usage can affect their health conditions. Consistent with the Activity Theory, this study suggests that the design of workstation has an impact on computer ergonomic hazards. This study gives the office management as well as policy-makers the opportunity to take necessary steps such as arranging training and development programmes, prepare guidelines on the awareness of computer ergonomic hazards, and redesign the workstation’s furniture and setup following worldwide prominent ergonomic standard and guidelines.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (28) ◽  
pp. 185-190
Author(s):  
Artur Zimny

The purpose of the article is to examine the impact of leverage on the market valuation of companies. The article verifies two hypotheses: 1. the degree of leverage is an important factor that impacts the market valuation of companies; 2. for companies with a high level of leverage, the impact of this leverage on their valuation is negative, and for companies with a low level of leverage, the impact is positive.The methodology of the study includes a critical literature review and empirical research based on correlation and regression analysis, including univariate and multivariate regression. The analysis covered quarterly data of ten energy companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. An important component of the research was classifying those companies into several groups, depending on their level of debt ratio in relation to the industry median debt ratio.The results of the research: The literature review did not provide an unequivocal conclusion to the problem. The empirical analysis did not give grounds to reject the first hypothesis; however, the second one was rejected. The research showed positive correlation and regression coefficients between the debt ratio and the price to book value ratio for highly leveraged companies and negative ones for companies with a low level of debt. The results are surprisingly contrary to the expectations based on theoretical premises.


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