The Progressive Development Of Multifunctional Composite Materials In Different Applications

Composite materials gain huge interest from researchers due to its advantages and flexibility. Strength and properties that can be adjusted based on the needs and applications is a specific advantage of composite materials. Since these advantages can be applied in many fields, composite materials often clustered in multifunctional materials. This study aims to lists and classified the progressive development of multifunctional composite materials that found and already proven can be applied in many applications. This study also gives data that can be driven to readers from different backgrounds and used it for further purposes. The results are shown that the progressive development of multifunctional composite materials not only one step forward in the technical achievements but also the energy and environment-related to human ecosystems.

A kind of magic: Enhanced detection of pantomimed grasps in professional magicians

Professional magicians regularly use pantomimed grasps (i.e., movements towards imagined objects) to deceive audiences. To do so, they learn to shape their hands similarly for real and pantomimed grasps. Here we tested whether this form of motor expertise provides them a significant benefit when processing pantomimed grasps. To this aim, in a one-interval discrimination design, we asked 17 professional magicians and 17 naïve controls to watch video clips of reach-to-grasp movements recorded from naïve participants and judge whether the observed movement was real or pantomimed. All video clips were edited to spatially occlude the grasped object (either present or imagined). Data were analysed within a drift diffusion model approach. Fitting different models showed that, whereas magicians and naïve performed similarly when observing real grasps, magicians had a specific advantage compared with naïve at discriminating pantomimed grasps. These findings suggest that motor expertise may be crucial for detecting relevant cues from hand movement during the discrimination of pantomimed grasps. Results are discussed in terms of motor recalibration.

What Makes a Global Business Model?

A firm's business model is an essential mechanism determining how an organization creates value for its stakeholders and captures part of the created value as profit for its owners. Global enterprises secure their market positions through properly functioning business models that are globally scalable. Once a globally scalable business model is successfully designed and validated in one location, it becomes a non-location-bound firm-specific advantage, promoting the firm's international expansion. This chapter addresses the following research questions: (1) What is the role of a business model in the success of global enterprises? (2) Which common attributes do business models of successful global companies possess? and (3) How to make a business model more suitable for global expansion? The theoretical analysis of these questions yields a conceptual framework for examining the global companies through the business model lens. The developed conceptual framework is illustrated and corroborated with the mini-cases of global companies.

Religion, Division of Labor, and Conflict: Anti-Semitism in Germany over 600 Years

We study the role of economic incentives in shaping the coexistence of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, using novel data from Germany for 1,000+ cities. The Catholic usury ban and higher literacy rates gave Jews a specific advantage in the moneylending sector. Following the Protestant Reformation (1517), the Jews lost these advantages in regions that became Protestant. We show (i) a change in the geography of anti-Semitism with persecutions of Jews and anti-Jewish publications becoming more common in Protestant areas relative to Catholic areas; (ii) a more pronounced change in cities where Jews had already established themselves as moneylenders. These findings are consistent with the interpretation that, following the Protestant Reformation, Jews living in Protestant regions were exposed to competition with the Christian majority, especially in moneylending, leading to an increase in anti-Semitism. (JEL D74, J15, N33, N43, N93)

What Makes a Global Business Model?

A firm's business model is an essential mechanism determining how an organization creates value for its stakeholders and captures part of the created value as profit for its owners. Global enterprises secure their market positions through properly functioning business models that are globally scalable. Once a globally scalable business model is successfully designed and validated in one location, it becomes a non-location-bound firm-specific advantage, promoting the firm's international expansion. This chapter addresses the following research questions: (1) What is the role of a business model in the success of global enterprises? (2) Which common attributes do business models of successful global companies possess? and (3) How to make a business model more suitable for global expansion? The theoretical analysis of these questions yields a conceptual framework for examining the global companies through the business model lens. The developed conceptual framework is illustrated and corroborated with the mini-cases of global companies.

Outward direct investment by Chinese state-owned enterprises

Purpose The paper aims to investigate outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs), aiming to unveil whether the Chinese OFDI policy acted as a country-specific advantage (CSA) that has been turned by Chinese firms, particularly SOEs, into a firm-specific advantage (FSA). Design/methodology/approach Using a data set spanning 18 years (1996-2013) on international mergers and acquisitions (IM&As) by Chinese companies (SOEs and private-owned enterprises – POEs) and drawing on extant literature, the paper systematically compares the behavior of Chinese SOEs and POEs, aiming to identify differences in their behavioral patterns that indicate that SOEs have benefitted more from policy-induced advantages than their private counterparts. Findings Among other aspects, significant differences were found regarding the behavior of SOEs vis-à-vis POEs that seem to show that SOEs had greater support from public entities, leading them to close larger deals and purchase more companies/stakes in cash; acquire firms with greater debt (implying higher interest payments); and purchase smaller stakes than POEs (indicating that there are other objectives than control). This lends support to the assumption that Chinese SOEs are “sitting on piles of cash”, and that the availability of capital acted as a CSA that has been transformed into an FSA by the companies involved, notably by SOEs. Research limitations/implications The comprehensive and large-scale data set used includes wholly owned SOEs, leaving out of this research partially owned SOEs. The findings of this paper have implications for the discussion on competitive neutrality and for the academic, managerial and public policy debate. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study, to date, that shows systematic differences in financing patterns of OFDI (notably via IM&As) by Chinese SOEs and POEs, among other behavioral characteristics of both types of companies when conducting FDI abroad, linking that to CSAs and FSAs induced by CSAs.

Production of self-rooted peach seedlings

The use of mini-cuttings in the production of peach seedlings may prevent the inconvenience of grafting and make possible the fast, simple and low-cost production of a great number of seedlings, in a shorter period of time. Seedlings collection from self-rooted scion cultivars may be an option for locations where the use of rootstock does not offer any specific advantage. The objective of the present experiment was to evaluate the growth and survival of self-rooted peach scion cultivars cloned through mini-cutting under the soilless cultivation system and in packages with commercial substrate, in a greenhouse. The experimente used rooted herbaceous mini-cuttings from the Maciel and Bonão scion cultivars transplanted to a package with commercial substrate and to a soilless cultivation system as vegetal material. The Maciel cultivar showed greater rooting and survival percentages after transplantation when compared to Bonão. At 120 days after transplantation to the cultivation systems, self-rooted seedlings from the Maciel and Bonão cultivars reached half the length of a commercially ready seedling. The soilless cultivation system improves self-rooted peach seedlings development in relation to production in packages.