Experimentation and Start-up Performance: Evidence from A/B Testing

Recent scholarship argues that experimentation should be the organizing principle for entrepreneurial strategy. Experimentation leads to organizational learning, which drives improvements in firm performance. We investigate this proposition by exploiting the time-varying adoption of A/B testing technology, which has drastically reduced the cost of testing business ideas. Our results provide the first evidence on how digital experimentation affects a large sample of high-technology start-ups using data that tracks their growth, technology use, and products. We find that, although relatively few firms adopt A/B testing, among those that do, performance improves by 30%–100% after a year of use. We then argue that this substantial effect and relatively low adoption rate arises because start-ups do not only test one-off incremental changes, but also use A/B testing as part of a broader strategy of experimentation. Qualitative insights and additional quantitative analyses show that experimentation improves organizational learning, which helps start-ups develop more new products, identify and scale promising ideas, and fail faster when they receive negative signals. These findings inform the literatures on entrepreneurial strategy, organizational learning, and data-driven decision making. This paper was accepted by Toby Stuart, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Revolving Door Paradox of Textile Industry in Ethiopia: Quantitative analyses of High Labor Turnover

The study aims to assess the determinants of employees’ turnover in the Ethiopian textile industry. To assess the determinants of the problem, a sample of four companies were included in the study from four different Regional States (Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and SNNPR). The principal sources of the data were employees, key informants, and employers in the textile manufacturing enterprise. A structured questionnaire with CSpro software was used to gather the information. A Probit Econometric Regression analysis was applied to analyze the data and draw a conclusion. The findings of the study revealed that workers’ dissatisfaction with their job, work environment, and salary dissatisfaction have a significant and positive relationship to their intention to leave the companies. However, as expected, supervisors’ good relationship with the workers has a significant effect to reduce the probability of the worker’s intention to leave the company. Compared to males, female workers are more likely to intend to leave. This could be associated with inconvenient work schedule and works stress. The result of the analysis also shows that the larger the family sizes, the less likely are the workers intend to leave their company which could be associated to fear of risk against the family livelihood.

Aggressive Language in Literature: A Pragmatic Approach

Aggression is a negative form of an anti-social behavior. It is produced because of a particular reason, desire, want, need, or due to the psychological state of the aggressor. It injures others physically or psychologically. Aggressive behaviors in human interactions cause discomfort and disharmony among interlocutors. The paper aims to identify how aggressive language manifests itself in the data under scrutiny in terms of the pragmatic paradigm. Two British literary works are the data; namely, Look Back in Anger by John Osborne (1956), and The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter (1957). This paper endeavors to answer the question of how aggressive language is represented in literature pragmatically? It is hoped to be significant to linguistic and psychological studies in that it clarifies how aggression is displayed in human communications linguistically. Qualitative and quantitative analyses are conducted to verify the findings. It ends with some concluding remarks, the most important of which are: insulting, belittling, ridiculing and threatening are prevalent speech acts; simile, hyperbole, metaphor and repetition appear due to Grice’s maxims breaching while the use of taboo words, calling names, or abusive words are the impoliteness strategies that are distinguished in the data.

Quantitative Insights into the Contribution of Nematocysts to the Adaptive Success of Cnidarians Based on Proteomic Analysis

Nematocysts are secretory organelles in cnidarians that play important roles in predation, defense, locomotion, and host invasion. However, the extent to which nematocysts contribute to adaptation and the mechanisms underlying nematocyst evolution are unclear. Here, we investigated the role of the nematocyst in cnidarian evolution based on eight nematocyst proteomes and 110 cnidarian transcriptomes/genomes. We detected extensive species-specific adaptive mutations in nematocyst proteins (NEMs) and evidence for decentralized evolution, in which most evolutionary events involved non-core NEMs, reflecting the rapid diversification of NEMs in cnidarians. Moreover, there was a 33–55 million year macroevolutionary lag between nematocyst evolution and the main phases of cnidarian diversification, suggesting that the nematocyst can act as a driving force in evolution. Quantitative analysis revealed an excess of adaptive changes in NEMs and enrichment for positively selected conserved NEMs. Together, these findings suggest that nematocysts may be key to the adaptive success of cnidarians and provide a reference for quantitative analyses of the roles of phenotypic novelties in adaptation.

Sociogeographic correlates of typological variation in northwestern Bantu gender systems

This paper investigates the sociolinguistic factors that impact the typology and evolution of grammatical gender systems in northwestern Bantu, the most diverse area of the Bantu-speaking world. We base our analyses on a typological classification of 179 northwestern Bantu languages, focusing on various instances of semantic agreement and their role in the erosion of gender marking. In addition, we conduct in-depth analyses of the sociolinguistics and population history of the 17 languages of the sample with the most eroded gender systems. The sociohistorical factors identified to explain these highly eroded systems are then translated into a set of explanatory variables, which we use to conduct extensive quantitative analyses on the 179 language sample. These variables are population size, longitude, latitude, relationship with the Central African rainforest, and border with Ubangi/Central Sudanic languages. All these measures are relevant, with population size and bordering with Ubangi/Central Sudanic being the most robust factors in accounting for the distribution of gender restructuring. We conclude that fine-tuned variable design tailored to language and area-specific ecologies is crucial to the advancement of quantitative sociolinguistic typology.

Identification and Quantification of Microplastics in Aquaculture Environment

The existence of microplastics (MPs) poses a potential threat to the entire ecosystem and has gained wide public attention. As an essential source of aquatic products, aquaculture industries are inevitably subjected to the pollution of MPs, particularly when the plastic products are widely used in aquaculture. Even so, the identification of MPs in aquaculture is rarely reported. Hence, high-efficient analytical methods for accurate detection of MPs in the aquaculture environment are of utmost significance. This review comprehensively summarizes the analytical methods for MPs in aquaculture, including sampling, extraction, and qualitative and quantitative analyses of MPs. MPs are identified and quantified mainly by visual inspection, spectroscopy, or thermal analysis. In addition, this review also points out the limitations of these methods and the accuracy of quality control. Finally, the need for establishing standard methods is emphasized, and suggestions for future research are also proposed.

Undergraduates lived experience of project-/problem-based learning in Introductory Biology

Recommendations for enhancing scientific literacy, inclusivity, and the ecosystem for innovation call for transitioning from teacher-centered to learner-centered science classrooms, particularly at the introductory undergraduate level. Yet, little is documented about the challenges that undergraduates perceive in such classrooms and on students' ways of navigating them. Via mixed methods, we studied undergraduates' lived experience in one form of learner-centered teaching, hybrid project-/problem-based learning (PBL), in introductory organismal biology at a baccalaureate institution. Prominent in qualitative analyses of student interviews and written reflections were undergraduates' initial expectation of and longing for an emphasis on facts and transmission of them. The prominence diminished from semester's middle to end, as students came to value developing ideas, solving problems collaboratively, and engaging in deep ways of learning. Collaboration and personal resources such as belief in self emerged as supports for these shifts. Quantitative analyses corroborated that PBL students transformed as learners, moving toward informed views on nature of science, advancing in multi-variable causal reasoning, and more frequently adopting deep approaches for learning than did students in lecture-based sections. The qualitative and quantitative findings portray the PBL classroom as an intercultural experience in which culture shock yields over time to acceptance in a way supported by students' internal resources and peer collaboration. The findings have value to those seeking to implement PBL and other complex-learning approaches in a manner responsive to the lived experience of the learner.

Explanations in Sociosyntactic Variation

What explains variation in human language? How are linguistic and social factors related? How do we examine possible semantic differences between variants? These questions and many more are explored in this volume, which examines syntactic variables in a range of languages. It brings together a team of internationally acclaimed authors to provide perspectives on how and why syntax varies between and within speakers, focusing on explaining theoretical backgrounds and methods. The analyses presented are based on a range of languages, making it possible to address the questions from a cross-linguistic perspective. All chapters demonstrate rigorous quantitative analyses, which expose the conditioning factors in language change as well as offering important insights into community and individual grammars. It is essential reading for researchers and students with an interest in language variation and change, and the theoretical framework and methods applied in the study of how and why syntax varies.

B-factor accuracy in protein crystal structures

The accuracy of B factors in protein crystal structures has been determined by comparing the same atoms in numerous, independent crystal structures of Gallus gallus lysozyme. Both B-factor absolute differences and normal probability plots indicate that the estimated B-factor errors are quite large, close to 9 Å2 in ambient-temperature structures and to 6 Å2 in low-temperature structures, and surprisingly are comparable to values estimated two decades ago. It is well known that B factors are not due to local movements only but reflect several, additional factors from crystal defects, large-scale disorder, diffraction data quality etc. It therefore remains essential to normalize B factors when comparing different crystal structures, although it has clearly been shown that they provide useful information about protein dynamics. Improved, quantitative analyses of raw B factors require novel experimental and computational tools that are able to disaggregate local movements from other features and properties that affect B factors.