We show that private equity-sponsored public-to-private buyouts in the US evoke positive externality effects among their targets’ industry peers. Industrial organization and strategic theory suggest ...buyouts may impact their industry peers as a result of increased takeover threat and competitive pressure felt by the peers. We document that buyouts are associated with positive market returns and better fundamental performance in the three years following a buyout acquisition in the industry. Drilling down into specific channels of improvement, we document that industry peers mitigate the increased takeover threat and competitive pressure by significantly improving several dimensions of operational efficiency, by engaging in long-term innovation and by enhancing their corporate governance. Our results suggest that competitive factors rather than takeover threat is responsible for the spillover effects.
Surface ozone is one of six air pollutants designated as harmful by National Ambient Air Quality Standards because it can adversely impact human health and the environment. Thus, ozone forecasting is ...a critical task that can help people avoid dangerously high ozone concentrations. Conventional numerical approaches, as well as data-driven forecasting approaches, have been studied for ozone forecasting. Data-driven forecasting models, in particular, have gained momentum with the introduction of machine learning advancements. We consider planetary boundary layer (PBL) height as a new input feature for data-driven ozone forecasting models. PBL has been shown to impact ozone concentrations, making it an important factor in ozone forecasts. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of utilization of PBL height on the performance of surface ozone forecasts. We present both surface ozone forecasting models, based on multilayer perceptron (MLP) and bidirectional long short-term memory (LSTM) models. These two models forecast hourly ozone concentrations for an upcoming 24-h period using two types of input data, such as measurement data and PBL height. We consider the predicted values of PBL height obtained from the weather research and forecasting (WRF) model, since it is difficult to gather actual PBL measurements. We evaluate two ozone forecasting models in terms of index of agreement (IOA), mean absolute error (MAE), and root mean square error (RMSE). Results showed that the MLP-based and bidirectional LSTM-based models yielded lower MAE and RMSE when considering forecasted PBL height, but there was no significant changes in IOA when compared with models in which no forecasted PBL data were used. This result suggests that utilizing forecasted PBL height can improve the forecasting performance of data-driven prediction models for surface ozone concentrations.
Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is regarded as one of the key technologies for future systems due to its high spectrum efficiency and low hardware cost. However, high integration of ...sensing and communication also brings abundant challenges, e.g., waveform design, signal processing and fundamental performance limits, etc. In this work, we focus on the spatial-temporal delay analysis of sensory data transmission in ISAC networks. Specifically, the spatial distribution of sensing infrastructures (SIs) and fusion centers (FCs) are modeled by Matern cluster process. The Laplace transform of the interference experienced by SIs and FCs is quantificated and the service capability of sensory data transmission is obtained. With the sensory data flow characterized by successful sensing probability, the upper bound of network-layer queuing delay is analyzed via stochastic network calculus. Furthermore, we propose an optimal power allocation strategy to minimize the transmission delay, which balances sensing quality and transmission latency.
With the recent events following the pandemic COVID-19, global awareness about the use of biosafety materials has been in raise. Leather industry being a major commodity-driven sector, its role in ...addressing the issues concerning the safe use of leather products has become inevitable for the sustainability of the industry. A significant number of researches have been conducted to fabricate bio-safe leather by incorporating different types of antimicrobial agents during leather manufacturing. Besides, the increasing diversity in the development of synthetic materials and the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on automotive industry may create more demand from customers for incorporating different functionalities in leather without losing its inherent properties. Some of the key functionalities discussed include resistance to microbial growth, self-cleaning through superhydrophobicity and photocatalysis, thermal regulation, flame retardance and scented leather. This review focusses on the fabrication of such advanced functional leather materials over the past decade with special emphasis on antimicrobial leather. Some of the key factors elaborated in the review include the state of art approaches for the preparation of functional materials, mode of incorporation of the same into the leather matrix, the mechanism behind with a perspective on the challenges involved in fabrication for real-world applications. A major outcome of this review is that even though several kinds of cutting edge researches are happening in the field of leather manufacturing, most of them were not validated for its practical applicability and sustainability of the proposed solution. This could be majorly attributed to the cost involved in fabrication of such materials, which forms a crucial factor when it comes to a mass production industry such as leather. Also, the researchers should concentrate on the toxicity of the fabricated materials which can impede the process of adopting such emerging and need of the hour technologies in the near future. Knowledge obtained from this review on fabrication of bio-safety leather against bacteria, mold and fungi would help further to integrate the antiviral property into the same which is a global need. Also, fabrication of functionalized leather would open new avenues for leather manufactures to venture into the development of advanced leather products such as flexible electronics, radiation shielding and fire fighting garments etc.
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•COVID-19’s impact on the need for bio-safe materials and the fabrication of antimicrobial leather matrixes are reviewed.•Provides an in-depth analysis of surface and fibrous matrix functionalization for production of advanced leather materials.•State of art approaches for engineering advanced functional surfaces are discussed in a detailed manner.•Different strategies for the incorporation of functional materials into fibrous matrixes has been discussed elaborately.
The development of the 5G network is envisioned to offer various types of services like virtual reality/augmented reality and autonomous vehicles applications with low-latency requirements in ...Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks. Mobile-edge computing (MEC) has become a promising solution for enhancing the computation capacity of mobile devices at the edge of the network in a 5G wireless network. Additionally, multiple radio access technologies (multi-RATs) have been verified with the potential in lowering the transmission latency and energy consumption, while improving the Quality of Services (QoS). Benefiting from the cooperation of multi-RATs, large latency-sensitive computing service tasks (L2SC) can be offloaded by different RATs simultaneously, which has great practical significance for data partitioned oriented applications with large task sizes. In this article, to enhance the L2SC offloading services for satisfying low-latency requirements with low energy consumption, we investigate the energy-latency tradeoff problem for partial task offloading in the MEC-enhanced multi-RAT network, considering the limitation of energy and computing in capability-constrained end devices in IoT networks. Specifically, we formulated the L2SC task computation offloading problem to minimize the weighted sum of the latency cost and the energy consumption by jointly optimizing the local computing frequency, task splitting, and transmit power, while guaranteeing the stringent latency requirement and the residual energy constraint. Due to the nonsmoothness and nonconvexity of the formulated problem with high complexity, we convert the tradeoff problem into a smooth biconvex problem and propose an alternate convex search-based algorithm, which can greatly reduce the computational complexity. Numerical simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm with various performance parameters.
Well-established in the field of bioelectronic medicine, Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS) offers an implantable, non-pharmacologic treatment for patients with intractable chronic pain conditions. ...Chronic pain is a widely heterogenous syndrome with regard to both pathophysiology and the resultant phenotype. Despite advances in our understanding of SCS-mediated antinociception, there still exists limited evidence clarifying the pathways recruited when patterned electric pulses are applied to the epidural space. The rapid clinical implementation of novel SCS methods including burst, high frequency and dorsal root ganglion SCS has provided the clinician with multiple options to treat refractory chronic pain. While compelling evidence for safety and efficacy exists in support of these novel paradigms, our understanding of their mechanisms of action (MOA) dramatically lags behind clinical data. In this review, we reconstruct the available basic science and clinical literature that offers support for mechanisms of both paresthesia spinal cord stimulation (P-SCS) and paresthesia-free spinal cord stimulation (PF-SCS). While P-SCS has been heavily examined since its inception, PF-SCS paradigms have recently been clinically approved with the support of limited preclinical research. Thus, wide knowledge gaps exist between their clinical efficacy and MOA. To close this gap, many rich investigative avenues for both P-SCS and PF-SCS are underway, which will further open the door for paradigm optimization, adjunctive therapies and new indications for SCS. As our understanding of these mechanisms evolves, clinicians will be empowered with the possibility of improving patient care using SCS to selectively target specific pathophysiological processes in chronic pain.
Wireless networks in next generation will provide users ubiquitous computing services with low delay by devices at the network edge, namely mobile edge computing (MEC). The intensive computation ...tasks can be partially offloaded to the MEC server via the wireless link and then processed through the MEC computation resources to cater for the delay demand. A parallel computation process is formed in the MEC network consists of local computation at MEC users (MUs) and MEC computation at MEC servers. However, the fluctuating wireless channel environment, changeable spatial distribution of MUs and the randomness of MEC servers' locations make it hard to characterize and guarantee the end-to-end quality of service requirements. In this work, we are devoted to analyze and optimize the overall delay bound for MEC networks under two orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) strategies via stochastic network calculus (SNC). Specifically, Poisson cluster process is utilized to capture the randomness of MEC servers' and users' spatial locations and to derive the Laplace transform of interference suffered by an MU of interest. The upper bounds for the delay violation probability of two OFDMA strategies are established by exploiting SNC with the Mellin transform of signal-to-interference ratio. Furthermore, we propose an optimal task offloading scheme by minimizing the overall delay, which balances the local computation delay and MEC delay.
Corporate brand value and cash holdings Bharadwaj, Neeraj; Hanssens, Dominique M.; Rao, Ramesh K. S.
Journal of brand management,
07/2020, Letnik:
27, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This research devotes theoretical and empirical attention to the understudied relationship between corporate brand value and cash holdings. We draw on existing firm valuation theorizing at the ...marketing–finance interface to propose that branding can alter the probability distribution of the firm’s revenues, lower potential operating shortfalls (negative operating earnings), and thereby reduce the firm’s cash holdings. The negative corporate brand value–cash holdings relationship is empirically tested using Brand Finance’s brand valuation metric as the predictor. Based on a pooled cross-section time-series design of up to 115 firms across 10 years, we find: that (1) support for the predicted negative association between brand value and cash holdings and (2) that the long-term cash holdings elasticity of brand value is between − 0.16 and − 0.22. Interestingly, these results are not replicated when using a traditional consumer-based brand equity measure. This study informs the debate on whether and how brand assets can impact firm cash holdings, reaffirms that results are sensitive to the operationalization of brand assets, and recognizes a new role for brands—as a “downside risk” (not variance) management tool for the top management team. An overarching implication of this research is that brands should be viewed as a firm-wide strategic asset with a sphere of influence that transcends the marketing function.
Differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) usually manifests as an indolent cancer with good prognosis. However, rarely uncommon sites of metastatic involvement can worsen the prognosis and require ...aggressive therapeutic approach. Here in, we describe 5 patients (3 women and 2 men) harboring rare sites of metastatic involvement from DTC including the adrenals, colon, kidneys, urinary bladder, brachial plexus, and superior vena cava with contiguous right atrial involvement. The awareness of such rare sites of involvement from DTC is imperative for treating clinicians to plan individualistic approach in management including multiprong therapies for better patient care.
Liu and Mauer (2011) document that firm cash holdings are positively related to the risk incentive component of CEO compensation and attribute this relation to bondholder-shareholder conflicts. We ...propose that the positive relationship could be due to a managerial risk aversion effect and find supporting evidence for this view. In our study, we focus on zero debt and negative net debt ratio firms in order to minimize the possibility that the risk incentive effect on cash is driven by bondholder-shareholder conflicts as suggested by Liu and Mauer (2011). We find that vega is positively related to cash holdings and that this relationship is enhanced for firms with greater managerial risk aversion. We conclude that managers appropriately respond to risk incentives by taking on riskier projects but increase cash holdings to reduce their undiversified risk to the firm as a consequence of greater risk incentive compensation.
•The positive risk incentive compensation (vega) - cash holdings relationship can be explained by CEO risk aversion.•More risk averse CEOs offset the risk incentive effect of compensation by raising firm cash holdings.•Greater CEO risk aversion is associated with more positive vega - cash holdings association.•Results are robust to alternate proxies for risk aversion including CEO pay duration, CEO wealth, and CEO education.
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