Actual Share Research Articles

Others in My Aging (Confronting de Beauvoir, Malabou, and Heidegger to Make Sense of Aging)

After a critical analysis of Simone de Beauvoir’s and Catherine Malabou’s accounts of aging, the paper offers an alternative to them. In contrast to de Beauvoir and Malabou, it explores the actual share of other beings, both human and non-human, in one’s aging. The paper employs the Heideggerian ontological framework and his concepts of “bodying” and gesture to argue that changes induced by others do not damage or contaminate one’s being but allow the disclosure of someone’s particularity in its undefinable character.

Managers’ staging of earnings conference calls around actual share repurchases

AbstractWe use earnings call transcripts to examine whether managers strategically change their disclosure behaviors before an actual share repurchase. Our findings suggest that managers use tone management to strategically portray a more negative outlook for the firm in the earnings call before an actual repurchase. In addition, we find that managers of repurchasing firms “cast” the call with more unfavorable analysts even when more favorable analysts are available. These disclosure strategies aim to influence the information flows to the market and allow repurchasing firms to repurchase their shares at a discounted price. We further show that insiders of repurchasing firms adjust their subsequent stock trading accordingly. Following more negative conference calls, insiders exhibit a tendency to increase share repurchases or reduce sales of company shares. Our findings underscore the increasingly sophisticated disclosure strategies employed by managers to wield influence over information dynamics in the market leading up to share repurchases.

Managers’ Staging of Earnings Conference Calls around Actual Share Repurchases

Managers’ Staging of Earnings Conference Calls around Actual Share Repurchases

The Reality of Cost Sharing in Japan.

Financial pressure on younger generation is mounting in Japan, a super-ageing society with staggering economy. The revision on the co-insurance rate for 70-74 with "Standard" category was implemented to mitigate such pressure, seeking better balance across generations in sharing the burden of healthcare cost. It raised the rate from 10% to 20% over the period of five years from 2014 to 2018. This report examined how it changed the share of cost sharing (cost sharing as percentage to total healthcare expenditure), among the 70-74 with "Standard" category in Citizens Health Insurance programme in 44 prefectures. It specifically focused on change in the population's actual share of cost sharing (ASCS) that better reflect the genuine amount of payment actually made by the patients themselves. The average ASCS increased from 7.28% (2013) to 10.78% (2019), resulting wider gap from the statutory planned share of cost sharing (i.e., the statutory co-insurance rate of 10% in 2013, and 20% in 2019). Also found was increased variance among prefectural ASCS, which may suggest a possibility of un-designed effect by the revision, of encouraging a move towards ability and willingness to pay. In terms of cost containment effect, Japan needs to consider various non-conventional options, including review of the current use of healthcare resources. First and foremost, however, the true state of cost sharing should be recognized in terms of ASCS and shared more widely as a reality. Such effort is essential in discussion of how to keep embracing the country's life line, UHC.

District cradle to grave LCA including the development of a localized embodied carbon database and a detailed end-of-life carbon emission workflow

The building industry is one of the main contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in today's world. To measure the environmental impacts of GHG emissions, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been increasingly utilized in recent years, and building LCA tries to evaluate the GHG emissions in three main phases including embodied carbon (EC), operational carbon (OC), and End-of-life carbon (EOLC).Most of the studies in this field have dealt with individual buildings as the scope of their research. The literature review showed a significant gap regarding the implementation of the LCA on a wider district-level scale rather than just one building. In addition, most of the studies have only considered landfilling of the waste materials and emissions related to this activity for the whole disposal phase emissions. Therefore, a more detailed analysis regarding the EOLC emission has been carried out to recognize the actual share of this section in the whole building’s LCA.To fill the mentioned gaps, this research has done a cradle-to-grave LCA by utilizing localized building materials' EC emission data, besides an OC emission assessment followed by a detailed EOLC emission analysis for a district in Montreal's downtown. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis regarding the selection of the best building materials according to their environmental performance has been implemented.The results of this study show that for different retrofitting scenarios of the buildings in a district, among the main building components for renovations (walls, roofs, and floors), walls are responsible for the most significant share of the GHG emissions and between various components of the walls, insulation layers have the most impact on the total embodied, operational and EOLC emissions. Detailed EOLC emission analysis revealed that even after implementing a detailed examination of the end-of-life phase, the share of EOLC emissions within the building's life cycle remains below 10%. Finally, the sensitivity analysis among the insulation layers has illustrated that buildings using foam glass for their insulation layer have the most GHG emissions, and buildings with glass wool have the least amount of emissions.

Accurately Measuring Contention in Mesh NoCs in Time-Sensitive Embedded Systems

The computing capacity demanded by embedded systems is on the rise as software implements more functionalities, ranging from best-effort entertainment functions to performance-guaranteed safety-related functions. Heterogeneous manycore processors, using wormhole mesh (wmesh) Network-on-Chips (NoCs) as the main communication means, and contention block among applications, are increasingly considered to deliver the required computing performance. Most research efforts on software timing analysis have focused on deriving bounds (estimates) to the contention that tasks can suffer when accessing wmesh NoCs. However, less effort has been devoted to an equally important problem, namely,accuratelymeasuring the actual contention tasks generate each other on the wmesh which is instrumental during system validation to diagnose any software timing misbehavior and determine which tasks are particularly affected by contention on specific wmesh routers. In this article, we work on the foundations ofcontention measuringin wmesh NoCs and propose and explain the rationale of agolden metric, called taskPairWise Contention(PWC). PWC allows ascribing the actual share of the contention a given task suffers in the wmesh to each of its co-runner tasks at packet level. We also introduce and formalize aGolden Reference Value(GRV) for PWC that specifically defines a criterion to fairly break down the contention suffered by a task among its co-runner tasks in the wmesh. Our evaluation shows that GRV effectively captures how contention occurs by identifying the actual core (task) causing contention and whether contention is caused by local or remote interference in the wmesh.

On the Effect of the Time Interval Base and Home Appliance on the Renewable Quota of a Building in an Alpine Location

The European goal of decarbonization drives design toward high-performance buildings that maximize the use of renewable sources. Therefore, the European RED II Directive and Italian law raise the minimum renewable share required for new buildings and major renovations. Currently, the renewable energy ratio (RER) is used for the mandatory verification, obtained with a quasi-steady state calculation on a monthly basis, while much of the scientific literature uses self-consumption factor (SCF) and load coverage factor (LCF) often calculated through dynamic simulation. However, the use of a monthly balance implies the use of the national grid as a virtual battery through the net metering mechanism. The actual share of renewable coverage in the absence of expensive electric storage will necessarily be lower. The link between the different indices, the effect of the time base used in the calculation as well as the actual renewable share achieved by buildings, considering also plug loads not in the regulatory verification framework, are still open issues. This work analyzes the actual renewable share achievable for a new building in a heating-dominated climate, i.e., the mountainous area of the municipality of Trento. The renewable share is evaluated through a coupled dynamic simulation of the building and the energy systems. The results show that the RER decreases by 13% and 15% when switching from monthly to instantaneous balance in the case without and with additional home appliance loads, respectively. Similarly, simulations show how the time interval base affects the difference between the RER index and the LCF of PV energy.

Creating a Competitive Advantage for Micro and Small Enterprises Based on Eco-Innovation as a Determinant of the Energy Efficiency of the Economy

The aim of this analysis is to identify the possibility of treating eco-innovation in micro and small enterprises as a factor influencing the energy efficiency of the economy. In order to obtain an answer to such a research question, quantitative research was carried out among Polish enterprises from the SME sector (N = 400). Accordingly, the CATI technique was applied. The selection of enterprises was random and took place in the non-returnable drawing process. The criterion for selecting the sample was the size of enterprises, but in order to ensure the possibility of drawing conclusions based on a sufficiently large research sample, its structure (300 micro and 100 small enterprises) assumed the study of small enterprises in a proportion greater than their actual share in the population of enterprises. As a result of this research, the existence of a relationship between the improvement of the company’s competitive position and its activity in the field of eco-innovation implementation was confirmed. It is shown that the behavior and attitudes of entrepreneurs largely determine the very decisions regarding the use of specific types of eco-innovation, as well as the areas in which they brought about changes influencing the improvement of the competitive position of the surveyed companies. Differences in these decisions can be observed in micro and small companies. This article justifies the notion that the impact of the scale of micro and small companies is important in shaping the energy efficiency of the economy.

Assessing public organic food procurement: the case of Zurich (CH)

Organic food is increasingly promoted among authorities and governments to tackle global sustainability challenges and support an agri-ecological transition. An important policy instrument in this endeavour is the purchase of food or food services by public institutions, the so-called public food procurement (PFP). While PFP policies often promote organic food, few studies quantify the actual share of organic products in PFP systems. This study applies an adapted city food flow analysis to evaluate the organic share of 12 product groups in public catering, using Zurich as a case study. Based on a typology of procurement channels, we show that Zurich’s PFP system is highly centralised with internal coordinated procurement (INT–coord) and external coordinated procurement (EX–coord) providing 70% and 25% of total annual meals respectively. As Zurich procures 11% (INT–coord) and 9% (EX–coord) of organic produce, the city has considerable potential to increase organic PFP. Leverage points to this aim include internal product-specific thresholds, supply development and developments in digital procurement. This study provides a methodology to conceptualise municipal PFP systems and measure city-wide levels of organic PFP. The insights from Zurich offer a blueprint for PFP systems in other municipalities and reveal potential challenges when defining and monitoring organic PFP policies based on total purchases.

Firm performance following actual share repurchases: Effects of investment crowding out and financial flexibility

In this paper, we analyze the effects of abnormal capital investment and financial flexibility on firm performance following actual share repurchases by using a unique Taiwanese dataset. The results indicate that superior operational performance is associated with share repurchases; however, share repurchases may crowd out required capital investments. Further examination reveals that firms with adequate financial flexibility outperform firms with inadequate financial flexibility after actual share repurchases. In summary, our findings suggest that financial flexibility can mitigate the investment crowding out effect and positively affect firms' operational performance post-repurchase.

An Analysis of Israeli Coalition Formation and Cabinet Post Distribution

As literature examining the application of game-theoretic models to political coalitions has flourished in the past few decades, the conclusions found by different types of models yield different predictions regarding payoff proportionality in parliamentary coalitions. While demand bargaining models predict pure payoff proportionality, proposal-based models predict that the formateur should receive a disproportionately large share of the total payoff—a phenomenon referred to as the formateur’s advantage. We apply a statistical model that incorporates this idea to calculate the predicted share of cabinet posts received by member parties of Israeli Governments 25–35, and then compare these predictions to each party’s actual share of cabinet posts in each government. We find a very strong correlation (r = .936) between the predicted and actual shares of cabinet posts for all parties, but find that the formateur’s advantage, while present, is overestimated by bargaining models, as the extent of the advantage is heavily determined by the context in which governments are formed. We then cross-analyze discrepancies in our data with the real-world factors that caused them in order to present evidence that empirical context should always be accounted for when applying game theoretic models to parliamentary coalition formation.

Telling a different story: disparities in perceived fairness of housework division among East Asian men

ABSTRACT Previous research on gender relations has overlooked the similarities and differences among East Asian societies. To fill this gap, this study investigated the association among men’s gender-role attitudes, the actual share of housework, and perceptions of fairness in housework division, and how it differs across four East Asian societies. Using data from the 2012 International Social Survey Programme, the results demonstrated that Japanese and Taiwanese men had more egalitarian attitudes than mainland Chinese and South Koreans, while mainland Chinese men did more housework. Korean men held the most traditional gender-role attitudes and were least likely to feel they did less than their fair share. The paper concludes with implications for the gender revolution, suggesting policies should promote men’s involvement in the family besides helping mothers balance work and family.

EVALUATING THE POTENTIAL OF FUTURE E-MOBILITY USE CASES FOR PROVIDING GRID ANCILLARY SERVICES

The fostered implementation of volatile renewable energy sources will trigger a raising demand of grid ancillary services in the upcoming years. However, future electrified road vehicles provide significant energy storage capacities, since they are unused for most of the time. In this regard, this study analyses for various electric vehicle (EV) use cases the potential for providing grid ancillary services based on the vehicle-to-grid technology. Therefore, we estimate the future demand of ancillary services in 2030 in terms of redispatch measures and control reserve. Real-life EV mobility patterns demonstrate, that EVs are perfectly suitable for the provision of ancillary services, even with low discharging power. Assuming a sufficient EV-penetration, private EVs charging at home or at work may cover a substantial share of required grid ancillary services. Besides EV users' mobility patterns, long-term load flow simulations illustrate the limitation of possible grid ancillary services due to local grid restrictions, especially with high discharging and charging power. Consequently, an increase of charging and discharging power only slightly raises the actual share of provided grid ancillary services compared to a low-power bidirectional power exchange between grid and EV.

ASSESSMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMPONENT OF SUNFLOWER PRODUCTION IN AGRICULTURAL ENTERPRISES

Introduction. The article highlights the fact that over the past twenty years, sunflower production in Ukraine has increased significantly as a result of the expansion of cultivated areas and an increase in yields. In 2019, the gross harvest of sunflower exceeded 15 million tons, which was an all-time record. At the same time, the authors draw attention to the fact that the rapid spread of sunflowers in the structure of cultivated areas creates significant problems related to the maintenance of soil fertility. The purpose of this article is to assess the level of environmental factor of sunflower production in agricultural enterprises of Kharkiv region. Results. The paper proposes its own methodical approach to assess the environmental factor of production. This approach takes into account the level of actual application of mineral fertilizers according to their various components, as well as organic fertilizers, summarized by the coefficients of mineral and organic fertilizer application rates. Given the level of variability, they form a total fertilizer application rate. It is also proposed to consider the compliance of the actual share of sunflower in the structure of cultivated areas with the normative value through the calculation of the coefficient of the normative area of sunflower. Ultimately, all indicators of the level of environmental factor of sunflower production are combined into one, called the coefficient of environmental friendliness of sunflower production. Approbation of this methodical approach on the example of agricultural enterprises of Kharkiv region according to the data of 2019 allowed the authors to establish the fact that the value of the factor of the environmental factor of sunflower production in the vast majority of enterprises was at 0.11-0.2 (181 enterprises) and 0.21-0.3 146 enterprises). The article notes that compliance with regulatory requirements for planted acreage was slightly better than regulatory requirements for fertilizer application. The authors found a correlation between the coefficient of the environmental factor of sunflower production and the share of the cultivated areas occupied by sunflowers in their total value. Conclusions. Studying the environmental factor of sunflower production, the authors proposed a methodical approach to determine the eco-factor of sunflower production. It allows an objective assessment of the problems associated with compliance with existing requirements for the recovery of nutrients in the soil and crop areas.

Paranoid styles and innumeracy: implications of a conspiracy mindset on Europeans' misperceptions about immigrants

AbstractInnumeracy, that is, the inability to deal with numbers and provide correct estimates about political issues, is reported to be widespread among the public. Yet, despite the recognition that a conspiracy mindset is an increasingly common phenomenon in Western democracies, this has not been considered as a potential correlate of innumeracy. Using data from an online sample of respondents across 10 European countries, we show that those with a higher propensity to hold a conspiracy worldview tend to overestimate the actual share of the immigrant population living in their own country. This association holds true when accounting for country heterogeneity and other cognitive, affective and socio-demographic factors. Employing a comparative design and refined measurements, the article contributes to our understanding of how a conspiracy mentality may influence perceptions of relevant political facts, questioning basic processes of democratic accountability.

‘With respect for the core business’: on regionalist parties and their minister portfolios in government

ABSTRACT This article investigates the relationship between regionalist parties and the minister portfolios they control in government. A novel dataset was constructed which inventories a comprehensive collection of their minister posts (N = 1779). These stem from 77 different regionalist parties across 10 Western multilevel democracies throughout the post-Second World War period (1945–2020). An in-depth analysis shows that governing regionalist parties adhere closely to their ideological core business: territorial, cultural and institutional affairs form a major part of their ministerial responsibilities. The kind of ministries that regionalist parties hold differs between the regional and national levels of government. They obtain more key leadership positions regionally than nationally. Regionalist parties own a disproportionately high number of minister posts at the national level when compared with their actual seat share in parliament. The results from this study improve our understanding of the portfolio preferences and party strategies that regionalist parties employ when they participate in government.

Geometric and Fractal Characterization of Pore Systems in the Upper Triassic Dolomites Based on Image Processing Techniques (Example from Žumberak Mts, NW Croatia)

Karst aquifers are important sources of thermal and groundwater in many parts of the world, such as the Alpine–Dinaric–Carpathian region in Europe. The Upper Triassic dolomites are regionally recognized thermal and groundwater aquifers but also hydrocarbon reservoirs. They are characterized by predominantly fractured porosity, but the actual share of depositional and diagenetic porosity is rarely investigated. In this research, we presented the geometric characterization of the measured microporosity of the Upper Triassic dolomites of the Žumberak Mts (Croatia), through thin-section image processing and particle analysis techniques. Pore parameters were analyzed on microphotographs of impregnated thin sections in scale. A total of 2267 pores were isolated and analyzed. The following parameters were analyzed: pore area, pore perimeter, circularity, aspect ratio (AR), roundness, solidity, Feret AR, compactness, and fractal dimension. Furthermore, porosity was calculated based on the pore portion in each image. The effective porosity on rock samples was determined using saturation and buoyancy techniques as an accompanying research method. We analyzed distributions of each parameter, their correlation, and most of the parameters are characterized by an asymmetric or asymmetric normal distribution. Parameters that quantify pore irregularities have similar distributions, and their values indicate the high complexity of the pore geometry, which can significantly impact permeability.

Female Labor Force Participation in Agriculture Sector: An Empirical Evidence from Pakistan

The analysis shows that female labor force participation inside Agriculture market, the case study by Pakistan. The analysis utilized time-series data from 1995 to 2019. Ordinary Least square procedures are applied to check the female labor force participation inside the agricultural sector. In this research Female labor force participation (FLFP) is used as a dependent variable based adjustable in addition to the Inflation rate (IR), Income per capita (IPC), Foreign direct investment (FDI), External Debts (ED), as independent variables. Agriculture almost always is a crucial portion involving progress in addition to low-income countries. Even so, the market can be underperforming in most nations around the world partly because women, that are normally a critical use of resources inside agriculture plus the non-urban economic climate, encounter demands which lower their productiveness. The research reveals that involving women in the garden in addition to foodstuff creation can be substantial nonetheless it can be extremely hard to verify empirically the actual share produced by women. The analysis demonstrates that women make vital advantages to agriculture in addition to non-urban companies over the acquiring entire world. Nevertheless, there is a lot of multiplicity inside women’s assignments in addition to over-generalization undermines policy relevance in addition to setting up.

B2B Networking, Renewable Energy, and Sustainability

While the benefits and advantages of using renewable energies are remarkable, and their prices have been decreasing dramatically and are expected to fall further, the diffusion and adoption of renewable energies still lag fossil energies. This paper improves our understanding regarding the role of the interrelationship among businesses (as an example of B2B networking amongst parent and subsidiary firms). Furthermore, it demonstrates the way/s that such interrelationships can contribute to the diffusion and adoption of sustainable and energy-efficient technologies. This study describes four diffusion channels in the interrelated firms which can help with promoting and using renewable and sustainable energies. The paper also reports the actual share of each diffusion channel contributing to implementing sustainable energy-efficient technologies in practice. The findings suggest that parent organisations enforce the majority (over 50%) of sustainable and energy-efficient technologies implemented in a B2B environment. In comparison, inter-subsidiary relationships are responsible for less than 30% of the implemented sustainable and energy-efficient technologies in organisations. The findings are in line with the forced perspective theory. They could, to some degree, explain the differences in the levels of implementation of sustainable and energy-efficient technologies in practice. These findings can help practitioners prioritise the diffusion channels when they want to facilitate the implementation of new technologies in their organisations. While some organisations may expect a more successful implementation of innovations initiated by subsidiaries than those enforced by parent organisations, the levels of success of the adoption of sustainable and energy-efficient technologies are not examined in this study. Further research is recommended to investigate the extent of association between different diffusion channels and the levels of success in terms of the adoption of innovation. We did not find similar studies to compare the results, which could be one of the limitations of this study.

How perceptions and information about women’s descriptive representation affect support for positive action measures

Based on the German Longitudinal Election Study (2016), we explain citizens’ support for measures to increase women’s descriptive representation in parliament. Despite women’s underrepresentation, we find little support for positive action measures, and in particular for legal gender quotas. Binary logit analyses show that support for the introduction of positive action measures is not affected by citizens’ perceptions about the share of female members of parliament. However, experimental data reveal that receiving information about women’s actual proportion in parliament has an impact on citizens’ support for gender quotas, in particular among those who overestimate women’s representation. Once they learn that the actual share is lower than they thought, they are more likely to support the introduction of quotas. This indicates that support for positive action measures can be changed through providing the correct information.