Exclusive Access Research Articles

CROSS BORDER ACQUISITIONS AND R&D ACTIVITIES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY IN THE ITALIAN RED BIOTECH INDUSTRY

In fast growing markets, technology-grafting acquisitions provide rapid and exclusive access to technologies and capabilities of the acquired firm. This paper focuses on the impact of cross border acquisitions on RD RD developments of their research and growth in sales worldwide. Managers may benefit from a mutual exchange of knowledge and competences between acquired firms and MNEs. Policy makers should encourage FDI attraction strategies. This study for the first time analyses the post-acquisition innovation performance of all the Italian acquired mid-sized firms.

Territory exclusivity and intergroup encounters in the indris (Mammalia: Primates: Indridae: Indri indri) upon methodological tuning

Territorial, socially monogamous species actively defend their home range against conspecifics to maintain exclusive access to resources such as food or mates. Primates use scent marks and loud calls to signal territory occupancy and limit the risk of intergroup encounters, maximizing their energetic balance. Indri indri is a little-studied territorial, socially monogamous singing primate living in family groups. The groups announce territory occupancy with long-distance calls, and actively defend their territories from conspecific intruders. This work includes data collected in three forests in Madagascar on 16 indri groups over up to 5 years. We aimed (1) to estimate the extent of territories using minimum convex polygon (MCP), implementing minimum sampling effort requirements; (2) to quantify territorial exclusivity, measuring the overlap between territories; and (3) to evaluate the intergroup encounter rate and to quantify the dynamics of group encounters. Our results showed that indris range evenly within exclusive small territories with no or little overlap. Intergroup encounters are rare (0.05 encounters per day), and are located on the periphery of the territories. Disputes were mostly solved with vocal confrontation and only in 13% of the cases ended in physical fights. This frame underlines a cost–benefit explanation of territoriality, favouring a strategy that efficiently limits overlap and avoids costly intergroup encounters. We hypothesize that territorial behaviour in indri is related to mate-guarding strategy and that vocal behaviour plays a fundamental role in regulating intergroup spacing dynamics.

A decision support tool for designing TURF-reserves

Territorial use rights in fisheries (TURFs) paired with marine reserves (henceforth called TURF-reserves) have been proposed as a viable management strategy to combat overfishing in many small-scale fisheries by combining the TURF benefits of exclusive access with the conservation, spillover, and resilience benefits of reserves. When appropriately designed and implemented, TURF- reserves can encourage stewardship and empower fishers to better manage their resources. While tools that assist spatial design in marine nearshore contexts exist, they are data intensive, require expertise in software operation, and often need Internet connection. We developed the TURF-Reserve Design Tool to assist spatial design in settings where these elements are not present by providing an easy-to-use decision support tool for small-scale fisheries contexts. This tool consists of a spatial bioeconomic model that allows managers to analyze the relative performance of TURF-reserve designs for a specific setting by assessing the relative ecological and economic outcomes of each design.

Blocked: Why Some Companies Restrict Data Access to Reduce Competition and How Open APIs Can Help

In some industries and markets, a small number of firms have exclusive access to particular datasets, and they exploit their market power to limit access to that data through both technical and administrative means without any legitimate business justification. In the real estate, financial services, and air travel industries, for example, established firms are using their exclusive control of information about property listings, customer financial transactions, and airline tickets, respectively, to limit competition by restricting access to the data by third-parties. This type of anti-competitive behavior limits innovation, reduces market transparency, and hurts consumers, and when these problematic practices occur, policymakers should intervene.

American Diabetes Association - 77th Scientific Sessions (June 9-13, 2017 - San Diego, California, USA).

The 77th American Diabetes Association (ADA) Sci-entific Sessions took place in San Diego, California. The meeting brought together scientists and professionals from a wide range of disciplines in the field of diabetes and provided a platform for networking, allowing experts and researchers to share ideas and learn about the significant advances in diabetes research, treatment and care. Over the course of the 5 days, participants received exclusive access to more than 2,500 original research presentations.

Concession and Secession: Constitutional Bargaining Failure in Post‐Communist Czechoslovakia

AbstractThis article explains the dissolution of Czechoslovak federation. It shows that the breakdown in bargaining between Slovakia and the federal center in Prague resulted from the federal institutional framework, differences in fiscal policy preferences and elite patronage incentives to monopolize the spoils of state property sell‐offs. Relatively less developed minority regions often seek greater autonomy in order to redress their economic backwardness through interventionist economic and social policies. Due to its veto powers, Slovakia was able to block central legislation, setting the stage for the divorce. At the same time, the federal government in the center was committed to a laissez‐faire strategy of governance, which precluded any significant accommodation of the periphery. (Mostly) Czech politicians understood that yielding to Slovak claims would threaten to undercut their pro‐market strategy and diminish Prague's exclusive access to the spoils of market reforms. In terms of the bargaining model, the center was not dependent on the periphery, which possessed a credible exit option. In fact, the periphery was perceived as a hindrance to the center's ability to pursue its fiscal goals and a fast economic transition, and as limiting Prague's exclusive access to a nascent revolving door between the upper echelons in politics and business.

Equity and ITQs: About Fair Distribution in Quota Management Systems in Fisheries

Fish stocks, as common pool resources, are more and more managed by giving fishermen exclusive access rights as Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQ). These have been widely discussed, with focus on social, economic and ecological issues. While equity aspects have been of great concern, there is very limited analysis about how to assess issues of equity and fair distribution when introducing ITQs. This paper applies an existing framework for assessing equity in resource use systems to tradable quota systems in fisheries. The framework defines the perspectives of distributive fairness, the stakeholders who are bound by fair practice rules, and instruments of fairness, and identifies metrics to assess equity in practice. We assess if the framework provides practical guidance for evaluating whether a given ITQ system operates under an equitable framework programme.

The Effects of Interannual Rainfall Variability on Tree–Grass Composition Along Kalahari Rainfall Gradient

Precipitation variability has been predicted to increase in a global warmer climate, and is expected to greatly affect plant growth, interspecies interactions, plant community composition, and other ecosystem processes. Although previous studies have investigated the effect of intra-annual rainfall variability on plant growth and ecosystem dynamics, the impacts of interannual rainfall variability remain understudied. This paper uses satellite data and develops a new mechanistic model to investigate the response of tree–grass composition to increasing interannual rainfall variability in arid to sub-humid ecosystems along the Kalahari Transect in Southern Africa. Both satellite data and model results show that increasing interannual rainfall fluctuations favor deep-rooted trees over shallow-rooted grasses in drier environments (that is, mean annual rainfall, MAP 900–1000 mm). Trees have a competitive advantage over grasses in dry environments because their generally deeper root systems allow them to have exclusive access to the increased deep soil water resources expected to occur in wet years as a result of the stronger interannual rainfall fluctuations. In relatively wet environments, grasses are favored because of their high growth rate that allows them to take advantage of the window of opportunity existing in years with above average precipitation and thus increase fire-induced tree mortality. Thus, under increasing interannual rainfall fluctuations both direct effects on soil water availability and indirect effects mediated by tree–grass interactions and fire dynamics are expected to play an important role in determining changes in plant community composition.

H-Group local mutual exclusion algorithm in MANETs

Mutual exclusion is one of the fundamental problems in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). The solutions to the mutual exclusion problem ensure exclusive access to a shared resource(s). In MANETs, one of the variants of mutual exclusion problem is local mutual exclusion (LME) problem. In LME problem, the non-neighboring nodes may enter CS simultaneously. Whereas, the group local mutual exclusion (GLME) problem in MANETs is the generalization of LME problem, where, unlike LME problem, the processes requesting same group (resource) may be in a critical section (CS) simultaneously. In the presented exposition, an extension of GLME problem, named h-group local mutual exclusion (h-GLME), has been proposed. The h-GLME problem, where the number of active groups can be h (h ≥ 1) and the processes requesting any of h groups may be in their respective CS simultaneously. It is applicable to MANETs. To the best of our knowledge, h-GLME is the first wireless extension of the GLME problem.

Calves growth infant of breed Nellore supplemented with chromium

The present study evaluated the growth of nursling Nelore calves supplemented with chromium during creep feeding. The study was conducted using 131 Nelore calves with an average age of 60 days and average adjusted initial weight of 75 kg; considering that all calves were accompanied by their mothers. Therefore, the experimental groups were defined as T1: 35 males supplemented with chromium; T2: 34 males without chromium, T3: 30 females supplemented with chromium and T4: 32 females supplemented without chromium. The experimental period lasted from 60 days of age to 210 days (weaning), the animals were kept in two pickets of Panicum maximum cv. Mombasa provided with troughs for the creep feeding system, which permitted calves exclusive access to the concentrate formula based on 75% of TDN and 20% of crude protein, with 35% of soybean meal, 63% of corn and 2% of mineral nucleus containing 10 mg of chromium chelate for each kg of the product. The data were subjected to the analysis of variance, using the software R (R Development Core Team, 2013). In the evaluation of the live weight at 150 days of age, no significant difference was found in the use of chromium in males and females (regardless of sex). However, in the analysis between sexes, females’ live weights were lower than males’ live weight (p = 0.04), being 131.1 kg and 138.1 kg respectively. In the evaluation of live weight at 210 days there was no significant difference between males and females (p = 0.07), but there was a difference (p = 0.03) in the use of chrome in the evaluated treatments. So, it could be concluded that the creep feeding system with chrome chelate supplementation promoted an improvement in male and females calves’ growth for average daily weight gain and weaning weight, with a positive influence on the weight of cows.

Governance of Data: Exclusive Property vs. Access

Governance of Data: Exclusive Property vs. Access

A Transition to a Net Oil Importir Country

Indonesia is becoming a net oil impoter in the near future. due to increasing domestic need of petroleum while on the other hand the exporting activity of crude oil is inevitable. Indonesia is buying the higher price and selling at the lower, and spending the more valuable to get the less. This paper examines the contradictory situation and its implication to Indonesia's terms of trade and gives a methodical evaluation of supply and demand scale for domestic market in the future. To resolve this problematic issue, a key policy is suggested to be applied namely "the downstream oil sector". This policy means bringing private involvement into the refining and retailing business, to create a freer market pricing and exclusive access to the domestic market.

Ethnic inclusion, democracy, and terrorism

Previous research has shown that ethnic exclusion and restricted political access can motivate ethnic groups to resort to violence. Although these links are better established for civil wars or conventional conflict, we believe that the same logic should be applicable to ethnic terrorism as well. If so, can reforms towards greater ethnic inclusion also reduce terrorist risks? We argue that reform and changes towards greater ethnic inclusion and democratization should induce substitution and reduce the volume of terrorist violence, even if attacks by splinter groups may persist. We develop propositions on terrorist attack frequency, given group characteristics and accommodation. We take advantage of the large changes towards democratization, decreased discrimination, and increased ethnic accommodation since the third wave of democratization and the end of the Cold War, as well as new data linking domestic terrorist organization in the Global Terrorism Data to specific ethnic groups in the Ethnic Power Relations data. Our group-level analyses suggest considerable support for a decline in terrorism following accommodation.

Property relations and the co-management of small-scale fisheries in Costa Rica: Lessons from Marine Areas for Responsible Fishing in the Gulf of Nicoya

Marine fisheries in Costa Rica have become characterized by overexploitation, ineffective centralized management and increased conflict among fishing sectors. Despite high economic and socio-cultural importance of small-scale fisheries, no formal mechanisms existed until recently to facilitate the participation of fishers in management. Marine Areas for Responsible Fishing (Áreas Marinas para la Pesca Responsable, AMPR) were legally recognized in 2009 as a co-management approach, enabling the designation of spatial management areas to be implemented collaboratively by artisanal fishers and government agencies. In this paper, we examine property and access relations shaping this emerging participatory management model using case studies primarily from the Gulf of Nicoya region. The policy demonstrably improves upon some aspects of management, for instance, by allowing artisanal fishers to determine gear restrictions within designated areas. However, the model lacks other attributes of more successful co-management scenarios, particularly exclusive access. The fugitive nature of resources further complicates property relations over these fisheries. The cases explored also illustrate broader institutional and systemic issues that preclude effective participatory management. Lessons from the region are used to propose significant shifts to the management of small-scale fisheries in Costa Rica.

Précis of The Varieties Of Consciousness

PSYCHOLOGY IS A PECULIAR DISCIPLINE. Chemistry is the science that attempts to explain chemical phenomena. Zoology is the science that attempts to explain zoological phenomena. One might expect psychology of be the science that attempts to explain psychological phenomena. But psychology, as practiced today, attempts rather to explain behavioral phenomena (including verbal behavior). Psychological notions enter its endeavor only as part of the explanans, not as part of the explanandum. In this psychology differs markedly from the bona fide sciences, such as chemistry and zoology, in the image of which psychologists have tried so deliberately to cast their discipline. There is of course a perfectly understandable reason for this. The psychological phenomena given to us pretheoretically are the phenomena manifest in the stream of consciousness. Embarrassingly, these appear to be “private” and “publicly inaccessible”. The sense in which this is so is elusive but familiar. Right now I am visualizing a purple threewheeled dragon; I know that this is so in a way you do not. And if next I imagine something else, equally outlandish, and refuse to share the content of my visualization with anybody, then the following becomes true: there is a fact – part of the natural history of the universe – which is known to one person only. One could rightly call it a private fact. When in its introspectionist infancy psychology really dealt with the psychological phenomena, it dealt with facts of this sort. And this too marked it as very different from more established sciences: the phenomena chemistry and zoology try to explain are public phenomena, phenomena nobody can claim exclusive access to or privileged authority over. So in search of phenomena more like those of chemistry and zoology, psychologists ended up training their powers on behavioral rather than psychological phenomena. Unfortunately, however, this strategic decision does not make the psychological phenomena disappear. A science targeting the psychological phenomena, rather than behavioral phenomena, is still needed by anyone who would like to see science produce a truly comprehensive account of the world. If the name “psychology” is to be reserved to the science that tries to explain behavioral phenomena, then some other name is needed for the science that attempts to explain the psychological phenomena, that is, the phenomena manifest in the stream of consciousness. The first task of that science would be to describe the phenomena it attempts to explain. The task of explaining the phenomena can only come later, when the phenomena in need of explanation have been suitably deSYMPOSIUM

Dynamic Spectrum Leasing for Bi-Directional Communication: Impact of Selfishness

In this paper, we propose a beamforming-based dynamic spectrum leasing (DSL) technique to improve the spectral utility of bi-directional communication of the legacy/primary spectrum users through the help of colocated secondary users. The secondary users help for a time interval to relay the data between two primary terminals using physical layer network coding and beamforming to attain bi-directional communication with high spectral utility. As a reimbursement, the secondary users, cognitive radios (CRs) in our case, get exclusive access to the primary spectrum for a certain duration. We use Nash bargaining to determine the optimal division of temporal resources between relaying and reimbursement. Moreover, we consider that a fraction of secondary nodes can act selfishly by not helping the primary, yet enjoy the reimbursement time. We measure the utility of the DSL scheme in terms of a metric called time-bandwidth product (TBP) ratio quantifying the number of bits transmitted in direct communication versus DSL. We show that if all secondary nodes act honestly, more than 17-fold increase in the TBP ratio is observed for a sparse CR network. However, in such a network, selfish behavior of CR nodes can reduce the gain by more than a factor of 2.

Federated scheduling admits no constant speedup factors for constrained-deadline DAG task systems

In the federated scheduling approaches in multiprocessor systems, a task either 1) is restricted to execute sequentially on a single processor or 2) has exclusive access to the assigned processors. There have been several positive results to conduct good federated scheduling policies, which have constant speedup factors with respect to any optimal federated scheduling algorithm. This paper answers an open question: "For constrained-deadline task systems with directed acyclic graph (DAG) dependency structures, do federated scheduling policies have a constant speedup factor with respect to any optimal scheduling algorithm?" The answer is "No!" This paper presents an example, which demonstrates that any federated scheduling algorithm has a speedup factor of at least $\Omega(\min\{M, N\})$ with respect to any optimal scheduling algorithm, where $N$ is the number of tasks and $M$ is the number of processors.

Jealousy Protest

In this article, nascent jealousy’s ultimate foundation is theorized as an adapted psychological mechanism that evolved in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) to prepare 1-year-olds for defending against premature weaning upon the closely spaced birth of a sibling. This position rests on evidence that nascent jealousy is expressed through jealousy protest, a constellation of caregiver-directed protests and bids for exclusive attention, and evidence that its onset occurs at approximately 9 months of age. Given that the period of human gestation is 9 months, we propose that jealousy protest’s form and timing were compelled by the possibility that the end of an infant’s first year could be met by competition with a newborn sibling. That possibility placed infants at risk of malnutrition and mortality due to entailing the loss of exclusive access to mother’s milk, while infants were at an age when they were still heavily reliant on breast milk for survival. At this juncture, threat posed by the birth of a sibling was compounded by conditions of the EEA, where the sole viable source of breast milk was an infant’s mother, and her supply of milk was sufficient for sustaining only one child at a time. We conclude by offering suggestions for future research and discuss implications for the theory of parent–offspring conflict as a foundation of adaptations in children.

The “state-led-economy” issue in the BIT negotiations and its policy implications for China

The state-led-economy provisions in the U.S. model BIT, which was released in April 2012, aims to impose strict regulations on the SOEs and exert great influence on state-led economy model. China and the U.S. are now in the midst of negotiating a BIT, and the U.S. government insists on negotiating on the basis of its 2012 model BIT. If China is to accept the 2012 U.S. model for the proposed BIT between the two nations, unprecedented international obligations will be placed in the field of international investment. In this context, in order to provide a reference for the BIT negotiation, the author will analyze, from the perspective of normative jurisprudence, which economic activities are included in the scope of state-led economy provisions, whether China should accept the clauses and the possible impact of accepting it. China’s economy has indivisible relationship with State-owned enterprises (SOEs). At present, most of these SOEs have clustered in those sectors that play crucial roles in the national economy such as energy, telecommunication and finances. Despite several rounds of reform on the SOEs aiming at a separation of governmental functions from corporate management, and a modern market-oriented governance structure, Chinese SOEs remain monopolies or de facto monopolies with exclusive access to many important industries relevant to national economy and people’s livelihood. Further, SOEs can enjoy a lot of privileges in their operation, some even have certain regulatory authority which is supposed to be exercised by the government. This kind of economic model is called State-led economy. The 2012 U.S. model for bilateral investment treaties (BIT) is characterized by the inclusion of the state-led economy provisions, which means that there are more restrictive regulations governing SOEs and their special treatment, and countervailing their competition implication in the host country and their home country. Apart from creating a fair and impartial environment for the investors, this international investment regime, represented by 2012 U.S. BIT model, is in some way, intended to alter the host country’s economic governance regime. In accordance with the decision of the 5th round of the U.S.–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, both parties are dedicated to proceeding the BIT negotiations (The 5th Round of the U.S.–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue: broad consensus achieved and positive progress made, People’s Daily, p 3, 2013). The U.S. government has insisted that they would base its 2012 model as a blueprint of BIT text negotiation. Seemingly to illustrate, the 6th round of the U.S.–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue has reached a consensus that an earlier launch of negotiation on the negative list will be expected in 2015 (The 6th Round of the U.S.–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue: broad consensus achieved and positive progress made, People’s Daily, p 3, 2014; Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, The 14th Round of the U.S.–China Investment Treaty Negotiation is Held in Washington, D.C., 2014). If China is to accept the new BIT model, it will bring China a bundle of increasing obligations under this system and an unprecedented impact on China’s mode for economic development. As a contracting party, China will have to carry out a comprehensively economic reform to comply with the disciplines specified in the BIT. It is also understandable that the incorporation of the state-led economy provision in the China–U.S. BIT will in turn accelerate the domestic economic reforms. In this context, research on the issue of state-led economy in the BIT negotiation will be of significance to China’s dealing with the core issue in the BIT, China’s fulfillment of treaty obligations and its promotion of domestic economic reform via BIT negotiations. In order to provide a reference for the BIT negotiation, the author will identify from the perspective of normative jurisprudence, the economic activities that fall within the scope of state-led economy provisions, project the possible impact of state-led economy provisions and how China should handle negotiation surrounding the state-led economy issue.

Konkurrenz um Kalkstein. Rohstoffsicherung der Montanindustrie und die Dynamik räumlicher Relationen um 1900

Abstract Limestone, a resource that was needed to smelt iron ore and to produce steel, became an object of competition between industrialists of the Ruhr around 1900. The making and transformation of spatial relations was crucial to the process of gaining exclusive access to the resource. First, images of the underground terrain, namely the identification and delineation of limestone deposits, were variable and subject to negotiation – albeit bound to physical space through procedures of surveying and chemical analysis. Second, the changing structure of real-estate property constituted new spatial relations. As limestone companies bought up property from local farmers, the social implications of land ownership slowly eroded. Instead, the spatial structure of property was reorganized around safeguarding an exclusive and unrestricted access to limestone deposits. Third, the companies' interventions transformed spatial relations by realigning infrastructures and restricting potentially conflicting uses of land. In the end, they also transformed much of the physical space by expanding quarries in unprecedented dimensions. All these processes were driven and shaped in a highly competitive setting in which not only competing companies but also the local populace gained decisive influence. The aim of this case study is to show that space was not a fixed “container” in which companies and locals pursued their economic interests. Rather, spatial relations were brought about, and hence made, amid the competition for the resource as these relations became the precondition for resource extraction.