Search results for "Lever"
showing 10 items of 191 documents
Leveraging and Deleveraging: Pluses and Minuses
2013
Abstract As in physics, leverage is an amplifier. In business, the leverage is amplifying the losses or the gains. In good times, leverage is good, it is busting the gains, it supports economic growth. Companies and governments are using leverage at large scale. In bad times, it is busting the losses. Companies and governments will have to deleverage. This paper aims to present in brief the concepts of leveraging and deleveraging, to explain why companies, banks and governments are using the leverage, and what are the consequences of using it? The high degree of leverage is one cause of a financial crisis and therefore deleveraging is usually following a financial crisis. We will address th…
Acetaldehyde Oral Self-Administration: Evidence from the Operant-Conflict Paradigm
2011
Background: Acetaldehyde (ACD), ethanol's first metabolite, has been reported to interact with the dopaminergic reward system, and with the neural circuits involved in stress response. Rats self-administer ACD directly into cerebral ventricles, and multiple intracerebroventricular infusions of ACD produce conditioned place preference. Self-administration has been largely employed to assess the reinforcing and addictive properties of most drugs of abuse. In particular, operant conditioning is a valid model to investigate drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior in rats. Methods: This study was aimed at the evaluation of (i) the motivational properties of oral ACD in the induction and maintenanc…
Laparoscopic drainage of liver abscess: case report and literature review.
2013
Aim To evaluate the safety and efficacy of the minimally invasive surgical approach (laparoscopic drainage) of liver abscesses in selected cases. Case report Male, 58 years old, from a rural area, presented with epigastric abdominal pain, fever, weight loss, loss of appetite, a palpable mass in the epigastrium and neutrophilic leukocytosis. CT revealed a complex multiloculated liver abscess in segments 2-3. Systemic antibiotic therapy alone was ineffective; percutaneous drainage was excluded due to the characteristics of the lesion. Result Given the complexity of the lesion, a laparoscopic approach was chosen involving complete drainage of the abscess, debridement and irrigation; the cavity…
Evolutionary psychological consumer research:Bold, bright, but better with behavior
2020
Abstract This special issue includes state-of-the-art papers that leverage various theories from evolutionary psychology (EP) to shed light on important consumption-related phenomena. Our guest editorial provides an overview of this EP-based consumer research, highlighting the key content, common denominators, and significant strengths of the articles. The papers cover a wide variety of topics, characteristic of evolutionary-informed research, that we structure around the following three themes: (1) Mating, marketing, and meaningful motivating forces, (2) Conspicuous consumption and salient signs of “showing off,” and (3) Human hormones and biologically-based business research. We close our…
Female directors, capital structure, and financial distress
2021
Abstract The composition of the board of directors is highly relevant to a firm’s capital structure and likelihood of financial distress. This study builds on the complementary proposals of agency theory and gender theories based on gender-differential behavior. We examine whether the gender diversity of the board affects firms’ capital structure (leverage, cost of debt, and debt maturity) and likelihood of bankruptcy. For a sample of European firms over the period 2002 to 2019, we find that the percentage of women directors is the most influential board characteristic in terms of capital structure decisions. This characteristic is negatively related to leverage, cost of debt, and debt matu…
Overcoming the liability of foreignness – A new perspective on Chinese MNCs
2021
Abstract We maintain that previous research on multinational corporations' liability of foreignness has underemphasized the importance of the firm's dependence on their parents, subsidiary and local resources. To address this issue, we conducted 43 semi-structured interviews with expatriate and local managers of Chinese high-tech MNCs over two years (2017–2019) and across China, Poland and Hong Kong to understand how they cope with the liability of foreignness in Poland. Using the resource dependence perspective, the linkage, leverage, learning (LLL) paradigm and the institutional view, we identified six dimensions affecting the liability of foreignness: resource commitment, information flo…
Quality of consulting services and consulting fees
2015
Abstract This study explores whether consulting service clients' degree of satisfaction can explain differences in consulting service fees to the same clients. By monitoring factors having a relationship with consulting fees as well as consulting service quality attributes, this study notes that client satisfaction with consulting team positively and strongly affects consulting fees. A dimension of consulting client satisfaction, which is not a consulting service quality attribute, is the factor that better explains consulting service pricing. This satisfaction dimension may allow consultants to charge higher fees through higher leverage while setting prices during contracting process. Clie…
Contrastive Learning with Continuous Proxy Meta-data for 3D MRI Classification
2021
Traditional supervised learning with deep neural networks requires a tremendous amount of labelled data to converge to a good solution. For 3D medical images, it is often impractical to build a large homogeneous annotated dataset for a specific pathology. Self-supervised methods offer a new way to learn a representation of the images in an unsupervised manner with a neural network. In particular, contrastive learning has shown great promises by (almost) matching the performance of fully-supervised CNN on vision tasks. Nonetheless, this method does not take advantage of available meta-data, such as participant’s age, viewed as prior knowledge. Here, we propose to leverage continuous proxy me…
Visible photothermal deflection spectroscopy using microcantilevers
2012
International audience; Photothermal deflection spectroscopy based on bi-material cantilevers combines the sensitivity of miniature sensors and the selectivity of optical spectroscopy. In this paper, we report on the photothermal response of the microcantilevers functionalized with nanometer thin organic films in the visible region. Unlike responses in the infrared regime, in the optical region, light absorption by all the cantilever constituents must be considered for extraction of the physical parameters of the organic layer. A model of photothermal deflection for the optical region has been developed for two absorbing layers consisting of a thick metal (>200 nm) and a thin organic film. …
Activation process of reversible Pd thin film hydrogen sensors
2013
Abstract Microcantilever-based thin film palladium hydrogen sensors have high selectivity and sensitivity. Reproducibility and accuracy of the sensor performance depend on the activation process of the polycrystalline palladium film deposited on the cantilever. When the hydrogen is in solid solution ( α -phase), the cantilever bending is mostly governed by the residual film stress induced by the swelling at the grain boundaries in the film. When the palladium hydride ( β -phase) starts to be formed, the cantilever undergoes a large deflection due to hydrogen absorption-induced film swelling (10% change in volume). Differences in the phase diagrams of the palladium hydride for two film thick…