Bouygues’ corporate operations research team (the “Bouygues e-lab”) has been working with this industrial group’s various subsidiaries, including the leading French TV Channel TF1, for the past 15 years. This article presents the achievements obtained with this advertisement broadcaster and tries to identify the practical keys to success in this partnership. In particular, best practices for ma...

This study analyzes the real estate production function and economic depreciation of structures by using data from Japan and the U.S. Real estate exhibits decreasing returns in the U.S. but constant returns in Japan. Land and structures are substitutes in both countries. The property depreciation rate is larger for newer and denser properties located away from the Central Business District (CBD...

We show that dependence on foreign energy can increase economic instability by raising the likelihood of equilibrium indeterminacy, hence making ‡uctuations driven by selfful…lling expectations easier to occur. This is demonstrated in a standard neoclassical growth model. Calibration exercises, based on the estimated share of imported energy in production for several countries, show that the de...

Spontaneous motor activity (SMA) is a ubiquitous feature of fetal and infant behavior. Although SMA appears random, successive limb movements often occur in bouts. Bout organization was evident at all ages in fetal (embryonic day [E] 17-21) and infant (postnatal day [P] 1-9) rats, with nearly all bouts comprising 1-4 movements of different limbs. A computational model of SMA, including spontane...

This paper analyses the general equilibrium effects on asset valuation and capital accumulation of an exogenous drop in the rate of return required by investors in a model of production with imperfectly competitive product markets. The model improves substantially on the standard perfectly competitive neo-classical framework, by dissociating the behavior of marginal and average q. It tracks mor...

This paper presents main results from a Ph.D. thesis on sociolinguistic variation among students in an upper secondary school in Alingsås, a town of 25,000, northeast of Göteborg. Phonological variants are found to be associated with traditional local dialect, regional and supraregional standard, Göteborg vernacular, general and Göteborg youth language. Correlations with demogeographical areas ...

We established an in vitro hypoxia model and investigated the protective effect of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) against neuronal cell death caused by hypoxia. Hippocampal neurons obtained from rats on embryonic day (E) 17 and 20 and on postnatal day (P) 4 were cultured for 6-24 h in an oxygen-deprived state. This in vitro hypoxia study showed that the cultured neurons were sensitive to...

What is the likelihood that the U.S. will experience a devastating catastrophic event over the next few decades – something that would substantially reduce the capital stock, GDP and wealth? What does the possibility of such an event imply for the behavior of economic variables such as investment, interest rates, and equity prices? And how much should society be willing to pay to reduce the pro...

BACKGROUND Acinetobacter is a multi-drug resistant and nosocomial pathogen. The aim of this study was to determine antibacterial susceptibility patterns and cross-resistance of Acinetobacter species. METHODS This study was conducted in Nemazee Hospital, Shiraz, Iran from October 2007 to September 2008. Species identification was carried out by API E20. Minimum inhibitory concentration and cro...