In many countries with weak political institutions, new ventures face challenges such as political risks, corruption, and civil conflict, which can severely hinder their ability to survive and grow. We explore how establishing affiliations at founding with coercive institutional actors can help new ventures overcome challenges characteristic of weak and volatile political environments. Our find...

This article addresses the determinants of regulatory agency design in multipartycoalition governments. Previous research has mainly focused on U.S. institutions, producing context-specific findings. We found electoral uncertainty, government turnover, and coalition size to be key factors explaining the bureaucratic autonomy of 31 state regulatory agencies recently created at the subnational le...

from applied linguistic point of view, the fundamental question facing the language teachers, methodologists and course designers is which procedure is more effective in fl/sl: learning to use or using to learn? definitely, in order to be a competent language user, knowledge of language system is necessary, but it is not sufficient to be a successful language user. that is why there was a gradu...

Stochastic optimization algorithms are usually evaluated based on performance on high dimensional benchmark functions and results of these tests determine the direction of development. Benchmark functions however, do not emulate complex engineering problems. In this paper a power plant optimization problem is presented and solved under different constraints with multiple elite dependent and sin...

Statement of the Problem: Understanding about impression materials, their properties, uses and manipulation can guide operators towards having more successful restorations. Purpose: The aim of this in vitro study was to compare the accuracy of a condensation silicone impression material, Optosil, and an addition poly siloxane impression material, Elite-HD. Materials and Method: A laboratory mod...

We propose a tabu search meta-heuristic for the Time dependent Multi-zone Multi-trip Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows. Two types of neighborhoods, corresponding to two decision sets of the problem, together with a strategy controlling the selection of the neighborhood type for particular phases of the search, provide the means to set up and combine exploration and exploitation capabili...

BACKGROUND School-based extracurricular sport remains an effective strategy to increase physical activity. However, school sport is often limited to a small number of elite athletes. Few schools provide more inclusive sport programs that offer a wider array of activities regardless of ability. PURPOSE The aim of this study was to examine school sport participation in middle schools (ages 11-1...

Popular User-Review Social Networks (URSNs)— such as Dianping, Yelp, and Amazon—are often the targets of reputation attacks in which fake reviews are posted in order to boost or diminish the ratings of listed products and services. These attacks often emanate from a collection of accounts, called Sybils, which are collectively managed by a group of real users. A new advanced scheme, which we te...

PURPOSE This study was to clarify the effect of age and competition level by measuring bone metabolism markers and bone mineral density measurements of junior high school and high school female rhythmic gymnasts, who restrict their diets to maintain a low body weight, while routinely undertaking long hours of high-intensity exercise, comparing the gymnasts based on their elite/non-elite. METH...

BACKGROUND Asthma is frequent in elite athletes and clinical studies in athletes have found increased airway inflammation. OBJECTIVE To investigate asthma-like symptoms, airway inflammation, airway reactivity (AR) to mannitol and use of asthma medication in Danish elite athletes. METHODS The study group consisted of 54 elite athletes (19 with doctor-diagnosed asthma), 22 non-athletes with d...