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Researchers have noticed that in efficiency assessment, some attributes exhibit specializations including non-discretionary, non-controllable or undesirable. This paper aims to focus on other special factors which have target levels to achieve, i.e. the inputs (outputs) are no longer the-less-the-better (the-more-the-better).

In this paper, the authors further study the target variables when some attributes have multiple levels of targets. Such a situation can be found in many operational efficiency evaluations with various targets or bounded scale in inputs or outputs. They suppose that decision-making units (DMUs), reaching any target level, are identical efficient. To some extent, it is mitigation between common targets and individual targets. Using the closest target rule, the authors propose a target-level-oriented method to evaluate DMUs locally.

First, the authors found that some factors have multiple levels of targets to improve its efficiency in real world practice. Second, the proposed technique is able to deal with the multiple-levels-targets problems in data envelopment analysis (DEA) framework. Third, the decision-maker can select the improvement directions more freely than that in the traditional setting.

First, this is the first paper to discuss the multiple-levels-targets problems in DEA framework. Second, the proposed technique can help the decision-maker to select the best improvement strategies. Third, the technique developed in this paper can be used in many areas. For example, it can support the environmental efficiency evaluation with different standards of pollution emission.

The purpose of this paper is to propose several potential determinants of the distance between acquirer and target in M & A deals and examine the negative impact of the acquirer-target distance on announcement returns of acquiring firms.

By employing two-stage regression model, the authors control for the potential endogeneity of acquirer-target distance. The authors use excess distance instead of raw distance between acquirer and target to look at the impact of acquirer-target distance on announcement returns.

The authors find that acquirer-target distance in M & A tends to be longer when major hub airports are located closer to acquiring and target firms, target firm is located in a region with higher level of unemployment rate and median household income, and target firm is smaller and has more cash holdings. When controlling for the potential determinants of acquirer-target distance, including the level of targets information asymmetry, the authors still find that the excess distance between acquirer and target has a negative impact on announcement returns of acquiring firms.

This study provides three main contributions to the literature. First, the authors find that acquirer-target distance in M & A is not exogenous and determined by several firm characteristics and regional economic factors. Second, the authors show that the acquirer-target distance has a negative impact on announcement returns even when controlling for the potential determinants. Third, by including information asymmetry measures as potential determinants of acquirer-target distance, the authors show that information advantage of local bidders may not be the most critical factor for their higher returns compared to the bidders from remote areas.

Nowadays, e‐queues are built up everywhere where customer online service is necessary such as in banks' e‐service, enterprises' e‐business, etc. In order to enhance quality of service (QoS), active queue management (AQM) algorithms are frequently employed due to their efficiency in congestion avoidance as well as the differentiated forwarding of packets. This paper aims at developing a novel AQM algorithm to better QoS in terms of congestion prediction, queuing delay, packet loss and link utility, etc.

Upon the traditional designs of AQM, this paper establishes a new integrated AQM scheme (RQ‐AQM) by employing input rate and current queue length to calculate the packet dropping/marking probability. In this way, the rate feedback control enables to rapid response to congestion, decreasing the packet loss from buffer overflow. Meanwhile, the queue length feedback control stabilizes the queue length around a given target, achieving predictable queuing delay and lower delay jitter. Thus, the main feature of the design is to use coefficients of both proportional rate control and proportional‐integral queue length control, and to simplify parameter setting, the control parameters were scaled by the link capacity C to normalize the rate and by the bandwidth‐delay product BDP to normalize the queue length, respectively.

The stability performance of RQ‐AQM was tested via simulation under several conditions. The results proved that it is able to maintain the queue length around the given target. Also, the comparison results with other AQM schemes, including RED, ARED, PI controller, AVQ and REM, demonstrated the superiority of RQ‐AQM in low packet loss, faster convergence to target queue length and closest to the target queue length.

The main limitation of this study is that all the simulations were merely under a single bottleneck network topology. Furthermore, the system stability was examined under just a few cases. Other cases like TCP connections mixed with HTTP connections, or UDP flows, etc. can also be tested. Furthermore, the multiple bottleneck scenarios should be covered in the future work with more parameters set to enhance the proved results.

The paper sets clear but ideal conditions for the performance of proposed algorithm; so the simulation results can only be used as a rough reference instead of an exact practical one. But the concepts the paper attempted to advocate could be considered seriously.

The scope of the paper is within the general theory of AQM. So it can be referred to any specific field that employs AQM technology, no matter locally or globally.

There are not much new brand contents in the paper. The main contribution is on some extension of the known related work.

An updated version of the original (1985) text, the book covers all aspects of marketing and selling bank services: the role of marketing; behaviour of customers; intelligence, planning and organisation; product decisions; promotion decisions; place decisions; price decisions; achieving sales. Application questions help to focus the readers' minds on key issues affecting practice.

To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

This study aims to propose and evaluate a searching scheme for a bichromatic reverse k-nearest neighbor (BRkNN) that has objects and queries in spatial networks. In this proposed scheme, the author’s search for the BRkNN of the query using an influence zone for each object with a network Voronoi diagram (NVD).

The author’s analyze and evaluate the performance of the proposed searching scheme.

The contribution of this paper is that it confirmed that the proposed searching scheme gives shorter processing time than the conventional linear search.

A future direction of this study will involve making a searching scheme that reduces the processing time when objects move automatically on spatial networks.

In BRkNN, consider two groups in a convenience store, where several convenience stores, which are constructed in Groups A and B, operate in a given region. The author’s can use RNN is RkNN when k = 1 (RNN) effectively to set a new store considering the Euclidean and road distances among stores and the location relationship between Groups A and B.

In the proposed searching scheme, the author’s search for the BRkNN of the query for each object with an NVD using the influence zone, which is the region where an object in the spatial network recognizes the nearest neighbor for the query.

American police trace their initial brush with handgun training to efforts taken by New York City in 1895. Developing proficiency did not become a widely held priority until beginning in the mid‐1920s when the reform era’s focus upon training understandably led them to desire being not just trained, but “qualified” with their handguns. Qualification is a military‐derived status introduced in large part by the National Rifle Association’s police firearms training programme between the two World Wars. Today, as then, formal qualification expectations imply that officers exceeding various minimum performance levels are competent to employ handguns during armed confrontations. An examination of police field marksmanship in armed confrontations ‐ within the context of firearms training developments, the nature of and role played by “qualification”, and the basis for threshold scores ‐ suggests otherwise.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the reliability and validity of doctoral candidates’ innovative personality model.

Based on doctoral candidates’ innovative personality model, this study took the best correlation and the worst correlation into account to predict and demonstrate their innovative ability tendencies. Matlab R2016a, a program of software programming, was used to calculate the contribution degree of each personality factor of doctoral candidates to their innovative ability tendencies.

The reliability and validity of doctoral candidates’ innovative personality model based on grey target theory have been verified, and the prediction for doctoral candidates’ innovative ability tendencies can be realized on the basis of this model.

Scientific and reasonable doctoral candidates’ innovative personality model can play a good guiding role, and its research results have certain practical significance for selecting innovative doctoral candidates, ensuring the training quality of doctoral candidates and cultivating the innovative ability of doctoral candidates. It can be promoted and applied on the basis of its trial operation in Jiangsu.

With regard to the relative degree of the influence of doctoral candidates’ individual personality factors, previous researchers seldom carried out the quantitative research. In this paper, the author sought a quantitative method to describe the degree of such influence and constructed the doctoral candidates’ innovative personality model based on grey target decision making. This study took the positive and negative off-target distance into account and demonstrated the rationality and validity of doctoral candidates’ innovative personality model.

The firm size hypothesis – takeover likelihood (TALI) decreases with target firm size (SIZE) – has enjoyed little traction in the TALI modelling literature; hence, this paper aims to redevelop this hypothesis while taking account of prevailing market conditions – capital liquidity and market performance.

The study uses a logit modelling framework to model TALI. Model performance is assessed using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. The empirical analysis is based on a UK sample of 34,661 firm-year observations drawn from 3,105 firms and 1,396 M&A deals over a 30-year period (1987-2016).

While acquirers generally seek smaller targets because of transaction cost constraints, the paper shows that the documented negative relation between SIZE and TALI arises from sampling bias. Over a full sample, mid-sized firms are most at risk of takeovers. Additionally, market conditions moderate the SIZE–TALI relationship, with acquirers more inclined to pursue comparatively larger targets when financing costs are low and market growth or sentiment is high. The results are generally robust to endogeneity.

Sample truncation on the basis of SIZE leads to empirical misspecification of the TALI–SIZE relation. In an unbiased sample, an inverse U-shaped specification between TALI and SIZE sufficiently models the underlying relation and leads to improvements in the predictive ability of TALI models.

This study advances a new firm size hypothesis which is consistent with classic M&A theories. The study also evidences market conditions as a moderator of the acquirer’s choice of target SIZE. A new model specification which recognises the non-linear relation between TALI and SIZE and accounts for the moderating effect of market conditions on the SIZE-TALI relationship leads to improvements in the performance of TALI prediction models.

The globalization of knowledge has driven an increased emphasis on cross-border, high-technology acquisitions where a target firm in a technology industry is acquired by a firm in another nation. However, learning depends on similarity of knowledge, and we find that needed similarity can be provided by either technology or culture. As a result, firms can learn from acquiring targets at increasing cultural distance or at increasing technological distance, but not both. We find an interaction where acquisitions made at longer cultural distances and less technological distance, and acquisitions at shorter cultural distances and greater technological distance improve financial performance. This means technological distance and cultural distance are substitutes or represent a trade-off where improved acquisition performance depends on having commonality (low distance) for one of the variables.