On the comparative study of three silver coins of the IIIrd century B.C. minted in Korkyra, Dyrrachion and by the Illyrian king Monounios

The microstructure of three silver coins dating back to the IIIrdcentury B.C. from the Illyrian King Monounios, the ancient Greek city of Dyrrachion and the ancient Greek city of Korkyra was studied with XRF, PIXE, microhardness measurements, and light and electron microscopy. From this investigation it turned out that these coins have different chemical compositions and different microstructures. The as-collected data allow the determination of a possible minting method. The Korkyra coin was probably hot-worked or cold-worked and annealed, while after cooling, it was cold-worked again. The coin of King Monounios is composed by equi-axed grains which are overrun by slip lines. Consequently it is likely that this coin was casted and then cold-struck. Finally the coin from Dyrrachion is characterized by small-sized grains and strain lines and as a result this coin was probably cold-struck. PACS 07.60.Pb; 78.70.En; 68.37.Ef; Hk; Lp; Nq; 61.66.Bi; 61.72.Mm     

The informational value of employee online reviews

This paper investigates the informational value of online reviews posted by employees for their employer, a rather untapped source of online information from employees, using a sample of 349,550 reviews from 40,915 UK firms. We explore this novel form of electronic Word-of-Mouth (e-WOM) from different perspectives, namely: (i) its information content as a tool to identify the drivers of job satisfaction/dissatisfaction, (ii) its predictive ability on firm financial performance and (iii) its operational and managerial value. Our approach considers both the rating score as well as the review text through a probabilistic topic modeling method, providing also a roadmap to quantify and exploit employee big data analytics. The novelty of this study lies in the coupling of structured and unstructured data for deriving managerial insights through a battery of econometric, financial and operational research methodologies. Our empirical analyses reveal that employee online reviews have informational value and incremental predictability gains for a firm's internal and external stakeholders. The results indicate that when models integrate structured and unstructured big data there are leveraged opportunities for firms and managers to enhance the informativeness of decision support systems and in turn, gain competitive advantage.     

A new scalable synthesis of entecavir

A new synthesis of entecavir from d-glucose in an average total yield of 3.5% was achieved via an intramolecular nitrile oxide cycloaddition (INOC) reaction and a Peterson olefination as key-steps. The present process was designed for industrial application, using widely available raw materials, simple and cheap reagents and avoiding low reaction temperatures, which are very common in the synthetic approaches towards similarly complex structures.