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Biotech companies stand as key actors in pharmaceutical innovation. The high risk and long timelines inherent with their R&D investments might hinder their access to funding, potentially stifling innovation. This study aims to explore into the appeal of biotech companies to capital market investors, whose financial backing could bolster the growth of the biotechnology sector.

This paper uses a dataset of 774 US publicly listed biotech firms to investigate their risk and return characteristics by comparing them to pharmaceutical firms and a sample of matched non-biotech R&D-intensive firms over the sample period 1980–2021. Tests show that the conclusions remain consistent across diverse methodological approaches.

The paper shows that biotech companies are riskier than the average firm in the market index but outperform on a risk-adjusted basis both the market and a matched group of R&D-intensive firms. This is particularly true for large capitalization biotech, which is also shown to provide a diversification benefit by reducing the downside risk in past crisis periods.

This paper provides insight relevant to the current debate about the overall performance of the biotech industry in terms of policy changes and their impact on small, early-stage biotech firms. While small and early-stage biotech firms are playing an increasing role in scientific innovation, this study confirms their greater vulnerability to financial risks and the importance of access to capital markets in enabling those companies to survive and evolve into larger biotech.

This paper aims to develop an electrochemical dechlorination method for large objects in a short time, which were for a long time in the sea. Traditionally, in conservation, chlorides are extracted from marine iron artifacts using complete immersion of those objects in alkaline solutions with or without electrolysis. However, these techniques are time-consuming and very costly, especially when applied to large marine artifacts such as cannons and anchors.

An appropriate sponge was chosen based on resistance to NaOH and the rate of exacted chlorides. Application of electrochemical dechlorination in situ and removal of chloride were measured by the scanning electron microscope (SEM)-EDAX method on the corrosion products and by titration of the electrolysis solution. X-ray diffraction (XRD) method is used for identification of corrosion products before and after application of electrochemical chloride extraction.

The electrochemical chloride extraction (ECE) method is applied against the corrosion of reinforced concrete. From the authors’ research, it is obvious that ECE can successfully extract chlorides from dried large metallic objects exported from the sea. The method of ECE removes the majority of chlorides from the metal during conservation treatment so that the application of organic coating will allow the object to remain stable over a long period.

A new methodology was developed for dechlorination of metallic objects exported from the sea in a short time and thus the consumption of chemical reagents was cut down.

In order to deepen the knowledge and further advance theory on enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation in small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), this paper seeks to explore the following question: what can be done to minimize the risk of ERP system implementation, from the adoption stage onwards, in a small manufacturing firm?

The research method is based on a positivist holistic single‐case design in order to perform an initial test of a process model of ERP system adoption by SMEs. The unit of analysis selected by purposeful sampling is a small manufacturing business.

In attempting to minimize the risk of ERP implementation, the small manufacturing firm applied three principles, eight policies and ten specific practices in adopting ERP.

The research design, based upon a single‐case study, imposes care in generalizing the results of the study. This design, however, allowed the identification and understanding of the risk of ERP from a managerial/practical standpoint, as opposed to a research/theoretical standpoint.

In managerial terms, the results show that highly formalized management is not necessary to minimize ERP implementation risk in the context of SMEs.

Few studies have focused on the adoption process within the ERP implementation cycle. The proposed model, as validated empirically in this study, adds to the understanding of this process in small‐manufacturing firms, especially as regards the minimization of implementation risk from the adoption stage onwards.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the animal diet problem in grey environment which is adapted to the real situations. In particular, a new approach to solve these problems is proposed.

With the objective to produce the least-cost diet, in the traditional model for optimizing the diet problem, the price of foods, the nutrients requirements and the necessity of foods requirement have been considered as grey interval numbers. Grey linear programming approach has been employed to solve the grey diet problem. Grey linear programming with flexibility in selection of the coefficients can be more effective for solving the diet problems. In this research, only the positioned method has been used. The grey diet model is solved by using GAMS software based on the positioned method.

The main contribution of this work is to introduce a new model in the practical case that is concerned with diet problem under a kind of uncertainty environment and furthermore, proposing a novel method to solve the formulated problem. In this way, using a grey model and applying all restrictions, the least cost for one kilogram of total mixed ration was 6,893-10,163 Rials, and at this level, cow’s nutrient requirement was met. Based on the numerical examination, which was done on the real case, the achieved results have showed that the uncertainty of foods requirement and nutrients requirements had slight effect on the animal budget diet.

This problem must be viewed from another perspective because of the uncertainty regarding the amount of nutrients per unit of foods and the diversity of animals’ daily needs to receive them. In particular, a new method to optimize the fully mixed diet of lactating cows in early lactation that are readily available in the northeast of Iran in uncertainty environment has been proposed.