Fuzzy Recommendations in Marketing Campaigns

The population in Sweden is growing rapidly due to immigration. In this light, the issue of infrastructure upgrades to provide telecommunication services is of importance. New antennas can be installed at hot spots of user demand, which will require an investment, and/or the clientele expansion can be carried out in a planned manner to promote the exploitation of the infrastructure in the less loaded geographical zones. In this paper, we explore the second alternative. Informally speaking, the term Infrastructure-Stressing describes a user who stays in the zones of high demand, which are prone to produce service failures, if further loaded. We have studied the Infrastructure-Stressing population in the light of their correlation with geo-demographic segments. This is motivated by the fact that specific geo-demographic segments can be targeted via marketing campaigns. Fuzzy logic is applied to create an interface between big data, numeric methods for processing big data and a manager.Comment: conferenc

Heavy Meson Production in NN Collisions with Polarized Beam and Target -- A new facility for COSY

The study of near--threshold meson production in pp and pd collisions involving polarized beams and polarized targets offers the rare opportunity to gain insight into short--range features of the nucleon--nucleon interaction. The Cooler Synchrotron COSY at FZ--J\"ulich is a unique environment to perform such studies. Measurements of polarization observables require a cylindrically symmetrical detector, capable to measure the momenta and the directions of outgoing charged hadrons. The wide energy range of COSY leads to momenta of outgoing protons to be detected in a single meson production reaction between 300 and 2500 MeV/c. Scattering angles of protons to be covered extend to about $45^{\circ}$ in the laboratory system. An azimuthal angular coverage of the device around 98% seems technically achievable. The required magnetic spectrometer could consist of a superconducting toroid, providing fields around 3 T.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Czechoslovak Journal of Physic

The Economic Rationale for Agricultural Regeneration and Rural Infrastructure Investment in South Africa

This paper informs government policy insofar as it relates to the agricultural and rural development sectors and infrastructure investment within these sectors. The paper first quantifies the role of agriculture in the South African economy. This is done within the context of, inter alia, food security, agriculture’s contribution to gross domestic product (GDP), economic linkages and multipliers with respect to the agricultural sector, as well as agriculture’s employment creation and external stabilisation capacity. Investment in the agricultural and rural sectors are then analysed with a view of supporting the argument that agriculture’s role in the economy is sufficiently important to warrant regenerative strategies, including renewed emphasis on agricultural and rural infrastructure investment by South African policy makers. The quantification of the agricultural sector in relation to the total economy and that of agricultural and rural infrastructure investment are investigated against the backdrop of declining government support, increasing production risks due to a variety of exogenous events like climate change, and increasing dynamic trade impacts. In this paper, the authors offer both supporting arguments in terms of current economic policy and recommendations for more decisive policy measures aimed at agricultural regeneration and rural infrastructure investment.

Phase reconstruction of strong-field excited systems by transient-absorption spectroscopy

We study the evolution of a V-type three-level system, whose two resonances are coherently excited and coupled by two ultrashort laser pump and probe pulses, separated by a varying time delay. We relate the quantum dynamics of the excited multi-level system to the absorption spectrum of the transmitted probe pulse. In particular, by analyzing the quantum evolution of the system, we interpret how atomic phases are differently encoded in the time-delay-dependent spectral absorption profiles when the pump pulse either precedes or follows the probe pulse. We experimentally apply this scheme to atomic Rb, whose fine-structure-split $5s\,^2S_{1/2}\rightarrow 5p\,^2P_{1/2}$ and $5s\,^2S_{1/2}\rightarrow 5p\,^2P_{3/2}$ transitions are driven by the combined action of a pump pulse of variable intensity and a delayed probe pulse. The provided understanding of the relationship between quantum phases and absorption spectra represents an important step towards full time-dependent phase reconstruction (quantum holography) of bound-state wave-packets in strong-field light-matter interactions with atoms, molecules and solids.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Deterministic Entanglement of Assistance and Monogamy Constraints

Certain quantum information tasks require entanglement of assistance, namely a reduction of a tripartite entangled state to a bipartite entangled state via local measurements. We establish that 'concurrence of assistance' (CoA) identifies capabilities and limitations to producing pure bipartite entangled states from pure tripartite entangled states and prove that CoA is an entanglement monotone for $(2\times2\times n)$-dimensional pure states. Moreover, if the CoA for the pure tripartite state is at least as large as the concurrence of the desired pure bipartite state, then the former may be transformed to the latter via local operations and classical communication, and we calculate the maximum probability for this transformation when this condition is not met.Comment: 5 pages, no figure

Why Customers Value Mass-customized Products: The Importance of Process Effort and Enjoyment

We test our hypotheses on 186 participants designing their own scarves with an MC toolkit. After completing the process, they submitted binding bids for "their" products in Vickrey auctions. We therefore observe real buying behavior, not merely stated intentions. We find that the subjective value of a self-designed product (i.e., one's bid in the course of the auction) is indeed not only impacted by the preference fit the customer expects it to deliver, but also by (1) the process enjoyment the customer reports, (2) the interaction of preference fit and process enjoyment, and (3) the interaction of preference fit and perceived process effort. In addition to its main effect, we interpret preference fit as a moderator of the valuegenerating effect of process evaluation: In cases where the outcome of the process is perceived as positive (high preference fit), the customer also interprets process effort as a positive accomplishment, and this positive affect adds (further) value to the product. It appears that the perception of the self-design process as a good or bad experience is partly constructed on the basis of the outcome of the process. In the opposite case (low preference fit), effort creates a negative affect which further reduces the subjective value of the product. Likewise, process enjoyment is amplified by preference fit, although enjoyment also has a significant main effect, which means that regardless of the outcome, customers attribute higher value to a self-designed product if they enjoy the process. The importance of the self-design process found in this study bears clear relevance for companies which offer or plan to offer MC systems. It is not sufficient to design MC toolkits in such a way that they allow customers to design products according to their preferences. The affect caused by this process is also highly important. Toolkits should therefore stimulate positive affective reactions and at the same time keep negative affect to a minimum. (authors' abstract

Small-Scale Interstellar Na I Structure Toward M92

We have used integral field echelle spectroscopy with the DensePak fiber-optic array on the KPNO WIYN telescope to observe the central 27" x 43" of the globular cluster M92 in the Na I D wavelength region at a spatial resolution of 4". Two interstellar Na I absorption components are evident in the spectra at LSR velocities of 0 km/s (Cloud 1) and -19 km/s (Cloud 2). Substantial strength variations in both components are apparent down to scales limited by the fiber-to-fiber separations. The derived Na I column densities differ by a factor of 4 across the Cloud 1 absorption map and by a factor of 7 across the Cloud 2 map. Using distance upper limits of 400 and 800 pc for Cloud 1 and Cloud 2, respectively, the absorption maps indicate structure in the ISM down to scales of 1600 and 3200 AU. The fiber-to-fiber Na I column density differences toward M92 are comparable to those found in a similar study of the ISM toward the globular cluster M15. Overall, the structures in the interstellar components toward M92 have significantly lower column densities than those toward M15. We interpret these low column density structures as small-scale turbulent variations in the gas and compare them to the larger-scale, higher column density variations toward M15, which may be the hallmarks of actual H I structures.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Cdc42 is not essential for filopodium formation, directed migration, cell polarization, and mitosis in fibroblastoid cells

Udgivelsesdato: 2005-OctCdc42 is a small GTPase involved in the regulation of the cytoskeleton and cell polarity. To test whether Cdc42 has an essential role in the formation of filopodia or directed cell migration, we generated Cdc42-deficient fibroblastoid cells by conditional gene inactivation. We report here that loss of Cdc42 did not affect filopodium or lamellipodium formation and had no significant influence on the speed of directed migration nor on mitosis. Cdc42-deficient cells displayed a more elongated cell shape and had a reduced area. Furthermore, directionality during migration and reorientation of the Golgi apparatus into the direction of migration was decreased. However, expression of dominant negative Cdc42 in Cdc42-null cells resulted in strongly reduced directed migration, severely reduced single cell directionality, and complete loss of Golgi polarization and of directionality of protrusion formation toward the wound, as well as membrane blebbing. Thus, our data show that besides Cdc42 additional GTPases of the Rho-family, which share GEFs with Cdc42, are involved in the establishment and maintenance of cell polarity during directed migration

On the Correlated X-ray and Optical Evolution of SS Cygni

We have analyzed the variability and spectral evolution of the prototype dwarf nova system SS Cygni using RXTE data and AAVSO observations. A series of pointed RXTE/PCA observations allow us to trace the evolution of the X-ray spectrum of SS Cygni in unprecedented detail, while 6 years of optical AAVSO and RXTE/ASM light curves show long-term patterns. Employing a technique in which we stack the X-ray flux over multiple outbursts, phased according to the optical light curve, we investigate the outburst morphology. We find that the 3-12 keV X-ray flux is suppressed during optical outbursts, a behavior seen previously, but only in a handful of cycles. The several outbursts of SS Cygni observed with the more sensitive RXTE/PCA also show a depression of the X-rays during optical outburst. We quantify the time lags between the optical and X-ray outbursts, and the timescales of the X-ray recovery from outburst. The optical light curve of SS Cygni exhibits brief anomalous outbursts. During these events the hard X-rays and optical flux increase together. The long-term data suggest that the X-rays decline between outburst. Our results are in general agreement with modified disk instability models (DIM), which invoke a two-component accretion flow consisting of a cool optically thick accretion disk truncated at an inner radius, and a quasi-spherical hot corona-like flow extending to the surface of the white dwarf. We discuss our results in the framework of one such model, involving the evaporation of the inner part of the optically thick accretion disk, proposed by Meyer & Meyer-Hofmeister (1994).Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in Ap