727 research outputs found
Financial rogue waves
The financial rogue waves are reported analytically in the nonlinear option
pricing model due to Ivancevic, which is nonlinear wave alternative of the
Black-Scholes model. These solutions may be used to describe the possible
physical mechanisms for rogue wave phenomenon in financial markets and related
fields.Comment: 4 papges, 2 figures, Final version accepted in Commun. Theor. Phys.,
201
Sustainable rural tourism: An indigenous community perspective on positioning rural tourism
It is commonly assumed that formulation of tourism policies and the marketing of destination areas
are dictated by the needs and interests of visitors. Often ignored however, are the views of the local
communities, the roles they play in these processes as well as the impacts on the indigenous communities
and their socio-cultural spaces. Th us this paper presents a study conducted with the indigenous
community of Long Lamai in Malaysia, who has recently ventured into rural tourism. Th e Long Lamai
community has slowly transformed from being solely dependent on hunting gathering to leveraging
on their rich natural sources for a cash income as well as opening up to the outside world. Th e local
community perceives tourism as the best option to sustain and align their lifestyle to their new needs.
However as a remote community, they are also aware of the vulnerabilities due to the rapid development
plans which may bring about adverse eff ects to their present healthy existence. Th e purpose of
this study was twofold: (1) to assess the local community's support for tourism development: and (2)
to explore the perceived positioning of rural tourism by local people. Results showed that the majority
of community members have strong support for tourism development and they are also ready to
face possible challenges that come with this development. Major concern s expressed by community
members include environmental conservation and local cultural protocols
Dimensionality of Communities’ Belief Attitude toward Rural Tourism Development
Rural tourism is becoming increasingly important to the Malaysian economy and tourism product offering. Rural tourism enables tourists to reunite with nature and the culture of the destinations, and that it contributes to the economic and social recovery of the rural areas, as well as to the conservation of the environment and the spreading of local cultures. Nonetheless, development projects are often designed and implemented in which indigenous people have minimal voice in policy and management of it. Tourism which simply transplants urban investment and enterprises to a rural setting does little to improve communities’ incomes. As a result, many indigenous people rightly feel that tourism industry has a poor track record, in disregarding their legitimate interests and rights, and profiting from their cultural knowledge and heritage. The present study in the paper involved looking at validating the dimensionality of the four tourism impact namely, economics, environment, social and cultural impact as perceived by local communities. Data was gathered through a survey using a structured questionnaire and administered to the community members residing at Bario. A series of tests such as factor analysis, correlation, and reliability analysis was conducted to confirm that the instrument is valid (content, construct, convergent, discriminant and nomological) as well as reliable. Implications regarding the value of conducting validity and reliability test for practitioners and researchers are discussed
Quantum state merging and negative information
We consider a quantum state shared between many distant locations, and define
a quantum information processing primitive, state merging, that optimally
merges the state into one location. As announced in [Horodecki, Oppenheim,
Winter, Nature 436, 673 (2005)], the optimal entanglement cost of this task is
the conditional entropy if classical communication is free. Since this quantity
can be negative, and the state merging rate measures partial quantum
information, we find that quantum information can be negative. The classical
communication rate also has a minimum rate: a certain quantum mutual
information. State merging enabled one to solve a number of open problems:
distributed quantum data compression, quantum coding with side information at
the decoder and sender, multi-party entanglement of assistance, and the
capacity of the quantum multiple access channel. It also provides an
operational proof of strong subadditivity. Here, we give precise definitions
and prove these results rigorously.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figure
Financial evaluations of antibiotic stewardship programs:a systematic review
Introduction: There is an increasing awareness to counteract problems due to incorrect antimicrobial use. Interventions that are implemented are often part of an Antimicrobial Stewardship Program (ASPs). Studies publishing results from these interventions are increasing, including reports on the economical effects of ASPs. This review will look at the economical sections of these studies and the methods that were used. Methods: A systematic review was performed of articles found in the PubMed and EMBASE databases published from 2000 until November 2014. Included studies found were scored for various aspects and the quality of the papers was assessed following an appropriate check list (CH EC criteria list). Results: 1233 studies were found, of which 149 were read completely. Ninety-nine were included in the final review. Of these studies, 57 only mentioned the costs associated with the antimicrobial medication. Others also included operational costs (n = 23), costs for hospital stay (n = 18), and/or other costs (n = 19). Nine studies were further assessed for their quality. These studies scored between 2 and 14 out of a potential total score of 19. Conclusions: This review gives an extensive overview of the current financial evaluation of ASPs and the quality of these economical studies. We show that there is still major potential to improve financial evaluations of ASPs. Studies do not use similar nor consistent methods or outcome measures, making it impossible draw sound conclusions and compare different studies. Finally, we make some recommendations for the future
Properties of Cosmic Ray Interactions at PeV Energies
An analysis has been made of the present situation with the high energy
hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus interaction models. As is already known
there are inconsistencies in the interpretation of experimental data on the
primary mass composition, which appear when different EAS components are used
for the analyses, even for the same experiment. In the absence of obvious
experimental defects, there is a clear need for an improvement to the existing
models; we argue that the most promising way is to introduce two effects which
should be present in nucleus-nucleus collisions and have not been allowed for
before. These are: a few percent energy transfer into the EAS electromagnetic
component due to electron-positron pair production or electromagnetic radiation
of quark-gluon plasma and a small slow-down of the cascading process in its
initial stages associated with the extended lifetime of excited nuclear
fragments. The latter process displaces the shower maximum deeper into the
atmosphere.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figures, accepted in Astroparticle Physic
Suppression of type 1 pilus assembly in uropathogenic Escherichia coli by chemical inhibition of subunit polymerization
OBJECTIVES:
To identify and to characterize small-molecule inhibitors that target the subunit polymerization of the type 1 pilus assembly in uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC).
METHODS:
Using an SDS-PAGE-based assay, in silico pre-filtered small-molecule compounds were screened for specific inhibitory activity against the critical subunit polymerization step of the chaperone-usher pathway during pilus biogenesis. The biological activity of one of the compounds was validated in assays monitoring UPEC type 1 pilus biogenesis, type 1 pilus-dependent biofilm formation and adherence to human bladder epithelial cells. The time dependence of the in vivo inhibitory activity and the overall effect of the compound on UPEC growth were determined.
RESULTS:
N-(4-chloro-phenyl)-2-{5-[4-(pyrrolidine-1-sulfonyl)-phenyl]-[1,3,4]oxadiazol-2-yl sulfanyl}-acetamide (AL1) inhibited in vitro pilus subunit polymerization. In bacterial cultures, AL1 disrupted UPEC type 1 pilus biogenesis and pilus-dependent biofilm formation, and resulted in the reduction of bacterial adherence to human bladder epithelial cells, without affecting bacterial cell growth. Bacterial exposure to the inhibitor led to an almost instantaneous loss of type 1 pili.
CONCLUSIONS:
We have identified and characterized a small molecule that interferes with the assembly of type 1 pili. The molecule targets the polymerization step during the subunit incorporation cycle of the chaperone-usher pathway. Our discovery provides new insight into the design and development of novel anti-virulence therapies targeting key virulence factors of bacterial pathogens
Measurement of the B0-anti-B0-Oscillation Frequency with Inclusive Dilepton Events
The - oscillation frequency has been measured with a sample of
23 million \B\bar B pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II
asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. In this sample, we select events in which both B
mesons decay semileptonically and use the charge of the leptons to identify the
flavor of each B meson. A simultaneous fit to the decay time difference
distributions for opposite- and same-sign dilepton events gives ps.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Physical Review Letter
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