29,840 research outputs found
Agency Risks in Outsourcing Corporate Real Estate Functions
Firms outsource business functions to focus on core competencies and cut operating expenses. However, companies must consider agency costs in determining the optimal staffing/outsourcing balance. Analysis of the views of corporate real estate managers and real estate service providers indicate that although they share a common vision of the role of corporate real estate, providers focus more on traditional real estate tasks than on corporate business strategy. The optimum balance of staffing/outsourcing may consist of a corporate real estate staff that understands the overall corporate strategy and devotes its resources to strategic planning, program development, contracting, and monitoring outsourced tasks.
Use of cohesive elements in fatigue analysis
Cohesive laws describe the resistance to incipient separation
of material surfaces. A cohesive finite element
is formulated on the basis of a particular cohesive
law. Cohesive elements are placed at the boundary
between adjacent standard volume finite elements
to model fatigue damage that leads to fracture at the
separation of the element boundaries per the cohesive
law. In this work, a cohesive model for fatigue
crack initiation is taken to be the irreversible loadingunloading
hysteresis that represents fatigue damage
occuring due to cyclic loads leading to the initiation of
small cracks. Various cohesive laws are reviewed and
one is selected that incorporates a hysteretic cyclic
loading that accounts for energetic dissipative mechanisms.
A mathematical representation is developed
based on an exponential effective load-separation cohesive
relationship. A three-dimensional cohesive element
is defined using this compliance relationship integrated
at four points on the mid-surface of the area
element. Implementation into finite element software
is discussed and particular attention is applied to numerical
convergence issues as the inflection point between
loading and 'unloading in the cohesive law is
encountered. A simple example of a displacementcontrolled
fatigue test is presented in a finite element
simulation. Comments are made on applications of
the method to prediction of fatigue life for engineering
structures such as pressure vessels and piping
A preliminary assessment of age at death determination using the nuclear weapons testing 14C activity of dentine and enamel
Calibration (using CALIBomb) of radiocarbon measurements made on the enamel of human teeth from people
born during the nuclear era typically produce 2 possible age ranges that potentially reflect the period of tooth formation. These
ranges correspond to periods before and after the 1963 atmospheric 14C maximum. Further measurements made on the
collagen component of the combined dentine and cementum from the roots of the same teeth enable the appropriate age range
to be selected. Using this range and the formation times for individual teeth, we estimated the year of birth of the individuals
and compared these to the known dates of birth. The results were relatively accurate and confirmed those of a previous study
by another research group. The present study demonstrates that it is possible to produce a good estimate of the year of birth
from a single tooth
Time, Place, Space, Technology and Corporate Real Estate Strategy
Few corporations take a strategic approach to managing real estate. This survey finds that corporate real estate managers and service providers in Australia, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the United States continue to fulfill a traditional transactional role within their organizations. Real estate is not cooperating with other parts of the organization to provide their companies with flexibility that could increase competitiveness. While the use of technology is growing, real estate managers remain uncertain about its role in their future. Corporate real estate managers believe that to be effective in the future they will need strategic planning skills and business knowledge.
Bayesian inference with an adaptive proposal density for GARCH models
We perform the Bayesian inference of a GARCH model by the Metropolis-Hastings
algorithm with an adaptive proposal density. The adaptive proposal density is
assumed to be the Student's t-distribution and the distribution parameters are
evaluated by using the data sampled during the simulation. We apply the method
for the QGARCH model which is one of asymmetric GARCH models and make empirical
studies for for Nikkei 225, DAX and Hang indexes. We find that autocorrelation
times from our method are very small, thus the method is very efficient for
generating uncorrelated Monte Carlo data. The results from the QGARCH model
show that all the three indexes show the leverage effect, i.e. the volatility
is high after negative observations
Effects to Scalar Meson Decays of Strong Mixing between Low and High Mass Scalar Mesons
We analyze the mass spectroscopy of low and high mass scalar mesons and get
the result that the coupling strengths of the mixing between low and high mass
scalar mesons are very strong and the strengths of mixing for scalar
mesons and those of I=0 scalar mesons are almost same. Next, we analyze the
decay widths and decay ratios of these mesons and get the results that the
coupling constants for which represents the coupling of high
mass scalar meson -> two pseudoscalar mesons are almost same as the
coupling for the I=0. On the other hand, the coupling constant for
which represents the low mass scalar meson -> are far
from the coupling constant for I=0. We consider a resolution for this
discrepancy. Coupling constant for glueball -> is smaller than
the coupling . is .Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure
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