2,323 research outputs found
Linking eCommerce and human resource strategies: a case study in a large Australian retail bank
The implementation of eCommerce technologies has considerably changed how employees in the banking industry interact with customers. For example, some customers use electronic banking applications to such an extent that they find little or no need to go into a branch. This change has had a significant impact on the way that jobs are designed and the way that employees are being managed. The preliminary findings from the case study of a large bank in Australia indicate that moving customers out of the branch to an online environment has created unforeseen issues for the way employees interact with customers and this in turn has changed the way that they do their jobs. The key challenge for banks in the future is how to form effective relationships with customers without some kind of face-to-face interaction. This impacts how organisations recruit and retain their staff as well as the level and type of skills required for jobs redesigned after the implementation of eCommerce applications. It is also an important factor in employee satisfaction.<br /
No evidence of quantitative signal honesty across species of aposematic burnet moths (Lepidoptera: Zygaenidae)
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.Many defended species use conspicuous visual warning signals to deter potential predators from attacking. Traditional theory holds that these signals should converge on similar forms, yet variation in visual traits and the levels of defensive chemicals is common, both within and between species. It is currently unclear how the strength of signals and potency of defences might be related: conflicting theories suggest that aposematic signals should be quantitatively honest, or, in contrast, that investment in one component should be prioritised over the other, while empirical tests have yielded contrasting results. Here, we advance this debate by examining the relationship between defensive chemicals and signal properties in a family of aposematic Lepidoptera, accounting for phylogenetic relationships and quantifying coloration from the perspective of relevant predators. We test for correlations between toxin levels and measures of wing colour across 14 species of day-flying burnet and forester moths (Lepidoptera: Zygaenidae), protected by highly aversive cyanogenic glucosides, and find no clear evidence of quantitative signal honesty. Significant relationships between toxin levels and coloration vary between sexes and sampling years, and several trends run contrary to expectations for signal honesty. Although toxin concentration is positively correlated with increasing luminance contrast in forewing pattern in one year, higher toxin levels are also associated with paler and less chromatically salient markings, at least in females, in another year. Our study also serves to highlight important factors, including sex-specific trends and seasonal variation, that should be accounted for in future work on signal honesty in aposematic species.The authors were funded by the BBSRC (SWBio DTP studentship, ref. 1355867) and Danish Council for Independent Research (DFF–1323-00088)
Ab initio calculation of the anomalous Hall conductivity by Wannier interpolation
The intrinsic anomalous Hall effect in ferromagnets depends on subtle
spin-orbit-induced effects in the electronic structure, and recent ab-initio
studies found that it was necessary to sample the Brillouin zone at millions of
k-points to converge the calculation. We present an efficient first-principles
approach for computing the anomalous Hall conductivity. We start out by
performing a conventional electronic-structure calculation including spin-orbit
coupling on a uniform and relatively coarse k-point mesh. From the resulting
Bloch states, maximally-localized Wannier functions are constructed which
reproduce the ab-initio states up to the Fermi level. The Hamiltonian and
position-operator matrix elements, needed to represent the energy bands and
Berry curvatures, are then set up between the Wannier orbitals. This completes
the first stage of the calculation, whereby the low-energy ab-initio problem is
transformed into an effective tight-binding form. The second stage only
involves Fourier transforms and unitary transformations of the small matrices
set up in the first stage. With these inexpensive operations, the quantities of
interest are interpolated onto a dense k-point mesh and used to evaluate the
anomalous Hall conductivity as a Brillouin zone integral. The present scheme,
which also avoids the cumbersome summation over all unoccupied states in the
Kubo formula, is applied to bcc Fe, giving excellent agreement with
conventional, less efficient first-principles calculations. Remarkably, we find
that more than 99% of the effect can be recovered by keeping a set of terms
depending only on the Hamiltonian matrix elements, not on matrix elements of
the position operator.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure
Existence of the Stark-Wannier quantum resonances
In this paper we prove the existence of the Stark-Wannier quantum resonances
for one-dimensional Schrodinger operators with smooth periodic potential and
small external homogeneous electric field. Such a result extends the existence
result previously obtained in the case of periodic potentials with a finite
number of open gaps.Comment: 30 pages, 1 figur
A particle system with explosions: law of large numbers for the density of particles and the blow-up time
Consider a system of independent random walks in the discrete torus with
creation-annihilation of particles and possible explosion of the total number
of particles in finite time. Rescaling space and rates for
diffusion/creation/annihilation of particles, we obtain a stong law of large
numbers for the density of particles in the supremum norm. The limiting object
is a classical solution to the semilinear heat equation u_t =u_{xx} + f(u). If
f(u)=u^p, 1<p \le 3, we also obtain a law of large numbers for the explosion
time
Many-body position operator in lattice fermionic systems with periodic boundary conditions
A total position operator in the position representation is derived for
lattice fermionic systems with periodic boundary conditions. The operator is
shown to be Hermitian, the generator of translations in momentum space, and its
time derivative is shown to correspond to the total current operator in a
periodic system. The operator is such that its moments can be calculated up to
any order. To demonstrate its utility finite size scaling is applied to the
Brinkman-Rice transition as well as metallic and insulating Gutzwiller
wavefunctions.Comment: to appear in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General
(reference will be added later
Tilting instability and other anomalies in the flux-lattice in some magnetic superconductors
The flux-line lattice in the compound , which has a tendency to
ferromagnetic order in the a-b plane is studied with external magnetic field
direction close to the c-axis. We show the existence of an instability where
the direction of flux-lines spontaneously tilts away from that of the applied
field near the onset of ferromagnetic order. The enhanced fluctuations in the
flux lattice and the square flux lattice recently observed are explained and
further experiments suggested.Comment: 12 pages, Latex file, no figur
Nonadiabatic wavepacket dynamics: k-space formulation
The time evolution of wavepackets in crystals in the presence of a
homogeneous electric field is formulated in k-space in a numerically tractable
form. The dynamics is governed by separate equations for the motion of the
waveform in k-space and for the evolution of the underlying Bloch-like states.
A one-dimensional tight-binding model is studied numerically, and both Bloch
oscillations and Zener tunneling are observed. The long-lived Bloch
oscillations of the wavepacket center under weak fields are accompanied by
oscillations in its spatial spread. These are analyzed in terms of a k-space
expression for the spread having contributions from both the quantum metric and
the Berry connection of the Bloch states. We find that when sizeable spread
oscillations do occur, they are mostly due to the latter term
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