Strategic opportunities: Leveraging decision-making indicators

Politicians tend to use the word opportunity as a catch-all term. This paper is contending that opportunities can be classified as tangible or intangible. Lawmakers do not appear to consider the idea that opportunities are hierarchical or link to a firms’ ability to leverage opportunities. The context for the paper is Brexit and its strategic implications. Furthermore, a hard Brexit will throw up more intangible opportunities than tangible opportunities, which suggests that firms will require different strategies for hard Brexit and soft Brexit environments. This paper suggests that there are two possible dominant strategies available to executives, namely leverage logic and opportunity logic, and the application of the strategies is dependent on the type of Brexit situation. The time horizon to develop and refine the dominant strategies is dependent on the type of Brexit environment, with a hard Brexit requiring the longest time horizon

How to Maximize the Capacity of General Quantum Noisy Channels

A general quantum noisy channel is analyzed, wherein the transmitted qubits may experience symmetry-breaking decoherence, along with memory effects. We find the optimal basis not to be fully entangled, but a combination of factorized and partially-entangled states in the presence of memory, asymmetry and the state-bias of the noise. Capacity-maximization is shown to be achievable by combining temporal shaping of the transmitted qubits and optimal basis selection.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

The Influence of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Social Media on the Strategy Formulation Process

The current theory on strategy formulation is based significantly on environmental analysis and leveraging strategic capability. There is limited understanding of how corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social media strategies could develop the strategy formulation to improve strategic outcomes. The input into the strategic formulation process does not tend to take account of customers’ inclination for CSR practices and policies. This is particularly important for consumers who can spurn organisations that do not incorporate ethical practices in their core values. The paper aims to show that social media is an inclusive tool, because of the duplex communication techniques that enhance it, and CSR is complementary to building a robust strategic planning process. The methodology is a qualitative case study using a reflective perspective based on a complete participant role. The results demonstrate that there are challenges in operating a strategic planning process that is situated in an uncertain, volatile and dynamic business environment; it requires an integrated partnership between the inter-organisational actors and other stakeholders. Social media is the integrator of resources and CSR helps to build relationships, acting as a reinforcer of trust

The role of tides in bottom water export from the western Ross Sea

Approximately 25% of Antarctic Bottom Water has its origin as dense water exiting the western Ross Sea, but little is known about what controls the release of dense water plumes from the Drygalski Trough. We deployed two moorings on the slope to investigate the water properties of the bottom water exiting the region at Cape Adare. Salinity of the bottom water has increased in 2018 from the previous measurements in 2008–2010, consistent with the observed salinity increase in the Ross Sea. We find High Salinity Shelf Water from the Drygalski Trough contributes to two pulses of dense water at Cape Adare. The timing and magnitude of the pulses is largely explained by an inverse relationship with the tidal velocity in the Ross Sea. We suggest that the diurnal and low frequency tides in the western Ross Sea may control the magnitude and timing of the dense water outflow

The soil and plant biogeochemistry sampling design for The National Ecological Observatory Network

Human impacts on biogeochemical cycles are evident around the world, from changes to forest structure and function due to atmospheric deposition, to eutrophication of surface waters from agricultural effluent, and increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) will contribute to understanding human effects on biogeochemical cycles from local to continental scales. The broad NEON biogeochemistry measurement design focuses on measuring atmospheric deposition of reactive mineral compounds and CO2 fluxes, ecosystem carbon (C) and nutrient stocks, and surface water chemistry across 20 eco‐climatic domains within the United States for 30 yr. Herein, we present the rationale and plan for the ground‐based measurements of C and nutrients in soils and plants based on overarching or “high‐level” requirements agreed upon by the National Science Foundation and NEON. The resulting design incorporates early recommendations by expert review teams, as well as recent input from the larger natural sciences community that went into the formation and interpretation of the requirements, respectively. NEON\u27s efforts will focus on a suite of data streams that will enable end‐users to study and predict changes to biogeochemical cycling and transfers within and across air, land, and water systems at regional to continental scales. At each NEON site, there will be an initial, one‐time effort to survey soil properties to 1 m (including soil texture, bulk density, pH, baseline chemistry) and vegetation community structure and diversity. A sampling program will follow, focused on capturing long‐term trends in soil C, nitrogen (N), and sulfur stocks, isotopic composition (of C and N), soil N transformation rates, phosphorus pools, and plant tissue chemistry and isotopic composition (of C and N). To this end, NEON will conduct extensive measurements of soils and plants within stratified random plots distributed across each site. The resulting data will be a new resource for members of the scientific community interested in addressing questions about long‐term changes in continental‐scale biogeochemical cycles, and is predicted to inspire further process‐based research

Zeta functions that hear the shape of a Riemann surface

To a compact hyperbolic Riemann surface, we associate a finitely summable spectral triple whose underlying topological space is the limit set of a corresponding Schottky group, and whose ``Riemannian'' aspect (Hilbert space and Dirac operator) encode the boundary action through its Patterson-Sullivan measure. We prove that the ergodic rigidity theorem for this boundary action implies that the zeta functions of the spectral triple suffice to characterize the (anti-)conformal isomorphism class of the corresponding Riemann surface. Thus, you can hear the shape of a Riemann surface, by listening to a suitable spectral triple.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure

Big data approximations: brand communities and AI

The quality of data and information located in brand communities can be ensured by checking for fake reviews or fake information. Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms have the potential to resolve the ethical issues of fake information and to analyse informational trends accurately and in a timely manner. Thus, the application of AI in brand communities could give firms a sustainable competitive advantage. Also, brand communities extend over many geographical locations, which adds to the richness of the data that could provide valuable insights into products and services. In this application, AI would include an ethical memory and the ability to analyse and synthesise information. Thus, there will be an interface between the algorithm that checks the integrity of the information and the algorithm that analyses the data