5,959 research outputs found
Virtual Proximity to Promote Expatriate Cultural Adjustment, Innovation, and the Reduction of Stress Levels
Given the dramatic increase in the number of expatriates living and working abroad, there is a need to advance the research into how to make sure these employees achieve success on their assignments. Often, these expatriates assume managerial roles and are intended to be the gatekeepers of information. Typically, this information is necessary for the success of their colleagues, in both their home country and their host country. The expatriate’s role is to facilitate the integration of organizational knowledge from both their home and host countries, as well as key sources in their host country’s local environment. However, historically, there has been an exceptionally high failure rate in expatriate engagements. There are various factors discussed in the literature related to this failure rate including the stress of cultural integration and isolation from family. This often interferes with the expatriate being able to perform of their key responsibilities, which is to innovate. This research will launch pilot studies to investigate the use of social media, and computer mediated communications, to develop virtual proximity, its effects on cultural integration, the maintenance of professional relationships on a global scale, and its effect on the reduction of stress and the innovation process
Supergravity Inflation Free from Harmful Relics
We present a realistic supergravity inflation model which is free from the
overproduction of potentially dangerous relics in cosmology, namely moduli and
gravitinos which can lead to the inconsistencies with the predictions of baryon
asymmetry and nucleosynthesis. The radiative correction turns out to play a
crucial role in our analysis which raises the mass of supersymmetry breaking
field to intermediate scale. We pay a particular attention to the non-thermal
production of gravitinos using the non-minimal Kahler potential we obtained
from loop correction. This non-thermal gravitino production however is
diminished because of the relatively small scale of inflaton mass and small
amplitudes of hidden sector fields.Comment: 10 pages, revtex, 1 eps figure, references added, conclusion section
expande
Relaxing the Cosmological Moduli Problem
Typically the moduli fields acquire mass m =C H in the early universe, which
shifts the position of the minimum of their effective potential and leads to an
excessively large energy density of the oscillating moduli fields at the later
stages of the evolution of the universe. This constitutes the cosmological
moduli problem, or Polonyi field problem. We show that the cosmological moduli
problem can be solved or at least significantly relaxed in the theories in
which C >> 1, as well as in some models with C << 1.Comment: 9 pages, 3 Postscript figure
Brighter prospects? Assessing the franchise advantage using census data
This paper uses Census micro data to examine how starting a business as a franchise rather than an independent business affects its survival and growth prospects. We assess factors that influence the decision to become a franchisee and use various empirical approaches to correct for selection bias in our performance analyses. We find that franchised businesses on average exhibit higher survival rates than independent businesses, but importantly, the difference is small compared to claims in the trade press. The effect is also short lived: conditional on surviving a year or two, we no longer find survival (or growth) differences. We then explore two potential sources for this small survival advantage, namely franchisors’ screening process and the benefits arising from the brand and business know-how provided by franchisors. We find evidence that both of the sources contribute to the franchising advantage
The CMS Tracker Readout Front End Driver
The Front End Driver, FED, is a 9U 400mm VME64x card designed for reading out
the Compact Muon Solenoid, CMS, silicon tracker signals transmitted by the
APV25 analogue pipeline Application Specific Integrated Circuits. The FED
receives the signals via 96 optical fibers at a total input rate of 3.4 GB/sec.
The signals are digitized and processed by applying algorithms for pedestal and
common mode noise subtraction. Algorithms that search for clusters of hits are
used to further reduce the input rate. Only the cluster data along with trigger
information of the event are transmitted to the CMS data acquisition system
using the S-LINK64 protocol at a maximum rate of 400 MB/sec. All data
processing algorithms on the FED are executed in large on-board Field
Programmable Gate Arrays. Results on the design, performance, testing and
quality control of the FED are presented and discussed
Relating PH and Ion Release from Ga2O3-Na 2O-CaO-ZnO-SiO2 Bioactive Glasses
Three glasses were designed for this study, including one Ga-free glass (Control), and two Ga-containing glasses (TGa-1, TGa-2). In the Ga-containing glasses, Ga2O3 is included at the expense of ZnO. This study focuses on the relation between pH and ion concentration present in solution in which these bioactive glasses have been submerged for periods of 1, 7, and 14 days. © 2013 IEEE
The Structural Characterization of Ga 2O 3-Na 2O-CaO-ZnO-SiO 2 Bioactive Glasses
The characterization of bioactive glasses in which zinc (Zn) has been incrementally replaced by gallium (Ga). © 2012 IEEE
Comparison of a SiO2-CaO-ZnO-SrO Glass Polyalkenoate Cement to Commercial Dental Materials: Ion Release, Biocompatibility and Antibacterial Properties
Ion Release and biocompatibility of a CaO-SrO-ZnO-SiO2 (BT 101) based glass polyalkenoate cement (GPC) was compared against commercial GPCs, Fuji IX and Ketac Molar. The radiopacity (R) was similar for each material, 2.0-2.8. Ion release was evaluated on each material over 1, 7, 30 and 90 days. BT 101 release included Ca (23 mg/L), Sr (23 mg/L) Zn (13 mg/L), Si (203 mg/L). Fuji IX release includes Ca (0.7 mg/L), Al (3 mg/L) Si (26 mg/L), Na (60 mg/L) and P (0.5 mg/L) while Ketac Molar release includes Ca (1 mg/L), Al (0.6 mg/L) Si (23 mg/L), Na (76 mg/L) and P (0.7 mg/L). Simulated body fluid trials revealed CaP surface precipitation on BT 101. No evidence of precipitation was found on Fuji IX or Ketac Molar. Cytotoxicity testing found similar cell viability values for each material (~60 %, P = 1.000). Antibacterial testing determined a reduced CFU count with BT 101 (2.5 x 103) when compared to the control bacteria (2.4 x 104), Fuji IX (1.5 x 104) and Ketac Molar (1.2 x 104). © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Structures for Knowledge Co-creation Between Organisations and the Public
A definitive version of this conference paper is available in the ACM Digital Library http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2556420.2558854© ACM 2014Social computing technologies are emerging to support innovative new relationships between organisations and the public. Inspired by concepts such as collective intelligence and crowdsourcing, diverse organisations are exploring new ways to increase engagement with the public, collect localised knowledge, or leverage human cognition and creativity. The COP2014 workshop will assimilate the craft understanding and experimentation underpinning innovations in relationships between public and professional realms. We aim to provide an opportunity for discussion and to build understanding of the principles of making these sociotechnical systems work, and discuss possible designs and opportunities that may be valuable and remain underexplored. As a tangible outcome, our main goal will be to co-author a paper discussing our positions on current systems and future visions, for submission to Communications of the ACM. We welcome participation from interested organisations, alongside those conducting research in this area. Topics of interest include: How can systems be designed for participation that is beneficial to individuals and organisations? How do we draw boundaries between ‘official’ and externally-generated knowledge? How can professional activities connect with the just-in-time, emergent nature of amateur interactions?RCUK Horizon Hu
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