Teaching research methods: Introducing a psychogeographical approach

This paper explores teaching business students research methods using a psychogeographical approach, specifically the technique of dérive. It responds to calls for new ways of teaching in higher education and addresses the dearth of literature on teaching undergraduate business students qualitative research methods. Psychogeography challenges the dominance of questionnaires and interviews, introduces students to data variety, problematizes notions of success and illuminates the importance of observation and location. Using two studies with undergraduate students, the authors emphasize place and setting, the perception of purpose, the choice of data, criteria of success and the value of guided reflection and self-reflection in students’ learning. Additionally the data reflect on the way students perceive research about management and the nature of management itself. The paper concludes that the deployment of psychogeography to teach business research methods although complex and fraught with difficulty is nevertheless viable, educationally productive and worthy of further research

Enhanced Higgs boson production and avoidance of CP-violation and FCNC in the MPP inspired 2HDM

The multiple point principle (MPP) can be used to suppress non--diagonal flavour transitions and CP violation in the two Higgs doublet extension of the standard model. We discuss the quasi--fixed point scenario in the MPP inspired two Higgs doublet model which leads to the enhanced production of Higgs particles at the LHC if the MPP scale is low.Comment: Talk given at the 2007 Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics, Manchester, England, 19-25 July 2007, CERN preprint number added, references update

The elliptic genus of Calabi-Yau 3- and 4-folds, product formulae and generalized Kac-Moody algebras

In this paper the elliptic genus for a general Calabi-Yau fourfold is derived. The recent work of Kawai calculating N=2 heterotic string one-loop threshold corrections with a Wilson line turned on is extended to a similar computation where K3 is replaced by a general Calabi-Yau 3- or 4-fold. In all cases there seems to be a generalized Kac-Moody algebra involved, whose denominator formula appears in the result.Comment: 10 pages, latex, no figure

Crisis as a plague on organisation: Defoe and A Journal of the Plague Year

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to enrich the understanding of current models of organisational response to crises and offer additional perspectives on some of these models. It is also intended to confirm the value of fiction as a truth-seeking and hermeneutic device for enriching the imagination. Design/methodology/approach – The study uses Daniel Defoe’s 1722 novel A Journal of the Plague Year to draw parallels between his portrayal of the London Great Plague of 1665 and the management of modern-day crises. Defoe uses London’s ordeal of the Great Plague to advise those subjected to future crises. Through his representation of plague-ridden streets, Defoe shows stakeholders acting in ways described in current crisis management literature. Findings – The authors note how the management of the Plague crisis was unsuccessful and they challenge the very idea of managing a true crisis. The authors are able to illustrate and offer refinements to the Pearson and Clair (1998) and Janes (2010) models of crisis management as well as confirming the value of their constructs across a lapse of centuries. Research limitations/implications – Although it is an examination of a single novel, the findings suggest value in conceptualising organisational crises in innovative and more imaginative ways. Originality/value – It confirms the heuristic value of using fiction to understand organisational change and adds value to current model

Anharmonic effects in magnetoelastic chains

We describe a new mechanism leading to the formation of rational magnetization plateau phases, which is mainly due to the anharmonic spin-phonon coupling. This anharmonicity produces plateaux in the magnetization curve at unexpected values of the magnetization without explicit magnetic frustration in the Hamiltonian and without an explicit breaking of the translational symmetry. These plateau phases are accompanied by magneto-elastic deformations which are not present in the harmonic case.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

From sine-Gordon to vacuumless systems in flat and curved spacetimes

In this work we start from the Higgs prototype model to introduce a new model, which makes a smooth transition between systems with well located minima and systems that support no minima at all. We implement this possibility using the deformation procedure, which allows the obtention of a sine-Gordon-like model, controlled by a real parameter that gives rise to a family of models, reproducing the sine-Gordon and the so-called vacuumless models. We also study the thick brane scenarios associated with these models and investigate their stability and renormalization group flow. In particular, one shows how gravity can change from the 5-dimensional warped geometry with a single extra dimension of infinite extent to the conventional 5-dimensional Minkowski geometry.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures. Version to appear in EPJ

Elementary solution to the time-independent quantum navigation problem

A quantum navigation problem concerns the identification of a time-optimal Hamiltonian that realizes a required quantum process or task, under the influence of a prevailing ‘background’ Hamiltonian that cannot be manipulated. When the task is to transform one quantum state into another, finding the solution in closed form to the problem is nontrivial even in the case of timeindependent Hamiltonians. An elementary solution, based on trigonometric analysis, is found here when the Hilbert space dimension is two. Difficulties arising from generalizations to higher-dimensional systems are discussed

Concrete - filled steel tube columns - tests compared with Eurocode 4

This paper summarises the data from 1819 tests on concrete-filled steel tube columns and compares their failure load with the prediction of Eurocode 4. The full data is given on the website http://web.ukonline.co.uk/asccs2 . The comparison with Eurocode 4 is discussed and shows that Eurocode 4 can be used with confidence and generally gives good agreement with test results, the average Test/EC4 ratio for all tests being 1.11. The Eurocode 4 limitations on concrete strength could be safely extended to concrete with a cylinder strength of 75 N/mm2 for circular sections and 60 N/mm2 for rectangular sections