The mythological power of hospitality leaders? : a hermeneutical investigation of their reliance on storytelling

Aims to explore how senior leaders in the hospitality industry use storytelling to disseminate their vision to employees. To illustrate how hermeneutics can be used as a method for the interpretation of qualitative data in hospitality management research. A purposeful criterion based sample design was constructed and after a period of sensitisation to their organisations, twenty phenomenological interviews with high level international hospitality industry leaders were conducted. These interviews are analysed using a hermeneutical framework. Storytelling is being used as a strategic method of communication and is fundamental to leadership in the contemporary commercial hospitality industry; stories are used to strengthen and revitalise current norms and values. Stories penetrate organisations and tap into the emotions of employees in order to inspire action and understanding.Hermeneutics is applied clearly and concisely and the paper demonstrates how hermeneutics could easily be adapted for other projects. Clear direction for further research is suggested, exploring the efficaciousness of stories from the listeners' rather than narrator's perspective. This paper does not teach managers how to tell stories, or even make them better storytellers; however, it highlights how storytelling is used by leaders at the apex of the commercial hospitality industry to develop and enhance organisational culture. Within hospitality management research, storytelling has mostly been ignored both as a management tool and as a form of data collection; similarly hermeneutics as a means of data analysis does not feature in the hospitality management literature

A reiterative method for calculating the early bactericidal activity of antituberculosis drugs.

Studies of early bactericidal activity (EBA) are important in the rapid evaluation of new antituberculosis drugs. Historically, these have concentrated on the log fall in the viable count in sputum during the first 48 hours of therapy. In this paper, we provide a mathematical model that suggests that the viable count in sputum follows an exponential decay curve with the equation V = S + Me(-kt) (where V is the viable count, M the population of bacteria susceptible to the test drug, S the population susceptible only to sterilizing agents, t the day of sputum collection as related to start of therapy, k the rate constant for the bacteria killed each day, and e the Napierian constant). We demonstrate that data from clinical trials fits the exponential decay model. We propose that future EBA studies should be performed by measuring daily quantitative counts for at least 5 days. We also propose that the comparison of the early bactericidal activity of antituberculosis drugs should be evaluated using the time taken to reduce the viable count by 50% (vt(50)). A further reiterative refinement following a rule set based on statistically the best fit to the exponential decay model is described that will allow investigators to identify anomalous results and thus enhance the accuracy in measuring early bactericidal activity

Analytical results for a Fokker-Planck equation in the small noise limit

We present analytical results for the lowest cumulants of a stochastic process described by a Fokker-Planck equation with nonlinear drift. We show that, in the limit of small fluctuations, the mean, the variance and the covariance of the process can be expressed in compact form with the help of the Lambert W function. As an application, we discuss the interplay of noise and nonlinearity far from equilibrium.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Leadership and storytelling : perspectives from senior hospitality management

This paper presents initial findings on how twenty leaders, at the highest level in the international hospitality industry, use stories to create, disseminate and sustain corporate culture within their organisations. The paper focuses on a method for the application of hermeneutics and demonstrates, through analysing phenomenological interviews with leaders, that storytelling is an important strategic method of communication. Not only does the paper present insights on how storytelling is fundamental to leadership in the contemporary commercial hospitality industry it also reveals, through empirical research, how stories can be used as a data source

StochKit-FF: Efficient Systems Biology on Multicore Architectures

The stochastic modelling of biological systems is an informative, and in some cases, very adequate technique, which may however result in being more expensive than other modelling approaches, such as differential equations. We present StochKit-FF, a parallel version of StochKit, a reference toolkit for stochastic simulations. StochKit-FF is based on the FastFlow programming toolkit for multicores and exploits the novel concept of selective memory. We experiment StochKit-FF on a model of HIV infection dynamics, with the aim of extracting information from efficiently run experiments, here in terms of average and variance and, on a longer term, of more structured data.Comment: 14 pages + cover pag

Analysis of multiple incidence angle SIR-B data for determining forest stand characteristics

For the first time in the U.S. space program, digital synthetic aperture radar (SR) data were obtained from different incidence angles during Space Shuttle Mission 41-G. Shuttle Imaging Radar-B (SIR-B) data were obtained at incidence angles of 58 deg., 45 deg., and 28 deg., on October 9, 10, and 11, 1984, respectively, for a predominantly forested study area in northern Florida. Cloud-free LANDSAT Thematic Mapper (T.M.) data were obtained over the same area on October 12. The SIR-B data were processed and then digitally registered to the LANDSAT T.M. data by scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This is the only known digitally registered SIR-B and T.M. data set for which the data were obtained nearly simultaneously. The data analysis of this information is discussed

Stability Properties of Nonhyperbolic Chaotic Attractors under Noise

We study local and global stability of nonhyperbolic chaotic attractors contaminated by noise. The former is given by the maximum distance of a noisy trajectory from the noisefree attractor, while the latter is provided by the minimal escape energy necessary to leave the basin of attraction, calculated with the Hamiltonian theory of large fluctuations. We establish the important and counterintuitive result that both concepts may be opposed to each other. Even when one attractor is globally more stable than another one, it can be locally less stable. Our results are exemplified with the Holmes map, for two different sets of parameter, and with a juxtaposition of the Holmes and the Ikeda maps. Finally, the experimental relevance of these findings is pointed out.Comment: Phys.Rev. Lett., to be publishe

Megawatt solar power systems for lunar surface operations

The work presented here shows that a solar power system can provide power on the order of one megawatt to a lunar base with a fairly high specific power. The main drawback to using solar power is still the high mass, and therefore, cost of supplying energy storage through the solar night. The use of cryogenic reactant storage in a fuel cell system, however, greatly reduces the total system mass over conventional energy storage schemes