Overcoming Recession through Effective Business Communication Approaches (A Study in Indian Scenario)

No business activity can be completed without effective business communication network. The stage of economic turmoil is the most important time for any organization to regroup its strategy. At this juncture, strong, transparent and constant internal and external communication networks play a vital role. The global meltdown is a blessing in disguise for the organizations to invigorate their business communication network. The present paper aims to study multifarious approaches of Business Communication applied by Indian Organizations to combat the turbulent period of recession in a successful manner.

Rural buyers' perception about mosquito repellants

Mosquito repellants prevent mosquito bites and prevention of "man-mosquito contact" is a critical factor in transmission and spread of any disease through mosquitoes particularly in rural area. There has been a long standing 'bias' towards rural buyers. The rural markets are considered rigid in the nature but it is not the case in real sense. Marketing to rural buyers is not only a challenge to the marketers but to the manufacturers, communicators, national planners and economists as well. That is why it has been necessary to understand the various aspects of selected rural areas and consumption pattern for such a fast growing market i.e. mosquito repellants and rural buyers’ perception towards such urban products. The present paper aims to find out the factors influencing the purchase decisions of rural buyers for mosquito repellants and to study the perceptions of present and potential rural buyers' of selected mosquito repellant brands.mosquito, repellent, malaria, rural market, buyers

Spin-1 chain with spin-1/2 excitations in the bulk

We present a spin-1 chain with a Hamiltonian which has three exactly solvable ground states. Two of these are fully dimerized, analogous to the Majumdar-Ghosh (MG) states of a spin-1/2 chain, while the third is of the Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) type. We use variational and numerical methods to study the low-energy excitations which interpolate between these ground states in different ways. In particular, there is a spin-1/2 excitation which interpolates between the MG and AKLT ground states; this is the lowest excitation of the system and it has a surprisingly small gap. We discuss generalizations of our model of spin fractionalization to higher spin chains and higher dimensions.Comment: 7 pages including 4 figures; this is the published version of the pape

Estimation of Irrigation Water Demand: A Case Study for the Texas High Plains

On the Texas High Plains, water from the Ogallala aquifer is used to supplement irrigation requirements, since annual rainfall is below 20.5 in/ year. This study addresses land and water demand by testing the effects of water costs, crop prices, and technology on water use and crop production acreages.Ogallala, Irrigation, Water Demand, Technology, Agricultural and Food Policy, Production Economics,

Do hedge funds manage their reported returns?

For funds with greater incentives and greater opportunities to inflate returns, we find that (i) returns during December are significantly higher than those during the rest of the year even after controlling for risk in both time-series and the cross-section; (ii) this December spike is greater than that for funds with lower incentives and opportunities to inflate returns. These results suggest that hedge funds manage their returns upwards in an opportunistic fashion in order to earn higher fees. Finally, we provide strong evidence that funds inflate December returns by under-reporting returns earlier in the year but only weak evidence that funds borrow from January returns in the following year

Effect of Agricultural Activity on River Water Quality: A Case Study for the Lower Colorado River Basin

This case study investigates the effect of a change in cropping pattern involving expanded acres of crops for biofuel feedstock, on the discharge of nutrients to rivers. Annual data from 1968-2008 on stream flow, cropped acres, and precipitation for Wharton County, Texas are used. A positive impact of increased corn acreage over this period on river discharge is identified.Biofuels, Stream Flow, Discharge, Production Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Role of managerial incentives and discretion in hedge fund performance

Using a comprehensive hedge fund database, we examine the role of managerial incentives and discretion in hedge fund performance. Hedge funds with greater managerial incentives, proxied by the delta of the option-like incentive fee contracts, higher levels of managerial ownership, and the inclusion of high-water mark provisions in the incentive contracts, are associated with superior performance. The incentive fee percentage rate by itself does not explain performance. We also find that funds with a higher degree of managerial discretion, proxied by longer lockup, notice, and redemption periods, deliver superior performance. These results are robust to using alternative performance measures and controlling for different data-related biases.Dieses Papier untersucht vier Themenbereiche: Erstens werden die Determinanten der Netto-Zuflüsse in Hedgefonds untersucht. Zweitens betrachten wir die Anreize für das Management von Hedgefonds. Drittens untersuchen wir das Verhalten von Hedgefondsinvestoren. Schließlich betrachten wir, was die Performance in der Hedgefondsindustrie treibt. Unsere Untersuchung der Performance-Zufluss Beziehung zeigt, dass Fonds mit bestimmten Eigenschaften größere Zuflüsse haben als andere Fonds. Insbesondere profitieren Fonds mit guter vergangener Performance, stärkeren Anreizen für das Fondsmanagement und niedrigeren Hindernissen beim Abzug von Kapital für Investoren von größeren Zuflüssen. Darüber hinaus analysieren wir, in welcher Beziehung heutige Zuflüsse zur zukünftigen Performance stehen. Wir stellen fest, dass Fonds mit höheren Zuflüssen in der Zukunft eine schlechtere Performance erzielen. Dieses Resultat deutet auf sinkende Skalenerträge in der Hedgefondsindustrie hin. Schließlich können wir zeigen, dass stärkere Anreize für das Fondsmanagement mit einer besseren zukünftigen Performance einhergehen. Daher ist das von uns gefundene Investitionsverhalten von Hedgefondsinvestoren insofern als rational zu bezeichnen, als sie tendenziell mehr Geld in Fonds mit stärkeren Managementanreizen investieren

CT Automated Exposure Control Using A Generalized Detectability Index

Purpose Identifying an appropriate tube current setting can be challenging when using iterative reconstruction due to the varying relationship between spatial resolution, contrast, noise, and dose across different algorithms. This study developed and investigated the application of a generalized detectability index (d\u27gen) to determine the noise parameter to input to existing automated exposure control (AEC) systems to provide consistent image quality (IQ) across different reconstruction approaches. Methods This study proposes a task‐based automated exposure control (AEC) method using a generalized detectability index (d\u27gen). The proposed method leverages existing AEC methods that are based on a prescribed noise level. The generalized d\u27gen metric is calculated using lookup tables of task‐based modulation transfer function (MTF) and noise power spectrum (NPS). To generate the lookup tables, the American College of Radiology CT accreditation phantom was scanned on a multidetector CT scanner (Revolution CT, GE Healthcare) at 120 kV and tube current varied manually from 20 to 240 mAs. Images were reconstructed using a reference reconstruction algorithm and four levels of an in‐house iterative reconstruction algorithm with different regularization strengths (IR1–IR4). The task‐based MTF and NPS were estimated from the measured images to create lookup tables of scaling factors that convert between d\u27gen and noise standard deviation. The performance of the proposed d\u27gen‐AEC method in providing a desired IQ level over a range of iterative reconstruction algorithms was evaluated using the American College of Radiology (ACR) phantom with elliptical shell and using a human reader evaluation on anthropomorphic phantom images. Results The study of the ACR phantom with elliptical shell demonstrated reasonable agreement between the d\u27gen predicted by the lookup table and d\u27 measured in the images, with a mean absolute error of 15% across all dose levels and maximum error of 45% at the lowest dose level with the elliptical shell. For the anthropomorphic phantom study, the mean reader scores for images resulting from the d\u27gen‐AEC method were 3.3 (reference image), 3.5 (IR1), 3.6 (IR2), 3.5 (IR3), and 2.2 (IR4). When using the d\u27gen‐AEC method, the observers’ IQ scores for the reference reconstruction were statistical equivalent to the scores for IR1, IR2, and IR3 iterative reconstructions (P \u3e 0.35). The d\u27gen‐AEC method achieved this equivalent IQ at lower dose for the IR scans compared to the reference scans. Conclusions A novel AEC method, based on a generalized detectability index, was investigated. The proposed method can be used with some existing AEC systems to derive the tube current profile for iterative reconstruction algorithms. The results provide preliminary evidence that the proposed d\u27gen‐AEC can produce similar IQ across different iterative reconstruction approaches at different dose levels

Lepton flavour violation in The Little Higgs model

Little Higgs models with T-parity have a new source of lepton flavour violation. In this paper we consider the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon \gmtwo and the lepton flavour violating decays \mutoeg and \tautomug in Little Higgs model with T-parity \cite{Goyal:2006vq}. Our results shows that present experimental constraints of \mutoeg is much more useful to constrain the new sources of flavour violation which are present in T-parity models.Comment: LaTeX file with 13 eps figures (included

Spectroscopic Identification of a Proto-Cluster at z=2.300: Environmental Dependence of Galaxy Properties at High Redshift

We have discovered a highly significant over-density of galaxies at z=2.300+/-0.015 in the course of a redshift survey designed to select star-forming galaxies in the redshift range z=2.3+/-0.4 in the field of the bright z=2.72 QSO HS1700+643. The structure has a redshift-space galaxy over-density of delta_g,z ~= 7 and an estimated matter over-density in real space of delta_m ~= 1.8, indicating that it will virialize by z~0 with a mass scale of ~= 1.4x10^15 M_sun, that of a rich galaxy cluster. Detailed modeling of the spectral energy distribution -- from the rest-far-UV to the rest-near-IR -- of the 72 spectroscopically confirmed galaxies in this field for which we have obtained K_s and Spitzer/IRAC photometry, allows for a first direct comparison of galaxy properties as a function of large-scale environment at high redshift. We find that galaxies in the proto-cluster environment have mean stellar masses and inferred ages that are ~2 times larger (at z=2.30) than identically UV-selected galaxies outside of the structure, and show that this is consistent with simple theoretical expectations for the acceleration of structure formation in a region that is over-dense on large scales by the observed amount. The proto-cluster environment contains a significant number of galaxies that already appear old, with large stellar masses (>10^11 M_sun), by z=2.3.Comment: 7 pages including 3 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ. Typo correcte