Scaling limit for a drainage network model

We consider the two dimensional version of a drainage network model introduced by Gangopadhyay, Roy and Sarkar, and show that the appropriately rescaled family of its paths converges in distribution to the Brownian web. We do so by verifying the convergence criteria proposed by Fontes, Isopi, Newman and Ravishankar.Comment: 15 page

Larval condition and growth of Sardinella brasiliensis (Steindachner, 1879): preliminary results from laboratory studies

Brazilian sardine, the most important resource along the southeastern Brazilian coast, presented great variations and declines in its stocks. The main factors contributing to this are: oceanographic structure changes; recruitment failures; excessive catches of juveniles and increase in fishery effort. In spite of this, no alterations in the density-dependent parameters were detected. Consequently, methods analysing the condition of the larvae coupled with methods determining growth using sagittae otolith increment width were applied to evaluate growth under experimental conditions. The results of the readings on the sagittae were compared with the age of the laboratory-reared sardine larvae and confirmed that increments are formed on a daily basis. Under poor feeding conditions, sardine larvae showed a low growth expressed by dry weight, RNA/DNA ratio and tryptic enzyme activity and by the narrow and low contrast increments in the otoliths. The results of the biochemical indices showed an unexpected decline in the feeding group coupled with a decrease in width of increment numbers 8 and 10. Other factors than food availability were affecting the condition of the larvae and might be indicative of physiological processes and ontogenetic changes occurring in sardine larvae

Enhancement of the Benjamin-Feir instability with dissipation

It is shown that there is an overlooked mechanism whereby some kinds of dissipation can enhance the Benjamin-Feir instability of water waves. This observation is new, and although it is counterintuitive, it is due to the fact that the Benjamin-Feir instability involves the collision of modes with opposite energy sign (relative to the carrier wave), and it is the negative energy perturbations which are enhanced.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures To download more papers, go to http://www.cmla.ens-cachan.fr/~dias. Physics of Fluids (2007) to appea

Measuring market-sensing capabilities for new product development success

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize and operationalize the concept of sensing capabilities and analyse its relationship with new product development (NPD) success and organic organizational structures. To our knowledge, past measures of market sensing capabilities have never included opportunity interpretation, through business experience and organizational articulation, as part of the concept. Based on a sample of over 180 SMEs, market sensing capabilities constructs and their relationships were tested through academics’ and managers’ perceptions. The measure was tested using confirmatory factor analysis. Findings reveal theoretically sound constructs based on four underlying sensing capabilities components: analytical processes, customer relationship, business experience, and organizational articulation. Results demonstrate reliability, convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. All four dimensions are positively associated with new product development success and are more likely to appear in organic organizational structures. The resulting instrument provides managers with a valuable tool to measure firms’ abilities to address environmental uncertainty. By using this instrument, managers can assess internal organizational structures and resources allocated to sensing capabilities. By developing sensing capabilities, managers might ultimately influence their new product development strategy. Findings also reveal that sensing capabilities are positively and significantly associated with organic organizational structures. Existing sensing capabilities measures are focused on environmental scanning, and the essence of the concept is not fully expressed by the traditional measures of analytical processes and customer relationship. Our new measure includes opportunity interpretation through business experience and organizational articulation.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Constraining Elko Dark Matter at the LHC with Monophoton Events

A mass dimension one fermion, also known as Elko, constitutes a dark matter candidate which might interact with photons at the tree level in a specific fashion. In this work, we investigate the constraints imposed by unitarity and LHC data on this type of interactions using the search for new physics in monophoton events. We found that Elkos which can explain the dark matter relic abundance mainly through electromagnetic interactions are excluded at the 95\%CL by the 8 TeV LHC data for masses up to 1 TeV.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure