Facility, Location and Employer-Employee Relations of German-Canadian Businesses in Canada

The purpose of this paper is an investigation into aspects of the decision-making process of German-Canadian business owners regarding the reasons for their choice of location and their assessment of the differences of some major traits of German and Canadian employees. This paper presents the results of a questionnaire that was administered by mail to German business owners in Canada. The purpose of this focus is to provide regional planners with some understanding why German owners/managers choose specific provinces or sites, and to provide managers in Canada with information concerning differences in traits of German and Canadian employees. The results of this work are that location decisions are mostly personal when it comes to choosing Canada as a country for their business, but the more we zoom into the chosen province and the specific site, the more business-related features become relevant. As far as personnel evaluations by German managers are concerned, the key result is that while at first glance it may appear that Canadians and Germans (and, by extension, Canadian and German employees) are not very different culturally, they actually are. Whereas some results appear to support common stereotypes, e.g., Canadians rank higher when it comes to politeness and tolerance, while Germans excel in job knowledge and punctuality, others are more unexpected. Among them are the results indicating no significant differences when it comes to flexibility, ambitiousness, and the acceptance of authority

ODS-materials for high temperature applications in advanced nuclear systems

AbstractA ferritic ODS-alloy (Fe-14Cr-1W-0.25Ti) has been manufactured by application of the powder metallurgical production route involving at first mechanical alloying of ∼10kg pre-alloyed steel powder together with an Y2O3 addition for 12h in a high energy industrial ball mill under hydrogen atmosphere at the company ZOZ GmbH. As a next step, one part of the alloyed powder was hot extruded into rods while another portion was hot isostatically pressed into plates. Both materials were then heat treated. A characterization program on these ODS-alloy production forms included microstructural and mechanical investigations: SANS and TEM assume the existence of Y2Ti2O7 nano clusters and show a bimodal distribution of ODS-particle sizes in both ODS variants. EBSD maps showed a strong 〈110〉 texture corresponding to the α fiber for the hot extruded ODS and a slight 〈001〉 texture for the hipped ODS material. Fracture toughness tests in different specimen orientations (extruded ODS) with mini 0.2T C(T) specimens together with Charpy impact tests revealed anisotropic mechanical properties: Promising (fracture) toughness levels were obtained in the specimen orientation perpendicular to the extrusion direction, while the toughness levels remained low in extrusion direction and generally for the hipped ODS material at all test temperatures. The fracture toughness tests were performed according to ASTM E 1921 and 1820 standards

The Complexity of Flow Expansion and Electrical Flow Expansion

FlowExpansion is a network design problem, in which the input consists of a flow network and a set of candidate edges, which may be added to the network. Adding a candidate incurs given costs. The goal is to determine the cheapest set of candidate edges that, if added, allow the demands to be satisfied. FlowExpansion is a variant of the Minimum-Cost Flow problem with non-linear edge costs. We study FlowExpansion for both graph-theoretical and electrical flow networks. In the latter case this problem is also known as the Transmission Network Expansion Planning problem. We give a structured view over the complexity of the variants of FlowExpansion that arise from restricting, e.g., the graph classes, the capacities, or the number of sources and sinks. Our goal is to determine which restrictions have a crucial impact on the computational complexity. The results in this paper range from polynomial-time algorithms for the more restricted variants over NP-hardness proofs to proofs that certain variants are NP-hard to approximate even within a logarithmic factor of the optimal solution

Fault-Tolerant Hotelling Games

The $n$-player Hotelling game calls for each player to choose a point on the line segment, so as to maximize the size of his Voronoi cell. This paper studies fault-tolerant versions of the Hotelling game. Two fault models are studied: line faults and player faults. The first model assumes that the environment is prone to failure: with some probability, a disconnection occurs at a random point on the line, splitting it into two separate segments and modifying each player's Voronoi cell accordingly. A complete characterization of the Nash equilibria of this variant is provided for every $n$. Additionally, a one to one correspondence is shown between equilibria of this variant and of the Hotelling game with no faults. The second fault model assumes the players are prone to failure: each player is removed from the game with i.i.d. probability, changing the payoffs of the remaining players accordingly. It is shown that for $n \geq 3$ this variant of the game has no Nash equilibria

Influence of a classical homogeneous gravitational field on dissipative dynamics of the Jaynes-Cummings model with phase damping

In this paper, we study the dissipative dynamics of the Jaynes-Cummings model with phase damping in the presence of a classical homogeneous gravitational field. The model consists of a moving two-level atom simultaneously exposed to the gravitational field and a single-mode traveling radiation field in the presence of the phase damping. We present a quantum treatment of the internal and external dynamics of the atom based on an alternative su(2) dynamical algebraic structure. By making use of the super-operator technique, we obtain the solution of the master equation for the density operator of the quantum system, under the Markovian approximation. Assuming that initially the radiation field is prepared in a Glauber coherent state and the two-level atom is in the excited state, we investigate the influence of gravity on the temporal evolution of collapses and revivals of the atomic population inversion, atomic dipole squeezing, atomic momentum diffusion, photon counting statistics and quadrature squeezing of the radiation field in the presence of phase damping.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figure

Relationship between the atomic inversion and Wigner function for multiphoton multimode Jaynes-Cummings model

In this paper we consider multimode multiphoton Jaynes-Cummings model, which consists of a two-level atom, initially prepared in an excited atomic state, interacting with $N$ modes of electromagnetic field prepared in general pure quantum states. For this system we show that under certain conditions the evolution of the Wigner function at the phase space origin provides direct information on the corresponding atomic inversion. This relation is also valid even if the system includes Kerr-like nonlinearity, Stark shift effect, different types of the initial atomic state as well as moving atom. Furthermore, based on this fact we discuss for the single-mode case the possibility of detecting the atomic inversion by means of techniques similar to those used for Wigner function.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Waste processing facility location problem by stochastic programming: Models and solutions

The paper deals with the so-called waste processing facility location problem (FLP), which asks for establishing a set of operational waste processing units, optimal against the total expected cost. We minimize the waste management (WM) expenditure of the waste producers, which is derived from the related waste processing, transportation, and investment costs. We use a stochastic programming approach in recognition of the inherent uncertainties in this area. Two relevant models are presented and discussed in the paper. Initially, we extend the common transportation network flow model with on-and-off waste-processing capacities in selected nodes, representing the facility location. Subsequently, we model the randomly-varying production of waste by a scenario-based two-stage stochastic integer linear program. Finally, we employ selected pricing ideas from revenue management to model the behavior of the waste producers, who we assume to be environmentally friendly. The modeling ideas are illustrated on an example of limited size solved in GAMS. Computations on larger instances were realized with traditional and heuristic algorithms, implemented within MATLAB. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

Total and corrected antioxidant capacity in hemodialyzed patients

BACKGROUND: Oxidative stress may play a critical role in the vascular disease of end stage renal failure and hemodialysis patients. Studies, analyzing either discrete analytes and antioxidant substances, or the integrated total antioxidant activity of human plasma during hemodialysis, give contradictory results. METHODS: Recently, we have introduced a new automated method for the determination of Total Antioxidant Capacity (TAC) of human plasma. We have serially measured TAC and corrected TAC (cTAC: after subtraction of the interactions due to endogenous uric acid, bilirubin and albumin) in 10 patients before the onset of the dialysis session, 10 min, 30 min, 1 h, 2 h and 3 h into the procedure and after completion of the session. RESULTS: Our results indicate that TAC decreases, reaching minimum levels at 2 h. However, corrected TAC increases with t(1/2 )of about 30 min. We then repeated the measurements in 65 patients undergoing dialysis with different filters (36 patients with ethylene vinyl alcohol copolymer resin filter -Eval-, 23 patients with two polysulfone filters -10 with F6 and 13 with PSN140-, and 6 patients with hemophan filters). Three specimens were collected (0, 30, 240 min). The results of this second group confirm our initial results, while no significant difference was observed using either filter. CONCLUSIONS: Our results are discussed under the point of view of possible mechanisms of modification of endogenous antioxidants, and the interaction of lipid- and water-soluble antioxidants

Performance Evaluation of Next-Generation Elastic Backhaul with Flexible VCSEL-based WDM Fronthaul

Neighbour joining tree of 217 rice accessions. Accessions names are shown. (PDF 1227 kb