2,651 research outputs found
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICT
Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
Mapping the geographies of luxury cognitive “purity”
This study aims to profile the cognitive and perceptual constructs on place and luxury products shared by individuals on the Internet. A netnographic study was conducted on selected digital platforms (Q&A websites, Forum Groups, Blogs), with further engagement in interviews, participant
and non-participant observation. Building upon a corpus of about 3,000 posts, a specific interpretive framework was devised, based on “purity”. The findings indicate that, when referring to luxury goods in relation to places, the sampled individuals rely on a clear set of assumptions. This framework is put to the test when they are called to discuss specific issues related to the contemporary reality of the luxury industry, such as delocalization. In confronting these ambiguities and/or anomalies, they react in different ways. Some of them become sceptical and question the essence of luxury. Some loosen or stretch their expectations, thus coming to terms with the fragmented reality of luxury, while others positively suggest new criteria to re-define “pure” luxury. Further researchers can focus on specific luxury sectors or brands. In addition, the study can be quantified by measuring patterns of recurrence, correlations of variables, and moderation effects from other products’ indicators. Practical implications of the research include the observation that cognitive “purity” adds to the analytical tools of customer-based brand equity. By profiling consumers’ “pure maps” around brands and/or products, brand managers can monitor their evolution and act against potentially disruptive factors. This work builds on the constructionist approach to “place”, and provides an anthropological account on how individuals build, negotiate and act upon their views on “place” in relation to luxury
Vevacious: A Tool For Finding The Global Minima Of One-Loop Effective Potentials With Many Scalars
Several extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics contain
additional scalars implying a more complex scalar potential compared to that of
the Standard Model. In general these potentials allow for charge and/or color
breaking minima besides the desired one with correctly broken SU(2)_L times
U(1)_Y . Even if one assumes that a metastable local minimum is realized, one
has to ensure that its lifetime exceeds that of our universe. We introduce a
new program called Vevacious which takes a generic expression for a one-loop
effective potential energy function and finds all the tree-level extrema, which
are then used as the starting points for gradient-based minimization of the
one-loop effective potential. The tunneling time from a given input vacuum to
the deepest minimum, if different from the input vacuum, can be calculated. The
parameter points are given as files in the SLHA format (though is not
restricted to supersymmetric models), and new model files can be easily
generated automatically by the Mathematica package SARAH. This code uses
HOM4PS2 to find all the minima of the tree-level potential, PyMinuit to follow
gradients to the minima of the one-loop potential, and CosmoTransitions to
calculate tunneling times.Comment: 44 pages, 1 figure, manual for publicly available software, v2
corresponds to version accepted for publication in EPJC [clearer explanation
of scale dependence and region of validity, explicit mention that SLHA files
should have blocks matching those expected by model files, updated
references
Constraining the Natural MSSM through tunneling to color-breaking vacua at zero and non-zero temperature
We re-evaluate the constraints on the parameter space of the minimal
supersymmetric standard model from tunneling to charge- and/or color-breaking
minima, taking into account thermal corrections. We pay particular attention to
the region known as the Natural MSSM, where the masses of the scalar partners
of the top quarks are within an order of magnitude or so of the electroweak
scale. These constraints arise from the interaction between these scalar tops
and the Higgs fields, which allows the possibility of parameter points having
deep charge- and color-breaking true vacua. In addition to requiring that our
electro-weak-symmetry-breaking, yet QCD- and electromagnetism-preserving vacuum
has a sufficiently long lifetime at zero temperature, also demanding stability
against thermal tunneling further restricts the allowed parameter space.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, software available from
http://vevacious.hepforge.org/ - version 2 matches that accepted for
publication in Phys. Lett.
A robust procedure for the measurement of Serum Magnesium on the Hitachi 704 using Calmagite
peer-reviewedA robust procedure for measurement of magnesium in serum is described using calmagite in CAPS buffer at pH 11.5. Interference from other magnesium reagents was reduced and evaluated for chromophoric interference. The procedure was not effected by bilirubin or hemoglobin in serum samples
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