1,152 research outputs found
The Importance of Effective Working Relationships Between Sales and Marketing
© Oxford University Press 2011. All rights reserved. This article examines the importance of effective working relationships between sales and marketing. It provides a framework for analysis and discussion concerning this important organizational relationship. It reviews current thinking on sales-marketing cross-functional relationships, identifies gaps in academic literature, and discusses a range of controllable and uncontrollable factors that may influence this interface. Many organizations are unsure how to manage the sales-marketing cross-functional relationship. The few empirical studies published to date examine the contextual conditions under which such relationships are enacted, e.g., the level of functional interdependence, power relations, and cultural differences. This article discusses the main types of variable that influence the effectiveness of such relationships. These include organizational structure variables, the types of interaction and communication prevalent in the cross-functional relationship, and key variables such as interpersonal trust
Dynamics of lattice spins as a model of arrhythmia
We consider evolution of initial disturbances in spatially extended systems
with autonomous rhythmic activity, such as the heart. We consider the case when
the activity is stable with respect to very smooth (changing little across the
medium) disturbances and construct lattice models for description of
not-so-smooth disturbances, in particular, topological defects; these models
are modifications of the diffusive XY model. We find that when the activity on
each lattice site is very rigid in maintaining its form, the topological
defects - vortices or spirals - nucleate a transition to a disordered,
turbulent state.Comment: 17 pages, revtex, 3 figure
Emergent global oscillations in heterogeneous excitable media: The example of pancreatic beta cells
Using the standard van der Pol-FitzHugh-Nagumo excitable medium model I
demonstrate a novel generic mechanism, diversity, that provokes the emergence
of global oscillations from individually quiescent elements in heterogeneous
excitable media. This mechanism may be operating in the mammalian pancreas,
where excitable beta cells, quiescent when isolated, are found to oscillate
when coupled despite the absence of a pacemaker region.Comment: See home page http://lec.ugr.es/~julya
Magnetic Field-Induced Condensation of Triplons in Han Purple Pigment BaCuSiO
Besides being an ancient pigment, BaCuSiO is a quasi-2D magnetic
insulator with a gapped spin dimer ground state. The application of strong
magnetic fields closes this gap creating a gas of bosonic spin triplet
excitations called triplons. The topology of the spin lattice makes
BaCuSiO an ideal candidate for studying the Bose-Einstein condensation
of triplons as a function of the external magnetic field, which acts as a
chemical potential. In agreement with quantum Monte Carlo numerical
simulations, we observe a distinct lambda-anomaly in the specific heat together
with a maximum in the magnetic susceptibility upon cooling down to liquid
Helium temperatures.Comment: published on August 20, 200
Noise Induced Coherence in Neural Networks
We investigate numerically the dynamics of large networks of globally
pulse-coupled integrate and fire neurons in a noise-induced synchronized state.
The powerspectrum of an individual element within the network is shown to
exhibit in the thermodynamic limit () a broadband peak and an
additional delta-function peak that is absent from the powerspectrum of an
isolated element. The powerspectrum of the mean output signal only exhibits the
delta-function peak. These results are explained analytically in an exactly
soluble oscillator model with global phase coupling.Comment: 4 pages ReVTeX and 3 postscript figure
The Shapes of Flux Domains in the Intermediate State of Type-I Superconductors
In the intermediate state of a thin type-I superconductor magnetic flux
penetrates in a disordered set of highly branched and fingered macroscopic
domains. To understand these shapes, we study in detail a recently proposed
"current-loop" (CL) model that models the intermediate state as a collection of
tense current ribbons flowing along the superconducting-normal interfaces and
subject to the constraint of global flux conservation. The validity of this
model is tested through a detailed reanalysis of Landau's original conformal
mapping treatment of the laminar state, in which the superconductor-normal
interfaces are flared within the slab, and of a closely-related straight-lamina
model. A simplified dynamical model is described that elucidates the nature of
possible shape instabilities of flux stripes and stripe arrays, and numerical
studies of the highly nonlinear regime of those instabilities demonstrate
patterns like those seen experimentally. Of particular interest is the buckling
instability commonly seen in the intermediate state. The free-boundary approach
further allows for a calculation of the elastic properties of the laminar
state, which closely resembles that of smectic liquid crystals. We suggest
several new experiments to explore of flux domain shape instabilities,
including an Eckhaus instability induced by changing the out-of-plane magnetic
field, and an analog of the Helfrich-Hurault instability of smectics induced by
an in-plane field.Comment: 23 pages, 22 bitmapped postscript figures, RevTex 3.0, submitted to
Phys. Rev. B. Higher resolution figures may be obtained by contacting the
author
Stochastic Resonance in Nonpotential Systems
We propose a method to analytically show the possibility for the appearance
of a maximum in the signal-to-noise ratio in nonpotential systems. We apply our
results to the FitzHugh-Nagumo model under a periodic external forcing, showing
that the model exhibits stochastic resonance. The procedure that we follow is
based on the reduction to a one-dimensional dynamics in the adiabatic limit,
and in the topology of the phase space of the systems under study. Its
application to other nonpotential systems is also discussed.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev.
General theory of instabilities for patterns with sharp interfaces in reaction-diffusion systems
An asymptotic method for finding instabilities of arbitrary -dimensional
large-amplitude patterns in a wide class of reaction-diffusion systems is
presented. The complete stability analysis of 2- and 3-dimensional localized
patterns is carried out. It is shown that in the considered class of systems
the criteria for different types of instabilities are universal. The specific
nonlinearities enter the criteria only via three numerical constants of order
one. The performed analysis explains the self-organization scenarios observed
in the recent experiments and numerical simulations of some concrete
reaction-diffusion systems.Comment: 21 pages (RevTeX), 8 figures (Postscript). To appear in Phys. Rev. E
(April 1st, 1996
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