Airline schedule and network competitiveness: A consumer-centric approach for business travel

The aim of this paper is to undertake a comparative analysis of the competitiveness of airline schedules and networks from a business traveller perspective with a particular focus on Europe and travel to and from this continent. A unique and innovative customer-centric model is developed using a passenger survey and airline schedule data to overcome the shortcomings of traditional models that lack the passenger viewpoint. The results show that Austrian Airlines/Vienna airport and Swiss/Zurich airport have the highest quality connections, whilst the top five competing European hubs are served by the Lufthansa group. The findings provide a significant opportunity to airlines to grow their knowledge and understanding of their competitive position and their ability to offer scheduling convenience to passenger

Casimir Effects in Renormalizable Quantum Field Theories

We review the framework we and our collaborators have developed for the study of one-loop quantum corrections to extended field configurations in renormalizable quantum field theories. We work in the continuum, transforming the standard Casimir sum over modes into a sum over bound states and an integral over scattering states weighted by the density of states. We express the density of states in terms of phase shifts, allowing us to extract divergences by identifying Born approximations to the phase shifts with low order Feynman diagrams. Once isolated in Feynman diagrams, the divergences are canceled against standard counterterms. Thus regulated, the Casimir sum is highly convergent and amenable to numerical computation. Our methods have numerous applications to the theory of solitons, membranes, and quantum field theories in strong external fields or subject to boundary conditions.Comment: 27 pp., 11 EPS figures, LaTeX using ijmpa1.sty; email correspondence to R.L. Jaffe ; based on talks presented by the authors at the 5th workshop `QFTEX', Leipzig, September 200

Noise-Activated Escape from a Sloshing Potential Well

We treat the noise-activated escape from a one-dimensional potential well of an overdamped particle, to which a periodic force of fixed frequency is applied. We determine the boundary layer behavior, and the physically relevant length scales, near the oscillating well top. We show how stochastic behavior near the well top generalizes the behavior first determined by Kramers, in the case without forcing. Both the case when the forcing dies away in the weak noise limit, and the case when it does not, are examined. We also discuss the relevance of various scaling regimes to recent optical trap experiments.Comment: 9 pages, no figures, REVTeX, expanded versio

Quantum Energies of Interfaces

We present a method for computing the one-loop, renormalized quantum energies of symmetrical interfaces of arbitrary dimension and codimension using elementary scattering data. Internal consistency requires finite-energy sum rules relating phase shifts to bound state energies.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, minor changes, Phys. Rev. Lett., in prin

Log-Networks

We introduce a growing network model in which a new node attaches to a randomly-selected node, as well as to all ancestors of the target node. This mechanism produces a sparse, ultra-small network where the average node degree grows logarithmically with network size while the network diameter equals 2. We determine basic geometrical network properties, such as the size dependence of the number of links and the in- and out-degree distributions. We also compare our predictions with real networks where the node degree also grows slowly with time -- the Internet and the citation network of all Physical Review papers.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, 2-column revtex4 format. Version 2: minor changes in response to referee comments and to another proofreading; final version for PR

Multispeed cities and the logistics of living in the Information Age

We now have a wealth of data on how the use of information and digital technologies (ICTs) is unevenly mapped onto different income, gender and ethnic groups. However we remain poorly equipped to understand how ICTs, with their intrinsic abilities to transcend barriers of space and time, relate to the fine grain of people’s lives on the ground in cities and neighbourhoods. ICTs contract space in enabling us to contact distant friends, pick up voice mail and order goods. Mobile phones on the move short-circuit time to an instant. But what are the effects of these space and time manipulations on the actual logistics of our interaction with other people? And what does it mean for people and neighbourhoods who do not have access to ICTs to live in a world that is being restructured to suit those who do? This project helps to fill these and allied gaps in our knowledge by simultaneously examining how ICTs relate to social inequalities through their use in orchestrati! ng the social time-space worlds both of a privileged and of a marginalized neighbourhood in Newcastle upon Tyne. Key Findings • Measures of the “digital divide” based on ICT ownership are inadequate to depict the complex patterns of use and access to a variety of technologies. For example, respondents in the poorer area may not have had access to, say, the Internet nor used online services, but they often relied on neighbours, family or friends to provide access. ICT use is often more collective and collaborative, beyond the household level, which suggests some caution over widely used official, individualistic measures. • In the richer area ICTs formed pervasive infrastructures underpinning everyday life, to such an extent that respondents could not say when they specifically used a technology because it was on all the time. In the poorer area, ICT use tended to be for specific purposes, which were recalled as discrete events marked out by their use of advanced technology. • Research on ICTs can profitably use a conceptual framework which emphasises the way in which interactions that do and do not use ICTs inter-relate to shape the detail of subjects’ everyday life. Such an approach allows research to address the ways in which multiple ICTs are used simultaneously and in subtle and continuous combination. • The relaxing of restrictions imposed by time and space that ICTs can give offers new possibilities for structuring the rhythms of daily life. Crucially, this leads not to a disembedding from local life but to forging new interactions within cities. Other Findings • By having ICTs as an “always on” background, affluent and ICT literate groups benefitted from accelerating lifestyles and mobility patterns and are enabled to cram extremely dense and flexible patterns of transaction, communication and information exchange into the logistical framework of their lives. • ICT use in the more marginalized neighbourhood tended to offer occasional support to existing patterns of everyday life. About the Study The project deployed an innovative cascade of methods to establish how ICT- mediated and place-based activities intersect to define together the logistics of everyday life for the affluent Jesmond and a relatively marginalized “off line” Blakelaw neighbourhood in Newcastle upon Tyne