Theory of invariants-based formulation of k⋅p{\bf k}\cdot{\bf p} Hamiltonians with application to strained zinc-blende crystals

Group theoretical methods and ${\bf k}\cdot{\bf p}$ theory are combined to determine spin-dependent contributions to the effective conduction band Hamiltonian. To obtain the constants in the effective Hamiltonian, in general all invariants of the Hamiltonian have to be determined. Hence, we present a systematic approach to keep track of all possible invariants and apply it to the ${\bf k}\cdot{\bf p}$ Hamiltonian of crystals with zinc-blende symmetry, in order to obtain all possible contributions to effective quantities such as effective mass, g-factor and Dresselhaus constant. Further spin-dependent contributions to the effective Hamiltonian arise in the presence of strain. In particular, with regard to the constants $C_3$ and $D$ which describe spin-splitting linear in the components of ${\bf k}$ and ${\boldsymbol\varepsilon}$, considering all possible terms allowed by symmetry is crucial.Comment: 17 pages (preprint style

Selling Beauty : A Linguistic-Communicational Investigation of the Female Beauty Ideal in Advertising in an International Comparison

The advertising campaigns of large international beauty companies greatly influence the perception of beauty. They promote beauty ideals in their campaigns - which easily spread worldwide thanks to the mass media - and offer solutions on how to achieve them. The use of language and persuasive communication is a crucial tool in this process. By using language and communication strategies, marketers actively manage the perceptions of their target groups. In my work, I examine 493 advertisements as well as 153 international and 711 country-specific websites of international beauty companies to find out what the beauty ideal they promote worldwide looks like. In particular, the Western world's idea of female beauty influences global perceptions. Scientists refer to this phenomenon as the Western or the global beauty ideal. I examine what is meant by the term Western in this context and whether beauty companies tend to show the global, Western or a local ideal in their advertising. I also look for answers to the questions: how do the companies use communication measures and language to promote the beauty ideal? Do they design individual campaigns for their target markets with different local ideals, or do they apply the same approach globally? Is English the lingua franca for the campaigns or are local languages used? The results of my research show that the characteristics which attractiveness research and social science refer to as the global ideal of beauty are identical to the ideal of beauty promoted primarily in the United States and Northern Europe. The Western ideal thus includes the beauty characteristics of a few countries in the world. The global promotion of this ideal leads to the spread of North American and Northern European beauty standards throughout the world. The principles of persuasive communication, rhetoric, and advertising language are used in the design of marketing campaigns. In my study, I first analyze the advertising material from different regions to determine how the companies interpret the respective local beauty ideal. Based on this analysis, I then examine the dominant beauty ideal in all advertising materials belonging to the object of study and assess which linguistic concepts and communicative appeals are used to convey it. In doing so, I analyze, among other things, the rhetorical figures used - the communicative appeals of ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion), or logos (logic) - the use of English as a lingua franca, the differences in the beauty ideal and language use between print and online, or the interplay of text and image. The scope of 493 ads as well as 153 global websites and 711 country-specific websites is necessary for representative results, as I conduct a majority analysis based on percentages. The results of my study show that overall, the Western ideal is predominantly promoted. Online, this is done through the use of English as the lingua franca on the international websites and through the use of local languages on the country-specific websites. In the ads, English is also the language of choice to promote the Western ideal. The exception is the ads from countries that historically have a very strong national identity; here, the local beauty ideal is predominant. For this reason, it is also not possible to determine an exclusive marketing of the Western ideal for the advertisements, as is the case with the websites, but rather a distinction must be made based on the regions. For both the printed ads and the websites evaluated, the most common communicative appeal is the emotional one (pathos), followed on the websites by the one to logic (logos) and the one to the credibility of the sender (ethos). The communicative appeals and linguistic features used in both the ads evaluated and on the websites are not country-specific, but are used worldwide. The ideal of beauty is promoted through a sophisticated interplay of text and image, with targeted use of rhetorical figures and linguistic patterns to convey the intended message. The language and communicative appeals used to promote the ideal and the products are the same worldwide. Of course, my study only provides a snapshot. In the fast-changing advertising business, where new campaigns are reworked within a very short time and current as well as future megatrends always have a strong influence, a follow-up study will provide interesting insights into further developments. In my study, I already touch on the topic of the body positivity movement and diversity, which will play an important role in the representation of beauty in advertising in the future

Colonial imagery in responsible travel dvertisement, a critique from a postcolonial perspective

This master's thesis analyses a selection of images used to advertise outbound responsible travel to various destinations in Africa. It shows that in the advertisement of the selected destinations colonial imagery and texts are emphasised. Colonial imagery is reproduced in a binary representation model of the "self" and the "other" that not only supports the criticised creation of knowledge of the Global South but also restores racism as an ideology of dominance. To demonstrate this, images and text material are analysed with regard to findings of postcolonial theory. It becomes apparent that contemporary outbound responsible travel agencies continue colonial ideas and power relations. It is thus determined that there is a gap between the declared aims of responsible tourism agencies and the single-perspective and derogatory meanings the images, they use to advertise their products, carry. Accordingly, recommendations for DMOs (Destination Management Organisations) and decision makers that are involved in the promotion of global travel are developed. Keyword

An examination of heuristic algorithms for the travelling salesman problem

The role of heuristics in combinatorial optimization is discussed. Published heuristics for the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) were reviewed and morphological boxes were used to develop new heuristics for the TSP. New and published heuristics were programmed for symmetric TSPs where the triangle inequality holds, and were tested on micro computer. The best of the quickest heuristics was the furthest insertion heuristic, finding tours 3 to 9% above the best known solutions (2 minutes for 100 nodes). Better results were found by longer running heuristics, e.g. the cheapest angle heuristic (CCAO), 0-6% above best (80 minutes for 100 nodes). The savings heuristic found the best results overall, but took more than 2 hours to complete. Of the new heuristics, the MST path algorithm at times improved on the results of the furthest insertion heuristic while taking the same time as the CCAO. The study indicated that there is little likelihood of improving on present methods unless a fundamental new approach is discovered. Finally a case study using TSP heuristics to aid the planning of grid surveys was described

chemf : a purely functional chemistry toolkit

Background: Although programming in a type-safe and referentially transparent style offers several advantages over working with mutable data structures and side effects, this style of programming has not seen much use in chemistry-related software. Since functional programming languages were designed with referential transparency in mind, these languages offer a lot of support when writing immutable data structures and side-effects free code. We therefore started implementing our own toolkit based on the above programming paradigms in a modern, versatile programming language. Results: We present our initial results with functional programming in chemistry by first describing an immutable data structure for molecular graphs together with a couple of simple algorithms to calculate basic molecular properties before writing a complete SMILES parser in accordance with the OpenSMILES specification. Along the way we show how to deal with input validation, error handling, bulk operations, and parallelization in a purely functional way. At the end we also analyze and improve our algorithms and data structures in terms of performance and compare it to existing toolkits both object-oriented and purely functional. All code was written in Scala, a modern multi-paradigm programming language with a strong support for functional programming and a highly sophisticated type system. Conclusions: We have successfully made the first important steps towards a purely functional chemistry toolkit. The data structures and algorithms presented in this article perform well while at the same time they can be safely used in parallelized applications, such as computer aided drug design experiments, without further adjustments. This stands in contrast to existing object-oriented toolkits where thread safety of data structures and algorithms is a deliberate design decision that can be hard to implement. Finally, the level of type-safety achieved by Scala highly increased the reliability of our code as well as the productivity of the programmers involved in this project

Inelastic neutron scattering study and Hubbard model description of the antiferromagnetic tetrahedral molecule Ni4Mo12

The tetrameric Ni(II) spin cluster Ni4Mo12 has been studied by INS. The data were analyzed extensively in terms of a very general spin Hamiltonian, which includes antiferromagnetic Heisenberg interactions, biquadratic 2-spin and 3-spin interactions, a single-ion magnetic anisotropy, and Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interactions. Some of the experimentally observed features in the INS spectra could be reproduced, however, one feature at 1.65 meV resisted all efforts. This supports the conclusion that the spin Hamiltonian approach is not adequate to describe the magnetism in Ni4Mo12. The isotropic terms in the spin Hamiltonian can be obtained in a strong-coupling expansion of the Hubbard model at half-filling. Therefore detailed theoretical studies of the Hubbard model were undertaken, using analytical as well as numerical techniques. We carefully analyzed its abilities and restrictions in applications to molecular spin clusters. As a main result it was found that the Hubbard model is also unable to appropriately explain the magnetism in Ni4Mo12. Extensions of the model are also discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figure

Branchenspezifische makro- und mikroökonomische Einflussgrössen und deren Auswirkungen auf den wirtschaftlichen Erfolg von privaten Schweizer Sicherheitsdienstleistern. Eine qualitative empirische Studie

The objective of the research project for this dissertation was to use a qualitative empirical analysis to determine what types of macro-and microeconomic branch-specific influencing variables Swiss security service providers find themselves confronted with and how these affect their economic success. This aim is to demonstrate which measures should be implemented, and how these influencing parameters can be favourably influenced in the future to achieve sustainable economic success. To answer the research questions, we carried out guided interviews with industry experts from small, mid-sized, and large companies in all three of the linguistic regions of Switzerland. The collected data was transcribed and then subjected to a structured qualitative content analysis. The analysis demonstrated that the economic success of private Swiss security service providers is primarily subject to the influencing variables of ‹branch-specific regulation› and ‹branch perception and image› as both these dimensions promote the identifiable margin erosion affecting the industry. To stop the continuous fall in price affecting private Swiss security service providers, it is recommended that measures be implemented at the professional association level targeting public relations and self-regulation. At the corporate level, forward-looking and innovative business models alongside novel services should be developed. This study provides a valuable contribution to the state of knowledge of the environment of macro-and microeconomic variables influencing Swiss security service providers. The industry now has access to empirically acquired knowledge that it can use to prepare itself for a challenging future. The impulses emanating from the study should drive related fields of research to develop forward-looking solutions in the fields of ‹Human–machine interaction› and novel business models for Swiss security service providers. A further consequence of this study is the generation of the attention necessary for the subject matter ‹Swiss security service providers› to be considered more in future research and teaching

Large-sized species of ctenodactylidae from the Valley of Lakes (Mongolia): An update on dental morphology, biostratigraphy, and paleobiogeography

Our study of the large and medium-sized species of Yindirtemys from the Valley of Lakes in Mongolia yielded three species: Yindirtemys deflexus, Y. suni and Y. birgeri. They differ in size and dental morphology. Yindirtemys suni is the largest and Y. birgeri the smallest species. Yindirtemys deflexus and Y. suni increase in body size but do not change dental morphology within their time range. The medium-sized Yindirtemys birgeri co-occurs in Mongolia with Y. deflexus in the late Oligocene (biozone C1) and is the easternmost occurrence of the species so far. Hitherto, Y. birgeri has been recorded from the Aral region in Kazakhstan only. Both Yindirtemys deflexus and Y. suni are used as biostratigraphic markers. Yindirtemys deflexus is a “key fossil” of the Chinese Land Mammal Age Tabenbulukian and for the Mongolian biozone C1; the latter correlates with the Oligocene. Yindirtemys suni is one of the “key fossils” of the Chinese Land Mammal Age Xiejian. In Mongolia the species ranges from the OligoceneMiocene transition (biozone C1-D) to the earliest Miocene (biozone D). The wide geographic range of Yindirtemys in the Oligocene of Asia suggests that no major physical barriers hampered mammal distribution between Kazakhstan, Mongolia and northern China, but local paleoecological and climatic conditions might have influenced mammal community structures in these areas.Peer Reviewe