16,101 research outputs found
Practical post-modernism: FM and socially constructed realities
The theme of the paper, with examples, is that strategic FM should engage not with elaborate structural functional models of building service supply but with the socially constructed realities of organisations and their results. Several, evidence based, examples of FM creating different conversations will be provided, viz:
• The creation of excellent patient environments in English Hospitals is not a function of structure (whether or not there is an integrated FM Directorate), sourcing (in house or outsourced) or a particular business process. It is a function of leadership exercised through context specific conversations.
• The creation of effective new ‘knowledge’ environments is not a function of a particular design or project structure. It is a reflection of FMs ability to create conversations for changes in business results.
• The failure of FM to capture strategic attention deriving from an obsession with considerations of unit costs and building condition rather than overall costs and business outcomes.
• The role of perceptions and assertions in creating or blocking effective business relationships between FM providers and clients
In the process the paper will challenge academic FM, whether research or education, to stop being in thrall to ‘practice’ to a degree that is arguably greater than is found in other areas of business and management, let alone other established disciplines. FM has too many models, too little theory and too little empirical evidence of specific business contributions. It is too concerned with supplying facilities rather than considering the purpose for which a given facility is managed.</p
Leadership conversations: the impact on patient environments
Purpose – The aim of this study is to examine 15 NHS acute trusts in England that achieved high scores at all their hospitals in the first four national Patient Environment audits. No common external explanations were discernible. This paper seeks to examine whether the facilities managers responsible for the Patient Environment displayed a consistent leadership style.
Design/methodology/approach – Overall, six of the 15 trusts gave permission for the research to take place and a series of unstructured interviews and observations were arranged with 22 facilities managers in these trusts. Responses were transcribed and categorised through multiple iteration.
Findings – The research found common leadership and managerial behaviours, many of which could be identified from other literature. The research also identified managers deliberately devoting energy and time to creating networks of conversations. This creation of networks through managing conversation is behaviour less evident in mainstream leadership literature or in the current
Department of Health and NHS leadership models.
Practical implications – The findings of this study offer managers (particularly those in FM and managers across NHS) a unique insight into the potential impact of leaders giving an opportunity to re-model thinking on management and leadership and the related managerial development opportunities. It provides the leverage to move facilities management from the role of a commodity or support service, to a position as a true enabler of business.
Originality/value – Original research is presented in a previously under-examined area. The paper illuminates how facilities management within trusts achieving high Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) scores is led.</p
Area products for stationary black hole horizons
Area products for multi-horizon stationary black holes often have intriguing
properties, and are often (though not always) independent of the mass of the
black hole itself (depending only on various charges, angular momenta, and
moduli). Such products are often formulated in terms of the areas of inner
(Cauchy) horizons and outer (event) horizons, and sometimes include the effects
of unphysical "virtual" horizons. But the conjectured mass-independence
sometimes fails. Specifically, for the Schwarzschild-de Sitter [Kottler] black
hole in (3+1) dimensions it is shown by explicit exact calculation that the
product of event horizon area and cosmological horizon area is not mass
independent. (Including the effect of the third "virtual" horizon does not
improve the situation.) Similarly, in the Reissner-Nordstrom-anti-de Sitter
black hole in (3+1) dimensions the product of inner (Cauchy) horizon area and
event horizon area is calculated (perturbatively), and is shown to be not mass
independent. That is, the mass-independence of the product of physical horizon
areas is not generic. In spherical symmetry, whenever the quasi-local mass m(r)
is a Laurent polynomial in aerial radius, r=sqrt{A/4\pi}, there are
significantly more complicated mass-independent quantities, the elementary
symmetric polynomials built up from the complete set of horizon radii (physical
and virtual). Sometimes it is possible to eliminate the unphysical virtual
horizons, constructing combinations of physical horizon areas that are mass
independent, but they tend to be considerably more complicated than the simple
products and related constructions currently being mooted in the literature.Comment: V1: 16 pages; V2: 9 pages (now formatted in PRD style). Minor change
in title. Extra introduction, background, discussion. Several additional
references; other references updated. Minor typos fixed. This version
accepted for publication in PRD; V3: Minor typos fixed. Published versio
Quantitative Probe of Pairing Correlations in a Cold Fermionic Atom Gas
A quantitative measure of the pairing correlations present in a cold gas of
fermionic atoms can be obtained by studying the dependence of RF spectra on
hyperfine state populations. This proposal follows from a sum rule that relates
the total interaction energy of the gas to RF spectrum line positions. We argue
that this indicator of pairing correlations provides information comparable to
that available from the spin-susceptibility and NMR measurements common in
condensed-matter systems.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur
Integrity bases for local invariants of composite quantum systems
Unitary group branchings appropriate to the calculation of local invariants
of density matrices of composite quantum systems are formulated using the
method of -function plethysms. From this, the generating function for the
number of invariants at each degree in the density matrix can be computed. For
the case of two two-level systems the generating function is . Factorisation of such series leads
in principle to the identification of an integrity basis of algebraically
independent invariants. This note replaces Appendix B of our paper\cite{us} J
Phys {\bf A33} (2000) 1895-1914 (\texttt{quant-ph/0001076}) which is incorrect.Comment: Latex, 4 pages, correcting Appendix B of quant-ph/0001076 Error in
corrected and conclusions modified accordingl
Cauchy's residue theorem for a class of real valued functions
Let be an interval in and let be a real valued
function defined at the endpoints of and with a certain number of
discontinuities within . Having assumed to be differentiable on a
set to the derivative , where is a subset of at whose points can take values or not be defined at all,
we adopt the convention that and are equal to 0 at all points of
and show that %, where
denotes the total value of the \textit{% Kurzweil-Henstock} integral. The
paper ends with a few examples that illustrate the theory.Comment: 6 page
From electrons to Janskys: Full stokes polarized radiative transfer in 3D relativistic particle-in-cell jet simulations
The underlying plasma composition of relativistic extragalactic jets remains
largely unknown. Relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (RMHD) models are able to
reproduce many of the observed macroscopic features of these outflows. The
nonthermal synchrotron emission detected by very long baseline interferometric
(VLBI) arrays, however, is a by-product of the kinetic-scale physics occurring
within the jet, physics that is not modeled directly in most RMHD codes. This
paper attempts to discern the radiative differences between distinct plasma
compositions within relativistic jets using small-scale 3D relativistic
particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. We generate full Stokes imaging of two PIC
jet simulations, one in which the jet is composed of an electron-proton
(-) plasma (i.e., a normal plasma jet), and the other in which
the jet is composed of an electron-positron (-) plasma (i.e., a
pair plasma jet). We examined the differences in the morphology and intensity
of the linear polarization (LP) and circular polarization (CP) emanating from
these two jet simulations. We find that the fractional level of CP emanating
from the - plasma jet is orders of magnitude larger than the
level emanating from an - plasma jet of a similar speed and
magnetic field strength. In addition, we find that the morphology of both the
linearly and circularly polarized synchrotron emission is distinct between the
two jet compositions. We also demonstrate the importance of slow-light
interpolation and we highlight the effect that a finite light-crossing time has
on the resultant polarization when ray-tracing through relativistic plasma.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures; accepted for publication in A&
Entanglement Entropy in the Calogero-Sutherland Model
We investigate the entanglement entropy between two subsets of particles in
the ground state of the Calogero-Sutherland model. By using the duality
relations of the Jack symmetric polynomials, we obtain exact expressions for
both the reduced density matrix and the entanglement entropy in the limit of an
infinite number of particles traced out. From these results, we obtain an upper
bound value of the entanglement entropy. This upper bound has a clear
interpretation in terms of fractional exclusion statistics.Comment: 14 pages, 3figures, references adde
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