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 $S$-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 $F(q) = 1 + q + 4q^{2} + 6 q^{3} + 16 q^{4} + 23 q^{5} + 52 q^{6} + 77 q^{7} + 150 q^{8} + 224 q^{9} + 396 q^{10} + 583 q^{11}+ O(q^{12})$. 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 $F(q)$ corrected and conclusions modified accordingl

Cauchy's residue theorem for a class of real valued functions

Let $[a,b]$ be an interval in $\mathbb{R}$ and let $F$ be a real valued function defined at the endpoints of $[a,b]$ and with a certain number of discontinuities within $[a,b]$. Having assumed $F$ to be differentiable on a set $[a,b] \backslash E$ to the derivative $f$, where $E$ is a subset of $[a,b]$ at whose points $F$ can take values $\pm \infty$ or not be defined at all, we adopt the convention that $F$ and $f$ are equal to 0 at all points of $E$ and show that $\mathcal{KH-}vt\int_{a}^{b}f=F(b) -F(a)$%, where $\mathcal{KH-}$ $vt$ 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 ($e^{-}$-$p^{+}$) plasma (i.e., a normal plasma jet), and the other in which the jet is composed of an electron-positron ($e^{-}$-$e^{+}$) 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 $e^{-}$-$p^{+}$ plasma jet is orders of magnitude larger than the level emanating from an $e^{-}$-$e^{+}$ 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