11,254 research outputs found
An evaluation of sustainability in large British companies
This article undertakes an assessment of the sustainability efforts of some of the largest companies that are listed on the FTSE 100 (a share index composed of the 100 largest companies that are listed on the London Stock Exchange according to market capitalisation). It provides empirical insights into how large listed British companies are addressing sustainability and their efforts in terms of incorporating sustainability factors into their business operations. The study was based on an extended content analysis of each companyâs annual and sustainability reports. Our findings demonstrate that companies are trying to integrate sustainability in their business strategies even though there are variations in their efforts. There are indications that the majority of the companies have been able to embed sustainability in their strategy and operations and are now attempting to establish goals for further improvement. We found strong evidence of willingness to engage with relevant stakeholders to evaluate which sustainability issues are of importance to the particular companies and then to communicate to those relevant stakeholders the measures that have been taken to integrate sustainability in their business strategies. However, our findings also revealed areas where there is a need for further improvement such as compliance with international standards for sustainability reporting and establishment of better frameworks to enhance their sustainability efforts
The Impact of Enlightened Shareholder Value
This paper documents and analyses the findings of a study conducted in relation to selected reports of all of the retail companies that are listed on the FTSE 100 in order to ascertain the impact of enlightened shareholder value on UK corporate governance. The findings are also analysed in light of other studies and commentary
Backwards-induction outcome in a quantum game
In economics duopoly is a market dominated by two firms large enough to
influence the market price. Stackelberg presented a dynamic form of duopoly
that is also called `leader-follower' model. We give a quantum perspective on
Stackelberg duopoly that gives a backwards-induction outcome same as the Nash
equilibrium in static form of duopoly also known as Cournot's duopoly. We find
two qubit quantum pure states required for this purpose.Comment: Revised in the light of referee's comments. Latex, 16 pages, 2
figures, To appear in Phy. Rev.
Quantum mechanics gives stability to a Nash equilibrium
We consider a slightly modified version of the Rock-Scissors-Paper (RSP) game
from the point of view of evolutionary stability. In its classical version the
game has a mixed Nash equilibrium (NE) not stable against mutants. We find a
quantized version of the RSP game for which the classical mixed NE becomes
stable.Comment: Revised on referee's criticism, submitted to Physical Review
Formal verification of âfull chipâ containing âshellâ partitions with and without feed-thrus
The `Full Chip' module of an ASIC is made up of various partitions and similar to individual partitions, it also goes through various stages of the physical design. The initial design-planning works on the existing pins of a partition, adds feed-thru pins and performs custom placement and routing on signal and clock nets. Near tape-in, ECO (Engineering Change Order) forces manual changes to design as opposed to taking it through full implementation cycle. At the final stages, when layout database of each partition meets the requirements, a bottom up integration is carried out to create full chip layout. All these stages can create logical differences between layout and RTL of the top level interface. In order to verify that no unintentional logical change has happened to full chip, a robust formal verification strategy with numerous practical considerations is necessary. Designers also make use of 100% or partial shell models at the floor-planning phase which does bring advantages but also creates challenges for the formal verification flow. This article documents these challenges by explaining the formal verification approach taken on Intel's next generation network processing chip
Refined Topological Vertex and Instanton Counting
It has been proposed recently that topological A-model string amplitudes for
toric Calabi-Yau 3-folds in non self-dual graviphoton background can be
caluculated by a diagrammatic method that is called the ``refined topological
vertex''. We compute the extended A-model amplitudes for SU(N)-geometries using
the proposed vertex. If the refined topological vertex is valid, these
computations should give rise to the Nekrasov's partition functions of N=2
SU(N) gauge theories via the geometric engineering. In this article, we verify
the proposal by confirming the equivalence between the refined A-model
amplitude and the K-theoretic version of the Nekrasov's partition function by
explicit computation.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, minor correction
Wall-crossing, free fermions and crystal melting
We describe wall-crossing for local, toric Calabi-Yau manifolds without
compact four-cycles, in terms of free fermions, vertex operators, and crystal
melting. Firstly, to each such manifold we associate two states in the free
fermion Hilbert space. The overlap of these states reproduces the BPS partition
function corresponding to the non-commutative Donaldson-Thomas invariants,
given by the modulus square of the topological string partition function.
Secondly, we introduce the wall-crossing operators which represent crossing the
walls of marginal stability associated to changes of the B-field through each
two-cycle in the manifold. BPS partition functions in non-trivial chambers are
given by the expectation values of these operators. Thirdly, we discuss crystal
interpretation of such correlators for this whole class of manifolds. We
describe evolution of these crystals upon a change of the moduli, and find
crystal interpretation of the flop transition and the DT/PT transition. The
crystals which we find generalize and unify various other Calabi-Yau crystal
models which appeared in literature in recent years.Comment: 61 pages, 14 figures, published versio
The Refined Topological Vertex
We define a refined topological vertex which depends in addition on a
parameter, which physically corresponds to extending the self-dual graviphoton
field strength to a more general configuration. Using this refined topological
vertex we compute, using geometric engineering, a two-parameter (equivariant)
instanton expansion of gauge theories which reproduce the results of Nekrasov.
The refined vertex is also expected to be related to Khovanov knot invariants.Comment: 70 Pages, 23 Figure
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