Lying in Business: Insights from Hannah Arendt’s ‘Lying in Politics’

The famous political philosopher Hannah Arendt develops several arguments why truthfulness cannot be counted among the political virtues. This article shows that similar arguments apply to lying in business. Based on Hannah Arendt’s theory, we distinguish five reasons why lying is a structural temptation in business: business is about action to change the world and therefore businessmen need the capacity to deny current reality; commerce requires successful image-making and liars have the advantage to come up with plausible stories; business communication is more often about opinions than about facts, giving leeway to ignore uncomfortable signals; business increasingly makes use of plans and models, but these techniques foster inflexibility in acknowledging the real facts; businessmen fall easily prey to self-deception, because one needs to act as if the vision already materializes. The theory is illustrated by a case study of Landis that grew from a relative insignificant into a large organization within a short period of time, but ended with outright lies and bankruptcy.Lying;deceit in business;Hannah Arendt;image-making;self-deception;accounting fraud;politics and business;Landis

Delaunay triangulation based image enhancement for echocardiography images

A novel image enhancement approach for automatic echocardiography image processing is proposed. The main steps include undecimated wavelet based speckle noise reduction, edge detection, followed by a regional enhancement process that employs Delaunay triangulation based thresholding. The edge detection is performed using a fuzzy logic based center point detection and a subsequent radial search based fuzzy multiscale edge detection. The edges obtained are used as the vertices for Delaunay triangulation for enhancement purposes. This method enhances the heart wall region in the echo image. This technique is applied to both synthetic and real image sets that were obtained from a local hospital

A comparison of RESTART implementations

The RESTART method is a widely applicable simulation technique for the estimation of rare event probabilities. The method is based on the idea to restart the simulation in certain system states, in order to generate more occurrences of the rare event. One of the main questions for any RESTART implementation is how and when to restart the simulation, in order to achieve the most accurate results for a fixed simulation effort. We investigate and compare, both theoretically and empirically, different implementations of the RESTART method. We find that the original RESTART implementation, in which each path is split into a fixed number of copies, may not be the most efficient one. It is generally better to fix the total simulation effort for each stage of the simulation. Furthermore, given this effort, the best strategy is to restart an equal number of times from each state, rather than to restart each time from a randomly chosen stat

Neogene plate tectonic reconstructions and geodynamics of North Island sedimentary basins: Implications for the petroleum systems

Although the modern Australia-Pacific plate boundary through New Zealand is relatively straight, there have been significant changes in its geometry during the Neogene. Within the North Island sector there has been a fundamental transition from an Alpine Fault translation/transpression regime to a Hikurangi margin subduction regime. This transition has been accompanied by the southward encroachment of the edge of the Pacific plate oceanic slab into Australia lithosphere, shortened and thickened along its eastern margin as a consequence of the prior Alpine Fault transpression, the process now operating in South Island. The response of the Australia lithosphere at the surface to the emplacement of the subducted slab at depth, has differed in the East Coast forearc region versus the foreland in western North Island, where the depth to the slab is greater and there has been a characteristic southward migration of depocentres pinned to the leading edge of the slab. The recent publication of new rotation parameters for relative motion of the Australia, Antarctic and Pacific plates, have provided key new data from which to plot the successive emplacement history of the Pacific slab beneath North Island, thus enabling the comparisons to be made with basin stratigraphy and geohistory. These data also constrain the age of subduction initiation at various points along the present trend of the Hikurangi Trough, identifying a younging of subduction initiation to the southwest. An implication of this younging direction is that the modern accretion¬ary prism south of Cape Kidnappers can be no older than late Miocene (c. 11 Ma). The focus of this paper is on new ideas about the tectonic development of North Island and its basins, which have implications for hydrocarbon exploration

Evaluation of PV technology implementation in the building sector

This paper presents a simulation case that shows the impact on energy consumption of a building applying photovoltaic shading systems. In order to make photovoltaic application more economical, the effect of a photovoltaic facade as a passive cooling system can result in a considerable energy cost reduction, with positive influence on the payback time of the photovoltaic installation. Photovoltaic shading systems can be applied to both refurbishment of old buildings and to new-build, offering attractive and environmentally integrated architectural solutions

Hydrodynamic modelling of circulating fluidised beds

A one-dimensional model for the riser section of a circulating fluidised bed has been developed which describes the steady-state hydrodynamic key variables in the radial direction for fully developed axisymmetric flow. Both the gas and the solid phase are considered as two continuous media, fully penetrating each other. As a first approximation gas phase turbulence has been incorporated in our hydrodynamic model by applying a slightly modified version of the well-known Prandtl mixing length model. To solve the resulting set or transport equations, the solids distribution along the tube radius is required. Several strategies are given to obtain this information. In addition the effect of clusters on the momentum transfer between both phases has been modelled using an empirical correlation. Theoretically calculated results agree well with reported experimental data of different author

Saturation of dephasing time in mesoscopic devices produced by a ferromagnetic state

We consider an exchange model of itinerant electrons in a Heisenberg ferromagnet and we assume that the ferromagnet is in a fully polarized state. Using the Holstein-Primakoff transformation we are able to obtain a boson-fermion Hamiltonian that is well-known in the interaction between light and matter. This model describes the spontaneous emission in two-level atoms that is the proper decoherence mechanism when the number of modes of the radiation field is taken increasingly large, the vacuum acting as a reservoir. In the same way one can see that the interaction between the bosonic modes of spin waves and an itinerant electron produces decoherence by spin flipping with a rate proportional to the size of the system. In this way we are able to show that the experiments on quantum dots, described in D. K. Ferry et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 82}, 4687 (1999)], and nanowires, described in D. Natelson et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 86}, 1821 (2001)], can be understood as the interaction of itinerant electrons and an electron gas in a fully polarized state.Comment: 10 pages, no figure. Changed title. Revised version accepted for publication in Physical Review

Transversal inhomogeneities in dilute vibrofluidized granular fluids

The spontaneous symmetry breaking taking place in the direction perpendicular to the energy flux in a dilute vibrofluidized granular system is investigated, using both a hydrodynamic description and simulation methods. The latter include molecular dynamics and direct Monte Carlo simulation of the Boltzmann equation. A marginal stability analysis of the hydrodynamic equations, carried out in the WKB approximation, is shown to be in good agreement with the simulation results. The shape of the hydrodynamic profiles beyond the bifurcation is discussed

Midpalatal implants vs headgear for orthodontic anchorage - a randomized clinical trial: Cephalometric results

OBJECTIVE: To compare the clinical effectiveness of the mid-palatal implant as a method of reinforcing anchorage during orthodontic treatment with that of conventional extra-oral anchorage. DESIGN: A prospective, randomized, clinical trial Setting: Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Royal Hospital NHS Trust and the Charles Clifford Dental Hospital, Sheffield. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: 51 orthodontic patients between the ages of 12 and 39, with a class II division 1 malocclusion and ‘absolute anchorage’ requirements were randomly allocated to either receive a mid-palatal implant or headgear to reinforce orthodontic anchorage. The main outcome of the trial was to compare the mesial movement of the molars and incisors of the two treatment groups between T1 (start) and T2 (end of anchorage reinforcement) as measured from cephalometric radiographs. RESULTS: The reproducibility of the measuring technique was acceptable. There were significant differences between the T1 and T2 measurements within the implant group for the position of the maxillary central incisor (p<0.001), position of the maxillary molar (p=0.009) and position of the mandibular molar (p<0.001). There were significant differences within the headgear group for the position of the mandibular central incisor (p<0.045), position of the maxillary molar (p=<0.001) and position of the mandibular molar (p<0.001). All the skeletal and dental points moved mesially more in the headgear group during treatment than in the implant group. These ranged from an average of 0.5mm more mesial for the mandibular permanent molar to 1.5mm more mesial for the maxillary molar and mandibular base. None of the treatment changes between the implant and headgear groups were statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: Mid-palatal implants are an acceptable technique for reinforcing anchorage in the orthodontic patient