687 research outputs found
Learning REAL Business Skills in a Virtual World: An Action Learning Perspective
Virtual worlds, computer-based simulated environment in which users interact via avatars, have become popular as gaming and social sites. And yet, virtual worlds are not games, but can be targeted to various objectives. One such world, Second Life (SL), is frequently used as platform for revenue generation (e.g., Anshe Chung becoming the first SL millionaire through land sales), information and knowledge sharing (e.g., Samsung show room providing product information), and learning (e.g., Ohio Universityâs Campus). This article describes a pilot project that leveraged these three uses, engaging business school students to develop their entrepreneurial knowledge by running a real business in SLâs virtual environment. An action learning process framework (i.e. experience, understanding, planning, and action) is used as the basic theoretical framework to analyze the resulting data, drawn from student reports and project outcomes. Considering three different domains (business, technology and virtual world environment) and the associated developed skills-set (in terms of knowledge, social, and application), we formulate a three dimensional analytical view. The findings demonstrate that virtual worlds can be used to induce studentsâ self learning abilities, as reflected for instance in the expression of a range of explicit knowledge concepts, drawn from experiential learning within projects
Characteristics of the grain-filling process and starch accumulation of high-yield common buckwheat âcv. Fengtian 1â and tartary buckwheat âcv. Jingqiao 2â
High-yield common buckwheat âcv. Fengtian 1â (FT1) and tartary buckwheat âcv. Jingqiao 2â (JQ2) were selected to investigate the characteristics of the grain-filling process and starch accumulation of high-yield buckwheat. FT1 had an average yield that was 43.0% higher than that of the control âcv. Tongliaobendixiaoliâ (TLBDXL) in two growing seasons, while JQ2 had an average yield that was 27.3% higher than that of the control âcv. Chuanqiao 2â (CQ2). The Richards equation was utilized to evaluate the grain-filling process of buckwheat. Both FT1 and JQ2 showed higher values of initial growth power and final grain weight and longer linear increase phase, compared with respective control. These values suggest that the higher initial increasing rate and the longer active growth period during grain filling play important roles to increase buckwheat yield. Similar patterns of starch, amylose and amylopectin accumulation were detected in common buckwheat, leading to similar concentration of each constituent at maturity in FT1 and TLBDXL. Tartary buckwheat showed an increasing accumulation pattern of amylose in developing seeds, which differed from that of starch and amylopectin. This pattern led to a significant difference of the concentrations of amylose and amylopectin at maturity between JQ2 and CQ2, the mechanisms of which remained unclear. Nevertheless, both FT1 and JQ2 showed increased starch, amylose, and amylopectin accumulation during the physiological maturity of grains. The results suggest that prolonging the active grain-filling period to increase carbohydrate partitioning from source to seed sink can be an effective strategy to improve buckwheat yield
Extending PT symmetry from Heisenberg algebra to E2 algebra
The E2 algebra has three elements, J, u, and v, which satisfy the commutation
relations [u,J]=iv, [v,J]=-iu, [u,v]=0. We can construct the Hamiltonian
H=J^2+gu, where g is a real parameter, from these elements. This Hamiltonian is
Hermitian and consequently it has real eigenvalues. However, we can also
construct the PT-symmetric and non-Hermitian Hamiltonian H=J^2+igu, where again
g is real. As in the case of PT-symmetric Hamiltonians constructed from the
elements x and p of the Heisenberg algebra, there are two regions in parameter
space for this PT-symmetric Hamiltonian, a region of unbroken PT symmetry in
which all the eigenvalues are real and a region of broken PT symmetry in which
some of the eigenvalues are complex. The two regions are separated by a
critical value of g.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure
Exploration of hyperfine interaction between constituent quarks via eta productions
In this work, the different exchange freedom, one gluon, one pion or
Goldstone boson, in constituent quark model is investigated, which is
responsible to the hyperfine interaction between constituent quarks, via the
combined analysis of the eta production processes,
and . With the Goldstone-boson exchange, as well as
the one-gluon or one-pion exchange, both the spectrum and observables, such as,
the differential cross section and polarized beam asymmetry, are fitted to the
suggested values of Particle Data Group and the experimental data. The first
two types of exchange freedoms give acceptable description of the spectrum and
observables while the one pion exchange can not describe the observables and
spectrum simultaneously, so can be excluded. The experimental data for the two
processes considered here strongly support the mixing angles for two lowest S11
sates and D13 states as about -30 and 6 degree respectively.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 4 table
âEmptying the cage, changing the birdsâ: state rescaling, path-dependency and the politics of economic restructuring in post-crisis Guangdong
This paper evaluates how economic restructuring in Guangdong is entwined with the politicization of state rescaling during and after the global financial crisis of 2008. It shows how a key industrial policy known as âdouble relocationâ generated tensions between the Guangdong government, then led by Party Secretary Wang Yang, and the senior echelon of the Communist Party of China in Beijing. The contestations and negotiations that ensued illustrate the dynamic entwinement between state rescaling and institutional path-dependency: the Wang administration launched this industrial policy in spite of potentially destabilizing effects on the prevailing national structure of capital accumulation. This foregrounds, in turn, the constitutive and constraining effects of established, national-level policies on local, territorially-specific restructuring policies
A hybrid noise suppression filter for accuracy enhancement of commercial speech recognizers in varying noisy conditions
Commercial speech recognizers have made possible many speech control applications such as wheelchair, tone-phone, multifunctional robotic arms and remote controls, for the disabled and paraplegic. However, they have a limitation in common in that recognition errors are likely to be produced when background noise surrounds the spoken command, thereby creating potential dangers for the disabled if recognition errors exist in the control systems. In this paper, a hybrid noise suppression filter is proposed to inter-face with the commercial speech recognizers in order to enhance the recognition accuracy under variant noisy conditions. It intends to decrease the recognition errors when the commercial speech recognizers are working under a noisy environment. It is based on a sigmoid function which can effectively enhance noisy speech using simple computational operations, while a robust estimator based on an adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference system is used to determine the appropriate operational parameters for the sigmoid function in order to produce effective speech enhancement under variant noisy conditions.The proposed hybrid noise suppression filter has the following advantages for commercial speech recognizers: (i) it is not possible to tune the inbuilt parameters on the commercial speech recognizers in order to obtain better accuracy; (ii) existing noise suppression filters are too complicated to be implemented for real-time speech recognition; and (iii) existing sigmoid function based filters can operate only in a single-noisy condition, but not under varying noisy conditions. The performance of the hybrid noise suppression filter was evaluated by interfacing it with a commercial speech recognizer, commonly used in electronic products. Experimental results show that improvement in terms of recognition accuracy and computational time can be achieved by the hybrid noise suppression filter when the commercial recognizer is working under various noisy environments in factories
Heavy quarkonium: progress, puzzles, and opportunities
A golden age for heavy quarkonium physics dawned a decade ago, initiated by
the confluence of exciting advances in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and an
explosion of related experimental activity. The early years of this period were
chronicled in the Quarkonium Working Group (QWG) CERN Yellow Report (YR) in
2004, which presented a comprehensive review of the status of the field at that
time and provided specific recommendations for further progress. However, the
broad spectrum of subsequent breakthroughs, surprises, and continuing puzzles
could only be partially anticipated. Since the release of the YR, the BESII
program concluded only to give birth to BESIII; the -factories and CLEO-c
flourished; quarkonium production and polarization measurements at HERA and the
Tevatron matured; and heavy-ion collisions at RHIC have opened a window on the
deconfinement regime. All these experiments leave legacies of quality,
precision, and unsolved mysteries for quarkonium physics, and therefore beg for
continuing investigations. The plethora of newly-found quarkonium-like states
unleashed a flood of theoretical investigations into new forms of matter such
as quark-gluon hybrids, mesonic molecules, and tetraquarks. Measurements of the
spectroscopy, decays, production, and in-medium behavior of c\bar{c}, b\bar{b},
and b\bar{c} bound states have been shown to validate some theoretical
approaches to QCD and highlight lack of quantitative success for others. The
intriguing details of quarkonium suppression in heavy-ion collisions that have
emerged from RHIC have elevated the importance of separating hot- and
cold-nuclear-matter effects in quark-gluon plasma studies. This review
systematically addresses all these matters and concludes by prioritizing
directions for ongoing and future efforts.Comment: 182 pages, 112 figures. Editors: N. Brambilla, S. Eidelman, B. K.
Heltsley, R. Vogt. Section Coordinators: G. T. Bodwin, E. Eichten, A. D.
Frawley, A. B. Meyer, R. E. Mitchell, V. Papadimitriou, P. Petreczky, A. A.
Petrov, P. Robbe, A. Vair
Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in âs = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector
A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fbâ1 of protonâproton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results
Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC
provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of
lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with
a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the
transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the
anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the
nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of
the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp.
Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in
the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies
smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating
nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and
transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of
inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous
measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables,
submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are
available at
http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02
Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment
This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and
W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with
the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and
the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto
the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions
f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV
and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw
> 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour,
are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017
+/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second
include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables,
revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio
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