Tourism firms survival jeopardized

A substantial decrease in revenues will, without any government intervention, affect the survival of the tourism firms. However, the effects of decreased demand and liquidity differ among subsectors and should be investigated separately. This paper explores the survival rate of Slovenian firms, operating in tourism industry during the period 2008-2018. Results show that the 10-year survival rate is around 60 percent, but there are substantial differences between the subsectors. We show that both liquidity ratios and sales per employee significantly affect survival rates, the first one having stronger effect within travel agency, accommodation, transport and food & beverage subsectors, while the former within gambling. Based on hazard ratios we can conclude that the expected fall in sales and worsened liquidity ratios of firms, operating in tourism sectors, will result in fallen survival rates. Crisis control measures will have to be adjusted for sub-sector in order to limit the firms’ default

Female perception of risk with regard to cultural background

Cross-cultural studies showed that cultures had influence on risk perceptions. The research presented here focused on the female perception of risk, since previous studies underline some gender difference. We studied risk perception of Slovenian and Japanese female students. As a tool to detect empirically based information on subjective meanings of concept risk we used Associative Group Analysis (Szalay and Brent, 1967). From hundreds of free associations on the risk that were given by the students we detect the common characteristic by their categorization. We found some difference in semantic saturation of particular categories between the compared groups of students. In order to gain an understanding about female risk perception we have carried out Survey on Attitudes toward Health, Life, and Science and Technology (Tsuchida, Pergar-Kuscer, and Englander, 2003). The effects of implicit attitude structures and affect on the risk perception were analyzed through the Linkage-Model

Fabrication and modeling of piezoelectric transducers for High-Frequency medical imaging

International audienceWe have studied the processing of piezoelectric thick films using electrophoretic deposition (EPD) for high-frequency ultrasound applications. Lead-zirconium-titanate (PZT) particles synthetized by solid states synthesis were dispersed in ethanol using ammonium polyacrylate (PAA). The electrophoretic deposition of PZT particles was performed at a constant-current mode. PZT thick-films deposited at 1 mA for 60 seconds were sintered at 900oC for 2 hours in a PbO-controlled atmosphere. The scanning-electron microscopy (SEM) analysis shows that the thickness of PZT layer is uniform and that the pores are homogeneously distributed within the layer. The complex electrical impedance was measured and fitted by KLM scheme in order to deduce the dielectric, mechanical and piezoelectric parameters of the thick-films. The density and thickness of PZT thick films are used as inputs and the thickness coupling factor kt, dielectric constant at constant strain and resonant frequency are deduced. The results show that homogeneous PZT thick-film structures with tailored thickness and density prepared by EPD and sintering having a resonant frequency around 20 MHz can be used for noninvasive medical ultrasound imaging and diagnostics

Orthogonality of case's eigenfunctions in one-speed transport theory

The eigenfunctions of the one-speed transport equation, as introduced by Case, are shown to have more general orthogonality properties than previously known. In particular, for isotropic scattering, partial range and "two-media" orthogonality relations are derived. An extension to linearly anisotropic scattering is indicated. These results facilitate the application of Case's method to one-speed transport problems in plane geometry.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32078/1/0000127.pd

Integral representation of the linear Boltzmann operator for granular gas dynamics with applications

We investigate the properties of the collision operator associated to the linear Boltzmann equation for dissipative hard-spheres arising in granular gas dynamics. We establish that, as in the case of non-dissipative interactions, the gain collision operator is an integral operator whose kernel is made explicit. One deduces from this result a complete picture of the spectrum of the collision operator in an Hilbert space setting, generalizing results from T. Carleman to granular gases. In the same way, we obtain from this integral representation of the gain operator that the semigroup in L^1(\R \times \R,\d \x \otimes \d\v) associated to the linear Boltzmann equation for dissipative hard spheres is honest generalizing known results from the first author.Comment: 19 pages, to appear in Journal of Statistical Physic

Measuring CMB polarisation with the Planck mission

In this paper, we discuss why and how the Planck mission, originally designed and proposed for mapping CMB intensity fluctuations, has been revised for polarisation measurement capability as well

On the initial expansion of meteor trails

The asymptotic solution of the equation governing the number density n(r,t) of evaporated meteoric atons behind a steadily moving meteor is obtained which is suitable to depict the initial expansion of a meteor trail. Some unusual results of meteor observations are elucidated.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/21660/1/0000044.pd

Insights into the Second Law of Thermodynamics from Anisotropic Gas-Surface Interactions

Thermodynamic implications of anisotropic gas-surface interactions in a closed molecular flow cavity are examined. Anisotropy at the microscopic scale, such as might be caused by reduced-dimensionality surfaces, is shown to lead to reversibility at the macroscopic scale. The possibility of a self-sustaining nonequilibrium stationary state induced by surface anisotropy is demonstrated that simultaneously satisfies flux balance, conservation of momentum, and conservation of energy. Conversely, it is also shown that the second law of thermodynamics prohibits anisotropic gas-surface interactions in "equilibrium", even for reduced dimensionality surfaces. This is particularly startling because reduced dimensionality surfaces are known to exhibit a plethora of anisotropic properties. That gas-surface interactions would be excluded from these anisotropic properties is completely counterintuitive from a causality perspective. These results provide intriguing insights into the second law of thermodynamics and its relation to gas-surface interaction physics.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figure

Ceramic packaging of PiezoMEMS devices

In the contributionthe design and the fabrication of two different types of ceramic packaging for PiezoMEMS devices ispresented. The first ceramic packaging is designed for housing the piezoelectric energy harvester. This packaging is made using LTCC technology and in the final application willintegrate piezoelectric device, electroniccircuit, storage capacitor and other components into the complex microsystem. The second packaging is developed for piezoelectric vibrating device as a part of water-purification system. In this case,the thick-film technology is used for electrical interconnection of piezoelectric actuators and for the hermetic watertight insulation of the system