1,191 research outputs found
A Finnish-Australian Acquisition: Organisational Problems and Issues
Although acquisitions are a popular way of internationalisation, the integration of acquired companies remains an arduous process that often impacts on the performance of the subsidiary or the overall organisation. Difficulties associated with integration mostly relate to cultural differences, either national or organisational. This paper reflects on the experience of Finnish and Australian staff involved in the acquisition of an Australian company by a Finish company. The paper points at problems and issues with business planning, vision sharing, effective management and leadership, cultural differences, cultural change, trust relationships and the integration environment as derived from literature and confirmed in the experience of interviewed respondents. The findings drawn from the case imply that it is imperative to avoid an 'us vs. them' atmosphere while both management and leadership must be strong and unbiased. Although a level of independence and identity should be allowed after the acquisition, integration of organisational cultures remains crucial for success
Rigidity and volume preserving deformation on degenerate simplices
Given a degenerate -simplex in a -dimensional space
(Euclidean, spherical or hyperbolic space, and ), for each , , Radon's theorem induces a partition of the set of -faces into two
subsets. We prove that if the vertices of the simplex vary smoothly in
for , and the volumes of -faces in one subset are constrained only to
decrease while in the other subset only to increase, then any sufficiently
small motion must preserve the volumes of all -faces; and this property
still holds in for if an invariant of
the degenerate simplex has the desired sign. This answers a question posed by
the author, and the proof relies on an invariant we discovered
for any -stress on a cell complex in . We introduce a
characteristic polynomial of the degenerate simplex by defining
, and prove that the roots
of are real for the Euclidean case. Some evidence suggests the same
conjecture for the hyperbolic case.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Discrete & Computational Geometr
Involving users in OPAC interface design: Perspective from a UK study
This is the post-print versoin of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2007 SpringerThe purpose of this study was to determine user suggestions for a typical OPAC (Online Public Library Catalogue) application’s functionality and features. An experiment was undertaken to find out the type of interactions features that users prefer to have in an OPAC. The study revealed that regardless of users’ Information Technology (IT) backgrounds, their functionality expectations of OPACs are the same. However, based on users’ previous experiences with OPACs, their requirements with respect to specific features may change. Users should be involved early in the OPAC development cycle process in order to ensure usable and functional interface
Opposing actions of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) in regulating microtubule stabilization during cardiac hypertrophy
Excessive proliferation and stabilization of the microtubule (MT) array in cardiac myocytes can accompany pathological cardiac hypertrophy, but the molecular control of these changes remains poorly characterized. In this study, we examined MT stabilization in two independent murine models of heart failure and revealed increases in the levels of post-translationally modified stable MTs, which were closely associated with STAT3 activation. To explore the molecular signaling events contributing to control of the cardiac MT network, we stimulated cardiac myocytes with an a-adrenergic agonist phenylephrine (PE), and observed increased tubulin content without changes in detyrosinated (glutubulin) stable MT’s. In contrast, the hypertrophic interleukin-6 (IL6) family cytokines increased both the glu-tubulin content and glu-MT density. When we examined a role for ERK in regulating cardiac MTs, we showed that the MEK/ERK-inhibitor U0126 increased glu-MT density in either control cardiac myocytes or following exposure to hypertrophic agents. Conversely, expression of an activated MEK1 mutant reduced glu-tubulin levels. Thus, ERK signaling antagonizes stabilization of the cardiac MT array. In contrast, inhibiting either JAK2 with AG490, or STAT3 signaling with Stattic or siRNA knockdown, blocked cytokine-stimulated increases in glu-MT density. Furthermore, the expression of a constitutively active STAT3 mutant triggered increased glu-MT density in the absence of hypertrophic stimulation. Thus, STAT3 activation contributes substantially to cytokine-stimulated glu-MT changes. Taken together, our results highlight the opposing actions of STAT3 and ERK pathways in the regulation of MT changes associated with cardiac myocyte hypertrophy
Construction and Analysis of Projected Deformed Products
We introduce a deformed product construction for simple polytopes in terms of
lower-triangular block matrix representations. We further show how Gale duality
can be employed for the construction and for the analysis of deformed products
such that specified faces (e.g. all the k-faces) are ``strictly preserved''
under projection. Thus, starting from an arbitrary neighborly simplicial
(d-2)-polytope Q on n-1 vertices we construct a deformed n-cube, whose
projection to the last dcoordinates yields a neighborly cubical d-polytope. As
an extension of thecubical case, we construct matrix representations of
deformed products of(even) polygons (DPPs), which have a projection to d-space
that retains the complete (\lfloor \tfrac{d}{2} \rfloor - 1)-skeleton. In both
cases the combinatorial structure of the images under projection is completely
determined by the neighborly polytope Q: Our analysis provides explicit
combinatorial descriptions. This yields a multitude of combinatorially
different neighborly cubical polytopes and DPPs. As a special case, we obtain
simplified descriptions of the neighborly cubical polytopes of Joswig & Ziegler
(2000) as well as of the ``projected deformed products of polygons'' that were
announced by Ziegler (2004), a family of 4-polytopes whose ``fatness'' gets
arbitrarily close to 9.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure
Six topics on inscribable polytopes
Inscribability of polytopes is a classic subject but also a lively research
area nowadays. We illustrate this with a selection of well-known results and
recent developments on six particular topics related to inscribable polytopes.
Along the way we collect a list of (new and old) open questions.Comment: 11 page
Development of planar pixel modules for the ATLAS high luminosity LHC tracker upgrade
The high-luminosity LHC will present significant challenges for tracking systems. ATLAS is preparing to upgrade the entire tracking system, which will include a significantly larger pixel detector. This paper reports on the development of large area planar detectors for the outer pixel layers and the pixel endcaps. Large area sensors have been fabricated and mounted onto 4 FE-I4 readout ASICs, the so-called quad-modules, and their performance evaluated in the laboratory and testbeam. Results from characterisation of sensors prior to assembly, experience with module assembly, including bump-bonding and results from laboratory and testbeam studies are presented
Realizability of Polytopes as a Low Rank Matrix Completion Problem
This article gives necessary and sufficient conditions for a relation to be
the containment relation between the facets and vertices of a polytope. Also
given here, are a set of matrices parameterizing the linear moduli space and
another set parameterizing the projective moduli space of a combinatorial
polytope
Algebraic entropy for semi-discrete equations
We extend the definition of algebraic entropy to semi-discrete
(difference-differential) equations. Calculating the entropy for a number of
integrable and non integrable systems, we show that its vanishing is a
characteristic feature of integrability for this type of equations
Generalised dimensions of measures on almost self-affine sets
We establish a generic formula for the generalised q-dimensions of measures
supported by almost self-affine sets, for all q>1. These q-dimensions may
exhibit phase transitions as q varies. We first consider general measures and
then specialise to Bernoulli and Gibbs measures. Our method involves estimating
expectations of moment expressions in terms of `multienergy' integrals which we
then bound using induction on families of trees
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