Interdisciplinary (retail) research: The business of geography and the geography of business

NoAt the 2005 British Academy of Management conference several well-known economic geographers, including Neil Wrigley, Gordon Clark, and Susan Christopherson, called for management researchers to engage with economic geographers on interrelated geographical and managerial issues in the study of (retail) firms. In this commentary we reflect upon the present geography -management interface.We begin by considering the term `interdisciplinary research' and its relationship to any management - geography interface. This is followed by a context-specific discussion of international retailing and the role of research on the retail transnational corporation (TNC) in developing an interdisciplinary agenda. This commentary represents an initial more business and management focused response to the call from geography academics for more/better interdisciplinary research at the geography - management interface

Analytic parametrizations of the non-perturbative Pomeron and QCD-inspired models

We consider several classes of analytic parametrizations of hadronic scattering amplitudes, and compare their predictions to all available forward data (proton- proton, antiproton-proton, pion-proton, kaon-proton, photon-proton, photon- photon, sigma-proton). Although these parametrizations are very close for energy larger than 9 GeV, it turns out that they differ markedly at low energy, where a universal Pomeron term ~(ln s)**2 enables one to extend the fit down to 4 GeV.Comment: 11 pages, 2 tables, Presented at the 9th Blois Workshop on Elastic and Diffractive Scattering, Pruhonice, Czech Republic, 9-15 June 200

New measures of the quality and of the reliability of fits applied to forward hadronic data at t=0

We develop five new statistical measures of the quality of fits, which we combine with the usual confidence level to determine the models which fit best all available data for total cross sections and for the real part of the forward hadronic amplitude.Comment: 7 pages, presented by J.R. Cudell on behalf of the COMPETE collaboration at the 6th workshop on non-perturbative QCD, American University of Paris, 5-9 June 200

Analytic Amplitude Models for Forward Scattering

We report on fits of a large class of analytic amplitude models for forward scattering against the comprehensive data for all available reactions. To differentiate the goodness of the fits of many possible parametrizations to a large sample of data, we developed and used a set of quantitative indicators measuring statistical quality of the fits over and beyond the typical criterion of the $\Chi^2 /dof$. These indicators favor models with a universal $log^2 s$ Pomeron term, which enables one to extend the fit down to $\sqrt s = 4$ GeV.Comment: 13 pages, COMPETE Collaboration, talk presented at the 9th International Conference (Blois Workshop) on Elastic and Diffractive Scatterin

Quark coalescence in the mid rapidity region at RHIC

We utilize the ALCOR model for mid-rapidity hadron number predictions at AGS, SPS and RHIC energies. We present simple fits for the energy dependence of stopping and quark production.Comment: Talk given at SQM2001, Frankfurt, (LaTeX 8 pages, 5 .ps figs

Forward observables at RHIC, the Tevatron run II and the LHC

We present predictions on the total cross sections and on the ratio of the real part to the imaginary part of the elastic amplitude (rho parameter) for present and future pp and pbar p colliders, and on total cross sections for gamma p -> hadrons at cosmic-ray energies and for gamma gamma -> hadrons up to sqrt(s)=1 TeV. These predictions are based on a study of many possible analytic parametrisations and invoke the current hadronic dataset at t=0. The uncertainties on total cross sections, including the systematic theoretical errors, reach 1% at RHIC, 3% at the Tevatron, and 10% at the LHC, whereas those on the rho parameter are respectively 10%, 17%, and 26%.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, LaTeX, presented at the Second International "Cetraro" Workshop & NATO Advanced Research Workshop "Diffraction 2002", Alushta, Crimea, Ukraine, August 31 - September 6, 200

User evaluation of an interactive learning framework for single-arm and dual-arm robots

The final publication is available at link.springer.comSocial robots are expected to adapt to their users and, like their human counterparts, learn from the interaction. In our previous work, we proposed an interactive learning framework that enables a user to intervene and modify a segment of the robot arm trajectory. The framework uses gesture teleoperation and reinforcement learning to learn new motions. In the current work, we compared the user experience with the proposed framework implemented on the single-arm and dual-arm Barrett’s 7-DOF WAM robots equipped with a Microsoft Kinect camera for user tracking and gesture recognition. User performance and workload were measured in a series of trials with two groups of 6 participants using two robot settings in different order for counterbalancing. The experimental results showed that, for the same task, users required less time and produced shorter robot trajectories with the single-arm robot than with the dual-arm robot. The results also showed that the users who performed the task with the single-arm robot first experienced considerably less workload in performing the task with the dual-arm robot while achieving a higher task success rate in a shorter time.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Heisenberg's Universal (lns)**2 Increase of Total Cross Sections

The (lns)**2 behaviour of total cross-sections, first obtained by Heisenberg 50 years ago, receives now increased interest both on phenomenological and theoretical levels. In this paper we present a modification of the Heisenberg's model in connection with the presence of glueballs and we show that it leads to a realistic description of all existing hadron total cross-section data.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Unified Model for Small-t and High-t Scattering at High Energies: Predictions at RHIC and LHC

The urgency of predictions in large-t region at LHC stimulated us to present a unified model of small and high t scattering at high energies. Our model is based upon a safe theoretical ground: analyticity, unitarity, Regge behavior, gluon exchange and saturation of bounds established in axiomatic quantum field theory. We make precise predictions for the behavior of the differential cross sections at high t, the evolution of the dip-shoulder structure localized in the region of -t between 0.5 and 0.8 GeV**2 and the radical violation of the exponential behavior of the first diffraction cone at small t.Comment: 6 pages, 2 table, 7 figures. Misprints are correcte