HRM Strategies in Structurally Depressed Industries: The Japanese Approach

Several adverse macro-economic trends beginning in the early 1970’s drastically reduced the relative competitiveness of various sectors of the Japanese economy. Firms in Western (industrialized) countries that were faced with a similar loss of comparative advantage dealt with the problem by undertaking strategies of restructuring--primarily, retrenchment and downsizing strategies. However, in sharp contrast to the Western approach, the Japanese response to industrial decline, from a HRM standpoint, was a product of the political, cultural, and social institutions/values of that society. The Japanese government, business sector and the labor unions worked together to ‘maintain’ employment levels (albeit, mainly that of permanent employees) in order to minimize the costs of adjustment for the key stakeholder groups in particular, and for the Japanese society as a whole, in general

Finite temperature properties of the triangular lattice t-J model, applications to Nax_xCoO2_2

We present a finite temperature ($T$) study of the t-J model on the two-dimensional triangular lattice for the negative hopping $t$, as relevant for the electron-doped Na$_x$CoO$_2$ (NCO). To understand several aspects of this system, we study the $T$-dependent chemical potential, specific heat, magnetic susceptibility, and the dynamic Hall-coefficient across the entire doping range. We show systematically, how this simplest model for strongly correlated electrons describes a crossover as function of doping ($x$) from a Pauli-like weakly spin-correlated metal close to the band-limit (density $n=2$) to the Curie-Weiss metallic phase ($1.5<n<1.75$) with pronounced anti-ferromagnetic (AFM) correlations at low temperatures and Curie-Weiss type behavior in the high-temperature regime. Upon further reduction of the doping, a new energy scale, dominated by spin-interactions ($J$) emerges (apparent both in specific heat and susceptibility) and we identify an effective interaction $J_{eff}(x)$, valid across the entire doping range. This is distinct from Anderson's formula, as we choose here $t<0$, hence the opposite sign of the usual Nagaoka-ferromagnetic situation. This expression includes the subtle effect of weak kinetic AFM - as encountered in the infinitely correlated situation ($U=\infty$). By explicit computation of the Kubo-formulae, we address the question of practical relevance of the high-frequency expression for the Hall coefficient $R_H^*$. We hope to clarify some open questions concerning the applicability of the t-J model to real experimental situations through this study

Fitting and Comparing Galactic Foreground Models for Unbiased 21-cm Cosmology

Accurate detection of the cosmological 21-cm global signal requires galactic foreground models which can remove power over ~$10^6$. Although foreground and global signal models unavoidably exhibit overlap in their vector-spaces inducing bias error in the extracted signal, a second source of bias and error arises from inadequate foreground models, i.e. models which cannot fit spectra down to the noise level of the signal. We therefore test the level to which seven commonly employed foreground models -- including nonlinear and linear forward-models, polynomials, and maximally-smooth polynomials -- fit realistic simulated mock foreground spectra, as well as their dependence upon model inputs. The mock spectra are synthesized for an EDGES-like experiment and we compare all models' goodness-of-fit and preference using a Kolomogorov-Smirnov test of the noise-normalized residuals in order to compare models with differing, and sometimes indeterminable, degrees of freedom. For a single LST bin spectrum and p-value threshold of $p=0.05$, the nonlinear-forward model with 4 parameters is preferred ($p=0.99$), while the linear forward-model fits well with 6-7 parameters ($p=0.94,0.97$ respectively). The polynomials and maximally-smooth polynomials, like those employed by the EDGES and SARAS3 experiments, cannot produce good fits with 5 parameters for the experimental simulations in this work ($p<10^{-6}$). However, we find that polynomials with 6 parameters pass the KS-test ($p=0.4$), although a 9 parameter fit produces the highest p-value ($p\sim0.67$). When fitting multiple LST bins simultaneously, we find that the linear forward-model outperforms (a higher p-value) the nonlinear for 2, 5 and 10 LST bins. Importantly, the KS-test consistently identifies best-fit \textit{and} preferred models.Comment: 26 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication by ApJ, minor revisions and edits from previous versio

Household economy, forest dependency &amp; opportunity costs of conservation in eastern rainforests of Madagascar

The Government of Madagascar is trying to reduce deforestation and conserve biodiversity through creating new protected areas in the eastern rainforests. While this has many benefits, forest use restriction may bring costs to farmers at the forest frontier. We explored this through a series of surveys in five sites around the Corridor Ankeniheny Zahamena new protected area and adjacent national parks. In phase one a stratified random sample of 603 households completed a household survey covering demographic and socio-economic characteristics, and a choice experiment to estimate the opportunity costs of conservation. A stratified sub-sample (n = 171) then completed a detailed agricultural survey (including recording inputs and outputs from 721 plots) and wild-harvested product survey. The data have been archived with ReShare (UK Data Service). Together these allow a deeper understanding of the household economy on the forest frontier in eastern Madagascar and their swidden agricultural system, the benefits households derive from the forests through wild-harvested products, and the costs of conservation restrictions to forest edge communities

(5,7-Dimethyl-2-oxo-2H-chromen-4-yl)methyl diethyl­dithio­carbamate

In the title compound, C17H21NO2S2, the coumarin ring system is nearly planar, with a maximum deviation of 0.080 (2) Å from the mean plane. An intra­molecular C—H⋯S hydrogen bond occurs. The crystal structure features C—H⋯S hydrogen bonds and weak π–π inter­actions with a centroid–centroid distance of 3.679 (1) Å

(5,7-Dimethyl-2-oxo-2H-chromen-4-yl)methyl pyrrolidine-1-carbodithio­ate

In the title compound, C17H19NO2S2, the 2H-chromene ring system is almost planar, with a maximum deviation of 0.044 (2) Å, and the pyrrolidine ring adopts an envelope conformation. The dihedral angle between the 2H-chromene system and the planar part of the pyrrolidine ring is 83.65 (8)°. A weak intra­molecular C—H⋯S hydrogen bond occurs. The crystal structure features C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds and π–π inter­actions, with a centroid–centroid distance of 3.5728 (16) Å

(7-Chloro-2-oxo-2H-chromen-4-yl)methyl piperidine-1-carbodithio­ate

In the title compound, C16H16ClNO2S2, the piperidine ring is in a chair conformation. In the coumarin ring system, the dihedral angle between the benzene and pyran rings is 3.5 (1)°. In the crystal, a weak C—H⋯O hydrogen bond links mol­ecules into chains along [001]. In addition, π–π stacking inter­actions are present involving the benzene and pyran rings, with a centroid-to-centroid distance of 3.712 (2) Å. The crystal studied is a nonmerohedral twin with refined components 0.221 (1) and 0.779 (1)

Power of Randomization in Automata on Infinite Strings

Probabilistic B\"uchi Automata (PBA) are randomized, finite state automata that process input strings of infinite length. Based on the threshold chosen for the acceptance probability, different classes of languages can be defined. In this paper, we present a number of results that clarify the power of such machines and properties of the languages they define. The broad themes we focus on are as follows. We present results on the decidability and precise complexity of the emptiness, universality and language containment problems for such machines, thus answering questions central to the use of these models in formal verification. Next, we characterize the languages recognized by PBAs topologically, demonstrating that though general PBAs can recognize languages that are not regular, topologically the languages are as simple as \omega-regular languages. Finally, we introduce Hierarchical PBAs, which are syntactically restricted forms of PBAs that are tractable and capture exactly the class of \omega-regular languages

(6-Meth­oxy-2-oxo-2H-chromen-4-yl)methyl pyrrolidine-1-carbodithio­ate

In the title compound, C16H17NO3S2, the 2H-chromene ring is close to being planar [maximum deviation = 0.034 (2) Å] and the pyrrolidine ring is twisted about the C—C bond opposite the N atom. The dihedral angle between the ring-system planes is 75.24 (16)° and an intra­molecular C—H⋯S inter­action occurs. In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds and the packing also exhibits π–π inter­actions, with a distance of 3.6106 (13) Å between the centroids of the benzene rings of neighbouring mol­ecules