18,269 research outputs found
Managing rapport in intercultural business interactions: a comparison of two Chinese-British welcome meetings
This paper explores the management of rapport in intercultural business interactions. It compares two Chinese-British business welcome meetings that were held by the same British company. Despite many similarities between the two meetings, both the British and the Chinese were very satisfied with the first meeting, while the Chinese were very annoyed by the second. This paper describes the similarities and differences between the two meetings, and explores why they were evaluated so differently. It argues that research into the management of relations in intercultural communication needs to use a broader analytic framework than is typical of intercultural discourse research, and that it needs to gather a wider range of data types
A Feynman integral via higher normal functions
We study the Feynman integral for the three-banana graph defined as the
scalar two-point self-energy at three-loop order. The Feynman integral is
evaluated for all identical internal masses in two space-time dimensions. Two
calculations are given for the Feynman integral; one based on an interpretation
of the integral as an inhomogeneous solution of a classical Picard-Fuchs
differential equation, and the other using arithmetic algebraic geometry,
motivic cohomology, and Eisenstein series. Both methods use the rather special
fact that the Feynman integral is a family of regulator periods associated to a
family of K3 surfaces. We show that the integral is given by a sum of elliptic
trilogarithms evaluated at sixth roots of unity. This elliptic trilogarithm
value is related to the regulator of a class in the motivic cohomology of the
K3 family. We prove a conjecture by David Broadhurst that at a special
kinematical point the Feynman integral is given by a critical value of the
Hasse-Weil L-function of the K3 surface. This result is shown to be a
particular case of Deligne's conjectures relating values of L-functions inside
the critical strip to periods.Comment: Latex. 70 pages. 3 figures. v3: minor changes and clarifications.
Version to appear in Compositio Mathematic
The Herschel SPIRE Fourier Transform Spectrometer Spectral Feature Finder II. Estimating Radial Velocity of SPIRE Spectral Observation Sources
The Herschel SPIRE FTS Spectral Feature Finder (FF) detects significant
spectral features within SPIRE spectra and employs two routines, and external
references, to estimate source radial velocity. The first routine is based on
the identification of rotational CO emission, the second cross-correlates
detected features with a line template containing most of the characteristic
lines in typical far infra-red observations. In this paper, we outline and
validate these routines, summarise the results as they pertain to the FF, and
comment on how external references were incorporated.Comment: 12 pages, 16 figures, 1 table, accepted by MNRAS March 202
Eggshell appearance does not signal maternal corticosterone exposure in Japanese quail:an experimental study with brown-spotted eggs
Reproduction is a critical period for birds as they have to cope with many stressful events. One consequence of an acute exposure to stress is the release of corticosterone, the avian stress hormone. Prolonged stress can have negative impacts on the immune system, resulting in, for example, increased oxidative stress. Through maternal effects, females are known to modulate their investment in eggs content according to their own physiological condition. Less is known about maternal investment in eggshells, especially in pigments. The two main eggshell pigments may possess opposite antioxidant properties: protoporphyrin (brown) is a pro-oxidant, whereas biliverdin (blue-green) is an antioxidant. In Japanese quail, we know that the deposition of both pigments is related to female body condition. Thus, a chronic stress response may be reflected in eggshell coloration. Using female Japanese quails that lay brown-spotted eggs, we explored whether physiological exposure to corticosterone induces a change in female basal stress and antioxidant factors, and eggshell pigment concentration, spectrophotometric reflectance, and maculation coverage. We supplemented adult females over a 2 week period with either peanut oil (control) or corticosterone (treatment). We collected pre- and post-supplementation eggs and analysed the effect of corticosterone treatment on female physiology and eggshell appearance parameters. Except for corticosterone-fed birds which laid eggs with brighter spots, supplementation had no significant effect on female physiology or eggshell pigment concentration, reflectance and maculation. The change in eggshell spot brightness was not detected by a photoreceptor noise-limited color opponent model of avian visual perception. Our data confirms that eggshell reflectance in spotted eggs varies over the laying sequence, and spot reflectance may be a key factor that is affected by females CORT exposure, even if the changes are not detected by an avian visual model
Compact steep-spectrum sources from the S4 sample
We present the results of 5-GHz observations with the VLA A-array of a sample
of candidate Compact Steep Spectrum sources (CSSs) selected from the S4 survey.
We also estimate the symmetry parameters of high-luminosity CSSs selected from
different samples of radio sources, and compare these with the larger sources
of similar luminosity to understand their evolution and the consistency of the
CSSs with the unified scheme for radio galaxies and quasars. The majority of
CSSs are likely to be young sources advancing outwards through a dense
asymmetric environment. The radio properties of CSSs are found to be consistent
with the unified scheme, in which the axes of the quasars are observed close to
the line of sight, while radio galaxies are observed close to the plane of the
sky.Comment: accepted for publication in mnras; 8 pages, figure 1 with 21 images,
and two additional figures; 2 table
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