Service quality gap analysis in private sector bank - a customer perspective

The present study evaluates the customer perceptions of service quality in selected private sector banks. Data was collected from 200 customers of ICICI and CUB using structured questionnaire. Gap analysis and Multi regression were used fro analysis of data. The result shows that the dimension of service quality such as Empathy and Accessibility has more gap, as the customer expectations are high to their perceived service. The result also indicates that Empathy-Reliability-Assurance positively influences the service quality. The study implies that bank should reduce the service gap to deliver superior quality of service to retain existing customers as well as to attract new customers.Service quality, Service Gap, Multi Regression

Spontaneous Time Asymmetry due to Horizon

We show that quantized matter fields in the presence of background metrics with Horizon exhibit spontaneous time asymmetry. All quantized matter fields have to vanish at the horizon. Some phenemenological applications of this in the context of black holes and early universe are considered.Comment: 4 pages, Revte

Linear and Nonlinear Optical Properties of Mn doped Benzimidazole Thin Films

In the present work, the Mn doped benzimidazole (BMZ) thin films were prepared by simple chemical bath deposition technique. The material was directly deposited as thin film on glass substrates and the metal concentration in the solution was varied in weight percentage in order to investigate the dopant effect on the properties of thin films. Similarly, the Mn doped BMZ films were deposited in different solution temperature to study the effect of deposition temperature on the properties of thin films. The PXRD and FT-IR spectroscopy are used to study the structural and the presence of functional groups in the BMZ medium. Depending upon the solution temperature, thickness of the films varying from 0.6 to 1.2 {\mu}m and the optical transparency of the samples increases with the increasing temperature up to 50 {\deg}C. Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) efficiency of the films is measured for all the films. Third order nonlinear optical properties of the films were analyzed using Z-scan technique. The experimental results show that Mn doped BMZ films exhibits saturation absorption and negative nonlinearity.Comment: This has been presented in DAE 58th Solid State Symposium held at Thapar University, Patiala, Punjab, India. Will be published in AIP conference proceedings soo

Dynamics of Team Teaching and Research in a Management School: Learning and Imperatives

This paper discusses the experience of team teaching to address the issues of integration of academic inputs by bringing multi-disciplinary perspective together and thereby enhance learning experience of participants. The paper delves on the process, events and outcome of team teaching by four faculty members at IIM Ahmedabad who collaborated in teaching, writing cases, and doing research for a period of more than three years. The experience has been summarized using the following dimensions: need for team-teaching, existing mechanisms and barriers, opportunities and potential, imperatives, fall-outs and challenges experienced in the process. The cohesion, trust and mutual respect are key imperatives. The other factors contributing to the success of team-teaching are strong felt need by the members for integration in programmes, complementary skills and experiences of team members, frequent programmes with integrated components that provided continuous opportunities for learning, co-location of the instructors, and off-site programmes that provided opportunities for close get-togethers. The autonomy granted by the institution to instructors and co-coordinators to design and execute learning opportunities was also instrumental in the success. In an environment where the rule of the game is individualism, forming teams creates fears of loss of importance and recognition. The experience shows that the competency of the members and the overall effectiveness of the tasks are strengthened if the team believes in “reciprocating interdependence”. This can be possible only if members allow themselves opportunities to experiment, improvise and review

Single and Double Diamond Circular Microstrip Patch Antenna

Volume 1 Issue 3 (May 2013

Large Polarization and Susceptibilities in Artificial Morphotropic Phase Boundary PbZr1−xTixO3 Superlattices

The ability to produce atomically precise, artificial oxide heterostructures allows for the possibility of producing exotic phases and enhanced susceptibilities not found in parent materials. Typical ferroelectric materials either exhibit large saturation polarization away from a phase boundary or large dielectric susceptibility near a phase boundary. Both large ferroelectric polarization and dielectric permittivity are attained wherein fully epitaxial (PbZr0.8Ti0.2O3)n/(PbZr0.4Ti0.6O3)2n (n = 2, 4, 6, 8, 16 unit cells) superlattices are produced such that the overall film chemistry is at the morphotropic phase boundary, but constitutive layers are not. Long- (n ≥ 6) and short-period (n = 2) superlattices reveal large ferroelectric saturation polarization (Ps = 64 µC cm−2) and small dielectric permittivity (εr ≈ 400 at 10 kHz). Intermediate-period (n = 4) superlattices, however, exhibit both large ferroelectric saturation polarization (Ps = 64 µC cm−2) and dielectric permittivity (εr = 776 at 10 kHz). First-order reversal curve analysis reveals the presence of switching distributions for each parent layer and a third, interfacial layer wherein superlattice periodicity modulates the volume fraction of each switching distribution and thus the overall material response. This reveals that deterministic creation of artificial superlattices is an effective pathway for designing materials with enhanced responses to applied bias

BiFeO3/La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 heterostructures deposited on Spark Plasma Sintered LaAlO3 Substrates

Multiferroic BiFeO3 (BFO) / La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 heterostructured thin films were grown by pulsed laser deposition on polished spark plasma sintered LaAlO3 (LAO) polycrystalline substrates. Both polycrystalline LAO substrates and BFO films were locally characterized using electron backscattering diffraction (EBSD), which confirmed the high-quality local epitaxial growth on each substrate grain. Piezoforce microscopy was used to image and switch the piezo-domains, and the results are consistent with the relative orientation of the ferroelectric variants with the surface normal. This high-throughput synthesis process opens the routes towards wide survey of electronic properties as a function of crystalline orientation in complex oxide thin film synthesis.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, Submitted to Applied Physics Letter

Inverse problem of photoelastic fringe mapping using neural networks

This paper presents an enhanced technique for inverse analysis of photoelastic fringes using neural networks to determine the applied load. The technique may be useful in whole-field analysis of photoelastic images obtained due to external loading, which may find application in a variety of specialized areas including robotics and biomedical engineering. The presented technique is easy to implement, does not require much computation and can cope well within slight experimental variations. The technique requires image acquisition, filtering and data extraction, which is then fed to the neural network to provide load as output. This technique can be efficiently implemented for determining the applied load in applications where repeated loading is one of the main considerations. The results presented in this paper demonstrate the novelty of this technique to solve the inverse problem from direct image data. It has been shown that the presented technique offers better result for the inverse photoelastic problems than previously published works

Probing the role of single defects on the thermodynamics of electric-field induced phase transitions

The kinetics and thermodynamics of first order transitions is universally controlled by defects that act as nucleation sites and pinning centers. Here we demonstrate that defect-domain interactions during polarization reversal processes in ferroelectric materials result in a pronounced fine structure in electromechanical hysteresis loops. Spatially-resolved imaging of a single defect center in multiferroic BiFeO3 thin film is achieved, and the defect size and built-in field are determined self-consistently from the single-point spectroscopic measurements and spatially-resolved images. This methodology is universal and can be applied to other reversible bias-induced transitions including electrochemical reactions.Comment: 34 pages,4 figures, high quality figures are available upon request, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let