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Japanese banking in the United States: From transient advantage to strategic failure
Japanese banks instantly became major players in world financial markets when the 1985 Plaza Accord doubled the value of the yen. Access to cheap capital and long-term relationships with Japanese firms doing business abroad allowed them to undercut overseas rivals and achieve early success. However this quick-term overseas strategy lacked a defined long-term outlook. Based upon the author's interviews with 61 Japanese bankers, this paper examines the failure of Japanese banks to create and sustain competitive advantage. Their lack of "soft" resources, such as international experience, knowledge about local markets, and management expertise, have all contributed to their recent retreat
Reflection on-line or off-line: the role of learning technologies in encouraging students to reflect
This paper presents case studies that describe the experiences of the two authors in trying to use learning technologies to facilitate reflective thinking in their students. At the University of Leicester, a Web-based biology tutorial called ‘How Now Mad Cow’, which covers the topics of bovine spongiform encephalopathy and a new variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (nvCJD). At the University of Southampton, a web-based hyper-mail discussion list to support teaching on a first year psychosocial science module for occupational therapy and physiotherapy students has been established. In both examples, the tutors had attempted to create a learning environment that would engage students in the learning experience and facilitate reflection by helping them to create meaning from the learning experience and see things in a different way. The evaluation data from both case studies provides some evidence that the learning technologies helped to facilitate reflection for some students. However, the evidence for reflection is not overwhelming and the data provides some evidence that four key factors may have influenced how successful the use of learning technologies were in facilitating reflection. These factors are the way the learning technology is used, the nature of the student groups, the role of the tutor and student preferences for ‘off-line reflection’. These are discussed and ways forward are identified
Lagrangians with electric and magnetic charges of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories
General Lagrangians are constructed for N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories in
four space-time dimensions involving gauge groups with (non-abelian) electric
and magnetic charges. The charges induce a scalar potential, which, when the
charges are regarded as spurionic quantities, is invariant under
electric/magnetic duality. The resulting theories are especially relevant for
supergravity, but details of the extension to local supersymmetry will be
discussed elsewhere. The results include the coupling to hypermultiplets.
Without the latter, it is demonstrated how an off-shell representation can be
constructed based on vector and tensor supermultiplets.Comment: 34 pages, LaTe
Fracton pairing mechanism for "strange" superconductors: Self-assembling organic polymers and copper-oxide compounds
Self-assembling organic polymers and copper-oxide compounds are two classes
of "strange" superconductors, whose challenging behavior does not comply with
the traditional picture of Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (BCS)
superconductivity in regular crystals. In this paper, we propose a theoretical
model that accounts for the strange superconducting properties of either class
of the materials. These properties are considered as interconnected
manifestations of the same phenomenon: We argue that superconductivity occurs
in the both cases because the charge carriers (i.e., electrons or holes)
exchange {\it fracton excitations}, quantum oscillations of fractal lattices
that mimic the complex microscopic organization of the strange superconductors.
For the copper oxides, the superconducting transition temperature as
predicted by the fracton mechanism is of the order of K. We suggest
that the marginal ingredient of the high-temperature superconducting phase is
provided by fracton coupled holes that condensate in the conducting
copper-oxygen planes owing to the intrinsic field-effect-transistor
configuration of the cuprate compounds. For the gate-induced superconducting
phase in the electron-doped polymers, we simultaneously find a rather modest
transition temperature of K owing to the limitations imposed by
the electron tunneling processes on a fractal geometry. We speculate that
hole-type superconductivity observes larger onset temperatures when compared to
its electron-type counterpart. This promises an intriguing possibility of the
high-temperature superconducting states in hole-doped complex materials. A
specific prediction of the present study is universality of ac conduction for
.Comment: 12 pages (including separate abstract page), no figure
Measurement of Fibrosis Marker Xylosyltransferase I Activity by HPLC Electrospray Ionization Tandem Mass Spectrometry
Fluxes, Gaugings and Gaugino Condensates
Based on the correspondence between the N = 1 superstring compactifications
with fluxes and the N = 4 gauged supergravities, we study effective N = 1
four-dimensional supergravity potentials arising from fluxes and gaugino
condensates in the framework of orbifold limits of (generalized) Calabi-Yau
compactifications. We give examples in heterotic and type II orientifolds in
which combined fluxes and condensates lead to vacua with small supersymmetry
breaking scale. We clarify the respective roles of fluxes and condensates in
supersymmetry breaking, and analyze the scaling properties of the gravitino
mass.Comment: 17 pages, C
Enriching the values of micro and small business research projects: co-creation service provision as perceived by academic, business and student
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Studies in Higher Education, first published online 3 September 2014, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03075079.2014.942273.The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (1996) chaired by Lord Dearing envisioned a university sector central to the UK’s knowledge-based economy. With successive government support the university-business partnership ideology has been put into practice. Widening participation has increased in emphasis over recent years, providing key innovations and skills to support business growth. Yet business schools activities in business growth is marginal against other university schools. The paper reports on an empirical study analyzing the university/business values derived from one small business engagement project. Data collected through semi-structured interviews, observations, memos, and discussions were coupled with critical evaluation of work and action-based learning (ABL) literature. Analysis reveals evidence of multiple value adding factors; it emerged that the existence of knowledge, present or generated through blended learning techniques, was a key value adding element. The findings enabled the construction of a universal process model providing a project framework, detailing areas of collaborative efforts and associated recompenses; this included ease in project advancements and a noticeably advanced project outcome. The study highlights these values in terms of individual and organizational learning, originality and quality of outputs. Given the growing importance of Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to the UK economy, understanding the value co-created by collaborative projects in delivering both work-based and ABL for graduates/students, academics and enterprise management is important.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio
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