Survey evidence on customer markets

This paper uses survey data from Iceland on 884 firms to test for the theory of customer markets proposed by Phelps and Winter (1970) and Okun (1981). The results provide support for the customer market theory in that managers agree that customers are valuable to firms – they rank them second only to employees – and they use various means of augmenting and retaining their customer base, such as advertising. Surprisingly, however, price setting appears not to be an important ploy for attracting and retaining customers. In this we confirm the earlier results of Lye and Sibly (1994) using Australian data. Instead, advertising and direct contact with customers are listed as significantly more important

GiRaFFE: An Open-Source General Relativistic Force-Free Electrodynamics Code

We present GiRaFFE, the first open-source general relativistic force-free electrodynamics (GRFFE) code for dynamical, numerical-relativity generated spacetimes. GiRaFFE adopts the strategy pioneered by McKinney and modified by Paschalidis and Shapiro to convert a GR magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) code into a GRFFE code. In short, GiRaFFE exists as a modification of IllinoisGRMHD, a user-friendly, open-source, dynamical-spacetime GRMHD code. Both GiRaFFE and IllinoisGRMHD leverage the Einstein Toolkit's highly-scalable infrastructure to make possible large-scale simulations of magnetized plasmas in strong, dynamical spacetimes on adaptive-mesh refinement (AMR) grids. We demonstrate that GiRaFFE passes a large suite of both flat and curved-spacetime code tests passed by a number of other state-of-the-art GRFFE codes, and is thus ready for production-scale simulations of GRFFE phenomena of key interest to relativistic astrophysics.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures. Consistent with published versio

Effect of non-magnetic impurities on the magnetic states of anatase TiO2_2

The electronic and magnetic properties of TiO$_2$, TiO$_{1.75}$, TiO$_{1.75}$N$_{0.25}$, and TiO$_{1.75}$F$_{0.25}$ compounds have been studied by using \emph{ab initio} electronic structure calculations. TiO$_2$ is found to evolve from a wide-band-gap semiconductor to a narrow-band-gap semiconductor to a half-metallic state and finally to a metallic state with oxygen vacancy, N-doping and F-doping, respectively. Present work clearly shows the robust magnetic ground state for N- and F-doped TiO$_2$. The N-doping gives rise to magnetic moment of $\sim$0.4 $\mu_B$ at N-site and $\sim$0.1 $\mu_B$ each at two neighboring O-sites, whereas F-doping creates a magnetic moment of $\sim$0.3 $\mu_B$ at the nearest Ti atom. Here we also discuss the possible cause of the observed magnetic states in terms of the spatial electronic charge distribution of Ti, N and F atoms responsible for bond formation.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures To appear J. Phys.: Condens. Matte

Shear-strain-induced Spatially Varying Super-lattice Structures on Graphite studied by STM

We report on the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) observation of linear fringes together with spatially varying super-lattice structures on (0001) graphite (HOPG) surface. The structure, present in a region of a layer bounded by two straight carbon fibers, varies from a hexagonal lattice of 6nm periodicity to nearly a square lattice of 13nm periodicity. It then changes into a one-dimensional (1-D) fringe-like pattern before relaxing into a pattern-free region. We attribute this surface structure to a shear strain giving rise to a spatially varying rotation of the affected graphite layer relative to the bulk substrate. We propose a simple method to understand these moire patterns by looking at the fixed and rotated lattices in the Fourier transformed k-space. Using this approach we can reproduce the spatially varying 2-D lattice as well as the 1-D fringes by simulation. The 1-D fringes are found to result from a particular spatial dependence of the rotation angle.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Polarization Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography for Blood Glucose Monitoring in Human Subjects

A device based on Polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography is developed to monitor blood glucose levels in human subjects. The device was initially tested with tissue phantom. The measurements with human subjects for various glucose concentration levels are found to be linearly dependent on the degree of circular polarization obtainable from the PS-OCT.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure