Souvenir shopping in Switzerland: A qualitative analysis of travel blogs and its implications for the souvenir trade

Tourism shopping represents an impressive investment by tourists in terms of the time and money involved. In an inductive approach based on case-studies, travel blog entries of tourists who had recently visited Switzerland were analysed, leading to a theoretical proposition and to pragmatic, reality-driven suggestions for the souvenir business. The notion of ‘Expert tourist’ emerged as an overarching theme. Depending on the tourists’ own judgment about how good or bad they are at being expert tourists, their perception about souvenirs and subsequently their souvenir buying preferences vary greatly. This needs to be taken into account by the souvenir trade

Spanning Trees on Hypercubic Lattices and Non-orientable Surfaces

We consider the problem of enumerating spanning trees on lattices. Closed-form expressions are obtained for the spanning tree generating function for a hypercubic lattice of size N_1 x N_2 x...x N_d in d dimensions under free, periodic, and a combination of free and periodic boundary conditions. Results are also obtained for a simple quartic net embedded on two non-orientable surfaces, a Moebius strip and the Klein bottle. Our results are based on the use of a formula expressing the spanning tree generating function in terms of the eigenvalues of an associated tree matrix. An elementary derivation of this formula is given.Comment: latex, 9 pages, no figures, to appear in Lett. Appl. Mat

The structure of the hard sphere solid

We show that near densest-packing the perturbations of the HCP structure yield higher entropy than perturbations of any other densest packing. The difference between the various structures shows up in the correlations between motions of nearest neighbors. In the HCP structure random motion of each sphere impinges slightly less on the motion of its nearest neighbors than in the other structures.Comment: For related papers see: http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/radin/papers.htm

Logarithmic corrections in the free energy of monomer-dimer model on plane lattices with free boundaries

Using exact computations we study the classical hard-core monomer-dimer models on m x n plane lattice strips with free boundaries. For an arbitrary number v of monomers (or vacancies), we found a logarithmic correction term in the finite-size correction of the free energy. The coefficient of the logarithmic correction term depends on the number of monomers present (v) and the parity of the width n of the lattice strip: the coefficient equals to v when n is odd, and v/2 when n is even. The results are generalizations of the previous results for a single monomer in an otherwise fully packed lattice of dimers.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Farm worker safety induction - a practical guide for employers. Employer guideline.

Outlines what a farm safety induction is and why it is important. Suggests the best way to carry out an induction. Explains how the induction assists with legal compliance and provides a summary of responsibilities for various individuals working on the farm. Some basic injury statistics are also included

Farm worker safety induction - a practical guide for employers. Employer guideline.

Outlines what a farm safety induction is and why it is important. Suggests the best way to carry out an induction. Explains how the induction assists with legal compliance and provides a summary of responsibilities for various individuals working on the farm. Some basic injury statistics are also included

A Corpus-Based, Pilot Study of Lexical Stress Variation in American English

Phonological free variation describes the phenomenon of there being more than one pronunciation for a word without any change in meaning (e.g. because, schedule, vehicle). The term also applies to words that exhibit different stress patterns (e.g. academic, resources, comparable) with no change in meaning or grammatical category. A corpus-based analysis of free variation is a useful tool for testing the validity of surveys of speakers' pronunciation preferences for certain variants. The current paper presents the results of a corpus-based pilot study of American English, in an attempt to replicate Mompéan's 2009 study of British English

Tetromino tilings and the Tutte polynomial

We consider tiling rectangles of size 4m x 4n by T-shaped tetrominoes. Each tile is assigned a weight that depends on its orientation and position on the lattice. For a particular choice of the weights, the generating function of tilings is shown to be the evaluation of the multivariate Tutte polynomial Z\_G(Q,v) (known also to physicists as the partition function of the Q-state Potts model) on an (m-1) x (n-1) rectangle G, where the parameter Q and the edge weights v can take arbitrary values depending on the tile weights.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

The Pfaffian solution of a dimer-monomer problem: Single monomer on the boundary

We consider the dimer-monomer problem for the rectangular lattice. By mapping the problem into one of close-packed dimers on an extended lattice, we rederive the Tzeng-Wu solution for a single monomer on the boundary by evaluating a Pfaffian. We also clarify the mathematical content of the Tzeng-Wu solution by identifying it as the product of the nonzero eigenvalues of the Kasteleyn matrix.Comment: 4 Pages to appear in the Physical Review E (2006