Experiences of taking students on business trips: with recommendations for organising successful business trips

Copyright and all rights therein are retained by the authors. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and conditions invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be re-posted without the explicit permission of the copyright holders.Visits to businesses provide an opportunity for students to see first-hand how different operations are managed, particularly in areas not often seen, such as manufacturing. They can be linked with classroom learning and teaching and can also provide opportunities for work- related assessment. This paper presents the outcome of a teaching and learning project that aimed to take a number of undergraduate and postgraduate business students from the University of Hertfordshire on a variety of operations-related business trips during the academic year 2009/2010. The organisation of these trips is described and they are evaluated by students. It is demonstrated that such trips take some time to get organised but can be run on virtually no budget and are very well received by students. A model for the development and implementation of business trips is presented

Mean field theory for driven domain walls in disordered environments

We study the mean field equation of motion for driven domain walls in random media. We discuss the two cases of an external constant as well as an oscillating driving force. Our main focus lies on the critical dynamics close to the depinning transition, which we study by analytical and numerical methods. We find power-law scaling for the velocity as well as the hysteresis loop area.Comment: 16 pages, 19 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Dust interferometers in plasmas

An interferometric imaging technique has been proposed to instantly measure the diameter of individual spherical dust particles suspended in a gas discharge plasma. The technique is based on the defocused image analysis of both spherical particles and their binary agglomerates. Above a critical diameter, the defocused images of spherical particles contain stationary interference fringe patterns and the fringe number increases with particle diameters. Below this critical diameter, the particle size has been measured using the rotational interference fringe patterns which appear only on the defocused images of binary agglomerates. In this case, a lower cut-off limit of particle diameter has been predicted, below which no such rotational fringe patterns are observed for the binary agglomerates. The method can be useful as a diagnostics for complex plasma experiments on earth as well as under microgravity condition

Anisotropic Compacts Stars on Paraboloidal Spacetime with Linear Equation of State

New exact solutions of Einstein's field equations (EFEs) by assuming linear equation of state, $p_r = \alpha (\rho - \rho_R)$ where $p_r$ is the radial pressure and $\rho_R$ is the surface density, are obtained on the background of a paraboloidal spacetime. By assuming estimated mass and radius of strange star candidate 4U 1820-30, various physical and energy conditions are used for estimating the range of parameter $\alpha$. The suitability of the model for describing pulsars like PSR J1903+327, Vela X-1, Her X-1 and SAX J1804.3658 has been explored and respective ranges of $\alpha$, for which all physical and energy conditions are satisfied throughout the distribution, are obtained.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, 1 tabl

Anomalous Hall effect in the Co-based Heusler compounds Co2_{2}FeSi and Co2_{2}FeAl

The anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in the Heusler compounds Co$_{2}$FeSi and Co$_{2}$FeAl is studied in dependence of the annealing temperature to achieve a general comprehension of its origin. We have demonstrated that the crystal quality affected by annealing processes is a significant control parameter to tune the electrical resistivity $\rho_{xx}$ as well as the anomalous Hall resistivity $\rho_{ahe}$. Analyzing the scaling behavior of $\rho_{ahe}$ in terms of $\rho_{xx}$ points to a temperature-dependent skew scattering as the dominant mechanism in both Heusler compounds

Doubly heavy hadrons and the domain of validity of doubly heavy diquark--anti-quark symmetry

In the limit of heavy quark masses going to infinity, a symmetry is known to emerge in QCD relating properties of hadrons with two heavy quarks to analogous states with one heavy anti-quark. A key question is whether the charm mass is heavy enough so that this symmetry is manifest in at least an approximate manner. The issue is crucial in attempting to understand the recent reports by the SELEX Collaboration of doubly charmed baryons. We argue on very general grounds that the charm quark mass is substantially too light for the symmetry to emerge automatically via colour coulombic interactions. However, the symmetry could emerge approximately depending on the dynamical details.Comment: 9 page

Quasi-two-dimensional complex plasma containing spherical particles and their binary agglomerates

A new type of quasi-two-dimensional complex plasma system was observed which consisted of monodisperse microspheres and their binary agglomerations (dimers). The particles and their dimers levitated in a plasma sheath at slightly different heights and formed two distinct sublayers. The sys- tem did not crystallize and may be characterized as disordered solid. The dimers were identified based on their characteristic appearance in defocused images, i.e., rotating interference fringe pat- terns. The in-plane and inter-plane particle separations exhibit nonmonotonic dependence on the discharge pressure which agrees well with theoretical predictions