Country branding emerging from citizens’ emotions and the perceptions of competitive advantage: the case of Malaysia

This article aims to examine the elements of country branding from the perspectives of a country’s citizens. In this exploration, the study constructs their views toward the country using both emotion (affect) and perceptions of competitive advantage and subsequently conceptualizes and tests a framework of internal country-branding elements. Using a survey approach, the study generated a total sample of 445 respondents across Malaysia. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the data and to test the hypotheses. Findings indicate that Malaysia can be portrayed favorably through export, human capital, culture and heritage, and political efforts. While some elements (human capital, culture and heritage, and politics) are important to foster positive emotions among its citizens, others (export, human capital, and politics) are considered as key tools to build competitive advantage. Implications exist for tourism marketers and policy makers, as the study highlights the importance of branding toward a country’s citizens and revealing the specific preferences affecting the citizens’ emotions and perceptions toward competitive advantage

Conformational Instability of Rodlike Polyelectrolytes due to Counterion Fluctuations

The effective elasticity of highly charged stiff polyelectrolytes is studied in the presence of counterions, with and without added salt. The rigid polymer conformations may become unstable due to an effective attraction induced by counterion density fluctuations. Instabilities at the longest, or intermediate length scales may signal collapse to globule, or necklace states, respectively. In the presence of added-salt, a generalized electrostatic persistence length is obtained, which has a nontrivial dependence on the Debye screening length. It is also found that the onset of conformational instability is a re-entrant phenomenon as a function of polyelectrolyte length for the unscreened case, and the Debye length or salt concentration for the screened case. This may be relevant in understanding the experimentally observed re-entrant condensation of DNA.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Exactly Solvable Pairing Model Using an Extension of Richardson-Gaudin Approach

We introduce a new class of exactly solvable boson pairing models using the technique of Richardson and Gaudin. Analytical expressions for all energy eigenvalues and first few energy eigenstates are given. In addition, another solution to Gaudin's equation is also mentioned. A relation with the Calogero-Sutherland model is suggested.Comment: 9 pages of Latex. In the proceedings of Blueprints for the Nucleus: From First Principles to Collective Motion: A Festschrift in Honor of Professor Bruce Barrett, Istanbul, Turkey, 17-23 May 200

Magnetic field calculation for a 13 MeV PET cyclotron

A design study of the main magnet for a 13 MeV cyclotron has been carried out in a joint collaboration between the Korea Cancer Center Hospital (KCCH) and POSTECH. A maximum energy of 13 MeV has been chosen to produce radioisotopes such as /sup 18/F. There are four magnet sectors, each with radial-ridged shape. Maximum magnetic fields are 1.85 T and 0.48 T at hill and valley centers, respectively. The total size of the cyclotron is less than 2 m in diameter. The program TOSCA has been utilized for the field calculation and optimization. In this paper, we describe design parameters of the 13 MeV PET cyclotron, with emphasis on the magnetic field shape and the beam optics calculation. (3 refs)

Counterion Condensation and Fluctuation-Induced Attraction

We consider an overall neutral system consisting of two similarly charged plates and their oppositely charged counterions and analyze the electrostatic interaction between the two surfaces beyond the mean-field Poisson-Boltzmann approximation. Our physical picture is based on the fluctuation-driven counterion condensation model, in which a fraction of the counterions is allowed to ``condense'' onto the charged plates. In addition, an expression for the pressure is derived, which includes fluctuation contributions of the whole system. We find that for sufficiently high surface charges, the distance at which the attraction, arising from charge fluctuations, starts to dominate can be large compared to the Gouy-Chapmann length. We also demonstrate that depending on the valency, the system may exhibit a novel first-order binding transition at short distances.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, to appear in PR

An Improved Upper Bound for the Ring Loading Problem

The Ring Loading Problem emerged in the 1990s to model an important special case of telecommunication networks (SONET rings) which gained attention from practitioners and theorists alike. Given an undirected cycle on $n$ nodes together with non-negative demands between any pair of nodes, the Ring Loading Problem asks for an unsplittable routing of the demands such that the maximum cumulated demand on any edge is minimized. Let $L$ be the value of such a solution. In the relaxed version of the problem, each demand can be split into two parts where the first part is routed clockwise while the second part is routed counter-clockwise. Denote with $L^*$ the maximum load of a minimum split routing solution. In a landmark paper, Schrijver, Seymour and Winkler [SSW98] showed that $L \leq L^* + 1.5D$, where $D$ is the maximum demand value. They also found (implicitly) an instance of the Ring Loading Problem with $L = L^* + 1.01D$. Recently, Skutella [Sku16] improved these bounds by showing that $L \leq L^* + \frac{19}{14}D$, and there exists an instance with $L = L^* + 1.1D$. We contribute to this line of research by showing that $L \leq L^* + 1.3D$. We also take a first step towards lower and upper bounds for small instances

Limits on Interactions between Weakly Interacting Massive Particles and Nucleons Obtained with NaI(Tl) crystal Detectors

Limits on the cross section for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) scattering off nucleons in the NaI(Tl) detectors at the Yangyang Underground Laboratory are obtained with a 2967.4 kg*day data exposure. Nuclei recoiling are identified by the pulse shape of scintillating photon signals. Data are consistent with no nuclear recoil hypothesis, and 90% confidence level upper limits are set. These limits partially exclude the DAMA/LIBRA region of WIMP-sodium interaction with the same NaI(Tl) target detector. This 90% confidence level upper limit on WIMP-nucleon spin-independent cross section is 3.26*10^-4 pb for a WIMP mass at 10 GeV/c^2