Dynamic Co-Existence of Company-Owned and Franchised Outlets Within a Company: A Framework of the Franchisor\u27s Perspective

Why and how do company-owned and franchised outlets simultaneously exist within the same organization? The purpose of this article is to integrate a variety of theories on this interesting retail phenomenon into a broader theoretical framework based on the political-economy paradigm. This paper attempts to integrate the perspectives of several theories that previously have been considered competing models of a single reality--the access-to-capital viewpoint, transaction cost analysis, the population ecology perspective, and power-dependence-conflict arguments--into a broader perspective that utilizes intra-firmfactors and the internal and external economies and polities of the political-economy paradigm. A model depicting this integration is set forth and nineteen research propositions stemming from this model are proposed

Hadronic Correlators from All-point Quark Propagators

A method for computing all-point quark propagators is applied to a variety of processes of physical interest in lattice QCD. The method allows, for example, efficient calculation of disconnected parts and full momentum-space 2 and 3 point functions. Examples discussed include: extraction of chiral Lagrangian parameters from current correlators, the pion form factor, and the unquenched eta-prime.Comment: LATTICE01(Algorithms and Machines

Recent results using all-point quark propagators

Pseudofermion methods for extracting all-point quark propagators are reviewed, with special emphasis on techniques for reducing or eliminating autocorrelations induced by low eigenmodes of the quark Dirac operator. Recent applications, including high statistics evaluations of hadronic current correlators and the pion form factor, are also described.Comment: LateX, 3 pages, 6 eps figures, Lattice2002(algor), corrected some typo

Drosophila Cappuccino alleles provide insight into formin mechanism and role in oogenesis.

During Drosophila development, the formin actin nucleator Cappuccino (Capu) helps build a cytoplasmic actin mesh throughout the oocyte. Loss of Capu leads to female sterility, presumably because polarity determinants fail to localize properly in the absence of the mesh. To gain deeper insight into how Capu builds this actin mesh, we systematically characterized seven capu alleles, which have missense mutations in Capu's formin homology 2 (FH2) domain. We report that all seven alleles have deleterious effects on fly fertility and the actin mesh in vivo but have strikingly different effects on Capu's biochemical activity in vitro. Using a combination of bulk and single- filament actin-assembly assays, we find that the alleles differentially affect Capu's ability to nucleate and processively elongate actin filaments. We also identify a unique "loop" in the lasso region of Capu's FH2 domain. Removing this loop enhances Capu's nucleation, elongation, and F-actin-bundling activities in vitro. Together our results on the loop and the seven missense mutations provides mechanistic insight into formin function in general and Capu's role in the Drosophila oocyte in particular

Spacetime Dynamics of a Higgs Vacuum Instability During Inflation

A remarkable prediction of the Standard Model is that, in the absence of corrections lifting the energy density, the Higgs potential becomes negative at large field values. If the Higgs field samples this part of the potential during inflation, the negative energy density may locally destabilize the spacetime. We use numerical simulations of the Einstein equations to study the evolution of inflation-induced Higgs fluctuations as they grow towards the true (negative-energy) minimum. These simulations show that forming a single patch of true vacuum in our past light cone during inflation is incompatible with the existence of our Universe; the boundary of the true vacuum region grows outward in a causally disconnected manner from the crunching interior, which forms a black hole. We also find that these black hole horizons may be arbitrarily elongated---even forming black strings---in violation of the hoop conjecture. By extending the numerical solution of the Fokker-Planck equation to the exponentially suppressed tails of the field distribution at large field values, we derive a rigorous correlation between a future measurement of the tensor-to-scalar ratio and the scale at which the Higgs potential must receive stabilizing corrections in order for the Universe to have survived inflation until today.Comment: 36 pages, 11 figures; revised to match published versio

Higgs bosons of a supersymmetric E6E_6 model at the Large Hadron Collider

It is found that CP symmetry may be explicitly broken in the Higgs sector of a supersymmetric $E_6$ model with two extra neutral gauge bosons at the one-loop level. The phenomenology of the model, the Higgs sector in particular, is studied for a reasonable parameter space of the model, in the presence of explicit CP violation at the one-loop level. At least one of the neutral Higgs bosons of the model might be produced via the $WW$ fusion process at the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, JHE

Explicit CP violation in a MSSM with an extra U(1)′U(1)'

We study that a minimal supersymmetric standard model with an extra $U(1)'$ gauge symmetry may accommodate the explicit CP violation at the one-loop level through radiative corrections. This model is CP conserving at the tree level and cannot realize the spontaneous CP violation for a wide parameter space at the one-loop level. In explicit CP violation scenario, we calculate the Higgs boson masses and the magnitude of the scalar-pseudoscalar mixings in this model at the one-loop level by taking into account the contributions of top quarks, bottom quarks, exotic quarks, and their superpartners. In particular, we investigate how the exotic quarks and squarks would affect the scalar-pseudoscalar mixings. It is observed that the size of the mixing between the heaviest scalar and pseudoscalar Higgs bosons is changed up to 20 % by a complex phase originated from the exotic quark sector of this model.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure

Higgs bosons of a supersymmetric U(1)′U(1)' model at the ILC

We study the scalar Higgs sector of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model with an extra U(1), which has two Higgs doublets and a Higgs singlet, in the light leptophobic $Z'$ scenario where the extra neutral gauge boson $Z'$ does not couple to charged leptons. In this model, we find that the sum of the squared coupling coefficients of the three neutral scalar Higgs bosons to $ZZ$, normalized by the corresponding SM coupling coefficient is noticeably smaller than unity, due to the effect of the extra U(1), for a reasonable parameter space of the model, whereas it is unity in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model. Thus, these two models may be distinguished if the coupling coefficients of neutral scalar Higgs bosons to $ZZ$ are measured at the future International Linear Collider by producing them via the Higgs-strahlung, $ZZ$ fusion, and $WW$ fusion processes.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, PR