The relevance of size, gender and ownership for performance-related pay schemes

With performance-related pay, the reward for an employee is partly dependent upon its own performance and/or on the performance of the organisation. In the Netherlands, performance-related pay is being implemented in SMEs an increasing scale. Currently, about 25% of Dutch SMEs make use of some kind of performance-related pay scheme, which may include profit sharing, bonuses, gratuities and stock options.� The aim of this study is to increase our understanding of the usage of performance-related pay schemes in Dutch small and medium-sized enterprises. In particular, we examine whether firm size, ownership structure, and gender of the entrepreneur and employees predict the presence of performance-related pay schemes. The results show that larger SMEs are more likely to use performance-related pay than smaller SMEs (as can be expected). We also find strong support for the presence of a gender effect. The results indicate that for male entrepreneurs, the use of performance-related pay is independent of the gender composition of the work force. For female entrepreneurs, we find that the usage of performance-related pay increases with the share of male employees. This relationship is such, that for firms where more than 70% of the workforce is male, female entrepreneurs are more likely to apply performance-related pay then male entrepreneurs. A possible explanation is that female entrepreneurs are more inclined to take the preferences of their employees into account when they determine the compensation scheme of their enterprise. Finally, the ownership structure also seems to matter. The results suggest that we should differentiate between (at least) three different ownership structures: single-owned and managed firms, family firms (firms with multiple owners that have family ties between them), and multiple-owned non-family firms. Once we do so, we find that single-owned and managed firms are just as likely to use performance-related pay schemes as family firms. Both types of firms use performance-related pay significantly less often than multiple-owned non-family firms. �

Vibration of the liner in an industrial combustion system due to an acoustic field

The subject of this paper is a numerical study of the properties of the liner of a test rig to be built in the future. The test-rig consists of a flexible tube of square crosssection surrounded by a pressure vessel, also with a square cross-section. At first instance, a two dimensional structural analytical model of the cross-section is made. The influence of the air between liner and pressure vessel and that within the liner on the vibration of the liner is studied using a coupled 2D finite element model. Furthermore the influence of the vibration of the liner on the acoustics of the setup is studied. After this the problem is extended to three dimensions and again the influence of the cavity surrounding the liner is analyzed. Both 2D and 3D results are compared. The cavities are found to substantially influence the structural behavior and therefore they cannot be neglected in predicting the behavior of the liner

The Future of Retail Operations

Retailing consists of all the activities associated with the selling of goods to the final consumer. In this article, we review the research on retail operations published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Research (M&SOM) since 1999. We then discuss the current retail landscape and the new research directions it offers, in which M&SOM can play a prominent role

Information gap for classical and quantum communication in a Schwarzschild spacetime

Communication between a free-falling observer and an observer hovering above the Schwarzschild horizon of a black hole suffers from Unruh-Hawking noise, which degrades communication channels. Ignoring time dilation, which affects all channels equally, we show that for bosonic communication using single and dual rail encoding the classical channel capacity reaches a finite value and the quantum coherent information tends to zero. We conclude that classical correlations still exist at infinite acceleration, whereas the quantum coherence is fully removed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

The orbital motion, absolute mass, and high-altitude winds of exoplanet HD209458b

For extrasolar planets discovered using the radial velocity method, the spectral characterization of the host star leads to a mass-estimate of the star and subsequently of the orbiting planet. In contrast, if also the orbital velocity of the planet would be known, the masses of both star and planet could be determined directly using Newton's law of gravity, just as in the case of stellar double-line eclipsing binaries. Here we report on the detection of the orbital velocity of extrasolar planet HD209458b. High dispersion ground-based spectroscopy during a transit of this planet reveals absorption lines from carbon monoxide produced in the planet atmosphere, which shift significantly in wavelength due to the change in the radial component of the planet orbital velocity. These observations result in a mass determination of the star and planet of 1.00+-0.22 Msun and 0.64+-0.09 Mjup respectively. A ~2 km/sec blueshift of the carbon monoxide signal with respect to the systemic velocity of the host star suggests the presence of a strong wind flowing from the irradiated dayside to the non-irradiated nightside of the planet within the 0.01-0.1 mbar atmospheric pressure range probed by these observations. The strength of the carbon monoxide signal suggests a CO mixing ratio of 1-3x10-3 in this planet's upper atmosphere.Comment: 11 Pages main article and 6 pages suppl. information: A final, edited version appears in the 24 May 2010 issue of Natur

Partial Wave Analyses of the pp data alone and of the np data alone

We present results of the Nijmegen partial-wave analyses of all NN scattering data below Tlab = 500 MeV. We have been able to extract for the first time the important np phase shifts for both I = 0 and I = 1 from the np scattering data alone. This allows us to study the charge independence breaking between the pp and np I = 1 phases. In our analyses we obtain for the pp data chi^2_{min}/Ndf = 1.13 and for the np data chi^2_{min}/Ndf = 1.12.Comment: Report THEF-NYM 94.04, 4 pages LaTeX, one PostScript figure appended. Contribution to the 14th Few-Body Conference, May 26 - 31, Williamsburg, V

Exoplanet atmospheres with GIANO. I. Water in the transmission spectrum of HD 189733b

High-resolution spectroscopy (R $\ge$ 20,000) at near-infrared wavelengths can be used to investigate the composition, structure, and circulation patterns of exoplanet atmospheres. However, up to now it has been the exclusive dominion of the biggest telescope facilities on the ground, due to the large amount of photons necessary to measure a signal in high-dispersion spectra. Here we show that spectrographs with a novel design - in particular a large spectral range - can open exoplanet characterisation to smaller telescope facilities too. We aim to demonstrate the concept on a series of spectra of the exoplanet HD 189733 b taken at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo with the near-infrared spectrograph GIANO during two transits of the planet. In contrast to absorption in the Earth's atmosphere (telluric absorption), the planet transmission spectrum shifts in radial velocity during transit due to the changing orbital motion of the planet. This allows us to remove the telluric spectrum while preserving the signal of the exoplanet. The latter is then extracted by cross-correlating the residual spectra with template models of the planet atmosphere computed through line-by-line radiative transfer calculations, and containing molecular absorption lines from water and methane. By combining the signal of many thousands of planet molecular lines, we confirm the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere of HD 189733 b at the 5.5-$\sigma$ level. This signal was measured only in the first of the two observing nights. By injecting and retrieving artificial signals, we show that the non-detection on the second night is likely due to an inferior quality of the data. The measured strength of the planet transmission spectrum is fully consistent with past CRIRES observations at the VLT, excluding a strong variability in the depth of molecular absorption lines.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. v2 includes language editin

The GROUSE project III: Ks-band observations of the thermal emission from WASP-33b

In recent years, day-side emission from about a dozen hot Jupiters has been detected through ground-based secondary eclipse observations in the near-infrared. These near-infrared observations are vital for determining the energy budgets of hot Jupiters, since they probe the planet's spectral energy distribution near its peak. The aim of this work is to measure the Ks-band secondary eclipse depth of WASP-33b, the first planet discovered to transit an A-type star. This planet receives the highest level of irradiation of all transiting planets discovered to date. Furthermore, its host-star shows pulsations and is classified as a low-amplitude delta-Scuti. As part of our GROUnd-based Secondary Eclipse (GROUSE) project we have obtained observations of two separate secondary eclipses of WASP-33b in the Ks-band using the LIRIS instrument on the William Herschel Telescope (WHT). The telescope was significantly defocused to avoid saturation of the detector for this bright star (K~7.5). To increase the stability and the cadence of the observations, they were performed in staring mode. We collected a total of 5100 and 6900 frames for the first and the second night respectively, both with an average cadence of 3.3 seconds. On the second night the eclipse is detected at the 12-sigma level, with a measured eclipse depth of 0.244+0.027-0.020 %. This eclipse depth corresponds to a brightness temperature of 3270+115-160 K. The measured brightness temperature on the second night is consistent with the expected equilibrium temperature for a planet with a very low albedo and a rapid re-radiation of the absorbed stellar light. For the other night the short out-of-eclipse baseline prevents good corrections for the stellar pulsations and systematic effects, which makes this dataset unreliable for eclipse depth measurements. This demonstrates the need of getting a sufficient out-of-eclipse baseline.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic