R&D INVESTMENT AND PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN U.S. AND CANADIAN FOOD MANUFACTURING

Productivity growth in the Canadian processed food industry has lagged behind that in the United States because of a relatively low rate of R&D investment. Although U.S. firms generally have a technological advantage over Canadian firms, marginal rates of return to R&D are higher in Canada.Agribusiness, Productivity Analysis,

Pseudospin-1 Physics of Photonic Crystals.

We review some recent progress in the exploration of pseudospin-1 physics using dielectric photonic crystals (PCs). We show some physical implications of the PCs exhibiting an accidental degeneracy induced conical dispersion at the Γ point, such as the realization of zero refractive index medium and the zero Berry phase of a loop around the nodal point. The photonic states of such PCs near the Dirac-like point can be described by an effective spin-orbit Hamiltonian of pseudospin-1. The wave propagation in the positive, negative, and zero index media can be unified within a framework of pseudospin-1 description. A scale change in PCs results in a rigid band shift of the Dirac-like cone, allowing for the manipulation of waves in pseudospin-1 systems in much the same way as applying a gate voltage in pseudospin-1/2 graphene. The transport of waves in pseudospin-1 systems exhibits many interesting phenomena, including super Klein tunneling, robust supercollimation, and unconventional Anderson localization. The transport properties of pseudospin-1 systems are distinct from their counterparts in pseudospin-1/2 systems, which will also be presented for comparison

Governance Methods Used in Externalizing Information Technology

Information technology (IT) is the largest capital expenditure in many firms and is an integral part of many organizations\u27 strategies. However, the benefits that each company receives from its IT investments vary. One study by Weill (2004) found that the top performer in the sample was estimated to have as high as a 40 greater return on its IT investment than its competitors. To expedite the progress toward getting better value from IT investments, along with the need to deal with the increasing complexity and expense of IT, a growing number of companies are turning to outside service providers to develop and/or manage various aspects of their information systems. The governance methods used by firms to maintain control over the quality, services, and cost of IT outsourcing are the focus of this dissertation.Previously in the literature, researchers have looked into the phenomenon of outsourcing from various perspectives. However, existing literature has not constructed or proposed an outsourcing model that examines the important moderating impact of internal technical capabilities to governance mechanisms. Building on existing literature related to IT outsourcing, this dissertation examines governance mechanisms that were used by firms to maintain control over the quality, services, and the cost of outsourcing of IT in order to identify their contribution to the success of IT outsourcing initiatives from the perspective of managers whose companies have engaged in IT outsourcing. In this dissertation, a research model was developed, and through an on-line survey instrument, data were collected from the members of the Information Systems Community of Practice in the Project Management Institute. The findings showed that the following governance mechanisms had positive impact on managerial perceptions of IT outsourcing success: (1) Financial commitment in the form of dedicated asset-specific investments and (2) attitudinal commitment. This study also confirms the moderation effect that firm technological capab

Matrix Product Operators, Matrix Product States, and ab initio Density Matrix Renormalization Group algorithms

Current descriptions of the ab initio DMRG algorithm use two superficially different languages: an older language of the renormalization group and renormalized operators, and a more recent language of matrix product states and matrix product operators. The same algorithm can appear dramatically different when written in the two different vocabularies. In this work, we carefully describe the translation between the two languages in several contexts. First, we describe how to efficiently implement the ab-initio DMRG sweep using a matrix product operator based code, and the equivalence to the original renormalized operator implementation. Next we describe how to implement the general matrix product operator/matrix product state algebra within a pure renormalized operator-based DMRG code. Finally, we discuss two improvements of the ab initio DMRG sweep algorithm motivated by matrix product operator language: Hamiltonian compression, and a sum over operators representation that allows for perfect computational parallelism. The connections and correspondences described here serve to link the future developments with the past, and are important in the efficient implementation of continuing advances in ab initio DMRG and related algorithms.Comment: 35 pages, 10 figure