HI 21cm observations of the PG1216+069 sub-DLy-alpha absorber field at z=0.00632

The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope finds a weak 21cm line emission feature at the coordinates (RA-Dec-velocity) of the sub-Damped Lyman-alpha absorber observed at z_abs=0.00632 in the spectrum of PG1216+069. The emission feature, WSRT-J121921+0639, lies within 30" of the quasar sightline, is detected at 99.8% (3 sigma) confidence level, has M_HI between 5 and 15x10^6 M_solar, and has velocity spread between 20 and 60 km/s. Other HI emitters in the field include VCC297 at a projected distance of 86/h_75 kpc and a previously unreported HI cloud, WSRT-J121919+0624 at 112/h_75 kpc with M_HI ~ 3x10^8 M_solar. The optically identified, foreground galaxy that is closest to the quasar sightline appears to be VCC339 (~L*/25) at 29/h_75 kpc and velocity offset 292 km/s . A low surface brightness galaxy with the HI mass of the sub-DLA absorber WSRT-J121921+0639 would likely have m_B ~ 17, and its diffuse optical emission would need to compete with the light of both the background QSO and a brighter foreground star ~10" from the QSO sight line.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in ApJLet

Offshoring and Backshoring in the British Fashion and Apparel Industry: a Literature Review

For decades, manufacturing has been offshored from high- to low-cost locations. However, there is now partial evidence of back-shoring to some advanced economies (Kinkel, 2012). Yet, both phenomena are not well understood. The aim of this paper is to investigate the theoretical underpinnings on the mechanisms of development and restructuring of production networks, and to provide reasoning for alternative locations of various activities, including possible causes of back-shoring. The example of the British fashion and apparel industry is chosen. The paper is concerned with the issues of flexibility (Christopher et al., 2004; Bruce et al., 2004) typical of this industry and related decision making on location and levels of control. This research reviews academic and practitioner literature on offshoring, outsourcing, FDI and related subjects, for the fashion and apparel industry and provides the insight in industry’s ecology based on interviews with practitioners from the industry

Unleashing the Power of Distributed CPU/GPU Architectures: Massive Astronomical Data Analysis and Visualization case study

Upcoming and future astronomy research facilities will systematically generate terabyte-sized data sets moving astronomy into the Petascale data era. While such facilities will provide astronomers with unprecedented levels of accuracy and coverage, the increases in dataset size and dimensionality will pose serious computational challenges for many current astronomy data analysis and visualization tools. With such data sizes, even simple data analysis tasks (e.g. calculating a histogram or computing data minimum/maximum) may not be achievable without access to a supercomputing facility. To effectively handle such dataset sizes, which exceed today's single machine memory and processing limits, we present a framework that exploits the distributed power of GPUs and many-core CPUs, with a goal of providing data analysis and visualizing tasks as a service for astronomers. By mixing shared and distributed memory architectures, our framework effectively utilizes the underlying hardware infrastructure handling both batched and real-time data analysis and visualization tasks. Offering such functionality as a service in a "software as a service" manner will reduce the total cost of ownership, provide an easy to use tool to the wider astronomical community, and enable a more optimized utilization of the underlying hardware infrastructure.Comment: 4 Pages, 1 figures, To appear in the proceedings of ADASS XXI, ed. P.Ballester and D.Egret, ASP Conf. Serie

Web 2.0 and micro-businesses: An exploratory investigation

This is the author's final version of the article. This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited.This article was chosen as a Highly Commended Award Winner at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2013.Purpose – The paper aims to report on an exploratory study into how small businesses use Web 2.0 information and communication technologies (ICT) to work collaboratively with other small businesses. The study had two aims: to investigate the benefits available from the use of Web 2.0 in small business collaborations, and to characterize the different types of such online collaborations. Design/methodology/approach – The research uses a qualitative case study methodology based on semi-structured interviews with the owner-managers of 12 UK-based small companies in the business services sector who are early adopters of Web 2.0 technologies. Findings – Benefits from the use of Web 2.0 are categorized as lifestyle benefits, internal operational efficiency, enhanced capability, external communications and enhanced service offerings. A 2×2 framework is developed to categorize small business collaborations using the dimensions of the basis for inter-organizational collaboration (control vs cooperation) and the level of Web 2.0 ICT use (simple vs sophisticated). Research limitations/implications – A small number of firms of similar size, sector and location were studied, which limits generalizability. Nonetheless, the results offer a pointer to the likely future use of Web 2.0 tools by other small businesses. Practical implications – The research provides evidence of the attraction and potential of Web 2.0 for collaborations between small businesses. Originality/value – The paper is one of the first to report on use of Web 2.0 ICT in collaborative working between small businesses. It will be of interest to those seeking a better understanding of the potential of Web 2.0 in the small business community.WestFocu

Hadronic Spectral Function and Charm Meson Production

At the chiral restoration/deconfinement transition, most hadrons undergo a Mott transition from being bound states in the confined phase to resonances in the deconfined phase. We investigate the consequences of this qualitative change in the hadron spectrum on final state interactions of charmonium in hot and dense matter, and show that the Mott effect for D-mesons leads to a critical enhancement of the J/Psi dissociation rate. Anomalous J/Psi suppression in the NA50 experiment is discussed as well as the role of the Mott effect for the heavy flavor kinetics in future experiments at the LHC. The status of our calculations of hadron-hadron cross sections using the quark interchange and chiral Lagrangian approaches is reviewed, and an Ansatz for a unification of these schemes is given.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, Proceedings of the Budapest'02 Workshop on Quark & Hadron Dynamics, Budapest, Hungary, March 3-7, 200

A preliminary study of environmental parameters associated with the feasibility of a polygeneration plant at Kennedy Space Center

The feasibility of a polygeneration plant at Kennedy Space Center was studied. Liquid hydrogen and gaseous nitrogen are the two principal products in consideration. Environmental parameters (air quality, water quality, biological diversity and hazardous waste disposal) necessary for the feasibility study were investigated. A National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) project flow sheet was to be formulated for the environmental impact statement. Water quality criteria for Florida waters were to be established