Tourism innovation policy: Implementation and outcomes

The paper opens the “black box” of tourism innovation policy implementation through an analysis of the Spanish Programme of Innovative Business Groups that foster innovation through hybrid top-down bottom-up collaboration embedded in clusters. The focus is on three main issues: process of policy implementation, types of innovation that emerged, and the outcomes and barriers. The findings show the contradictions of this hybrid model of implementation with mixed outcomes of successful collaborations and abandoned trajectories. The Programme has stimulated the ‘propensity’ to innovate resulting in different types of innovation but has revealed the existence of mutually-reinforcing barriers. Some suggestions for future improvements of tourism innovation policies are offered including the importance of polycentricity in effective policy formulation and implementation.The research paper has been supported by the Spanish National R&D&I Plan 2008-2011 (CSO2011-26396). The authors are grateful to the state owned company "Innovation Management and Tourism Technologies, SEGITTUR" for their generous support and data provision. Isabel Rodriguez thanks the University of Alicante who funded her visit to the University of Surrey, facilitating the author’s collaboration

Nonlocal signaling in the configuration space model of quantum-classical interactions

When interactions are turned off, the theory of interacting quantum and classical ensembles due to Hall and Reginatto is shown to suffer from a nonlocal signaling effect that is effectively action at a distance. This limits the possible applicability of the theory. In its present form, it is restricted to those situations in which interactions are always on, such as classical gravity interacting with quantized matter.Comment: 3 pages, no figure

Proof of Rounding by Quenched Disorder of First Order Transitions in Low-Dimensional Quantum Systems

We prove that for quantum lattice systems in d<=2 dimensions the addition of quenched disorder rounds any first order phase transition in the corresponding conjugate order parameter, both at positive temperatures and at T=0. For systems with continuous symmetry the statement extends up to d<=4 dimensions. This establishes for quantum systems the existence of the Imry-Ma phenomenon which for classical systems was proven by Aizenman and Wehr. The extension of the proof to quantum systems is achieved by carrying out the analysis at the level of thermodynamic quantities rather than equilibrium states.Comment: This article presents the detailed derivation of results which were announced in Phys. Rev. Lett. 103 (2009) 197201 (arXiv:0907.2419). v3 incorporates many corrections and improvements resulting from referee comment

Socially cued developmental plasticity affects condition-dependent trait expression

Condition-dependent sexually selected traits are thought to indicate an individual's quality or breeding value for fitness. Variation in developmental environments, however, introduces much complexity to resource allocation, and therefore, to phenotypic expression. The extent to which environment-specific developmental tactics interact with resource allocation and impinge on the relationship between condition and adult phenotype remains largely untested. Here, we used the black field cricket (Teleogryllus commodus), a species known to modify allocation tactics in response to both nutrition and social environments, to examine whether socially cued plasticity affects condition-dependent trait expression. We reared juvenile males in a 2 by 2 factorial experiment, crossing 2 social environments with 2 diets, and examined allocation toward life-history, morphological traits and costly sexual signaling (i.e., calling) in adulthood. Although diet significantly affected phenotypes during the second-last juvenile stadium, shifts in development rate in response to both the nutrient and social environment during the last juvenile stadium obscured the effects of condition on male phenotypes. Our results suggest that sexually selected signals may be poor indicators of individual quality due to interactions among sources of environmental variance. We suggest that the correlation between trait expression and condition is more complex under natural environments than most literature in this area assume

Non-magnetic semiconductor spin transistor

We propose a spin transistor using only non-magnetic materials that exploits the characteristics of bulk inversion asymmetry (BIA) in (110) symmetric quantum wells. We show that extremely large spin splittings due to BIA are possible in (110) InAs/GaSb/AlSb heterostructures, which together with the enhanced spin decay times in (110) quantum wells demonstrates the potential for exploitation of BIA effects in semiconductor spintronics devices. Spin injection and detection is achieved using spin-dependent resonant interband tunneling and spin transistor action is realized through control of the electron spin lifetime in an InAs lateral transport channel using an applied electric field (Rashba effect). This device may also be used as a spin valve, or a magnetic field sensor. The electronic structure and spin relaxation times for the spin transistor proposed here are calculated using a nonperturbative 14-band k.p nanostructure model.Comment: Accepted for publication in Applied Physics Letter

Interacting classical and quantum particles

We apply Hall and Reginatto's theory of interacting classical and quantum ensembles to harmonically coupled particles, with a view to understanding its experimental implications. This hybrid theory has no free parameters and makes distinctive predictions that should allow it to be experimentally distinguished from quantum mechanics. It also bears on the questions of quantum measurement and quantum gravity.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Iordanskii Force and the Gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect for a Moving Vortex

I discuss the scattering of phonons by a vortex moving with respect to a superfluid condensate. This allows us to test the compatibility of the scattering-theory derivation of the Iordanskii force with the galilean invariance of the underlying fluid dynamics. In order to obtain the correct result we must retain $O(v_s^2)$ terms in the sound-wave equation, and this reinforces the interpretation, due to Volovik, of the Iordanskii force as an analogue of the gravitational Bohm-Aharonov effect.Comment: 20 pages, LaTe

Comment on "Local accumulation times for source, diffusion, and degradation models in two and three dimensions" [J. Chem. Phys. 138, 104121 (2013)]

In a recent paper, Gordon, Muratov, and Shvartsman studied a partial differential equation (PDE) model describing radially symmetric diffusion and degradation in two and three dimensions. They paid particular attention to the local accumulation time (LAT), also known in the literature as the mean action time, which is a spatially dependent timescale that can be used to provide an estimate of the time required for the transient solution to effectively reach steady state. They presented exact results for three-dimensional applications and gave approximate results for the two-dimensional analogue. Here we make two generalizations of Gordon, Muratov, and Shvartsman’s work: (i) we present an exact expression for the LAT in any dimension and (ii) we present an exact expression for the variance of the distribution. The variance provides useful information regarding the spread about the mean that is not captured by the LAT. We conclude by describing further extensions of the model that were not considered by Gordon,Muratov, and Shvartsman. We have found that exact expressions for the LAT can also be derived for these important extensions..

Heisenberg-style bounds for arbitrary estimates of shift parameters including prior information

A rigorous lower bound is obtained for the average resolution of any estimate of a shift parameter, such as an optical phase shift or a spatial translation. The bound has the asymptotic form k_I/ where G is the generator of the shift (with an arbitrary discrete or continuous spectrum), and hence establishes a universally applicable bound of the same form as the usual Heisenberg limit. The scaling constant k_I depends on prior information about the shift parameter. For example, in phase sensing regimes, where the phase shift is confined to some small interval of length L, the relative resolution \delta\hat{\Phi}/L has the strict lower bound (2\pi e^3)^{-1/2}/, where m is the number of probes, each with generator G_1, and entangling joint measurements are permitted. Generalisations using other resource measures and including noise are briefly discussed. The results rely on the derivation of general entropic uncertainty relations for continuous observables, which are of interest in their own right.Comment: v2:new bound added for 'ignorance respecting estimates', some clarification