The Anharmonic Correction in the Soliton Model for the Hyperons

We derive the anharmonic correction to the hyperon energy in the bound state version of the topological soliton model for the hyperons, and show that it represents a negative correction of at most 10% to the energy of the bound heavy flavour two-meson system in the case of cascade hyperons. The main anharmonic correction arises from the mass term in the Lagrangian density. For large meson masses the consistency of the model requires that the anharmonic correction decreases as the inverse square root of the mass of the heavy flavour meson.Comment: 19 page

What informs a firm’s Attractiveness as an Alliance Partner? The development of a survey instrument.

Strategic alliances are defined as inter-organisational collaborative arrangements whose purpose is to achieve the strategic targets of partners (Das and Teng, 1998). Within the pharmaceutical industry, they represent a key form of disintegration that enables organisations to create a network based on partnerships, whereby the overarching goal is to pursue a set of agreed-upon goals, in which they share the benefits (Chen and Chen, 2002). Despite the high prevalence of strategic alliances within this industry, only 50% are considered stable or achieve performance perceived by the partners as satisfactory (McCutchen et al., 2008) and up to 70% terminate early (Kogut, 1989; Park and Russo, 1996; Park and Ungson, 1997). Nevertheless, 85% of the senior executives still believe alliances are and will continue to be essential or important to their business (Powerlinx, 2014), and as such have invested significantly in becoming attractive alliance partners, or partner of choice. Further, both conceptual and empirical evidence has signaled that a partner’s attractiveness can have significant contribution to the success of the alliance itself (Coombs and Deeds, 2000; Lee, 2007). Despite this evidence, there is no validated approach for a firm to test how attractive they are perceived to be by prospective partners. Without this, a firm is not able to tangibly understand what their perceived strengths and weaknesses are, and how these evolve over time. The purpose of this research is to address this gap. Further, the research aims to understand the impact of firm’s Alliance Strategy on their attractiveness scores. As such, this research makes three overarching and significant contributions; (1) the identification of two key antecedents of a firm’s Attractiveness as an Alliance Partner (2) the development of a self-assessment questionnaire for a firm to use in order to quantify their attractiveness, and (3) the development of research propositions for how an Alliance Strategy moderates the relationship between Attractiveness and its antecedents. This research applies Network Theory, which, in its most simple terms, refers to a firm’s relationships with others that have important and desired resources (Ireland et al., 2002). Networks promote alliance formation and firm success through ‘social capital’, described as the benefits a firm derives from their relationships (Coleman, 1988). Social capital increases in alliances with greater diversity within their networks (Baker, 2000) and with the quality of the alliances themselves (Glaister and Buckley, 1999). As such, this theory plays a key part in explaining the identified antecedents of Attractiveness - Previous Alliance Performance and Alliance Portfolio Diversity. In turn, this research extends Network Theory in two ways. Firstly, by introducing the novel concept of Attractiveness as an Alliance Partner as an indicator of a firm’s success or performance. Secondly, by introducing the novel concept of an Alliance Strategy as an important condition that will moderate a firm’s attractiveness. A mixed method approach has been used, comprising of four Empirical Studies in order to develop and finalise the research propositions and questionnaire. This research has been conducted within and for the pharmaceutical industry specifically but can be applied to other industries

Does internationalisation of technology determine technological diversification in large firms?

The purpose of the paper is to examine the relationship between technological diversification and internationalisation of technology for large multinational firms, operating at the world technological frontier. More precisely we address the question as to whether internationalisation determines diversification. The analysis is based on a rich database of the European patenting activity of 345 large multinational firms with the highest levels of patenting over two periods of time (1988-1990 and 1994-1996). The relationship is tested using a variety of different regression models. The results show that for the sample as a whole there is no statistically significant relationship between technological diversification and internationalisation of technology. However when the sample is disaggregated according to the predominant internationalisation strategy adopted by a firm, we find a statistically significant relationship. Our results show that in a cross-section of firms adopting a homebase- augmenting strategy, internationalisation determines the level of diversification. Thus amongst such large firms a higher level of internationalisation of technology is associated with a greater level of diversification.multinational firms, technological diversification,internationalisation of technology, patenting

Evolution of heavy quark distribution function in quark-gluon plasma: using the Iterative Laplace Transform Method

The "Iterative Laplace Transform Method" is used to solve the Fokker-Planck equation for finding the time evolution of the heavy quarks distribution functions such as charm and bottom in quark gluon plasma. These solutions will lead us to calculation of nuclear suppression factor RAA. The results have good agreement with available experiment data from the PHENIX collaboration.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Improving Early Sepsis Identification on Inpatient Units

Sepsis is a life threatening medical emergency that if left untreated could ultimately lead to death. It is defined as the body’s extreme response to infection which can rapidly worsen if not identified and managed quickly. As sepsis worsens, it leads to extended hospital stays, poor patient prognoses and increased hospital costs. In an effort to combat these negative outcomes, efficient protocols must be implemented hospital wide. A 5 P’s microsystem assessment was preformed to assess the purpose, patients, professionals, processes and patterns. Additionally, assessments were conducted to collect baseline nursing knowledge regarding sepsis criteria, treatment, and hospital protocol. A root cause analysis was used to identify any discrepancies in compliance with completing the sepsis screening in a timely manner, expose contributing factors in sepsis treatment delays, and ensure the sepsis process map is reflective of hospital policy and easy to follow. To confirm nurses were correctly documenting the sepsis screening within the correct timeframe, the surveyors, under the direction of the Sepsis Committee Director, developed a Sepsis Screening Observation Checklist to observe the nurses on the unit and determine if it was completed. A chart audit was conducted as well and looked at 100 patient’s sepsis screenings in five different units for both morning and evening shift. Finally, a nursing questionnaire was handed out to assess their baseline knowledge of sepsis and the hospital protocol regarding sepsis treatment. Results demonstrated vital signs are reported to the nurse only 50% of the time, the greatest contributor to delays in treatment of sepsis are the labs, and only 38% of nurses feel adequate educational resources regarding sepsis are provided for them. This provided an arena for development with both clinical nursing knowledge, and overall process improvement

Energy Efficient Clustering and Routing in Mobile Wireless Sensor Network

A critical need in Mobile Wireless Sensor Network (MWSN) is to achieve energy efficiency during routing as the sensor nodes have scarce energy resource. The nodes' mobility in MWSN poses a challenge to design an energy efficient routing protocol. Clustering helps to achieve energy efficiency by reducing the organization complexity overhead of the network which is proportional to the number of nodes in the network. This paper proposes a novel hybrid multipath routing algorithm with an efficient clustering technique. A node is selected as cluster head if it has high surplus energy, better transmission range and least mobility. The Energy Aware (EA) selection mechanism and the Maximal Nodal Surplus Energy estimation technique incorporated in this algorithm improves the energy performance during routing. Simulation results can show that the proposed clustering and routing algorithm can scale well in dynamic and energy deficient mobile sensor network.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Characterization of Woodchips for Energy from Forestry and Agroforestry Production

We set out to determine the particle-size distribution, the fiber, the bark and the leaves content, the heating value, the CNH and the ash content of a wide sample of wood chips, collected from 10 forestry and 10 agroforestry production sources. This sampling focused on two main production types: forestry (Full Tree System—FTS—and logging residues—LR) and agroforestry (Short Rotation Coppice—SRC). For the forestry production wood chips from coniferous and broadleaf species were considered. For the agroforestry production wood chips from poplar plantations were examined (different clones with two different harvesting intervals). Overall, we collected 400 samples. Particle size distribution was determined with an automatic screening device on 200 samples. The higher heating value was determined on 200 subsamples using an adiabatic bomb calorimeter. The CNH and the ash content was ascertained on another 200 subsamples. FTS and SRC (with three year old sprouts) offered the best quality, with high fiber content (71%–80%), favorable particle-size distribution and good energetic parameters. On the contrary, both logging residues and SRC (with two year old sprouts) presented a high bark content (18%–27%) and occasionally a mediocre particle-size distribution, being often too rich in fines (6%–12%), but the energetic parameters are in the normal range