117,656 research outputs found
Maintenance of portable operating microscopes in developing countries: the Myanmar experience
No full textCopyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, IncLucy A Goold, Brian Staples, James Muecke and Henry S Newlan
Protecting Information Privacy
No full textThis report for the Equality and Human Rights Commission (the Commission) examines the threats to information privacy that have emerged in recent years, focusing on the activities of the state. It argues that current privacy laws and regulation do not adequately uphold human rights, and that fundamental reform is required. It identifies two principal areas of concern: the state’s handling of personal data, and the use of surveillance by public bodies. The central finding of this report is that the existing approach to the protection of information privacy in the UK is fundamentally flawed, and that there is a pressing need for widespread legislative reform in order to ensure that the rights contained in Article 8 are respected. The report argues for the establishment of a number of key ‘privacy principles’ that can be used to guide future legal reforms and the development of sector-specific regulation. The right to privacy is at risk of being eroded by the growing demand for information by government and the private sector. Unless we start to reform the law and build a regulatory system capable of protecting information privacy, we may soon find that it is a thing of the past
Back catalogue touring and the ephemeral archive: personal memory and popular music heritage
No full textAmong the waves of new popular music disseminated via live music tours globally, a distinct pattern of live touring based primarily on back catalogue material is increasingly evident. This article takes a closer look at recent practices of music reissue and revival, which point to a movement beyond the traditional processes of popular music ‘heritagisation’ at a time when pop music’s recent past now plays a significant role in production and consumption. This article reflects on artist perspectives in theorizing the popularity of back catalogue touring with its nostalgic effects. Drawing on concepts from music heritage and memory studies, the article first makes a case for an original concept of the ‘ephemeral archive’: the flood of personal memories that can occur during live music performance, contributing to ‘lifetime soundtracks’ for both artists and audiences. To elaborate on manifestations of the ephemeral archive, the authors present a case study on the Australian band Regurgitator, who have a tour history of over 30 years, including recently completed anniversary tours of their widely successful albums Tu Plang (1996) and Unit (1997).No Full Tex
International Differences in the Size and Roles of Corporate Headquarters: An Empirical Examination
No full textThis paper examines differences in the size and roles of corporate headquarters around the world. Based on a survey of over 600 multibusiness corporations in seven countries (France, Germany, Holland, UK, Japan, US, and Chile) the paper describes the differences among countries, and then applies a model of the factors determining the size of corporate headquarters (Young, Collis, and Goold, 2003) to systematically examine those differences. The data shows that there are significant differences among countries in the size and role of corporate headquarters, and strongly suggests the existence of a developing country model, a European model, a US model, and a Japanese model of corporate headquarters. Contrary to popular expectations, corporate headquarters in the US are about twice the size of European counterparts. Headquarters there exert a higher level of functional influence and have larger staffs in certain key areas, such as IT and R&D. US managers are generally more satisfied than their European counterparts with their larger more powerful headquarters which suggests that, at least in the US context, large corporate headquarters can create value. Japanese headquarters, as might have been expected, are substantially larger than elsewhere – a factor of four times larger than in Europe. However, those headquarters are becoming smaller because of dissatisfaction with their performance. It is clear that having headquarters the size of the Japanese firms in the survey is not conducive to value creation. More specifically, the evidence cannot refute a hypothesis that the slope of the relationship between firm size and the size of corporate headquarters is the same across all countries, but that there are significant differences in the intercept for Chile, the US, Japan, and the European countries. What the data indicates is that at a firm employing 20,000, a European corporate headquarters would on average employ 124 individuals, a US headquarters would have 255 employees, and Japan 467 employees. The paper also examines differences between countries in the extent to which they perform the two key corporate tasks of control and coordination. The US and Chile chose to be somewhat more interventionist in the traditional tools and processes used to monitor and control business units – setting strategy, budgets, and administering capital budgets. However, there was a significant difference in the degree of influence in operational affairs between countries. The US and Japan exerted far more influence than the other countries over every activity from IT and purchasing, to marketing, R&D and HR issues. The US was also found to have significantly larger legal, tax, and treasury functions than the common European model, perhaps reflecting a more legalistic institutional structure. Japan also has significantly larger tax, treasury, and corporate management functions, but overall was not that much larger than the common European model. While the causes of these observed differences cannot be directly determined from the research, suggestions are made that the institutional infrastructure, the size and homogeneity of the domestic market, and cultural factors within countries are important underlying drivers.
The Role of Quantum Work Statistics in Many-Body Physics
No full textIn this contribution, we aim to illustrate how quantum work statistics can be used as a tool in order to gain insight on the universal features of non-equilibrium many-body systems. Focusing on the two-point measurement approach to work, we first outline the formalism and show how the related irreversible entropy production may be defined for a unitary process. We then explore the physics of sudden quenches from the point of view of work statistics and show how the characteristic function of work can be expressed as the partition function of a corresponding classical statistical physics problem in a film geometry. Connections to the concept of fidelity susceptibility are explored along with the corresponding universal critical scaling. We also review how large deviation theory applied to quantum work statistics gives further insight to universal properties. The quantum-to-classical mapping turns out to have close connections with the historical problem of orthogonality catastrophe: we therefore discuss how this relationship may be exploited in order to experimentally extract quantum work statistics in many-body systems
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