Total Quality Management in the African business community of Burkina Faso: a change in perspective on knowledge development

During the 1990s Total Quality Management (TQM) became diffused to Burkina Faso. The overarching logic of privatization due to Structural Adjustment Programs prepared the ground for far-reaching changes in management practices. TQM became exhorted as a new way of manufacturing. This new management concept was presented as a crucial part of new corporate success and put strong emphasis on empowerment of employers, customer service and charismatic leadership. Interviews with top and middle management in a range of Burkinabé companies showed a willingness for mimetic learning but it turned out that translating the concept into specific new practices by way of new routines remained a complex matter. Although this management concept sometimes became part of the dispositional practice of managers ? a new habitus ? company practices could be better characterized as improvisation on quality improvement.

Seismic wide-angle study of accreted Proterozoic crust in southeastern Wyoming

A seismic wide-angle xperiment was conducted in southeastern Wyoming, USA to investigate the seismic character of a postulated Proterozoic magmatic arc south of the suture (Cheyenne Belt) to the Archean Wyoming Province. Recordings from vibrator and dynamite sources with offsets between 34 and 126 km reveal no evidence for Moho reflections. The large-offset recordings contain multicyclic bands of reflective phases from the middle to lower crust. The data were transformed into the intercept ime-ray parameter (~--p) domain to estimate local depth bounds. A subsequent 1D inversion using high-amplitude ~'-p arrivals shows that the reflective part of the crust ranges from the depths of 25 to 40 km. This part of the crust exhibits velocities increasing from about 6.5 to 7.5 km/s. Reflectivity modeling shows that the lower crust might consist of a zone of alternating low- and high-velocity layers with average velocity increasing. The average lower crustal velocity of about 6.9 km/s suggests a predomi-nantly mafic composition with interlayered intermediate to felsic components generating impedance contrasts that cause observable amplitudes from reflections at large offsets but not at clearly pre-critical and near-vertical distances. Our model is consistent with observations of interlayered sequences of gabbroic to ultramafic rocks with more felsic anorthositic and charnockitic rocks in the exposed lower crust of magmatic arc complexes. The lack of wide-angle Moho reflections might be explained by a gradational compositional boundary, or a transitional phase change from granulite to eclogite facies. 1

Constant mean curvature surfaces with three ends

We announce the classification of complete, almost embedded surfaces of constant mean curvature, with three ends and genus zero: they are classified by triples of points on the sphere whose distances are the asymptotic necksizes of the three ends.Comment: LaTex, 4 pages, 1 postscript figur

Workshop - Amundsen Sea Embayment Tectonic and Glacial History - Programme and Abstracts

Overall Objective: Review existing data and identify priorities for future geoscience research (terrestrial, marine and airborne) in the Amundsen Sea embayment (ASE) region required to develop a better understanding of the past, present and future behaviour of this sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Background: The ASE is the most rapidly changing sector of the WAIS and contains enough ice to raise global sea level by 1.2 m. Over the past few years considerable efforts have been made to acquire new data to improve knowledge of the geological structure, subglacial topography, continental shelf bathymetry and glacial history of this remote region. In this workshop we aim to review the current state of knowledge on the tectonic and glacial evolution of the Amundsen Sea embayment. Particular emphasis will be placed on work that will improve boundary conditions for ice sheet models (e.g. subglacial topography, shelf bathymetry, palaeotopography, heat flow and substrate types) and provide palaeo-data against which model outputs can be compared. There will also be a focus on plans and targets for future scientific drilling that will reveal the history of this sector of the WAIS and its sensitivity to major climate changes

The finite mass beamsplitter in high power interferometers

The beamplitter in high-power interferometers is subject to significant radiation-pressure fluctuations. As a consequence, the phase relations which appear in the beamsplitter coupling equations oscillate and phase modulation fields are generated which add to the reflected fields. In this paper, the transfer function of the various input fields impinging on the beamsplitter from all four ports onto the output field is presented including radiation-pressure effects. We apply the general solution of the coupling equations to evaluate the input-output relations of the dual-recycled laser-interferometer topology of the gravitational-wave detector GEO600 and the power-recycling, signal-extraction topology of advanced LIGO. We show that the input-output relation exhibits a bright-port dark-port coupling. This mechanism is responsible for bright-port contributions to the noise density of the output field and technical laser noise is expected to decrease the interferometer's sensitivity at low frequencies. It is shown quantitatively that the issue of technical laser noise is unimportant in this context if the interferometer contains arm cavities.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Shape-preserving and unidirectional frequency conversion using four-wave mixing Bragg scattering

In this work, we investigate the properties of four-wave mixing Bragg scattering in a configuration that employs orthogonally polarized pumps in a birefringent waveguide. This configuration enables a large signal conversion bandwidth, and allows strongly unidirectional frequency conversion as undesired Bragg-scattering processes are suppressed by waveguide birefringence. Moreover, we show that this form of four-wave mixing Bragg scattering preserves the (arbitrary) signal pulse shape, even when driven by pulsed pumps.Comment: 11 pages + refs, 5 figure

Coplanar constant mean curvature surfaces

We consider constant mean curvature surfaces of finite topology, properly embedded in three-space in the sense of Alexandrov. Such surfaces with three ends and genus zero were constructed and completely classified by the authors in arXiv:math.DG/0102183. Here we extend the arguments to the case of an arbitrary number of ends, under the assumption that the asymptotic axes of the ends lie in a common plane: we construct and classify the entire family of these genus-zero coplanar constant mean curvature surfaces.Comment: 35 pages, 10 figures; minor revisions including one new figure; to appear in Comm. Anal. Geo

Photon-pair generation by non-instantaneous spontaneous four-wave mixing

We present a general model, based on a Hamiltonian approach, for the joint quantum state of photon pairs generated through pulsed spontaneous four-wave mixing, including nonlinear phase-modulation and a finite material response time. For the case of a silica fiber, it is found that the pair-production rate depends weakly on the waveguide temperature, due to higher-order Raman scattering events, and more strongly on pump-pair frequency detuning. From the analytical model, a numerical scheme is derived, based on the well-known split-step method. This scheme allows computation of joint states where nontrivial effects are included, such as group-velocity dispersion and Raman scattering. In this work, the numerical model is used to study the impact of the non-instantaneous response on the pre-filtering purity of heralded single photons. We find that for pump pulses shorter than 1 ps, a significant detuning-dependent change in quantum-mechanical purity may be observed in silica

On Dirac Zero Modes in Hyperdiamond Model

Using the SU(5) symmetry of the 4D hyperdiamond and results on the study of 4D graphene given in "Four Dimensional Graphene" (L.B Drissi, E.H Saidi, M. Bousmina, CPM-11-01, Phys. Rev. D (2011)), we engineer a class of 4D lattice QCD fermions whose Dirac operators have two zero modes. We show that generally the zero modes of the Dirac operator in hyperdiamond fermions are captured by a tensor {\Omega}_{{\mu}}^{l} with 4\times5 complex components linking the Euclidean SO(4) vector {\mu}; and the 5-dimensional representation of SU(5). The Bori\c{c}i-Creutz (BC) and the Karsten-Wilzeck (KW) models as well as their Dirac zero modes are rederived as particular realizations of {\Omega}_{{\mu}}^{l}. Other features are also given. Keywords: Lattice QCD, Bori\c{c}i-Creutz and Karsten-Wilzeck models, 4D hyperdiamond, 4D graphene, SU(5) Symmetry.Comment: LaTex, 28 pages, To appear in Phys Rev