Corporate Real Estate Management: Evidence from German Companies

Based on a conceptual framework of factors representing and influencing corporate real estate management, this study is the first to be performed on the topic in Germany. The research shows that, despite their significant value and associated costs, real estate assets are at present seriously undermanaged by the vast majority of German companies. It seems that the international "bandwagon" toward active real estate management has not yet reached German firms. However, in some companies the function is evolving into a recognized management activity that requires a more formal and systematic approach.

Der soziologische Neo-Institutionalismus. Eine organisationstheoretische Analyse- und Forschungsperspektive auf schulische Organisationen

Der organisationssoziologische Neo-Institutionalismus ist bislang in den Erziehungswissenschaften kaum oder nur ansatzweise rezipiert worden. Dieser Befund steht in Kontrast zu der bedeutenden Stellung, die neo-institutionalistische Ansätze in der internationalen Organisationsforschung sowie auch in der deutschen organisationstheoretischen Diskussion einnehmen. Mit der Zielsetzung, das Potenzial einer neo-institutionalistischen Perspektive auf schulische Organisationen aufzuzeigen, gibt der vorliegende Beitrag zunächst einen Überblick über theoretische Grundzüge und aktuellere Weiterentwicklungen des soziologischen Neo-Institutionalismus. Anhand der zentralen neo-institutionalistischen Argumentationen und Erkenntnisse werden in einem zweiten Schritt die Situation des deutschen Schulwesens sowie aktuelle Schulreformvorhaben diskutiert. Dabei zeigt sich aus neo-institutionalistischer Sicht im Schulsektor eine Vielfalt möglicher Analyse- und Forschungsbereiche. (DIPF/Orig. )Organization-sociological neo-institutionalism has so far hardly been taken account of by educational science. This finding runs counter to the importance of neo-institutional approaches in international research on organization and in the German debate on organization theory. It is the author´s aim to point out the potential inherent in a neo-institutional perspective applied to school organization. She therefore sketches the theoretical foundations and present developments of sociological neo-institutionalism. Based on the central neo-institutional lines of reasoning and insights, she then discusses the situation of the German school system as well as present-day plans for school reform. It is shown that, from the neo-institutional point of view, the school sector offers a variety of possible fields for analysis and research. (DIPF/Orig.

The changing role of pesticides in pest management

Significant changes have occurred in the role of pesticides in pest management programmes since the publication of Carson's book Silent Spring in 1962. This discourse addresses the multitude of factors which contributed to these changes including such factors as policy and legislation, the public's perception of associated risks, population pressures, the availability of practical integrated pest management programmes, and perhaps most importantly, the constraints to IPM in Third World countries. While reliable statistics are difficult to obtain, the changing patterns in pesticide use in the tropical regions are also discussed. Finally, the future of pesticide use in developing countries is projected, as is the necessity of their use and expected impact

LHC Dark Matter Signals from Vector Resonances and Top Partners

Extensions of the Standard Model which address the hierarchy problem and dark matter (DM) often contain top partners and additional resonances at the TeV scale. We explore the phenomenology of a simplified effective model with a vector resonance $Z'$, a fermionic vector-like coloured partner of the top quark $T'$ as well as a scalar DM candidate $\phi$ and provide publicly available implementations in CalcHEP and MadGraph. We study the $pp \to Z' \to T'\overline{T'} \to t\bar{t}\,\phi\phi$ process at the LHC and find that it plays an important role in addition to the $T'\overline{T'}$ production via strong interactions. It turns out that the presence of the $Z'$ can provide a dominant contribution to the $t\bar{t}+E_T^{\text{miss}}$ signature without conflicting with existing bounds from $Z'$ searches in di-jet and di-lepton final states. We find that through this process, the LHC is already probing DM masses up to about 900 GeV and top partner masses up to about 1.5 TeV, thus exceeding the current bounds from QCD production alone almost by a factor of two for both particles.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures, 3 table

A W:B4C multilayer phase retarder for broadband polarization analysis of soft x-ray radiation \ud

A W:B4C multilayer phase retarder has been designed and characterized which shows a nearly constant phase retardance between 640 and 850 eV photon energies when operated near the Bragg condition. This freestanding transmission multilayer was used successfully to determine, for the first time, the full polarization vector at soft x-ray energies above 600 eV, which was not possible before due to the lack of suitable optical elements. Thus, quantitative polarimetry is now possible at the 2p edges of the magnetic substances Fe, Co, and Ni for the benefit of magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy employing circularly polarized synchrotron radiatio

Root Weevils

NYS IPM Type: Fruits IPM Fact SheetThere are more than 20 species of root weevils that attack strawberry in the United States. In New York, the three major species are the black vine weevil, Otiorhynchus sulcatus (Fabricius), the strawberry root weevil, 0. ovatus L., and the rough strawberry weevil, 0. rugostriatus Goeze. Root weevils are also pests of raspberries and rhododendrons

Gender Preference for Music Proximity

Oral presentation abstract

Population Dynamics and Clonal Comparisons of Cowpea Aphid (Homoptera: Aphididae) on Resistant and Susceptible Cowpea Cultivars

Survivorship, growth, and reproductive performance of cowpea aphid, Aphis craccivora Koch, were studied on whole plants and excised plant tissues of aphid-resistant (‘ICV-12') and aphid-susceptible (‘ICV-1') cultivars of cowpea, Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp. In a greenhouse study, clonal populations derived from individuals that were originally collected from 5 different locations were studied on plants of the 2 cultivars to assess possible development of aphid biotypes. In the laboratory, performance of 1 clone was studied on excised leaves, flowers, and pods to assess tissue localization and effect of injury on ICV-12 resistance. Aphid life table parameters measured included survivorship, reproductive period, intrinsic rate of increase, net rate of reproduction, number of generations and generation time. Aphid reproductive performance and life table parameters were significantly reduced on seedlings and excised tissues of ICV-12 plants compared with ICV-1. Survivorship, intrinsic rate of increase and net rate of reproduction of populations were most adversely affected. Antibiosis appeared to contribute to aphid resistance in ICV-12. Effects of excised ICV-12 foliage were stronger than those of flowers or pods. Thus, the resistant factor in ICV-12 apparently was based in seedling foliage. However, there were no differences among excised tissues of ICV-1. Trends in the results indicated that there was no variability among the different populations in their demographic statistics on each cultivar. Thus, there did not seem to be biotype development or breakdown of ICV-12 resistance in any of the A. craccivora population

Electron spin tomography through counting statistics: a quantum trajectory approach

We investigate the dynamics of electron spin qubits in quantum dots. Measurement of the qubit state is realized by a charge current through the dot. The dynamics is described in the framework of the quantum trajectory approach, widely used in quantum optics, and we show that it can be applied successfully to problems in condensed matter physics. The relevant master equation dynamics is unravelled to simulate stochastic tunneling events of the current through the dot.Quantum trajectories are then used to extract the counting statistics of the current. We show how, in combination with an electron spin resonance (ESR) field, counting statistics can be employed for quantum state tomography of the qubit state. Further, it is shown how decoherence and relaxation time scales can be estimated with the help of counting statistics, in the time domain. Finally, we discuss a setup for single shot measurement of the qubit state without the need for spin-polarized leads.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, RevTeX4, submitted to PR

A to Z of the Muon anomalous magnetic moment in the MSSM with Pati-Salam at the GUT scale

We analyse the low energy predictions of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) arising from a GUT scale Pati-Salam gauge group further constrained by an A4 × Z5 family symmetry, resulting in four soft scalar masses at the GUT scale: one left-handed soft mass m0 and three right-handed soft masses m1, m2, m3, one for each generation. We demonstrate that this model, which was initially developed to describe the neutrino sector, can explain collider and non-collider measurements such as the dark matter relic density, the Higgs boson mass and, in particular, the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon (g − 2)μ. Since about two decades, (g − 2)μ suffers a puzzling about 3σ excessoftheexperimentallymeasuredvalueoverthetheoreticalprediction,whichour model is able to fully resolve. As the consequence of this resolution, our model predicts specific regions of the parameter space with the specific properties including light smuons and neutralinos, which could also potentially explain di-lepton excesses observed by CMS and ATLAS