Using idiothetic cues to swim a path with a fixed trajectory and distance: Necessary involvement of the hippocampus but not the retrosplenial cortex.

Rats rapidly learned to find a submerged platform in a water maze at a constant distance and angle from the start point, which changed on every trial. The rats performed accurately in the light and dark, but prior rotation disrupted the latter condition. The rats were then retested after receiving cytotoxic hippocampal or retrosplenial cortex lesions. Retrosplenial lesions had no apparent effect in either the light or dark. Hippocampal lesions impaired performance in both conditions but spared the ability to locate a platform placed in the center of the pool. A hippocampal deficit emerged when this pool-center task was run in the dark. The spatial effects of hippocampal damage extend beyond allocentric tasks to include aspects of idiothetic guidance.

The Sustainability Balanced Scorecard. Linking Sustainability Management to Business Strategy.

The Balanced Scorecard of Kaplan and Norton is a management tool that supports the successful implementation of corporate strategies. It has been discussed and considered widely in both practice and research. By linking operational and non-financial corporate activities with causal chains to the firm's long-term strategy, the Balanced Scorecard supports the alignment and management of all corporate activities according to their strategic relevance. The Balanced Scorecard makes it possible to take into account non-monetary strategic success factors that significantly impact the economic success of a business. The Balanced Scorecard is thus a promising starting-point to also incorporate environmental and social aspects into the main management system of a firm. Sustainability management with the Balanced Scorecard helps to overcome the shortcomings of conventional approaches to environmental and social management systems by integrating the three pillars of sustainability into a single and overarching strategic management tool. After a brief discussion of the different possible forms of a Sustainability Balanced Scorecard the article takes a closer look at the process and steps of formulating a Sustainability Balanced Scorecard for a business unit. Before doing so, the basic conventional approach of the Balanced Scorecard and its suitability for sustainability management will be outlined in brief.

Balanced class e amplifier based multimode modulator

In this paper we present an adaptation to the classical I/Q modulator topology which simultaneously allows it to operate both as a multi-modulation standard modulator, and as a high efficiency balanced amplifier. This is made possible by concurrently exploiting the ability of the Class E amplifiers to produce variable output power at maximum power added efficiency, PAE, by simple dc bias control while faithfully reproducing phase encoded signals. Experimental evidence for the behaviour of the modulator when operated in QPSK mode at 2.33 GHz with a 1 Msymbol/s rate shows that Error Vector Magnitude of less than 5% with amplifier PAE of 65% is possible. The multimode modulator presented here should lead to significantly reduced complexity, enhanced functionality transceivers for use in dc power sensitive handheld wireless applications. © 2007 EuMA.

Distance and Proximity in Service to the Empire: Ulster and New Zealand between the Wars

This essay uses the concepts of ‘distance’ and ‘proximity’ to investigate and assess perceptions of community, nation and empire in inter-war New Zealand and Ulster (as well as Ireland and Northern Ireland) within a British imperial context, and explores the extent to which service of the empire (for example in the First World War) promoted both notions of imperial unity and local autonomy. It focuses on how these perceptions were articulated in the inter-war years during visits to Northern Ireland by three New Zealand premiers – Massey, Forbes and Coates – and to New Zealand by the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Lord Craigavon. It discusses the significant ways in which distance from their ‘home base’ and proximity to expatriate communities (in Craigavon's case) and Irish unionists and nationalists (in the case of the New Zealand premiers) inflected public statements during their visits. By examining these inter-war visits and investigating the rhetoric used and the cultural demonstrations associated with them, the factors of both distance and proximity can be used to evaluate similarities and difference across two parts of the empire. Thus, we can throw some light on the nature and dynamics of British imperial identity in the early twentieth century.

Adaptive automated construction of hybrid heuristics for exam timetabling and graph colouring problems

In this paper, we present a random iterative graph based hyper-heuristic to produce a collection of heuristic sequences to construct solutions of different quality. These heuristic sequences can be seen as dynamic hybridisations of different graph colouring heuristics that construct solutions step by step. Based on these sequences, we statistically analyse the way in which graph colouring heuristics are automatically hybridised. This, to our knowledge, represents a new direction in hyper-heuristic research. It is observed that spending the search effort on hybridising Largest Weighted Degree with Saturation Degree at the early stage of solution construction tends to generate high quality solutions. Based on these observations, an iterative hybrid approach is developed to adaptively hybridise these two graph colouring heuristics at different stages of solution construction. The overall aim here is to automate the heuristic design process, which draws upon an emerging research theme on developing computer methods to design and adapt heuristics automatically. Experimental results on benchmark exam timetabling and graph colouring problems demonstrate the effectiveness and generality of this adaptive hybrid approach compared with previous methods on automatically generating and adapting heuristics. Indeed, we also show that the approach is competitive with the state of the art human produced methods.

Compact Toffoli gate using weighted graph states

We introduce three compact graph states that can be used to perform a measurement-based Toffoli gate. Given a weighted graph of six, seven, or eight qubits, we show that success probabilities of 1/4, 1/2, and 1, respectively, can be achieved. Our study puts a measurement-based version of this important quantum logic gate within the reach of current experiments. As the graphs are setup independent, they could be realized in a variety of systems, including linear optics and ion traps.

Balanced Weights and Three-Sided Coalition Formation

We consider three-sided coalition formation problems when each agent is concerned about his local status as measured by his relative rank position within the group of his own type and about his global status as measured by the weighted sum of the average rankings of the other types of groups. We show that a core stable coalition structure always exists, provided that the corresponding weights are balanced and each agent perceives the two types of status as being substitutable.