Constructing the architext: Georges Perec's life a user's manual

Mitchell critiques Georges Perec's Life a User's Manual, which articulates compellingly the confluence of literature and architecture studies that emerged in the late twentieth century. She argues the Perec's novel diverges from this tradition, for, rather than being a search for origins and true expression, Life a User's Manual denies the very possibility of originality. She adds that Perec's architext is de-constructive and ironic.

A Research Agenda for Strategic Management Research in Developing Countries

This paper explores the extent to which it is possible to address issues pertaining to developing countries with significant socio-cultural and political interventions. Examples from the Sri Lankan tea plantations are used to illustrate the necessity to understand the context from actors’ perspectives using rigorous case study research, before making prescriptive recommendations. Current problems faced by the Sri Lankan tea industry are identified as not merely micro-institutional or managerial. We argue that their roots lie in reproduction of social struggles at the level of production. We propose a research agenda, in the doctrine of critical theory, for exploring the formation and implementation of business strategies in developing countries, using the tea plantation sector as a case. Our primary attempt here is to conceptualize strategic management in the context of political economy and to identify central issues to be addressed. Accordingly, we argue that researching historical dynamics of strategic management facilitates understanding and interpreting the articulation of modes of production in a given social formation. We further argue that a highly context specific research agenda is required to fully comprehend idiosyncratic characteristics of Sri Lankan strategy structures and organizational forms. Then, it is proposed that explaining the role of social formation in shaping and reshaping strategy relations should be at the centre of the research due to the social significance attached to ‘strategy’. Finally, methodological and epistemological necessities arising from the nature of strategy relationships are discussed.

Critical Temperature of a Trapped Bose Gas: Comparison of Theory and Experiment

We apply the projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation (PGPE) formalism to the experimental problem of the shift in critical temperature T-c of a harmonically confined Bose gas as reported in Gerbier , Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 030405 (2004). The PGPE method includes critical fluctuations and we find the results differ from various mean-field theories, and are in best agreement with experimental data. To unequivocally observe beyond mean-field effects, however, the experimental precision must either improve by an order of magnitude, or consider more strongly interacting systems. This is the first application of a classical field method to make quantitative comparison with experiment.

High-pressure adsorption of supercritical gases on activated carbons: An improved approach based on the density functional theory and the bender equation of state

Adsorption of nitrogen, argon, methane, and carbon dioxide on activated carbon Norit R1 over a wide range of pressure (up to 50 MPa) at temperatures from 298 to 343 K (supercritical conditions) is analyzed by means of the density functional theory modified by incorporating the Bender equation of state, which describes the bulk phase properties with very high accuracy. It has allowed us to precisely describe the experimental data of carbon dioxide adsorption slightly above and below its critical temperatures. The pore size distribution (PSD) obtained with supercritical gases at ambient temperatures compares reasonably well with the PSD obtained with subcritical nitrogen at 77 K. Our approach does not require the skeletal density of activated carbon from helium adsorption measurements to calculate excess adsorption. Instead, this density is treated as a fitting parameter, and in all cases its values are found to fall into a very narrow range close to 2000 kg/m(3). It was shown that in the case of high-pressure adsorption of supercritical gases the PSD could be reliably obtained for the range of pore width between 0.6 and 3 run. All wider pores can be reliably characterized only in terms of surface area as their corresponding excess local isotherms are the same over a practical range of pressure.

Balanced critical sets in Latin squares

In this note we first introduce balanced critical sets and near balanced critical sets in Latin squares. Then we prove that there exist balanced critical sets in the back circulant Latin squares of order 3n for n even. Using this result we decompose the back circulant Latin squares of order 3n, n even, into three isotopic and disjoint balanced critical sets each of size 3n. We also find near balanced critical sets in the back circulant Latin squares of order 3n for n odd. Finally, we examine representatives of each main class of Latin squares of order up to six in order to determine which main classes contain balanced or near balanced critical sets.

A census of critical sets in the Latin squares of order at most six

A critical set in a Latin square of order n is a set of entries from the square which can be embedded in precisely one Latin square of order n, Such that if any element of the critical set. is deleted, the remaining set can be embedded, in more than one Latin square of order n.. In this paper we find all the critical sets of different sizes in the Latin squares of order at most six. We count the number of main and isotopy classes of these critical sets and classify critical sets from the main classes into various strengths. Some observations are made about the relationship between the numbers of classes, particularly in the 6 x 6 case. Finally some examples are given of each type of critical set.

An investigation of 2-critical sets in latin squares

In this paper we focus on the existence of 2-critical sets in the latin square corresponding to the elementary abelian 2-group of order 2(n). It has been shown by Stinson and van Rees that this latin square contains a 2-critical set of volume 4(n) - 3(n). We provide constructions for 2-critical sets containing 4(n) - 3(n) + 1 - (2(k-1) + 2(m-1) + 2(n-(k+m+1))) entries, where 1 less than or equal to k less than or equal to n and 1 less than or equal to m less than or equal to n - k. That is, we construct 2-critical sets for certain values less than 4(n) - 3(n) + 1 - 3 (.) 2([n /3]-1). The results raise the interesting question of whether, for the given latin square, it is possible to construct 2-critical sets of volume m, where 4(n) - 3(n) + 1 - 3 (.) 2([n/3]-1) < m < 4(n) - 3(n).

Critical discourse studies: Where to from here?

This paper surveys critical discourse studies to the present and claims that, to avoid lapsing into comfortable orthodoxy in its mature phase, CDS needs to reassert its transformative radical teleology. The initial part of the paper reasserts the need for a strong social theory given the materialist and context-bound nature of discourse in daily activity. From this basis, the paper then characterizes the “new times” in which contemporary discourse occurs, and briefly surveys those issues typically analyzed, namely political economy, race and gender, and critical literacy. By considering people's ordinary lives, the paper then suggests that subject and agency, and calculative technologies of management deserve, and new modalities need, more research. Transdisciplinarity is encouraged, particularly with social psychology and critical management studies.

The origin of the difference in the superconducting critical temperatures of the beta(H) and beta(L) phases of (BEDT-TTF)(2)I-3

Incommensurate lattice fluctuations are present in the beta(L) phase (T-c similar to 1.5 K) of ET2I3 (where ET is BEDT-TTF - bis(ethylenedithio)tetrathiafulvalene) but are absent in the beta(H) phase (T-c similar to 7 K). We propose that the disorder in the conformational degrees of freedom of the terminal ethylene groups of the ET molecules, which is required to stabilise the lattice fluctuations, increases the quasiparticle scattering rate and that this leads to the observed difference in the Superconducting critical temperatures, T-c, of the two phases. We calculate the dependence of T-c on the interlayer residual resistivity. Our theory has no free parameters. Our predictions are shown to be consistent with experiment. We describe experiments to conclusively test our hypothesis.

Critical fluctuations and entanglement in the nondegenerate parametric oscillator

We present a fully quantum mechanical treatment of the nondegenerate optical parametric oscillator both below and near threshold. This is a nonequilibrium quantum system with a critical point phase transition, that is also known to exhibit strong yet easily observed squeezing and quantum entanglement. Our treatment makes use of the positive P representation and goes beyond the usual linearized theory. We compare our analytical results with numerical simulations and find excellent agreement. We also carry out a detailed comparison of our results with those obtained from stochastic electrodynamics, a theory obtained by truncating the equation of motion for the Wigner function, with a view to locating regions of agreement and disagreement between the two. We calculate commonly used measures of quantum behavior including entanglement, squeezing, and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlations as well as higher order tripartite correlations, and show how these are modified as the critical point is approached. These results are compared with those obtained using two degenerate parametric oscillators, and we find that in the near-critical region the nondegenerate oscillator has stronger EPR correlations. In general, the critical fluctuations represent an ultimate limit to the possible entanglement that can be achieved in a nondegenerate parametric oscillator.