Impact of the industry on franchise chain efficiency: a meta-DEA and context-dependent DEA approach

A meta-DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) approach is used to analyse the impact of the industry in which the franchisor operates its business on its chain efficiency by comparing chain efficiency between and across industries (retail versus services). To provide realistic short-term and long-term objectives to inefficient chains, a level-by-level benchmarking path is developed with the context-dependent DEA approach. Furthermore, the joint implementation of both approaches enables an identification of chains for which the industry influences their efficiency, an evaluation of the efficiency share that results from industry-specific factors rather than factors common to the franchise sector as a whole, and the characterization of an implementable and achievable benchmarking defining level-by-level improvements of chain efficiency and taking into account chain characteristics. Such an analysis can help franchisors to define their future strategic and managerial orientations.     

Exponential Convergence to Equilibrium for the Homogeneous Boltzmann Equation for Hard Potentials Without Cut-Off

This paper deals with the long time behavior of solutions to the spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation. The interactions considered are the so-called (non cut-off with a moderate angular singularity and non mollified) hard potentials. We prove an exponential in time convergence towards the equilibrium, improving results of Villani (Commun Math Phys 234(3): 455–490, 2003) where a polynomial decay to equilibrium is proven. The basis of the proof is the study of the linearized equation for which we prove a new spectral gap estimate in a \(L^1\) space with a polynomial weight by taking advantage of the theory of enlargement of the functional space for the semigroup decay developed by Gualdani et al. (http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ccsd-00495786, 2013). We then get our final result by combining this new spectral gap estimate with bilinear estimates on the collisional operator that we establish.     

Setting and Analysis of the Multi-configuration Time-dependent Hartree–Fock Equations

In this paper, we formulate and analyze the multi-configuration time-dependent Hartree–Fock (MCTDHF) equations for molecular systems with pairwise interaction. This set of coupled nonlinear PDEs and ODEs is an approximation of the N-particle time-dependent Schrödinger equation based on (time-dependent) linear combinations of (time-dependent) Slater determinants. The “one-electron” wave-functions satisfy nonlinear Schrödinger-type equations coupled to a linear system of ordinary differential equations for the expansion coefficients. The invertibility of the one-body density matrix (full-rank hypothesis) plays a crucial rôle in the analysis. Under the full-rank assumption a fiber bundle structure emerges and produces unitary equivalence between different useful representations of the MCTDHF approximation. For a large class of interactions (including Coulomb potential), we establish existence and uniqueness of maximal solutions to the Cauchy problem in the energy space as long as the density matrix is not singular. A sufficient condition in terms of the energy of the initial data ensuring the global-in-time invertibility is provided (first result in this direction). Regularizing the density matrix violates energy conservation. However, global well-posedness for this system in L ² is obtained with Strichartz estimates. Eventually, solutions to this regularized system are shown to converge to the original one on the time interval when the density matrix is invertible.     

Hyper Rayleigh scattering of protein-mediated gold nanoparticles aggregates

The second harmonic generation response from protein-mediated gold nanoparticles assemblies in solution has been studied by the technique of hyper Rayleigh scattering (HRS). It is found that the HRS intensity from biotinylated bovine serum albumin coated gold nanoparticles is enhanced when StreptAvidin is added into the solution. This increase in intensity is attributed to the aggregation of the gold nanoparticles through the binding of biotin and StreptAvidin. Comparison with photo-absorption spectroscopy indicates that the technique of HRS is a potential tool in detecting small levels of particle aggregation in liquid samples.     

Fast search algorithms for computational protein design

One of the main challenges in computational protein design (CPD) is the huge size of the protein sequence and conformational space that has to be computationally explored. Recently, we showed that state‐of‐the‐art combinatorial optimization technologies based on Cost Function Network (CFN) processing allow speeding up provable rigid backbone protein design methods by several orders of magnitudes. Building up on this, we improved and injected CFN technology into the well‐established CPD package Osprey to allow all Osprey CPD algorithms to benefit from associated speedups. Because Osprey fundamentally relies on the ability of to produce conformations in increasing order of energy, we defined new strategies combining CFN lower bounds, with new side‐chain positioning‐based branching scheme. Beyond the speedups obtained in the new ‐CFN combination, this novel branching scheme enables a much faster enumeration of suboptimal sequences, far beyond what is reachable without it. Together with the immediate and important speedups provided by CFN technology, these developments directly benefit to all the algorithms that previously relied on the DEE/ combination inside Osprey* and make it possible to solve larger CPD problems with provable algorithms. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Blow-up of Critical Besov Norms at a Potential Navier–Stokes Singularity

We prove that if an initial datum to the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in any critical Besov space \({\dot B^{-1+\frac 3p}_{p,q}({\mathbb {R}}^{3})}\), with \({3 < p, q < \infty}\), gives rise to a strong solution with a singularity at a finite time \({T > 0}\), then the norm of the solution in that Besov space becomes unbounded at time T. This result, which treats all critical Besov spaces where local existence is known, generalizes the result of Escauriaza et al. (Uspekhi Mat Nauk 58(2(350)):3–44, 2003) concerning suitable weak solutions blowing up in \({L^{3}({\mathbb R}^{3})}\). Our proof uses profile decompositions and is based on our previous work (Gallagher et al., Math. Ann. 355(4):1527–1559, 2013), which provided an alternative proof of the \({L^{3}({\mathbb R}^{3})}\) result. For very large values of p, an iterative method, which may be of independent interest, enables us to use some techniques from the \({L^{3}({\mathbb R}^{3})}\) setting.