In the service economy of the 21st century, companies face intense competition in providing customer-centric products and services. In an environment where emerging technologies constantly stimulate innovative methods of service delivery, customer and technological knowledge remain the primary types of information applied by a company in providing customers with quality products and services. Managing knowledge interactions for synergetic business operations is critical in building a service-oriented infrastructure for continuous innovation. This study explores the pattern of knowledge interaction between R&D and marketing departments. Knowledge possessed by R&D department is defined as technological knowledge, while knowledge possessed by marketing department is defined as customer knowledge. First, the concepts, theories, and relevant research regarding the relationship between customer and technological knowledge is reviewed. Based on boundary-spanning theory, this study conducts an exploratory case study to examine the interaction between customer and technological knowledge. The case study focuses on the interaction between sales personnel and R&D employees across three levels of interaction, the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. This study found that different types of knowledge and activities between R&D and marketing departments generate different results. This study also found that most business knowledge for innovation is generated at the knowledge interaction between semantic and pragmatic level. Another finding is that Field Application Engineers play the important roles of boundary spanner because they possess both technological knowledge and customer knowledge for their specialized field. Boundary spanners serve as both filters and facilitators in information transmittal between internal units, and play an important role in the transfer of ideas within organizations. To develop critical innovations, businesses should interact according to what type of knowledge accessed.

Over the last decade a number of potential tracers of massive star (M > 8M ) formation have been put forward. In this thesis I attempt to understand how these tracers relate to one another and attempt to identify the most suitable tracer for future surveys for massive star formation sites. In this thesis we examine a number of these tracers; the Methanol Maser Multi- Beam Survey (MMB), the Red MSX Survey (RMS), the Boston University Five Colleges Radio Astronomical Observatory (BU-FCRAO) Galactic Ring Survey (GRS), the BOLOCAM Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS) and the Perretto &amp; Fuller (P&F) Infrared Dark Cloud (IRDC) Catalogue, in addition to the Cyganowski Extended Green Objects Catalogue. This work employs a bespoke non-circular aperture photometry technique, K=1 Nearest Neighbour Analysis and Minimum Spanning Trees (MSTs) in multi-dimensional parameter space with oversampling, edge weighing, mean edge fracturing and convex hull tting. Additional, new 13CO observations were made of the young infrared cluster BDS[2003] 107 (Bica 107) and its environs. We see that despite not being contained within the GLIMPSE Point Source Archive the bulk of masers have an infrared bright counterpart. Photometry of the counterparts shows that they occupy the same colour spaces as that previously determined in Ellingsen (2006); [3.6]-[4.5]>1 and [8.0]<1. We show that the bulk of RMS MYSOs do not exhibit masing and that a signi cant fraction of MYSOs are not found within the RMS . Additionally, we see that the EGO RMS association rate is higher than expected. The BGPS, GRS and P&amp;F IRDC exhibit clustering and elongating, with a common characteristic clustering scale of the order of 6 8 pc. We see that the BGPS is more strongly associated with massive star formation than the GRS. Additionally, we see that although in general all three hull types occupy similar co-located spatial positions they also appear as isolated hulls. The analysis of Bica 107 shows that it is part of a larger star forming region containing Bica 108 and the ultra compact HII region, G5.89. The maser associated with Bica 107 appears to lie on the edge of the cluster's expanding CO shell. The observation that the IRAC colour-magnitude occupied by the masers from the Ellingsen sample is consistent with the MMB, sample suggest that these objects have broadly consistent colours during their masing phase. This can be attributed to the dust and gas envelope being radiatively dominant. The cross matching results indicate that the majority of MYSOs do not exhibit masing. The RMS appears to be missing MYSOs due to missing sources in the MSX catalogue and a photospheric bluing due to MSX large beam width, moving candidates outside the RMS colour cut. The RMS EGO relationship appears to be inconsistent with observed MYSO evolution and may be indicative of multiple EGO generation mechanism as suggested by De Buizer and Vacca (2010). The BPGS and GRS objects and IRDCs do not appear to form a star formation sequence and their existence is not necessarily an indicator of on-going star formation; rather they are an indication of the potential for star formation. All three species types showing signs of clustering and elongation. The shared characteristic scale is suggestive that there may be a processes acting below the scale of the GMC but above that of a single star forming region. The maser associated with Bica 107 appears to be either an example of triggered star formation or late onset star formation within the region and is not an example of continuing star formation within Bica 107. We conclude that a GLIMPSE based colour-selected survey, with follow-up observation to reduce contamination, would be the most appropriate method for identifying MYSOs, given the reliability of the tracers examined in this thesis.

Given a graph G, we construct T(G), called the tree graph of G. The vertices of T(G) are the spanning trees of G, with edges between vertices when their respective spanning trees differ only by a single edge. In this paper we detail many new results concerning tree graphs, involving topics such as clique decomposition, planarity, and automorphism groups. We also investigate and present a number of new results on orthogonal tree decompositions of complete graphs.

The focus of this thesis is to investigate the impact of the boundary conditions on configurations in the Abelian sandpile model. We have two main results to present in this thesis. Firstly we give a family of continuous, measure preserving, almost one-to-one mappings from the wired spanning forest to recurrent sandpiles. In the special case of $Z^d$, $d \geq 2$, we show how these bijections yield a power law upper bound on the rate of convergence to the sandpile measure along any exhaustion of $Z^d$. Secondly we consider the Abelian sandpile on ladder graphs. For the ladder sandpile measure, $\nu$, a recurrent configuration on the boundary, I, and a cylinder event, E, we provide an upper bound for $\nu(E|I) − \nu(E)$.

Knots and links $L\subset S^3$ carry a wealth of data. Spanning surfaces $F$ (1- or 2-sided), $\partial F=L$, especially {\bf checkerboard} surfaces from link diagrams $D\subset S^2$, help to mine this data. This text explores the structure of these surfaces, with a focus on a gluing operation called {\bf plumbing}, or {\it Murasugi sum}. First, naive classification questions provide natural and accessible motivation for the geometric and algebraic notions of essentiality (incompressibility with $\partial$-incompressibility and $\pi_1$-injectivity, respectively). This opening narrative also scaffolds a system of hyperlinks to the usual background information, which lies out of the way in appendices and glossaries. We then extend both notions of essentiality to define geometric and algebraic {\it degrees} of essentiality, $\underset{\hookrightarrow}{\text{ess}}(F)$ and $\text{ess}(F)$. For the latter, cutting $S^3$ along $F$ and letting $\mathcal{X}$ denote the set of compressing disks for $\partial (S^3\backslash\backslash F)$ in $S^3\backslash\backslash F$, $\text{ess}(F):=\min_{X\in\mathcal{X}}|\partial X\cap L|$. Extending results of Gabai and Ozawa, we prove that plumbing respects degrees of algebraic essentiality, $\text{ess}(F_1*F_2)\geq\min_{i=1,2}\text{ess}(F_i)$, provided $F_1,F_2$ are essential. We also show by example that plumbing does not respect the condition of geometric essentiality. We ask which surfaces de-plumb uniquely. We show that, in general, essentiality is necessary but insufficient, and we give various sufficient conditions. We consider Ozawa's notion of representativity $r(F,L)$, which is defined similarly to $\text{ess}(F)$, except that $F$ is a closed surface in $S^3$ that contains $L$, rather than a surface whose boundary equals $L$. We use Menasco's crossing bubbles to describe a sort of thin position for such a closed surface, relative to a given link diagram, and we prove in the case of alternating links that $r(F,L)\leq2$. (The contents of Chapter 4, under the title Alternating links have representativity 2, are first published in Algebraic \& Geometric Topology in 2018, published by Mathematical Sciences Publishers.) We then adapt these arguments to the context of spanning surfaces, obtaining a simpler proof of a useful crossing band lemma, as well as a foundation for future attempts to better classify the spanning surfaces for a given alternating link. We adapt the operation of plumbing to the context of Khovanov homology. We prove that every homogeneously adequate Kauffman state has enhancements $X^\pm$ in distinct $j$-gradings whose traces (which we define) represent nonzero Khovanov homology classes over $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$, and that this is also true over $\mathbb{Z}$ when all $A$-blocks' state surfaces are two-sided. A direct proof constructs $X^\pm$ explicitly. An alternate proof, reflecting the theorem's geometric motivation, applies our adapted plumbing operation. Finally, we describe an interpretation of Khovanov homology in terms of decorated cell decompositions of abstract, nonorientable surfaces, featuring properly embedded (1+1)-dimensional nonorientable cobordisms in (2+1)-dimensional nonorientable cobordisms. This formulation contains a planarity condition; removing this condition leads to Khovanov homology for virtual link diagrams.

Parmi les systèmes complexes étudiés en mécanique statistique, les systèmes possédant un comportement critique à l'équilibre thermodynamique jouissent d'un statut particulier. En effet, pour les systèmes à deux dimensions, les techniques de l'invariance conforme ont permis de les caractériser en grand détail. Cette thèse présente l'étude d'un des tous premiers exemples de systèmes statistiques hors équilibre à pouvoir être traité par des méthodes similaires. Le modèle des piles de sable, considéré dans cet ouvrage, est un modèle dynamique introduit fin des années 80 comme prototype de « criticalité auto-organisée ». On entend par ce terme, des systèmes évoluant spontanément vers un état hautement corrélé qui exhibent des propriétés d'échelle similaires à celles du point critique de systèmes statistiques à l'équilibre. L'outil principal permettant de caractériser l'état stationnaire du modèle sur réseau est la correspondance univoque entre les configurations de hauteur du modèle et certains types de graphes appelés « arbres couvrants ». Cette correspondance a été utilisée pour identifier les opérateurs d'échelle correspondant aux observables de hauteur. Il s'avère que ces opérateurs s'organisent en termes de représentations de l'algèbre conforme de charge centrale c = −2 dont la réalisation naturelle est donnée par une théorie quantique de champs fermioniques libres. Bien que les opérateurs d'échelle des observables locales s'expriment en termes de champs de cette réalisation, il a été montré que les observables de hauteur non locales engendrent une nouvelle réalisation inéquivalente de l'algèbre conforme. Le rapprochement entre ces deux domaines de la physique permet non seulement de fournir un cadre nouveau pour l'étude du modèle des piles de sable et accéder ainsi à des propriétés jusque là impossibles à obtenir par la méthode traditionnelle, mais fournit aussi un outil supplémentaire pour l'étude des théories conformes dites logarithmiques qui sont encore mal comprises à ce jour.

Snow cleaning is one of the important tasks in the winter time in Sweden. Every year government spends huge amount money for snow cleaning purpose. In this thesis we generate a shortest road network of the city and put the depots in different place of the city for snow cleaning. We generate shortest road network using minimum spanning tree algorithm and find the depots position using greedy heuristic. When snow is falling, vehicles start work from the depots and clean the snow all the road network of the city. We generate two types of model. Models are economic model and efficient model. Economic model provide good economical solution of the problem and it use less number of vehicles. Efficient model generate good efficient solution and it take less amount of time to clean the entire road network.

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The minimum degree spanning tree problem is a widely studied NP-hard variation of the minimum spanning tree problem, and a generalization of the Hamiltonian path problem. Most of the work done on the minimum degree spanning tree problem has been on approximation algorithms, and very little work has been done studying graph classes where this problem may be polynomial time solvable. The Hamiltonian path problem has been widely studied on graph classes, and we use classes with polynomial time results for the Hamiltonian path problem as a starting point for graph class results for the minimum degree spanning tree problem. We show the minimum degree spanning tree problem is polynomial time solvable for chain graphs. We then show this problem is polynomial time solvable on bipartite permutation graphs, and that there exist minimum degree spanning trees of these graphs that are caterpillars, and that have other particular structural properties.