A crucial ingredient of inflation

Nonminimal coupling of the inflaton field to the Ricci curvature of spacetime is generally unavoidable, and the paradigm of inflation should be generalized by including the corresponding term in the Lagrangian of the inflationary theory. This paper reports on the status of the programme of generalizing inflation. First, the problem of finding the correct value (or set of values) of the coupling constant is analyzed; the result has important consequences for the success or failure of inflationary scenarios. Then, the slow-roll approximation to generalized inflation is studied. Both the unperturbed inflating universe models and scalar/tensor perturbations are discussed, and open problems are pointed out.Comment: 42 pages, LaTeX. Talk given at the conference ''Recent Developments in Gravitation, Cosmology and Quantum Field Theory, Peyresq, France (June 2000

Operational Capabilities: The Secret Ingredient

We develop a theoretical definition of operational capabilities, based on the strategic management and operations management literature, and differentiate this construct from the related constructs of resources and operational practices, drawing upon the resourcebased view of the firm as our foundation. We illustrate the key features of operational capabilities using the illustration of a restaurant kitchen. Because the traits of operational capabilities are distinct, they create a barrier to imitation, making them a potential source of competitive advantage. However, operational capabilities are particularly challenging to measure, because they emerge gradually and are tacit, embedded, and manifested differently across firms. In solving this measurement conundrum, we draw upon similar situations experienced by Schein (2004) and Eisenhardt and Martin (2000) in operationalizing organizational culture and dynamic capabilities. A taxonomy of six emergent operational capabilities is developed: operational improvement, operational innovation, operational customization, operational cooperation, operational responsiveness, and operational reconfiguration. A set of measurement scales is developed, in order to measure each of the operational capabilities, and validated using two different datasets. This allows replication of the psychometric properties of the multi-item scales and helps to ensure the validity of the resulting measures

Measuring the Value of Ingredient Brand Equity at Multiple Stages in the Supply Chain: a Component Supplier's Perspective

The goal of this article is to conceptualize the Ingredient Branding strategy and propose tools for measuring value derived from brand equity at the component supplier’s perspective. We demonstrate how brand equity occurs and how it can be measured at three marketing stages: B2B, B2C and B2B2C.This paper characterizes different stages in the Ingredient Branding strategy. Furthermore, the paper provides a different measurement method for each stage, and highlights in the end, an overall view of all participants in the Ingredient Branding value chain. We show fi rst that measuring brand equity at the end user stage alone is not as useful as measuring brand equity at multiple stages of the value chain. The complexity associated with an Ingredient Branding strategy makes it a multi-stage branding and marketing effort. Therefore, various data and measurement tools are needed to meet the needs of marketing managers and scholars focused on brand strategies for differing stages of the value chain. We demons rate that existing brand measurement methods can be modified to analyze multi-stage, interrelated exchanges. The paper extends existing brand measurements to capture the value of an Ingredient Brand both qualitatively and quantitatively, at multiple stages of the value chain.Ingredient Branding, brand measurement, value chain.

Building a Successful Community

Resident advisors are an important ingredient to help students live and learn effectively in a diverse environmen

K(π,1)K(\pi, 1)-neighborhoods and comparison theorems

A technical ingredient in Faltings' original approach to p-adic comparison theorems involves the construction of $K(\pi, 1)$-neighborhoods for a smooth scheme X over a mixed characteristic dvr with a perfect residue field: every point of X has an open neighborhood whose general fiber is a $K(\pi, 1)$ scheme (a notion analogous to having a contractible universal cover). We show how to extend this result to the logarithmically smooth case, which might help to simplify some proofs in p-adic Hodge theory. The main ingredient of the proof is a variant of a trick of Nagata used in his proof of the Noether Normalization Lemma.Comment: 24 page

The Economics of Traceability for Multi-Ingredient Products: A Network Approach

The consumption of multi-ingredient foods is increasing across the globe as consumers spend less time preparing meals. Traceability is now extensively used to reduce information imperfections in food markets and recent EU law suggests it will be implemented for manufactured meals as well. We present a model developed to understand how information on different ingredients flows through supply chains for multi-ingredient food products. The network model has three tiers linked by contracts for levels of quality and information. The model is useful for analyzing tradeoffs and network effects emerging in the choice of traceability levels.Traceability, multi-ingredient foods, network models, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,