SME food suppliers versus large retailers: perspectives in the international supply chains

none3noThe market share of international retail chains substantially increased from the beginning of the nineties. The supplier’s market has been adapted to the evolutions of retailers’ market in terms of modified purchasing processes. The concentration of large food retailers has been much faster than the same process among manufacturers. Due to these changes, the requirements towards food industry suppliers grew in number and quality. Thus it is generally true that the nature of the buyer-supplier relationship in retailing has been undergoing dramatic changes. Important literature has described these emerging relationships as "partnerships" or "strategic alliances," as opposed to the traditional "arm's length" type of associations. But these conditions are likely to change especially in the relationships between small and medium suppliers and large retailers. The paper shows how the relationships between suppliers and retailers are experiencing several important changes, above all at international level. In particular, the analysis is focused on the Italian food SME suppliers related with international large retailers. Considering the focus of this paper, in-depth interviews to 28 Italian food SME suppliers have been conducted in early 2007. Results have been analyzed and compared to the retailers’ point of view, resulting from public reports (such as Annual report, CSR report, etc.) to understand retail companies’ approach to SME suppliers. Considering the main topics of such relations and the selection criteria used by retailers, one of the main results of the analysis is that the unbalance of power in the relation is not necessarily a negative condition, as the growth of SME suppliers is stimulated by an improving attitude to operate with large retailers. Retailers reserve a wide space on their shelves to SME references because they contribute to increase the variety of merchandising and ensure a more tight control on the supply chain (traceability). At the same time, the strong pressure on price and the required organizational qualifications lead to a selection process, in which smaller manufacturers seem to be the more vulnerable actors.openC. Pepe; F. Musso; M. RissoC., Pepe; Musso, Fabio; M., Riss

Vehicle Navigation Service Based on Real-Time Traffic Information

GNSS-assisted vehicle navigation services are nowadays very common in most of the developed countries. However, most of those services are either delivered through proprietary technologies, or fall short in flexibility because of the limited capability to couple road information with real-time traffic information. This paper presents the motivations and a brief summary of a vehicle navigation service based on real-time traffic information, delivered through an open protocol that is currently under standardization in the Open Mobile Alliance forum

Landscape of Resistance: The Fronts of Economic Expansion and the Xavante Indigenous People—Brazil

This article has the objective of identifying and reflecting upon the sociocultural strategies that allowed the Xavante Indians, after centuries of cultural spoliation and territory expropriation, the development of different adaptive mechanisms that guaranteed their reproduction. Here, the attempt is to show that those sociocultural strategies and mechanisms were decisive in the maintenance of its territory, social cohesion, and relative cultural autonomy. Likewise, as a specific objective of this article, one intends to identify which of those cultural changes are perceived in the landscape, seeking a deeper comprehension of the appropriation mechanisms developed by those people in the interface with the Brazilian contemporary society. The proposed methodology to reach the said objectives has been built upon extensive multidisciplinary bibliographical surveys, interviews, and field observations that made feasible, among other things, a more refined construction of the Xavante historiography and a more precise understanding of the social organization variation of those people. Finally, it is proposed here to view the Xavante people as the main subject of their decisions, capable of offering resistance to the progress of capitalist expansion fronts upon their territory and, above all, capable of maintaining their sociocultural cohesion deciding on the course of their own development

Participatory Plant Breeding in Uruguay

The introduction of forage legumes into the native pastures of Uruguay is considered an environmentally safe method with which to increase the level of production through the addition of biologically fixed nitrogen. An integrated plant breeding programme was initiated at INIA (National Agricultural Research Institute), Uruguay, with the aim of developing forage legumes able to persist and produce in co-existence with the native (grass dominant) vegetation under cattle and sheep grazing. The programme was conducted in parallel with rhizobial strain selection. During 1998 to 2001 at Glencoe Research Station (32o 01\u2732 S lat; 57o 00o 39 W long), 326 temperate and subtropical forage legume species were evaluated in the basaltic region of Uruguay. This study provided a set of data with which the legume species could be ranked according to their performance (Real et al., 2004) so that the best 10% could be selected for further evaluation and breeding. The best species according to objectively measured characters (i.e. forage and seed yield) could be very valuable to certain farming systems and farmers, but might be of little value for other farmers and their systems. A significant relationship between the farm decision making unit and the farming systems has been reported for this region (Ferreira, 1997). Participatory research has proved to be an effective way to include farmers\u27 local knowledge in plant breeding programmes (Dusseldorp & Box, 1993).Therefore, to aid the conventional plant breeding approach, a farmer participatory breeding group was formed

Free Thermal Convection Driven by Nonlocal Effects

We report and explain a convective phenomenon observed in molecular dynamics simulations that cannot be classified either as a hydrodynamics instability nor as a macroscopically forced convection. Two complementary arguments show that the velocity field by a thermalizing wall is proportional to the ratio between the heat flux and the pressure. This prediction is quantitatively corroborated by our simulations.Comment: RevTex, figures is eps, submited for publicatio

Exploiting the network for securing personal devices

Personal devices (such as smartphones and laptops) often experience incoherent levels of security due to the different protection applications available on the various devices. This paper presents a novel approach that consists in offloading security applications from personal devices and relocating them inside the network; this will be achieved by enriching network devices with the appropriate computational capabilities to execute generic security applications. This approach is fostered by the Secured project, which will define the architecture, data and protocols needed to turn this vision into reality

Meiotic Arrest Compromises Pollen Fertility in an Interspecific Hybrid Between \u3cem\u3eBrachiaria Ruziziensis\u3c/em\u3e X \u3cem\u3eBrachiaria Decumbens\u3c/em\u3e (Gramineae)

Disruptions in meiosis, development of the free microspores, microspore mitosis, pollen differentiation or anthesis can result in male-sterile plants (Glover et al., 1998). An understanding of the meiotic process is pivotal to work on reproduction, fertility, genetics and breeding in plants, with serious implications in crop production (Armstrong & Jones, 2003). Some African species of Brachiaria are the most important for pastures in the American tropics due to good adaptation and production. Artificial hybridization is underway in Embrapa to improve production, quality and insect resistance (Valle & Miles, 2001). For a cultivar to be successfully adopted good seed production and pollen viability are required. This paper reports on meiotic abnormalities impairing pollen fertility in a hybrid between B. ruziziensis x B. decumbens

Analysis of Genomic Affinity Between \u3cem\u3eBrachiaria Ruziziensis\u3c/em\u3e and \u3cem\u3eB. Brizantha\u3c/em\u3e Through Meiotic Behaviour

Genetic divergence between polyploid hybrids is displayed in chromosome pairing and in the rate of chromosome elimination due to differences in cell cycle between the two combined genomes (Sundberg et al. 1991). In Brachiaria, a genus of African grasses reaching continental proportions as a tropical pasture in Latin America, genome analysis has never been performed. The majority of accessions in this genus is polyploid and apomictic, which restricts breeding. The relative ease of obtaining fertile interspecific hybrids once ploidy barriers are overcome (Pereira et al. 2001) confirms the phylogenetic proximity among B. ruziziensis, B. decumbens and B. brizantha. Hybrids were synthesised using sexual artificial 4x as the female genitor and natural apomictic 4x as the pollen donors. Genome affinity is a pre-requisite for chosen genitors to produce fertile hybrids and plenty of viable seed to assure adoption of the new cultivar. Microsporogenesis of a hybrid between B. ruziziensis and B. brizantha is described in this paper, focusing on the behaviour of both genomes

Holographic quark matter with colour superconductivity and a stiff equation of state for compact stars

We present a holographic model of QCD with a first order chiral restoration phase transition with chemical potential, mu. The first order behaviour follows from allowing a discontinuity in the dual description as the quarks are integrated out below their constituent mass. The model predicts a deconfined yet massive quark phase at intermediate densities (350 MeV< mu <500 MeV), above the nuclear density phase, which has a very stiff equation of state and a speed of sound close to one. We also include a holographic description of a colour superconducting condensate in the chirally restored vacuum and study the resulting equation of state. They provides a well behaved first order transition from the deconfined massive quark phase at very high density (mu>500 MeV). We solve the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equations with the resulting equations of state and find stable hybrid stars with quark cores. We compute the tidal deformability for these hybrid stars and show they are consistent with LIGO/Virgo data on a neutron star collision. Our holographic model shows that quark matter could be present at the core of such compact stars.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figure