Examining sustainability performance in the supply chain: The case of the Greek dairy sector

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Industrial Marketing Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.This paper evaluates the sustainability performance of the Greek dairy chain and the performance of its individual members by using key indicators in relation to efficiency, flexibility, responsiveness and product quality. We assessed the importance of these indicators based on the relevant perceptions of key members of this chain. A structured questionnaire was developed where nineteen sustainability-related issues were examined. Two hundred and fifty three members of the Greek dairy supply chain responded including breeders, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and catering companies. Our findings illustrate the immediate need for improvement in many key sustainability performance indicators. They also show the critical role of large dairy manufacturers who are the “sustainability performance champions” in this chain and are the driving force for the implementation of many sustainability initiatives.European Unio

Current Exchanges for Reducible Higher Spin Modes on AdS

We show how to decompose a Lagrangian for reducible massless bosonic Higher Spin modes into the ones describing irreducible (Fronsdal) Higher Spin modes on a D dimensional AdS space. Using this decomposition we construct a new nonabelian cubic interaction vertex for reducible higher spin modes and two scalars on AdS from the already known vertex which involves irreducible (Fronsdal) mode

On manifolds admitting the consistent Lagrangian formulation for higher spin fields

We study a possibility of Lagrangian formulation for free higher spin bosonic totally symmetric tensor field on the background manifold characterizing by the arbitrary metric, vector and third rank tensor fields in framework of BRST approach. Assuming existence of massless and flat limits in the Lagrangian and using the most general form of the operators of constraints we show that the algebra generated by these operators will be closed only for constant curvature space with no nontrivial coupling to the third rank tensor and the strength of the vector fields. This result finally proves that the consistent Lagrangian formulation at the conditions under consideration is possible only in constant curvature Riemann space.Comment: 11 pages; v2: minor typos corrected, a reference adde

Gravity on Noncommutative D-Branes

The effective action for the low energy scattering of two gravitons with a D-brane in the presence of a constant antisytmetric $B$ field in bosonic string theory is calculated and the modification to the standard D-brane action to first order in $\alpha'$ is obtained.Comment: 18 pages, Latex file, accepted in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Spin 3 cubic vertices in a frame-like formalism

Till now most of the results on interaction vertices for massless higher spin fields were obtained in a metric-like formalism using completely symmetric (spin-)tensors. In this, the Lagrangians turn out to be very complicated and the main reason is that the higher the spin one want to consider the more derivatives one has to introduce. In this paper we show that such investigations can be greatly simplified if one works in a frame-like formalism. As an illustration we consider massless spin 3 particle and reconstruct a number of vertices describing its interactions with lower spin 2, 1 and 0 ones. In all cases considered we give explicit expressions for the Lagrangians and gauge transformations and check that the algebra of gauge transformations is indeed closed.Comment: 17 pades, no figure

On the relation between local and geometric Lagrangians for higher spins

Equations of motion for free higher-spin gauge fields of any symmetry can be formulated in terms of linearised curvatures. On the other hand, gauge invariance alone does not fix the form of the corresponding actions which, in addition, either contain higher derivatives or involve inverse powers of the d'Alembertian operator, thus introducing possible subtleties in degrees of freedom count. We suggest a path to avoid ambiguities, starting from local, unconstrained Lagrangians previously proposed, and integrating out the auxiliary fields from the functional integral, thus generating a unique non-local theory expressed in terms of curvatures.Comment: 14 pages. Contribution to the proceedings of the 1st Mediterranean Conference on Classical and Quantum Gravity, Kolymbary (Crete, Greece) September 14-18 200

D-branes and SQCD in Non-Critical Superstring Theory

Using exact boundary conformal field theory methods we analyze the D-brane physics of a specific four-dimensional non-critical superstring theory which involves the N=2 SL(2)/U(1) Kazama-Suzuki model at level 1. Via the holographic duality of hep-th/9907178 our results are relevant for D-brane dynamics in the background of NS5-branes and D-brane dynamics near a conifold singularity. We pay special attention to a configuration of D3- and D5-branes that realizes N=1 supersymmetric QCD and discuss the massless spectrum and classical moduli of this setup in detail. We also comment briefly on the implications of this construction for the recently proposed generalization of the AdS/CFT correspondence by Klebanov and Maldacena within the setting of non-critical superstrings.Comment: harvmac, 47 pages, 6 figures; v4 same as v3 due to submission erro

Current Exchanges for Reducible Higher Spin Multiplets and Gauge Fixing

We compute the current exchanges between triplets of higher spin fields which describe reducible representations of the Poincare group. Through this computation we can extract the propagator of the reducible higher spin fields which compose the triplet. We show how to decompose the triplet fields into irreducible HS fields which obey Fronsdal equations, and how to compute the current-current interaction for the cubic couplings which appear in ArXiv:0708.1399 [hep-th] using the decomposition into irreducible modes. We compare this result with the same computation using a gauge fixed (Feynman) version of the triplet Lagrangian which allows us to write very simple HS propagators for the triplet fields.Comment: 26 pages, 1 table; v3 some clarifications and references added, typos corrected. Published versio

Non-critical holography and four-dimensional CFT's with fundamentals

We find non-critical string backgrounds in five and eight dimensions, holographically related to four-dimensional conformal field theories with N=0 and N=1 supersymmetries. In the five-dimensional case we find an AdS_5 background metric for a string model related to non-supersymmetric, conformal QCD with large number of colors and flavors and discuss the conjectured existence of a conformal window from the point of view of our solution. In the eight-dimensional string theory, we build a family of solutions of the form AdS_5 x \tilde{S}^3 with \tilde{S}^3 a squashed three-sphere. For a special value of the ratio N_f/N_c, the background can be interpreted as the supersymmetric near-horizon limit of a system of color and flavor branes on R^{1,3} times a known four-dimensional generalization of the cigar. The N=1 dual theory with fundamental matter should have an IR fixed point only for a fixed ratio N_f/N_c. General features of the string/gauge theory correspondence for theories with fundamental flavors are also addressed.Comment: 38 pages, 3 figures; JHEP class. Minor corrections, references adde