694 research outputs found
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 âsustainability performance championsâ 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 field in bosonic string
theory is calculated and the modification to the standard D-brane action to
first order in 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
- âŠ