A Value-Based Approach for Sustainable Supplier-Customer Relationships: The Case of the Indian Steel Industry

The steel industry, which has endured years of mediocre performance due to a supply glut and consequent depressed world prices, has seen considerable resurgence during the last several months. The ever-widening demand-supply gap, and greatly increased input costs have resulted in prices firming up. The sharp increase in steel prices without any let-up is an issue that steel customers have found difficult to grapple with. Many customers believe that the steel industry is behaving opportunistically. The paper attempts to understand the dynamics of the Indian steel industry. Although the steel industry caters to both consumer (B2C) and business (B2B) markets, the focus of the paper is on the business markets, which accounts for 80% of the market. After presenting a picture of who the suppliers and customers of the steel industry are, the paper presents the various forces at play in the industry, a conceptual model to understand supplier-customer relationships in the industry, and traces the sources of animosity and hostility between the supplier and the customer firms. Forging meaningful value-based long-term relationships between supplier and customer firms as a way forward is explored. The paper presents possible remedies to the malady of distrust between customer and supplier firms. Collaborative working between competing suppliers and active pan-industry collaborative forums to bring better cooperation and trust between customer and supplier firms are essential first steps to bring normalcy back into the industry’s functioning.

Oxygen consumption at rest and after moderate aerobic exercise in sportsmen

The oxygen consumption at rest and after moderate aerobic exercise on a treadmill was estimated in 20 sportsmen of Loyola College, Madra s T.he mean oxygen consumption index at rest was 118 ml/min/m2 end there was a three-fold increase in oxygen consumption after walking at 5 k.m. per hour for five minutes on the treadmill.T he rise in pulse rate and the rise in systolic blood pressure after the exercise did not have any significant correlation with the excess oxygen consumption. However. the product of the rise in pulse rate end the rise in systolic blood pressure (double product) showed a significant correlation with the excess oxygen consum e d . The excess minute ventilation showed a positive correlation with the excess oxygen consumed, whereas the PO2 difference between the inspired and expired air showed a negative correlation. It is suggested that after moderate aerobic exercise in sportsmen, the initial responses are more on the respiratory system rather on the cardiovascular system

N=4 supergravity for Type IIB on T^6/Z_2 in presence of fluxes

We report on the construction of four dimensional gauged supergravity models that can be interpreted as type IIB orientifold compactification in presence of 3-form fluxes and D3--branes. We mainly address our attention to the symplectic embedding of the U-duality group of the theory and the consequent choice of the gauge group, whose four dimensional killing vectors are the remnant of the ten dimensional fluxes. We briefly discuss the structure of the scalar potential arising from the gauging and the properties of the killing vectors in order to preserve some amount of supersymmetry.Comment: LaTeX, iopart class, 9 pages, Contribution to the proceedings of the workshop of the RTN Network "The quantum structure of space-time and the geometric nature of fundamental interactions",Copenhagen, September 2003 2nd version, references adde

Transfer co-efficient for carbon monoxide in sportsmen

The transfer factor (TLCO) and the transfer coefficient (KCO) for carbon monoxide were measured by the single-breath method in eleven non-smoking college sportsmen. The mean transfer factor for whole lung in the college sportsmen was within normal limits when compared to predicted values of European descent; however, the transfer coefficient was high and is thought to be due to a rise in pulmonary capillary blood volume. It is postulated that continuous and prolonged training of sportsmen causes recruitment of pulmonary capillaries and this causes increased capillary blood volume even at rest

Effect of Substrates Types on CO Gas Sensing of SnO2 Thin Film Prepared by Sol-Gel Method

Tin oxide thin film was synthesized on glass and quartz substrate by sol-gel dip coating process taking tin (II) chloride as precursor and methanol as solvent. XRD study confirmed the tetragonal rutile structure of SnO2. It was concluded that the transmission was higher and grain size was bigger in case of quartz than glass substrate from the study of optical characteristics by UV/VIS Spectrophotometer and SEM micrographs. CO gas sensing property of SnO2 thin film was studied and it was revealed that the sensitivity of SnO2 thin film grown on quartz substrate shows better performance than the film grown on glass substrate under the same conditions. Sensitivity of the film to CO gas was measured at different temperatures and was found to be highly sensitive at 220 C for glass substrate and 210 C for quartz substrate, at 50 ppm concentration. The result of change in conductivity of the sensors in presence of CO gas was also reported. When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/3554

Large Charge Four-Dimensional Extremal N=2 Black Holes with R^2-Terms

We consider N=2 supergravity in four dimensions with small R^2 curvature corrections. We construct large charge extremal supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric black hole solutions in all space, and analyze their thermodynamic properties.Comment: 18 pages. v2,3: minor fixe

Cell-mediated immunity in chyluria

Cellular immune response to mitogens phytohemaggluthin (PHA) and poke weed mitogen (PWM) was assessed in 13 patients with chyluria and 32 healthy controls. The mean stimulation Index of the patient group was significantly lower than the control group. The degree of depression was neither related to the duration of excretion of chyle nor to the microfilaraemic status

Gaugino Condensation and Nonperturbative Superpotentials in Flux Compactifications

There are two known sources of nonperturbative superpotentials for K\"ahler moduli in type IIB orientifolds, or F-theory compactifications on Calabi-Yau fourfolds, with flux: Euclidean brane instantons and low-energy dynamics in D7 brane gauge theories. The first class of effects, Euclidean D3 branes which lift in M-theory to M5 branes wrapping divisors of arithmetic genus 1 in the fourfold, is relatively well understood. The second class has been less explored. In this paper, we consider the explicit example of F-theory on $K3 \times K3$ with flux. The fluxes lift the D7 brane matter fields, and stabilize stacks of D7 branes at loci of enhanced gauge symmetry. The resulting theories exhibit gaugino condensation, and generate a nonperturbative superpotential for K\"ahler moduli. We describe how the relevant geometries in general contain cycles of arithmetic genus $\chi \geq 1$ (and how $\chi > 1$ divisors can contribute to the superpotential, in the presence of flux). This second class of effects is likely to be important in finding even larger classes of models where the KKLT mechanism of moduli stabilization can be realized. We also address various claims about the situation for IIB models with a single K\"ahler modulus.Comment: 24 pages, harvmac, no figures, references adde

A novel system to obtain addresses of out-patients-assessent in routine clinic practice in Madras

A novel method of obtaining accurate home addresses from out-patients was introduced as a routine procedure in 6 chest clinics of Madras City, following highly satisfactory results under study conditions. In this method, the patient is given a card (the address card), and asked to get his exact address entered on it by any knowledgeable person of his choice such as a landlord or neighbour. An assessment of the system was undertaken after it had been in operation for about 8 months. A complete and legible address was available for 82 % of 3956 patients, the range in the 6 clinics being 74 % to 91 %. The main causes for failure were : not giving address card to patient (7 %), patient not reattending the clinic (6 %), and patient reattending but not returning the address card (3%). Corrective measures have now been introduced, and a re-assessment will be undertaken in due course