Big Players Research Articles

Thermal Arc Spray Overview

Usage of protective coating for corrosion protection was on highly demand during the past decade; and thermal spray coating played a major part during that time. In recent years, the thermal arc spray coating becomes a popular coating. Many big players in oil and gas such as PETRONAS, EXXON MOBIL and SHELL in Malaysia tend to use the coating on steel structure as a corrosion protection. Further developments in coating processes, the devices, and raw materials have led to expansion of functional coatings and applications scope from conventional coating to specialized industries. It is widely used because of its ability to withstand high process temperature, offer advantages in efficiency, lower cost and acts as a corrosion protection. Previous research also indicated that the thermal arc spray offers better coating properties compared to other methods of spray. This paper reviews some critical area of thermal spray coating by discussing the process/parameter of thermal arc spray technology and quality control of coating. Coating performance against corrosion, wear and special characteristic of coating are also described. The field application of arc spray technology are demonstrated and reviewed.

Competition Commission of India and Consumers’ Welfare: An Analysis

After globalization of economies around the world, markets became more and more competitive. International players also jumped into the field called local or national market of a country. Entry of so many players gives birth to unfair means and malafide practices which leads to unhealthy competition and only big players have chance to win the game. In the pursuit of globalization, India has also responded to opening up its economy, removing controls and resorting to liberalisation. The natural corollary of this is that the Indian market should be geared to face competition from within the country and outside. Hence, the Competition Act, 2002 has been enacted replacing the MRTP Act, 1969, with the purpose of providing a competition law regime that meets and suits the demands of the changed economic scenario in India and abroad. The purpose of formulating a competition law in India was to shift the focus from curbing monopolies to promoting competition. Competition in a market contributes to the progress of an economy because it ensures better products and services, offers wider choice, promotes efficiency and increases consumer welfare. Competition eliminates the poor performing products or services and leaves only good and outstanding products for the general masses to consume. Consumers need good quality products at lower prices. If there is competition in the market, the market players in order to survive will be compelled to bow down to the demands of the consumer, i.e. quality products at lower prices. Competition law, therefore, is designed for the regulation of competition, thereby ensuring economic growth.

Saving photo slides [Resources_Tools

If you're old enough to have been called a shutterbug, you've probably got a bunch of slides or film somewhere that you've fantasized about digitizing. Well, a new scanner system, flawed though it is, may be what you're looking for. · Film scanning is recovering from a market implosion several years ago, when big players Canon, Minolta, and Nikon all either got out of the business or cut back their offerings. That left fewer than a dozen companies competing in the market for 35-mm film scanners. One of the most interesting of this group is Plustek Technology, whose new model, the OpticFilm 8200i Ai, offers impressive value. · Available now in stores for about US $430, it can scan at 7200 dots per inch—high enough to show the grain in a photograph, no matter how fine-grain the film is. Its image-sensing component is a charge-coupled-device combined with an LED light source. Like all film scanners, the Plustek is equally adept at scanning negatives and slides. · But good hardware is useless without good software. It's a big challenge for a scanner, because the software has to control so many variables, including spatial and color resolution, output format, and many optimization and correction parameters. The Plustek comes bundled with software called SilverFast, which is available for Microsoft Windows and Apple's OS X. · SilverFast has an intuitive user interface. It enabled me to control the key factors of a scan with few false starts and with minimal use of the thin and mediocre reference booklet that comes with the software. Unfortunately, however, I also encountered a significant bug. Every time I tried to make a scan with the highest color depth—64-bit—the software crashed. This instability surprised me, because the software is now on version 8. (I was running it on my powerful iMac computer.) · The Plustek scanner can perform several different kinds of scans, but they boil down to two basic types. One is an archival scan, which strives to capture every detail and aspect of the slide as faithfully as possible.

A Method to Transform a Personal Computer into Several Networking Devices

Internet connects millions of computers from around the world and provides communication, storage and high speed computation infrastructure. As such Computer Networks has emerged as one of the most important technological field of our time. Users are joining the internet from every nook and corner of the world and utilising its services in all fields including education and business. Networking devices provide the infrastructure to these different institutions joining the internet world, with a reasonably high investment. As a result high cost of networking devices and their enterprise oriented design limits their usage to big institutions. These devices are also less flexible as their configuration and functionalities are designed to suit the big players of the industry. This method transforms Personal Computer into Networking Devices (PCIND) used in computer networks. The invention serves as various networking devices as and when required and is therefore a cost effective way of utilizing the benefits of computer networking. Overall it serves as a cheap alternative to the networking devices with the flexibility to configure and install the system according to local needs. This paper is based on a patent and is organized into four parts, viz a method to turn a PC into Router, a Server, a Wireless Access Point and a Bridge⁄Gateway⁄Firewall. The main features of the patent are given and also the working of the method.

(Keynote) Chinas Markets - No Option for German SMEs

China has reached the champions’ league for export. Today China is one of the most important markets worldwide. From Europe and Germany big global companies are already settled in China. But the German economy is driven by small and medium sized enterprises mainly. Over 90% of all German companies are SMEs with less than 500 employees. Many high tech evolutions are coming from small start-ups. These have much more difficulties to go to China then big players. Chinese business needs all-time presence. SMEs who want to get a food in the Chinese market door have to invest in a branch office at least. Even more efficient is a production subsidiary. Strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and risks of the company and the management should be evaluated. For SMEs focused on realistic expectations it is possible to plan the business for short, middle and long term run. In some points Chinese business works like somewhere else in the world: The right technique at the right spot at the right time. Quality is very welcome in China. Strong price discussions signaling high interest and are an honor to a strong partner. China is open for small and medium-sized companies. Province and city government supports foreign investors and potential business partners. Once a partnership is established on equal level for both parties operating with respect and trust, the mutual benefit will succeed.

The 2012 CLSR-LSPI seminar on privacy, data protection & cyber-security – Presented at the 7th international conference on Legal, Security and Privacy Issues in IT law (LSPI) October 2–4, 2012, Athens

This has been a big year for privacy with so much going on within the EU regarding reform of data protection. What are the implications of reform here and what are the issues that concern us about the proposed new data protection regime contained in the proposed Regulation? We hear a lot about the ‘right to be forgotten’. How is that possible in the digital age within the online world? And what can be done about the big players who stand charged with the erosion of privacy viz Facebook, Google, Skype & YouTube etc? How can the law keep up with technological change when the latter is moving so fast e.g. with RFID, Cloud and social networking? To what extent can data breach notification, net neutrality and privacy impact assessment help and how should the law approach issues of liability and criminality in relation to privacy? What is the state of play too in the relationship between privacy policy and state surveillance and, given its implications for privacy, what obligations should governments adopt in response to cybersecurity regulation and data management? Is there a place for privacy self-regulation and if so in what respects and how effective are the Information Commissioners who often complain of being under resourced? In reviewing the way privacy law has emerged do we now need a completely new approach to the whole issue? Has the law crept into its present form simply by default? Do we need some new thinking now that reflects the fact that law is only one dimension in the battle for privacy? If so what are the other factors we need to recognise?

Motivations, Incentives and Risks of Investment in Biofuels

Different factors such as rising oil prices, climate change and energy security have generated much interest in renewable energy sources such as biofuels. Investment in this new industry involves certain motivations, incentives and risks. While there is now some experience in working with the first generation of biofuels, the second and third (which seem to have greater potential) are still in their infancy, yet are viewed as important investment opportunities by companies such as BP or ExxonMobil. This essay provides an overview of the motivations, incentives, and risks involved in investment in each generation of biofuels. Furthermore, it provides some examples of investments by the ‘Big Players’: BP, ExxonMobil, and D1 Oils.

Revisiting the prescription of corporate governance standards: a panacea for big players and SMEs in the German financial industry alike?

Bad corporate governance has been criticised as one reason for the failure of financial companies in the current crisis. Nevertheless, this discussion almost exclusively referred to big players so far. Our paper investigates and compares both, big players as well as SMEs in the German financial sector. We find remarkable differences between the two sub-samples concerning compliance with German corporate governance standards. Furthermore, considering the impact of compliance with German corporate governance standards on performance, we surprisingly do not find differences between both groups with respect to total shareholder return, but big companies with high compliance rates demonstrating a significantly impact on return on equity which we cannot find for SMEs. This opens a discussion whether the existing standards of ‘good’ corporate governance in Germany are even able to help SMEs to lower their agency costs.

Competition policy and optimal retail network development in transitional economies

The choice of retail store location is a very complex process, with many different stakeholders having interests in both the micro and macro locations. The goal of this work is to contribute to the better understanding of the different interests of corporative and public policies in choosing retail store locations, in order to enable more efficient and effective trade network development. After having slowed down as a consequence of the global economic crisis, the retail sector is experiencing strong expansion in the markets of transitional countries. Insufficient engagement of public policy in planning trade networks can violate market competition. An active government role in carrying out the policy of retail network development in transitional countries is necessary to maintain the level of competition and prevent big market players abusing their dominant position.

The cloud is not 'there', we are the cloud!

Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most highly discussed topics both in the academic community and in the computing industry. Many big computer industry players such as Microsoft, IBM and Sun, as well as other Internet technology heavyweights, including Google and Amazon, have a long time ago started delivering standardised services in a self-service and pay-per-use way. However, why pay when you can simply cooperate? This paper takes the first exploratory step in this direction by introducing a new Peer-to-Peer cloud architecture we refer to as Cooperation as a Service CaaS that allows providing cloud participants with a whole set of Infrastructure, Platform and Software cloud services for free by taking advantage of cooperation among different peers.

Cost management skills among the owners of Malaysian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the era of globalisation

In the era of globalisation or internationalisation, as a developing country, it is crucial for the Malaysian Government to propose an SME development plan to assist the SMEs to meet the new business challenges in the competitive global business environment. This is because SMEs in Malaysia need to prepare themselves in various aspects, especially in respect of entrepreneurial skills and knowledge to face the challenges in this new economic era. From the literature, globalisation or internationalisation is considered to be among the most important motivations for Malaysian SMEs owners to strengthen their entrepreneurial skills and knowledge to compete with the big world players. Among the important skills that have been discussed in the literature is cost management skills. Therefore, this paper will give an overview of the skill in costing among the owners of Malaysian SMEs in the era of globalisation. Furthermore, this paper will provide recommendations concerning how to improve cost management skills among Malaysian SMEs.

Advantage India: A Study of Competitive Position of Organized Retail Industry

Organised retail industry is one of the untapped industry sectors in India with huge growth potential. Indian retail sector mainly divided into unorganised and organised retail. Organizes retail has limited market share in this sector. Recently Government of India allowed FDI in single brand retailing and multi brand retail. Due to this decision it will create market opportunity to foreign big retail players to enter into Indian retail market. Organised retailing continues to be the least evolved industries in India and the growth of organized retailing in India much slower as compared to other Asian and European countries. The present paper discusses the competitive advantage of India for FDI in retail sector with the help of National diamond Model suggested by Michael Porter (1990) for competitive advantage of nation. The purpose of the study is to analyse the strategic competitive position of India for investment in retail sector and also analyses the world wide retail market opportunity as compared with Indian retail sector. Analysis of retail industry is done by using various market research reports on retail sector published by market research firm, government publication, and industry news and online resource. Michael Porter’s model on competitive advantage of nation is applied here with the help of secondary data and analysed the each determinants of competitiveness of nation. Some of determinant used for analysis from the report published by World Economic Forum. The findings of the study are point out that FDI in retail would undoubtedly enable Indian economy to boost at faster rate than current situation. There are various advantages to foreign retailer to enter into the Indian retail sector. Growth in disposal income and a change in the standard of living of Indian society create demand condition for retail. Absence of bigger organised retail players, largest demand and market size, availability of low cost labour, developing infrastructure, economy of scale and global sourcing are the key market potential indicators for foreign investor to invest in India. It is concluded that foreign direct investment in retail industry will create positive and favourable business opportunity for foreign retailers and all the determinant of competitiveness are positive for retail industry in India.

Foreign direct investment as export facilitator in Serbia's apparel industry

The attraction of foreign direct investment, especially export oriented FDI has been one of the main economic policy goals for Serbia since the start of transition in 2001, backed by incentives for attracting this type of investment. The apparel industry is one sector that has drawn significant amount of FDI, and where the link between FDI and exports is emerging strongly, as confirmed by data presented in this article. Appearance of several multinational investors, particularly from Italy, led to positive spillovers on Serbian apparel industry in terms of specific products production and their export on foreign markets, especially 'panty hose, tights, stockings & other hosiery, knitted or crocheted'. In 2012, Serbia's exports for this product represented 1.8% of world exports, ranking Serbia 10th in the world and hence representing a rising niche export. Recent investments of big industry players like Benetton will have further positive effects on export and employment in years to come, provided that the government engages in activities to improve branding in addition to continued investment incentives and policies aimed at advancing infrastructure, education and general business climate.

Factors influencing the Consumption Pattern of Male Cosmetics in Delhi by an Urban Male

This study appraise in depth the pursuance of self image, societal expectations and media (celebrity endorsement and advertisements) on the consumption pattern of urban male towards male cosmetics in Delhi. Also, this study endeavours to find out the reasonable impact of perception on the association of various variables and consumption pattern. The primary data was collected through administration of questionnaire which was circulated to the men who fall in the category of age between 15-45 years living in Delhi. The sample consists of 162 respondents. The study reveals the sizeable variables that affect urban male consumption pattern and attitude towards male cosmetics. The result of the study reinforced an existence of the relationship between self image, media (celebrity endorsement and advertisements) and societal expectation and consumption pattern. Apart from this, the study also provides valuable insight towards the understanding on how perception balanced the relationships between the variables studied and its influence on the consumption pattern of urban male toward male cosmetics products. Keywords: Consumption pattern, Male cosmetics, Media self image, Societal expectation Urban male. In the released survey by The NPD Group (2) , a leading market research company of New York, men is continuously finding new benefits of keeping up appearances. Men's grooming and cosmetic products are among the largest monetary growth drivers in totality of personal care industry and product categories like men's cosmetics specifically face creams steadily growing at a rapid speed.‖ Grooming of men's in India has risen by 22% in current value terms in 2012, to reach Rs 37.9 billion. Most of the big players within beauty and personal care launched products specific to males in 2012. The male cosmetics market in India is still not developed and in its infancy stage. The initial stage of Indian market is an opportunity to various cosmetics companies which are designing and planning their strategies to attract and target male consumers in upcoming years. This case will definitely be beneficial to the companies which will enter first in terms of product acceptability among male consumers. The market is forecasted to witness a double digit growth in coming years because of change in lifestyle and increasing spending among male consumers. As we all can see grooming products and male cosmetics can now be found under brands such as Garnier, Nivea, Fiama Di Wills and Olay. Men are increasingly accepting to use products that were earlier considered the domain of women. According to Mr Sanjay Singal, marketing head, beauty care at Dabur India Ltd, men are increasingly becoming the drivers of growth for the Indian cosmetic market. Also emphasized that the belief of a men that how a person presents himself to the outer world is important for the social acceptance has moved a step forward understanding the importance of presenting nicely will certainly be an advantage to his career. Even nowadays the other sectors like Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) (3) are increasingly trying to lure male consumers which was earlier just focussing on traditional products like deodorant etc. The companies have extended their presence to specialized skin creams and bleaches also. The market segment of deodorants—a category that has players such as HUL, Godrej, Nivea among many other smaller brands— clocked a 46% growth, the fastest as per Euromonitor (4) .

Targeting Rural Yoghurt Market: A Way Forward

This case describes the marketing practices at Mali, one of the new entrants to the crowded yoghurt market in Sri Lanka. Mali focuses on the rural yoghurt market—a significant market untapped by big players in the yoghurt market. Being a medium-scale enterprise, Nimal, the owner of the Mali, manages the marketing function of the company. So far he has succeeded in the rural market where he focuses on his marketing applications. However, he faces some issues, such as, to what extent he can survive with the existing marketing practices? How can the company address the changes taking place in the consumer behaviour of the rural market? What opportunities are available in the urban market where Mali is about to enter? What lessons can be learned from the applications of marketing practices in a typical rural market? And how the strategic bases of Mali can be affected in long term to get competitive edge in yoghurt market?

Datastores supporting Services Lifecycle in the framework of Cloud Governance

While adopting the Cloud, the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) could increase their benefit by embracing some Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions, doubled by a Cloud Governance or Cloud brokerage approach. However, in order to fully exploit the advantages brought by Cloud environments, and enter in real competition with big players from different markets, SMEs must group themselves under the umbrella of a common marketplace, via some Cloud Governance solutions, and expose together complex, tailored and integrated solutions. The implementation of an effective Cloud Governance solution requires a strong support for storing and manipulating data which is relevant for various aspects of applications, both at business and technical level, support which is closely linked to cloud service lifecycle. This paper focuses on analyzing the main requirements related to data storage in an effective Cloud Governance system, details the functionality of the most important datastores and presents various use cases involving the entire storage architecture.

The Credit Derivatives Market – A Threat to Financial Stability?

Credit derivatives occurred as a solution to the needs of managing credit risks by the financial institutions, mainly banks. Besides the role of means of hedging and diversifying credit risks, derivatives become tempting for those likely to take on more risk to make more money. Therefore, the users of credit derivatives for protective purposes were outnumbered by the speculative ones. The result consisted in an ever-growing OTC market, with huge volumes traded. The players achieved very high leverage on increased credit exposures, without being suspected by creditors or regulators of inconsistency. The very first signs of the current global crisis revealed the weaknesses of the relations and dependencies developed on the credit derivatives markets, as big players on these markets have failed. This paper considers the benefits of credit derivatives for risk management, along with the perils they pose for systemic risk. Finally, the paper outlines the actions that should be undertaken in order to strengthen the operational efficiency of credit derivatives markets so as to ensure that they do not harm financial stability.

Nursery Chains: Business - In the balance

Nursery WorldVol. 2012, No. 10 FeatureNursery Chains: Business - In the balanceMary EvansMary EvansSearch for more papers by this authorMary EvansPublished Online:4 Mar 2014https://doi.org/10.12968/nuwa.2012.23.10.1097388AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail View articleAbstractA series of large-scale acquisitions suggests the big players are thriving, but what will this mean for the coming year? Mary Evans takes a look. FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails 1 October 2012Volume 2012Issue 10ISSN (print): 0029-6422ISSN (online): 2059-9358 Metrics History Published online 4 March 2014 Published in print 1 October 2012 Information© MA Education Ltd

Big players jostle for pole position in muscular dystrophy

Big players jostle for pole position in muscular dystrophy

Exotic Highly Ionized Pulse Plasma Processes

Highly ionized pulse plasma processes (HIPP processes), like high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HIPIMS) also known as high power pulse magnetron sputtering (HPPMS), modulated pulse power sputtering (MPP), as well as further modifications involving increased ionization in sputtering have been investigated and matured within the last decade. On European level a concerted action focusing the efforts and bringing together the leading experts was set up and is actually promoting the transition of HIPP processes to industry. Besides the well know approaches of HIPIMS/HPPMS and MPP further modifications for ionized PVD are under development. This paper focuses on HIPP processes and new technological approaches besides the well-known "big players". New approaches combining technologies like hollow cathodes in different modifications, coils for inductive coupling, arc sources for "gasless sputtering" or a modified process for constant-current HIPIMS will be presented.