Reinterpreting India's Rise through the Middle Power Prism

Charalampos Efstathopoulos 서울대학교행정대학원 2011 Asian Journal of Political Science Vol.19 No.1

India’s spectacular rise in recent years has been the source of hyperbolic theorising andspeculation on its major power status. Middle power theory offers a set of dynamicanalytical parameters which allow for re-evaluating India’s global influence andidentifying both strengths and weaknesses of its power projection and resources. Placingemphasis on themes of Third World leadership, good international citizenship, multilateralactivism, bridge-building diplomacy, and coalition-building with like-mindedstates, the middle power concept can encapsulate key aspects of India’s contemporaryagency and account for structural dynamics which constitute a reformist world-viewthrough the reconfiguration of the Indian state within the existing world order. Overall,middlepowermanship delineates fundamental continuities in India’s foreign policytradition, epitomises India’s existing position in the neoliberal world order, whileproviding a good indication of the directions India will take on the global stage in theshort and medium-term.

Patient Transfer with Kocher Forceps on the Axillary Artery: A Rare Case of Ongoing Iatrogenic Vascular Injury

Charalampos Seretis,Andreas Tsimpoukis,Andreas Georgiakakis,Panagiotis Kitrou,Eleftheria Panteli,Spyros I. Papadoulas 대한혈관외과학회 2022 Vascular Specialist International Vol.38 No.1

Iatrogenic trauma of the axillary artery by non-vascular surgeons can occur during various general surgical procedures such as resection of soft tissue tumors or axillary lymph node clearance. Prompt recognition, appropriate initial management, and rapid transfer to a tertiary vascular surgery service, if needed, are key steps to ensuring patient safety. Here we present a case of iatrogenic axillary artery injury during the resection of a recurrent soft tissue tumor in a local hospital. The desperate application of a Kocher clamp on the bleeding axillary artery by the operating general surgeons controlled the bleeding but led to further arterial damage. The patient was transferred to our tertiary hospital, where the arterial injury was repaired using a vein interposition graft. Apart from the encountered intraoperative technical challenges, this case highlights the need for broader training of nonvascular specialist surgeons on the core principles of basic vascular surgical techniques and oncovascular surgery.

INTRODUCING EVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS TO RETAIL ASSORTMENT PLANNING

Charalampos Saridakis,Stelios Tsafarakis,George Baltas 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2014 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2014 No.10

One of the basic strategic decisions a retailer must make involves the determination of the assortment to offer. Product assortment planning (PAP) involves important decisions related to the determination of variety (i.e., number of categories), depth (i.e., number of stock-keeping units within a category) and service level (i.e., amount of merchandise inventory within a category) in a retailer’s product portfolio (Mantrala et al., 2009; Hübner & Kuhn, 2012). By making optimal PAP decisions, retailers hope to satisfy customers’ needs by providing the right service in the right store at the right time (Nogales & Suarez, 2005). Despite the importance of PAP, several limitations and gaps can be found in existing literature. First, existing research tends to examine analytical solutions that deal almost exclusively with questions of depth, whilst it completely fails to address issues related to variety and service levels (see for example, Mantrala et al., 2009). Second, current literature focuses on a single category of products or services and fails to examine the interplay among various categories that are offered by a retailer. Third, although in reality a retailer might have a different assortment at each store format, the academic literature has focused on determining a single assortment for a retailer, which could be viewed as either a common assortment to be carried at all stores or the solution to the PAP problem for a single store (Kök et al., 2006). Finally, Private Labels (PLs) have been widely neglected in existing PAP literature, despite the fact that retailers consider PLs as a powerful competitive tool (Nogales & Suarez, 2005). This paper corrects for omissions of existing PAP research by introducing a new innovative method, namely Differential Evolution (DE). More specifically, the proposed mechanism facilitates simultaneously, strategic PAP decisions, related to the determination of a) optimal variety of PL categories in a retail grocery store, b) optimal service level of PL merchandise within each category, and hence, c) optimal balance between PLs and National Brands (NBs) in a retailer’s product portfolio. The interrelated issue of assortment adaptation across different store formats is also considered. Differential Evolution (DE) is an evolutionary, population-based algorithm, for global optimization over continuous spaces. It was first introduced by Storn and Price (1997), and has been extensively applied to a wide domain of optimization problems due to its ability to efficiently handle non-differentiable, nonlinear and multimodal cost functions. DE is based on the Darwinian theory of Evolution (Engelbrecht, 2007). In a world with limited resources and stable populations, each individual competes with others for survival. The individuals with the best characteristics will more probably survive and reproduce. Those desirable characteristics (a) are passed on to their offspring, (b) are inherited by the subsequent generations, and (c) over time will become dominant among the population. During the production process of a child organism, random events may cause random changes to its characteristics. If these altered characteristics benefit the organism, then the likelihood of survival for the organism is increased. In accordance to this, DE works with a group (population) of candidate solutions to the problem (individuals). The algorithm searches for the global optimum through an iterative process. In each algorithm’s iteration the individuals produce offspring through crossover, and some individual’s characteristics are randomly altered through mutation. The strongest (fittest) individuals of the new population survive to the next generation. Our proposed mechanism is implemented to empirical data that have been collected for the purposes of a large-scale telephone survey research examining consumer buying behaviour in the grocery market of a European metropolitan area. A highly structured questionnaire was developed and data were collected from a random sample of 1,928 supermarket customers. The telephone survey was conducted by the Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) facilities of a local university. In total, we examined consumer preferences for a set of twelve product categories that are usually available in a typical supermarket. We implement our DE algorithm to find optimal solutions (i.e., PL service level per category) in the entire dataset and for three store-formats separately (i.e., large supermarkets, discount supermarkets, small local supermarkets). The derived optimal solution for the entire dataset suggests that retailers should mainly focus their efforts on providing extensive PL service levels in product categories such as disposable paper products and packaged foods, and also maintain a decent PL presence in categories such as bakery, laundry, household cleaning products, tea-coffee, and non-alcoholic beverages. On the other hand, the introduction of PLs in categories such as frozen foods, personal hygiene products and clothing products would not be advisable. Regarding the adaptation of PL service levels across store formats, interesting conclusions can be drawn. For example, managers of large mainstream supermarket chains must offer extensive PL service levels in categories such as disposable paper products and packaged foods, whilst they should maintain a decent PL presence in categories such as laundry and dairy products. In line with our expectations, discount retailers are expected to provide broader varieties of PLs, because in addition to the PL categories offered by mainstream supermarkets, discounters must also provide extensive PL service levels in household cleaning products. It is suggested that discounters not only must offer broader varieties of PLs, but also more extensive service levels within those varieties. Finally, the derived optimal PL service levels in most product categories of local supermarket chains are

INTRODUCING EVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS TO RETAIL ASSORTMENT PLANNING

Charalampos Saridakis,Stelios Tsafarakis,George Baltas 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2014 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2014 No.7

One of the basic strategic decisions a retailer must make involves the determination of the assortment to offer. Product assortment planning (PAP) involves important decisions related to the determination of variety (i.e., number of categories), depth (i.e., number of stock-keeping units within a category) and service level (i.e., amount of merchandise inventory within a category) in a retailer’s product portfolio (Mantrala et al., 2009; H?bner & Kuhn, 2012). By making optimal PAP decisions, retailers hope to satisfy customers’ needs by providing the right service in the right store at the right time (Nogales & Suarez, 2005). Despite the importance of PAP, several limitations and gaps can be found in existing literature. First, existing research tends to examine analytical solutions that deal almost exclusively with questions of depth, whilst it completely fails to address issues related to variety and service levels (see for example, Mantrala et al., 2009). Second, current literature focuses on a single category of products or services and fails to examine the interplay among various categories that are offered by a retailer. Third, although in reality a retailer might have a different assortment at each store format, the academic literature has focused on determining a single assortment for a retailer, which could be viewed as either a common assortment to be carried at all stores or the solution to the PAP problem for a single store (K?k et al., 2006). Finally, Private Labels (PLs) have been widely neglected in existing PAP literature, despite the fact that retailers consider PLs as a powerful competitive tool (Nogales & Suarez, 2005). This paper corrects for omissions of existing PAP research by introducing a new innovative method, namely Differential Evolution (DE). More specifically, the proposed mechanism facilitates simultaneously, strategic PAP decisions, related to the determination of a) optimal variety of PL categories in a retail grocery store, b) optimal service level of PL merchandise within each category, and hence, c) optimal balance between PLs and National Brands (NBs) in a retailer’s product portfolio. The interrelated issue of assortment adaptation across different store formats is also considered. Differential Evolution (DE) is an evolutionary, population-based algorithm, for global optimization over continuous spaces. It was first introduced by Storn and Price (1997), and has been extensively applied to a wide domain of optimization problems due to its ability to efficiently handle non-differentiable, nonlinear and multimodal cost functions. DE is based on the Darwinian theory of Evolution (Engelbrecht, 2007). In a world with limited resources and stable populations, each individual competes with others for survival. The individuals with the best characteristics will more probably survive and reproduce. Those desirable characteristics (a) are passed on to their offspring, (b) are inherited by the subsequent generations, and (c) over time will become dominant among the population. During the production process of a child organism, random events may cause random changes to its characteristics. If these altered characteristics benefit the organism, then the likelihood of survival for the organism is increased. In accordance to this, DE works with a group (population) of candidate solutions to the problem (individuals). The algorithm searches for the global optimum through an iterative process. In each algorithm’s iteration the individuals produce offspring through crossover, and some individual’s characteristics are randomly altered through mutation. The strongest (fittest) individuals of the new population survive to the next generation. Our proposed mechanism is implemented to empirical data that have been collected for the purposes of a large-scale telephone survey research examining consumer buying behaviour in the grocery market of a European metropolitan area. A highly structured questionnaire was developed and data were collected from a random sample of 1,928 supermarket customers. The telephone survey was conducted by the Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) facilities of a local university. In total, we examined consumer preferences for a set of twelve product categories that are usually available in a typical supermarket. We implement our DE algorithm to find optimal solutions (i.e., PL service level per category) in the entire dataset and for three store-formats separately (i.e., large supermarkets, discount supermarkets, small local supermarkets). The derived optimal solution for the entire dataset suggests that retailers should mainly focus their efforts on providing extensive PL service levels in product categories such as disposable paper products and packaged foods, and also maintain a decent PL presence in categories such as bakery, laundry, household cleaning products, tea-coffee, and non-alcoholic beverages. On the other hand, the introduction of PLs in categories such as frozen foods, personal hygiene products and clothing products would not be advisable. Regarding the adaptation of PL service levels across store formats, interesting conclusions can be drawn. For example, managers of large mainstream supermarket chains must offer extensive PL service levels in categories such as disposable paper products and packaged foods, whilst they should maintain a decent PL presence in categories such as laundry and dairy products. In line with our expectations, discount retailers are expected to provide broader varieties of PLs, because in addition to the PL categories offered by mainstream supermarkets, discounters must also provide extensive PL service levels in household cleaning products. It is suggested that discounters not only must offer broader varieties of PLs, but also more extensive service levels within those varieties. Finally, the derived optimal PL service levels in most product categories of local supermarket chains are extremely low. This finding indicates that local grocery stores should concentrate their efforts in providing a narrow variety of PLs, by focusing on few categories, such as packaged food and laundry products. In the light of the entire discussion, we suggest that evolutionary analysis can reveal exciting opportunities not merely for new research, but for novel, revolutionary views of market behavior.

AN ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS APPROACH FOR THE IDENTIFICATION OF CAUSAL PATHWAYS TO LOYALTY IN THE AUTOMOBILE MARKET

Charalampos Saridakis,Stelios Tsafarakis,George Baltas 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2016 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2016 No.7

The car market is a high-involvement, high-information market, in which consumers are expected to go through extensive searches. Cars are highly symbolic artefacts. The marque and model say a lot about the owner, and evidently, a car is far beyond a purely rational, functionally based purchase. However, car manufacturers face a serious problem as worldwide marque loyalty levels, from purchase to purchase, average below 50%, and tend to decline over time. Evidently, the analysis of factors affecting car marque loyalty is a research topic of significant managerial importance. This study attempts to empirically address the structure of marque loyalty in the car market and has a dual objective: First, to relate marque loyalty to a set of consumer characteristics under a theoretical framework, and second, to examine the impact of current car’s attribute-level performance on loyalty. In this direction, this study illustrates the value of Adaptive Network-based Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), as a bridge between qualitative and quantitative approaches, in an attempt to identify alternative complex antecedent conditions that give rise to marque loyalty in the car market. The proposed approach offers to conventional correlational quantitative approaches three benefits: (1) asymmetry (i.e., relationships between independent and dependent variables are treated as non-linear/asymmetric), (2) equifinality (i.e., multiple pathways may lead to the same outcome), and (3) causal complexity (i.e., combinations of antecedent conditions lead to the outcome, and hence, the focus is not on net-effects, but on combinatorial-synergistic effects). To demonstrate these merits, ANFIS is compared to a conventional econometric forecasting technique, namely logistic regression.

THE ROLE OF RELATIONSHIP VALUE IN EXPORTER–IMPORTER RELATIONSHIPS: PLS-SEM AND FSQCA FINDINGS

Dionysios Skarmeas,Charalampos Saridakis,Constantinos N. Leonidou 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2016 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2016 No.7

Value creation constitutes the essential purpose of a business relationship. However, limited research examines the role of relationship value in interfirm relationships in general and in international business settings in particular. This study develops a conceptual model that positions psychic distance, relational norms, and relationship learning as antecedents of relationship value, and relationship quality and performance as its key outcomes in international channel relationships. The study uses partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to test the model relationships. Comparing the findings of these two approaches provides an interesting basis for discussion on the importance and applicability of PLS-SEM and fsQCA. Furthermore, the results provide an important addition to the relationship value literature and an interesting discussion on the asymmetric versus symmetric relationships among the observations.

GREEN EMPHASIS: THE ROLE OF GREEN PRODUCT COMMUNICATIONS IN INFLUENCING PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS

Bryan Usrey,Dayananda Palihawadana,Charalampos Saridakis,Aristeidis Theotokis 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2016 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2016 No.7

Green products are often afflicted with a perceived performance liability, presenting marketing managers with a dilemma of how to motivate consumers to alter their consumption behavior, while acknowledging their negative inferences about green product performance. To address this problem, we develop green emphasis, defined as the prominence given to a firms’ environmental initiative in a green product communication appeal. By employing a green emphasis strategy, a firm makes prominent in a communication message either environmental attributes (Study 1 and 3), or uses assertive terminology (Study 2) to heighten issue importance. When a green emphasis strategy is used, the lack of performance-related extrinsic cues may reduce an individuals’ evaluation of a product’s performance ability. This relationship is mediated by autonomous motivation, which may be enhanced through the provision of information that is of interest and value to an individual (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Next, the moderating variable of performance criticality is examined, whereby the importance of the products’ performance ability is based on its associated category (Study 1) or purchase situation (Study 2). When a product belongs to a performance-critical category, or if situational involvement is heightened, the incongruent product information may heighten the negative impact of green emphasis. Finally, environmental attribute optionality (Study 3) is examined. When optional, the attribute is non-fundamental to the functioning of the base product (Ma, Gill, & Jiang, 2015). By making the environmental attribute an option, it is supposed that the incongruity between the attribute and perceived product performance is mitigated and localized, overcoming the negative effect of green emphasis.

An MPEG-4 Compliant Interactive Multimedia Streaming Platform Using Overlay Networks

김현철,Charalampos Patrikakis,Nikos Minogiannis,Pantelis Karamolegos,Alexis Lambiris,김규헌 한국전자통신연구원 2006 ETRI Journal Vol.28 No.4

This paper presents a multimedia streaming platform for efficiently transmitting MPEG-4 content over IP networks. The platform includes an MPEG-4 compliant streaming server and client, supporting object-based representation of multimedia scenes, interactivity, and advanced encoding profiles defined by the ISO standard. For scalability purposes, we employ an application-layer multicast scheme for media transmission using overlay networks. The overlay network, governed by the central entity of the network distribution manager, is dynamically deployed according to a set of pre-defined criteria. The overlay network supports both broadcast delivery and video-ondemand content. The multimedia streaming platform is standards-compliant and utilizes widespread multimedia protocols such as MPEG-4, real-time transport protocol, real-time transport control protocol, and real-time streaming protocol. The design of the overlay network was architected with the goal of transparency to both the streaming server and the client. As a result, many commercial implementations that use industry-standard protocols can be plugged into the architecture relatively painlessly and can enjoy the benefits of the platform.

Non-destructive assessment of the three-point-bending strength of mortar beams using radial basis function neural networks

Alex Alexandridis,Ilias Stavrakas,Charalampos Stergiopoulos,George Hloupis,Konstantinos Ninos,Dimos Triantis 사단법인 한국계산역학회 2015 Computers and Concrete, An International Journal Vol.16 No.6

This paper presents a new method for assessing the three-point-bending (3PB) strength of mortar beams in a non-destructive manner, based on neural network (NN) models. The models are based on the radial basis function (RBF) architecture and the fuzzy means algorithm is employed for training, in order to boost the prediction accuracy. Data for training the models were collected based on a series of experiments, where the cement mortar beams were subjected to various bending mechanical loads and the resulting pressure stimulated currents (PSCs) were recorded. The input variables to the NN models were then calculated by describing the PSC relaxation process through a generalization of Boltzmannn-Gibbs statistical physics, known as non-extensive statistical physics (NESP). The NN predictions were evaluated using k-fold cross-validation and new data that were kept independent from training; it can be seen that the proposed method can successfully form the basis of a non-destructive tool for assessing the bending strength. A comparison with a different NN architecture confirms the superiority of the proposed approach.

Analyzing chaos in higher order disordered quartic-sextic Klein-Gordon lattices using <i>q</i>-statistics

Antonopoulos, Chris G.,Skokos, Charalampos,Bountis, Tassos,Flach, Sergej Elsevier 2017 Chaos, solitons, and fractals Vol.104 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>In the study of subdiffusive wave-packet spreading in disordered Klein–Gordon (KG) nonlinear lattices, a central open question is whether the motion continues to be chaotic despite decreasing densities, or tends to become quasi-periodic as nonlinear terms become negligible. In a recent study of such KG particle chains with quartic (4th order) anharmonicity in the on-site potential it was shown that q − Gaussian probability distribution functions of sums of position observables with <I>q</I> > 1 always approach pure Gaussians ( q = 1 ) in the long time limit and hence the motion of the full system is ultimately “strongly chaotic”. In the present paper, we show that these results continue to hold even when a sextic (6th order) term is gradually added to the potential and ultimately prevails over the 4th order anharmonicity, despite expectations that the dynamics is more “regular”, at least in the regime of small oscillations. Analyzing this system in the subdiffusive energy domain using <I>q</I>-statistics, we demonstrate that groups of oscillators centered around the initially excited one (as well as the full chain) possess strongly chaotic dynamics and are thus far from any quasi-periodic torus, for times as long as t = <SUP> 10 9 </SUP> .</P> <P><B>Highlights</B></P> <P> <UL> <LI> We contribute to the debate concerning the asymptotic behavior of wavepacket spreading in nonlinear, disordered lattices, which is an issue of interest in the last years. </LI> <LI> Using numerical techniques of chaos theory (computations of Lyapunov exponents) and statistical physics (q-statistics, Tsallis entropy) we provide, for a set of Klein–Gordon disordered lattices with higher than 4th order nonlinearity in their on-site potential, strong numerical evidences that wave packet spreading remains strongly chaotic for very long times. </LI> <LI> Our findings clearly suggest that the overall motion in the considered systems does not approach the quasi-periodic regime of invariant tori as conjectured by some authors. </LI> </UL> </P>