Towards a business model for sustainable supply chain management

Designers make decisions that ultimately impact on both the economic, environmental and social performance of the products and process, and many of these costs and impacts occur across the supply chain. This paper aims to show initials elements of a research which aims to develop an integrated business model for sustainable supply chain management in order to facilitate the business management process in terms of assessment of suppliers and collaboration addressed to the sustainable improvements across supply chain. It is noteworthy that it is an imperative in the current competitive market that companies must be able to manage their entire production chain taking into account sustainable issues as an important factor in their decision processes. Therefore, it is believed that this model can integrate and strengthen a company’s functions and assist its decision processes as well as implement improvements within its supply chain

Patterns of load distribution among the legs in small water striders during standing and striding

Water striders (Gerris argentatus) move across the water surface by taking advantage of the surface tension, which supports their bodyweight without breaking. During locomotion, the midlegs are primarily responsible for generating thrust, whereas the other legs support the body. Although the aspects of standing and locomotion on the water surface are well understood, relatively fewer studies concerned the coordinated biomechanical movements of the legs. In order to maintain buoyancy of the body on the water surface, the leg positions must be adjusted to distribute the bodyweight appropriately. The present study investigates distribution of the bodyweight on the legs in relatively small water striders. We aimed to understand how loading on the legs changes during sculling that leads to sliding of the body on the water surface. The assistance of all legs at every moment enables the body to maintain its floating during standing and striding. Water striders can achieve a gentle striding through the midlegs driving phase in association with smooth load shifting among their legs, which are positioned in a specific configuration to support the insect on the water surface

Parental Substance Use in New Hampshire: Who Cares for the Children?

In this brief, author Kristin Smith examines parental substance use and who cares for children when their parents cannot. It uses data from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services’ Division for Children, Youth, and Families Results Oriented Management and the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (NH Bridges), and the American Community Survey. She reports that the number of child abuse and neglect reports assessed by the New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth, and Families increased by 21 percent between 2013 and 2016. The number of children or youth removed from parental care increased from 358 in 2012 to 547 in 2016, and the percent that included a substance-related allegation doubled from 30 percent to 60 percent. Five percent of children or youth removed from parental care in 2016 were born drug-exposed, up from 2 percent in 2012. The percent of children in state custody placed in out-of-home care with a relative increased from 23 percent to 33 percent from 2012 to 2016. Many grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, other extended family, and close friends step forward to care for children when their parents cannot. When parents cannot provide care, children need support systems in place and stable connections so they can develop the capacity for emotional bonding and build resilience. Encouraging parents to seek treatment, as well as providing services to families where there is reasonable concern for potential child abuse or neglect, can help families access the services they need and identify issues before they escalate into problems. Prevention and intervention efforts targeting children and youth may be beneficial in reducing the impact of parental opioid use

Beyond the clinic? Eluding a medical diagnosis of anorexia through narrative

The persistence and recurrence of anorexia nervosa poses a clinical challenge, and provides support for critiques of oppressive and injurious facets of society inscribed on women’s bodies. This essay illustrates how a phenomenological, linguistic anthropological approach fruitfully traverses clinical and cultural perspectives by directing attention beyond the embodied experience of patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa to those who are not clinically diagnosed. Extending a model of illness and recovery as entailing sufferers’ emplotting of past, present, and imagined future selves, I argue that women’s accounts of their experiences do not simply reflect lived reality, but actually propel health-relevant states of being by enlivening and creating these realities in the process of their telling. In indexical interaction with public and clinical discourses, narratives’ grammar, lexicon, and plot structures modify subjects’ experiences and interpretations of the events and feelings recounted. This article builds on the insight that linear narratives of “full recovery” that adopt a clinical and feminist voice can help tellers stay recovered, whereas for those “struggling to recover,” a genre of contingent, uncertain, sideshadowing narratives alternatively renders recovery an elusive and ambivalently desired object. This essay then identifies a third narrative genre, eluding a diagnosis, which combines elements of the first two genres to paradoxically keep its teller simultaneously sheltered from, and invisible to the well-meaning clutches of medical care, leaving her suffering, yet free, to starve. This focus on narrative genres illustrates the utility of linguistic analyses for discerning and interpreting distress in subclinical populations.First author draf

Putting away childish things: incidents of recovery in Tolkien and Haddon

The article discusses the philosophy of author J.R.R. Tolkien. Borrowing concepts from Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Duns Scotus, Tolkien developed the concept of recovery, in which a person is able to interact with the world as though they have never done so before. Using Mark Haddon's novel "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" the article details how recovery can lead people to seeing things differently rather than just glancing at them and accepting it for what it is. The author also uses examples from Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" series to prove his point

Locomotory Behavior of Water Striders with Amputated Legs

The stability of the body during locomotion is a fundamental requirement for walking animals. The mechanisms that coordinate leg movement patterns are even more complex at water–air interfaces. Water striders are agile creatures on the water surface, but they can be vulnerable to leg damage, which can impair their movement. One can assume the presence of certain compensatory biomechanical factors that are involved in the maintenance of postural balance lost after an amputation. Here, we studied changes in load distribution among the legs and assessed the effects of amputation on the locomotory behavior and postural defects that may increase the risk of locomotion failure. Apparently, amputees recover a stable posture by applying leg position modifications (e.g., widening the stance) and by load redistribution to the remaining legs. Water striders showed steering failure after amputation in all cases. Amputations affected locomotion by (1) altering motion features (e.g., shorter swing duration of midlegs), (2) functional constraints on legs, (3) shorter travelled distances, and (4) stronger deviations in the locomotion path. The legs functionally interact with each other, and removal of one leg has detrimental effects on the others. This research may assist the bioinspired design of aquatic robots

The monetary origins of the financial and economic crisis

Abstract The monetary policy, especially the American one, can be blamed for the remote role (2002-2004) it played in the creation of the speculative bubble which led to a financial crisis. It also has a part of the responsibility through its restrictive direction during the 2004-2006 period; this time, a direction shared by other central banks. Finally, it is more immediately involved through its lack of clear-sightedness and responsiveness in the first months of the recession.Economic crisis, Financial crisis, Monetary Policy, Taylor Rule,Taylor gap, Interest Term Spread, Recession

Towards automated visual surveillance using gait for identity recognition and tracking across multiple non-intersecting cameras

Despite the fact that personal privacy has become a major concern, surveillance technology is now becoming ubiquitous in modern society. This is mainly due to the increasing number of crimes as well as the essential necessity to provide secure and safer environment. Recent research studies have confirmed now the possibility of recognizing people by the way they walk i.e. gait. The aim of this research study is to investigate the use of gait for people detection as well as identification across different cameras. We present a new approach for people tracking and identification between different non-intersecting un-calibrated stationary cameras based on gait analysis. A vision-based markerless extraction method is being deployed for the derivation of gait kinematics as well as anthropometric measurements in order to produce a gait signature. The novelty of our approach is motivated by the recent research in biometrics and forensic analysis using gait. The experimental results affirmed the robustness of our approach to successfully detect walking people as well as its potency to extract gait features for different camera viewpoints achieving an identity recognition rate of 73.6 % processed for 2270 video sequences. Furthermore, experimental results confirmed the potential of the proposed method for identity tracking in real surveillance systems to recognize walking individuals across different views with an average recognition rate of 92.5 % for cross-camera matching for two different non-overlapping views.<br/

Is the Health Care System Working for Adolescents? Perspectives From Providers in Boston, Denver, Houston, and San Francisco

Assesses healthcare system services for adolescents in four urban areas. Includes provider perspectives on how health insurance, managed care, and other factors facilitate or impede access. Discusses innovative programs, and offers recommendations