23,675 research outputs found
GResilient index to assess the greenness and resilience of the automotive supply chain
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to suggest an Index entitled GResilient Index to assess the greenness and resilience of the automotive companies and corresponding supply chain. Design/methodology/approach: An integrated assessment model is proposed based on Green and Resilient practices. These practices are weighted according to their importance to the automotive supply chain competitiveness. The Delphi technique is used to obtain the weights for the focused supply chain paradigms and corresponding practices. The model is then tested using a case study approach in the automotive supply chain. Findings: The case study results confirmed the applicability of this Index in a real-world supply chain. The results show that the Resilient supply chain management paradigm is the one considered as the one that more contributes for the automotive supply chain competitiveness. Research limitations/implications: The proposed Index was developed in the automotive sector context therefore it could not be adjusted to a different one. Future research could consider other aggregation methods for the Index construction. Practical implications: Supply chain participants will be able to evaluate the performance of their companies or supply chain in terms of Green and Resilient paradigms. Also, the Index can be effectively employed for functional benchmarking among competing companies and supply chains.Green; resilient; supply chain management; index; automotive industry
White dwarfs with a surface electrical charge distribution: Equilibrium and stability
The equilibrium configuration and the radial stability of white dwarfs
composed of charged perfect fluid are investigated. These cases are analyzed
through the results obtained from the solution of the hydrostatic equilibrium
equation. We regard that the fluid pressure and the fluid energy density follow
the relation of a fully degenerate electron gas. For the electric charge
distribution in the object, we consider that it is centralized only close to
the white dwarfs' surfaces. We obtain larger and more massive white dwarfs when
the total electric charge is increased. To appreciate the effects of the
electric charge in the structure of the star, we found that it must be in the
order of with which the electric field is about
. For white dwarfs with electric fields close to the
Schwinger limit, we obtain masses around . We also found that in
a system constituted by charged static equilibrium configurations, the maximum
mass point found on it marks the onset of the instability. This indicates that
the necessary and sufficient conditions to recognize regions constituted by
stable and unstable equilibrium configurations against small radial
perturbations are respectively and .Comment: This is a preprint. The original paper will be published in EPJ
Morphology of low-redshift compact galaxy clusters I. Shapes and radial profiles
The morphology of clusters of galaxies may be described with a set of
parameters which contain information about the formation and evolutionary
history of these systems. In this paper we present a preliminary study of the
morphological parameters of a sample of 28 compact Abell clusters extracted
from DPOSS data. The morphology of galaxy clusters is parameterized by their
apparent ellipticity, position angle of the major axis, centre coordinates,
core radius and beta-model power law index. Our procedure provides estimates of
these parameters by simultaneously fitting them all, overcoming some of the
difficulties induced by sparse data and low number statistics typical of this
kind of analysis. The cluster parameters were fitted in a 3 x 3 h^-2 sqMpc
region, measuring the background in a 2 <R< 2.5 h^-1Mpc annulus. We also
explore the correlations between shape and profile parameters and other cluster
properties. One third of this compact cluster sample has core radii smaller
than 50 h^-1 kpc, i.e. near the limit that our data allow us to resolve,
possibly consistent with cusped models. The remaining clusters span a broad
range of core radii up to 750 h^-1 kpc. More than 80 per cent of this sample
has ellipticity higher than 0.2. The alignment between the cluster and the
major axis of the dominant galaxy is confirmed, while no correlation is
observed with other bright cluster members. No significant correlation is found
between cluster richness and ellipticity. Instead, cluster richness is found to
correlate, albeit with large scatter, with the cluster core radius.[abridged]Comment: 23 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. Full paper
including full resolution figures 2 and 9 at
http://www.eso.org/~vstrazzu/P/ME1030fv.pd
Self-organized patterns of coexistence out of a predator-prey cellular automaton
We present a stochastic approach to modeling the dynamics of coexistence of
prey and predator populations. It is assumed that the space of coexistence is
explicitly subdivided in a grid of cells. Each cell can be occupied by only one
individual of each species or can be empty. The system evolves in time
according to a probabilistic cellular automaton composed by a set of local
rules which describe interactions between species individuals and mimic the
process of birth, death and predation. By performing computational simulations,
we found that, depending on the values of the parameters of the model, the
following states can be reached: a prey absorbing state and active states of
two types. In one of them both species coexist in a stationary regime with
population densities constant in time. The other kind of active state is
characterized by local coupled time oscillations of prey and predator
populations. We focus on the self-organized structures arising from
spatio-temporal dynamics of the coexistence. We identify distinct spatial
patterns of prey and predators and verify that they are intimally connected to
the time coexistence behavior of the species. The occurrence of a prey
percolating cluster on the spatial patterns of the active states is also
examined.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figure
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