Blockchain adoption in the maritime supply chain: Examining barriers and salient stakeholders in containerized international trade

YesThis study aimed to investigate the relationships between blockchain adoption barriers and identified the salient stakeholders for blockchain adoption in containerized international trade. The interpretative structural modelling and Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification analyses indicated that the most impactful among the eight barriers are lack of support from influential stakeholders, lack of understanding regarding blockchain, and lack of government regulations. The stakeholder mapping analysis demonstrated that the high salient stakeholders among 11 legitimate stakeholders are container lines, ports, beneficial cargo owners, freight forwarders/third party logistics, and customs authorities. The study is original and contributes to theory and practice as it uncovers both impactful barriers and critical stakeholders by adopting a stakeholder theory perspective and offers significant implications to practice, policy, and theory by combining these two analyses

Social media engagement of stakeholders: A decision tree approach in container shipping

YesSocial media provides a significant avenue for stakeholder engagement which is crucial to ensure loyalty and satisfaction of stakeholders who possess valuable resources that can influence the business outcomes. Container lines – imperative members of global supply chains and facilitators of international trade – utilize social media to engage their stakeholders due to environmental and commercial complexity of their business. However, not all social media posts generate the same amount of stakeholder engagement. This study aims to identify and examine the social media post characteristics that lead to higher stakeholder engagement in the container shipping market. The study applies Chi-Squared Automatic Interaction Detection method to categorize social media posts based on their engagement levels. The analysis is conducted on the tweets of four global container lines which are posted between 1 September 2018 and 31 January 2019. The results demonstrate that social media posts of container lines have varying effects on engagement level. We found that fluency of tweets, tangibility of company resources in the tweet, vividness level, content type, existence of a link, and existence of a call-to-action significantly influence the container lines’ stakeholder engagement rate. This study is the first that finds out social media post classes based on the interaction between their characteristics and engagement rates by employing a decision tree methodology. The results are expected to help container lines in their social media management and stakeholder engagement policies

The power of diversity over large solution spaces

We consider a team of agents with limited problem-solving ability facing a disjunctive task over a large solution space. We provide sufficient conditions for the following four statements. First, two heads are better than one: a team of two agents will solve the problem even if neither agent alone would be able to. Second, teaming up does not guarantee success: if the agents are not sufficiently creative, even a team of arbitrary size may fail to solve the problem. Third, "defend it numerous": when the agent's problem-solving ability is adversely affected by the complexity of the solution space, the solution of the problem requires only a mild increase in the size of the team. Fourth, groupthink impairs the power of diversity: if agents' abilities are positively correlated, a larger team is necessary to solve the problem

Receptor-Specific Mechanisms Regulate Phosphorylation of AKT at Ser473: Role of RICTOR in β1 Integrin-Mediated Cell Survival

A tight control over AKT/PKB activation is essential for cells, and they realise this in part by regulating the phosphorylation of Ser473 in the “hydrophobic motif” of the AKT carboxy-terminal region. The RICTOR-mTOR complex (TORC2) is a major kinase for AKT Ser473 phosphorylation after stimulation by several growth factors, in a reaction proposed to require p21-activated kinase (PAK) as a scaffold. However, other kinases may catalyse this reaction in stimuli-specific manners. Here we characterised the requirement of RICTOR, ILK, and PAK for AKT Ser473 phosphorylation downstream of selected family members of integrins, G protein-coupled receptors, and tyrosine-kinase receptors and analysed the importance of this phosphorylation site for adhesion-mediated survival. siRNA-mediated knockdown in HeLa and MCF7 cells showed that RICTOR-mTOR was required for phosphorylation of AKT Ser473, and for efficient phosphorylation of the downstream AKT targets FOXO1 Thr24 and BAD Ser136, in response to β1 integrin-stimulation. ILK and PAK1/2 were dispensable for these reactions. RICTOR knockdown increased the number of apoptotic MCF7 cells on β1 integrin ligands up to 2-fold after 24 h in serum-free conditions. β1 integrin-stimulation induced phosphorylation of both AKT1 and AKT2 but markedly preferred AKT2. RICTOR-mTOR was required also for LPA-induced AKT Ser473 phosphorylation in MCF7 cells, but, interestingly, not in HeLa cells. PAK was needed for the AKT Ser473 phosphorylation in response to LPA and PDGF, but not to EGF. These results demonstrate that different receptors utilise different enzyme complexes to phosphorylate AKT at Ser473, and that AKT Ser473 phosphorylation significantly contributes to β1 integrin-mediated anchorage-dependent survival of cells

Growth requirements of thermophilic aerobic microorganisms in mixed cultures for the treatment of strong wastes

The nutritional and temperature requirements of a naturally occurring mixed culture of thermophilic microorganisms were studied. Investigations concerning the effect of temperature on the growth characteristics of the mixed culture showed that the rate of growth was highest between 55 and 58 degrees C. Furthermore, it was found that the minimal nutritional requirements for maximum growth of these microorganisms included methionine, magnesium, calcium, and the necessary carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus sources. It was shown that a mixed culture was nutritionally less fastidious than the pure cultures of individual organisms isolated from the mixed culture; this observation illustrated the possibility of symbiotic growth of thermophilic microorganisms insofar as meeting their individual nutritional requirements. (C) 1999 IAWQ Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Pressure and spin effect on the stability, electronic and mechanic properties of three equiatomic quaternary Heusler (FeVHfZ, Z = Al, Si, and Ge) compounds

In this paper, three equiatomic quaternary Heusler compounds − role= presentation style= box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: normal; font-size: 16.2px; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; position: relative; \u3e− FeVHfZ (Z = Al, Si, and Ge) − role= presentation style= box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: normal; font-size: 16.2px; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; position: relative; \u3e− are investigated for their structural, magnetic, electronic, mechanic, and lattice dynamic properties under pressure effect. These compounds are optimized for under three structural types and three magnetic phases: β role= presentation style= box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: normal; font-size: 16.2px; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; position: relative; \u3eβ is the most stable structure with ferromagnetic phase. The electronic properties reveal that FeVHfAl is a half-metal, and that FeVHfSi and FeVHfGe are spin gapless semiconductors. In addition to electronic band structure, possible hybridization and partial density of states are presented. Furthermore, the mechanical properties are studied, and the three-dimensional direction-dependent mechanical properties are visualized under varying pressure effects. Our results reveal the half-metal and spin gapless semiconductor nature of the ferromagnetic FeVHfZ compounds, making them promising materials for spintronics applications

The investigation of electronic, anisotropic elastic and lattice dynamical properties of MAB phase nanolaminated ternary borides: M2AlB2 (M=Mn, Fe and Co) under spin effects

In the present study, the structural, electronic, magnetic, anisotropic elastic and lattice dynamic properties of the ternary metal borides M2AlB2 (M=Mn, Fe and Co) known as MAB phases have been investigated by density functional theory. The obtained results from the structural optimizations show that all these compounds have negative formation enthalpy implying the thermodynamic stability and synthesizability. The spin effects on the M2AlB2 phases have been studied with the plotted energy-volume curves for different magnetic phases (antiferromagnetic (AFM), ferromagnetic (FM), and paramagnetic (PM)) of these compounds. The stable magnetic phase for the Mn2AlB2 compound is found to be AFM while the magnetic nature of Fe2AlB2 and Co2AlB2 compounds are FM. The calculated electronic band structures with the total and orbital projected partial density of electronic states imply that these ternary metal borides have metallic behavior. Also, the mentioned compounds have mechanical and dynamic stability due to the calculated elastic constants and the observed phonon dispersion curves. Some thermodynamic properties have been investigated by means of phonon dispersion curves. Furthermore, the anisotropic elastic properties have been visualized in three dimensions (3D) for Young's modulus, linear compressibility, shear modulus, Poisson's ratio, and sound wave velocities. © 2020 Elsevier B.V

EFFECT OF TEMPERATURE, PH AND DO CONCENTRATION ON FILTERABILITY AND COMPRESSIBILITY OF ACTIVATED-SLUDGE

This study investigates the effect of aeration basin temperature, pH and dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration on filterability and compressibility characteristics of activated sludge. Laboratory-scale semi-continuous reactors, fed with synthetic wastewater were used. Effects of temperatures of 15, 20, 25, 30, 35°C; pH values of 5.7, 7.2, 8.2, 9.0 and DO concentrations of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 5.0 ml/l were studied by keeping all the other parameters constant in each case. Results indicated that as the operating temperatures of reactors were increased, specific resistances to filtration also increased. Up to 25°C a decrease in compressibility of the sludges was observed and above 25°C the sludges became more compressible. Similarly, as the operating pH of the reactors were increased, sludge filterabilities decreased. Increases in the pH of the reactors caused the sludges to become more compressible. On the other hand, low aeration basin DO concentrations reduced the filterability of sludges; and caused the formation of low compressible sludges, and poor effluent qualities. At higher DO concentrations higher filterabilities, better effluent qualities and more compressible sludges are resulted