Identifying Critical Barriers And Drivers For Green Supply Chain Management Application In The Malaysian Construction Industry

The construction industry is a major contributor to both global pollutions and global warming. Booming construction activities consume large amount of natural resources and cause degradation of ecology, eventually result in an adverse impact to our earth, human beings, natural environment and other living creatures. Devastating floods, annual dry spells, irregular weather patterns as well as unpredictable storms have become major concerns in Malaysia. Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM), which is the integration of environmental thinking into the supply chain management has started to gain attention from many parties as they are increasingly aware of the global pollution issues

Significant Barriers Influencing Green Design Application among the Contractors in Construction Industry

This paper aims to find out the vital barriers that affecting the implementation of Green Design practice, which is part of the Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) application in construction industry. GSCM is an innovative strategy that integrates environmental and social considerations with involving all parties in product (building) design stage, procurement, materials sourcing and selection, completion and handover to the ultimate users without overlooking the end-of-life management of the product. By the same time, GSCM also can improve both short and long-term competitiveness and profitability of the organisation. Green design application can reduce the environmental effects throughout the product lifecycle by minimising the resources and energy consumption. The objectives of this study are to determine and analyse the critical barriers that preventing Green Design related activities among contractors in construction industry. Quantitative research method with survey questionnaire was employed in this study. Total 450 sets of questionnaire were distributed with 21.8% response rate. The independent variables in this study was the barriers of Green Design implementation while the dependent variable was the adoption level of Green Design practice in construction industry. In short, four (4) barriers are identified, which were Government Supports, Company Resources, Knowledge and Information, and Financial issue barriers. Results of the study shown that Government Supports and Company Resources barriers were significant for Green Design practice. Significance of this research is to provide a better understanding of green practices, such as GSCM, to deal with current environmental issues and to realise the recent problems and obstacles faced by all construction players, so that further actions are required for a successful GSCM implementation in order to move towards a sustainable environment in the future

Concurrence and a proper monogamy inequality for arbitrary quantum states

We obtain an analytical lower bound of entanglement quantified by concurrence for arbitrary bipartite quantum states. It is shown that our bound is tight for some mixed states and is complementary to the previous known lower bounds. On the other hand, it is known that the entanglement monogamy inequality proposed by Coffman, Kundu, and Wootters is in general not true for higher dimensional quantum states. Inducing from the new lower bound of concurrence, we find a proper form of entanglement monogamy inequality for arbitrary quantum states.Comment: 4 pages, Theorem 2 was rephrase

High visibility on-chip quantum interference of single surface plasmons

Quantum photonic integrated circuits (QPICs) based on dielectric waveguides have been widely used in linear optical quantum computation. Recently, surface plasmons have been introduced to this application because they can confine and manipulate light beyond the diffraction limit. In this study, the on-chip quantum interference of two single surface plasmons was achieved using dielectric-loaded surface-plasmon-polariton waveguides. The high visibility (greater than 90%) proves the bosonic nature of single plasmons and emphasizes the feasibility of achieving basic quantum logic gates for linear optical quantum computation. The effect of intrinsic losses in plasmonic waveguides with regard to quantum information processing is also discussed. Although the influence of this effect was negligible in the current experiment, our studies reveal that such losses can dramatically reduce quantum interference visibility in certain cases; thus, quantum coherence must be carefully considered when designing QPIC devices.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Caffeic Acid Phenethyl Ester (CAPE) mediated decrease in metastasis of colon cancer cells: an in vitro and in vivo study

Background: Caffeic acid phenethyl ester (CAPE) is a phytochemically active component obtained from honeybee hive propolis. CAPE has been reported to show antimitogenic, anticancer, and other beneficial medicinal properties. Many of its activities have been reported to be mediated by inhibiting levels of matrix metalloproteinase, that is, MMP-2 and MMP-9. We hypothesize the effect of CAPE on the metastasis of colon cancer cells in both in vitro and in vivo.Methods: Cell migration, motility, invasion were evaluated also expression of protein and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) such as MMP-2 and MMP-9 were measured in SW-480 cancer cells in vitro. The cells were exposed to Phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) and were treated with various concentration of CAPE.Results: The treatment of CAPE caused significant decrease (P<0.05) in both cell motility and invasion. The treatment of CAPE inhibited activity of MMP-2 and MMP-9 and their protein with increasing dose in SW-480 cancerous cells. Antimetastatic activity was evaluated in vivo in BALB/c mice by injecting them with CT-26 mouse colon cancer cells via tail vein and were treated with CAPE (20 mg/kg) orally for 21 days. The CAPE treatment significantly (P<0.05) reduced count of pulmonary nodules. The mice showed decreased plasma MMP-2 and MMP-9 activity after 21 days treatment with CAPE.Conclusion: The study suggested beneficial role of CAPE in preventing invasion of colon cancer and metastasis via MMP- 2 and MMP-9 mediated pathway.Keywords: CAPE, colon cancer, SW-480, CT-26, anti-metastati