First‐arrival traveltime sound speed inversion with a priori information

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134972/1/mp5955.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134972/2/mp5955_am.pd

Managing out-of-stocks and over-stock occurrences in supermarket stores: a case study in Singapore

Despite over 40 years of research on out-of-stock (OOS) and over-stock (OS) occurrences, OOS rates remain at an average of 8%. Further, while the store has been found to be a major contributor to OOS situations, it continues to remain a ‘black-box’ in OOS research, especially at the operational level. This thesis examines how supermarket stores execute in-store processes to manage OOS and OS events before, during and after their occurrences. It adopted the case study approach to investigate four specific in-store operations practices – planning and ordering, receiving and checkout, storage, and shelf replenishment - of 19 stores of a major supermarket chain in Singapore. Using semi-structured interviews supplemented by unobtrusive on-site observations of live in-store processes, this study found that OOS and OS occurrences were generally attributable to mismanagement of logistical processes, especially failure to deal with trivial operational issues and minor human errors on-time. Store managers’ attitudes toward enforcement of standard operations procedures (SOPs) also played a significant role in minimizing OOS and OS occurrences in-store. Contrasting the manner in which low-OOS and high-OOS stores handled OOS and OS events, this study unearthed five specific approaches the case supermarket stores used, depending on the in-store retailing dynamics at the time and store management’s knowledge of the causes of their occurrence. From a theoretical perspective, findings from this study have provided a theoretical thread, linking the relationships between store management commitment toward OOS and OS events and OOS and OS performance. They also bring many of the well-documented OOS and OS measures from a broad strategic dimension to the detailed operational level. From a practical standpoint, these findings offer four major Despite over 40 years of research on out-of-stock (OOS) and over-stock (OS) occurrences, OOS rates remain at an average of 8%. Further, while the store has been found to be a major contributor to OOS situations, it continues to remain a ‘black-box’ in OOS research, especially at the operational level. This thesis examines how supermarket stores execute in-store processes to manage OOS and OS events before, during and after their occurrences. It adopted the case study approach to investigate four specific in-store operations practices – planning and ordering, receiving and checkout, storage, and shelf replenishment - of 19 stores of a major supermarket chain in Singapore. Using semi-structured interviews supplemented by unobtrusive on-site observations of live in-store processes, this study found that OOS and OS occurrences were generally attributable to mismanagement of logistical processes, especially failure to deal with trivial operational issues and minor human errors on-time. Store managers’ attitudes toward enforcement of standard operations procedures (SOPs) also played a significant role in minimizing OOS and OS occurrences in-store. Contrasting the manner in which low-OOS and high-OOS stores handled OOS and OS events, this study unearthed five specific approaches the case supermarket stores used, depending on the in-store retailing dynamics at the time and store management’s knowledge of the causes of their occurrence. From a theoretical perspective, findings from this study have provided a theoretical thread, linking the relationships between store management commitment toward OOS and OS events and OOS and OS performance. They also bring many of the well-documented OOS and OS measures from a broad strategic dimension to the detailed operational level. From a practical standpoint, these findings offer four major sets of best-practice guidelines on OOS and OS management that relates to the role of store managers, adherence to SOPs, supplier relationship management and effects of contextual factors

Non-linear unit root properties of stock prices : evidence from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

This study applies a threshold autoregressive (TAR) model to monthly stock prices for three South Asian countries over the period from 1991:01 to 2009:09. Two main conclusions are drawn. Firstly, the results indicate that all the stock prices in this study exhibit non-linear behavior. Secondly, a partial unit root was found to be present in one of the regimes indicating that the stock prices are weak form efficiency, but not all the time

Unsupervised user behavior representation for fraud review detection with cold-start problem

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. Detecting fraud review is becoming extremely important in order to provide reliable information in cyberspace, in which, however, handling cold-start problem is a critical and urgent challenge since the case of cold-start fraud review rarely provides sufficient information for further assessing its authenticity. Existing work on detecting cold-start cases relies on the limited contents of the review posted by the user and a traditional classifier to make the decision. However, simply modeling review is not reliable since reviews can be easily manipulated. Also, it is hard to obtain high-quality labeled data for training the classifier. In this paper, we tackle cold-start problems by (1) using a user’s behavior representation rather than review contents to measure authenticity, which further (2) consider user social relations with other existing users when posting reviews. The method is completely (3) unsupervised. Comprehensive experiments on Yelp data sets demonstrate our method significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods

Effect of fermented fruits on the growth performance, shedding of Enterobacteriaceae and Lactobacilli in post-weaning pigs

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of fermented fruits (FF) on the growth performance, Enterobacteriaceae and Lactobacillus counts in faeces of the post-weaning piglets. A total of twenty-four 4 weeks old LandracexLarge WhitexDuroc with initial body weight of 6 kg were used in this study. The piglets were housed individually in metabolic cage and randomly assigned to four groups with six piglets per group. The piglets were fed on basal diet without antibiotic (AF), basal diets with antibiotic (Ab), basal diet with 10% (w/w) fermented fruit (10% FF) and basal diet with 20% (w/w) fermented fruit (20% FF). Faecal samples were taken directly from the rectum of each piglet and cultured for Enterobacteriaceae and Lactobacillus counts. In the growth performance, the piglets of Ab and 10%FF had significantly higher (p0.05) were observed between AF, Ab and 10%FF. Studies showed that the use of fermented fruits (FF) could significantly (p<0.05) reduce Enterobacteriaceae population in piglets' faeces compared to the use of normal feed (AF) and antibiotic (Ab). However, the Lactobacillus population in the faeces was increased in those piglets fed with diets added with FF

Simulation of Internal Undular Bores Propagating over a Slowly Varying Region

Internal undular bores have been observed in many parts of the world. Studies have shown that many marine structures face danger and risk of destruction caused by internal undular bores due to the amount of energy it carries. This paper looks at the transformation of internal undular bore in two-layer fluid flow under the influence of variable topography. Thus, the surface of the bottom is considered to be slowly varying. The appropriate mathematical model is the variable-coefficient extended Korteweg-de Vries equation. We are particularly interested in looking at the transformation of KdV-type and table-top undular bore over the variable topography region. The governing equation is solved numerically using the method of lines, where the spatial derivatives are first discretised using finite difference approximation so that the partial differential equation becomes a system of ordinary differential equations which is then solved by 4th order Runge-Kutta method. Our numerical results show that the evolution of internal undular bore over different types of varying depths regions leads to a number of adiabatic and non-adiabatic effects. When the depth decreases slowly, a solitary wavetrain is observed at the front of the transformed internal undular bore. On the other hand, when the depth increases slowly, we observe the generation of step-like wave and weakly nonlinear trailing wavetrain, the occurrence of multi-phase behaviour, the generation of transformed undular bore of negative polarity and diminishing transformed undular bore depending on the nature of the topography after the variable topography

Utilisation of earthworm meal in partial replacement of soybean and fish meals in diets of broilers

To study the effect of worm meal (WM) as partial replacement of soybean and fish meals in the diets, a total of 245 day-old broiler chicks were randomly assigned to five different treatment groups (0%, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% WM) in partial replacement of soybean and fish meals for a period of 6 weeks. The final body weight, growth rate and feed efficiency of the 10% and 15% WM groups broiler were better (P0.05) in Enterobacteriaceae count or fecal pH. These results suggest that WM could be used to replace soybean and fish meals between 10 to 15% in broiler diets

Plastron osteotomy in the management of fishing hook ingestion in a Malayan box turtle (Cuora amboinensis)

An adult male Malayan box turtle was diagnosed with foreign body obstruction of fishing hook. Upon presentation, the animal had pale mucous membrane and fishing line protruding out from the oral cavity. Diagnosis of foreign body ingestion was based on plain radiograph where the fishing hook was evidenced on the lateral and ventrodorsal radiographic view. Plastron osteotomy surgical removal was performed after endoscopy guided forcep removal failed. Procedures were carried out under the injectable anesthesia using a combination of ketamine and xylazine hydrochloride. Antibiotic, anti-inflammatory and parenteral fluid therapy was given pre and post-surgically as medical treatment and stabilisation

Effect of a Gel Retainment Dam on Automated Ultrasound Coverage in a Dual‐Modality Breast Imaging System

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135299/1/jum20102971075.pd