Drivers and barriers to implement sustainable manufacturing concepts in Sri Lankan manufacturing sector

Part of: Seliger, Günther (Ed.): Innovative solutions : proceedings / 11th Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing, Berlin, Germany, 23rd - 25th September, 2013. - Berlin: Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin, 2013. - ISBN 978-3-7983-2609-5 (online). - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-40276. - pp. 171–176.Sri Lanka promotes manufacturing sector without much concern on environmental and social problems as one of the driving forces for the economic prosperity. This has aggravated number of issues and this has lead to adapting of some sustainability related initiatives in local manufacturing sector. However, majority of them function independently with fix boundaries. Conversely, there are some hindrances to implement the sustainable manufacturing concepts as a one comprehensive solution. This research intends to investigate the motivators and barriers to adapt sustainable manufacturing concept to overcome current issues faced by the manufacturing industry. An evaluation criterion was developed based on some of the popularly used guidelines and sustainability options available in number of sub domains. Results highlights the main motivators plus common and cluster specific barriers to implement sustainable manufacturing in local industry. These outcomes can be easily considered for the policy development purposes in developing countries in future

Organizational response to disaster -the case of tsunami, December 2004

The Tsunami struck Sri Lanka on 26th December 2004, causing an enormous devastation of humanlives and property. State and non-state sectors being unprepared and poor coordination of internationaland local assistance left people internally displaced even after one year of the disaster. Using primaryand secondary data, the study assessed the responsiveness of the organizations to the Tsunami disasterin the Galle district and developed a model of action for effective disaster management.The study identified the response levels of the organizations at relief, recovery, reconstruction,rehabilitation and development stages. There was no pre-preparation for a major disaster in Galledistrict. The disaster reliefwas provided by unplanned emergent structures. The prevailing administrativestructures, political institutions, Center for National Operations, Non-governmental organizations,volunteers and community-based groups provided relief for two months. The government establishedthe emergency operation structures for national level coordinationAt the recovery stage community and the private sector organizations have been marginalized in theresponse system. Governmental and NGOs have focused on providing transitional shelters and dryrations. The reconstruction and rehabilitation stages have focused on housing, livelihoods, socialrehabilitation and infrastructure, which were in progress through September 2006. The Galle districtemergency operation center completed the Disaster management plan for the district in July 2005.The parliament of Sri Lanka approved the Sri Lanka Disaster Management Act, No 13 of2005, underwhich the National Disaster Management center has been established.The model identifies organizational structure to coordinate donor assistance and link to communityneeds, through national and local level coordinating institutions with the contribution of different sectorsand with proper monitoring. Getting the vulnerable community to actively participate in disastermanagement activities leading towards development will minimize the damage. Suggestions are madefor specific capacity building measures for the different levels of the institutional model

Data production models for the CDF experiment

The data production for the CDF experiment is conducted on a large Linux PC farm designed to meet the needs of data collection at a maximum rate of 40 MByte/sec. We present two data production models that exploits advances in computing and communication technology. The first production farm is a centralized system that has achieved a stable data processing rate of approximately 2 TByte per day. The recently upgraded farm is migrated to the SAM (Sequential Access to data via Metadata) data handling system. The software and hardware of the CDF production farms has been successful in providing large computing and data throughput capacity to the experiment.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures; presented at HPC Asia2005, Beijing, China, Nov 30 - Dec 3, 200

Data processing model for the CDF experiment

The data processing model for the CDF experiment is described. Data processing reconstructs events from parallel data streams taken with different combinations of physics event triggers and further splits the events into datasets of specialized physics datasets. The design of the processing control system faces strict requirements on bookkeeping records, which trace the status of data files and event contents during processing and storage. The computing architecture was updated to meet the mass data flow of the Run II data collection, recently upgraded to a maximum rate of 40 MByte/sec. The data processing facility consists of a large cluster of Linux computers with data movement managed by the CDF data handling system to a multi-petaByte Enstore tape library. The latest processing cycle has achieved a stable speed of 35 MByte/sec (3 TByte/day). It can be readily scaled by increasing CPU and data-handling capacity as required.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, submitted to IEEE-TN

Mainstreaming Grassroots Adaptation and Building Climate Resilient Agriculture in Sri Lanka

Climate change in recent decades has become a major concern of the global community. The Inter- Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established in 1988 by the United Nations has highlighted alarming trends in changes in global temperatures, shifts in rainfall patterns, rising sea levels and the impact of these changes on the livelihoods of people, especially the poor. The changes will affect sub-Saharan Africa the greatest and also Asia with its very large population, most of whom are dependent on agriculture

Helping Communities Adapt: Climate Change Perceptions and Policy in Asia

Recent studies on climate change and the 4th assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)1 provide the latest understanding on the status, impacts, and measures required to address the effects of climate change. The global climate change outlook highlighted serious concerns about the future at a macro perspective, ie, continental, national, and regional levels. Further, the state of knowledge available at the regional and sub-regional levels is still inadequate (INCAA 2010)

Evidence for t\bar{t}\gamma Production and Measurement of \sigma_t\bar{t}\gamma / \sigma_t\bar{t}

Using data corresponding to 6.0/fb of ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV collected by the CDF II detector, we present a cross section measurement of top-quark pair production with an additional radiated photon. The events are selected by looking for a lepton, a photon, significant transverse momentum imbalance, large total transverse energy, and three or more jets, with at least one identified as containing a b quark. The ttbar+photon sample requires the photon to have 10 GeV or more of transverse energy, and to be in the central region. Using an event selection optimized for the ttbar+photon candidate sample we measure the production cross section of, and the ratio of cross sections of the two samples. Control samples in the dilepton+photon and lepton+photon+\met, channels are constructed to aid in decay product identification and background measurements. We observe 30 ttbar+photon candidate events compared to the standard model expectation of 26.9 +/- 3.4 events. We measure the ttbar+photon cross section to be 0.18+0.08 pb, and the ratio of the cross section of ttbar+photon to ttbar to be 0.024 +/- 0.009. Assuming no ttbar+photon production, we observe a probability of 0.0015 of the background events alone producing 30 events or more, corresponding to 3.0 standard deviations.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Search for the Higgs boson in events with missing transverse energy and b quark jets produced in proton-antiproton collisions at s**(1/2)=1.96 TeV

We search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with an electroweak vector boson in events with no identified charged leptons, large imbalance in transverse momentum, and two jets where at least one contains a secondary vertex consistent with the decay of b hadrons. We use ~1 fb-1 integrated luminosity of proton-antiproton collisions at s**(1/2)=1.96 TeV recorded by the CDF II experiment at the Tevatron. We find 268 (16) single (double) b-tagged candidate events, where 248 +/- 43 (14.4 +/- 2.7) are expected from standard model background processes. We place 95% confidence level upper limits on the Higgs boson production cross section for several Higgs boson masses ranging from 110 GeV/c2 to 140 GeV/c2. For a mass of 115 GeV/c2 the observed (expected) limit is 20.4 (14.2) times the standard model prediction.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let