A Triple-A supply chain measurement model: validation and analysis

"This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPDLM-06-2018-0233. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited"[EN] Purpose The purpose of this paper is to establish definitions and dimensions of Triple-A supply chain (SC) variables based on a literature review and to validate a Triple-A SC measurement model using a worldwide multiple informant sample. Design/methodology/approach Following a literature review, Triple-A SC variables (agility, alignment and adaptability) are conceptualized and a list of possible items is created for their measurement. An international 309 plant sample is used to validate the convergent and criterion validities of the composites proposed to measure Triple-A SC. Findings Contributions to the literature: clarification of Triple-A SC variable concepts; identification of key dimensions of Triple-A SC variables; development of a validated Triple-A SC measurement scale for future empirical research and industrial applications. Research limitations/implications A rigorously validated instrument is needed to measure Triple-A SC variables and enable researchers to credibly test theories regarding causal links between capabilities, practices and performance. Practical implications Proposal of a scale for use by managers of different functions to analyze Triple-A SC deployment in the company. Originality/value The only Triple-A SC scale used in the previous literature has serious limitations: scales were not taken from an extended literature review; data were collected from single respondents in a single country. This is the first validated Triple-A SC measurement model to overcome these limitations.This study has been conducted within the frameworks of the following projects: 'Accion especial SGUIT-2015 (SBAPA2015-06) HPM-(Project 2015/148 U.S.)-Junta de Andalucia (Spain); PAIDI Excellence Project P08-SEJ-0384-Junta de Andalucia (Spain); and DPI2009-11148-Spanish National Program of Industrial Design and Production.Marin-Garcia, JA.; Alfalla-Luque, R.; Machuca, JA. (2018). A Triple-A supply chain measurement model: validation and analysis. International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management. 48(10):976-994. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPDLM-06-2018-0233S9769944810Agarwal, A., Shankar, R., & Tiwari, M. K. (2007). Modeling agility of supply chain. Industrial Marketing Management, 36(4), 443-457. doi:10.1016/j.indmarman.2005.12.004Alfalla-Luque, R., & Medina-López, C. (2009). Supply Chain Management: Unheard of in the 1970s, core to today’s company. 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Twisted equivariant K-theory, groupoids and proper actions

In this paper we define twisted equivariant K-theory for actions of Lie groupoids. For a Bredon-compatible Lie groupoid, this defines a periodic cohomology theory on the category of finite CW-complexes with equivariant stable projective bundles. A classification of these bundles is shown. We also obtain a completion theorem and apply these results to proper actions of groups.Comment: 26 page

A Systematic Literature Review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide groundwork for an emerging theory of supply chain robustness – which has been conceptualized as a dimension of supply chain resilience – through reviewing and synthesizing related yet disconnected studies. The paper develops a formal definition of supply chain robustness to build a framework that captures the dimensions, antecedents and moderators of the construct as discussed in the literature. Design/methodology/approach – The authors apply a systematic literature review approach. In order to reduce researcher bias, they involve a team of academics, librarians and managers. Findings – The paper (1) provides a formal definition of supply chain robustness, (2) builds a theoretical framework of supply chain robustness that augments both causal and descriptive knowledge, (3) shows how findings in this review support practice and (4) reveals methodological insights on the use of journal rankings in reviews. Research limitations/implications – At this stage, managers may benefit from seeing these relationships as clues derived from the literature. The paper is fundamentally a call for researchers to conduct quantitative testing of such relationships to derive more reliable understanding and practical applications. Practical implications – Rather than presenting empirical findings, this paper reveals to managers that visibility, risk management orientation and reduced network complexity have been the main predictive antecedents of supply chain robustness (as discussed in the academic literature). This provides a potentially important signal as to where to invest resources. Originality/value – The study is the first to develop a formal definition of supply chain robustness and to establish a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the construct

Bubbles from Nothing

Within the framework of flux compactifications, we construct an instanton describing the quantum creation of an open universe from nothing. The solution has many features in common with the smooth 6d bubble of nothing solutions discussed recently, where the spacetime is described by a 4d compactification of a 6d Einstein-Maxwell theory on S^2 stabilized by flux. The four-dimensional description of this instanton reduces to that of Hawking and Turok. The choice of parameters uniquely determines all future evolution, which we additionally find to be stable against bubble of nothing instabilities.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figure

Trade openness, income levels, and economic growth: the case of developing countries, 1970–2009.

This paper attempts to investigate the extent to which trade openness has had an impact on the levels of income and rates of growth in a sample of 115 developing countries for the period 1970–2009. Additionally, to assess whether there is an income level threshold for a country to benefit from international trade, the sample is broken down into three mutually exclusive groups of countries: low-income, lower middle-income, and upper middleincome countries. The main novelty of the paper lies on the use, on the one hand, of a new and better trade openness measure and, on the other hand, of non-stationary heterogeneous panel cointegration techniques to cope with the problem of cross-sectional dependence. The results show a positive bidirectional relationship between trade openness and income level in the long run, thus suggesting that trade openness is both a cause and a consequence of the level of income. The results for the short run, that is, the link between openness growth and economic growth, go in the same direction

Dynamics of Higher Spin Fields and Tensorial Space

The structure and the dynamics of massless higher spin fields in various dimensions are reviewed with an emphasis on conformally invariant higher spin fields. We show that in D=3,4,6 and 10 dimensional space-time the conformal higher spin fields constitute the quantum spectrum of a twistor-like particle propagating in tensorial spaces of corresponding dimensions. We give a detailed analysis of the field equations of the model and establish their relation with known formulations of free higher spin field theory.Comment: JHEP3 style, 40 pages; v2 typos corrected, comments and references added; v3 published versio

Accidental Inflation in the Landscape

We study some aspects of fine tuning in inflationary scenarios within string theory flux compactifications and, in particular, in models of accidental inflation. We investigate the possibility that the apparent fine-tuning of the low energy parameters of the theory needed to have inflation can be generically obtained by scanning the values of the fluxes over the landscape. Furthermore, we find that the existence of a landscape of eternal inflation in this model provides us with a natural theory of initial conditions for the inflationary period in our vacuum. We demonstrate how these two effects work in a small corner of the landscape associated with the complex structure of the Calabi-Yau manifold P^4_[1,1,1,6,9] by numerically investigating the flux vacua of a reduced moduli space. This allows us to obtain the distribution of observable parameters for inflation in this mini-landscape directly from the fluxes.Comment: 40 pages, 11 figure

A review of consumer preferences of and interactions with electric vehicle charging infrastructure

This paper presents a literature review of studies that investigate infrastructure needs to support the market introduction of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). It focuses on literature relating to consumer preferences for charging infrastructure, and how consumers interact with and use this infrastructure. This includes studies that use questionnaire surveys, interviews, modelling, GPS data from vehicles, and data from electric vehicle charging equipment. These studies indicate that the most important location for PEV charging is at home, followed by work, and then public locations. Studies have found that more effort is needed to ensure consumers have easy access to PEV charging and that charging at home, work, or public locations should not be free of cost. Research indicates that PEV charging will not impact electricity grids on the short term, however charging may need to be managed when the vehicles are deployed in greater numbers. In some areas of study the literature is not sufficiently mature to draw any conclusions from. More research is especially needed to determine how much infrastructure is needed to support the roll out of PEVs. This paper ends with policy implications and suggests avenues of future research

From Cow Manure to Bioactive Carbon Dots: A Light-up Probe for Bioimaging Investigations, Glucose Detection and Potential Immunotherapy Agent for Melanoma Skin Cancer

Bioactive carbon dots (C-dots) with ca. 4 nm were successfully produced with singular photophysical properties, low-toxicity and interesting immunological response. The optical properties of the C-dots were investigated and the “light-up” behaviour enabled them to be explored in glucose detection and bioimaging experiments (mitochondrial selective probe). C-dots were not selective to the tumour region and several fluorescent spots were visualized spread on animal bodies. The histology investigations showed that cancer-bearing mice treated with C-dots presented a large number of regions with necrosis and inflammatory infiltrates, which were not identified for cancer-bearing mice without the treatment. These results suggested that C-dots have the potential to be explored as an immune therapy agent for melanoma skin cancer

Regulatory sites for splicing in human basal ganglia are enriched for disease-relevant information

Genome-wide association studies have generated an increasing number of common genetic variants associated with neurological and psychiatric disease risk. An improved understanding of the genetic control of gene expression in human brain is vital considering this is the likely modus operandum for many causal variants. However, human brain sampling complexities limit the explanatory power of brain-related expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) and allele-specific expression (ASE) signals. We address this, using paired genomic and transcriptomic data from putamen and substantia nigra from 117 human brains, interrogating regulation at different RNA processing stages and uncovering novel transcripts. We identify disease-relevant regulatory loci, find that splicing eQTLs are enriched for regulatory information of neuron-specific genes, that ASEs provide cell-specific regulatory information with evidence for cellular specificity, and that incomplete annotation of the brain transcriptome limits interpretation of risk loci for neuropsychiatric disease. This resource of regulatory data is accessible through our web server, http://braineacv2.inf.um.es/