Collaborative mechanism on profit allotment and public health for a sustainable supply chain

This paper explores the collaborative mechanism that motivates supply chain firms to collectively invest in environmental technology and produce environmental friendly products (EFPs) to reduce pollutant emissions and negative impacts on environment and public health. Our paper investigates how such firms can achieve the balance between economic feasibility and environmental and social sustainability under multiple sustainable constraints in terms of the triple bottom line dimensions. The work also describes the impacts of interrelated multiple sustainable constraints on optimal policy for the supply chain transfer price and profit allotment decisions. Our findings suggest that government intervention plays a dominant role in governing the supply chain firms’ behaviors in the context of environmental and public health sustainability. The profit allotment is determined through the process of negotiation of the transfer price interrelated with the government subsidy sharing between the supply chain firms

Determinants of the competitive advantage of dairy supply chains: Evidence from the Chinese dairy industry

In this study, we use an evidence-based approach to examine the factors that determine the competitive advantage of dairy supply chains using evidence from the Chinese dairy industry. We focus on the quality assurance of dairy products, which is considered one of the fundamental influential factors. We investigate interrelationships among the identified determinants, which include dairy production behavior, dairy cow culture model, government regulations, corporate social responsibility, and quality assurance, and examine how these determinants influence the competitive advantage of dairy supply chains. We employ the structural equation modeling approach in which grouped observable variables that represent the identified determinants are extrapolated from primary data collected through a questionnaire survey. Our key findings show that by mediating the effects of dairy production behavior and the dairy cow culture model, government regulation and corporate social responsibility significantly affect the quality assurance of dairy products. In turn, dairy production behavior and the dairy cow culture model significantly affect the competitive advantage of the dairy supply chain via the fully mediated effects of the quality assurance of dairy products. Specifically, the dairy cow culture model helps ensure the safety and quality of milk supply, allowing core dairy firms to control product quality throughout the dairy supply chain. Our empirical study shows that the identified determinants interact to assure the quality of dairy products and enhance the competitive advantage of the dairy supply chain in China

Examining Foods and Beverages Served and Child Food Insecurity across Early Care and Education (ECE) Programs in Communities with High Rates of Obesity and Food Insecurity

The purpose of this study was to examine implementation of serving food and beverage evidence-based practices (nutrition EBPs) across CACFP participating licensed childcare centers (CCCs, n = 51) and family childcare homes (FCCHs, n = 49) in central California. Results indicated that FCCHs reported significantly higher (p \u3c .05) implementation of nutrition EBPs and barriers than CCCs. Both CCCs and FCCHs refer families to WIC/SNAP when they observe child food insecurity and control how much food is served to children. It is important to consider organizational structure (CCCs, FCCHs) and child food insecurity when developing policies/interventions for improving implementation of nutrition EBPs in ECEs

Targeting TFH cells in human diseases and vaccination: rationale and practice

The identification of CD4+ T cells localizing to B cell follicles has revolutionized the knowledge of how humoral immunity is generated. Follicular helper T (TFH) cells support germinal center (GC) formation and regulate clonal selection and differentiation of memory and antibody-secreting B cells, thus controlling antibody affinity maturation and memory. TFH cells are essential in sustaining protective antibody responses necessary for pathogen clearance in infection and vaccine-mediated protection. Conversely, aberrant and excessive TFH cell responses mediate and sustain pathogenic antibodies to autoantigens, alloantigens, and allergens, facilitate lymphomagenesis, and even harbor viral reservoirs. TFH cell generation and function are determined by T cell antigen receptor (TCR), costimulation, and cytokine signals, together with specific metabolic and survival mechanisms. Such regulation is crucial to understanding disease pathogenesis and informing the development of emerging therapies for disease or novel approaches to boost vaccine efficacy

The scattering of LyA radiation in the intergalactic medium: numerical methods and solutions

Two methods are developed for solving the steady-state spherically symmetric radiative transfer equation for resonance line radiation emitted by a point source in the Intergalactic Medium. One method is based on solving the ray and moment equations using finite differences. The second uses a Monte Carlo approach incorporating methods that greatly improve the accuracy compared with previous approaches in this context. Several applications are presented serving as test problems for both a static medium and an expanding medium, including inhomogeneities in the density and velocity fields. Solutions are obtained in the coherent scattering limit and for Doppler RII redistribution with and without recoils. We find generally that the radiation intensity is linear in the cosine of the azimuthal angle with respect to radius to high accuracy over a broad frequency region across the line centre for both linear and perturbed velocity fields, yielding the Eddington factors f(nu) = 1/3 and g(nu) = 3/5. We show the radiation field produced by a point source divides into three spatial regimes for a uniformly expanding homogeneous medium: at radii r small compared with a characteristic radius r*, the mean intensity near line centre varies as 1/ r^(7/3), while at r > r* it approaches 1/ r^2; for r << r* it is modified by frequency redistribution. Before the reionization epoch, r* takes on the universal value 1.1 Mpc, independent of redshift. The mean intensity and scattering rate are found to be very sensitive to the gradient of the velocity field, growing exponentially with the amplitude of the perturbation as the limit of a vanishing velocity gradient is approached near the source. We expect the 21cm signal from the Epoch of Reionization to thus be a sensitive probe of both the density and the peculiar velocity fields.Comment: 27 pages, 26 figures, 10 supplementary tables; submitted to MNRA

Transfer Learning Using Infrared and Optical Full Motion Video Data for Gender Classification

This work is a review and extension of our ongoing research in human recognition analysis using multimodality motion sensor data. We review our work on hand crafted feature engineering for motion capture skeleton (MoCap) data, from the Air Force Research Lab for human gender followed by depth scan based skeleton extraction using LIDAR data from the Army Night Vision Lab for person identification. We then build on these works to demonstrate a transfer learning sensor fusion approach for using the larger MoCap and smaller LIDAR data for gender classification

A Qualitative Study on the User Acceptance of a Home-Based Stroke Telerehabilitation System

Objective: This paper reports a qualitative study of a home-based stroke telerehabilitation system. The telerehabilitation system delivers treatment sessions in the form of daily guided rehabilitation games, exercises, and stroke education in the patient’s home. The aims of the current report are to investigate patient perceived benefits of and barriers to using the telerehabilitation system at home. Methods: We used a qualitative study design that involved in-depth semi-structured interviews with 13 participants who were patients in the subacute phase after stroke and had completed a six-week intervention using the home-based telerehabilitation system. Thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the data. Results: Participants mostly reported positive experiences with the telerehabilitation system. Benefits included observed improvements in limb functions, cognitive abilities, and emotional well-being. They also perceived the system easy to use due to the engaging experience and the convenience of conducting sessions at home. Meanwhile, participants pointed out the importance of considering technical support and physical environment at home. Further, family members’ support helped them sustain in their rehabilitation. Finally, adjusting difficulty levels and visualizing patients’ rehabilitation progress might help them in continued use of the telerehabilitation system. Conclusion: Telerehabilitation systems can be used as an efficient and user-friendly tool to deliver home-based stroke rehabilitation that enhance patients’ physical recovery and mental and social-emotional wellbeing. Such systems need to be designed to offer engaging experience, display of recovery progress, and flexibility of schedule and location, with consideration of facilitating and social factors

Incompressible SPH method based on Rankine source solution for violent water wave simulation

With wide applications, the smoothed particle hydrodynamics method (abbreviated as SPH) has become an important numerical tool for solving complex flows, in particular those with a rapidly moving free surface. For such problems, the incompressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (ISPH) has been shown to yield better and more stable pressure time histories than the traditional SPH by many papers in literature. However, the existing ISPH method directly approximates the second order derivatives of the functions to be solved by using the Poisson equation. The order of accuracy of the method becomes low, especially when particles are distributed in a disorderly manner, which generally happens for modelling violent water waves. This paper introduces a new formulation using the Rankine source solution. In the new approach to the ISPH, the Poisson equation is first transformed into another form that does not include any derivative of the functions to be solved, and as a result, does not need to numerically approximate derivatives. The advantage of the new approach without need of numerical approximation of derivatives is obvious, potentially leading to a more robust numerical method. The newly formulated method is tested by simulating various water waves, and its convergent behaviours are numerically studied in this paper. Its results are compared with experimental data in some cases and reasonably good agreement is achieved. More importantly, numerical results clearly show that the newly developed method does need less number of particles and so less computational costs to achieve the similar level of accuracy, or to produce more accurate results with the same number of particles compared with the traditional SPH and existing ISPH when it is applied to modelling water waves

Selective Impact of HIV Disease Progression on the Innate Immune System in the Human Female Reproductive Tract

We have previously demonstrated intrinsic anti-HIV activity in cervicovaginal lavage (CVL) from HIV-infected women with high CD4 counts and not on antiretroviral therapy. However, the impact of HIV disease progression on CVL innate immune responses has not been delineated.CVL from 57 HIV-infected women not on antiretroviral therapy were collected by washing the cervicovaginal area with 10 ml of sterile normal saline. We characterized subject HIV disease progression by CD4 count strata: >500 cells/µl, 200–500 cells/µl, or <200 cells/µl of blood. To assess CVL anti-HIV activity, we incubated TZM-bl cells with HIV plus or minus CVL. Antimicrobials, cytokines, chemokines and anti-gp160 HIV IgG antibodies were measured by ELISA and Luminex.CVL exhibited broad anti-HIV activity against multiple laboratory-adapted and transmitted/founder (T/F) viruses, with anti-HIV activity ranging from 0 to 100% showing wide variation between viral strains. Although there was broad CVL inhibition of most both laboratory-adapted and T/F virus strains, there was practically no inhibition of T/F strain RHPA.c, which was isolated from a woman newly infected via heterosexual intercourse. HIV disease progression, measured by declining CD4 T cell counts, resulted in a selective reduction in intrinsic anti-HIV activity in CVL that paralleled CVL decreases in human beta-defensin 2 and increases in Elafin and secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor. HIV disease progress predicted decreased CVL anti-HIV activity against both laboratory-adapted and T/F strains of HIV. Anti-HIV activity exhibited close associations with CVL levels of fourteen cytokines and chemokines.Amid a multifaceted immune defense against HIV-1 and other sexually transmitted pathogens, HIV disease progression is associated with selective disturbances in both CVL anti-HIV activity and specific innate immune defenses in the human female reproductive tract (FRT). Overall, these studies indicate that innate immune protection in the FRT is compromised as women progress to AIDS

From fat droplets to floating forests: cross-domain transfer learning using a PatchGAN-based segmentation model

Many scientific domains gather sufficient labels to train machine algorithms through human-in-the-loop techniques provided by the Zooniverse.org citizen science platform. As the range of projects, task types and data rates increase, acceleration of model training is of paramount concern to focus volunteer effort where most needed. The application of Transfer Learning (TL) between Zooniverse projects holds promise as a solution. However, understanding the effectiveness of TL approaches that pretrain on large-scale generic image sets vs. images with similar characteristics possibly from similar tasks is an open challenge. We apply a generative segmentation model on two Zooniverse project-based data sets: (1) to identify fat droplets in liver cells (FatChecker; FC) and (2) the identification of kelp beds in satellite images (Floating Forests; FF) through transfer learning from the first project. We compare and contrast its performance with a TL model based on the COCO image set, and subsequently with baseline counterparts. We find that both the FC and COCO TL models perform better than the baseline cases when using >75% of the original training sample size. The COCO-based TL model generally performs better than the FC-based one, likely due to its generalized features. Our investigations provide important insights into usage of TL approaches on multi-domain data hosted across different Zooniverse projects, enabling future projects to accelerate task completion.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication at the Proceedings of the ACM/CIKM 2022 (Human-in-the-loop Data Curation Workshop