The Future of Retail Operations

Retailing consists of all the activities associated with the selling of goods to the final consumer. In this article, we review the research on retail operations published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Research (M&SOM) since 1999. We then discuss the current retail landscape and the new research directions it offers, in which M&SOM can play a prominent role

A scalable parallel Monte Carlo algorithm for atomistic simulations of precipitation in alloys

We present an extension of the semi-grandcanonical (SGC) ensemble that we refer to as the variance-constrained semi-grandcanonical (VC-SGC) ensemble. It allows for transmutation Monte Carlo simulations of multicomponent systems in multiphase regions of the phase diagram and lends itself to scalable simulations on massively parallel platforms. By combining transmutation moves with molecular dynamics steps structural relaxations and thermal vibrations in realistic alloys can be taken into account. In this way, we construct a robust and efficient simulation technique that is ideally suited for large-scale simulations of precipitation in multicomponent systems in the presence of structural disorder. To illustrate the algorithm introduced in this work, we study the precipitation of Cu in nanocrystalline Fe.Comment: 12 pages; 10 figure

Instrumentalisation de la réforme agraire et enlisement de la démocratisation au Zimbabwe

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

Re-existencias cotidianas: ser grieta y maleza para habitar otros mundos posibles a través del arte

Maestría en Educación y Desarrollo Humano, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas.Este artículo de reflexión teórica a partir de las voces de diversos autores y de dos artistas se centra en cavilar sobre las formas de re – existencias cotidianas que se generan desde el arte como medio de transformación. Retomando la metáfora de la maleza se intenta construir una reflexión que interactúa con las voces de dos artistas del municipio de Medellín en aras de articular sus re-existencias políticas con la reflexión teórica, explicitando la importancia que tienen los agenciamientos políticos cotidianos en torno a la transformación de los contextos. Para esto se inicia con una introducción, posteriormente se desarrolla el texto desde los apartados que explicitan el arte y la metáfora de la maleza, para finalizar con algunas conclusiones

Loneliness, Violence and Rebirth in Xialou Guo's Village of Stone and Dacia Maraini's The Silent Duchess

The Village of Stone and The Silent Duchess are contemporary novels which depict clearly the oppression on women in the male-dominated society both in the 18th century and in our times. Both heroines have a similar experience in life and the endings of the novels are identical. The gloomy, depressive atmosphere of each novel turns into hope and optimisim in relation to the future. This paper analyses the hardships both protagonists go through and despite the difculties they face, it suggests that so long as women assert their own will, they are destined to reach victory

The current and future role of visual question answering in eXplainable artificial intelligence.

Over the last few years, we have seen how the interest of the computer science research community on eXplainable Artificial Intelligence has grown in leaps and bounds. The reason behind this rise is the use of Artificial Intelligence in many daily life tasks, and the consequent necessity of people to understand the intelligent systems' behaviour. Computer vision-related tasks are not an exception, for example, Visual Question Answering tasks. The Artificial Intelligence models that carry out this specific task make an effort to answer questions about what we can watch in a particular image. In this work, we review the existing work about eXplainable Artificial Intelligence on Visual Question Answering which is a problem on which there is still much work to be done. Moreover, we open the discussion about the challenges to overcome regarding this topic, like the future role of Visual Question Answering to address eXplainable Artificial Intelligence issues or difficulties

FORMULATION AND PHYSICOCHEMICAL EVALUATION OF VINEGARS PRODUCED FROM MURTA (Ugni molinae TURCZ.) AND MAQUI (Aristotelia chilensis (Molina) Stunz) WITH BEES’ HONEY (Apis mellifera L.) AT LABORATORY SCALE

In this study, vinegar was formulated from mixtures of murta (Ugnimolinae Turcz.) and maqui (Aristotelia chilensis (Molina) Stunz) withbees’ honey (Apis mellifera L.) and its physicochemical characteristicswere evaluated with the aim of adding value to these agriculturalproducts and diversifying the supply of gourmet vinegars. Alcoholicfermentation was performed by preparing a must by dissolvinghoney at 21 °Brix with murta pulp and maqui juice in distilled water,which was enriched with ammonium sulphate and ammoniumphosphate. The must was inoculated with Saccharomycescerevisiae and incubated at 26 °C to facilitate the action of theyeast. The alcoholic drink was incubated at ambient temperaturewith Acetobacter aceti bacteria to induce acetic fermentation.The vinegar was clarifi ed, fi ltered and then stabilised in orderto measure total, volatile and fi xed acidity, pH, ash and totalpolyphenols. The results indicated that the physicochemicaland functional properties were acceptable and that vinegarsmade from murta and maqui with honey have market potential.KEY