Returns Management Practices in Swiss Online Apparel Retailing: A Multiple Case Study Approach

Product returns are a critical, costly task for online retailers; yet the process of managing and avoiding returns is neither actively coordinated nor investigated. Based on a multiple case study approach, six in-depth interviews with top- and middle-level apparel industry managers were conducted to explore and describe practices of managing product returns in online apparel retailing. Our findings revealed returns management practices implemented in online apparel retailing and identified several applications to reduce the environmental footprint of product returns and improving the company’s performance, based on five facets of returns management: (1) the interplay of return policy, product category, and preventive actions; (2) the application of avoidance practices; (3) the management of returns in omnichannel retail; (4) the potential of artificial intelligence to reduce return rates; and (5) the role of sustainability in consumer behaviour. To reduce product returns and enhance a company’s performance, we propose to map the practices against different phases of the return journey

A large genome-wide association study of age-related macular degeneration highlights contributions of rare and common variants.

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng.3448Advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly, with limited therapeutic options. Here we report on a study of >12 million variants, including 163,714 directly genotyped, mostly rare, protein-altering variants. Analyzing 16,144 patients and 17,832 controls, we identify 52 independently associated common and rare variants (P < 5 × 10(-8)) distributed across 34 loci. Although wet and dry AMD subtypes exhibit predominantly shared genetics, we identify the first genetic association signal specific to wet AMD, near MMP9 (difference P value = 4.1 × 10(-10)). Very rare coding variants (frequency <0.1%) in CFH, CFI and TIMP3 suggest causal roles for these genes, as does a splice variant in SLC16A8. Our results support the hypothesis that rare coding variants can pinpoint causal genes within known genetic loci and illustrate that applying the approach systematically to detect new loci requires extremely large sample sizes.We thank all participants of all the studies included for enabling this research by their participation in these studies. Computer resources for this project have been provided by the high-performance computing centers of the University of Michigan and the University of Regensburg. Group-specific acknowledgments can be found in the Supplementary Note. The Center for Inherited Diseases Research (CIDR) Program contract number is HHSN268201200008I. This and the main consortium work were predominantly funded by 1X01HG006934-01 to G.R.A. and R01 EY022310 to J.L.H

error estimates for reduced order models in finance

Mathematical models for option pricing often result in partial differential equations. Recent enhancements are models driven by Lévy processes, which lead to a partial differential equation with an additional integral term. In the context of model calibration, these partial integro differential equations need to be solved quite frequently. To reduce the computational cost the implementation of a reduced order model has shown to be very successful numerically. In this paper we give a priori error estimates for the use of the proper orthogonal decomposition technique in the context of option pricing models

Reduced order models in PIDE constrained optimization

Mathematical models for option pricing often result in partial differential equations originally starting with the Black-Scholes model. In this context, recent enhancements are models driven by Levy processes, which lead to a partial differential equation with an additional integral term. If one solves the problems mentioned last numerically, this yields large linear systems of equations with dense matrices. However, by using the special structure and an iterative solver the problem can be handled efficiently. To further reduce the computational cost in the calibration phase we implement a reduced order model, like proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), which proves to be very efficient. In this paper we use a special multi-level trust region POD algorithm to calibrate the option pricing model and give numerical results supporting the gain in efficiency

Plasma-Derived Hemopexin as a Candidate Therapeutic Agent for Acute Vaso-Occlusion in Sickle Cell Disease: Preclinical Evidence

People living with sickle cell disease (SCD) face intermittent acute pain episodes due to vaso-occlusion primarily treated palliatively with opioids. Hemolysis of sickle erythrocytes promotes release of heme, which activates inflammatory cell adhesion proteins on endothelial cells and circulating cells, promoting vaso-occlusion. In this study, plasma-derived hemopexin inhibited heme-mediated cellular externalization of P-selectin and von Willebrand factor, and expression of IL-8, VCAM-1, and heme oxygenase-1 in cultured endothelial cells in a dose-responsive manner. In the Townes SCD mouse model, intravenous injection of free hemoglobin induced vascular stasis (vaso-occlusion) in nearly 40% of subcutaneous blood vessels visualized in a dorsal skin-fold chamber. Hemopexin administered intravenously prevented or relieved stasis in a dose-dependent manner. Hemopexin showed parallel activity in relieving vascular stasis induced by hypoxia-reoxygenation. Repeated IV administration of hemopexin was well tolerated in rats and non-human primates with no adverse findings that could be attributed to human hemopexin. Hemopexin had a half-life in wild-type mice, rats, and non-human primates of 80&ndash;102 h, whereas a reduced half-life of hemopexin in Townes SCD mice was observed due to ongoing hemolysis. These data have led to a Phase 1 clinical trial of hemopexin in adults with SCD, which is currently ongoing