Cold Chain Synergy of Chain Restaurant

With the economic development and social progress, the modern catering industry represented by chain operation is gradually moving towards industrialization, chain operation, and modernization. The chain restaurant industry relies more on professional and efficient cold chain supply chain design and services. The cold chain supply chain system includes a distribution center based on the central kitchen, specialized third-party logistics based on its own or outsourced cold chain logistics, and food taste quality research and development represented by new technologies

Parameter identification of JONSWAP spectrum acquired by airborne LIDAR

International audienceIn this study, we developed the first linear Joint North Sea Wave Project (JONSWAP) spectrum (JS), which involves a transformation from the JS solution to the natural logarithmic scale. This transformation is convenient for defining the least squares function in terms of the scale and shape parameters. We identified these two wind-dependent parameters to better understand the wind effect on surface waves. Due to its efficiency and high-resolution, we employed the airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) system for our measurements. Due to the lack of actual data, we simulated ocean waves in the MATLAB environment, which can be easily translated into industrial programming language. We utilized the Longuet-Higgin (LH) random-phase method to generate the time series of wave records and used the fast Fourier transform (FFT) technique to compute the power spectra density. After validating these procedures, we identified the JS parameters by minimizing the mean-square error of the target spectrum to that of the estimated spectrum obtained by FFT. We determined that the estimation error is relative to the amount of available wave record data. Finally, we found the inverse computation of wind factors (wind speed and wind fetch length) to be robust and sufficiently precise for wave forecasting

Application of Ultra-high Pressure Processing Technology

High pressure processing is an innovation for the traditional food processing and preservation method. Since the method of ultra-high pressure processing (HPP) exerts a very little influence on the covalent bond of food, its influence on the nutrition, taste, and texture of food is minimized. However, HPP food is perishable in long distance transportation and sales process. Since food freshness directly affects the final demand in market, how to use the appropriate strategy to manage commodity stocks effectively during the long time and distance in food transportation and match the supply and demand of HPP food to improve the competitiveness of companies are the challenges faced by HPP food companies in upstream and downstream supply chain. This paper describes of the different features of HPP foods compared to that of traditional processed foods, and analyzes the collaboration of HPP foods supply chain members

Association of tissue lineage and gene expression: conservatively and differentially expressed genes define common and special functions of tissues

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Embryogenesis is the process by which the embryo is formed, develops, and establishes developmental hierarchies of tissues. The recent advance in microarray technology made it possible to investigate the tissue specific patterns of gene expression and their relationship with tissue lineages. This study is focused on how tissue specific functions, tissue lineage, and cell differentiation are correlated, which is essential to understand embryonic development and organism complexity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We performed individual gene and gene set based analysis on multiple tissue expression data, in association with the classic topology of mammalian fate maps of embryogenesis. For each sub-group of tissues on the fate map, conservatively, differentially and correlatively expressed genes or gene sets were identified. Tissue distance was found to correlate with gene expression divergence. Tissues of the ectoderm or mesoderm origins from the same segments on the fate map shared more similar expression pattern than those from different origins. Conservatively expressed genes or gene sets define common functions in a tissue group and are related to tissue specific diseases, which is supported by results from Gene Ontology and KEGG pathway analysis. Gene expression divergence is larger in certain human tissues than in the mouse homologous tissues.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results from tissue lineage and gene expression analysis indicate that common function features of neighbor tissue groups were defined by the conservatively expressed genes and were related to tissue specific diseases, and differentially expressed genes contribute to the functional divergence of tissues. The difference of gene expression divergence in human and mouse homologous tissues reflected the organism complexity, i.e. distinct neural development levels and different body sizes.</p

An Efficient and Secure Arbitrary N-Party Quantum Key Agreement Protocol Using Bell States

Two quantum key agreement protocols using Bell states and Bell measurement were recently proposed by Shukla et al.(Quantum Inf. Process. 13(11), 2391-2405, 2014). However, Zhu et al. pointed out that there are some security flaws and proposed an improved version (Quantum Inf. Process. 14(11), 4245-4254, 2015). In this study, we will show Zhu et al.'s improvement still exists some security problems, and its efficiency is not high enough. For solving these problems, we utilize four Pauli operations {I, Z, X, Y } to encode two bits instead of the original two operations {I,X} to encode one bit, and then propose an efficient and secure arbitrary N-party quantum key agreement protocol. In the protocol, the channel checking with decoy single photons is introduced to avoid the eavesdropper's flip attack, and a post-measurement mechanism is used to prevent against the collusion attack. The security analysis shows the present protocol can guarantee the correctness, security, privacy and fairness of quantum key agreement.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

Use of Electronic Word of Mouth as Quality Metrics: A Comparison of Airline Reviews on Twitter and Skytrax

User-generated content (UGC) at online platforms serves as a critical data source in the service industry as it can be accessed in real-time and reflect customers’ changing focus on service aspects. Drawing upon the importance-performance analysis framework, we propose a methodology to derive service quality metrics by utilizing the heterogeneous sources of UGC with customized text mining techniques and examining the effectiveness of these quality metrics. UGC data related to major U.S. airlines were collected from non-social media (Skytrax) and social media platforms (Twitter) from 2014 to June 2019. The results suggest that the topic distributions and the UGC-derived weighted service quality (WSQ, which represents the weighted sentiment based on service aspects) significantly vary between the non-social media and social media platforms. In addition, the WSQ scores derived from two platforms are significant indicators of the objective service quality measurement (i.e., airline quality rating) with stronger predictive power from the social media derived WSQ score

Thermal-Mechanical Properties of Polyurethane-Clay Shape Memory Polymer Nanocomposites

Shape memory nanocomposites of polyurethane (PU)-clay were fabricated by melt mixing of PU and nano-clay. Based on nano-indentation and microhardness tests, the strength of the nanocomposites increased dramatically as a function of clay content, which is attributed to the enhanced nanoclay–polymer interactions. Thermal mechanical experiments demonstrated good mechanical and shape memory effects of the nanocomposites. Full shape memory recovery was displayed by both the pure PU and PU-clay nanocomposites.