Employing dynamic fuzzy membership functions to assess environmental performance in the supplier selection process

The proposed system illustrates that logic fuzzy can be used to aid management in assessing a supplier's environmental performance in the supplier selection process. A user-centred hierarchical system employing scalable fuzzy membership functions implement human priorities in the supplier selection process, with particular focus on a supplier's environmental performance. Traditionally, when evaluating supplier performance, companies have considered criteria such as price, quality, flexibility, etc. These criteria are of varying importance to individual companies pertaining to their own specific objectives. However, with environmental pressures increasing, many companies have begun to give more attention to environmental issues and, in particular, to their suppliers’ environmental performance. The framework presented here was developed to introduce efficiently environmental criteria into the existing supplier selection process and to reflect on its relevant importance to individual companies. The system presented attempts to simulate the human preference given to particular supplier selection criteria with particular focus on environmental issues when considering supplier selection. The system considers environmental data from multiple aspects of a suppliers business, and based on the relevant impact this will have on a Buying Organization, a decision is reached on the suitability of the supplier. This enables a particular supplier's strengths and weaknesses to be considered as well as considering their significance and relevance to the Buying OrganizationPeer reviewe

Estimating Photometric Redshifts Using Support Vector Machines

We present a new approach to obtaining photometric redshifts using a kernel learning technique called Support Vector Machines (SVMs). Unlike traditional spectral energy distribution fitting, this technique requires a large and representative training set. When one is available, however, it is likely to produce results that are comparable to the best obtained using template fitting and artificial neural networks. Additional photometric parameters such as morphology, size and surface brightness can be easily incorporated. The technique is demonstrated using samples of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 2 and the hybrid galaxy formation code GalICS. The RMS error in redshift estimation is $<0.03$ for both samples. The strengths and limitations of the technique are assessed.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the PASP, minor typos fixed to make consistent with published versio

The Truth in Compatibilism and the truth of Libertarianism

The paper offers the outlines of a response to the often-made suggestion is that it is impossible to see how indeterminism could possibly provide us with anything that we might want in the way of freedom, anything that could really amount to control, as opposed merely to an openness in the flow of reality that would constitute merely the injection of chance, or randomness, into the unfolding of the processes which underlie our activity. It is suggested that the best first move for the libertarian is to make a number of important concessions to the compatibilist. It should be conceded, in particular, that certain sorts of alternative possibilities are neither truly available to real, worldly agents, nor required in order that those agents should act freely; and it should be admitted also that it is the compatibilist who tends to give the most plausible sorts of analyses of many of the ‘can’ and ‘could have’ statements which seem to need to be assertible of those agents we regard as free. But these concessions do not bring compatibilism itself in their wake. The most promising version of libertarianism, it is argued, should be based on the idea that agency itself (and not merely some special instances of it which we might designate with the honorific appellation ‘free’) is inconsistent with determinism. This version of libertarianism, it is claimed, can avoid the objection that indeterminism is as difficult to square with true agential control as determinism can sometimes seem to be

Ultraviolet spectroscopy of the brightest supergiants in M31 and M33

Ultraviolet spectroscopy from the IUE, in combination with groundbased visual and infrared photometry, are to determine the energy distributions of the luminous blue variables, the Hubble-Sandage variables, in M31 and M33. The observed energy distributions, especially in the ultraviolet, show that these stars are suffering interstellar reddening. When corrected for interstellar extinction, the integrated energy distributions yield the total luminosities and black body temperatures of the stars. The resulting bolometric magnitudes and temperatures confirm that these peculiar stars are indeed very luminous, hot stars. They occupy the same regions of the sub B01 vs. log T sub e diagram as do eta Car, P Cyg and S Dor in our galaxy and the LMC. Many of the Hubble-Sandage variables have excess infrared radiation which is attributed to free-free emission from their extended atmospheres. Rough mass loss estimates from the infrared excess yield rates of 0.00001 M sub annual/yr. The ultraviolet spectra of the H-S variables are also compared with similar spectra of eta Car, P Cyg and S For

Flight-Test Evaluation of Landing Gear Noise Reduction Technologies

Results from the third Acoustics Research Measurements flight test, conducted under the NASA Flight Demonstrations and Capabilities project, are presented and discussed. The test evaluated landing gear and gear cavity noise mitigation technologies installed on a NASA Gulfstream G-III. Aircraft configurations with and without main landing gear treatments were flown at several flap deflections to determine the acoustic performance of the technologies for aircraft equipped with conventional Fowler flaps. With the aircraft flying an approach path and engines at ground-idle, extensive acoustic measurements were acquired with a phased microphone array system. Computed beamform maps were used to examine the effectiveness of the tested technologies in reducing the strength of the noise sources generated by the main landing gear. Various integration regions were devised to extract the farfield noise spectra associated with the treated and untreated landing gear configurations. Analyses of the gathered acoustic data demonstrate that significant noise reduction was achieved. How- ever, the full noise reduction potential of the technologies could not be determined because of contamination from flap inboard edge noise and other secondary sources

Exact isotropic cosmologies with local fractal number counts

We construct an exact relativistic cosmology in which an inhomogeneous but isotropic local region has fractal number counts and matches to a homogeneous background at a scale of the order of $10^2$ Mpc. We show that Einstein's equations and the matching conditions imply either a nonlinear Hubble law or a very low large-scale density.Comment: revised version, to appear Class. Q. Grav.; minor corrections following eqn 16, additional comments on relation to other work, some new reference

Results of an aqueous source term model for a radiological risk assessment of the Drigg LLW Site, U.K.

A radionuclide source term model has been developed which simulates the biogeochemical evolution of the Drigg low level waste (LLW) disposal site. The DRINK (DRIgg Near field Kinetic) model provides data regarding radionuclide concentrations in groundwater over a period of 100,000 years, which are used as input to assessment calculations for a groundwater pathway. The DRINK model also provides input to human intrusion and gaseous assessment calculations through simulation of the solid radionuclide inventory. These calculations are being used to support the Drigg post closure safety case. The DRINK model considers the coupled interaction of the effects of fluid flow, microbiology, corrosion, chemical reaction, sorption and radioactive decay. It represents the first direct use of a mechanistic reaction-transport model in risk assessment calculations

Non-linear Microwave Surface Impedance of Epitaxial HTS Thin Films in Low DC Magnetic Fields

We have carried out non-linear microwave (8 GHz) surface impedance measurements of three YBaCuO thin films in dc magnetic fields $H_{dc}$ (parallel to c axis) up to 12 mT using a coplanar resonator technique. In zero dc field the three films, deposited by the same method, show a spread of low-power residual surface resistance, $R_{res}$ and penetration depth, $\lambda$ (T=15 K) within a factor of 1.9. However, they exhibit dramatically different microwave field, $H_{rf}$ dependences of the surface resistance, $R_s$, but universal $X_s(H_{rf})$ dependence. Application of a dc field was found to affect not only absolute values of $R_s$ and $X_s$, but the functional dependences $R_s(H_{rf})$ and $X_s(H_{rf})$ as well. For some of the samples the dc field was found to decrease $R_s$ below its zero-field low-power value.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. To be published in IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond., June 199

Can continental bogs with stand the pressure due to climate change?

Not all peatlands are alike. Theoretical and process based models suggest that ombrogenic, oligotrophic peatlands can withstand the pressures due to climate change because of the feedbacks among ecosystem production, decomposition and water storage. Although there have been many inductive explanations inferring from paleo-records, there is a lack of deductive empirical tests of the models predictions of these systems’ stability and there are few records of the changes in the net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) of peatlands that are long enough to examine the dynamics of the NECB in relation to climate variability. Continuous measurements of all the components of the NECB and the associated general climatic and environmental conditions have been made at the Mer Bleue (MB) peatland, a large, 28 km2, 5 m deep, raised ombro-oligotrophic, shrub and Sphagnum covered bog, near Ottawa, Canada from May 1, 1998 until the present. The sixteen-year daily CO2, CH4, and DOC flux and NECB covers a wide range of variability in peatland water storage from very dry to very wet growing seasons. We used the MB data to test the extent of MB peatland’s stability and the strength of the underlying key feedback between the NECB and changes in water storage projected by the models. In 2007 we published a six-year (1999-2004) net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) for MB of ∼22 ± 40 g C m-2 yr-1, but we have since recalculated the 1998-2004 NECB to be 32 ± 40 g C m-2 yr-1 based on a reanalyzed average NEP of 51 ± 41 g C m-2 yr-1. Over the same period the net loss of C via the CH4 and DOC fluxes were -4 ± 1 and -15 ± 3 g C m-2 yr-1. The 1998-2004 six-year MB average NECB is similar to the long-term C accumulation rate, estimated from MB peat cores, for the last 3,000 years. The post 2004 MB NEP has increased to an average of ∼96 ± 32 g C m-2 yr-1 largely to there being generally wetter growing seasons. The losses of C via DOC (18 ± 1 g C m-2 yr-1) and CH4 (7 ± 4 g C m-2 yr-1) while showing considerable year-to-year variability are not significantly different post 2004. Hence, the proportional loss of C as DOC and CH4 in the MB NECB is slightly less post-2004 than it was before 2004 though the cumulative errors preclude statistically differences. As a result the MB NECB has increased to 79 ± 29 g C m-2 yr-1 post 2004 yielding a 14 year contemporary NECB of 56 ± 36 g C m-2 yr-1, which is double the long-term accumulation rate of C. The variability in the annual NECB and growing season mean NEP for the MB bog can be explained (r2 = 0.35, p \u3c 0.01) by the variability in growing season water table depth. These results suggest the carbon balance – water table feedback is sufficient enough to create stability in continental bogs so they will withstand a considerable amount of climate change