Determinants of sourcing flexibility and its impact on performance

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Sourcing flexibility is an increasingly important building block of supply chain flexibility. Our study which is grounded in information processing theory argues that two mechanisms can support firms in building up sourcing flexibility. Based on a survey of 336 manufacturing firms from Europe and the U.S. and using partial least squares (PLS) modeling as well as hierarchical regression analysis, we show that supplier evaluation and selection, and the integration of information systems at the buyer-supplier interface are positively related to sourcing flexibility. Sourcing flexibility, in turn, is curvilinearly related to delivery performance. Finally, delivery performance positively influences the product's financial performance. The strong associations between sourcing flexibility, delivery performance, and product financial performance underscore that sourcing flexibility merits the attention of supply chain managers during supplier selection and purchasing decisions

Neutrino-electron scattering in noncommutative space

Neutral particles can couple with the $U(1)$ gauge field in the adjoint representation at the tree level if the space-time coordinates are noncommutative (NC). Considering neutrino-photon coupling in the NC QED framework, we obtain the differential cross section of neutrino-electron scattering. Similar to the magnetic moment effect, one of the NC terms is proportional to $\frac 1 T$, where $T$ is the electron recoil energy. Therefore, this scattering provides a chance to achieve a stringent bound on the NC scale in low energy by improving the sensitivity to the smaller electron recoil energy.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

The role of the helper lipid on the DNA transfection efficiency of lipopolyplex formulations.

Multifunctional, lipopolyplex formulations comprising a mixture of cationic liposomes and cationic, receptor-targeting peptides have potential use in gene therapy applications. Lipopolyplex formulations described here are typically far more efficient transfection agents than binary lipoplex or polyplex formulations. It has been shown previously that the peptide component mediates both DNA packaging and targeting of the nanoparticle while in this report we investigate the contribution of the lipid component. We hypothesised that the lipid components synergise with the peptides in the transfection process by promoting endosomal escape after lipid bilayer fusion. Lipopolyplexes were prepared with cationic liposomes comprising DOTAP with either neutral lipid DOPE or DOPC. DOPE promotes fusogenic, inverted hexagonal lipid structures while DOPC promotes more stable laminar structures. Lipopolyplexes containing DOPE showed substantially higher transfection efficiency than those formulated with DOPC, both in vitro and in vivo. DOPE-containing lipopolyplexes showed rapid endosomal trafficking and nuclear accumulation of DNA while DOPC-containing formulations remained within the late endo-lysosomal compartments. These findings are consistent with previous finding for the role of DOPE in lipoplexes and support the hypothesis regarding the function of the lipid components in lipopolyplexes. These findings will help to inform future lipopolyplex design, strategies and clinical development processes

2021 BEETL competition: advancing transfer learning for subject independence & heterogenous EEG data sets

Transfer learning and meta-learning offer some of the most promising avenues to unlock the scalability of healthcare and consumer technologies driven by biosignal data. This is because regular machine learning methods cannot generalise well across human subjects and handle learning from different, heterogeneously collected data sets, thus limiting the scale of training data available. On the other hand, the many developments in transfer- and meta-learning fields would benefit significantly from a real-world benchmark with immediate practical application. Therefore, we pick electroencephalography (EEG) as an exemplar for all the things that make biosignal data analysis a hard problem. We design two transfer learning challenges around a. clinical diagnostics and b. neurotechnology. These two challenges are designed to probe algorithmic performance with all the challenges of biosignal data, such as low signal-to-noise ratios, major variability among subjects, differences in the data recording sessions and techniques, and even between the specific BCI tasks recorded in the dataset. Task 1 is centred on the field of medical diagnostics, addressing automatic sleep stage annotation across subjects. Task 2 is centred on Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI), addressing motor imagery decoding across both subjects and data sets. The successful 2021 BEETL competition with its over 30 competing teams and its 3 winning entries brought attention to the potential of deep transfer learning and combinations of set theory and conventional machine learning techniques to overcome the challenges. The results set a new state-of-the-art for the real-world BEETL benchmarks

Superposition operators between weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions of controlled growth

The final publication is available at Springer via: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00605-012-0441-6[EN] We characterize the entire functions which transform a weighted Banach space of holomorphic functions on the disc of type H∞ into another such space by superposition. We also show that all the superposition operators induced by such entire functions map bounded sets into bounded sets and are continuous. Superposition operators that map bounded sets into relatively compact sets are also considered. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Wien.The research of Bonet was partially supported by MICINN and FEDER Project MTM2010-15200, by GV project Prometeo/2008/101, and by ACOMP/2012/090. The research of Vukotic was partially supported by MICINN grant MTM2009-14694-C02-01, Spain and by the European ESF Network HCAA ("Harmonic and Complex Analysis and Its Applications").Bonet Solves, JA.; Vukotić, D. (2013). Superposition operators between weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions of controlled growth. Monatshefte für Mathematik. 170(3-4):311-323. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00605-012-0441-6S3113231703-4Álvarez, V., Márquez, M.A., Vukotić, D.: Superposition operators between the Bloch space and Bergman spaces. Ark. Mat. 42, 205–216 (2004)Appell, J., Zabrejko, P.P.: Nonlinear Superposition Operators, Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics 95. Cambridge University Press, London (1990)Appell, J., Zabrejko, P.P.: Remarks on the superposition operator problem in various function spaces. Complex Var. Elliptic Equ. 55(8–10), 727–737 (2010)Bierstedt, K.D., Bonet, J., Galbis, A.: Weighted spaces of holomorphic functions on bounded domains. Michigan Math. J. 40, 271–297 (1993)Bierstedt, K.D., Bonet, J., Taskinen, J.: Associated weights and spaces of holomorphic functions. Studia Math. 127, 137–168 (1998)Bonet, J., Domański, P., Lindström, M.: Essential norm and weak compactness of composition operators on weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. Can. Math. Bull. 42(2), 139–148 (1999)Bonet, J., Domański, P., Lindström, M., Taskinen, J.: Composition operators between weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. J. Aust. Math. Soc. (Ser. A) 64, 101–118 (1998)Boyd, C., Rueda, P.: Holomorphic superposition operators between Banach function spaces. Preprint (2011)Boyd, C., Rueda, P.: Superposition operators between weighted spaces of analytic functions. Preprint (2011)Buckley, S.M., Fernández, J.L., Vukotić, D.: Superposition operators on Dirichlet type spaces. In: Papers on Analysis: A Volume dedicaed to Olli Martio on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Rep. Univ. Jyväskyla Dept. Math. Stat, vol. 83, pp. 41–61. Univ. Jyväskyla, Jyväskyla (2001)Buckley, S.M., Vukotić, D.: Univalent interpolation in Besov spaces and superposition into Bergman spaces. Potential Anal. 29(1), 1–16 (2008)Cámera, G.A.: Nonlinear superposition on spaces of analytic functions. In: Harmonic Analysis and Operator Theory (Carácas, 1994), Contemp. 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In: Functional Analysis (Trier, 1994), pp. 249–280. de Gruyter, Berlin (1996)Levin, B.Ya.: Lectures on Entire Functions. Translations of Mathematical Monographs, vol. 150, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence (1996).Lusky, W.: On weighted spaces of harmonic and holomorphic functions. J. Lond. Math. Soc. 51, 309–320 (1995)Lusky, W.: On the isomorphism classes of weighted spaces of harmonic and holomorphic functions. Studia Math. 175, 19–45 (2006)Pommerenke, Ch.: Boundary Behaviour of Conformal Maps. Springer, Berlin (1992)Ramos Fernández, J.C.: Bounded superposition operators between weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. Preprint, Available from http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.5857Shields, A.L., Williams, D.L.: Bounded projections, duality and multipliers in spaces of analytic functions. Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 162, 287–302 (1971)Vukotić, D.: Integrability, growth of conformal maps, and superposition operators, Technical Report 10. 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Role of liposome and peptide in the synergistic enhancement of transfection with a lipopolyplex vector

Lipopolyplexes are of widespread interest for gene therapy due to their multifunctionality and high transfection efficiencies. Here we compared the biological and biophysical properties of a lipopolyplex formulation with its lipoplex and polyplex equivalents to assess the role of the lipid and peptide components in the formation and function of the lipopolyplex formulation. We show that peptide efficiently packaged plasmid DNA forming spherical, highly cationic nanocomplexes that are taken up efficiently by cells. However, transgene expression was poor, most likely due to endosomal degradation since the polyplex lacks membrane trafficking properties. In addition the strong peptide-DNA interaction may prevent plasmid release from the complex and so limit plasmid DNA availability. Lipid/DNA lipoplexes, on the other hand, produced aggregated masses that showed poorer cellular uptake than the polyplex but contrastingly greater levels of transgene expression. This may be due to the greater ability of lipoplexes relative to polyplexes to promote endosomal escape. Lipopolyplex formulations formed spherical, cationic nanocomplexes with efficient cellular uptake and significantly enhanced transfection efficiency. The lipopolyplexes combined the optimal features of lipoplexes and polyplexes showing optimal cell uptake, endosomal escape and availability of plasmid for transcription, thus explaining the synergistic increase in transfection efficiency

Angular and Current-Target Correlations in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA

Correlations between charged particles in deep inelastic ep scattering have been studied in the Breit frame with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 6.4 pb-1. Short-range correlations are analysed in terms of the angular separation between current-region particles within a cone centred around the virtual photon axis. Long-range correlations between the current and target regions have also been measured. The data support predictions for the scaling behaviour of the angular correlations at high Q2 and for anti-correlations between the current and target regions over a large range in Q2 and in the Bjorken scaling variable x. Analytic QCD calculations and Monte Carlo models correctly describe the trends of the data at high Q2, but show quantitative discrepancies. The data show differences between the correlations in deep inelastic scattering and e+e- annihilation.Comment: 26 pages including 10 figures (submitted to Eur. J. Phys. C

Measurement of the cross-section of high transverse momentum vector bosons reconstructed as single jets and studies of jet substructure in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents a measurement of the cross-section for high transverse momentum W and Z bosons produced in pp collisions and decaying to all-hadronic final states. The data used in the analysis were recorded by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7 TeV;{\rm Te}{\rm V}$and correspond to an integrated luminosity of$4.6\;{\rm f}{{{\rm b}}^{-1}}$. The measurement is performed by reconstructing the boosted W or Z bosons in single jets. The reconstructed jet mass is used to identify the W and Z bosons, and a jet substructure method based on energy cluster information in the jet centre-of-mass frame is used to suppress the large multi-jet background. The cross-section for events with a hadronically decaying W or Z boson, with transverse momentum${{p}_{{\rm T}}}\gt 320\;{\rm Ge}{\rm V}$and pseudorapidity$|\eta |\lt 1.9$, is measured to be${{\sigma }_{W+Z}}=8.5\pm 1.7$ pb and is compared to next-to-leading-order calculations. The selected events are further used to study jet grooming techniques

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

Jet energy measurement with the ATLAS detector in proton-proton collisions at root s=7 TeV

The jet energy scale and its systematic uncertainty are determined for jets measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 38 pb-1. Jets are reconstructed with the anti-kt algorithm with distance parameters R=0. 4 or R=0. 6. Jet energy and angle corrections are determined from Monte Carlo simulations to calibrate jets with transverse momenta pT≥20 GeV and pseudorapidities {pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy systematic uncertainty is estimated using the single isolated hadron response measured in situ and in test-beams, exploiting the transverse momentum balance between central and forward jets in events with dijet topologies and studying systematic variations in Monte Carlo simulations. The jet energy uncertainty is less than 2. 5 % in the central calorimeter region ({pipe}η{pipe}<0. 8) for jets with 60≤pT<800 GeV, and is maximally 14 % for pT<30 GeV in the most forward region 3. 2≤{pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy is validated for jet transverse momenta up to 1 TeV to the level of a few percent using several in situ techniques by comparing a well-known reference such as the recoiling photon pT, the sum of the transverse momenta of tracks associated to the jet, or a system of low-pT jets recoiling against a high-pT jet. More sophisticated jet calibration schemes are presented based on calorimeter cell energy density weighting or hadronic properties of jets, aiming for an improved jet energy resolution and a reduced flavour dependence of the jet response. The systematic uncertainty of the jet energy determined from a combination of in situ techniques is consistent with the one derived from single hadron response measurements over a wide kinematic range. The nominal corrections and uncertainties are derived for isolated jets in an inclusive sample of high-pT jets. Special cases such as event topologies with close-by jets, or selections of samples with an enhanced content of jets originating from light quarks, heavy quarks or gluons are also discussed and the corresponding uncertainties are determined. © 2013 CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration