Pricing Decision of Closed-Loop Supply Chain to Improve Service Level under Patent Protection

This paper constructs a two-level closed-loop supply chain system consisting of original parts manufacturers and parts distributors. Based on the different preferences of consumers for remanufactured parts and new parts, four combination models of patent protection and service improvement are constructed. Through comparative analysis, the impact of implementing patent protection policies by original parts manufacturers and improving service levels by parts distributors on the pricing decisions of the closed-loop supply chain is explored.Through the comparison between related models and the verification of calculation examples, it is found that (1) a manufacturer prevents the price of new products from being affected by the price of remanufactured products and upgrading of service level by introducing royalties, which reduces its loss of profit; (2) in the absence of patent protection, the manufacturerꞌs profit decreases as the level of service increases; in the presence of patent protection, the manufacturerꞌs profit increases as the level of service increases; (3) retailersꞌ profits decrease after the manufacturer introduces royalties, which discourages them to improve service levels for remanufactured products; (4) as retailers raise the service level of the remanufactured products, the profits of the manufacturer and third-party manufacturers keep increasing, while the profits of the retailers first increase and then decrease

Procedural Generation of Large-Scale Forests Using a Graph-Based Neutral Landscape Model

Specifying the positions and attributes of plants (e.g., species, size, and height) during the procedural generation of large-scale forests in virtual geographic environments is challenging, especially when reflecting the characteristics of vegetation distributions. To address this issue, a novel graph-based neutral landscape model (NLM) is proposed to generate forest landscapes with varying compositions and configurations. Our model integrates a set of class-level landscape metrics and generates more realistic and variable landscapes compared with existing NLMs controlled by limited global-level landscape metrics. To produce patches with particular sizes and shapes, a region adjacency graph is transformed from a cluster map that is generated based upon percolation theory; subsequently, optimal neighboring nodes in the graph are merged under restricted growth conditions from a source node. The locations of seeds are randomly placed and their species are classified according to the generated forest landscapes to obtain the final tree distributions. The results demonstrate that our method can generate realistic vegetation distributions representing different spatial patterns of species with a time efficiency that satisfies the requirements for constructing large-scale virtual forests

Serum hepatokines in dairy cows: periparturient variation and changes in energy-related metabolic disorders

International audienceBACKGROUND: During peripartum period, dairy cows are highly susceptible to energy metabolism disorders such as fatty liver and ketosis. Angiopoietin-like protein 4 (ANGPTL4) and fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21), known as hepatokines, play important roles in lipid metabolism. The purposes of our study were to evaluate variations of serum ANGPTL4 and FGF21 concentrations in periparturient dairy cows and changes in these serum analyte concentrations of energy-related metabolic disorders in early lactation dairy cows. This study was divided into two experiments. Experiment I: Blood parameters were measured in healthy periparturient Holstein cows from 4 wk antepartum to 4 wk postpartum (n = 219). In this experiment, weekly blood samples were obtained from 4 wk before the expected calving date through 4 wk after calving. Experiment II: Blood parameters were measured in healthy cows (n = 30) and cows with clinical ketosis (n = 29) and fatty liver (n = 25) within the first 4 wk of lactation. In the present study, all blood samples were collected from the coccygeal vein in the early morning before feeding.RESULTS: Serum ANGPTL4 and FGF21 concentrations peaked at parturition, and declined rapidly over the following 2 wk Serum ANGPTL4 and FGF21 concentrations were positively correlated with serum non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA) concentration (r = 0.856, P = 003; r = 0.848, P = 0.004, respectively). Cows with clinical ketosis and fatty liver had significantly higher serum ANGPTL4 and FGF21 concentrations than healthy cows (P < 0.01).CONCLUSION: Serum ANGPTL4 and FGF21 concentrations were elevated during peripartum period, suggesting that energy balance changes that were associated with parturition contributed significantly to these effects. Although FGF21 and ANGPTL4 could play important roles in the adaptation of energy metabolism, they may be involved in the pathological processes of energy metabolism disorders of dairy cows in the peripartum period

Evaluation of Atmospheric Pollutant Emission Efficiency Based on SBM-Undesirable Model —— Taking PM2.5 as an Example

At present, China's haze is becoming more and more serious. How to reduce haze emission is an urgent problem in China's environmental governance. This paper uses the SBM-Undesirable model, adopting 5 inputs indexes(coal, oil, gas, labor and capital), and 2 outputs indexes（GDP and PM2.5 emissions）as expected output and unexpected output respectively, to calculate the emission efficiency of PM2.5 in China's 29 provinces. Based on the efficiency evaluation results of SBM-Undesirable model, the reasons for the inefficiency of PM2.5 emission are analyzed. The redundancy rate of investment, the insufficient rate of expected output and the redundancy rate of undesirable outputs are calculated. Results showed that: (1) Most provinces with high PM2.5 emission efficiency are concentrated in the eastern region, while the PM2.5 emission efficiency in the central and western regions is relatively low. (2) The redundancy rate of input variables and undesirable output of the eastern region is lower than that of the western and based on SBM-Undesirable model central regions. This is likely to have a great relationship with the economic development and the high level of technology in the eastern region. This study provides a reference for reducing the haze theory and providing empirical support for the government's haze reduction

A Colorimetric Assay for the Detection of Glucose and H2O2 Based on Cu-Ag/g-C3N4/ZIF Hybrids with Superior Peroxidase Mimetic Activity

In this work, we report the synthesis of Cu-Ag bimetallic nanopartiles and g-C3N4 nanosheets decorated on zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) to form a Cu-Ag/g-C3N4/ZIF hybrid. The hybrid was synthesized and characterized by Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transformed infrared (FTIR), the X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The Cu-Ag/g-C3N4/ZIF hybrid has intrinsic peroxidaselike catalytic activity towards the oxidation of TMB in the presence of H2O2. The situ synthesis of Cu-Ag bimetallic nanopartiles on 2D support such as g-C3N4 nanosheets would significantly enhance the peroxidaselike catalytic properties of individual Cu-Ag bimetallic nanopartiles and the g-C3N4 nanosheets. After loading of Cu-Ag bimetallic nanopartiles and g-C3N4 nanosheets on the ZIF-8, the hybrids exhibited superior peroxidaselike catalytic activity and good recyclability. Then, this method was applied for detecting glucose in human serum, owing the significant potential for detection of metabolites with H2O2-generation reactions

Characterization of Dispersed Heteropoly Acid on Mesoporous Zeolite Using Solid-State P-31 NMR Spin-Lattice Relaxation

Dispersion and quantitative characterization of supported catalysts is a grand challenge in catalytic science. In this paper, heteropoly acid H3PW12O40 (HPA) is dispersed on mesoporous zeolite silicalite-1 derived from hydrothermal synthesis using carbon black nanoparticle templates, and the catalytic activity is studied for 1-butene isomerization. The HPAs supported on conventional zeolite and on mesoporous zeolite exhibit very different activities and thus provide good model systems to investigate the structure dependence of the catalytic properties. The HPA on mesoporous silicalite-1 shows enhanced catalytic activity for 1-butene isomerization, while HPA on conventional silicalite-1 exhibits low activity. To elucidate the structural difference, supported HPA catalysts are characterized using a variety of techniques, including P-31 magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance, and are shown to contain a range of species on both mesoporous and conventional zeolites. However, contrary to studies reported in the literature, conventional NMR techniques and chemical shifts alone do not provide sufficient information to distinguish the dispersed and aggregated surface species. The dispersed phase and the nondispersed phase can only be unambiguously and quantitatively characterized using spin-lattice relaxation NMR techniques. The HPA supported on mesoporous zeolite contains a fast relaxation component related to the dispersed catalyst, giving a much higher activity, while the HPA supported on conventional zeolite has essentially only the slow relaxation component with very low activity. The results obtained from this work demonstrate that the combination of spinning sideband fitting and spin-lattice relaxation techniques can provide detailed structural information on not only the Keggin structure for HPA but also the degree of dispersion on the supportclose202

A Pseudomonas syringae ADP-Ribosyltransferase Inhibits Arabidopsis Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Kinases[W]

This study demonstrates that the HopF2 effector of Pseudomonas syringae can interact with MAP KINASE KINASE5 to weaken pathogen-associated molecular pattern–triggered immunity in Arabidopsis and identifies key residues required for this interaction

Highly Dispersed and Active ReO_<i>x</i> on Alumina-Modified SBA-15 Silica for 2-Butanol Dehydration

SBA-15 silica supported rhenium catalysts were synthesized using solution-based atomic layer deposition method, and their activity and stability were studied in the acid-catalyzed 2-butanol dehydration. We find that ReO_<i>x</i>/SBA-15 exhibited an extremely high initial activity but a fast deactivation for 2-butanol dehydration at 90–105 °C. Fast deactivation was likely due to the sintering, sublimation, and reduction of rhenia as confirmed by TEM, elemental analysis, and in situ UV–vis (DRS) measurements. To overcome these issues, ReO_<i>x</i>/AlO_<i>x</i>/SBA-15 catalysts with significantly improved stability were prepared by first modifying the surface identity of SBA-15 with alumina followed by dispersion of rhenia using atomic layer deposition. The AlO_<i>x</i> phase stabilizes the dispersion of small and uniform rhenia clusters (<2 nm) as as confirmed by TEM, STEM, and UV–vis (DRS) characterizations. Additional ²⁷Al MAS NMR characterization revealed that modification of the SBA-15 surface with alumina introduces a strong interaction between rhenia and alumina, which consequently improves the stability of supported rhenia catalysts by suppressing the sintering, sublimation, and reduction of rhenia albeit at a moderately reduced initial catalytic dehydration activity