Strategic Remanufacturing Decision in a Supply Chain with an External Local Remanufacturer

This paper develops a model for remanufacturing decisions in a two-stage supply chain with one manufacturer, one retailer and one external local remanufacturer, who collects used products and then reproduces them into a new one if the manufacturer does not join in remanufacturing process. This paper is different from most of the extant studies about remanufacturing because they consider decisions of firms rather than supply chains. We mainly focus on the remanufacturing strategy of the manufacturer when there is a local remanufacturer. We derive the equilibrium results for all players and do some comparative studies under different cases. We find that product substitutability can invert the effect of manufacturer’s extension decision on the retailer’s profit. We also consider the effect of channel structure by comparing the decentralized channel with the centralized channel. We find that the manufacturer has a higher incentive to extend its product line in the centralized channel than the decentralized channel; and the competition can strengthen its motivation to extend the line

Visual Performance of Psychological Factors in Interior Design Under the Background of Artificial Intelligence

Sensation (the reflection of past experience in the mind) is the reflection of the brain on the individual attributes of objective things that directly act on the sense organs. Feeling is the most elementary cognitive process and the simplest psychological phenomenon. Vision is a kind of sense, and sense is produced by objective things acting on the sense organs. But at present, it is rare to analyze interior design exhibition from the perspective of visual psychology, an emerging science, as an interdisciplinary attempt, only in interior design research. Therefore, the study of sensory process should start from its external stimuli, in order to first understand how it acts on the sensory organs to produce sensory phenomena. This paper mainly studies the visual performance of psychological factors in interior design under the background of artificial intelligence. This paper proposes a K-means clustering algorithm and a localization algorithm fused with visual and inertial navigation. The distance thresholds corresponding to the SIFT feature descriptors of threshold T1, 128D, 96D, 64D, and 32D are 170, 160, 150, and 90, respectively. This verifies that the candidate image with the highest number of matching points is considered the best matching image

Modeling and Swimming Property Characterizations of Scaled-Up Helical Microswimmers.

International audienceMicro- and nanorobots capable of controlled propulsion at low Reynolds number are foreseen to change many aspects of medicine by enabling targeted diagnosis and therapy, and minimally invasive surgery. Several kinds of helical swimmers with different heads actuated by a rotating magnetic field have been proposed in prior works. Beyond these proofs of concepts, this paper aims to obtain an optimized design of the helical swimmers adapted to low Reynolds numbers. For this, we designed an experimental setup and scaled-up helical nanobelt swimmers with different head and tail coatings to compare their rotational propulsion characteristics.We found in this paper that the head shape of a helical swimmer does not influence the shape of the rotational propulsion characteristics curve, but it influences the cutoff frequency values.The rotational propulsion characteristics of the helical swimmers with a magnetic head or a magnetic tail are different. The helical swimmers with uniformly coated magnetic tails do not show a cutoff frequency, whereas the ones with a magnetic head exhibit a saturation of frequency

The rotational propulsion characteristics of scaled-up helical microswimmers with different heads and magnetic positioning.

International audienceMicro and nanorobots capable of controlled propulsion at low Reynolds number are foreseen to change many aspects of medicine by enabling targeted diagnosis and therapy, and minimally invasive surgery. Several kinds of helical swimmers with different heads actuated by a rotating magnetic field have been proposed in prior works. Beyond these proofs of concepts, this paper aims to study behaviours of helical swimmers with different head and magnetic positing adapted to low Reynolds number liquids. For this, we designed an experimental setup and scaled-up helical nanobelt swimmers with different heads and tail coatings to compare their rotational propulsion characteristics. We found in this paper that the head shape of a helical swimmer does not influence on the shape of the rotational propulsion characteristics curve, but it influences on the values of the cut-off frequency. The rotational propulsion characteristics of helical swimmers with a magnetic head or a magnetic tail are much different. The helical swimmer with uniformly coated magnetic tail does not show a cut-off frequency but a saturation of frequency

Solar-driven broad spectrum fungicides based on monodispersed Cu₇S₄ nanorods with strong near-infrared photothermal efficiency

The development of low-cost and biocompatible inorganic photothermal nanoagents with broadband sunlight absorption and high photothermal conversion efficiency as broad spectrum fungicides is highly desirable for the large scale antibacterial treatment especially in the wild, because of their highly efficient anti-bacteria ability via solar irradiation. Here, we present a facile strategy for the synthesis of Cu7S4 nanorods (NRs) with broadband light absorption (300-3300 nm) and high photothermal conversion efficiency (57.8%, 808 nm), and the use of these NRs as broad spectrum fungicides for efficient disinfection using natural sunlight as light source. In the presence of Cu7S4 NRs, with natural sunlight irradiation (70 mW cm-2), both Gram-positive (S. aureus) and Gram-negative (E. coli) bacterium strains (2 mL, 106 mL-1) were completely killed in 10 min. These results suggest that our Cu7S4 NRs are effective and broad spectrum photothermal anti-bacterial agents regardless of drug resistance, that are particularly suitable for anti-bacteria activity in the wild using solar irradiation where artificial light sources are not available. Due to their strong near infrared (NIR) absorption, these biocompatible and low-cost Cu7S4 NRs may also serve as promising agents for photothermal therapy of tumors, disinfection in clinics, food sterilization and environmental treatment.</p

Trust Effects on E-commerce: Cross-cultural Comparison of Business-to-Consumer Environment Between UK and China

The advent of the internet has changed the way of conducting business due to the unique nature of the web and internet such as ubiquity, global reach, interactivity, personalization and so on (Laudon and Laudon, 2009). As a result, E-commerce has been becoming a more attractive avenue to conduct business. At the same time, the trust is also becoming increasingly important element in the success of transaction in virtual environment. While many scholars have made many study contributing in this field, but they do not conduct in the way of qualitative one. Most them just find the generalization of the samples. In addition, some international trust also be discussed. In this study, B2C e-Commerce was used to understand the effect of trust in the online shopping in China and UK. The results of the existing research may not have a direct application to China and UK. Semi-structured interview was used to collect data in this research. The Chinese or British consumers who have online shopping experience were chosen to do the interview. According to findings, internet merchant should have trustworthiness features including benevolence, integrity, and ability, which are the important factors in the formation of trust for both Chinese and British online customers. For customers themselves, their individual propensity to trust, culture and perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are associated with their trust and purchasing intention. Furthermore, some external environment such as guarantees from the third parties and legal environment the still has influence on customer trust and shopping behavior. In addition, different trust factors also have different influencing degree on consumers’ purchasing behavior