Strategic and Tactical Urban Farm Design

International audienceWe use mix integer linear programing to establish a model for fresh fruit and vegetable production. We aim at maximizing the annual farm result, responding to a fixed daily demand. Our main variables are the area to grow using specific management practices, the beginning date of each plot cultivation and the workers to hire to produce. We introduce variables to consider the perishability of the products in different ways. As Ahumada and Villalobos (2009), we use a storage cold room loss function and cold room limited capacity. But we also allow a standing storage on the plot, associated to another loss function: the crops can be harvested some days after the ideal harvest time. The selling price is lowered according to storage time, both on the plot and in the cold room. We force the unsold products left on the plots (losses) to be harvested before a management practice dependent deadline, to limit diseases and insects proliferation. Considering short time perishability (a few days) make us work on a tow-day step. It enables a good combination of different crop management practices on the farm to have the best labor affectation. Perishability, considered at a tactical level, has major consequences on the strategic farming system sizing

Collection-disassembly problem in reverse supply chain

The reverse supply chain and disassembly processes are getting more and more important for tackling the burden of waste electrical and electronic equipment. The disassembly's complexity and frequent manual operation makes this process relatively expensive compared to its potential profit. The collection of end-of-life product is also a big issue dealing with vehicle routing. Thus, the decisions taken for collection and disassembly of end-of-life products need to be optimised. In this work, an optimisation model is developed for incorporating these problems. Our experimental study shows joint optimisation of collection and disassembly with coordination between them improves the global performance of the reverse supply chain including lower total cost corresponding to the component demand satisfaction

Coordination of Collection and Disassembly Planning for End-of-Life Product

This work proposes a formulation for coordinating between collection and disassembly planning for an End-of-Life (EOL) product. The coordination deals with the balance between the number of products collected, the inventory level and the number of products disassembled. The objective function aims to minimize the total cost including the disassembly cost, the penalty cost, the holding cost and the running cost of vehicle. Two strategies with and without coordination were compared via numerical experiments. The results obtained show that the coordinated strategy allows total cost reducing

Underwater near-infrared spectroscopy measurements of muscle oxygenation: laboratory validation and preliminary observations in swimmers and triathletes

The purpose of this research was to waterproof a near-infrared spectroscopy device (PortaMon, Artinis Medical Systems) to enable NIR measurement during swim exercise. Candidate materials were initially tested for waterproof suitability by comparing light intensity values during phantom-based tissue assessment. Secondary assessment involved repeated isokinetic exercises ensuring reliability of the results obtained from the modified device. Tertiary assessment required analysis of the effect of water immersion and temperature upon device function. Initial testing revealed that merely covering the PortaMon light sources with waterproof materials considerably affected the NIR light intensities. Modifying a commercially available silicone covering through the addition of a polyvinyl chloride material (impermeable to NIR light transmission) produces an acceptable compromise. Bland-Altman analysis indicated that exercise-induced changes in tissue saturation index (TSI %) were within acceptable limits during laboratory exercise. Although water immersion had a small but significant effect upon NIR light intensity, this resulted in a negligible change in the measured TSI (%). We then tested the waterproof device in vivo illustrating oxygenation changes during a 100 m freestyle swim case study. Finally, a full study compared club level swimmers and triathletes. Significant changes in oxygenation profiles when comparing upper and lower extremities for the two groups were revealed, reflecting differences in swim biomechanics

Impact of teachers’ self-efficacy on their work engagement: A case of Vietnam

Recent research across various educational settings has consistently highlighted the statistically positive effects of teachers' efficacy on their level of work engagement. However, an in-depth analysis of the literature reveals an important gap in this study in relation to Vietnamese education. Hence, the present study aims to establish a relationship by investigating the relationship between teachers' efficacy and their work engagement within the framework of the Vietnamese educational system. The study used both the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) to gather quantitative data from 354 high school teachers across 6 different high schools. The findings revealed a positive relationship between teachers' efficacy and their work engagement through a combination of factorial analysis and path analysis. These findings are significant because they highlight the value of incorporating self-efficacy concepts into training programs and creating encouraging environments to increase teachers' levels of engagement with their jobs. It is essential to prioritize the use of random sampling techniques in future research initiatives in order to generate a sample that is more extensive and applicable to a broader range of situations. Future researchers may explore incorporating qualitative research methodologies to better understand the impact of teacher efficacy by capturing the unique narratives and perspectives of teachers. This approach would provide a complete understanding of the dynamic relationship between teacher efficacy and work engagement

2-Benzyl-benzofurans from the tubers of Ophiopogon japonicus

Additional file 1. NMR spectra of compounds 1–3

Theorie de Lubin-Tate non-abelienne et representations elliptiques

Harris and Taylor proved that the supercuspidal part of the cohomology of the Lubin-Tate tower realizes both the local Langlands and Jacquet-Langlands correspondences, as conjectured by Carayol. Recently, Boyer computed the remaining part of the cohomology and exhibited two defects : first, the representations of GL\_d which appear are of a very particular and restrictive form ; second, the Langlands correspondence is not realized anymore. In this paper, we study the cohomology complex in a suitable equivariant derived category, and show how it encodes Langlands correspondance for all elliptic representations. Then we transfer this result to the Drinfeld tower via an enhancement of a theorem of Faltings due to Fargues. We deduce that Deligne's weight-monodromy conjecture is true for varieties uniformized by Drinfeld's coverings of his symmetric spaces.Comment: 54 page

On the elliptic nonabelian Fourier transform for unipotent representations of p-adic groups

In this paper, we consider the relation between two nonabelian Fourier transforms. The first one is defined in terms of the Langlands-Kazhdan-Lusztig parameters for unipotent elliptic representations of a split p-adic group and the second is defined in terms of the pseudocoefficients of these representations and Lusztig's nonabelian Fourier transform for characters of finite groups of Lie type. We exemplify this relation in the case of the p-adic group of type G_2.Comment: 17 pages; v2: several minor corrections, references added; v3: corrections in the table with unipotent discrete series of G