The economic and environmental performance of distribution networks: A case study from the petrochemical industry

Designing a company's distribution network is a challenging task that requires the consideration of different aspects. In this respect, especially trade-offs between, for example, operational costs and customer service are the focus of the companies' attention. However, growing concerns of governments and customers about environmental protection have raised awareness towards the environmental impact of operations. Activities associated with the distribution of products, i.e. transportation and warehousing, are not yet subject to strict environmental regulations, but this situation is expected to change soon. Companies must, therefore, start to concentrate not only on economic but also on environmental aspects in the design of their supply chain. Based on a case study from the petrochemical industry, this paper presents a way to combine both, economic as well as environmental criteria, when evaluating (strategic) distribution network design decisions. The results show a trade-off between total (distribution) costs and transport carbon emissions. (author's abstract

Greenhouse gas emissions of regionally produced alternative feedstuffs rich in protein for Austrian dairy production

The aim of this study was to analyse the potential greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) of locally and regionally produced, alternative protein‐rich feedstuffs (APRFs) which can be utilised in dairy cattle feeding as compared to extracted soybean meal (SBME) in a complete life‐cycle chain for Austria. In addition to GHGE from soil (N2O), from the production of mineral fertilizers and pesticides, industrial processes (oil milling, distillery, and drying plant) and use of fuels, the effects of land use change (LUC) were included in the calculation of GHGE. Currently, SBME, which is mainly imported from South‐America, is the most important protein feedstuff for livestock in Austria, but recently it was started to replace it by APRFs in diets for dairy cows for various reasons. In this study, the GHGE of SBME was compared to those of regionally cultivated and locally processed APRFs. Furthermore, mixtures of APRFs were evaluated which provided energy and available protein equivalent to one kg of SBME. In conclusion, utilisation of more locally produced APRFs shows clear advantages in terms of GHGE. Balanced mixtures of APRFs may offer specific benefits in this regard. On average of all four balanced mixtures of APRFs presented in this study, they result in a reduction of GHGE of about 55% as compared to SBME

CP violation in bilinear R-parity violation and its consequences for the early universe

Supersymmetric models with bilinear R-parity violation (BRpV) provide a framework for neutrino masses and mixing angles to explain neutrino oscillation data. We consider CP violation within the new physical phases in BRpV and discuss their effect on the generation of neutrino masses and the decays of the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP), being a light neutralino with mass $\sim 100$ GeV, at next-to-leading order. The decays affect the lepton and via sphaleron transitions the baryon asymmetry in the early universe. For a rather light LSP, asymmetries generated before the electroweak phase transition via e.g. the Affleck-Dine mechanism are reduced up to two orders of magnitude, but are still present. On the other hand, the decays of a light LSP themselves can account for the generation of a lepton and baryon asymmetry, the latter in accordance to the observation in our universe, since the smallness of the BRpV parameters allows for an out-of-equilibrium decay and sufficiently large CP violation is possible consistent with experimental bounds from the non-observation of electric dipole-moments.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figure

Higgs CP properties using the tau decay modes at the ILC

We investigate the prospects of determining the CP nature of the 126 GeV neutral spin-0 (Higgs) boson h, discovered at the LHC, at a future linear collider. We consider the production of h by the Higgsstrahlung process and its subsequent decays to tau leptons. We investigate how precisely a possible pseudoscalar component of h can be detected by the measurement of a suitably defined angular distribution, if all major decay modes of the tau lepton are used. From our numerical simulations, we estimate the expected precision to the scalar-pseudoscalar mixing angle, including estimates of the background and of measurement uncertainties, to be 2.8 degree for Higgs-boson production at a center-of-mass energy of 250 GeV and for a collider with integrated luminosity of 1 inverse attobarn.Comment: Journal versio

QCD Hard Scattering and the Sign of the Spin Asymmetry A_LL^pi

Recent preliminary PHENIX data are consistent with a negative and sizable longitudinal double-spin asymmetry A_LL^pi for pi^0 production at moderate transverse momentum p_perp \simeq 1 - 4 GeV and central rapidity. By means of a systematic investigation of the relevant degrees of freedom we show that the perturbative QCD framework at leading power in p_perp produces at best a very small negative asymmetry in this kinematic range.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, final version published in PRL (only minor changes; note: title changed in published version

Using cross-lingual information to cope with underspecification in formal ontologies

Description logics and other formal devices are frequently used as means for preventing or detecting mistakes in ontologies. Some of these devices are also capable of inferring the existence of inter-concept relationships that have not been explicitly entered into an ontology. A prerequisite, however, is that this information can be derived from those formal definitions of concepts and relationships which are included within the ontology. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm that is able to suggest relationships among existing concepts in a formal ontology that are not derivable from such formal definitions. The algorithm exploits cross-lingual information that is implicitly present in the collection of terms used in various languages to denote the concepts and relationships at issue. By using a specific experimental design, we are able to quantify the impact of cross-lingual information in coping with underspecification in formal ontologies