Blockchain for Sustainable Supply Chain Management: Trends and Ways Forward

YesBlockchain operates on a highly secured framework, and its decentralized consensus has benefits for supply chain sustainability. Scholars have recognized the growing importance of sustainability in supply chains and studied the potential of blockchain for sustainable supply chain management. However, no study has taken stock of high-quality research in this area. To address this gap, this paper aims to provide a state-of-the-art overview of high-quality research on blockchain for sustainable supply chain management. To do so, this paper conducts a systematic literature review using a bibliometric analysis of 146 high-quality articles on blockchain for sustainable supply chain management that have been published in journals ranked “A*”, “A”, and “B” by the Australian Business Deans Council and retrieved from the Scopus database. In doing so, this paper unpacks the most prominent journals, authors, institutions, and countries that have contributed to three major themes in the field, namely blockchain for sustainable business activities, decision support systems using blockchain, and blockchain for intelligent transportation system. This paper also reveals the use of blockchain for sustainable supply chain management across four major sectors, namely food, healthcare, manufacturing, and infrastructure, and concludes with suggestions for future research in each sector

Collaborative research for the study of e-commerce and e-business in China

E-commerce has experienced tremendous growth in China over the past few years, where we have witnessed the emergence of online portals, search engines, community forums, online travel agencies, auction houses, and gaming websites. This fast developing ecommerce phenomenon has attracted the interest of researchers from both within and outside of China. The aim of this panel is to discuss opportunities for researchers interested in Chinese e-commerce issues to collaborate and share their research findings

Editors' introduction to the issue: Electronic commerce research and applications, volume 9, issue 5, September - October 2010

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Unilateral renal agenesis: a systematic review on associated anomalies and renal injury.

Item does not contain fulltextBACKGROUND: Unilateral renal agenesis (URA) is associated with other congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract (CAKUT) and extra-renal anomalies. However, the reported prevalences of these anomalies are highly variable. We estimated the prevalence of associated CAKUT and extra-renal anomalies in patients with URA. Furthermore, we determined the prevalence of renal injury in URA patients. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review of English and non-English articles using PubMed and Embase.com. Included studies reported at least one of the following items: incidence of URA, gender, side of URA, prenatal diagnosis, performance of micturating cystourethrogram, associated CAKUT, urinary tract infection or extra-renal anomalies. Studies that described a mean/median glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and proportions of patients with hypertension, micro-albuminuria or a decreased GFR were also included. RESULTS: Analyses were based on 43 included studies (total number of patients: 2684, 63% male). The general incidence of URA was 1 in approximately 2000. Associated CAKUT were identified in 32% of patients, of which vesicoureteral reflux was most frequently identified (24% of patients). Extra-renal anomalies were found in 31% of patients. Hypertension could be identified in 16% of patients, whereas 21% of patients had micro-albuminuria. Ten per cent of patients had a GFR<60 mL/min/1.73 m2;. CONCLUSIONS: These aggregate results provide insight in the prevalence of associated anomalies and renal injury in patients with URA. Our systematic review implicates that URA is not a harmless malformation by definition. Therefore, we emphasize the need for clinical follow-up in URA patients starting at birth.1 juli 201

Unilateral renal agenesis: a systematic review on associated anomalies and renal injury.

Item does not contain fulltextBACKGROUND: Unilateral renal agenesis (URA) is associated with other congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract (CAKUT) and extra-renal anomalies. However, the reported prevalences of these anomalies are highly variable. We estimated the prevalence of associated CAKUT and extra-renal anomalies in patients with URA. Furthermore, we determined the prevalence of renal injury in URA patients. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review of English and non-English articles using PubMed and Embase.com. Included studies reported at least one of the following items: incidence of URA, gender, side of URA, prenatal diagnosis, performance of micturating cystourethrogram, associated CAKUT, urinary tract infection or extra-renal anomalies. Studies that described a mean/median glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and proportions of patients with hypertension, micro-albuminuria or a decreased GFR were also included. RESULTS: Analyses were based on 43 included studies (total number of patients: 2684, 63% male). The general incidence of URA was 1 in approximately 2000. Associated CAKUT were identified in 32% of patients, of which vesicoureteral reflux was most frequently identified (24% of patients). Extra-renal anomalies were found in 31% of patients. Hypertension could be identified in 16% of patients, whereas 21% of patients had micro-albuminuria. Ten per cent of patients had a GFR<60 mL/min/1.73 m2;. CONCLUSIONS: These aggregate results provide insight in the prevalence of associated anomalies and renal injury in patients with URA. Our systematic review implicates that URA is not a harmless malformation by definition. Therefore, we emphasize the need for clinical follow-up in URA patients starting at birth.1 juli 201

Performance driven database design for scalable web applications

Abstract. Scaling up web applications requires distribution of load across multiple application servers and across multiple database servers. Distributing load across multiple application servers is fairly straightforward; however distributing load (select and UDI queries) across multiple database servers is more complex because of the synchronization requirements for multiple copies of the data. Different techniques have been investigated for data placement across multiple database servers, such as replication, partitioning and de-normalization. In this paper, we describe our architecture that utilizes these data placement techniques for determining the best possible layout of data. Our solution is general, and other data placement techniques can be integrated within our system. Once the data is laid out on the different database servers, our efficient query router routes the queries to the appropriate database server/(s). Our query router maintains multiple connections for a database server so that many queries are executed simultaneously on a database server, thus increasing the utilization of each database server. Our query router also implements a locking mechanism to ensure that the queries on a database server are executed in order. We have implemented our solutions in our system, that we call SIPD (System for Intelligent Placement of Data). Preliminary experimental results illustrate the significant performance benefits achievable by our system

Rapport d'expertise. Evaluation des besoins en recherche-developpement sur le drainage et la salinisation au Maroc. (Programme international sur les techniques d'irrigation et de drainage IPTRID)

National audienc

An Empirical Study on Design Quality Improvement from Best-Practice Inspection and Pair Programming

Abstract. The quality of the software design often has a major impact on the quality of the final product and the effort for development and evolution. A number of quality assurance (QA) approaches for inspection of early-life-cycle documents have been empirically evaluated. An implicit assumption of these studies was: an investment into early defect detection and removal saves higher rework cost. The concept of pair programming combines software construction with implicit QA in the development team. For planning QA activities, an important research question is how effective inspectors can be expected to be at detecting defects in software (design and code) documents compared to programmers who find defects as by-product of their usual construction activities. In this paper we present an initial empirical study that compares the defect detection effectiveness of a best-practice inspection technique with defect detection as by-product of constructive software evolution tasks during pair programming. Surprisingly, in the study context pair programmers were more effective to find defects in design documents than inspectors. However, when building a larger team for defect detection, a mix of inspection and pair programming can be expected to work better than any single technique