Service dominant logic:implications for postponement in service supply chains

Abstract. Different service supply chain models and frameworks have been developed based on the models of supply chain management of product manufacturing sector. Meanwhile, postponement has been studied a lot in the areas of manufacturing supply chain management, but not much evidence of service postponement has been examined. Is it possible to utilize postponement in service supply chain management? This Master’s thesis is presenting research exploring the feasibility of applying postponement strategy in managing a service supply chain. With the service dominant logic as the basement, it is discovered that service providers should focus on assist creating customers’ value-in-use, which leads to long-term and higher value-in-exchange to the service provider. Operant resources, such as knowledge on customers, must be considered critical in managing service supply chains. Value offering model is adopted as a significant adaptation to enable postponement, because it integrates both demand and supply, both customers and the provider as the service co-creators. Then it is explained in the study that how postponement can be applied to manage the service supply chain with a creative model based on the value offering theory. The proposed framework adds to the existing knowledge on service supply chain management by exploring the applicability of postponement strategy from service dominant perspective. From this sense this study is innovative and exploratory. Practically, it suggests a service firm can utilize postponement by integrating the customer and customer’s demand chain into its supply chain. Qualitative method is considered as a reasonable and valid research method for this study. Abductive reasoning works as a strategy to conduct this research as it is appropriate for theory development. A single case study is conducted with a partner company, an international knowledge-intensive service provider providing professional consulting and engineering service. Primary empirical data is collected from semi-structured interviews. The approach of data analysis is coding and hermeneutics

Analysis of Extended Algebraic Immunity of Boolean Functions

AbstractAlgebraic immunity (AI) is a new cryptographic criterion proposed against algebraic attacks. Extended algebraic immunity (EAI) extends the concept of algebraic immunity, whose point is that a Boolean function f may be replaced by another Boolean function fc called the algebraic complement of f In this paper, we investigate EAI of Boolean functions. Firstly, we present a sufficient and necessary condition to judge AI of a Boolean function equals to its EAI. Secondly, we prove that two classes of Boolean functions with maximum AI also have optimal EAI. Finally, we analyze that the structure of the annihilators of Boolean functions with the algebraic complement

Effects of Magnetic Nanoparticles and External Magnetostatic Field on the Bulk Heterojunction Polymer Solar Cells

The price of energy to separate tightly bound electron-hole pair (or charge-transfer state) and extract freely movable charges from low-mobility materials represents fundamental losses for many low-cost photovoltaic devices. In bulk heterojunction (BHJ) polymer solar cells (PSCs), approximately 50% of the total efficiency lost among all energy loss pathways is due to the photogenerated charge carrier recombination within PSCs and low charge carrier mobility of disordered organic materials. To address these issues, we introduce magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) and orientate these MNPS within BHJ composite by an external magnetostatic field. Over 50% enhanced efficiency was observed from BHJ PSCs incorporated with MNPs and an external magnetostatic field alignment when compared to the control BHJ PSCs. The optimization of BHJ thin film morphology, suppression of charge carrier recombination, and enhancement in charge carrier collection result in a greatly increased short-circuit current density and fill factor, as a result, enhanced power conversion efficiency. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep0926

Efficient Halftoning via Deep Reinforcement Learning

Halftoning aims to reproduce a continuous-tone image with pixels whose intensities are constrained to two discrete levels. This technique has been deployed on every printer, and the majority of them adopt fast methods (e.g., ordered dithering, error diffusion) that fail to render structural details, which determine halftone's quality. Other prior methods of pursuing visual pleasure by searching for the optimal halftone solution, on the contrary, suffer from their high computational cost. In this paper, we propose a fast and structure-aware halftoning method via a data-driven approach. Specifically, we formulate halftoning as a reinforcement learning problem, in which each binary pixel's value is regarded as an action chosen by a virtual agent with a shared fully convolutional neural network (CNN) policy. In the offline phase, an effective gradient estimator is utilized to train the agents in producing high-quality halftones in one action step. Then, halftones can be generated online by one fast CNN inference. Besides, we propose a novel anisotropy suppressing loss function, which brings the desirable blue-noise property. Finally, we find that optimizing SSIM could result in holes in flat areas, which can be avoided by weighting the metric with the contone's contrast map. Experiments show that our framework can effectively train a light-weight CNN, which is 15x faster than previous structure-aware methods, to generate blue-noise halftones with satisfactory visual quality. We also present a prototype of deep multitoning to demonstrate the extensibility of our method

Aloperine attenuates carbon tetrachloride-induced mouse hepatic injury via Nrf2/HO-1 pathway

Purpose: To investigate whether aloperine pretreatment ameliorates acute liver injury in carbon tetrachloride (CCl4)-treated mice.Methods: Mice were injected with CCl4 and orally administered aloperine. Blood samples and liver tissues were used for histopathological and biochemical analyses, respectively. Protein expression levels were determined by western blotting.Results: Histopathological analysis indicate that aloperine pretreatment significantly alleviated CCl4- induced mouse hepatic injury. CCl4 treatment induced the upregulation of aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), alanine amino transferase (ALT), and total bilirubin (p < 0.05). However, these alterations were significantly inhibited by aloperine treatment. Moreover, aloperine pretreatment markedly decreased (p < 0.05) the CCl4-induced expression of oxidative stress biomarkers, including malondrialdeline (MDA), glutathione (GSH), catalase (CAT), and  superoxide dismutase (SOD). Compared to the control group, the protein levels of Nrf2, HO-1, iNOS, and COX-2 were significantly increased in the CCl4 group, while Nrf2 and HO-1 were upregulated. Furthermore, iNOS and COX-2 were downregulated in mouse liver in CCl4 + aloperine group compared to CCl4 group in a concentration-dependent manner (p < 0.05).Conclusion: Aloperine pretreatment appears to markedly upregulate Nrf2 and HO-1 and downregulate iNOS and COX-2 to suppress hepatic injury in mice. Thus, aloperine is a promising treatment for acute liver injury. Keywords: Hepatic injury, Aloperine, Oxidative stress, Nrf2/HO-1 pathwa

Side-Chain Molecular Engineering of Triazole-Based Donor-Acceptor Polymeric Photocatalysts with Strong Electron Push-Pull Interactions.

By the integration of electron-deficient alkyl chain anchored triazole (TA) moieties and electron-rich pyrene units into the polymer skeleton, a new series of donor-acceptor (D-A) type semiconductive polymers were generated, bearing satisfactory light-harvesting ability and suitable bandgaps. Benefiting from the minimized exciton binding energy along with strongest D-A interaction and favorable hydrophilicity, P-TAME exhibits an outstanding photocatalytic H2 evolution rate of ~100 μmol h-1 (10 mg polymer, AQY420nm = 8.9%) and H2O2 production rate of ~190 μmol h-1 (20 mg polymer) under visible light irradiation, superior to most currently reported polymers. Besides, all these polymers can mediate water oxidation reactions to evolving O2. Thus, these TA-based polymers open a new avenue for tailor-made efficient photocatalysts with broad photocatalytic activities

Side‐Chain Molecular Engineering of Triazole‐Based Donor‐Acceptor Polymeric Photocatalysts with Strong Electron Push‐Pull Interactions

AbstractA new series of donor‐acceptor (D‐A)‐type semiconductive polymers were generated by the integration of electron‐deficient alkyl chain anchored triazole (TA) moieties and electron‐rich pyrene units into the polymer skeleton. The polymer series demonstrated satisfactory light‐harvesting ability and suitable band gaps. In the series, polymer P‐TAME benefits from a minimized exciton binding energy, strongest D‐A interaction, and favorable hydrophilicity, affording an outstanding photocatalytic H2 evolution rate of ca. 100 μmol h−1 (10 mg polymer, AQY420 nm=8.9 %) and H2O2 production rate of ca. 190 μmol h−1 (20 mg polymer) under visible‐light irradiation, which is superior to most currently reported polymers. All polymers in the series can mediate water oxidation reactions to evolve O2. Thus, these TA‐based polymers open up a new avenue toward tailor‐made efficient photocatalysts with broad photocatalytic activities.</jats:p