Economic order quantity under retailer partial trade credit in two-echelon supply chain

In this paper, we want to investigate the retailer’s inventory policy when the retailer maintains a powerful position in two-echelon supply chain. That is, we assumed that the retailer can obtain the full trade credit offered by the supplier yet the retailer just offers the partial trade credit to their customers under two-level trade credit situation. Then, we investigate the retailer’s inventory system as a cost minimization problem to determine the retailer’s optimal inventory policy in two-echelon supply chain. Finally, numerical examples are given to illustrate the results and to obtain managerial insights

I. Chemical Synthesis of Lactose-1-Phosphate and Galactose 1,6-Diphosphate II. Induction of Tyrosine Transaminase in Isolated Rat Liver Cells

Chemistr

Understanding the antecedents of consumer brand engagement by managing brand communities on social media

As social media provide companies with opportunities to create touch-points by enabling consumers to interact with brands in new ways, a key issue for organizations is how to use brand communities to engage customers and enhance their relationships with brands. Brand community interactivity is one of the latest developments to engage consumers in online brand communities. The objective of brand communities is not only to attract potential customers, but also to retain loyal consumers and gain advocates. Thus, brands and companies’ social media activity should be appropriately organized and managed for high-level consumer brand engagement (CBE), which is a comprehensive construct that allow companies to examine the bond between their brands and consumers. The essence of this CBE bond is related to the involvement of consumers, as it increases the touch-points between them and the brand. This study examined perceived interactivity as a driving factor in the context of a brand community on social media with the purpose of encouraging consumer community engagement, community satisfaction, and consumer brand engagement (CBE). Two second-order constructs were operationalized in the research model. Communication, responsiveness, and control were treated as reflective factors to create the second-order construct “perceived interactivity,” while the other second-order construct “CBE” comprised cognitive processing, affection, and activation as reflective indicators. The results, based on data collected from 328 social media users who are followers of a smartphone brand’s Facebook page, indicated that perceived interactivity is likely to significantly affect consumer community engagement and community satisfaction, which in turn foster brand engagement. Successful social media marketing practices for companies should take responsibility for transforming consumer community engagement into CBE, as it is imperative for organizations building brand communities to enhance their consumer community satisfaction through proper community management to achieve high CBE

Hospitalized Pediatric Parainfluenza Virus Infections in a Medical Center

Background/PurposeParainfluenza viruses (PIVs) are common pathogens in respiratory tract infections. The aims of this study were to determine the clinical presentation of PIV infections in hospitalized children and to identify particular clinical indications that may effectively distinguish between different PIV serotypes.MethodsA retrospective review of data from children hospitalized with PIV infections at the Mackay Memory Hospital in Taipei between January 2005 and December 2007 was undertaken. Symptoms, signs, laboratory findings and seasonal variations between different types of PIV (serotypes 1, 2 and 3) were compared.ResultsA total of 206 patients [119 (57.8%) boys and 87 (42.2%) girls] were enrolled in the study. Seventy-four (35.9%) patients were infected with PIV serotype 1, 25 (12.1%) with serotype 2 and 107 (51.9%) with serotype 3. The most common clinical presentations were fever (81.1%), cough (66.0%), rhinorrhea (44.2%) and hoarseness (22.3%); 4.9% of the infected children also had skin rashes. No significant differences were found in average white blood cell counts and C-reactive protein levels between the three serotypes. PIV serotype 1 infections were discernible throughout the year; serotype 2 tended to cluster in the late summer and autumn of 2005 and 2007; and serotype 3 was more common in the spring and early summer.ConclusionThe clinical presentation of PIV infection in hospitalized children ranges from upper respiratory tract infection to croup, bronchiolitis and viral bronchopneumonia, with the different types of PIV infections giving rise to similar symptoms. The seasonal distribution of the different serotypes is, nevertheless, quite distinct

An Enhanced Screenshot Interaction with Animated Stickers to Promote Learning Transfer

This study has implemented a platform, namely piniton.tw, rolling out a redesign of user interaction with screenshot. It is an excellent environment for students’ collaborative learning, as students upload screenshots and interact with each other to complete assignments by using animated stickers. As the study intended to investigate how to promote learning transfer by means of such enhanced screenshot interaction with animated stickers, task difficulty, online participation, and learning transfer were chosen as the basis for the research model. By applying the technology acceptance model, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and behavioral intention were included. The results indicated that students’ perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are likely to significantly affect their behavioral intention, which in turn promote learning transfer. An implication is that students’ learning transfer could be prompted greatly by enhancing their intention to use such platform that provides enhanced screenshot interaction with animated stickers

Field-Free Switching in Symmetry Breaking Multilayers: The Critical Role of Interlayer Chiral Exchange

It is crucial to realize field-free, deterministic, current-induced switching in spin-orbit torque magnetic random-access memory (SOT-MRAM) with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). A tentative solution has emerged recently, which employs the interlayer chiral exchange coupling or the interlayer Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (i-DMI) to achieve symmetry breaking. We hereby investigate the interlayer DMI in a Pt/Co multilayer system with orthogonally magnetized layers, using repeatedly stacked [Pt/Co]n structure with PMA, and a thick Co layer with in-plane magnetic anisotropy (IMA). We clarify the origin and the direction of such symmetry breaking with relation to the i-DMI effective field, and show a decreasing trend of the said effective field magnitude to the stacking number (n). By comparing the current-induced field-free switching behavior for both PMA and IMA layers, we confirm the dominating role of i-DMI in such field-free switching, excluding other possible mechanisms such as tilted-anisotropy and unconventional spin currents that may have arisen from the symmetry breaking

How Does Social Media Interactivity Affect Brand Loyalty?

As social media has become a prominent platform for networking, many organizations have begun to establish more than one brand community, as a set of supplements to their branded websites. Once most online brand interactions take place on social networking sites rather than branded sites, such customer-oriented interactions will become much more complicated and unpredictable. It is a real challenge for organizations to build successful customer-brand relationships through social networking sites. Hence, organizations that wish to enhance brand loyalty by running brand communities face the challenge of effectively conducting social customer relationship management (CRM) tactics. As social media users are susceptible to highly interactive features, understanding the nature of social media interactivity in brand communities is the key to building successful social CRM. The aim of the study is to investigate not only the effect of social media interactivity on community benefits, but also the effect of community benefits on brand loyalty. In addition to measuring the direct effects of social influence and media richness on brand loyalty, the study assessed the indirect effect of responsiveness on brand loyalty by means of community benefits, including knowledge gains and sense of membership. The results, based on data collected from 229 social media users who are followers of a Super Basketball League (SBL) team’s Facebook page, indicated that media richness had a strong, positive, and direct effect on brand loyalty, and that responsiveness had direct effects on their knowledge gains and their sense of membership, which in turn affected brand loyalty indirectly

An easy approach to derive EOQ and EPQ models with shortage and defective items

Huang [Journal of Statistics and Management Systems, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 171-180, 2003.] studied the EOQ (Economic Order Quantity) and EPQ (Economic Production Quantity) models with backlogging and defective items using the algebraic approach. He assumed that a 100% inspection policy and the known proportion of defective items was removed after the screening process prior to storage or use. In this paper, we will offer another simple approach to find both the optimal lot size and backorder level under the minimized total relevant cost per unit time