A Survey and Analysis of Outsourcing in East China

The aim of this study is to investigate whether outsourcing activities in east china are associated with a theoretical framework derived from the literature. By the methodology of Statistics Package for the Social Science (SPSS), the results of survey indicate that outsourcing will more extensively practiced in the future, the principal outsourcing motivation are to reduce costs and focus on core businesses. The purchasing outsourcing has the largest correlation coefficients with short-term contract, the total outsourcing has a significant correlation coefficient with long-term contract at the level of =0.05. The findings indicate that high service quality and mutual trust are the main criteria for selecting outsourcing vendors. However, it is found that outsourcing satisfaction is generally low. The main benefits of outsourcing are to reduce cost, concentrate on core businesses and improve the service quality, while the main problems with outsourcing are legal disputes, disclosure of commercial secrets and conflicts with vendors.Outsourcing; strategy; contract; survey

l-connectivity, l-edge-connectivity and spectral radius of graphs

Let G be a connected graph. The toughness of G is defined as t(G)=min{\frac{|S|}{c(G-S)}}, in which the minimum is taken over all proper subsets S\subset V(G) such that c(G-S)\geq 2 where c(G-S) denotes the number of components of G-S. Confirming a conjecture of Brouwer, Gu [SIAM J. Discrete Math. 35 (2021) 948--952] proved a tight lower bound on toughness of regular graphs in terms of the second largest absolute eigenvalue. Fan, Lin and Lu [European J. Combin. 110 (2023) 103701] then studied the toughness of simple graphs from the spectral radius perspective. While the toughness is an important concept in graph theory, it is also very interesting to study |S| for which c(G-S)\geq l for a given integer l\geq 2. This leads to the concept of the l-connectivity, which is defined to be the minimum number of vertices of G whose removal produces a disconnected graph with at least l components or a graph with fewer than l vertices. Gu [European J. Combin. 92 (2021) 103255] discovered a lower bound on the l-connectivity of regular graphs via the second largest absolute eigenvalue. As a counterpart, we discover the connection between the l-connectivity of simple graphs and the spectral radius. We also study similar problems for digraphs and an edge version

Identification and Analysis of Intermediate Size Noncoding RNAs in the Human Fetal Brain

The involvement of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) in the development of the human brain remains largely unknown. Applying a cloning strategy for detection of intermediate size (50–500 nt) ncRNAs (is-ncRNAs) we have identified 82 novel transcripts in human fetal brain tissue. Most of the novel is-ncRNAs are not well conserved in vertebrates, and several transcripts were only found in primates. Northern blot and microarray analysis indicated considerable variation in expression across human fetal brain development stages and fetal tissues for both novel and known is-ncRNAs. Expression of several of the novel is-ncRNAs was conspicuously absent in one or two brain cancer cell lines, and transient overexpression of some transcripts in cancer cells significantly inhibited cell proliferation. Overall, our results suggest that is-ncRNAs play important roles in the development and tumorigenesis of human brain

Likelihood ratio tests for covariance matrices of high-dimensional normal distribution

a b s t r a c t For a random sample of size n obtained from a p-variate normal population, the likelihood ratio test (LRT) for the covariance matrix equal to a given matrix is considered. By using the Selberg integral, we prove that the LRT statistic converges to a normal distribution under the assumption p=n-y 2 ð0; 1. The result for y¼ 1 is much different from the case for y 2 ð0; 1Þ. Another test is studied: given two sets of random observations of sample size n 1 and n 2 from two p-variate normal distributions, we study the LRT for testing the two normal distributions having equal covariance matrices. It is shown through a corollary of the Selberg integral that the LRT statistic has an asymptotic normal distribution under the assumption p=n 1 -y 1 2 ð0; 1 and p=n 2 -y 2 2 ð0; 1. The case for maxfy 1 ,y 2 g ¼ 1 is much different from the case max fy 1 ,y 2 g o 1

Region of Interest Localization Methods for Publicly Available Palmprint Databases

So far, there exist many publicly available palmprint databases. However, not all of them have provided the corresponding region of interest (ROI) images. If everyone uses their own extracted ROI images for performance testing, the final accuracy is not strictly comparable. Since ROI localization is the critical stage of palmprint recognition. The location precision has a significant impact on the final recognition accuracy, especially in unconstrained scenarios. This problem has limited the applications of palmprint recognition. However, many currently published surveys only focus on feature extraction and classification methods. Throughout these years, many new ROI localization methods have been proposed. In this chapter, we will group the existing ROI localization methods into different categories, analyze their basic ideas, reproduce some of the codes, make comparisons of their performances, and provide further directions. We hope this could be a useful reference for further research

Effects of congestion charging and subsidy policy on vehicle flow and revenue with user heterogeneity

Traffic congestion is a major issue in urban traffic networks. Both congestion charging and subsidy policy can solve traffic congestion to some extent, but which one is better? Based on this, this paper constructs a typical transit network consisting of three travel tools in four common travel modes. Travelers' values of time affect their choice of transportation in the congestion network, thus a stochastic user equilibrium model is established by considering travelers' heterogenous values of time to evaluate the effects of different combinations of congestion charging and subsidy policies on vehicle flow and revenue. Numerical results indicate that the effectiveness of congestion charging and subsidy policy in alleviating traffic congestion depends on the object of charging or subsidizing. Congestion charging for private cars can reduce traffic flow and alleviate traffic congestion, but charging for ridesharing cars does not reduce traffic flow and may even cause traffic congestion. Subsidizing public buses does not reduce traffic flow, but it can ease congestion by coordinating traffic flow on both edges of the dual-modal transport. The combination of no subsidy for public buses and charging for both private cars and ridesharing cars can obtain the greatest revenue, but it does not alleviate traffic congestion. Although the combination of charging for private cars and subsidizing public buses does not bring the most benefits, it can reduce traffic flow, and its revenue is also considerable. This study can provide quantitative decision support for the government to ease traffic congestion and improve government revenue