An Efficient Approach for Coordination of Dual-Channel Closed-Loop Supply Chain Management

[EN] In this paper, a closed-loop supply chain composed of dual-channel retailers and manufacturers, a dynamic game model under the direct recovery, and an entrusted third-party recycling mode of the manufacturer is constructed. The impact of horizontal fairness concern behavior is introduced on the pricing strategies and utility of decision makers under different recycling models. The equilibrium strategy at fair neutrality is used as a reference to compare offline retails sales. Research shows that in the closed-loop supply chain of dual-channel sales, whether in the case of fair neutrality or horizontal fairness concerns, the manufacturer's direct recycling model is superior to the entrusted third-party recycling, and the third-party recycling model is transferred by the manufacturer. In the direct recycling model, the horizontal fairness concern of offline retailers makes two retailers in the positive supply chain compete to lower the retail price in order to increase market share. Manufacturers will lower the wholesale price to encourage competition, and the price will be the horizontal fairness concern coefficient, which is negatively correlated. In the reverse supply chain, manufacturers increase the recycling rate of used products. This pricing strategy increases the utility of manufacturers and the entire supply chain system compared to fair neutral conditions, while two retailers receive diminished returns. Manufacturers, as channel managers to encourage retailers to compete for price cuts, can be coordinated through a three-way revenue sharing contract to achieve Pareto optimality.This research was funded by Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de Espana grant number BIA2017-87573-C2-2-P.Arshad, M.; Khalid, QS.; Lloret, J.; León Fernández, A. (2018). An Efficient Approach for Coordination of Dual-Channel Closed-Loop Supply Chain Management. Sustainability. 10(10). https://doi.org/10.3390/su10103433S101

Diagnostic accuracy of digital mammography in the detection of breast cancer

Introduction Breast cancer has a high prevalence in the community and places very high demands on resources. Digital mammography provides a good quality image with reduced radiation dose and can detect breast carcinoma in its earlier stages, resulting in good prognosis and improved patient survival. Objective To calculate the diagnostic accuracy of digital mammography in the detection of breast cancer, using histopathology as a gold standard in women aged over 30 years, who are undergoing mammography for screening and diagnostic purposes. Materials and methods This was a cross-sectional analytical study, conducted in the department of radiology, for a total duration of 10 months. A total of 122 patients of age above 30 years, referred for digital mammography for the evaluation of different symptoms related to breast diseases, followed by biopsy/surgery and histopathology, were included in the study. Result Our data confirmed that digital mammography is a highly accurate tool for breast cancer detection having a sensitivity of 97%, a specificity of 64.5%, a positive predictive value of 89%, and a negative predictive value of 90.9%, with a diagnostic accuracy of 89.3%. Conclusion Considering our results, we recommend that digital mammography should replace screen-film mammography as a basic tool to detect breast cancer for both screening and diagnostic purpose

Application of exact and multi-heuristic approaches to a sustainable closed loop supply chain network design

Closed-loop supply chains (CLSC) are gaining popularity due to their efficiency in addressing economic, environmental, and social concerns. An important point to ponder in the distribution of CLSC is that imperfect refrigeration and bad road conditions may result in product non-conformance during the transit and thus such products are to be returned to the supply node. This may hinder the level of customer satisfaction. This paper presents a sustainable closed-loop supply chain framework coupled with cross-docking subject to product non-conformance. A cost model is proposed to investigate the economic and environmental aspects of such systems. The transportation cost is analyzed in terms of total carbon emissions. A set of metaheuristics are administered to solve the model and a novel lower bound is proposed to relax the complexity of the proposed model. The results of different size problems are compared with the branch and bound approach and the proposed lower bound. The results indicate that the proposed research framework, mathe-matical model, and heuristic schemes can aid the decision-makers in a closed-loop supply chain context

Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying into two photons in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV

A search for a Higgs boson decaying into two photons is described. The analysis is performed using a dataset recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC from pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, which corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.8 inverse femtobarns. Limits are set on the cross section of the standard model Higgs boson decaying to two photons. The expected exclusion limit at 95% confidence level is between 1.4 and 2.4 times the standard model cross section in the mass range between 110 and 150 GeV. The analysis of the data excludes, at 95% confidence level, the standard model Higgs boson decaying into two photons in the mass range 128 to 132 GeV. The largest excess of events above the expected standard model background is observed for a Higgs boson mass hypothesis of 124 GeV with a local significance of 3.1 sigma. The global significance of observing an excess with a local significance greater than 3.1 sigma anywhere in the search range 110-150 GeV is estimated to be 1.8 sigma. More data are required to ascertain the origin of this excess.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters

Study of the mass and spin-parity of the Higgs boson candidate via its decays to Z boson pairs

This is the pre-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2013 CERN.A study is presented of the mass and spin-parity of the new boson recently observed at the LHC at a mass near 125 GeV. An integrated luminosity of 17.3  fb-1, collected by the CMS experiment in proton-proton collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, is used. The measured mass in the ZZ channel, where both Z bosons decay to e or μ pairs, is 126.2±0.6(stat)±0.2(syst)  GeV. The angular distributions of the lepton pairs in this channel are sensitive to the spin-parity of the boson. Under the assumption of spin 0, the present data are consistent with the pure scalar hypothesis, while disfavoring the pure pseudoscalar hypothesis.This study is supported by the: BMWF and FWF (Austria); FNRS and FWO (Belgium); CNPq, CAPES, FAPERJ, and FAPESP (Brazil); MEYS (Bulgaria); CERN; CAS, MoST, and NSFC (China); COLCIENCIAS (Colombia); MSES (Croatia); RPF (Cyprus); MoER, SF0690030s09 and ERDF (Estonia); Academy of Finland, MEC, and HIP (Finland); CEA and CNRS/IN2P3 (France); BMBF, DFG, and HGF (Germany); GSRT (Greece); OTKA and NKTH (Hungary); DAE and DST (India); IPM (Iran); SFI (Ireland); INFN (Italy); NRF and WCU (Korea); LAS (Lithuania); CINVESTAV, CONACYT, SEP, and UASLP-FAI (Mexico); MSI (New Zealand); PAEC (Pakistan); MSHE and NSC (Poland); FCT (Portugal); JINR (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan); MON, RosAtom, RAS and RFBR (Russia); MSTD (Serbia); SEIDI and CPAN (Spain); Swiss Funding Agencies (Switzerland); NSC (Taipei); ThEP, IPST and NECTEC (Thailand); TUBITAK and TAEK (Turkey); NASU (Ukraine); STFC (United Kingdom); DOE and NSF (USA)

Searches for Higgs bosons in pp collisions at in the context of four-generation and fermiophobic models

Searches are reported for Higgs bosons in the context of either the standard model extended to include a fourth generation of fermions (SM4) with masses of up to 600 GeV or fermiophobic models. For the former, results from three decay modes (tau tau, WW, and ZZ) are combined, whilst for the latter the diphoton decay is exploited. The analysed proton-proton collision data correspond to integrated luminosities of up to 5.1 inverse femtobarns at 7 TeV and up to 5.3 inverse femtobarns at 8 TeV. The observed results exclude the SM4 Higgs boson in the mass range 110-600 GeV at 99% confidence level (CL), and in the mass range 110-560 GeV at 99.9% CL. A fermiophobic Higgs boson is excluded in the mass range 110-147 GeV at 95% CL, and in the range 110-133 GeV at 99% CL. The recently observed boson with a mass near 125 GeV is not consistent with either an SM4 or a fermiophobic Higgs boson

Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC

The article is the pre-print version of the final publishing paper that is available from the link below.Results are presented from searches for the standard model Higgs boson in proton–proton collisions At √s = 7 and 8 TeV in the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the LHC, using data samples corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 5.1 fb−1 at 7TeV and 5.3 fb−1 at 8 TeV. The search is performed in five decay modes: γγ, ZZ, W+W−, τ+τ−, and bb. An excess of events is observed above the expected background, with a local significance of 5.0 standard deviations, at a mass near 125 GeV, signalling the production of a new particle. The expected significance for a standard model Higgs boson of that mass is 5.8 standard deviations. The excess is most significant in the two decay modes with the best mass resolution, γγ and ZZ; a fit to these signals gives a mass of 125.3±0.4(stat.)±0.5(syst.) GeV. The decay to two photons indicates that the new particle is a boson with spin different from one