Supply chain risks: an automotive case study

The supply chain is a complex system exchanging information, goods, material and money within enterprises, as well as between enterprises within the value chain. An effective supply chain management contributes to large corporate profits and it is therefore a valid path to reinforce the enterprises' competitiveness. However, supply chain is exposed to influences from undesirable factors both from the outside environment and the entities in the chain. Moreover, industrial trends towards lean production, increasing outsourcing, globalisation and reliance on supply networks capabilities and innovations, increase the complexity of the supply chain . Therefore, managers need to identify, and manage risks, as well as opportunities, from a more diverse range of sources and contexts. This paper contributes to identify and categorise supply chain risks based on a literature study and an automotive manufacturer’s viewpoint. The empirical results indicate suppliers and raw material prices as the major internal and external potential risks

CORRELATIONS BETWEEN JUMP HEIGHT AND VELOCITY COMPONENTS OF DIFFERENT APPROACH STRIDES IN POWER SPIKING

The aim of present work was to find correlations between approach velocity components and jump height in power spike. Fourteen top elite volleyball players have been served for this study. A Mikro-Mak Motion Analyzer with Win-Analyze program has been used for 2D study. A Kodak video camera with 240 frames per second has also been used to better trace the markers on the shoulder, hip, knee, ankle, and toe. The program enabled us to find out the displacement and velocity of all parts and especially the hip in order to estimate subjects CG velocity components. Our findings showed that there were significant correlations between vertical component and jump height in all strides; short (r=0.71, ), normal (r=0.70, ), and long strides (r=0.88, ). The highest correlation was achieved for long stride, where the CG of players is more displaced horizontally as well as vertically. There were no meaningful correlations between Height jump and horizontal velocity component and deviation

How real is real: attitudes towards realism in selected post-war British fiction

Despite its apparent precision in meaning, realism as a once-held literary school of thought provokes controversies regarding its basic definition and the works attributed to it. This is particularly the case with the postmodern use of the term, most specifically in relation to fiction, with realism generally asserted as the traditional language of the genre. This paper is an attempt to discuss the implication and tenets of realism, its progress and changes, in selected works of post-war British fiction. Accordingly, Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, and Ian McEwan’s Atonement are dealt with to trace realism within their respective modes of new realism, fantastic-grotesque and postmodern metafiction. Having survived the early twentieth century allure of modernism, realism has gradually evolved into a new identity capable of emerging in and mingling with new modes prevalent in postmodern fiction. Owing to the spirit of the time immediately following the Second World War and the particularities of different authors, the postmodern realism has gone beyond a mere portrayal of the objective world and is in demand of a refreshed understanding of the new outlooks contemporary realism has the potentiality to offer

Grotesque representations of deviant sexuality in Ian McEwan's selected short stories

Themes of sexuality, particularly in excessive and extraordinary forms, can readily merge into the grotesque to ameliorate their depiction and thematic impact. Ian McEwan’s early fiction best exemplifies such inclinations. The psychologically violent and excessive world of McEwan’s early fiction is basically conceived in the milieu of sex and through grotesque representations. In this relation, the present work selectively focuses on “Solid Geometry” from First Love, last Rites (1975) and “Reflections of a kept Ape” and “Dead as they Come” from In between the Sheets (1978) to illustrate the implication and range of the grotesque in McEwan’s short fiction. The selected stories are discussed for their portrayal of the grotesque, as represented through transgressive partnership and deviant sexuality. The portrayal of sexuality in McEwan’s early short fiction offers a variety of the grotesque types of narrative mingling the mode both with the fantastic and the caricature

Site selection of rural waste landfill using the AHP model and GIS software (Case study: the central part of Ejroud city)

Background and Aims: Site selection and management of a landfill site is one of the main pillars of sustainable development. Selection of an appropriate site for the burial of rural wastes is of utmost importance in rural areas.  At present there is no coherent management in the field of rural wastes. Selecting the right place for landfilling requires considering several complex factors and thus the need for use of spatial information technologies and their incorporation to other managing and planning issues are raised.Materials and Methods: In this study, nine important affecting parameters in locating the waste burial site including the slope, aspect, elevation, distance to the rural points, distance to the channels, distance to the roads, distance to the faults, erosion, and land use were considered to assess the appropriate site for burial of the rural wastes of the central part of Ejroud city. The identified parameters were compared by incorporating the Analytic Hierarchy Analysis (AHP) method in a pairwise manner and the corresponding weight of each factor, which indicates the effect of that factor, was calculated utilizing the Expert Choice software. All stages of this research were conducted ethically.Results: Through the incorporation of weight layers obtained in the ArcGIS  environment, the final locating map for burial of the rural wastes in the study area was prepared and categorized into 5 classes (completely inappropriate, inappropriate, intermediate, appropriate and completely appropriate).Conclusion: The results showed that the appropriate and completely appropriate zones with 251.1 and 158.1 square kilometers had respectively the highest prefer ability for burial of the wastes in this categorization. Totally, about 41.8% of the total area of the town, was prioritized for the waste burial plans.

Mechanical damage to wheat and triticale seeds related to moisture content and impact energy

The objective of this research was to determine the effects of moisture content and the impact energy on the breakage susceptibility of wheat and triticale seeds.  The experiments were conducted at five moisture contents of 7.5%, 12%, 17%, 22% and 27% in wet basis (w.b.), and at the impact energies of 0.05 and 0.1 J.  The percentage of breakage of both wheat and triticale seeds increased as the impact energy increased.  The analysis of variance showed that the difference between breakage susceptibility of wheat and triticale seeds was significant at the 0.01% level (P<0.01).  Triticale seeds had more breakage than wheat seeds.  For both wheat and triticale seeds as the moisture content of the seeds increased, the amount of the percentage breakage of seeds decreased as a polynomial.  The average values of percentage breakage of wheat seeds decreased from 43.81% to 19.88% as the moisture content increased from 7.5% to 27% (w.b.).  Over the same moisture content range, the percentage breakage of triticale seeds varied from 81.34% to 37.77%.  Below the moisture contents of 17% (w.b.) for the wheat and 22% (w.b.) for the triticale the percentage breakage of seeds increased obviously. Keywords: wheat, triticale, mechanical damage, moisture content, impact energy, harvesting, handling, processin

Mechanical damage to pinto beans as affected by moisture content and impact energy

 Mechanical damage to seeds due to harvest, handling and other process is an important factor that affects the quality of seeds.  Seed damage results in lower grain value, storability problem, and reducing of seed germination and seedling vigor and subsequent yield of crops.  Tests were conducted to determine the extent of percentage of physical damage (PPD) and percentage of loss in germination (PLG) (physiological damage) of pinto beans due to impact.  The effects of beans moisture content (9.25%, 12.51%, 15.02% and 17.50%, wet basis) and impact energy (0.09 J, 0.19 J and 0.29 J) were determined.  The tests were conducted under laboratory conditions, using an impact test apparatus.  Results showed that effects of moisture content and impact energy on seed damages were significant.  PPD of beans was higher than PLG.  It found that the total damage of beans increased from 54.45% (48.14% PPD and 6.31% PLG) to 73.20% (63.40% PPD and 9.80% PLG) as the impact energy increased from 0.9 to 0.29 J, for all the moisture contents used.  With increasing the moisture content from 9.25% to 17.50%, the mean values of the percentage of loss in germination of beans increased from 0.53 to 15.30%.  However, by increasing in the moisture from 9.25% to 17.50%, the mean values of percentage of physical damage to beans decreased from 92.67% to 21.53%. Keywords: physical damage, reduce in germination, moisture content, impact energy, pinto bean 

An insight into gastrointestinal macromolecule delivery using physical oral devices

Oral delivery is preferred over other routes of drug administration by both patients and physicians. The bioavailability of some therapeutics that are delivered via the oral route is restricted due to the protease- and bacteria-rich environment in the gastrointestinal tract, and by the pH variability along the delivery route. Given these harsh environments, the oral delivery of therapeutic macromolecules is complicated and remains challenging. Various formulation approaches, including the use of permeation enhancers and nanosized carriers, as well as chemical alteration of the drug structure, have been studied as ways to improve the oral absorption of macromolecular drugs. Nevertheless, the bioavailability of marketed oral peptide medicines is often relatively poor. This review highlights the most recent and promising physical methods for improving the oral bioavailability of macromolecules such as peptides. These methods include microneedle injections, high-speed stream injectors, magnetic drug targeting, expandable hydrogels, and iontophoresis. We highlight the potential and challenges of these new technologies, which may impact the future approaches used by pharmaceutical companies to create more efficient and safer orally administered macromolecules

Treasure Island Security framework : A Generic Security Framework for public clouds

In this thesis we introduce a generic security framework for public clouds called Treasure Island Security framework that is designed to address the issues related to cloud computing security and specifically key-management in untrusted domains. Nowadays many cloud structure and services are provided but as an inevitable concomitant to these new products, security issues increase rapidly. Availability, integrity of data, lack of trust, confidentiality as well as security issues are also of great importance to cloud computing users; they may be more skeptical of the cloud services when they feel that they might lose the control over their data or the structures that the cloud provided for them.   Because of deferred control of data from customers to cloud providers and unknown number of third parties in between, it is almost impossible to apply traditional security methods. We present our security framework, with distributed key and sequential addressing in a simple abstract mode with a master server and adequate number of chunk servers. We assume a fixed chunk size model for large files and sequentially distribution file system with 4 separated key to decrypt/encrypt file. After reviewing the process, we analyze the Distributed Key and Sequentially Addressing Distributed file system and it's Security Risk Model. The focus of this thesis is on increasing security in untrusted domain especially in the cloud key management in public cloud. We discuss cryptographic approaches in key-management and suggest a novel cryptographic method for public cloud's key-management system based on forward-secure public key encryption, which supports a non-interactive publicly verifiable secret sharing scheme through a tree access structure. We believe that Treasure Island Security Framework can provide an increased secure environment in untrusted domains, like public cloud, in which users can securely reconstruct their secret-keys (e.g. lost passphrases). Finally, we discuss the advantages and benefits of Cloud Computing Security Framework with Distributed Key and Sequentially Addressing Distributed file system and cryptographic approaches and how it helps to improve the security levels in cloud systems.  M.S