Exploiting supplier capabilities to maximise product design opportunities in the fuzzy front end activities

This paper explores the Fuzzy Front-End (FFE), i.e. the first phase of the Product Design and Development process where a company formulates a product concept to be developed and decides whether or not to invest resources in the further development of an idea. Our goal is to understand how companies leverage supply chain capabilities to improve product design opportunities in order to obtain optimized product concepts in the FFE. From the analysis of our pilot study, the results suggest that FFE is organized differently depending on design requirements and supply chain capabilities and that matching design requirements with supplier capabilities during the FFE improves performance. Therefore, the findings indicate that the proposed Conceptual Framework has the potential to be used by companies to design their FFE and to enhance the use of supply chain capabilities in their product design activities

Framework for Excellence provider guide 2010/11

"The prime purposes of the Framework for Excellence (FfE) are to provide information for learners and employers to make informed choices about post -16 education and training and to provide consistent management information on key performance indicators (PIs) for all post-16 providers. Throughout 2010/11, work will continue to be undertaken with the sector to ensure that the FfE PIs are calculated and presented in the most appropriate ways to fulfil the prime purposes. This document sets out the methodologies for collecting and collating data for the FfE PIs in 2010/11." - Page 1

Stability of exact force-free electrodynamic solutions and scattering from spacetime curvature

Recently, a family of exact force-free electrodynamic (FFE) solutions was given by Brennan, Gralla and Jacobson, which generalizes earlier solutions by Michel, Menon and Dermer, and other authors. These solutions have been proposed as useful models for describing the outer magnetosphere of conducting stars. As with any exact analytical solution that aspires to describe actual physical systems, it is vitally important that the solution possess the necessary stability. In this paper, we show via fully nonlinear numerical simulations that the aforementioned FFE solutions, despite being highly special in their properties, are nonetheless stable under small perturbations. Through this study, we also introduce a three-dimensional pseudospectral relativistic FFE code that achieves exponential convergence for smooth test cases, as well as two additional well-posed FFE evolution systems in the appendix that have desirable mathematical properties. Furthermore, we provide an explicit analysis that demonstrates how propagation along degenerate principal null directions of the spacetime curvature tensor simplifies scattering, thereby providing an intuitive understanding of why these exact solutions are tractable, i.e. why they are not backscattered by spacetime curvature.Comment: 33 pages, 21 figures; V2 updated to match published versio

The Food For Education program in Bangladesh

The Government of Bangladesh launched the innovative Food for Education (FFE) program in 1993. The FFE program provides a free monthly ration of rice or wheat to poor families if their children attend primary school. The goals of this program are to increase primary school enrollment, promote attendance, reduce dropout rates, and enhance the quality of education. This paper presents the findings of a recent International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) evaluation of the FFE program that demonstrates the extent to which these goals were met. This evaluation uses primary data collected from multiple surveys covering schools, households, communities, and foodgrain dealers. The authors first examine the performance of the FFE program, showing that it has largely fulfilled its objectives of increasing school enrollment, promoting school attendance, and preventing dropouts. The enrollment increase was greater for girls than for boys. The quality of education, however, remains a problem. Next, they analyze the targeting effectiveness of the program, its impact on food security, and its efficiency in distributing rations. In general, the FFE program targets low-income households. However, there is considerable scope for improving targeting, as a sizable number of poor households remain excluded from the program even while many nonpoor households are included. Furthermore, the evaluation results indicate that the functioning of the current private-dealer-based foodgrain distribution system of the FFE program is not satisfactory.School children Food ,

Analytical model of 1D Carbon-based Schottky-Barrier Transistors

Nanotransistors typically operate in far-from-equilibrium (FFE) conditions, that cannot be described neither by drift-diffusion, nor by purely ballistic models. In carbonbased nanotransistors, source and drain contacts are often characterized by the formation of Schottky Barriers (SBs), with strong influence on transport. Here we present a model for onedimensional field-effect transistors (FETs), taking into account on equal footing both SB contacts and FFE transport regime. Intermediate transport is introduced within the Buttiker probe approach to dissipative transport, in which a non-ballistic transistor is seen as a suitable series of individually ballistic channels. Our model permits the study of the interplay of SBs and ambipolar FFE transport, and in particular of the transition between SB-limited and dissipation-limited transport

Approximating the Permanent with Fractional Belief Propagation

We discuss schemes for exact and approximate computations of permanents, and compare them with each other. Specifically, we analyze the Belief Propagation (BP) approach and its Fractional Belief Propagation (FBP) generalization for computing the permanent of a non-negative matrix. Known bounds and conjectures are verified in experiments, and some new theoretical relations, bounds and conjectures are proposed. The Fractional Free Energy (FFE) functional is parameterized by a scalar parameter $\gamma\in[-1;1]$, where $\gamma=-1$ corresponds to the BP limit and $\gamma=1$ corresponds to the exclusion principle (but ignoring perfect matching constraints) Mean-Field (MF) limit. FFE shows monotonicity and continuity with respect to $\gamma$. For every non-negative matrix, we define its special value $\gamma_*\in[-1;0]$ to be the $\gamma$ for which the minimum of the $\gamma$-parameterized FFE functional is equal to the permanent of the matrix, where the lower and upper bounds of the $\gamma$-interval corresponds to respective bounds for the permanent. Our experimental analysis suggests that the distribution of $\gamma_*$ varies for different ensembles but $\gamma_*$ always lies within the $[-1;-1/2]$ interval. Moreover, for all ensembles considered the behavior of $\gamma_*$ is highly distinctive, offering an emprirical practical guidance for estimating permanents of non-negative matrices via the FFE approach.Comment: 42 pages, 14 figure