Tiering Effects in Third-party Logistics: A First-tier Buyer Perspective

This doctoral dissertation takes a buy side perspective to third-party logistics (3PL) providers’ service tiering by applying a linear serial dyadic view to transactions. It takes its point of departure not only from the unalterable focus on the dyad levels as units of analysis and how to manage them, but also the characteristics both creating and determining purposeful conditions for a longer duration. A conceptual framework is proposed and evaluated on its ability to capture logistics service buyers’ perceptions of service tiering. The problem discussed is in the theoretical context of logistics and reflects value appropriation, power dependencies, visibility in linear serial dyads, a movement towards the more market governed modes of transactions (i.e. service tiering) and buyers’ risk perception of broader utilisation of the logistics services market. Service tiering, in a supply chain setting, with the lack of multilateral agreements between supply chain members, is new. The deductive research approach applied, in which theoretically based propositions are empirically tested with quantitative and qualitative data, provides new insight into (contractual) transactions in 3PL. The study findings imply that the understanding of power dependencies and supply chain dynamics in a 3PL context is still in its infancy. The issues found include separation of service responsibilities, supply chain visibility, price-making behaviour and supply chain strategies under changing circumstances or influence of non-immediate supply chain actors. Understanding (or failing to understand) these issues may mean remarkable implications for the industry. Thus, the contingencies may trigger more open-book policies, larger liability scope of 3PL service providers or insourcing of critical logistics activities from the first-tier buyer core business and customer service perspectives. In addition, a sufficient understanding of the issues surrounding service tiering enables proactive responses to devise appropriate supply chain strategies. The author concludes that qualitative research designs, facilitating data collection on multiple supply chain actors, may capture and increase understanding of the impact of broader supply chain strategies. This would enable pattern-matching through an examination of two or more sides of exchange transactions to measure relational symmetries across linear serial dyads. Indeed, the performance of the firm depends not only on how efficiently it cooperates with its partners, but also on how well exchange partners cooperate with an organisation’s own business.

Parallelization of an unstructured data based cell centre finite volume code, HIFUN-3D

This work describes the parallelization of High Resolution flow solver on unstructured meshes, HIFUN-3D, an unstructured data based finite volume solver for 3-D Euler equations. For mesh partitioning, we use METIS, a software based on multilevel graph partitioning. The unstructured graph used for partitioning is associated with weights both on its vertices and edges. The data residing on every processor is split into four layers. Such a novel procedure of handling data helps in maintaining the effectiveness of the serial code. The communication of data across the processors is achieved by explicit message passing using the standard blocking mode feature of Message Passing Interface (MPI). The parallel code is tested on PACE++128 available in CFD Center

Pre-eclampsia : The role of soluble VEGF receptor-1 and related anti-angiogenic factors beyond

Pre-eclampsia is a pregnancy complication that affects about 5% of all pregnancies. It is known to be associated with alterations in angiogenesis -related factors, such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). An excess of antiangiogenic substances, especially the soluble receptor-1 of VEGF (sVEGFR-1), has been observed in maternal circulation after the onset of the disease, probably reflecting their increased placental production. Smoking reduces circulating concentrations of sVEGFR-1 in non-pregnant women, and in pregnant women it reduces the risk of pre-eclampsia. Soluble VEGFR-1 acts as a natural antagonist of VEGF and placental growth factor (PlGF) in human circulation, holding a promise for potential therapeutic use. In fact, it has been used as a model to generate a fusion protein, VEGF Trap , which has been found effective in anti-angiogenic treatment of certain tumors and ocular diseases. In the present study, we evaluated the potential use of maternal serum sVEGFR-1, Angiopoietin-2 (Ang-2) and endostatin, three central anti-angiogenic markers, in early prediction of subsequent pre-eclampsia. We also studied whether smoking affects circulating sVEGFR-1 concentrations in pregnant women or their first trimester placental secretion and expression in vitro. Last, in order to allow future discussion on the potential therapy based on sVEGFR-1, we determined the biological half-life of endogenous sVEGFR-1 in human circulation, and measured the concomitant changes in free VEGF concentrations. Blood or placental samples were collected from a total of 268 pregnant women between the years 2001 2007 in Helsinki University Central Hospital for the purposes above. The biomarkers were measured using commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). For the analyses of sVEGFR-1, Ang-2 and endostatin, a total of 3 240 pregnant women in the Helsinki area were admitted to blood sample collection during two routine ultrasoundscreening visits at 13.7 ± 0.5 (mean ± SD) and 19.2 ± 0.6 weeks of gestation. Of them, 49 women later developing pre-eclampsia were included in the study. Their disease was further classified as mild in 29 and severe in 20 patients. Isolated early-onset intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) was diagnosed in 16 women with otherwise normal medical histories and uncomplicated pregnancies. Fifty-nine women remaining normotensive, non-proteinuric and finally giving birth to normal-weight infants were picked to serve as the control population of the study. Maternal serum concentrations of Ang-2, endostatin and sVEGFR-1, were increased already at 16 20 weeks of pregnancy, about 13 weeks before the clinical manifestation of preeclampsia. In addition, these biomarkers could be used to identify women at risk with a moderate precision. However, larger patient series are needed to determine whether these markers could be applied for clinical use to predict preeclampsia. Intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR), especially if noted at early stages of pregnancy and not secondary to any other pregnancy complication, has been suggested to be a form of preeclampsia compromising only the placental sufficiency and the fetus, but not affecting the maternal endothelium. In fact, IUGR and preeclampsia have been proposed to share a common vascular etiology in which factors regulating early placental angiogenesis are likely to play a central role. Thus, these factors have been suggested to be involved in the pathogenesis of IUGR. However, circulating sVEGFR-1, Ang-2 and endostatin concentrations were unaffected by subsequent IUGR at early second trimester. Furthermore, smoking was not associated with alterations in maternal circulating sVEGFR-1 or its placental production. The elimination of endogenous sVEGFR-1 after pregnancy was calculated from serial samples of eight pregnant women undergoing elective Caesarean section. As typical for proteins in human compartments, the elimination of sVEGFR-1 was biphasic, containing a rapid halflife of 3.4 h and a slow one of 29 h. The decline in sVEGFR-1 concentrations after mid-trimester legal termination of pregnancy was accompanied with a simultaneous increase in the serum levels of free VEGF so that within a few days after pregnancy VEGF dominated in the maternal circulation. Our study provides novel information on the kinetics of endogenous sVEGFR-1, which serves as a potential tool in the development of new strategies against diseases associated with angiogenic imbalance and alterations in VEGF signaling.

On Minimization of Test Application Time for RAS

Conventional Random access scan (RAS) for testing has lower test application time, low power dissipation, and low test data volume compared to standard serial scan chain based design In this paper, we present two cluster based techniques, namely, Serial Input Random Access Scan and Variable Word Length Random Access Scan to reduce test application time even further by exploiting the parallelism among the clusters and performing write operations on multiple bits Experimental results on benchmarks circuits show on an average 2-3 times speed up in test write time and average 60% reduction in write test data volume

Una gramática descriptiva del chabacano de Ternate

This dissertation is a descriptive grammar of Ternate Chabacano, a Spanish-lexifier Creole spoken by 3.000 people in the town of Ternate, Philippines. The dissertation offers an analysis of the phonological, morphological, and syntactic system of the language. It includes an overview of the historical background, the current situation of the speech community and a collection of annotated texts. Ternate Chabacano shares many characteristics with its main adstrate language Tagalog as well as the dialectal varieties of Spanish. At present, English also exerts an influence, nevertheless mainly affecting its lexicon. The description offered is based on fieldwork conducted in Ternate. Spoken language collected through thematic interviews forms the main type of the material analysed. Information regarding the informants and text types is included in the examples. Ternate Chabacano has a five-vowel system and 17 consonant phonemes. The morphology of the language is largely isolating. Clitics are used extensively for expressing adverbial relations. The verbal system is based on the preverbal markers that express the category of tense, modality and aspect, among which aspect is the main dimension. Complex predicates and verbal chains are used in order to further distinguish aspect and modality, as well as changes of voice and valency. Intransitive verbs express motion, states, and reflexive actions, even though the majority of verbs can occur in both intransitive and transitive clauses. Ternate Chabacano is a nominative-accusative type language but the typological configuration of the Philippine languages influences the marking of its constituents. A case in point is constituted by the nominal determination system. The basic constituent order in a clause is VSO. Equative and attibutive clauses are formed by juxtaposition while the locative clauses feature a copula. Indefinite terms are expressed through existential constructions. The negation of existential clauses differs from standard negation but both are intensified in the same way. In spoken discourse, tag-questions are common. Pragmatic elements and social formulas reflect largely the corresponding Tagalog expressions. Coordination and subordination occur typically without overt markers but a variety of markers exists for expressing different relations, especially those made explicit by adverbial clauses. Verbal chains form a continuum from serial verbs to complementation and ultimately to coordination.

Toward Effective Scalar Hardware for Highly Vectorizable Applications

The performance of a program will ultimately be limited by its serial (scalar) portion, as pointed out by Amdahl′s Law. Reported studies thus far of instruction-level parallelism have mixed data-parallel program portions with scalar program portions, often leading to contradictory and controversial results. We report an instruction-level behavioral characterization of scalar code containing minimal data-parallelism, extracted from highly vectorized programs of the PERFECT benchmark suite running on a Cray Y-MP system. We classify scalar basic blocks according to their instruction mix, characterize the data dependencies seen in each class, and, as a first step, measure the maximum intrablock instruction-level parallelism available. We observe skewed rather than balanced instruction distributions in scalar code and in individual basic block classes of scalar code; nonuniform distribution of parallelism across instruction classes; and, as expected, limited available intrablock parallelism. We identify frequently occurring data-dependence patterns and discuss new instructions to reduce latency. Toward effective scalar hardware, we study latency-pipelining trade-offs and restricted multiple instruction issue mechanisms.

Test Application Time Minimization for RAS using Basis Optimization of Column Decoder

Random Access Scan, which addresses individual flip-flops in a design using a memory array like row and column decoder architecture, has recently attracted widespread attention, due to its potential for lower test application time, test data volume and test power dissipation when compared to traditional Serial Scan. This is because typically only a very limited number of random ``care'' bits in a test response need be modified to create the next test vector. Unlike traditional scan, most flip-flops need not be updated. Test application efficiency can be further improved by organizing the access by word instead of by bit. In this paper we present a new decoder structure that takes advantage of basis vectors and linear algebra to further significantly optimize test application in RAS by performing the write operations on multiple bits consecutively. Simulations performed on benchmark circuits show an average of 2-3 times speed up in test write time compared to conventional RAS.

Studies on multi-metal ion tolerance of Thiobacillus ferrooxidans

The influence of different concentrations of base metal ions, such as CU2+, Zn2+ and Fe3+, when present either alone or in different possible binary and ternary combinations in a 9K medium, on the fel rous ion oxidation ability of Thiobacillus ferrooxidans was studied. Levels and degree of toxicity of these ions have been quantified in terms of toxicity index (TI). Copper and zinc tolerant strains of the bacteria were developed through serial subculturing and their activity tested in the presence of the above metal ions in comparison with the behavior of wild unadapted cells under similar conditions. Copper tolerant strains (25 g/L Cu2+) were found to be more efficient in the bioleaching of both copper and zinc concentrates than wild unadapted strains, while zinc tolerant strains (40 g/L Zn2+) exhibited better leaching efficiency only in the bioleaching of sphalerite concentrates. The significance and relevance of multi-metal ion tolerance in Thiobacillus ferrooxidans has been highlighted with respect to bioleaching of sulphide mineral concentrates. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

PRUNE and PROBE-two modular web services for protein-protein docking

The protein-protein docking programs typically perform four major tasks: (i) generation of docking poses, (ii) selecting a subset of poses, (iii) their structural refinement and (iv) scoring, ranking for the final assessment of the true quaternary structure. Although the tasks can be integrated or performed in a serial order, they are by nature modular, allowing an opportunity to substitute one algorithm with another. We have implemented two modular web services, (i) PRUNE: to select a subset of docking poses generated during sampling search (http://pallab.serc.iisc.ernet.in/prune) and (ii) PROBE: to refine, score and rank them (http://pallab.serc.iisc.ernet.in/probe). The former uses a new interface area based edge-scoring function to eliminate > 95% of the poses generated during docking search. In contrast to other multi-parameter-based screening functions, this single parameter based elimination reduces the computational time significantly, in addition to increasing the chances of selecting native-like models in the top rank list. The PROBE server performs ranking of pruned poses, after structure refinement and scoring using a regression model for geometric compatibility, and normalized interaction energy. While web-service similar to PROBE is infrequent, no web-service akin to PRUNE has been described before. Both the servers are publicly accessible and free for use.

Static Balancing of Spring-loaded Planar Revolute-joint Linkages without Auxiliary Links

We present a method to statically balance a general treestructured,planar revolute-joint linkage loaded with linear springs or constant forces without using auxiliary links. The balancing methods currently documented in the literature use extra links; some do not apply when there are spring loads and some are restricted to only two-link serial chains. In our method, we suitably combine any non-zero-free-length load spring with another spring to result in an effective zero-free-length spring load. If a link has a single joint (with the parent link), we give a procedure to attach extra zero-free-length springs to it so that forces and moments are balanced for the link. Another consequence of this attachment is that the constraint force of the joint on the parent link becomes equivalent to a zero-free-length spring load. Hence, conceptually,for the parent link, the joint with its child is removed and replaced with the zero-free-length spring. This feature allows recursive application of this procedure from the end-branches of the tree down to the root, satisfying force and moment balance of all the links in the process. Furthermore, this method can easily be extended to the closed-loop revolute-joint linkages, which is also illustrated in the paper.

Eye-View: A retinal image capture system

This paper presents a low cost but high resolution retinal image acquisition system of the human eye. The images acquired by a CMOS image sensor are communicated through the Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface to a personal computer for viewing and further processing. The image acquisition time was estimated to be 2.5 seconds. This system can also be used in telemedicine applications.

Analog/RF Built-in-Self-Test Subsystem for a Mobile Broadcast Video Receiver in 65-nm CMOS

A built-in-self-test (BIST) subsystem embedded in a 65-nm mobile broadcast video receiver is described. The subsystem is designed to perform analog and RF measurements at multiple internal nodes of the receiver. It uses a distributed network of CMOS sensors and a low bandwidth, 12-bit A/D converter to perform the measurements with a serial bus interface enabling a digital transfer of measured data to automatic test equipment (ATE). A perturbation/correlation based BIST method is described, which makes pass/fail determination on parts, resulting in significant test time and cost reduction.

A unified view of the Apriori-based algorithms for frequent episode discovery

Frequent episode discovery framework is a popular framework in temporal data mining with many applications. Over the years, many different notions of frequencies of episodes have been proposed along with different algorithms for episode discovery. In this paper, we present a unified view of all the apriori-based discoverymethods for serial episodes under these different notions of frequencies. Specifically, we present a unified view of the various frequency counting algorithms. We propose a generic counting algorithm such that all current algorithms are special cases of it. This unified view allows one to gain insights into different frequencies, and we present quantitative relationships among different frequencies.Our unified view also helps in obtaining correctness proofs for various counting algorithms as we show here. It also aids in understanding and obtaining the anti-monotonicity properties satisfied by the various frequencies, the properties exploited by the candidate generation step of any apriori-based method. We also point out how our unified view of counting helps to consider generalization of the algorithm to count episodes with general partial orders.

Discovering injective episodes with general partial orders

Frequent episode discovery is a popular framework for temporal pattern discovery in event streams. An episode is a partially ordered set of nodes with each node associated with an event type. Currently algorithms exist for episode discovery only when the associated partial order is total order (serial episode) or trivial (parallel episode). In this paper, we propose efficient algorithms for discovering frequent episodes with unrestricted partial orders when the associated event-types are unique. These algorithms can be easily specialized to discover only serial or parallel episodes. Also, the algorithms are flexible enough to be specialized for mining in the space of certain interesting subclasses of partial orders. We point out that frequency alone is not a sufficient measure of interestingness in the context of partial order mining. We propose a new interestingness measure for episodes with unrestricted partial orders which, when used along with frequency, results in an efficient scheme of data mining. Simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms.

Synthesis, spectroscopic properties and biological evaluation of transition metal complexes of salicylhydrazone of anthranilhydrazide: X-ray crystal structure of copper complex

The transition metal complexes of salicylhydrazone of anthranilhydrazide (H2L) were synthesised. The structures of metal complexes were characterized by various spectroscopic [IR, NMR, UV-Vis, EPR], thermal and other physicochemical methods. The single-crystal X-ray diffraction study of [Cu(HL)Cl]center dot H2O reveal its orthorhombic system with space group P2(1)2(1)2 and Z=4. The copper center has a distorted square planar geometry with ONO and Cl as the donor atoms. The ligand and its metal chelates have been screened for their antimicrobial and anti-tubercular activities using serial dilution method. Metal complexes in general have exhibited better antibacterial and antifungal activity than the free ligand and in few cases better than the standard used. Among the bacterial strains used, the complexes are highly potent against Gram-positive strains compared to Gram-negative. Anti-tubercular activity exhibited by the Co(II) complex is comparable with the standard used. (C) 2011 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.