Production planning of multi-stage multi-option seru production systems with sustainable measures

With the concerns over climate change and the escalation in worldwide population, sustainable development attracts more and more attention of academia, policy makers, and businesses in countries. Sustainable manufacturing is an inextricable measure to achieve sustainable development since manufacturing is one of the main energy consumers and greenhouse gas contributors. In the previous researches on production planning of manufacturing systems, environmental factor was rarely considered. This paper investigates the production planning problem under the performance measures of economy and environment with respect to seru production systems, a new manufacturing system praised as Double E (ecology and economy) in Japanese manufacturing industries. We propose a mathematical model with two objectives minimizing carbon dioxide emission and makespan for processing all product types by a seru production system. To solve this mathematical model, we develop an algorithm based on the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II. The computation results and analysis of three numeral examples confirm the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Multigrid for American option pricing with stochastic volatility

The paper describes an implicit finite difference approach to the pricing of American options on assets with a stochastic volatility. A multigrid procedure is described for the fast iterative solution of the discrete linear complementarity problems that result. The accuracy and performance of this approach is improved considerably by a strike-price related analytic transformation of asset prices and adaptive time-stepping.

Can evidence-based healthy housing interventions be put into practice in the UK's private housing sector?

The UK’s public health agenda has encouraged enhanced housing and health interventions. The private housing sector (privately rented and owner occupied) is the favoured and majority UK tenure, but is it seen as a primarily health promoting environment, or a commercial asset? There has been a growing interest in integrating health and housing policy in recent years. However, housing and public health fall under separate government departments and funding regimes. Partnership working has sought to overcome silo working and encourage evidence-based practice, yet is particularly challenging for interventions in the private housing sector, with an increased emphasis on ‘personal responsibility’ for conditions. Strategic public health frameworks are in place, but barriers remain and there is pressure for organisations to revert to core activities. An accessible, continually updated evidence base specific to private sector housing is recommended, to help estimate health gain arising from interventions to prioritise activities and address inequalities.

Increased expression of fibroblast activation protein-alpha in keloid fibroblasts: implications for development of a novel treatment option.

Keloid scars are common benign fibroproliferative reticular dermal lesions with unknown etiology and ill-defined management with high rate of recurrence post surgery. The progression of keloids is characterized by increased deposition of extracellular matrix proteins, invasion into the surrounding healthy skin and inflammation. Fibroblasts are considered to be the key cellular mediators of fibrogenesis in keloid scars. Fibroblast activation protein alpha (FAP-a) and dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPPIV) are proteases located at the plasma membrane promoting cell invasiveness and tumor growth and have been previously associated with keloid scars. Therefore, in this study we analyzed in further detail the expression of FAP-a in keloid fibroblasts compared to control skin fibroblasts. Dermal fibroblasts were obtained from punch-biopsies from the active margin of four keloids and four control skin samples. Flow cytometry was used to analyze FAP-a expression and the CytoSelect(®) 24-Well Collagen I Cell Invasion Assay was applied to study fibroblast invasion. Secretion of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins was investigated by multiplexed particle-based flow cytometric assay and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. We found an increased expression of FAP-a in keloid fibroblasts compared to control skin fibroblasts (p

Molecular evolution of proadrenomedullin N-terminal 20 peptide (PAMP):evidence for gene co-option

Posttranslational processing of proadrenomedullin generates two biologically active peptides, adrenomedullin (AM) and proadrenomedullin N-terminal 20 peptide (PAMP). Sequence comparison of homologous proadrenomedullin genes in vertebrate evolution shows a high degree of stability in the reading frame for AM, whereas PAMP sequence changes rapidly. Here we investigate the functional significance of PAMP phylogenetic variation studying two of PAMP's better characterized physiological activities, angiogenic potential and antimicrobial capability, with synthetic peptides carrying the predicted sequence for human, mouse, chicken, and fish PAMP. All tested peptides induced angiogenesis when compared with untreated controls, but chicken and fish PAMP, which lack terminal amidation, were apparently less angiogenic than their human and mouse homologs. Confirming the role of amidation in angiogenesis, Gly-extended and free acid variants of human PAMP produced responses similar to the natural nonamidated peptides. In contrast, antimicrobial activity was restricted to human PAMP, indicating that this function may have been acquired at a late time during the evolution of PAMP. Interestingly, free acid human PAMP retained antimicrobial activity whereas the Gly-extended form did not. This fact may reflect the need for maintaining a tightly defined structural conformation in the pore-forming mechanism proposed for these antimicrobial agents. The evolution of PAMP provides an example of an angiogenic peptide that developed antimicrobial capabilities without losing its original function.