Distributed ledger technology in supply chains: a transaction cost perspective

With the emergence of distributed ledger technology (DLT), numerous practitioners and researchers have proclaimed its beneficial impact on supply chain transactions in the future. However, the vast majority of DLT initiatives are discontinued after a short period. With the full potential of DLT laying far down the road, especially managers in supply chain management (SCM) seek for short-term cost-saving effects of DLT in order to achieve long-term benefits of DLT in the future. However, the extant research has bypassed grounding long-term as well as short-term effects of DLT on supply chain transaction with empirical data. We address this shortcoming, following an abductive research approach and combining empirical data from a multiple case study design with the corresponding literature. Our study reveals that the effects of DLT on supply chain transactions are two-sided. We found six effects of DLT solutions that have a cost-reducing or cost avoidance impact on supply chain transactions. In addition, we found two effects that change the power distribution between buyers and suppliers in transactions and a single effect that reduces the dependency of supply chain transactions on third parties. While cost-reducing and avoidance as well as dependency-reducing effects are positive effects, the change in power distribution might come with disadvantages. With these findings, the paper provides the first empirical evidence of the impact of DLT on supply chain transactions, which will enable managers to improve their assessment of DLT usage in supply chains.     

Supramolecular Assembly of Aminoethylene‐Lipopeptide PMO Conjugates into RNA Splice‐Switching Nanomicelles

Phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomers (PMOs) are oligonucleotide analogs that can be used for therapeutic modulation of pre‐mRNA splicing. Similar to other classes of nucleic acid‐based therapeutics, PMOs require delivery systems for efficient transport to the intracellular target sites. Here, artificial peptides based on the oligo(ethylenamino) acid succinyl‐tetraethylenpentamine (Stp), hydrophobic modifications, and an azide group are presented, which are used for strain‐promoted azide‐alkyne cycloaddition conjugation with splice‐switching PMOs. By systematically varying the lead structure and formulation, it is determined that the type of contained fatty acid and supramolecular assembly have a critical impact on the delivery efficacy. A compound containing linolenic acid with three cis double bonds exhibits the highest splice‐switching activity and significantly increases functional protein expression in pLuc/705 reporter cells in vitro and after local administration in vivo. Structural and mechanistic studies reveal that the lipopeptide PMO conjugates form nanoparticles, which accelerate cellular uptake and that the content of unsaturated fatty acids enhances endosomal escape. In an in vitro Duchenne muscular dystrophy exon skipping model using H2K‐mdx52 dystrophic skeletal myotubes, the highly potent PMO conjugates mediate significant splice‐switching at very low nanomolar concentrations. The presented aminoethylene‐lipopeptides are thus a promising platform for the generation of PMO‐therapeutics with a favorable activity/toxicity profile.     

Effects of breed and age at slaughter on degradation of muscle lipids during processing of dry‐cured hams

Hams from Landrace, Duroc and Hampshire pigs slaughtered at ages 6, 7.5 and 9 months were processed to generate Norwegian Parma‐style hams. Lipid contents and the compositions of fatty acid classes (ΣSFA, ΣMUFA, ΣPUFA) within neutral lipids, phospholipids and free fatty acids were determined. Small differences in lipid degradation and composition of the classes were revealed. However, significant sensory differences related to lipids were observed. Breed was more important than age. Dry‐cured Hampshire hams gave a more intense mature odour that may be associated with higher overall lipid degradation. Unexpectedly, these hams also demonstrated high juiciness and tenderness, which could be related to the melting characteristics of the fat. Dry‐cured Duroc hams showed a higher susceptibility towards rancidity, presumably associated with preferential oxidation of n‐6 fatty acids relative to C18:1 n‐9. Dry‐cured Landrace hams showed the lowest juiciness and tenderness, likely due to their lower fat content (marbling).     

爱立信IMS weShare分享每一天(系列之二)如何提供出色的用户体验?

爱立信IMS weShare业务有20%的开发与用户视觉体验相关(用户界面、图标、标签以及进度条),其它的80%则主要致力于设备间的系统.与此相对比,用户的体验则完全(100%)有赖于其可接触的事物.     

The Role of Test Protocols in Automated Test Generation for Embedded-Core-Based System ICs

Modular testing is an attractive approach to testing large system ICs, especially if they are built from pre-designed reusable embedded cores. This paper describes an automated modular test development approach. The basis of this approach is that a core or module test is dissected into a test protocol and a test pattern list. A test protocol describes in detail how to apply one test pattern to the core, while abstracting from the specific test pattern stimulus and response values. Subsequent automation tasks, such as the expansion from core-level tests to system-chip-level tests and test scheduling, all work on test protocols, thereby greatly reducing the amount of compute time and data involved. Finally, an SOC-level test is assembled from the expanded and scheduled test protocols and the (so far untouched) test patterns. This paper describes and formalizes the notion of test protocols and the algorithms for test protocol expansion and scheduling. A running example is featured throughout the paper. We also elaborate on the industrial usage of the concepts described.     

Acoustic Properties of Amorphous Solids at Very Low Temperatures: The Quest for Interacting Tunneling States

We discuss the strain dependence of the acoustic properties of amorphous metals in both normal and superconducting states, in the temperature range 0.1 mK<T<1 K. A crossover is found when the strain energy is of the order of the effective interaction energy between tunneling systems at the corresponding temperature. Our results provide clear evidence for the interaction between tunneling systems, whose energy is in quantitative agreement with theoretical expectations, and reveal that without the knowledge of the corresponding strain dependences, the measured temperature dependences below ～50 mK of the acoustic properties of disordered solids are rather meaningless.     

Determination of the uranium enrichment with the NaIGEM code

The traditional method used to non-destructively determine the uranium enrichment with an NaI detector is based on the “enrichment meter principle” (Progress report LA-4605-MS, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NNM, 1970, p. 19), which involves measuring the intensity of the 186 keV line of ²³⁵U by selecting two regions of interest for the peak and the background. This type of method suffers from several limitations, the most limiting of which are the impossibility to make wall thickness correction or to take the inference of foreign radioisotopes into account. The NaIGEM software (A guide for using NaIGEM code, version 1.5 for DOS and Windows, 2001; Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 458 (2001) 196) was developed to overcome these limitations by calculating the 186 keV line intensity with a fitting procedure. The code was tested in different measurement conditions on the wide variety of certified samples, in particular, on reprocessed uranium and on depleted material with thick steel filters interposed between the source and the detector. The results are presented to illustrate the performance and limitations of the tested version (A guide for using NaIGEM code, version 1.5 for DOS and Windows, 2001). The general performance is good except in the case of low-enriched uranium in thick containers.     

RanGen: A Random Network Generator for Activity-on-the-Node Networks

In this paper, we describe RanGen, a random network generator for generating activity-on-the-node networks and accompanying data for different classes of project scheduling problems. The objective is to construct random networks which satisfy preset values of the parameters used to control the hardness of a problem instance. Both parameters which are related to the network topology and resource-related parameters are implemented. The network generator meets the shortcomings of former network generators since it employs a wide range of different parameters which have been shown to serve as possible predictors of the hardness of different project scheduling problems. Some of them have been implemented in former network generators while others have not.     

Polyimide foams from powder: Experimental analysis of competitive diffusion phenomena

In the present study, various diffusive processes have been investigated during foaming of powdered precursors of polyimide. A detailed analysis of the powdered precursor's characteristics allows for an enhanced morphological understanding of the resulting microstructures and foam unit cell. Parameters that are central to the foaming process such as particle morphology, volatile concentration and sorption-desorption processes are evaluated. Isothermal and non-isothermal desorption experiments have been carried out by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and specific diffusive processes have been correlated to thermodynamic and kinetic transitions by means of modulated differential scanning calorimetry (MDSC) of the corresponding materials. It was found that two primary fluxes of volatiles, one out of the external surface of the particles (responsible for volatile desorption) and the other into the growing bubble (responsible for vapor supersaturation inside the bubble) compete against each other creating a competitive scenario that becomes the controlling factor for potential inflation within the precursor particles.