Dynamic pricing models for electronic business

Dynamic pricing is the dynamic adjustment of prices to consumers depending upon the value these customers attribute to a product or service. Today's digital economy is ready for dynamic pricing; however recent research has shown that the prices will have to be adjusted in fairly sophisticated ways, based on sound mathematical models, to derive the benefits of dynamic pricing. This article attempts to survey different models that have been used in dynamic pricing. We first motivate dynamic pricing and present underlying concepts, with several examples, and explain conditions under which dynamic pricing is likely to succeed. We then bring out the role of models in computing dynamic prices. The models surveyed include inventory-based models, data-driven models, auctions, and machine learning. We present a detailed example of an e-business market to show the use of reinforcement learning in dynamic pricing.     

Frugal innovation and sustainable business models

This study aims to explore how frugal innovations (FIs) emerge at the grassroots level of developing countries and employ novel business models to contribute to sustainable development. It explores various business model elements, mainly viewed through the lens of value proposition, value creation, and value capture. FIs transform underserved customers at the grassroots level into novel consumer groups. By exploring three FI cases, this study contributes to the literature about FI business models. It shows how individuals with limited education, funds, and resources can bring affordable products to market using outside the box thinking to meet the needs of underserved customers in developing countries.     

Keys to effective third-party process safety audits

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA's) Process Safety Management (PSM) regulation was promulgated in 1992. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) corresponding Risk Management Program (RMP) rule followed in 1996. Both programs include requirements for triennial compliance audits. Effective compliance audits are critical in identifying program weaknesses and ensuring the safety of facility personnel and the surrounding public. Large companies with corporate and facility health, safety, and environmental groups typically have the resources and experience to conduct audits internally, either through a corporate audit team or the sharing of personnel between multiple facilities. Small to medium sized businesses frequently do not have the expertise or the resources to perform compliance audits, and rely on third-party consultants to provide these services. This paper will discuss the observations of the authors in performing audits and working with PSM/RMP programs across a number of market sectors (e.g. chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, water treatment), including effective practices, hurdles to successful implementation and execution of programs, and typical program shortcomings. The paper will also discuss steps to improve the audit process and increase effectiveness whether performed by a third party or internally.     

经济责任审计质量事中控制方法

本文主要阐述领导干部任期经济责任审计质量控制的具体方法,对各环节如何加强管理、监督,以提高审计工作质量,防范审计风险。     

The effectiveness of motor carrier safety audits.

In 1986 the federal government expanded its program of company inspections for enforcement of motor carrier safety regulations. We find that many parts of these inspections are unrelated to the safety performance of firms. Never the less, reinspection of firms found to be unsatisfactory in a previous inspection does appear to bring about a substantial improvement in their safety performance. However, such firms represent a small fraction of the industry, and the probability of being inspected is very low. Thus, the program does not appear to have resulted in a detectable improvement in the accident rate of the industry.     

The need to curb CFC emissions

The need to be careful with CFC emissions is acknowledged, due to the possible influence on the ozone layer around the globe and the greenhouse effect. A brief overview of the scientific and political conferences on this problem is given with the resulting conclusions and resolutions. Activities of the IIR on the subject of using CFCs in refrigeration technology are described. The possibilities of decreasing CFC emission and eventual substitution of these media are also discussed. The application of alternative systems and media creates many problems. The consequences of restrictions on the use of CFCs in refrigeration must be considered very seriously to obtain optimal solutions from both the ecological and economical point of view. This is very important for the well-being of mankind.

Résumé

The need to be careful with CFC emissions is acknowledged, due to the possible influence on the ozone layer around the globe and the greenhouse effect. A brief overview of the scientific and political conferences on this problem is given with the resulting conclusions and resolutions. Activities of the IIR on the subject of using CFCs in refrigeration technology are described. The possibilities of decreasing CFC emission and eventual substitution of these media are also discussed. The application of alternative systems and media creates many problems. The consequences of restrictions on the use of CFCs in refrigeration must be considered very seriously to obtain optimal solutions from both the ecological and economical point of view. This is very important for the well-being of mankind.     

The use of the Canberra metrics to aggregate metrics to sustainability

Sustainability metrics are a set of economic, environmental, and societal indicators specifically chosen to characterize a certain multidimensional sustainability system. The difficulty in establishing criteria to consider the multiple aspects involved in sustainability increases with the complexity of the system, in general associated to its dimension. This is particularly complicated for sustainability processes because they involve not only large dimensions but the indicators are usually expressed in different units. Aggregating these metrics into a single metric represents a model calculation for sustainability and provides a tool which can be used as a sustainability decision-support. In the present work we use the Canberra metrics to model the aggregation of the three dimensions of sustainability: economics, environmental, and societal (3D) metrics into a single sustainability metric. The Canberra metrics is adequate to establish how two states are similar or dissimilar. We used a simple model to show that the Canberra metrics is independent of any specific metric (indicator) satisfying an important requirement of sustainability metrics; it treats equally the contributions of the economic, social, and environmental indicators for the sustainability indicators. This allows equally weighting the economic, social, and environmental indicators. In order to verify the applicability of the model we have considered four previously studied industrial processes and compared the results of the Canberra metrics with three previously published results of other methods, for aggregating multidimensional sustainability metrics into a single metric. The results obtained through the comparisons indicate the adequacy of the Canberra to provide very good discrimination among the processes and to be a good model metrics for sustainability.     

Engineers as business leaders: A need to investigate formative collegiate experiences of highly successful executive-level engineers

1 Introduction The engineering and construction (E&C) industry is human resource-intensive.Most E&C tasks are performed,handled,or supervised by humans.Besides,...     

从《蒙特利尔议定书》走向《京都议定书》制冷行业沿着可持续方向前进的旅程

执迷不悟，无功而返——中国谚语[第一段]     

Circadian clocks optimally adapt to sunlight for reliable synchronization

Circadian oscillation provides selection advantages through synchronization to the daylight cycle. However, a reliable clock must be designed through two conflicting properties: entrainability to synchronize internal time with periodic stimuli such as sunlight, and regularity to oscillate with a precise period. These two aspects do not easily coexist, because better entrainability favours higher sensitivity which may sacrifice regularity. To investigate conditions for satisfying the two properties, we analytically calculated the optimal phase–response curve with a variational method. Our results indicate an existence of a dead zone, i.e. a time period during which input stimuli neither advance nor delay the clock. A dead zone appears only when input stimuli obey the time course of actual solar radiation, but a simple sine curve cannot yield a dead zone. Our calculation demonstrates that every circadian clock with a dead zone is optimally adapted to the daylight cycle.     

Biomedical and social contributions to sustainability

Over the past two or three centuries, biomedical advances have provided methods to prevent and treat infectious diseases. These changes have greatly reduced human suffering and enhanced sustainability by allowing people to live longer and healthier lives. The challenge for the coming centuries will be to ensure that these longer, healthier lives are also more productive lives. We must build on the gains of the past by translating new discoveries in regenerative medicine into therapies for degenerative and genetic diseases. Stem cells may be used to identify drugs that prevent the development of symptoms or to replace cells that have either died or lost their physiological function. In the case of genetic diseases, it may be possible to correct the genetic error. While most conditions that might be treated in these ways are common to all communities, some are more prevalent in specific races. Provision of these and other benefits depends not only on attainment of the research objectives, but also upon our ability to make treatment opportunities available throughout both developed and developing communities. The long history of researching and treating infectious diseases shows that it may take many decades to reap the full benefit of the new biological understanding.     

An Integrated mining approach to discover business process models with parallel structures: towards fitness improvement

Process mining (PM) is a technique to extract a process model from an event log to represent the process behaviour recorded in that event log. A mined process model with high fitness means that it can reflect most of the process behaviour recorded in the event log. Previous studies have shown that the mined model with high fitness can be used in process improvement, such as fraud detection, continuous process improvement and benchmarking. Genetic process mining (GPM) is a famous PM approach, which can simultaneously identify several process structures from event logs. However, GPM cannot effectively discover parallel structures from event logs. This study proposes a PM approach based on integration of GPM, particle swarm optimisation and differential evolution to find process models with high fitness for event logs involving multiple parallel structures. The results show that the proposed approach does indeed lead to improvement in gaining process models with high fitness for event logs involving multiple parallel structures.     

Irradiation systems which adapt to the shape of the heated object

The concept of technical systems designed for adaptive thermal irradiation of objects whose shape and position in space are variable is presented.Translated from Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 61, No. 6, pp. 993–997, December, 1991.     

How urban societies can adapt to resource shortage and climate change

With more than half the world's population now living in urban areas and with much of the world still urbanizing, there are concerns that urbanization is a key driver of unsustainable resource demands. Urbanization also appears to contribute to ever-growing levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Meanwhile, in much of Africa and Asia and many nations in Latin America and the Caribbean, urbanization has long outstripped local governments' capacities or willingness to act as can be seen in the high proportion of the urban population living in poor quality, overcrowded, illegal housing lacking provision for water, sanitation, drainage, healthcare and schools. But there is good evidence that urban areas can combine high living standards with relatively low GHG emissions and lower resource demands. This paper draws on some examples of this and considers what these imply for urban policies in a resource-constrained world. These suggest that cities can allow high living standards to be combined with levels of GHG emissions that are much lower than those that are common in affluent cities today. This can be achieved not with an over-extended optimism on what new technologies can bring but mostly by a wider application of what already has been shown to work.