A grey approach for forecasting in a supply chain during intermittentdisruptions

The supply chains today have become vulnerable to frequent disruptions, and with continuing emphasis on efficiency, lacks robustness to deal with them. A part of the solution lies in forecasting the disruption beforehand and the other part in knowing which policies will suit such disrupted conditions best. Accurate and immediate forecasts are a must in a supply chain and hence play a huge role in stabilizing. This study compares the performance of three established forecasting methods (moving average, weighted moving average and exponential smoothing) as well as grey prediction method, during disruptions and stable situations. The experiments are performed in the form of discrete event simulation, on a four stage beer game settings. The results show that moving average and weighted moving average methods become incompetent during disruptions, and are useful only during stable times, when the demand hovers around a predefined mean value. Exponential smoothing and grey method seems to give better results during disruptions and also during stable times in upstream tiers. Grey prediction method in particular is the best method when the disruption frequency is high and also when the disruption impact is gradual rather than sudden.     

Effect of Annealing Temperature on Flowerlike Cu<Subscript>3</Subscript>BiS<Subscript>3</Subscript> Thin Films Grown by Chemical Bath Deposition

For widespread application of thin-film photovoltaic solar cells, synthesis of inexpensive absorber material is essential. In this work, deposition of ternary Cu₃BiS₃ absorber material, which contains abundant and environmentally benign elements, was carried out on glass substrate. Flowerlike Cu₃BiS₃ thin films with nanoflakes as building block were formed on glass substrate by chemical bath deposition. These films were annealed at 573 K and 673 K in sulfur ambient for structural improvement. Their structure was characterized using Raman spectroscopy, as well as their surface morphological and optical properties. The x-ray diffraction profile of as-deposited Cu₃BiS₃ thin film revealed amorphous structure, which transformed to orthorhombic phase after annealing. The Raman spectrum exhibited a characteristic peak at 290 cm^?1. Scanning electron microscopy of as-deposited Cu₃BiS₃ film confirmed formation of nanoflowers with diameter of around 1052 nm. Wettability testing of as-deposited Cu₃BiS₃ thin film demonstrated hydrophobic nature, which became hydrophilic after annealing. The measured ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) absorption spectra of the Cu₃BiS₃ thin films gave an absorption coefficient of 10⁵ cm^?1 and direct optical bandgap of about 1.42 eV after annealing treatment. Based on all these results, such Cu₃BiS₃ material may have potential applications in the photovoltaic field as an absorber layer.     

An Octagonal Shaped Monopole Antenna for UWB Applications with Band Notch Characteristics

Wireless Personal Communications - This article presents a microstrip-fed octagonal shaped monopole antenna with dual band notched characteristics for UWB applications. Partial ground plane has...     

Effect of particle size of magnesium silicate filler on physical properties of paper

Fillers are essential component of printing papers to increase the opacity, brightness, and to improve formation and printing properties. As a very little work has been reported so far on magnesium silicate (talc), the study was conducted with the filler of different particle size for papermaking. The sheets were made in the laboratory with refined mixed hardwood chemical pulp with five grades of talc, ground calcium carbonate (GCC) and precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) fillers with 15–24% ash level. Apparent density along with tensile, burst, tear index, Z‐direction tensile strength (ZDTS) and bending stiffness index were evaluated for talc filled sheets, and compared with GCC and PCC. Physical strength properties of talc filled sheets were decreased at a faster rate on increasing filler loading in paper and decreasing the particle size of the filler. With same type of filler its particle size determines the physical properties of paper. The postulate was not found to be valid for all the three varieties of fillers viz., talc, PCC and GCC. Shape and geometry of the PCC and GCC fillers determine the individual property. © 2012 Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering     

Fragment-Based Drug Discovery for RNA Targets

Rapid development within the fields of both fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) and medicinal targeting of RNA provides possibilities for combining technologies and methods in novel ways. This review provides an overview of fragment-based screening (FBS) against RNA targets, including a discussion of the most recently used screening and hit validation methods such as NMR spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography, and virtual screening methods. A discussion of fragment library design based on research from small-molecule RNA binders provides an overview on both the currently limited guidelines within RNA-targeting fragment library design, and future possibilities. Finally, future perspectives are provided on screening and hit validation methods not yet used in combination with both fragment screening and RNA targets.     

Secure and mobile networking

The IETF Mobile IP protocol is a significant step towards enabling nomadic Internet users. It allows a mobile node to maintain and use the same IP address even as it changes its point of attachment to the Internet. Mobility implies higher security risks than static operation. Portable devices may be stolen or their traffic may, at times, pass through links with questionable security characteristics. Most commercial organizations use some combination of source-filtering routers, sophisticated firewalls, and private address spaces to protect their network from unauthorized users. The basic Mobile IP protocol fails in the presence of these mechanisms even for authorized users. This paper describes enhancements that enable Mobile IP operation in such environments, i.e., they allow a mobile user, out on a public portion of the Internet, to maintain a secure virtual presence within his firewall-protected office network. This constitutes what we call a Mobile Virtual Private Network (MVPN). This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Electrical characterization and parameter extraction of organic thin film transistors using two dimensional numerical simulations

In this paper a performance based comparison of top and bottom contact organic thin film transistor (OTFT) device structures, using two dimensional numerical simulations has been carried out. In addition to this, investigations pertaining to the estimation of contact resistance in these OTFTs were also performed. To estimate contact resistance the conventional transmission line method and modified transmission line method (M-TLM) were respectively invoked. Our simulation results clearly indicate that the latter is more accurate in the estimation of contact resistance compared to the conventional method. Furthermore, the M-TLM was used to estimate the gate voltage and film thickness dependence of the contact resistance for the two device structures. The observed results have been explained on the basis of the significantly lowered area of carrier injection and extraction regions, at the source/channel and channel/drain interface respectively, in bottom contact transistor that lead to its inferior performance over the top contact transistor.     

An analytic algorithm for the space–time fractional advection–dispersion equation

Fractional advection–dispersion equation (FADE) is a generalization of the classical ADE in which the first order time derivative and first and second order space derivatives are replaced by Caputo derivatives of orders 0<α?1, 0<β?1 and 1<γ?2, respectively. We use Caputo definition to avoid (i) mass balance error, (ii) hyper-singular improper integral, (iii) non-zero derivative of constant, and (iv) fractional derivative involved in the initial condition which is often ill-defined. We present an analytic algorithm to solve FADE based on homotopy analysis method (HAM) which has the advantage of controlling the region and rate of convergence of the solution series via the auxiliary parameter ? over the variational iteration method (VIM) and homotopy perturbation method (HPM). We find that the proposed method converges to the numerical/exact solution of the ADE as the fractional orders α, β, γ tend to their integral values. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the proposed algorithm. Example 5 describes the intermediate process between advection and dispersion via Caputo fractional derivative.     

OBSERVER: An Approach for Query Processing in Global Information Systems Based on Interoperation Across Pre-Existing Ontologies

There has been an explosion in the types, availability and volume of data accessible in an information system, thanks to the World Wide Web (the Web) and related inter-networking technologies. In this environment, there is a critical need to replace or complement earlier database integration approaches and current browsing and keyword-based techniques with concept-based approaches. Ontologies are increasingly becoming accepted as an important part of any concept or semantics based solution, and there is increasing realization that any viable solution will need to support multiple ontologies that may be independently developed and managed. In particular, we consider the use of concepts from pre-existing real world domain ontologies for describing the content of the underlying data repositories. The most challenging issue in this approach is that of vocabulary sharing, which involves dealing with the use of different terms or concepts to describe similar information. In this paper, we describe the architecture, design and implementation of the OBSERVER system. Brokering across the domain ontologies is enabled by representing and utilizing interontology relationships such as (but not limited to) synonyms, hyponyms and hypernyms across terms in different ontologies. User queries are rewritten by using these relationships to obtain translations across ontologies. Well established metrics like precision and recall based on the extensions underlying the concepts are used to estimate the loss of information, if any.