1,720,984 research outputs found

    Shelf life-based inventory management policy for RF monitored warehouse

    No full text
    Post-harvest losses of perishable products strongly depend on inefficiencies of the entire supply chain. In particular, these inefficiencies can be reduced by optimizing the warehouse management, taking into account the remaining shelf life of the product, and matching it to the requirements of the subsequent part of the handling chain. The replacement of First In First Out picking rule with Last Shelf Life First Out policy has been proved to improve the overall performance of the supply chain. The practicability of such approach is related to the possibility of monitoring the deterioration rate of the products and of predicting the residual shelf-life, that is mainly influenced by harvesting conditions. Shelf-life based inventory management policies are seldom employed, generally due to the difficulties in the assessment of the environmental conditions. Such problem can be overcome by means of an automatic system able to acquire the volatile organic compound emitted by the product and of a communication tool that allows sending the information to be processed. RF technologies can be efficiently employed to reach this purpose in order to establish a shelf-life based prediction model. The present paper reports the technical/economic analysis related to the employment of an RF warehouse management system in an agro-industrial supply chain based upon an experimental campaign performed in a real case study

    A proposal for sorting a projects portfolio through the ELECTRE TRI method focused on the European strategy

    No full text
    In recent years, the partnerships between private companies and public organizations are becoming key elements for improving local development, territorial competitiveness, and delivering innovation. These collaborations are widely promoted by the European Framework Programme for Research and Innovation thanks to the provision of several instruments, such as Horizon 2020. In this context, competitiveness's improvement of the territory employing research and innovation actions is supported by the technological districts. In Sicily, the AgroBioPesca district has attempted a strategic action named "Call for ideas" in order to design its own roadmap for research and innovation in the agri-food sector. For this purpose, many proponents of public and/or private sectors presented several innovative project ideas referred to specific Technological Trajectories. This paper aims at providing an instrument able to select the most suitable project ideas in order to constitute the AgroBioPesca projects portfolio. To such an aim, the authors propose the application of the multiple criteria sorting method ELECTRE TRI considering criteria deduced by the Horizon 2020 guidelines and documents. The application of this methodology allows subdividing the project ideas received into project ideas to be rejected, reviewable, and eligible for funding. Moreover, to consider the uncertainty of the decision-makers' judgment, the authors propose a new version of the method in which the crisp judgment is converted into an interval. A sensitivity analysis has lastly been conducted to study the weaknesses of non-financiable projects

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

    Full text link
    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Reusing coffee ground waste in manufacture of novel sustainable product

    No full text
    Coffee is one of the most important commodities in the world. Every year the coffee industry is responsible for generating a large amount of wastes, mainly Spent Coffee Grounds (SCGs). The traditional disposal of this residue into the environment should be avoided due to its toxicity and organic character. Because of the decrease in nonrenewable natural resources, society has been making a huge effort to valorize and reuse several types of wastes in the production of novel sustainable products. In this regard, construction is considered one of the most energy-intensive sectors. As a consequence, the goals of sustainability and energy efficiency must be prosecuted to achieve the results expected by the recent European directives and national regulations. The present paper aims at providing further knowledge on wastes recycling, analyzing the influence of the SCG incorporation as an aggregate in construction materials. To this purpose, the produced mortar specimens are firstly characterized. Afterwards, engineering properties as well as environmental and economic aspects are taken into account to rank the considered mixtures by a multicriteria approach. The performed analysis highlights how the addition of the considered industrial wastes is strongly recommended to improve the performance of materials intended for various applications in construction

    Variations on the Author

    Full text link
    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

    Full text link
    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

    Full text link
    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

    Author Index

    No full text
    Nao informado

    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

    No full text
    We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
    corecore