The global supplier network is becoming an increasingly important asset for many firms. If successfully managed, supplier relationships may support the firm's strategic orientation and become a sustainable advantage on the global market. A key question is thus how the firm can develop and maintain such relationships. The market-driving strategy has recently been advanced as a more pro-active type

Searches for pair-produced scalar leptoquarks are performed using 20 fb[Formula: see text] of proton-proton collision data provided by the LHC and recorded by the ATLAS detector at [Formula: see text] TeV. Events with two electrons (muons) and two or more jets in the final state are used to search for first (second)-generation leptoquarks. The results from two previously published ATLAS analyses a

We investigate the optical properties of periodic composites containing metamaterial inclusions in a normal material matrix. We consider the case when these inclusions have sharp corners and, following Hetherington and Thorpe, use analytic results to argue that it is then possible to deduce the shape of the corner (its included angle) by measurements of the absorptance of such composites when the

The skin constitutes an effective barrier mediating protection against environmental danger and foreign substances. At the surface of the skin, the residential microorganisms grow as small colonies and consist of various non-pathogenic bacteria, fungi and viruses. However, the cutis is also exposed to pathogenic microorganisms, and to combat this threat the residential cells of the epidermis have

In this paper we propose a scheme for test planning and test access mechanism (TAM) design for stacked integrated circuits (SICs) that are designed in a core-based manner. Our scheme minimizes the test cost, which is given as the weighted sum of the test time and the TAM width. The test cost is evaluated for a test flow that consists of a wafer sort test of each individual chip and a package test

Objective To investigate the possible association of the BANK1 gene with genetic susceptibility to systemic sclerosis (SSc) and its subphenotypes. Methods A large multicentre case-control association study including 2380 patients with SSc and 3270 healthy controls from six independent case-control sets of Caucasian ancestry ( American, Spanish, Dutch, German, Swedish and Italian) was conducted. Th

Aim: To compare treatment costs with alternative luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) agonist preparations and determine whether a leuprorelin solid implant is associated with potential cost savings. Patients & methods: A hypothetical population of 1000 prostate cancer patients was apportioned between the three most commonly-prescribed LHRH agonist preparations. Differentiated annual c

In the paper we present integer programming (IP) optimization models for flexgrid elastic optical networks (EON). We consider several different basic assumptions regarding flexibility of EON that lead to a variety of IP formulations differing in precision and complexity. As usual, detailed models aiming at precisely describing technological aspects of EON suffer from tractability issues resulting

A small-scale prototype of the CALIFA calorimeter, which is a subsystem of the R 3 B detector, has been constructed and tested using the 179 MeV proton beam at The Svedberg Laboratory, Uppsala, Sweden. The prototype consists of 15 Csl(Tl) elements with a size of 10 x 30 x 130 mm(3), assembled in a 3 x 5 array. Each crystal was individually tested using gamma-ray sources and the light output unifor

In this paper, we construct protograph-based spatially coupled low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes by coupling together a series of L disjoint, or uncoupled, LDPC code Tanner graphs into a single coupled chain. By varying L, we obtain a flexible family of code ensembles with varying rates and frame lengths that can share the same encoding and decoding architecture for arbitrary L. We demonstrate

Model-based systems in control are a means to utilize efficiently human knowledge and achieve high performance. While models consisting of formalized knowledge are used during the engineering step, running systems usually do not contain a high-level, symbolic representation of the control and most of its properties, typically named numerical parameters. On a system level and beyond the plant data,

The effect of atomic oxygen adsorption on the structure and electronic properties of monolayer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) grown on Ir(111) has been studied using near edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (NEXAFS), photoelectron spectroscopy (PES), and low-energy electron diffraction (LEED). It has been shown that the oxidation of the h-BN monolayer occurs through a gradual substit

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The European Cooperative Acute Stroke Study (ECASS) III trial and Safe Implementation of Thrombolysis in Stroke-International Stroke Thrombolysis Register (SITS-ISTR) data were published in 2008. Riks-Stroke, the Swedish Stroke Register, was used to explore how thrombolysis in the 3- to 4.5-hour window has been spread in different hospitals and patient groups and what effec

The latest generation of storage ring-based light sources employs multibend achromat lattices to achieve ultralow emittance. These lattices make use of a large number of weak bending magnets which considerably reduces the amount of power radiated in the dipoles in comparison to power radiated from insertion devices. Therefore, in such storage rings, parameters such as emittance, energy spread, and

Temperate calcareous grasslands are characterized by high levels of species richness at small spatial scales. Nevertheless, many species from a habitat-specific regional species pool may be absent from local communities and represent the dark diversity' of these sites. Here we investigate dry calcareous grasslands in northern Europe to determine what proportion of the habitat-specific species pool

The estimation of three-dimensional position information from two-dimensional images in computer vision systems can be formulated as a state estimation problem for a nonlinear perspective dynamic system. The multi-output state estimation problem has been treated by several authors using methods for nonlinear observer design. This paper shows that a perspective system can be transformed to two obse

The fibrillatory rate of the surface ECG during atrial fibrillation (AF) has been suggested for quantification of the individual atrial remodeling, to monitor interventions and to predict the response to different therapies. In this dissertation, the relation between fibrillatory rate of the surface ECG and (1) clinical and echocardiographic variables, (2) the outcome of cardioversion, (3) circula

Background: The cell wall component callose is mainly synthesized at certain developmental stages and after wounding or pathogen attack. Callose synthases are membrane-bound enzymes that have been relatively well characterized in vitro using isolated membrane fractions or purified enzyme. However, little is known about their functional properties in situ, under conditions when the cell wall is int