Sustainable business models: integrating employees, customers and technology

This Special Issue of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing has the same title as the 23rd International Conference CBIM 2018 (June 18-20, 2018, Madrid, Spain) “Sustainable Business Models: Integrating Employees, Customers and Technology”. In this edition of International Conference, following a competitive blind review process, papers from 126 authors and 25 countries were ultimately accepted. The best papers of the Conference were invited to submit to this Special Issue and we were also open to direct submissions from other authors. We present here the 17 accepted papers for publication in this Special Issue

Estimating Literacy Rate: A Study Relating Literacy Rate with Combined Gross Elementary and Secondary Schools Enrollment Rate

Literacy is one of the core indicators utilized to measure social development. It is necessary that planners and policymakers be aided in their evaluation of past literacy performance and formulation of future education policies. Literacy data, however, are relatively scarce because of the costs involved in its collection and processing. This paper addresses the problem of generating annual literacy rate estimates to fill the gap between planning considerations and the scantiness of statistics on literacy.literacy and language proficiency

Estimating Literacy Rate: A Study Relating Literacy Rate with Combined Gross Elementary and Secondary Schools Enrollment Rate

Literacy is one of the core indicators utilized to measure social development. It is necessary that planners and policymakers be aided in their evaluation of past literacy performance and formulation of future education policies. Literacy data, however, are relatively scarce because of the costs involved in its collection and processing. This paper addresses the problem of generating annual literacy rate estimates to fill the gap between planning considerations and the scantiness of statistics on literacy.literacy and language proficiency

ADM Pseudotensors, Conserved Quantities and Covariant Conservation Laws in General Relativity

The ADM formalism is reviewed and techniques for decomposing generic components of metric, connection and curvature are obtained. These techniques will turn out to be enough to decompose not only Einstein equations but also covariant conservation laws. Then a number of independent sets of hypotheses that are sufficient (though non-necessary) to obtain standard ADM quantities (and Hamiltonian) from covariant conservation laws are considered. This determines explicitely the range in which standard techniques are equivalent to covariant conserved quantities. The Schwarzschild metric in different coordinates is then considered, showing how the standard ADM quantities fail dramatically in non-Cartesian coordinates or even worse when asymptotically flatness is not manifest; while, in view of their covariance, covariant conservation laws give the correct result in all cases.Comment: 40 page

Simulating the Impact of Macroeconomic Policy Changes on Macronutrient Availability in Households

This study estimates a system of food demand equations utilizing nationally representative survey data. These estimates are then used to set-up a model that can use price and income changes from simulating a general equilibrium model to determine the impact of changes on macroeconomic policy on the nutritional status of households. Results indicate that the tariff reform program has a more progressive impact on nutrition than on income.computable general equilibrium (CGE)

Flavor-dependent eigenvolume interactions in a hadron resonance gas

Eigenvolume effects in the hadron resonance gas (HRG) model are studied for experimental hadronic yields in nucleus-nucleus collisions. If particle eigenvolumes are different for different hadron species, the excluded volume HRG (EV-HRG) improves fits to multiplicity data. In particular, using different mass~-~volume relations for strange and non-strange hadrons we observe a remarkable improvement in the quality of the fits. This effect appears to be rather insensitive to other details in the schemes employed in the EV-HRG. We show that the parameters found from fitting the data of the ALICE Collaboration in central Pb+Pb collisions at the collision energy $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76$~TeV entail the same improvement for all centralities at the same collision energy, and for the RHIC and SPS data at lower collision energies. Our findings are put in the context of recent fits of lattice QCD results.Comment: 4 figure

Microscopic measurement of the linear compressibilities of two-dimensional fatty acid mesophases

The linear compressibility of two-dimensional fatty acid mesophases has determined by grazing incidence x-ray diffraction. Surface pressure vs molecular area isotherms were reconstructed from these measurements, and the linear compressibility (relative distortion along a given direction for isotropic applied stress) was determined both in the sample plane and in a plane normal to the aliphatic chain director (transverse plane). The linear compressibilities range over two orders of magnitude from 0.1 to 10 m/N and are distributed depending on their magnitude in 4 different sets which we are able to associate with different molecular mechanisms. The largest compressibilities (10m/N) are observed in the tilted phases. They are apparently independent of the chain length and could be related to the reorganization of the headgroup hydrogen-bounded network, whose role should be revalued. Intermediate compressibilities are observed in phases with quasi long-range order (directions normal to the molecular tilt in L_2 or L_2' phases, S phase), and could be related to the ordering of these phases. The lowest compressibilities are observed in the solid untilted CS phase and for 1 direction of the S and L_2'' phases. They are similar to the compressibility of crystalline polymers and correspond to the interactions between methyl groups in the crystal. Finally, negative compressibilities are observed in the transverse plane for L_2' and L_2'' phases and can be traced to subtle reorganizations upon untilting.Comment: 24 pages, 17 figure

Molecular diagnosis by PCR-DHPLC technique of wood-decay fungi in historical buildings in Italy

Wood inhabiting fungi cause real problems in the preservation of wooden surfaces and are responsible for the deterioration of cultural heritage. The identification of fungi based on morphological characteristics are still a topical issue. Nevertheless, they are limited for characterization and identification on an intraspecific level and even sometimes on an interspecific level. It is not always evident and thus many fungi remain unnamed or confused. The objective of this study was to circumvent these limitations by using a new molecular approach allowing fungal detection and identification in historic buildings in Italy. Fungal colonization was assessed by using PCR amplification and amplicons separation by Denaturing High Performance Liquid Chromatography. Due to its high sensitivity, the PCR-DHPLC technique was optimised to profile fungal communities in wood decay as well as ubiquitous contaminants. (Résumé d'auteur