Myopic Versus Farsighted Behaviors in a Low-Carbon Supply Chain with Reference Emission Effects

The increased carbon emissions cause relatively climate deterioration and attract more attention of governments, consumers, and enterprises to the low-carbon manufacturing. This paper considers a dynamic supply chain, which is composed of a manufacturer and a retailer, in the presence of the cap-and-trade regulation and the consumers’ reference emission effects. To investigate the manufacturer’s behavior choice and its impacts on the emission reduction and pricing strategies together with the profits of both the channel members, we develop a Stackelberg differential game model in which the manufacturer acts in both myopic and farsighted manners. By comparing the equilibrium strategies, it can be found that the farsighted manufacturer always prefers to keep a lower level of emission reduction. When the emission permit price is relatively high, the wholesale/retail price is lower if the manufacturer is myopic and hence benefits consumers. In addition, there exists a dilemma that the manufacturer is willing to act in a farsighted manner but the retailer looks forward to a partnership with the myopic manufacturer. For a relatively high price of emission permit, adopting myopic strategies results in a better performance of the whole supply chain

Analytical modeling of surface roughness in precision grinding of particle reinforced metal matrix composites considering nanomechanical response of material

Grinding is usually applied for particle reinforced metal matrix composites (PRMMCs) to achieve high ground surface quality. However, the surface quality especially surface roughness is difficult to predict theoretically due to different mechanical properties of two or more phases inside the PRMMCs. In this study, an analytical model of the surface roughness of ground PRMMCs is developed based on an undeformed chip thickness model with Rayleigh probability distribution by considering the different removal mechanism of metal matrix and reinforcement particles in grinding. GT35, a typical kind of steel based metal matrix composite reinforced with TiC particles is investigated as an example. Nanoindentation experiments are employed for the investigation of nanomechanical properties and cracking behavior of GT35 and the nanoindentation results are integrated in the model. Single factor surface grinding experiments of GT35 are also carried out to understand the material removal mechanism of GT35 and validate this novel surface roughness prediction model. The predicted surface roughness from this model shows good agreement with the experimental results

NRPA: Neural Recommendation with Personalized Attention

Existing review-based recommendation methods usually use the same model to learn the representations of all users/items from reviews posted by users towards items. However, different users have different preference and different items have different characteristics. Thus, the same word or similar reviews may have different informativeness for different users and items. In this paper we propose a neural recommendation approach with personalized attention to learn personalized representations of users and items from reviews. We use a review encoder to learn representations of reviews from words, and a user/item encoder to learn representations of users or items from reviews. We propose a personalized attention model, and apply it to both review and user/item encoders to select different important words and reviews for different users/items. Experiments on five datasets validate our approach can effectively improve the performance of neural recommendation.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Low Temperature Epitaxial Growth of High Permittivity Rutile TiO2TiO_2 on SnO2SnO_2

Thin films of high dielectric constant $\kappa \sim 68$ rutile phase titanium dioxide $TiO_2$ were grown epitaxially on tin dioxide $SnO_2$ substrates, which are a low cost, more abundant alternative to ruthenium electrodes used previously. Atomic layer deposition at low temperature ${250^\circ C}$ was used with titanium(IV) tetrakis(isopropoxide) and hydrogen peroxide $H_2O_2$ as precursors. The rutile $TiO_2$ thin films have crystalline grains that match the structure and orientation of the grains in the polycrystalline rutile phase $SnO_2$ substrates. The epitaxial relations can be clearly identified from the continuous lattice fringes across the interfaces.Chemistry and Chemical BiologyOther Research Uni

Exploring transcriptional signalling mediated by OsWRKY13, a potential regulator of multiple physiological processes in rice

BACKGROUND Rice transcription regulator OsWRKY13 influences the functioning of more than 500 genes in multiple signalling pathways, with roles in disease resistance, redox homeostasis, abiotic stress responses, and development. RESULTS To determine the putative transcriptional regulation mechanism of OsWRKY13, the putative cis-acting elements of OsWRKY13-influenced genes were analyzed using the whole genome expression profiling of OsWRKY13-activated plants generated with the Affymetrix GeneChip Rice Genome Array. At least 39 transcription factor genes were influenced by OsWRKY13, and 30 of them were downregulated. The promoters of OsWRKY13-upregulated genes were overrepresented with W-boxes for WRKY protein binding, whereas the promoters of OsWRKY13-downregulated genes were enriched with cis-elements putatively for binding of MYB and AP2/EREBP types of transcription factors. Consistent with the distinctive distribution of these cis-elements in up- and downregulated genes, nine WRKY genes were influenced by OsWRKY13 and the promoters of five of them were bound by OsWRKY13 in vitro; all seven differentially expressed AP2/EREBP genes and six of the seven differentially expressed MYB genes were suppressed by in OsWRKY13-activated plants. A subset of OsWRKY13-influenced WRKY genes were involved in host-pathogen interactions. CONCLUSION These results suggest that OsWRKY13-mediated signalling pathways are partitioned by different transcription factors. WRKY proteins may play important roles in the monitoring of OsWRKY13-upregulated genes and genes involved in pathogen-induced defence responses, whereas MYB and AP2/EREBP proteins may contribute most to the control of OsWRKY13-downregulated genes.This work was supported by grants from the National Program of High Technology Development of China, the National Program on the Development of Basic Research in China, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China

The arabidopsis RCC1 family protein TCF1 regulates freezing tolerance and cold acclimation through modulating lignin biosynthesis

Cell water permeability and cell wall properties are critical to survival of plant cells during freezing, however the underlying molecular mechanisms remain elusive. Here, we report that a specifically cold-induced nuclear protein, Tolerant to Chilling and Freezing 1 (TCF1), interacts with histones H3 and H4 and associates with chromatin containing a target gene, BLUE-COPPER-BINDING PROTEIN (BCB), encoding a glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored protein that regulates lignin biosynthesis. Loss of TCF1 function leads to reduced BCB transcription through affecting H3K4me2 and H3K27me3 levels within the BCB gene, resulting in reduced lignin content and enhanced freezing tolerance. Furthermore, plants with knocked-down BCB expression (amiRNA-BCB) under cold acclimation had reduced lignin accumulation and increased freezing tolerance. The pal1pal2 double mutant (lignin content reduced by 30% compared with WT) also showed the freezing tolerant phenotype, and TCF1 and BCB act upstream of PALs to regulate lignin content. In addition, TCF1 acts independently of the CBF (C-repeat binding factor) pathway. Our findings delineate a novel molecular pathway linking the TCF1-mediated cold-specific transcriptional program to lignin biosynthesis, thus achieving cell wall remodeling with increased freezing tolerance

Verification of {\Gamma}7_{7} symmetry assignment for the top valence band of ZnO by magneto-optical studies of the free A exciton state

The circularly-polarized and angular-resolved magneto-photoluminescence spectroscopy was carried out to study the free A exciton 1S state in wurtzite ZnO at 5 K.Comment: 4 figures, 16 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:0706.396