We consider a firm that periodically procures raw material units, stores them, and processes them into finished products upon order arrivals. The raw material cost evolves in a Markovian fashion, whereas the demand process is influenced by both the raw material cost and sales prices charged by the firm. The firm controls both the raw material procurement activity and sales price in each period....

Humans are the only animals to cook their food before eating it. Some evidence indicates that cooked food allowed the human brain and body to develop amazing complexities due to increased access to varieties of food and time. Others believe that the humans who cooked their first meal 40,000 years ago took a step towards a long fall from grace that eventually led to fast food, heart disease, and...

Database systems deliver impressive performance for large classes of workloads as the result of decades of research into optimizing database engines. High performance, however, is achieved at the cost of versatility. In particular, database systems only operate efficiently over loaded data, i.e., data converted from its original raw format into the system’s internal data format. At the same tim...

Background: Raw or minimally processed vegetables can be important vehicles of food-borne parasites. The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the parasitic infections in raw vegetables from Kermanshah, Western Iran and their relation with season and washing procedures. Methods: From January to December 2013, raw vegetable samples were collected from Kermanshah, Western Iran. Th...

Using biocomposites containing wheat straw (WS) and synthetic polymers like polyethylene (PE) has gained tremendous popularity, but its application in the packaging industry is not substantial. Due to the prevalence of raw WS color which manifests itself in the WS/LDPE biocomposite, the present investigation is dedicated to fabricate a bleached WS/LDPE composite. Thus, raw WS and the pulp of WS...

Purpose: To investigate the anti-inflammatory effect of pristimerin using RAW 264.7 macrophage cells. Methods: The effect of pristimerin on the RAW 264.7 cells proliferation was determined by CCK8 test. The expression of cyclin D1 and cyclin E1 in RAW 264.7 cells treated with TNF-α and pristimerin was measured by qRT-PCR. The regulation of cytokine IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, and PGE2 in RAW 264.7 cells...

Humans are the only animals to cook their food before eating it. Some evidence indicates that cooked food allowed the human brain and body to develop amazing complexities due to increased access to varieties of food and time. Others believe that the humans who cooked their first meal 40,000 years ago took a step towards a long fall from grace that eventually led to fast food, heart disease, and...