Nowadays, competitive market creates the necessity of quality improvement in different levels of supply chains (SCs). This paper contributes to the SC coordination literature and proposes a bilateral coordination contract for optimizing pricing decisions along with quality improvement decisions in different echelons of a real case of a cell phone SC. The SC comprises a manufacturer who deals wi...

Credit risk estimation is a key determinant for the success of financial institutions. The aim of this paper is presenting a new hybrid model for estimating the probability of default of corporate customers in a commercial bank. This hybrid model is developed as a combination of Logit model and Neural Network to benefit from the advantages of both linear and non-linear models. For model verific...

Introduction Materials property characterization is central to nearly all facets of medical device design, production, and pre or post-use testing. Material properties are routinely evaluated to meet needs in R&D & quality assurance, and to obtain regulatory approval for sale. Devices that have been used clinically or experimentally are also routinely analyzed to better understand mechanisms of...

Patents and copyrights are forms of immaterial “property” that grant to their owners exclusive control over the production and sale of a specified product—a literary or artistic work in the case of copy­ rights, an invention or productive process in the case of patents. Though these concepts are subsumed under the broader heading of “intelle c­ tual property,” they are not completely analogous ...

municipal solid waste. Business and industry operations generate recyclable materials in many areas, such as offices, cafeterias, supply stores, shipping or warehouse units, print shops, and production areas. Many companies are already enthusiastically collecting recyclables in high-profile programs, while others are just beginning. Collecting recyclables costs money, but it also saves money by...

In June 2005, USDA/FDA/EPA deregulated the Roundup Ready trait in alfalfa. In August 2005, seed of the first Roundup Ready alfalfa varieties was offered for sale. This was the first biotech trait to be commercialized in alfalfa, and paved the way for new research supporting a second wave of biotech traits enhancing value in alfalfa. These new biotech traits can be divided into two categories: o...

The cigarette is the deadliest artefact in the history of human civilisation. Most of the richer countries of the globe, however, are making progress in reducing both smoking rates and overall consumption. Many different methods have been proposed to steepen this downward slope, including increased taxation, bans on advertising, promotion of cessation, and expansion of smoke-free spaces. One op...

    Dynamic model,   regional economy,   innovation.   This paper presents a normative balance mathematical model of regional economy that contains a lot of unspecified parameters which are not defined directly by the data of economic statistics. A method for estimation of the model parameters by application of parallel computations on multi-processors systems is presented. It is determined the...

Forest-owning companies in Sweden have both a goal to yield a good short-term rate of return on their forest and a goal to maintain a high long-term rate of return by maintaining the production of wood-based products. Both these objectives are taken into account in the forest planning process. For the long-term goal, the companies develop strategies formulated in the forest planning system and ...