This paper concerns coordination of enterprise decisions such as suppliers and components selection, pricing and inventory in a multi-level supply chain composed of multiple suppliers, a single manufacturer and multiple retailers. The problem is modeled as a three-level dynamic non-cooperative...

Recently user-oriented online sharing communities have seen explosive growth. Two characteristics of these communities set them apart from traditional online message-based communities such as online forums. First, users have no social ties before joining the community. Second, there is little or...

Interdisciplinary teams are assembled in scientific research and are aimed at solving complex problems. Given their increasing importance, it is not surprising that considerable attention has been focused on processes of collaboration in interdisciplinary teams. Despite such efforts, we know...

To improve the lipid accumulation of diatom cells, Nitzschia sp. was mutated by 60Co-γ-ray irradiation and cultivated with high salinity. The biomass and lipid yields of Nitzschia sp. mutated by 60Co-γ-ray irradiation at 900 Gy were increased by 53.8% and 28.1%, respectively. The lipid...

Online peer-to-peer communities and online social networks have become increasingly popular. In particular, the recent boost of online peer-to-peer communities leads to exponential growth in sharing of user-contributed content which have brought profound changes to business and economic...

This paper concerns heat exchange devices with a zigzag configuration containing multi-phase change materials (m-PCMs). A two dimensional mathematical model was established to model the charging behaviour. An experimental system was built to validate the model. The modelling results agree...

This paper presents a make-or-buy (M–B) model in which a firm (say Firm 1) may produce in-house, or outsource a product to the unique vendor, the monopolist in the outsourcing market. Demand for the finished product is stochastic and price-sensitive, and Firm 1's information forecast about the...

Dispersed manufacturing achieves the greatest cumulative competitive advantage by dissecting a supply chain and assigning each process to an optimal location. Dispersed manufacturing has been an integral part of global manufacturing in China. This paper presents a bi-objective model for the...

The purpose of this paper is to propose allocatively efficient auction mechanisms for the distributed transportation procurement problem (DTPP), which is generally the problem of matching demands and supplies over a transportation network. We first construct a one-sided Vickrey–Clarke–Groves...