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This paper aims to derive a reduced-order model for the heat transfer across the interface between a millimetric thermocapillary liquid bridge from silicone oil and the surrounding ambient gas.

Numerical solutions for the two-fluid model are computed covering a wide parametric space, making a total of 2,800 numerical flow simulations. Based on the computed data, a reduced single-fluid model for the liquid phase is devised, in which the heat transfer between the liquid and the gas is modeled by Newton’s heat transfer law, albeit with a space-dependent Biot function Bi(z), instead of a constant Biot number Bi.

An explicit robust fit of Bi(z) is obtained covering the whole range of parameters considered. The single-fluid model together with the Biot function derived yields very accurate results at much lesser computational cost than the corresponding two-phase fully-coupled simulation required for the two-fluid model.

Using this novel Biot function approach instead of a constant Biot number, the critical Reynolds number can be predicted much more accurately within single-phase linear stability solvers.

The Biot function for thermocapillary liquid bridges is derived from the full multiphase problem by a robust multi-stage fit procedure. The derived Biot function reproduces very well the theoretical boundary layer scalings.

The purpose of this study was to explore potential witnesses' memories for a day that was experienced an unremarkable. There may be instances in an investigation in which all leads have been exhausted, and investigators use a broad appeal for witnesses who may have witnessed something important. Investigators can benefit from knowing the types of information that may be recalled in such circumstances, as well as identifying specific methods that are effective in eliciting useful information.

The present study explored how the delay to recall and recall method influenced the recollection of a seemingly unremarkable day that later became important. Participants were asked to recall an experienced event that occurred either recently (a few weeks prior) or in the distant past (a year prior). Participants recalled via either a written method, in-person individual-spoken or collaborative-spoken interviews.

Results suggest an independent benefit for individual-spoken in-person recall (compared to written or collaborative-spoken recall) and recall undertaken closely after an event (compared to delayed recall). Both individual-spoken interviews as well as more recent recollection resulted in a greater number of overall details recalled. The authors further examined the types of details recalled that might be important to progressing an investigation (e.g. other witnesses and records).

The present work provides important implications for interviewing witnesses about a seemingly unremarkable event that later became important.

This research investigates how advergame design elements (fantasy vs realistic advergame experiences) may impact players' brand patronage (BP), under the influence of mediators (hot and cold brand relationship quality [BRQ]) and moderators (advergame reward system and brand personality).

This research comprises of a survey (study 1) and a lab experiment (study 2).

Study 1 shows that fantasy (reality) based advergame experience leads to brand patronage through strong mediation of hot (cold) BRQ and weak mediation of cold (hot) BRQ. Introducing a utilitarian (hedonic) advergame reward system positively moderates the effect of fantasy (reality) based advergame experience on cold (hot) BRQ. Study 2 shows that an advergame that elicits fantasy (realistic) experience and offers hedonic (utilitarian) rewards for a brand having affective (vs cognitive) brand personality strongly impacts hot (cold) BRQ.

This research is an effort to understand how gamification as leisure information systems may be used to create gamers' advergame experiences that elicit BP by strategically designing advergame reward systems specific to brand personality types.

This study aims to elucidate the role of curved walls in the presence of identical mass of porous bed with identical heating at a wall for two heating objectives: enhancement of heat transfer to fluid saturated porous beds and reduction of entropy production for thermal and flow irreversibilities.

Two heating configurations have been proposed: Case 1: isothermal heating at bottom straight wall with cold side curved walls and Case 2: isothermal heating at left straight wall with cold horizontal curved walls. Galerkin finite element method is used to obtain the streamfunctions and heatfunctions associated with local entropy generation terms.

The flow and thermal maps show significant variation from Case 1 to Case 2 arrangements. Case 1 configuration may be the optimal strategy as it offers larger heat transfer rates at larger values of Darcy number, Da_m. However, Case 2 may be the optimal strategy as it provides moderate heat transfer rates involving savings on entropy production at larger values of Da_m. On the other hand, at lower values of Da_m (Da_m ≤ 10⁻³), Case 1 or 2 exhibits almost similar heat transfer rates, while Case 1 is preferred for savings of entropy production.

The concave wall is found to be effective to enhance heat transfer rates to promote convection, while convex wall exhibits reduction of entropy production rate. Comparison between Case 1 and Case 2 heating strategies enlightens efficient heating strategies involving concave or convex walls for various values of Da_m.

Due to the importance of quality to customers, this study considers criteria of quality and profit and optimizes both in a multi-echelon cold chain of perishable agricultural products whose quality immediately begins to deteriorate after harvest. The two objectives of the proposed cold chain are to maximize profit and quality. Since postharvest quality loss in the supply chain depends on various decisions and factors, in addition to strategic decisions, the authors consider the temperature setting in refrigerated facilities and transportation vehicles due to the unfixed shelf life of the products which is related to the temperature found by Arrhenius formula.

The authors use bi-objective mixed-integer nonlinear programming to design a four-echelon supply chain. The authors integrate the supply chain echelons to detect the sources and factors of quality loss. The four echelons include supply, processing, storage and customer. The decisions, including facility location, assigning nodes of each echelon to corresponding nodes from the adjacent echelon, allocation of vehicles to transport the products from farms to wholesalers, processing selection, and temperature setting in refrigerated facilities, are made in an integrated way. Model verification and validation in the case study are done based on three perishable herbal plants.

The model obtains a 29% profit against a total cost of 71 and 93% of original quality of the crops is maintained, indicating a 7% quality loss. The final quality of 93% is the result of making a US$6m investment in the supply chain, including the procurement of high-quality raw materials; facility establishment; high-speed, high-capacity vehicles; location assignment; processing selection and refrigeration equipment in the storage and transportation systems, helping to maximize both the final quality of the products and the total profit.

The proposed supply chain model should help managers with modeling decisions, especially when it comes to cold chains for agricultural products. The model yields these results – optimal location-allocation decisions for the facilities to minimize distances between the network nodes, which save time and maintain the majority of the products’ original quality; choosing the most appropriate processing method, which reduces the perishability rate; providing high-capacity, high-speed vehicles in the logistics system, which minimizes transportation costs and maximizes the quality; and setting the right temperature in the refrigerated facilities, which mitigates the postharvest decay reaction rate of the products.

Comparison of the results of the present research with those of the traditional chain (obtained through experts) shows that since the designed chain increases the profit as well as the final quality, it has benefits for the main chain stakeholders, which are customers of agricultural products. This study model is expected to have a positive impact on the environment by placing strong emphasis on quality and preventing excessive waste generation and air pollution by imposing a financial penalty on extra demand production.

Since profit and quality of the final product are two important factors in all cultures and communities, the proposed supply chain model can be used in any food industry around the world. Applying the proposed model induces growth in local industries and promotes the culture of prioritizing quality in societies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research on a bi-objective four-echelon (supply, processing, storage and customer) postharvest supply chain for agricultural products including that integrates transportation logistics and considers the deterioration rate of products as a time-dependent variable at different levels of decision-making.

This study aims to contribute to discussions on peace between hostile nonmajor powers by focusing on the behavior of major powers. Specifically, alliances between nonmajor and major powers are explored to determine whether such ties contribute to transitions to higher levels of peace. Moreover, systemic factors involving power dynamics and relationships between major powers are also evaluated.

Multiple data sets which altogether covered the era from 1816 to 2010 were analyzed. All pairs of countries that were former foes were considered. Cox hazard regression was conducted.

Systemic instability is influential at transitions from lowest levels of peace for nonmajor power dyads. Eras where major powers are operating multilaterally appear to play a highly limited role in nonmajor powers attaining stable peace. However, alliances with major powers are relatively more crucial in these discussions for nonmajor powers and contribute to higher levels of peace being attained by nonmajor powers.

Further research in particular with case studies can help to elucidate and extend the statistical findings.

Based on the findings, the design and operations of alliances can create more space to hear a wider range of issues that allies can be facing.

While major powers clearly have considerable capacity and global outreach, there has been little attention to whether and how they contribute to former foes attaining higher quality of peace.

Natural good-quality sources of aggregates are depleting, whereas large amount of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) is produced annually. Safe disposal and use of RAP in the cold in-place recycling (CIR) using foamed bitumen could be sustainable approach where milling and mixing operations are accomplished simultaneously. This will not only help in minimizing contamination (probability) and transportation cost but also reduces the carbon footprints. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the scope of RAP utilization up to 100% and further its effect on the behavior of reclaimed asphalt foamed bituminous mix.

Reclaimed asphalt foamed bituminous mix (FBM) is still a new technique. The evidence of performance of 100% recycled pavement (CIR) is only anecdotal and lacks in systematic guidelines and literatures. Foam binder coating around the aggregates is also a concern. Therefore, this study is mainly emphasized to investigate the scope of RAP use in the FBM up to 100%. RAP content is varied in each trial, i.e. 70, 85, 100 and 0% (only fresh aggregates), to make the FBM. RAP use and its effect on the behavior of FBM in terms of resilient modulus, variation in resilient modulus with curing, rutting performance and the potential of resistance against the moisture damage are addressed.

Considering the laboratory studies, it can be accomplished that mechanistic properties and performance of FBM are largely influenced by RAP material and portray less susceptible characteristics against the moisture damage. FBM containing 70% RAP content exhibits maximum resilient modulus. However, use of RAP up to 100% in FBM is satisfying the minimum required specification.

Overall, the study may be helpful to highway professionals and could generate another possible option of 100% RAP replacing fresh aggregates in the flexible pavements.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced countries to consider how to reach vulnerable communities with extended outreach services to improve vaccination uptake. The authors created an optimization model to align with decision-makers' objective to maximize immunization coverage within constrained budgets and deploy resources considering empirical data and endogenous demand.

A mixed integer program (MIP) determines the location of outreach sites and the resource deployment across health centers and outreach sites. The authors validated the model and evaluated the approach in consultation with UNICEF using a case study from The Gambia.

Results in The Gambia showed that by opening new outreach sites and optimizing resource allocation and scheduling, the Ministry of Health could increase immunization coverage from 91.0 to 97.1% under the same budget. Case study solutions informed managerial insights to drive gains in vaccine coverage even without the application of sophisticated tools.

The research extended resource constrained LMIC vaccine distribution modeling literature in two ways: first, endogenous calculation of demand as a function of distance to health facility location enabled the effective design of the vaccine network around convenience to the community and second, the model's resource bundle concept more accurately and flexibly represented complex requirements and costs for specific resources, which facilitated buy-in from stakeholders responsible for managing health budgets. The paper also demonstrated how to leverage empirical research and spatial analysis of publicly available demographic and geographic data to effectively represent important contextual factors.

The current study aims to deliver a consolidated view of environmental sustainability in cold supply chain performance systems (CSCPS), incorporating theoretical and empirical analysis for improving environmental standards. For this purpose, this study firstly aims to explore and analyze the various crucial challenging factors for environmental sustainability in the cold supply chain (CSC). Secondly, it discovers the most effective sustainable strategies for improving the environmental sustainability of CSCPS.

The exploration of the crucial challenging factors and the proposed sustainable strategies have been done using a systematic literature review relevant to the sustainable performance of CSC. At the same time, semi-structured brainstorming sessions were conducted with the domain professionals having an industrial and academic background to finalize the strategies. Empirical analysis has been performed using an intuitionistic fuzzy (IF) based hybrid approach of SWARA and COPRAS methods.

The key findings of the study address that “higher energy consumption during refrigerated transportation and storage” is the most crucial challenge for environmental sustainability in CSC. In addition, “managerial refrain to profit decline due to sustainability implementation” is the second most crucial challenge that hinders the adoption of sustainable practices in CSCs. Meanwhile, the governmental attention to motivating organizations for green adoption and implementation of solar energy-driven refrigeration technologies are the two most important discoveries of the study that might help in improving CSC's environmental performance.

From the implications side, the study enriches and extends the current literature content on CSC sustainability. In addition, it offers sound managerial implications by identifying the challenges that create threats among the management for sustainability adoption and suggesting the most suitable sustainable strategies, which may help the management to raise the environmental performance of their CSC. Besides having various important theoretical and managerial implications for the study, contemplation of only environmental sustainability traits as a broader perspective limits the scope of the study.

The study's main contribution is the exploration of the most crucial challenges imparting obstructions in sustainable development and sustainable strategies, which may get the interest of the CSC players, market leaders, and industrial and academic practitioners working in the domain of CSC sustainability. In addition, this study offers structured theoretical and empirical evidence for CSC's environmental sustainability, thus playing a bridging role between theoretical sustainability concepts and its practical implications in CSC industries.

Prior literature has widely established that the design of storage locations impacts order picking task performance. The purpose of this study is to investigate the performance impact of unit loads, e.g. pallets or rolling cages, utilized by pickers to pack products after picking them from storage locations.

An empirical analysis of archival data on a manual order picking system for deep-freeze products was performed in cooperation with a German brick-and-mortar retailer. The dataset comprises N = 343,259 storage location visits from 17 order pickers. The analysis was also supported by the development and the results of a batch assignment model that takes unit load selection into account.

The analysis reveals that unit load selection affects order picking task performance. Standardized rolling cages can decrease processing time by up to 8.42% compared to standardized isolated rolling boxes used in cold retail supply chains. Potential cost savings originating from optimal batch assignment range from 1.03% to 39.29%, depending on batch characteristics.

This study contributes to the literature on factors impacting order picking task performance, considering the characteristics of unit loads where products are packed on after they have been picked from the storage locations. In addition, it provides potential task performance improvements in cold retail supply chains.