Search results

The Swedish government is likely to implement longer and heavier road freight vehicles, so-called high-capacity vehicles (HCVs), in the near future. The purpose of this paper is to analysis the expected effects on the whole transport system regarding tonne-kilometres, vehicle-kilometres on road, CO₂ and socio-economics with three possible implementation strategies (HCVs on all roads, a designated road network and a designated road network with a kilometre-based truck charge) and two vehicle types (74 t/25.25 m and 74 t/34 m).

Calculations are based on two well-established scenarios for transport development in Sweden. Changes per tonne-kilometre are modelled for ten product groups with considerations taken to their transport networks. Socio-economic effects are analysed using the net present value rating method over a 40-year period.

The study shows the increase in demand for transport and the modal shift, from rail and sea to road, in terms of tonne-kilometres, vehicle-kilometres and CO₂ emissions for three implementation strategies of HCVs in two scenarios. All implementation strategies show a positive social net-benefit with the introduction of HCVs.

The results reveal potential benefits to the implementation of HCVs. The results are limited by possible over/under-estimations of effects considered in the calculations, due to uncertainties and assumptions.

The results highlight expected levels of modal shift and induced transport for different HCV implementation strategies and how they depend on transport and climate policies and the expected growth of tonne-kilometres.

The calculations consider socio-economic effects, particularly from increased CO₂ emissions due to modal shift and induced traffic, which is lacking in previous studies. To balance conflicting economic and environmental goals, the findings indicate that the implementation of HCVs could be accompanied by other policy measures. The findings are based on the Swedish context, but the model can be adapted to other countries or regions and to study other freight transport reforms.

There is a heavy dependence on cars for people living in rural areas and small towns. The countryside has so far been left out of the transition to carbon-free transport, and public transport shares are low in rural areas. New information and communication technology (ICT) solutions and autonomous vehicles (AVs) have the potential to improve the conditions for public transport in rural areas, as they may increase efficiency and reduce costs. Still, these technological novelties are rarely tested in rural settings and policy focus and pilot tests have occurred almost exclusively in cities. The aim of this chapter is to explore the conditions and challenges for public transport in rural areas through ICT and AVs. The authors will discuss how policy focus needs to change to increase attention to rural areas and give suggestions on concrete policy measures that can be used. In the chapter, the authors draw empirically on results from two research projects in Sweden about the conditions for public transport in rural areas and ongoing tests with new ICT solutions.

An increment in energy efficiency by employing nanoparticles is a hot topic of research in present era due to its abundant implications in modern engineering and technological processes. Therefore, the current research analysis reported the viscoelastic nanofluid flow over porous oscillatory moving sheet in the presence of microorganisms. A rate-type fluid namely Maxwell fluid is employed with the addition of nanoparticles. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

First, acceptable dimensionless variables are defined to convert the system of dimensional form into the system of dimensionless forms. Later on, the self-similar solution of the boundary value problem is computed by using the homotopy analysis method. The obtained results of velocity, temperature, mass concentration and motile microorganism density profiles are interpreted through physical background.

The presence of both thermophoresis and Brownian motion parameters also improve the thermophysical features of non-Newtonian nanoparticles. It is also pointed out that the presence of porous medium and magnetic force enhances the nanoparticles concentration. Moreover, a weaker distribution of gyrotactic microorganism has been depicted with Peclet number and bioconvection Lewis parameter.

No such article exists in the literature yet.

The global incidence of dengue has grown dramatically in recent decades. According to WHO, 3.9 billion people are at risk of infection with dengue viruses with 70% of the actual burden is in Asia. In Pakistan, Punjab faced the major dengue outbreak with 21,685 confirmed cases and 350 deaths, mainly due to DENV-2. Dengue is a major health care problem that affecting countries worldwide. Dengue epidemic have a devastating impact on health care systems. All four characteristics of VUCA are true of the challenges we face due to the dengue epidemic. That called for a need to have integrated disease and surveillance (IDSR) framework for the management, prevention, and control of dengue. The IDSR framework for dengue includes hospital readiness, patient reporting system, surveillance, evidence-based decision making, awareness, citizen engagement, and availability of insecticides along with third party validation on top of it to keep a close check on containment efforts. A comprehensive patient portal was developed for all public and private health care facilities to report dengue cases i.e. suspected, probable, and confirmed as per the Dengue GCP guidelines. For surveillance, smartphone-based application was developed for field users to report larvicidal activities i.e. indoor residual spray in real-time, case response, and hotspots (areas at risk). As per established Standard Operating Procedures, hotspot regime was setup to sweep out breeding spots or larvae population at regular intervals in a week. For the purpose of evaluation and monitoring, third party validation application is designed to check activities that are performed as per prescribed standards or not. Dashboards and reports are available for various stakeholders to facilitate evidence-based decision making. These reports analyze field-based activities and rank performance of district and town. System also generates alerts i.e. Breteau (the number of positive containers per 100 houses inspected) and Container (percentage of water-holding containers infested with larvae or pupae) Indices, in real-time, enabling the administration to take decisions in a timely manner. Looking at the magnitude of dengue-related morbidity and mortality, all departments were involved in dengue prevention and control activities. This approach has proven effective in curtailing this mosquito-borne disease. The impact of these interventions can be clearly seen in regard to confirmed patient and death reported in recent year.

This paper investigates the interactional relationships between sustainable human resource management (SHRM) and organizational performance (OP). Sustainable HRM is an approach that links HRM and sustainability. These studies focused on integrating HR with sustainable developments, such as economic and social aspects, in favour of focusing on the environmental aspect. Organizational change is an ongoing process that has to be managed effectively to keep the change in place for a long time.

A framework was offered to estimate the cause-and-effect relation of the SHRM and OP factors. Data is gathered from professionals from various pharmaceutical industries. This study applied two methods, Fuzzy AHP and DEMATEL Type II. These techniques are used to understand the cause-and-effect factors and their interactions.

It was observed from the findings that the factor of SHRM, such as Social Justice (F2), Green Job Design (F5), Green Training (F6) and Implementation of Green Policy (F8), was the most critical for the pharmaceutical sector that effects Financial performance (F13), Customer Satisfaction (F15) and Market performance (F14). Pharmaceutical firms ought to coordinate public health advocacy efforts, engage in healthcare initiatives and provide financial support for environmentally friendly efforts that improve social and economic conditions.

For this sustainability, managers concentrate on creating an environment that is healthy and acceptable, and they work hard to mitigate the impact of natural factors and repair damage done to the environment; it is essential to move towards sustainable development to resolve environmental problems. Improving HR efficiency is among essential HRM responsibilities, as they expand the knowledge base of the workforce, enhance human capital, and eventually create valuable intangible assets and promote and encourage sustainable pharmaceutical products for some years.

This research paper has presented exclusive worth to the SHRM and organizational performance literature as it employs fuzzy FAHP and DEMATEL type 2. There is less research on SHRM in the pharmaceutical sector with these factors. In addition, FAHP and TYPE 2 DEMATEL are used in very few researches on SHRM approaches.

In this chapter, the authors will summarise the entire book and look ahead. The aim of this book has been to take the calls for governance of smart mobility one step further by analysing and discussing current and future policy instruments to govern smart mobility. The task has been carried out by discussing the why, how and what of policy instruments. So far, the policy instruments governing smart mobility to a large extent are focussed on understanding this new field of mobility, establishing relations and roles between companies and authorities, and making the field governable. What is lacking in this equation are policy instruments that establish the population as citizens with rights, voices and roles. In order to align the smart mobility transition and the transition towards a sustainable society, the authors consider the development of deliberative citizen participation an important initiative and the authors suggest it as an important field for future research.

In present research work, the effects of rotational speed, feed rate and vibration amplitude have been investigated during novel method of ultrasonic-assisted bone grinding. During dissection of tumors, firstly a bone flap is removed near the target region to create passage for grinding burr. During abrasion, heat is produced, which sometimes increases the temperature to unsafe levels. So, efforts have been made to limit the temperature below the threshold levels of osteonecrosis during bone grinding.

The temperature produced during osteotomy has been measured using infrared thermography camera during the implementation of L18 Taguchi orthogonal array design. Subsequently, main effect plots and contour plots have been presented to analyze and visualize the effect of grinding parameters on temperature rise during bone grinding. Furthermore, the process parameters have been optimized for optimum results for response characteristics using Taguchi SN ratio-based optimization methodology. For multiobjective optimization, the process parameters are further optimized using grey relational analysis.

It is revealed that all three process parameters substantially affect the response characteristics. The proposed optimization methodology is successfully applied on the experimental findings and the optimum results for change in temperature are found to be rotational speed = 3,000 rpm, feed rate = 20 mm/min, amplitude = 10 µm and for standard deviation are 5,000 rpm, 60 mm/min, 10 µm.

The present research findings cannot be generalized, and researchers are encouraged to further investigate the proposed rotary ultrasonic-assisted bone grinding at higher rotational speed up to 60k rpm on the skull bone.

The research on osteotomy is still at its initial phase, and continuous research is carried out for making patients’ life comfortable. In this direction, the authors have proposed a novel osteotomy method to limit the temperature below the threshold limit of osteonecrosis. The outcomes of the present study will be beneficial for the neurosurgeons working in this field.

Because many cutting fluids contain hazardous chemical constituents, industries and researchers are looking for alternative methods to reduce the consumption of cutting fluids in machining operations due to growing awareness of ecological and health issues, government strict environmental regulations and economic pressures. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to raise awareness of the minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) technique as a potential substitute for environmental restricted wet (flooded) machining situations.

The methodology adopted for conducting a review in this study includes four sections: establishment of MQL technique and review of MQL machining performance comparison with dry and wet (flooded) environments; analysis of the past literature to examine MQL turning performance under mono nanofluids (M-NF); MQL turning performance evaluation under hybrid nanofluids (H-NF); and MQL milling, drilling and grinding performance assessment under M-NF and H-NF.

From the extensive review, it has been found that MQL results in lower cutting zone temperature, reduction in cutting forces, enhanced tool life and better machined surface quality compared to dry and wet cutting conditions. Also, MQL under H-NF discloses notably improved tribo-performance due to the synergistic effect caused by the physical encapsulation of spherical nanoparticles between the nanosheets of lamellar structured nanoparticles when compared with M-NF. The findings of this study recommend that MQL with nanofluids can replace dry and flood lubrication conditions for superior machining performance.

Machining under the MQL regime provides a dry, clean, healthy and pollution-free working area, thereby resulting the machining of materials green and environmentally friendly.

This paper describes the suitability of MQL for different machining operations using M-NF and H-NF.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-05-2023-0131/

It is important to understand the factors that are significant in supply chain (SC) collaboration decision making and whether supply chain collaborative factors that are considered in the literature are still valid. To date, SC collaboration has not been extensively studied in the literature with supply chain finance (SCF) factors to evaluate SCF performance. Therefore, in this paper, the authors investigate the interrelationships between SCF and supply chain collaborative (SCC) factors for achieving SCF performance. The authors identified the most important factors from the literature on SCF and SCC and with inputs from experts in the textile industry in Pakistan.

The authors employed the Gray-Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory approach to help examine the cause-and-effect relationship between the factors and identify the influence of each factor on the others.

The findings showed that the most prominent factors of the study are “level of digitalization”, “information sharing”, and “collaborative communication”, and “most effect factors of this study are incentive alignment” and “information quality”. Furthermore, the “Level of digitalization” was identified as the factor with the central role and most significant correlation with other factors.

The major implication of the study is that textile industries should effectively develop their supply chain decisions after analyzing their internal and external factors, which will help in developing strategies that will facilitate better management of SCF relationships. The limitations of the study are that only 15 SCF and supply chain collaborative factors were considered, and time and scope are also limited. This study is only applied in the textile industry, so generalization may be limited.

To date, this study is the only one that has taken into consideration SCC with SCF factors to evaluate supply chain performance. This paper therefore makes this initial attempt and original contribution to this discussion, which can be helpful for those working to enhance supply chain performance, such as practitioners and policymakers.