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This study aims to investigate the association of the dietary inflammatory index (DII), kidney function and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) among the senior population (60-83 years).

This cross-sectional study was conducted in 221 elderly subjects who are living in Tehran, Iran. The DII was calculated from validated semi-quantified food frequency questionnaire, combining putatively pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory effects of nutrients, vitamins and trace elements. Biochemical measurements of blood and urine samples were measured. The estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) was assessed from serum creatinine.

A total of 221 subjects with mean BMI of 29.75 and age ranged 60-83 years old were included in the current study. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that eGFR (ß = –0.471; p = 0.48; 95 per cent CI: –2.90, 2.63), albumin/creatinine ratio (ACR) (ß = 0.041 p = 0.55; 95 per cent CI: –5.12, 9.46) and hs-CRP (ß = 0.004; p = 0.55; 95 per cent CI: –0.96, 1.79) were not associated with the DII before and after adjusting for potential confounders, including energy intake, age, sex, BMI, smoking status, physical activity, hypertension, diabetes, use of lipid-lowering medication, angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARB) and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEI), steroidal and non- steroidal anti-inflammatory medications.

Due to the cross-sectional nature of this study, it is difficult to find the cause-and-effect relationship between the DII and the serum hs-CRP concentration. Another limitation of our study is concerning a possible overestimation or underestimation of dietary intakes, because the participants in the study were elderly and FFQ is a memory-based questionnaire.

Our findings suggest that the DII score is not associated with serum hs-CRP and kidney function markers in elderly people.

The game plan firms must navigate in the quest of competitive advantage which is changing quickly. More and more firms acknowledge that future prosperity depends on achieving the joint goals of economic, environmental and social sustainability. This understanding has resulted in both firms and actors on the financial markets enhancing their focus on environmental, social and governance dimensions in their respective decision-making processes. In this chapter, the focus is on one key component of the changing game plan, the European Union’s (EU) Sustainable Finance Platform that envisions investors as a key driver of firms’ sustainability transformation. Based on survey data from Swedish listed firms, we discuss implications and outcomes of the Platform. Our results show that investors play an important role in setting the rules of the gameplan for firms. However, not to the extent that it meets the ambitions of the policymakers. This suggests either that the Platform will fail to meet its aims or that firms should expect further significant changes to the gameplan in the future.

Several previous studies showed strong social stigma toward mental illness patients from the health-care providers (HCPs) in Saudi Arabia. This stigma affects the level of care provided by HCPs. Stigma is a major barrier in treating schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients. Thus, it is important to clarify the difference regarding the social stigma between both diagnoses. This study aimed to identify and compare the existence of social stigma among HCPs towards schizophrenia patients compared to OCD patients.

A total of 283 HCPs from King Abdullah Medical City (KAMC), Makkah, Saudi Arabia, were enrolled in this cross-sectional questionnaire-based study between middle and end of January 2021. The scale included a demographic questionnaire plus two vignette cases reflecting OCD and schizophrenia patients’ symptoms without mentioning diagnosis. Each case was followed with 18 questions, which measured some of the thoughts and attitudes of the social stigma of mental illnesses including negative stereotypes, discrimination, social distancing and emotional and cognitive prejudices against mental illness patients. The scale was validated by a pilot study (which included 15 other participants) with acceptable validity and reliability (Cronbach’s alpha: 81.4%).

Most participants’ responses were “low” in the total score of their stigma score for both diagnosis [OCD (84.1%), mean ± SD (1.15  ±  0.366) and schizophrenia (74.2%), mean ± SD (1.25  ±  0.438)]. However, those who responded “high” in their stigma score regarding the schizophrenia section were higher in their number than those who responded “high” in the OCD section (25.8% vs 15.9%). Most participants had “low” total stigma scores for both diagnoses [OCD (84.1%), mean ± SD (1.15  ±  0.366) and schizophrenia (74.2%), mean ± SD (1.25  ±  0.438)]. However, of those with “high” stigma score responses, more were for the schizophrenia section compared to the OCD section (25.8% vs 15.9%). Being flexible to recruit any of them was more related to promoting them if they deserve promotion. The sample that answered wrong regarding OCD vignette diagnosis and had “high” stigma score was higher (n = 40) than the sample that answered correctly and had “high” stigma score (n = 5). In contrast, the sample that answered wrong regarding the schizophrenia case diagnosis and had “high” stigma score (n = 41) was not significantly different in terms of its number compared to the one that answered correctly and had “high” stigma score (n = 32).

One aspect that reduces the strength of this study is that the target number of the participants could not be reached, meaning a 95% confidence level with a ±5% margin of error could not be reached. Another limitation is the lack of contact between HCPs at the KAMC in Makkah with mental illness patients owing to lack of psychiatric inpatient departments. However, this limitation may be a strength for this study, as we were able to primarily measure medical HCPs rather than psychiatric HCPs. Although the vignette methodology in stigma studies has many benefits, the participants do not respond to real patients, and therefore miss appearance and other nonverbal cues that are typically present in real interactions.

The social stigma level among HCPs against schizophrenia patients is higher than that against OCD patients. The factor of knowing the diagnosis of the case has a positive effect on decreasing stigma toward OCD patients but not toward schizophrenia patients. Educational awareness about stigma against mental illness patients to HCPs, rather than focusing on increasing literature knowledge, may decrease stigma among HCPs.

Given the importance of estimating the demand for relief items in earthquake disaster, this research studies the complex nature of demand uncertainty in a vehicle routing problem in order to distribute first aid relief items in the post disaster phase, where routes are subject to disruption.

To cope with such kind of uncertainty, the demand rate of relief items is considered as a random fuzzy variable and a robust scenario-based possibilistic-stochastic programming model is elaborated. The results are presented and reported on a real case study of earthquake, along with sensitivity analysis through some important parameters.

The results show that the demand satisfaction level in the proposed model is significantly higher than the traditional scenario-based stochastic programming model.

In reality, in the occurrence of a disaster, demand rate has a mixture nature of objective and subjective and should be represented through possibility and probability theories simultaneously. But so far, in studies related to this domain, demand parameter is not considered in hybrid uncertainty. The worth of considering hybrid uncertainty in this study is clarified by supplementing the contribution with presenting a robust possibilistic programming approach and disruption assumption on roads.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of the implementation of Lean bundles on hospital performance in private hospitals in Jordan and evaluate how much the size of organization can affect the relationship between Lean bundles implementation and hospital performance.

The research is considered as quantitative method (descriptive and hypothesis testing). Three statistical techniques were adopted to analyse the data. Structural equation modeling techniques and multi-group analysis were used to examine the research’s hypothesis, and to perform the required statistical analysis of the data from the survey. Reliability analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to test the construct validity, reliability and measurement loadings that were performed.

Lean bundles have been identified as an effective approach that can dramatically improve the organizational performance of private hospitals in Jordan. Main Lean bundles – just in time, human resource management, and total quality management are applicable to large, small and medium hospitals without significant differences in advantages that depend on size.

According to the researchers’ best knowledge, this is the first research that studies the impact of Lean bundles implementation in healthcare sector in Jordan. This research also makes a significant contribution for decision makers in healthcare to increase their awareness of Lean bundles.

With the emergence of the different Industry 4.0 technologies and the interconnectedness between the physical and cyber components within manufacturing systems, the manufacturing environment is becoming more susceptible to unexpected disruptions, and manufacturing systems need to be even more resilient than before. Hence, the purpose of this work is to explore how does incorporating Industry 4.0 into current manufacturing systems affects (positively or negatively) its resiliency.

A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was performed with a focus on studying the manufacturing system’s resilience when applying Industry 4.0 technologies. The SLR is composed of four phases, which are (1) questions formulation, (2) determining an adequate search strategy, (3) publications filtering and (4) analysis and interpretation.

From the SLR results’ analysis, four potential research opportunities are proposed related to conducting additional research within the research themes in this field, considering less studied Industry 4.0 technologies or more than one technology, investigating the impact of some technologies on manufacturing system’s resilience, exploring more avenues to incorporate resiliency to preserve the state of the system, and suggesting metrics to quantify the resilience of manufacturing systems.

Although there are a number of publications discussing the resiliency of manufacturing systems, none fully investigated this topic when different Industry 4.0 technologies have been considered. In addition to determining the current research state-of-art in this relatively new research area and identifying potential future research opportunities, the main value of this work is in providing insights about this research area across three different perspectives/streams: (1) Industry 4.0 technologies, (2) resiliency and (3) manufacturing systems and their intersections.

In operations and supply chain management, time is largely one-dimensional – less is better – with much effort devoted to compressing, efficiently using, and competitively exploiting clock-time. However, by drawing on other literatures, the purpose of this paper is to understand implications for the field of operations management if we also emphasize how humans and organizations experience time, termed process-time, which is chronicled by events and stages of change.

After a brief review, the limitations of the recurrent time-oriented themes in operations management and the resulting short-termism are summarized. Next, sustainability is offered as an important starting point to explore the concept of temporality, including both clock- and process-time, as well as the implications of temporal orientation and temporal conflict in supply chains.

A framework that includes both management and stakeholder behavior is offered to illustrate how multiple temporal perspectives might be leveraged as a basis for an expanded and enriched understanding of more sustainable competitiveness in operations.

Research by others emphasizes the importance of stakeholders to competitiveness. By recognizing that different stakeholder groups have varying temporal orientations and temporality, managers can establish objectives and systems that better reflect time-based diversity and diffuse temporal conflict.

This paper summarizes how time has been incorporated in operations management, as well as the challenges of short-termism. Sustainability forms the basis for exploring multiple perspectives of time and three key constructs: temporal orientation, temporality, and temporal conflict. A framework is proposed to better incorporate temporal perspectives as a basis for competitiveness in operations and supply chain management.

The purpose of this study is use a bibliometric analysis to explore the relational nature of knowledge creation in WFM in operations. Companies live under constant pressure to find the best ways to plan their workforce, and the workforce emangement (WFM) is one of the biggest challenges faced by managers. Relevant research on WFM in operations has been published in a several range of journals that vary in their scope and readership, and thus the academic contribution to the topic remains largely fragmented.

To address this gap, this review aims to map research on WFM in operations to understand where it comes from and where it is going and, therefore, provides opportunities for future work. This study combined two bibliometric approaches with manual document coding to examine the literature corpus of WFM in operations to draw a holistic picture of its different aspects.

Content and thematic analysis of the seminal studies resulted in the extraction of three key research themes: workforce cross-training, planning workforce mixed methods and individual workforce characteristics. The findings of this study further highlight the gaps in the WFM in operations literature and raise some research questions that warrant further academic investigation in the future.

Likewise, this study has important implications for practitioners who are likely to benefit from a holistic understanding of the different aspects of WFM in operations.

The paper explores how social networks influence Cameroonian consumers' buying behavior. Then, the authors examine customers' advertising perceptions and psychological dispositions to explain their purchase intention and behavioral consumption.

The research framework is developed based on Nelson's theory of advertising by studying advertising perceptions, consumer psychological dispositions associated with social network characteristics and behavioral consumption. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), the validation takes support from 231 responses collected with an online questionnaire from Cameroun.

The study reveals three critical results: (1) consumers' perceptions of advertising significantly influence their psychological disposition, (2) consumers' psychological dispositions and the social network significantly influence their intention to purchase and (3) consumers' intention to purchase significantly impacts their behavioral consumption.

The proposed and validated model contributes to understanding the influence of social network communication on customers' buying behavior on social s-Commerce platforms of developing country enterprises.