► A fuzzy multi criteria approach is proposed to select the best green supplier based on environmental criteria. ► A numerical application is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed ...approach. ► The proposed method provides additional insights for practical applications and future researches.
Today's international business environment has forced many firms to focus on supply chain management to gain a competitive advantage. During recent years, supplier selection process in the supply chain has become a key strategic consideration. With the growing worldwide awareness of environmental protection and the corresponding increase in legislation and regulations, green purchasing has become an important issue for companies to gain environmental sustainability. Traditionally, companies consider criteria such as price, quality and lead time, when evaluating supplier performance and do not give enough attention to environmental criteria as a means to evaluate suppliers. Now, many companies have begun to implement green supply chain management (GSCM) and to consider environmental issues and the measurement of their suppliers’ environmental performance. This paper examines GSCM to propose a fuzzy multi criteria approach for green suppliers’ evaluation. We apply fuzzy set theory to translate the subjective human perceptions into a solid crisp value. These linguistic preferences are combined through fuzzy TOPSIS to generate an overall performance score for each supplier. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Fluid flow and optical flow LIU, TIANSHU; SHEN, LIXIN
Journal of fluid mechanics,
11/2008, Volume:
614
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The connection between fluid flow and optical flow is explored in typical flow visualizations to provide a rational foundation for application of the optical flow method to image-based fluid velocity ...measurements. The projected-motion equations are derived, and the physics-based optical flow equation is given. In general, the optical flow is proportional to the path-averaged velocity of fluid or particles weighted with a relevant field quantity. The variational formulation and the corresponding Euler–Lagrange equation are given for optical flow computation. An error analysis for optical flow computation is provided, which is quantitatively examined by simulations on synthetic grid images. Direct comparisons between the optical flow method and the correlation-based method are made in simulations on synthetic particle images and experiments in a strongly excited turbulent jet.
Microplankton with cell size less than 20µm are susceptive to environmental alteration,and often employed to study the ecological effect of anthropogenic disturbance in various environment.In this ...study,we investigated the temporal and spatial patterns of microplankton including bacteria,Synechococcus,microeukaryote and virus by flow cytometry in Sanmen Bay,and explored the driving physicochemical factors.The results showed that the abundance of bacteria,Synechococcus,microeukaryote and virus were 6.98X105-9.84X106 cells/mL,1.10X103-3.71X104 cells/mL,1.04X103-3.75X104 cells/mL and 1.01X106-3.47X107 mL-1,respectively.The abundance of microplankton in surface water was higher than that in bottom both in summer and autumn.Bacteria,Synechococcus and virus were more abundant in summer,but the abundance of microeukaryote had higher abundances in autumn.Among environmental variables detected here,water temperature was the main factor leading to the seasonal variation of microplankton.As to the horizontal distributio
Hantavirus infection, which causes severe zoonotic diseases with high mortality in humans, has become a global public health concern. Here, we demonstrate that Hantaan virus (HTNV), the prevalent ...prototype of the hantavirus in Asia, can restrain innate immune responses by manipulating host autophagy flux. HTNV induces complete mitophagy at the early stage of infection but incomplete autophagy at the late stage, and these responses involve the viral glycoprotein (Gn) and nucleocapsid protein (NP), respectively. Gn translocates to mitochondria and interacts with TUFM, recruiting LC3B and promoting mitophagy. Gn-induced mitophagy inhibits type I interferon (IFN) responses by degrading MAVS. Additionally, we found that NP competes with Gn for binding to LC3B, which inhibits Gn-mediated autophagosome formation, and interacts with SNAP29, which prevents autophagosome-lysosome fusion. Thus, NP disturbs the autophagic degradation of Gn. These findings highlight how hantaviruses repurpose host autophagy and evade innate immune responses for their life cycle and pathogenesis.
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•HTNV infection dynamically manipulates host autophagy flux for viral benefit•Gn-induced mitophagy facilitates MAVS degradation and delays host IFN responses•NP prevents autophagy-dependent clearance of Gn by binding to LC3B and SNAP29•Inhibiting autophagy at the early infection stage can restrict HTNV replication
Wang et al. report that the cooperative work of HTNV Gn and NP proteins manipulates host autophagy flux to restrain host innate immune responses for viral replication and propagation.
, an important opportunistic pathogen, is capable of producing various virulence factors and forming biofilm that are regulated by quorum sensing (QS). It is known that targeting virulence factor ...production and biofilm formation instead of exerting selective pressure on growth such as conventional antibiotics can reduce multidrug resistance in bacteria. Therefore, many quorum-sensing inhibitors (QSIs) have been developed to prevent or treat this bacterial infection. In this study, wogonin, as an active ingredient from
, was found to be able to inhibit QS system of
PAO1. Wogonin downregulated the expression of QS-related genes and reduced the production of many virulence factors, such as elastase, pyocyanin, and proteolytic enzyme. In addition, wogonin decreased the extracellular polysaccharide synthesis and inhibited twitching, swimming, and swarming motilities and biofilm formation. The attenuation of pathogenicity in
PAO1 by wogonin application was further validated in vivo by cabbage infection and fruit fly and nematode survival experiments. Further molecular docking analysis, pathogenicity examination of various QS-related mutants, and PQS signal molecule detection revealed that wogonin could interfere with PQS signal molecular synthesis by affecting
and
. Taken together, the results indicated that wogonin might be used as an anti-QS candidate drug to attenuate the infection caused by
.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
is an important opportunistic pathogen, and the emergence of drug resistance greatly increased the difficulty of treating its infection. Cell density-dependent quorum sensing ...(QS) system not only regulates the virulence but also associates with the drug resistance of
P. aeruginosa
. Screening for agents targeting QS to inhibit bacterial virulence and pathogenicity is considered a promising strategy to combat
P. aeruginosa
infection. In the present study, sennoside A was found to be able to inhibit the QS expression of
P. aeruginosa
at subinhibitory concentrations. The QS-regulated virulence factors, including protease, elastase, rhamnolipid, and pyocyanin, were also inhibited by sennoside A at both transcriptional and translational levels. Moreover, sennoside A could suppress the motility of twitching, swimming, and swarming as well as the biofilm formation, which is associated with the acute and chronic infections of
P. aeruginosa
in a dose-dependent manner. The attenuated pathogenicity of
P. aeruginosa
by sennoside A was further verified by Chinese cabbage,
Drosophila melanogaster
, and
Caenorhabditis elegans
infection analysis. Further study found that sennoside A might target the
las
system, mainly LasR, to interfere with QS. All the results indicate that sennoside A could inhibit the QS system to attenuate its regulated virulence and pathogenicity
via
mainly targeting LasR in
P. aeruginosa
and further research to identify its anti-QS activity for other Gram-negative bacteria is warranted.
Therapeutics that target the virulence of pathogens rather than their viability offer a promising alternative for treating infectious diseases and circumventing antibiotic resistance. In this study, ...we searched for anti-virulence compounds against
from Chinese herbs and investigated baicalin from
as such an active anti-virulence compound. The effect of baicalin on a range of important virulence factors in
was assessed using
-based reporters and by phenotypical assays. The molecular mechanism of the virulence inhibition by baicalin was investigated using genetic approaches. The impact of baicalin on
pathogenicity was evaluated by both in vitro assays and in vivo animal models. The results show that baicalin diminished a plenty of important virulence factors in
, including the Type III secretion system (T3SS). Baicalin treatment reduced the cellular toxicity of
on the mammalian cells and attenuated in vivo pathogenicity in a
infection model. In a rat pulmonary infection model, baicalin significantly reduced the severity of lung pathology and accelerated lung bacterial clearance. The PqsR of the
quinolone signal (PQS) system was found to be required for baicalin's impact on T3SS. These findings indicate that baicalin is a promising therapeutic candidate for treating
infections.
Deoxynivalenol (DON) is one of the most prevalent food- and feed-associated mycotoxins. It frequently contaminates agricultural commodities and poses serious threats to human and animal health and ...leads to tremendous economic losses globally. Much attention has been paid to using microorganisms to detoxify DON. In this study, a
strain named YB9 with a strong ability to detoxify DON was isolated and characterized from a moldy soil sample. YB9 could degrade more than 82.67% of 1 mg/L DON within 48 h at 37 °C and showed strong survival and DON degradation rate at simulated gastric fluid. The effects of YB9 on mice with DON intragastrical administration were further investigated by biochemical and histopathological examination and the gut microbiota was analyzed by 16S rRNA Illumina sequencing technology. The results showed that DON increased the levels of aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and creatinine (Cr), decreased those of immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgM in serum, and resulted in severe pathological damage of the liver, kidney, and spleen. By contrast, YB9 supplementation obviously inhibited or attenuated the damages caused by DON in mice. In addition, YB9 addition repaired the DON-induced dysbiosis of intestinal flora, characterized by recovering the balance of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes to the normal level and decreasing the abundance of the potentially harmful bacterium
and the excessive
caused by DON. Taken together, DON-degrading strain YB9 might be used as potential probiotic additive for improving food and feed safety and modulating the intestinal microbial flora of humans and animals.
Multimodal transport document collaboration is the foundation of multimodal transport operations. Blockchain technology can effectively address issues such as a lack of trust and difficulties in ...information sharing in current multimodal transport document collaboration. However, in current research on blockchain-based electronic documents, the bottleneck lies in the collaboration aspect of multimodal transport among multiple entities, known as the “one-bill coverage system” collaborative problem. The collaboration problem studied in this paper involves selecting suitable transport routes according to the shipper’s transport needs, and selecting the most suitable specific carrier from numerous carriers. To address the collaboration problem among multiple parties in the multimodal transport “one-bill coverage system”, a multiparty collaboration mechanism is designed. This mechanism includes two aspects: firstly, designing the architecture of the multimodal transport blockchain transport platform, which reengineers the operation process of the “one-bill coverage system” for container multimodal transport; secondly, constructing a multiparty collaboration decision-making model for the “one-bill coverage system” in multimodal transport. The model is solved and analyzed, and the collaboration strategy obtained is embedded in the application layer of the platform. Smart contracts related to the “one-bill coverage system” for multimodal transport are written in the Solidity language and deployed and executed on the Remix platform. The design of this mechanism can effectively improve the collaboration efficiency of participants in the “one-bill coverage system” for multimodal transport.
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