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Tropical high‐Andean wetlands, locally known as 'bofedales', are key ecosystems sustaining biodiversity, carbon sequestration, water provision and livestock farming. Bofedales' contribution to dry season baseflows and sustaining water quality is crucial for downstream water security. The sensitivity of bofedales to climatic and anthropogenic disturbances is therefore of growing concern for watershed management. This study aims to understand seasonal water storage and release characteristics of bofedales by combining remote sensing analysis and ground‐based monitoring for the wet and dry seasons of late 2019 to early 2021, using the glacierised Vilcanota‐Urubamba basin (Southern Peru) as a case study. A network of five ultrasound loggers was installed to obtain discharge and water table data from bofedal sites across two headwater catchments. The seasonal extent of bofedales was mapped by applying a supervised machine learning model using Random Forest on imagery from Sentinel‐2 and NASADEM. We identified high seasonal variability in bofedal area with a total of 3.5% and 10.6% of each catchment area, respectively, at the end of the dry season (2020), which increased to 15.1% and 16.9%, respectively, at the end of the following wet season (2021). The hydrological observations and bofedal maps were combined into a hydrological conceptual model to estimate the storage and release characteristics of the bofedales, and their contribution to runoff at the catchment scale. Estimated lag times between 1 and 32 days indicate a prolonged bofedal flow contribution throughout the dry season (about 74% of total flow). Thus, our results suggest that bofedales provide substantial contribution to dry season baseflow, water flow regulation and storage. These findings highlight the importance of including bofedales in local water management strategies and adaptation interventions including nature‐based solutions that seek to support long‐term water security in seasonally dry and rapidly changing Andean catchments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current study, we tested whether school connectedness mediates more distal deficits in social skills in influencing depressive symptoms in a sample of 127 sixth- and seventh-grade students. Results demonstrated that school connectedness and social skills accounted for 44% and 26% of variance in depressive symptoms respectively and 49% in a combined model. Although the full mediation model hypothesis was not supported, follow-up analyses revealed that school connectedness partially mediated the link between social skills and preadolescent depressive symptoms. Thus, school connectedness appears to play as strong a role in depressive symptoms in this younger preadolescent age group. (Contains 2 tables.)

Floods remain a wicked problem and are becoming more destructive with widespread ecological, social, and economic impacts. The problem is acute in mountainous river catchments where plausible assumptions of risk behaviour to flood exposure and vulnerability are crucial. Inclusive approaches are required to design suitable flood early warning systems (EWSs) with a focus on local social and governance context rather than technology, as is the case with existing practice. We assess potential approaches for facilitating inclusiveness in designing EWSs by integrating diverse contexts and identifying preconditions and missing links. We advocate the use of a SMART approach as a checklist for good practice to facilitate bottom-up initiatives that benefit the community at risk by engaging them at every stage of the decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study two-stage short-term staffing adjustments for the upcoming nursing shift. Our proposed adjustments are first used at the beginning of each 4-hour nursing shift, shift t, for the upcoming shift, shift t + 1. Then, after observing actual patient demand for nursing at the start of shift t + 1, we make our final staffing adjustments to meet the patient demand. We model six different adjustment options for the two-stage stochastic programming model, five options available as first-stage decisions and one option available as the second-stage decision. We develop a two-stage stochastic integer programming model, which minimizes total nurse staffing costs and the cost of adjustments to the original schedules, while ensuring the coverage of nursing demand. Our experimental results, using the data from an urban Children's Hospital, indicate that the developed stochastic nurse schedule adjustment model can deliver cost savings up to 18% for the medical units, compared to alternative no short-term adjustment scheduling models. The proposed stochastic adjustments model successfully keeps average understaffing percentages under 2% throughout the staffing horizon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conducts a state-of-the-art review for a particular emerging field of Production Research: pricing optimisation, channel and uncertainty. This is achieved by presenting a set of state-of-the-art papers accepted to this special issue, and co-word analysis to trace the development of this research field. Data for co-word analysis is based on literature search in the International Journal of Production Research, since 1961 using Web of Science with the Keywords 'pricing optimization', 'channel' or 'uncertainty'. Pricing approaches and tools have attracted more and more attentions from multiple disciplinary such as supply-chain management and marketing. The objective of this special issue is to contribute new insights to the extant body of knowledge in pricing optimisation, channel and uncertainty, specifically for 55th anniversary of International Journal of Production Research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5915.2009.00228.x Byline: Anthony D. Ross (1[dagger]), Vaidyanathan Jayaraman (2) Keywords: Health Care Supply Chains; Heuristic Procedure; and Mathematical Models Abstract: ABSTRACT Recent articles in the Wall Street Journal summarize the state of business practice in American hospitals by shedding light on the state of supply chain management practices and foci in today's health care supply chains. In health care, the single largest cost after labor is materials, and it has been documented that health care facilities can reduce the environmental impacts of the products and services they consume before regulatory problems arise or waste disposal costs increase by focusing on their upstream activities. Health care systems around the country consume significant quantities and varieties of products within the health delivery processes. Solving these environmental problems requires a much broader view involving collaborative efforts of professionals from different areas of health care to meet these challenges. The purchasing function bridges the gaps by providing a healthy dialogue on key environmental attributes within the health care supply chain. The concept of bundling new with refurbished products is gaining a lot of attention in the health care supply chain. This research describes a health care purchasing problem for bundling new and refurbished products of the type facing a growing number of large health care providers, and then proposes a methodology for evaluating the complex tradeoffs involved in bundling decisions for refurbished health care products. By exploiting some useful properties of the problem structure, our results provide buyers with useful insights for examining and selecting suppliers who are willing to offer bundles of new and refurbished products. Author Affiliation: (1)Department of Marketing & Supply Chain Management, Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1112, e-mail:rossant@bus.msu.edu (2)Department of Management, School of Business Administration, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124, e-mail:Vaidy@miami.edu Article History: [Received: December 2006. Accepted: January 2009.] Article note: ([dagger]) Corresponding author.

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5915.2008.00219.x Byline: Anthony D. Ross (1[dagger]), Frank P. Buffa (2), Cornelia Droge (3), Donald Carrington (4) Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA); Strengths and Weaknesses Performance Frontiers; and Supplier Relationship Management Abstract: ABSTRACT This article presents a consensus-building methodology to implement dyadic performance measurement. It focuses on transmuting supplier performance and buyer performance metrics on several important attributes into actionable relationship management plans using Clark's (1996) theory of performance frontiers. Access to the supplier performance management program of a Fortune 100 corporation was granted to the research team. Direct observation of practice and in-depth discussions with several managers provided a roadmap for investigating both the literature on quantitative evaluation methods and the empirically derived theory on buyer-supplier relationships from several perspectives. This study describes a multiphase, iterative framework that uses current methods and theory on dyadic buyer-supplier evaluation to consider: (i) evaluation criteria and their importance; (ii) whether the improvement focus should be on strengths, weaknesses, or both; and (iii) whether the referent role supplier should be the ideal supplier, best supplier, or best-in-strategic-group supplier in the focal supply base. We illustrate a unifying approach by reporting results from a large buyer and 35 of its key suppliers. This research makes the case for managing supplier relationships through the dyadic performance lens. The outputs from this framework provide individual supplier improvement paths which are actionable prescriptions for each buyer-supplier dyad, as well as recommendations for strategic group formation. Author Affiliation: (1)Department of Supply Chain Management, Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1122, e-mail:rossant@msu.edu (2)Department of Information and Operations Management, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77845, e-mail:f-buffa@tamu.edu (3)Department of Marketing, Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1122, e-mail:droge@msu.edu (4)Qwest Communication Corporation, Littleton, CO 80120 e-mail:Donald.carrington@qwest.com Article History: [Received: November 2006. Accepted: October 2008.] Article note: ([dagger]) Corresponding author.

Floods remain a wicked-problem and are becoming more destructive with widespread ecological, social and economic impacts. The problem is particularly acute in modified formerly pristine, mountainous river-catchments where plausible assumptions of risk-behaviour relevant to flood exposure and vulnerability are crucial for robust early warning system development. In particular more focused conversation with the community-at-risks is required. In such context, we advocate the use of a SMART -approach to facilitate bottom-up initiatives to facilitate development of inclusive and purposeful early warning systems that benefit the community-at-risk by engaging them every step of the way along with including other stakeholders at multiple-scales of operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations increasingly emphasize the use of information technology in the procurement process. An integrative model of e-procurement adoption that captures its antecedents. two types of e-procurement use, and their respective effects on relationship development and perceived efficiency gains are proposed and empirically tested using the data collected from senior managers in four technology-intensive industries. Our findings indicate that the use of coordination e-procurement applications has both direct and indirect effects on perceived efficiency gains, while transactional application use can directly lead to efficiency gains. In addition, the use of e-procurement applications is strongly influenced by organizational learning ability and normative pressures. The findings provide a new perspective for managers in their future implementation of e-procurement applications. Index Terms--E-procurement adoption, information technology (IT), supply management.

Referenceless proton resonance frequency (PRF) shift thermometry provides a means to measure temperature changes during minimally invasive thermotherapy that is inherently robust to motion and tissue displacement. However, if the referenceless method is used to determine temperature changes during prostate ablation, phase gaps between water and fat in image regions used to determine the background phase can confound the phase estimation. We demonstrate an extension to referenceless thermometry which eliminates this problem by allowing background phase estimation in the presence of phase discontinuities between aqueous and fatty tissue. In this method, images are acquired with a multiecho sequence and binary water and fat maps are generated from a Dixon reconstruction. For the background phase estimation, water and fat regions are treated separately and the phase offset between the two tissue types is determined. The method is demonstrated feasibile in phantoms and during in vivo thermal ablation of canine prostate. Index Terms--Interventional, magnetic resonance, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), prostate, temperature, thermal ablation, thermometry.

Usage of production, logistics, outbound, transportation (PLOT) design system for design and management of distribution networks is discussed.

The phosphorylation sites on the delta subunit of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (AChR) on intact cultured myotubes were identified to determine the function of the phosphorylation pathway on the redistribution of AChR during organogenesis. Enzyme inhibition and activation studies revealed that protein kinase C phosphorylates serine residues at positions 378, 393 and 450 of the delta subunit of AChR. The implications of these findings are discussed.

This work examines medium-term integrated nurse staffing policy options for hospital Intensive Care Units (ICU) Our aim is to reduce nurse staffing costs while balancing the under/ over-staffing risks. Medium-term nurse schedules are highly uncertain as they are generated long before actual patient demand is realised. Optimisation models presented in this study allow us to examine fixed versus dynamic nurse staffing policy options for the medical units. In the dynamic nurse staffing, we utilise historical patient data to fit estimates of non-stationary patient demand. We compare the performance of both policy options with the optimal staffing scheme reached by the actual patient data. We generate feasible schedules for nurse sub-groups to avoid complete enumeration. We evaluate the performance of models with the pediatric ICU of a large urban children's hospital. Experiments with the dynamic policy resulted in more than 3% higher average cost savings compared to the fixed staffing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]