Two – Warehouse Inventory System Model for Deteriorating Items Considering Partial Upstream Trade Credit Financing

In this study, we developed an inventory system model under two – level trade credit where the supplier considers the retailer as credit risk but the retailer considers the customers as credit worthy. Therefore, the retailer is given a trade credit period on proportion of the goods ordered whenever he/she pays for proportion of the goods immediately after delivery. In the same vein, the retailer passes the same grace to the customers but without attaching any condition as the customers are assumed credit worthy. This partial upstream trade credit is offered to reduce the risk of failure in payment on the business transaction especially that most retailers are involved in bulk orders. The relevant cost functions are determined and a numerical example is given. Sensitivity analysis was carried out to see the effect of changes in parameters on the optimal solution of the model.

Clinical Outcomes and Cost of Ventilator Weaning and Endotracheal Extubation Guided by An Established Ventilator Weaning Protocol in Patients Undergoing Elective Cardiac Surgery

Objective: To compare successful early extubation rates, complications, and cost before and after the use of anestablished ventilator weaning protocol in patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery.Materials and Methods: Subjects were adult patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery who were clinically stablewithin 2 hours after surgery. The control group underwent conventional ventilator weaning at the discretion of theirattending staff. The intervention group underwent protocol-guided ventilator weaning. The primary outcome wasa successful early extubation (within 6 hours after surgery). Secondary outcomes were complications from weaningto 24 hours after surgery, and the relevant cost related to respiratory and cardiovascular care within 24 hours afteradmission to the postoperative intensive care unit.Results: The primary outcome occurred in 37 out of 65 patients (56.9%) in the intervention group and in 5 out of65 patients (7.7%) in the control group (adjusted odds ratio 20.6; 95% confidence interval 6.7–62.9, p<0.001). Thecomplication rates were not statistically different between the intervention and control groups (26.2% vs. 20.0%,p=0.41). The relevant cost, approximated by the service charges, related to respiratory and cardiovascular care wassignificantly less in the intervention group than in the control group (median 2,491 vs. 2,711 Thai baht, p<0.001).Conclusion: The use of the established ventilator weaning protocol after elective cardiac surgery was associated witha higher rate of successful early extubation and lower cost related to respiratory and cardiovascular care comparedto the conventional practices of ventilator weaning and extubation. The rates of overall complications were notsignificantly different.

The Effect of Leaded Gasoline on Elderly Mortality: Evidence from Regulatory Exemptions

Leaded gasoline is still used globally for aviation and automotive racing. Exploiting regulatory exemptions and a novel quasi-experiment, we find that leaded gasoline use in racing increases ambient lead, elevated blood lead rates, and elderly mortality. The mortality estimates indicate that each gram of lead added to gasoline exceeds $1,100 in damages. Our setting allows us to rule out potential confounders, such as correlated pollutants or socioeconomic status. We provide the first causal estimates linking adult mortality to leaded gasoline, highlight the value of banning on-road leaded gasoline, and present policy-relevant cost estimates at the lowest ambient levels to date. (JEL I12, J14, L71, Q51, Q53)

On Approaching Relevant Cost-Effective Sustainable Maintenance of Mineral Oil-Filled Electrical Transformers

Fire and explosion accidents of oil-filled electrical transformers are leading to negative impacts, not only on the delivery of energy, but also on workplace health and safety as well as the surrounding environment. Such accidents are still being reported, regardless of applying the regular maintenance strategy in the power plants. The purpose of this paper is to integrate a sustainability perspective into the maintenance strategy. The problem addressed is: how can we approach the relevant cost-effective sustainable maintenance for oil-filled electrical transformers? For this purpose, an empirical study in a power plant in Kuwait was introduced. The first stage was to carry out a sustainability assessment using the ABCD procedure. In this procedure, gaps to approach sustainability were identified and actions prioritized to close these gaps were demonstrated. Applying this procedure yielded an early fault diagnosis (EFD) model for achieving cost-effective sustainable maintenance using a fault trend chart based on a novel numerical method. Implementing this model resulted in an extension of the lifetime of transformers with suspected failure propagation, leading to a deferral of the replacement investment costs. The principal conclusion of this paper is the importance of viewing the maintenance strategy of transformers from a strategic sustainability perspective, in order to approach relevant cost-effective sustainable maintenance.

Seismic Retrofitting Resilience-Based for Strategic RC Buildings

The resilience of communities is given by the ideal convolution of the resilience of all their single parts. Strategic buildings require high levels of performance during and after a seismic sequence. Consequently, the seismic retrofitting of old strategic buildings is a central issue in prevention and mitigation strategies. The core of the study is a resilience approach to the seismic retrofitting of existing strategic buildings. Different performance levels are considered and four different retrofitting techniques are compared according to their fragility, and their post-earthquake cost and time recovery analyses. Lastly, the retrofitting techniques are compared based on the considered resilience index, which in turn is related to the estimated reduction of the seismic losses owing to the different retrofitting techniques, but especially to the effectiveness of the intervention based on the relevant cost and recovery times. In other words, these aspects take into account the key role of a building’s characteristics, and its public and strategic role during and after an earthquake. The intervention is selected not only (as is currently done) to reduce its construction times and costs, but to limit the service interruption after earthquakes. The results of this study could be operatively used as support tools in the seismic retrofitting of strategic buildings, either individually or on a large territorial scale.

A Comparison of Variational Bounds for the Information Bottleneck Functional

In this short note, we relate the variational bounds proposed in Alemi et al. (2017) and Fischer (2020) for the information bottleneck (IB) and the conditional entropy bottleneck (CEB) functional, respectively. Although the two functionals were shown to be equivalent, it was empirically observed that optimizing bounds on the CEB functional achieves better generalization performance and adversarial robustness than optimizing those on the IB functional. This work tries to shed light on this issue by showing that, in the most general setting, no ordering can be established between these variational bounds, while such an ordering can be enforced by restricting the feasible sets over which the optimizations take place. The absence of such an ordering in the general setup suggests that the variational bound on the CEB functional is either more amenable to optimization or a relevant cost function for optimization in its own regard, i.e., without justification from the IB or CEB functionals.

S119. A DIMENSIONAL APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING COST-BENEFIT DECISION-MAKING IN SCHIZOPHRENIA AND DEPRESSION

Background Reductions in motivation figure prominently in the clinical presentation of schizophrenia (SZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD). One critical nexus in the motivation system that drives real-world behaviour is effort-based decision-making (EBDM), which refers to the cost-benefit calculations involved in computing the amount of effort one is willing to expend in order to obtain a desired reward. Important individual differences are associated with these processes, and impairments in motivation can arise if any relevant cost-benefit information is not properly computed, appraised, or integrated. Thus, in order to better understand the computations guiding choice behaviour, the present study sought to utilize a more person-centric approach to characterize individual differences in the effort-cost computations that underlie cost-benefit decision-making in individuals with SZ and MDD. Methods A sample of 51 individuals with SZ, 43 individuals with MDD, and 51 healthy control (HC) participants underwent a comprehensive clinical and cognitive characterization, and completed the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT) as a measure of EBDM. Random effects modelling was conducted to estimate the subject-specific predictors of reward magnitude, probability, and perceived cost on choice behaviour. Cluster analysis was subsequently applied to these predictors in order to identify subtypes of impairments within the entire sample, irrespective of diagnostic status. Results Data-driven cluster analysis identified unique subgroups of individuals with distinct patterns of utilizing cost-benefit information to guide effort-based decision-making. Analyses of variance revealed significant differences between clusters with respect to their utilization of reward (F (3, 133) = 51.58, p &lt; .001), probability (F (3, 133) = 48.71, p &lt; .001), and cost (F (3, 133) = 45.24, p &lt; .001). The first cluster was characterized by an indifference to all cost-benefit information, the second cluster was more influenced by perceived cost, the third cluster demonstrated a preference for reward-based information, and the fourth cluster mainly utilized probability to guide their decision-making. While the clusters did not differ in their severity of clinical amotivation (p = .11), there was a significant effect for cognition, specifically with impairments in clusters 1 and 2. All diagnostic groups were represented in each cluster, but the distribution of SZ, MDD, and HC participants was significantly different (X2 (6, N = 137) = 16.18, p = .013). Discussion The emergence of four distinct subgroups in our sample suggests that there are individual differences amongst SZ, MDD, and HC participants in their utilization of cost-benefit information to guide choice behaviour. Moreover, with elevated levels of clinical amotivation present in all four clusters, it is possible that these unique cost-benefit decision-making patterns represent different underlying motivational impairments, the nature of which depending on how reward magnitude, probability, and perceived cost are weighed. Thus, by characterizing the specific mechanisms underlying EBDM in SZ and MDD, the results of this work may be able to help guide the identification of more precise targets for the effective treatment of motivation deficits.

Use of Chaotic Randomness Numbers

The timeless search for optimizing the demand and supply of any resource is one of the main issues for humanity nearly from the beginning of time. The relevant cost of adding an extra resource reacts by means of more energy requirement, more emissions, interaction with policies and market status makes is even more complicated. Optimization of demand and supply is the key to successfully solve the problem. There are various optimization algorithms in the literature and most of them uses various algorithms of iteration and some degree of randomness to find the optimum solution. Most of the metaheuristic and artificial intelligence algorithms require the randomness where to make a new decision to go forward. So this chapter is about the possible use of chaotic random numbers in the metaheuristic and artificial intelligence algorithms that requires random numbers. The authors only provide the necessary information about the algorithms instead of providing full detailed explanation of the subjects assuming the readers already have theoretical basic information.

TACTICAL DECISION MAKING TERKAIT DENGAN KEPUTUSAN SELL OR PROCESS FURTHER PRODUK GYPSUM MENGGUNAKAN PENDEKATAN DIFFERENTIAL ANALYSIS

Gypsum is a by-product of phosphoric acid production, which is a solid waste from the extraction of P2O5 content in phosphate rock. Gypsum can be directly sold as bulk gypsum (split off point) or furtherly processed into purified gypsum. Similarly, purified gypsum can also be furtherly processed into granulated gypsum which has the lowest water and P2O5 content. A differential analysis based on the use of relevant cost data is needed to identify alternatives that provide the greatest benefits to the company, related to alternative decisions to sell gypsum at the split-off point or to process it further. his study aims to develop a differential analysis that is used as a basis for tactical decision making related to the decision to sell gypsum products at the split-off point or to be furtherly processed into purified gypsum and/or granulated gypsum. This study uses a qualitative research approach while the research method used is a case study research method. The result shows that the decision to furtherly process gypsum into purified gypsum and granulated gypsum generates additional profit compared to selling gypsum at the split-off point. The production and sales of granulated gypsum generate the highest profit compared to purified gypsum and bulk gypsum at the split-off point