IntroductIonObesity, in addition to being a risk factor for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, has been implicated in degrading cognitive operation (1). Elias et al. (2) found that obesity was associated with lower cognitive functioning in late middleaged and elderly (55-88 years) men, but not women. This association is independent of other cardiovascular risk factors. Gustafson et al. (3) also found that overweight at older ages (79-88 years) is a risk factor for dementia, particularly the Alzheimer's disease. Additionally, obesity in the midlife (40-45 years) is a risk factor for dementia and Alzheimer's disease in American (both sexes) (4) and in Swedish men (5). Impaired spatial memory and hippocampal synaptic plasticity were also reported in genetically obese animal models (6,7). However, instead of genetic factors, consumption of high-fat diet (HFD) is conceived to be a common cause of obesity in humans (8). Therefore, the animal models of HFD-induced obesity could better mimic the pathological changes in obese humans.The impairment of cognitive functions has been observed in several rodent models of HFD-induced obesity but most of these studies were limited to using one sex of animals, mostly the males (9-12), or short-term (<6 months) HFD feeding (13). In an obese mouse model with long-term (up to 9-12 months) HFD feeding, we have previously reported that the Obesity is a potential risk factor for cognitive deficits in the elder humans. Using a high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obese mouse model, we investigated the impacts of HFD on obesity, metabolic and stress hormones, learning performance, and hippocampal synaptic plasticity. Both male and female C57BL/6J mice fed with HFD (3 weeks to 9-12 months) gained significantly more weights than the sex-specific control groups. Compared with the obese female mice, the obese males had similar energy intake but developed more weight gains. The obese male mice developed hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, hypercholesterolemia, and hyperleptinemia, but not hypertriglyceridemia. The obese females had less hyperinsulinemia and hypercholesterolemia than the obese males, and no hyperglycemia and hypertriglyceridemia. In the contextual fear conditioning and step-down passive avoidance tasks, the obese male, but not female, mice showed poorer learning performance than their normal counterparts. These learning deficits were not due to sensorimotor impairment as verified by the open-field and hot-plate tests. Although, basal synaptic transmission characteristics (input-output transfer and paired-pulse facilitation (PPF) ratio) were not significantly different between normal and HFD groups, the magnitudes of synaptic plasticity (long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD)) were lower at the Schaffer collateral-CA1 synapses of the hippocampal slices isolated from the obese male, but not female, mice, as compared with their sex-specific controls. Our results suggest that male mice are more vulnerable than the females to the impacts of HFD on weight gains, metab...

The last decade has witnessed a sharp rising trend in environmental awareness and protection in China. Green supply chain management (GSCM) has been regarded as an effective tool in China for mitigating the negative effects that firms have on the environment. However, the extent to which GSCM pressures influence GSCM practices, and whether and how GSCM practices affect GSCM performance are topics that remain under-explored. Combining Institutional Theory, Resource-Based View (RBV) Theory, and the literature on GSCM, our study sheds light on the relationship among GSCM pressures, practices, and performance under the moderating effect of quick response (QR) technology. Using statistical analysis of the collected data and case studies from companies in China, we establish several results. First, among different GSCM pressures, market and export pressures have significant impacts on GSCM practices, whereas cost pressure does not influence GSCM practices significantly. Second, internal improvement practice exerts a significant impact on GSCM practices, while external improvement practice negatively affects positive economic performance. In addition, ecology practice has significantly influenced environmental, positive economic, and operational performance. Third, QR technology suppresses the positive effect between internal improvement practice and negative economic performance. Two real cases from Huawei (telecommunications technologies) and Beijing Benz Automotive (automobile manufacturing) are conducted to verify the findings and generate additional insights. Our findings contribute to the literature and provide guidance to help governments and companies establish effective and innovative GSCM policies. K E Y W O R D S green supply chain management, multi-methodological research, performance, practice, pressures, quick response 1 | INTRODUCTION 1.1 | Background Environmental sustainability is a global concern. For a long time, governments, academies, and enterprises have considered the trade-off between economic growth and environmental preservation and sought out optimal strategies (

No abstract

We present a numerical scheme for approximating the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations based on an auxiliary variable associated with the total system energy. By introducing a dynamic equation for the auxiliary variable and reformulating the Navier-Stokes equations into an equivalent system, the scheme satisfies a discrete energy stability property in terms of a modified energy and it allows for an efficient solution algorithm and implementation. Within each time step, the algorithm involves the computations of two pressure fields and two velocity fields by solving several de-coupled individual linear algebraic systems with constant coefficient matrices, together with the solution of a nonlinear algebraic equation about a scalar number involving a negligible cost. A number of numerical experiments are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and the performance of the presented algorithm.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Dramatic advancements and adoption of computing capabilities, communication technologies, and advanced, pervasive sensing have impacted every aspect of modern manufacturing. Furthermore, as society explores the Fourth Industrial Revolution characterized by access to and leveraging of knowledge in the manufacturing enterprise, the very character of manufacturing is rapidly evolving, with new, more complex processes, and radically, new products appearing in both the industries and academe. As for traditional manufacturing processes, they are also undergoing transformations in the sense that they face ever-increasing requirements in terms of quality, reliability, and productivity, needs that are being addressed in the knowledge domain. Finally, across all manufacturing we see the need to understand and control interactions between various stages of any given process, as well as interactions between multiple products produced in a manufacturing system. All these factors have motivated tremendous advancements in methodologies and applications of control theory in all aspects of manufacturing: at process and equipment level, manufacturing systems level, and operations level. Motivated by these factors, the purpose of this paper is to give a high-level overview of latest progress in process and operations control in modern manufacturing. Such a review of relevant work at various scales of manufacturing is aimed not only to offer interested readers information about state-of-the art in control methods and applications in manufacturing, but also to give researchers and practitioners a vision about where the direction of future research may be, especially in light of opportunities that lay as one concurrently looks at the process, system and operation levels of manufacturing.