A successful procedure for the in situ synthesis of silver nanoparticles by chemical reduction of a silver salt on cotton and wool textiles is reported herein. The synthesis can be advantageously performed in an aqueous system when compared with an ethanolic system. SEM studies confirmed the presence of silver nanoparticles on the treated textiles, and elemental analysis by ICP revealed that, for the aqueous system, up to 3 and 4 mg of silver per gram were deposited per gram of cotton and wool fabric, respectively. This represented an increase of up to 16-fold for cotton and 3-fold for wool compared with the ethanolic system. Thus, the difference between the aqueous and ethanolic systems was more evident for cotton, albeit more silver was deposited on wool samples in all conditions. An increase in the amount of reducing agent present resulted in more silver being deposited on the textiles when using an aqueous system. The use of water presents a great advantage for possible scale-up of the method. This simple method can be applied to produce textiles for biomedical applications or presenting conductive properties. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Green and lean paradigms have been adopted by companies in order to manage their relationships with suppliers in a supply chain management context, but nearly always separately and with little understanding of their influence on company performance. This paper proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of the influence of green and lean upstream supply chain management practices on the sustainable development of businesses. To attend this objective, a set of performance measures covering economic (operational cost, environmental cost, and inventory cost), environmental (business wastage, green image, and CO 2 emission), and social (corruption risk, supplier screening and local supplier) perspectives is proposed. An explanatory case study was conducted at a Portuguese automaker to test qualitatively the validity of the proposed theoretical framework. From the case study, a model is suggested, which encompasses the relationships between green and lean upstream supply chain practices and sustainable business development.

Herein we describe the design and the assembly of temperature sensitive polysulfone (PS)/polyacrylonitrile (PAN) blend membranes using supercritical fluid technology. Blended membranes were prepared using the CO2-assisted phase inversion method, and their pores were coated with two thermoresponsive hydrogels-poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm) and poly(N,N′-diethylacrylamide) (PDEAAm). Permeation experiments of bovine serum albumin (BSA) and lysozyme (LYS) solutions were used to evaluate the performance and temperature-responsive behavior of coated membranes. While membranes coated with PNIPAAm presented similar protein permeation profiles at temperatures below and above its lower critical solution temperature, PDEAAm coating imparted a temperature-responsive behavior to PS/PAN (90:10) membranes and selective permeation of proteins with different sizes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The main objective of this paper is to propose an index to assess the agility and leanness of individual companies and the corresponding supply chain. The index is named Agilean and is obtained from a set of Agile and Lean supply chain practices integrated in an assessment model. The Delphi technique is used to develop a series of weighted Agile and Lean {SCM} practices and also the importance of paradigms through experts in automotive research topics. As a way to illustrate the application of the index and find out if it returns return meaningful values, a case study is presented. The case study results confirm the quite easy applicability of the suggested Agilean index in a supply chain real-world setting. This index makes it possible to assess the companies and corresponding supply chain Agile and Lean behaviour, which is translated into an index score to compare competing companies and supply chains.

Measurements made in feces and urine of Wistar rats exposed to lead acetate (n = 20) in drinking water since the fetal period were compared with those obtained from a control group (n = 20) in order to assess the age influence on Pb excretion. The measurements were made in different collections of rats aging between 1 and 11 months. To determine the Pb content of the samples, total reflection X-ray fluorescence (TXRF) and electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry (ETAAS) were used for the urine samples and energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) was used for the feces.The results show high concentrations of Pb being eliminated from the organism by urine and feces in contaminated rats. Values vary from (600`140)mgl1 to (5 460`115)mgl1 in urine and from (4 500`300)mgg1 to (11 400`3 300)mgg1 in dry feces. The control rats show, in general, low lead concentrations or below detection limits. The fecal/urinary ratio was studied. It was shown to be about three to four orders of magnitude and positively correlated with time. It was verified in feces and urine that excretion decreases with the animal age and that this decrease is made by different levels of excretion. The excretions of Pb in urine and in feces are positively correlated.A good agreement was found between the results obtained with TXRF and ETAAS for urine samples. This work also stresses the suitability of these techniques in the study of Pb intoxication.

The purpose of this paper is to establish links between supply chain disturbances and corresponding strategies of resilience to counter them. To this end, an inductive research approach is used, examining a sample of 38 cases. Secondary data from the cases is used to identify disturbances which affected the corresponding supply chains and the resilience strategies used by managers. The empirical evidences shows that the negative effects of supply chain disturbances can be categorised into a number of supply chain failure modes. In addition, a set of resilience strategies was identified that could be used to overcome those failure modes. A conceptual model, with links between supply chain disturbances, failures and resilience strategies, is proposed. The limitations of this research result from the use of secondary data sources. The findings are only valid for the selected case studies and, consequently, may not be applicable in other scenarios. Future research should focus on detailed case studies that investigate cross-functional applications across the organisation and the supply chain.

Reduction in the accumulation capacitance value was more in Si metal-oxide-semiconductor devices than that of Ge metal-oxide-semiconductor devices after a thermal treatment irrespective of the annealing environment. Relatively, thermal treatment in oxygen environment improves the interface quality of HfO2/Ge stacks considerably, when compared with HfO 2/Si stacks. Whereas, the forming gas annealing at a temperature of 400 °C was not so effective in improving the interface quality at HfO 2/Si stack. The presence of induced negatively charged hydrogen atom in Ge lessens the Fermi level pinning at HfO2 and Ge interface. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.