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.

Titanium oxide (TiO 2) finds potential applications in various fields such as solar cells, optical coatings due to its high refractive index and it also has been widely used in memory devices owing to its high dielectric constant. TiO 2 films have been deposited on p-type silicon (100) substrates by RF magnetron sputtering technique. Thickness, structure and surface morphology of the films were analyzed by using α-step profilometer, Raman spectroscopy and atomic force microscope respectively. Thin film capacitors of the type Al/TiO 2/Si were fabricated by evaporation of Aluminium on to the TiO 2 films. The current - voltage and capacitance - voltage characteristics were carried out to understand the electrical conduction and dielectric properties of the deposited films with a stack of Al/TiO 2/Si. The leakage current density was decreased and capacitance was increased with increase of substrate bias voltage.

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.

Molybdenum (0.5at%) doped indium oxide thin films deposited by spray pyrolysis technique were irradiated by 100MeV O 7+ ions with different fluences of 5×10 11, 1×10 12 and 1×10 13ions/cm 2. Intensity of (222) peak of the pristine film was decreased with increase in the ion fluence. Films irradiated with the maximum ion fluence of 1×10 13ions/cm 2 showed a fraction of amorphous nature. The surface microstructures on the surface of the film showed that increase in ion fluence decreases the grain size. Mobility of the pristine molybdenum doped indium oxide films was decreased from  122 to 48cm 2/Vs with increasing ion fluence. Among the irradiated films the film irradiated with the ion fluence of 5×10 11ions/cm 2 showed relatively low resistivity of 6.7×10 -4Ωcm with the mobility of 75cm 2/Vs. The average transmittance of the as-deposited IMO film is decreased from 89% to 81% due to irradiation with the fluence of 5×10 11ions/cm 2. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Supply chains in an attempt to be more competitive, are adopting new management paradigm. Among these paradigms there are four that deserve particular mention because of their importance to better {SC} performance: lean, agile, resilient and green. The main objective of this paper is to propose a set of supply chain management practices to become the {SC} more lean, agile, resilient and green, which were named {LARG} practices, and to suggest a conceptual model that makes possible to analyze the influence of these {LARG} practices on manufacturing supply chains performance. Also, a set of operational, economic and environmental performance measures are suggested.

The main objective of this exploratory paper is to investigate the relationships between green practices of supply chain management and supply chain performance. This relationship is investigated in the context of the automotive industry. Five research propositions are suggested and tested with empirical data derived from five case studies taken from the Portuguese automotive supply chain. The data analysis identifies the most important green practices considered by managers, as well as the performance measures that are most appropriate and most widely used as means to evaluate the influence of green practices on supply chain performance. A conceptual model was derived from the data analysis and it can be used to assess the influence of green practices on supply chain performance. This model provides evidence as to which green practices have positive effects on quality, customer satisfaction and efficiency. It also identifies the practices which have negative effects on supply chain performance.