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The field of metal-organic framework based mixed matrix membranes (M(4)s) is critically reviewed, with special emphasis on their application in CO2 capture during energy generation. After introducing the most relevant parameters affecting membrane performance, we define targets in terms of selectivity and productivity based on existing literature on process design for pre- and post-combustion CO2 capture. Subsequently, the state of the art in M(4)s is reviewed against these targets. Because final application of these membranes will only be possible if thin separation layers can be produced, the latest advances in the manufacture of M(4) hollow fibers are discussed. Finally, the recent efforts in understanding the separation performance of these complex composite materials and future research directions are outlined.

Abstract In most organizations, supply chain planning is a cross‐functional effort. However, functional areas such as sales, marketing, finance, and operations traditionally specialize in portions of the planning activities, which results in conflicts over expectations, preferences, and priorities. We report findings from a detailed case analysis of a supply chain planning process that seemingly weathers these cross‐functional conflicts. In contrast to traditional research on this area, which focuses on incentives, responsibilities, and structures, we adopt a process perspective and find that integration was achieved despite formal functional incentives that did not support it. By drawing a distinction between the incentive landscape and the planning process, we identify process as a mediator that can affect organizational outcomes. Thus, organizations may be capable of integration while functions retain different incentives and orientations to maintain focus on their stakeholders’ needs. Through iterative coding, we identify the attributes of the planning process that can drive planning performance—information, procedural, and alignment quality—but also find evidence that achieving alignment in the execution of plans can be more important than informational and procedural quality. In addition to process attributes, we also identify social elements that influenced the performance of the planning process and place the information processing attributes within a broader social and organizational context.

Purpose Faced with increasing pressure to meet short-term financing needs, companies are looking for ways to unlock potential funds from within the supply chain. Recently, reverse factoring (RF) has emerged as a financing solution that is initiated by the ordering parties to help their suppliers secure financing of receivables at favorable terms. This paper studies the impact of RF schemes on SMEs’ operational decisions and performance. Design/methodology/approach We model a supplier’s inventory replenishment problem as a multi-stage dynamic program and derive the supplier’s optimal inventory policy for two cases: 1) no access to external financing; 2) access to external financing through RF or traditional factoring (TF). A number of numerical experiments assesses the supplier’s operational performance. Findings A working capital-dependent base-stock policy is optimal. The optimal policy specifies the sell-up-to level of accounts receivable with regard to their maturity. RF considerably improves a supplier’s operational performance while providing the potential to unlock more than 10% of the supplier’s working capital. When RF is associated with credit term extension and the supplier has access to alternative sources of financing, the value of RF is then lower than intuitively expected unless the interest spread is considerably large. Originality/value This is the first attempt to analytically study the impact of RF in a stochastic multi-period setting.

Microplastics are pollutants highly stable to complete biodegradation and require more specific separation processes for their removal. Classification and potential remediation technologies, such as membrane technology, are discussed in this review.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a taxonomy of how companies implement Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) in terms of two fundamental approaches: the first emerging from internal actions and operations within companies, and the other involving inter-organizational actions undertaken with external supply chain partners. This taxonomy aims to predict firms’ performance with regard to the frequency of supply chain disruption. Design/methodology/approach A cluster analysis of survey data from 908 firms representing 69 countries together with an analysis of variance. Findings The authors’ analysis demonstrates a clear structure of four different patterns of how companies manage supply chain risks: passive, internal, collaborative, and integral. The authors found that firms pursuing an inter-organizational orientation (collaborative and integral) face the lowest levels of supply chain disruption. On the contrary, strategies which simply concentrate on having greater control of internal operations are not vigorous enough to stop the cascade effect of a disruption at the supply chain level. Furthermore, the excellent performance of integral SCRM strategies also suggests that collaboration between buyers and suppliers ensures the efficacy of internal business continuity plans and security procedures. Practical implications Managers should play an active role in making sure that supply chain management and risk management disciplines evolve together. Obviously, when an exogenous event results in a supply chain disruption, a firm will try to put its operations under control through internal capabilities. But SCRM strategies designed proactively in advance with relevant partners are even more beneficial. Originality/value First, previous studies have limited the analysis of SCRM mainly to its reactive internal initiatives within a firm. This paper takes the SCRM literature beyond the internal focus by considering both internal and inter-organizational efforts and, more importantly, developing a single configurational model to analyze modes of interaction. Second, there is little empirical evidence showing the current situation of SCRM. Research in SCRM has been more qualitative than empirical, especially in global coverage. The research tackles this gap and, based on a broader scope of the samples the empirical findings show a higher level of generalizability.

Exosomes can be considered natural targeted delivery systems able to carry exogenous payloads, drugs or theranostic nanoparticles (NPs). This work aims to combine the therapeutic capabilities of hollow gold nanoparticles (HGNs) with the unique tumor targeting properties provided by exosomes. Here, we tested different methods to encapsulate HGNs (capable of absorbing light in the NIR region for selective thermal ablation) into murine melanoma cells derived exosomes (B16-F10-exos), including electroporation, passive loading by diffusion, thermal shock, sonication and saponin-assisted loading. These methods gave less than satisfactory results: although internalization of relatively large NPs into B16-F10-exos was achieved by almost all the physicochemical methods tested, only about 15% of the exosomes were loaded with NPs and several of those processes had a negative effect regarding the morphology and integrity of the loaded exosomes. In a different approach, B16-F10 cells were pre-incubated with PEGylated HGNs (PEG-HGNs) in an attempt to incorporate the NPs into the exosomal biogenesis pathway. The results were highly successful: exosomes recovered from the supernatant of the cell culture showed up to 50% of HGNs internalization. The obtained hybrid HGN-exosome vectors were characterized with a battery of techniques to make sure that internalization of HGNs did not affect exosome characteristics compared with other strategies. PEG-HGNs were released through the endosomal-exosome biogenesis pathway confirming that the isolated vesicles were exosomes.

This critical review summarises and analyses all the work conducted to date on the use of microwave-assisted hydrothermal processes for the conversion of biomass into hydrochar, bio-crude (bio-oil) and valuable chemicals.

Abstract Traditionally, distribution has been viewed as the key (physical) link between a company's internal supply chain activities and its customers. More recently, demand management has emerged as a new dimension at the customer interface. Although it has become increasing popular in industry, it has not yet been analyzed in depth with respect to its impact on supply chain performance. Both distribution management and demand management entail customer‐facing processes and practices and that are interrelated and (may) jointly determine supply chain performance. In this paper we seek to extend the stream of research in supply chain management by systematically investigating the impact of customer‐facing supply chain practices on supply chain performance. Specifically, the paper examines the relative impact of relevant practices associated with demand and distribution management. To this end, we collected data from 116 multi‐national companies based in Europe and analyzed it using structural equation modeling techniques. Our results suggest that (i) high demand management performance has a substantial positive impact on the overall supply chain performance, (ii) this effect is stronger than that of distribution management performance, and (iii) there is no evidence that demand management might be an enabler for effective distribution management. Among the individual practices that constitute demand and distribution management, adherence to the demand and distribution management processes and demand segmentation emerged as the strongest performance levers. Based upon additional in‐depth interviews conducted with selected companies from our sample, we shed light on some of the most important findings that emerged from our survey analysis.

Chlorosulfonic acid assisted the exfoliation of MoS2 and WS2 resulting in retaining their semiconducting 2H-phase, sharply contrasting the semiconducting-to-metallic phase-transition observed with the currently available exfoliation techniques.

Regulations regarding drivers' working hours often have a big impact on total transit times, i.e., the time required for driving periods, breaks, and rest periods. Although of particular importance for many real-life applications, they have received only very little attention in the vehicle routing literature. This paper describes the new regulations for drivers' working hours in the European Union that entered into force in April 2007. According to the new regulations, motor carriers must organise the work of drivers in such a way that drivers are able to comply with the respective regulations and are made liable for infringements committed by the drivers. This paper shows how motor carriers can schedule driving periods, breaks, rest periods, and handling activities, and presents a large neighbourhood search algorithm capable of generating vehicle tours complying with the new regulations.

The CO₂ permeability and CO₂/N₂ selectivity of IL–CS membranes is improved by adding nano-HKUST-1 and ZIF-8, and predicted accurately by Maxwell-derived model as a function of interfacial contact, crystallinity and pore blockage with temperature.

. At the same time, the resulting solid nanocomposites showed, at the same doses, reduced or totally excluded cytotoxicity on mammalian somatic and tumoral cells. Data obtained in the present study suggest that adequately designed chitosan-silver nanocomposites are powerful and promising materials for reducing pathogenic microorganism-associated infections without harmful effects towards mammalian cells.

Nano-sized ZIF-11 with similar features to ZIF-11 has been used for the adsorption of H₂and CO₂and in the preparation of mixed matrix membranes for H₂/CO₂separation.

A zeolitic imidazolate framework two-layered membrane approach is simulated and experimentally validated to improve the pre-combustion gas separation.

The paper aims to evaluate the state of the literature on public procurement through examination of the works published in the Journal of Public Procurement from 2001 to 2014. 231 research outputs were collected and analyzed (with regard to, e.g., the background theory used, research method, and content of the papers), providing a overview of prior research topics and findings and identifying main gaps in the existing literature. This type of study is unique, as a broad literature review related to public procurement does not currently exist; therefore, the work has been designed with the intention to a) synthetize the prior research on public procurement; b) provide researchers with a structural framework in which future research on public procurement topics may be oriented; c) identify promising and active areas for future research.

Since April 2007 working hours of truck drivers in the European Union are controlled by regulation (EC) No. 561/2006. According to the new regulation, road transport undertakings must organise the work of drivers in a way that drivers are able to comply with the regulations and can be made liable for infringements committed by the drivers. Although of particular importance in long-distance haulage, regulations on working hours of truck drivers have received very little attention in the scheduling literature. This paper presents a method for scheduling driving and working hours of truck drivers with respect to regulation (EC) No. 561/2006. Given a sequence of locations to be visited within specified time windows, the approach is guaranteed to find a schedule complying with the regulation if such a schedule exists.

To date, little research has been done on managing the organizational and political dimensions of generating and improving forecasts in corporate settings. We examine the implementation of a supply chain planning process at a consumer electronics company, concentrating on the forecasting approach around which the process revolves. Our analysis focuses on the forecasting process and how it mediates and accommodates the functional biases that can impair the forecast accuracy. We categorize the sources of functional bias into intentional, driven by misalignment of incentives and the disposition of power within the organization, and unintentional, resulting from informational and procedural blind spots. We show that the forecasting process, together with the supporting mechanisms of information exchange and elicitation of assumptions, is capable of managing the potential political conflict and the informational and procedural shortcomings. We also show that the creation of an independent group responsible for managing the forecasting process, an approach that we distinguish from generating forecasts directly, can stabilize the political dimension sufficiently to enable process improvement to be steered. Finally, we find that while a coordination system—the relevant processes, roles and responsibilities, and structure—can be designed to address existing individual and functional biases in the organization, the new coordination system will in turn generate new individual and functional biases. The introduced framework of functional biases (whether those biases are intentional or not), the analysis of the political dimension of the forecasting process, and the idea of a coordination system are new constructs to better understand the interface between operations management and other functions.

OBJECTIVES: The Zarit Caregiver Burden Scale, translated and validated into Spanish, is sensitive to the application of a Psychoeducational Intervention Program (PIP) for the prevention and reduction of burden in caregivers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients (EDUCA study). The data obtained in EDUCA was used to reanalyse its psychometric properties and the cut-off points of the Zarit scale. METHODS: The scale was administered to 115 caregivers of patients with AD who were randomised to receive a PIP or standard care for four months. Internal reliability and a factorial analysis of principal components were assessed, and the impact of PIP on each of the subscales was evaluated. A cut-off point was defined for the Zarit scale to identify the caregivers most sensitive to receiving a PIP. RESULTS: A good internal reliability (Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.92) was obtained, with three principal components (burden, competency and dependence) explaining 54.75% of the variance. The application of PIP showed statistically significant differences versus standard care for the dependence subscale (p = 0.0082) (p = 0.062 for the burden scale). The Zarit scale cut-off points which combine better sensitivity and specificity were 56/57 and 59/60, for the 5/6 and 6/7 cut-off points of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) scale, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms the good psychometric properties of the Zarit scale found in previous studies. The dependence component appeared to be most influenced by the application of a PIP in the clinical trial. Caregivers with a Zarit scale score of 60 or more benefit most from the PIP.

crystal formation, interfacial polymerization, Langmuir-Blodgett technique, facile filtration process, and gutter layer formation, to mention just a few. For this, the most recent approaches are addressed, with particular emphasis on the most relevant results in separating gas molecules. A brief overview of the fundamentals for the application of the techniques is given. Finally, by reviewing the ongoing development works, the concluding remarks and future trends are also provided.

MOF nanoparticles of MIL-68(Al), MIL-101(Cr) and ZIF-11 for thin film nanocomposite organic solvent nanofiltration.