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The textile and apparel industry is characterized by fast changes in customer demand and large seasonal impacts on products, which makes supplier selection more difficult. Textile and apparel enterprises should not only maximize their own economic interests, but also pay attention to humanistic care and ecological concepts due to the pressure from the public and the ecological environment. This study addresses the problem of sustainable development in textile and garment industry. A sustainable supplier selection research system, including quality, cost, flexibility, delivery, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and environmental management, was developed. A fashion apparel company was used as a specific case to support the study. The multi-attribute decision method PROMETHEE is used to evaluate supplier performance. The proposed sustainable framework can deal with the problem of supplier selection in textile and apparel industry effectively.

We aimed at producing sodium carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) from waste paper cellulose. For this etherification, the raw material was waste paper, the cellulose was initially alkalized with NaOH, the etherifying agent was sodium chloroacetate, and the reaction medium was water or ethanol. The method provided by us, i e, a method for preparing CMC from waste paper, was environment-friendly, could be easily implemented, and could be conveniently applied to make waste paper efficiently used with high profit, and to expand the range of usable raw materials for CMC production. We successfully synthesized CMC and prepared CMC plastic membrane. This practice changes waste into valuables, which is beneficial to our living environment. For preparation of CMC, one of the crucial factors is appropriate pretreatment of the cellulose from waste paper. The pretreatment was done with a self-built hydrolysis method. We experimentally examined the effects of the mass ratios of reactants, reaction temperature, time, and reaction environment of homogeneous or heterogeneous on CMC yield. The innovative points of this research could be stated as follows: the reaction activity of cellulose was improved by pre-hydrolysis; synthesizing CMC with cellulose from waste paper changes waste into valuables is beneficial to our living environment; and a freezing treatment for the cellulose-alkali mixture was innovatively added. The effects were exhibited by a desired final conversion efficiency.

The overuse of antibiotics exacerbates the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, threatening global public health, while most traditional antibiotics act on specific targets and sterilize through chemical modes. Therefore, it is a desperate need to design novel therapeutics or extraordinary strategies to overcome resistant bacteria. Herein, we report a positively charged nanocomposite PNs-Cur with a hydrodynamic diameter of 289.6 nm, which was fabricated by ring-opening polymerization of ε-caprolactone and Z-Lys

Intercatalyst coupling has been widely applied in the functional mimics for binuclear synergy in natural metal enzymes. Herein, we introduce two facile and effective design strategies, which facilitate the coupling of two catalytic units via electrostatic interactions. The first system is based on a catalyst molecule functionalized with both a positively charged and a negatively charged group in the structure being able to pair with each other in an antiparallel manner arranged by electrostatic interactions. The other system consists of a mixture of two different of catalysts modified with either positively or negatively charged groups to generate intermolecular electrostatic interactions. Applying these designs to Ru(bda) (H2bda = 2,2'-bipyridine-6,6'-dicarboxylic acid) water-oxidation catalysts improved the catalytic performance by more than an order of magnitude. The intermolecular electrostatic interactions in these two systems were fully identified by 1H NMR, TEM, SAXS, and electrical conductivity experiments. Molecular dynamics simulations further verified that electrostatic interactions contribute to the formation of prereactive dimers, which were found to play a key role in dramatically improving the catalytic performance. The successful strategies demonstrated here can be used in designing other intercatalyst coupling systems for activation and formation of small molecules and organic synthesis.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are gradually playing an increasing role in the aspects of economic growth and social responsibility. SMEs have the characteristics of weak bargaining power and capital shortage. They are at a disadvantage when dealing with large suppliers and dishonest small and medium-sized suppliers, which may increase transaction costs and even threaten their survival. However, previous studies mainly focus on supplier selection in large organizations, and lack of appropriate methods applied to research on supplier selection in SMEs. Therefore, this paper innovatively developed a supplier evaluation framework and proposed a new multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method suitable for manufacturing SMEs. Firstly, based on the characteristics of SMEs and the requirements of sustainable development of manufacturing enterprises, the framework of supplier performance evaluation criteria for manufacturing SMEs was established. The framework covered economic, environmental and social dimensions and contained 6 main criteria and 17 sub-criteria. Secondly, a new MCDM method for supplier selection was proposed by combining with D-AHP method and fuzzy TOPSIS method. Finally, the practical case and sensitivity analysis verified the effectiveness of the framework and method.

Current approaches for the security of embedded software mainly focused on some specific platforms. In this paper, a security model based on code obfuscation is applied to embedded software. A control flow flattening algorithm is used to implement an automated obfuscator, which obfuscates C code first, and does source-to-source conversions to protect software on different platforms. The effectiveness of code obfuscation is evaluated by a multi-level quantitative model proposed in this paper. Related experiments are carried out on the NUC140VE3CN board and MC9S12XEPIOOMAG board, which are typical hardware platforms used in the application domain of automotive. The result of experiments shows that for one thing, the quantitative value of the effectiveness of the obfuscated program is obviously higher than that of the original program, namely the strength for software to keep it from being reversed is greater, and the overhead of time and space is acceptable; for another, the efficiency of the evaluation model is also demonstrated.

In order to improve the existing evaluation model, this paper establishes an innovative urban sustainable development level evaluation model from the four perspectives of “economic quality, social quality, environmental quality, quality awareness”. This paper first gives the entropy weight method and gives weight to each indicator. Then it ranks and evaluates the sustainability level of each city comprehensively by TOPSIS. And then Sichuan Province would be used as an example as a case study. The research shows that the sustainable development level of Chengdu, Panzhihua, Mianyang, Deyang and Leshan rank in the top five, while Ganzi, Liangshan, Neijiang, Bazhong and Nanchong are relatively backward. The main factors affecting the level of sustainable development are the level of urban economic quality and the level of quality awareness. According to the evaluation results, we point out the policy suggestions on how to improve the quality of urban economy and quality awareness. It provides important application value to relevant management departments and industry enterprise managers.

The rapid development of the Internet and the accelerated pace of people’s lives have gradually changed people’s consuming habit, which also contribute to the development of Real-time Distribution Industry. Real-time delivery differs from traditional service- Instead of long distances, this industry often serves customers within 5km. The delivery is carried out by motorbike couriers which requires striking a good balance between speedy on time delivery without endangering public safety. Unfortunately, when it comes into courier performance evaluation, currently the majority of the industry heavily emphasize on improving business operation efficiency and pretty much ignore the problems with public safety. Such attitude is reflected on the large amount of quantitative research and evaluating methods on the subject. While qualitative research with regard to ensuring public safety was few and far between. This paper seeks to readdress this current imbalance by adopting a sustainable development approach as a research perspective. Its aim was to create a new performance evaluation system by taking social public safety into account. Under the new system, couriers are measured under five dimensions: “service performance”, ”safety assurance”, “health awareness”, “work attitude” and “business skills”. The paper then adopts the Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic PROMETHEE Method to rank and sort the performance of each motorbike courier. Finally, through the empirical analysis of the M take-out platform, it provides important application value for the sustainable development of the motorbike courier’s performance evaluation problem for the Real-time Distribution Industry.

Petrochemical industry is a high-pollution and high-risk industry. Under the trend of maintenance business outsourcing in petrochemical industry, the performance of maintenance suppliers is directly related to operation safety. Faced with large scale and varied capability of maintenance suppliers working in a dangerous environment with high temperature, high pressure and high explosivity, petrochemical companies need to evaluate the sustainability performance of maintenance suppliers with appropriate evaluation criteria and methods. However, few scholars focused on this problem of particular industries. Therefore, in this paper, a novel performance evaluation criteria framework of maintenance suppliers was formulated and an extended fuzzy PROMETHEE II method was proposed to assess their actual performance. Firstly, considering the lack of performance criteria in maintenance process of petrochemical firms, a sustainable supplier performance evaluation criteria framework was established from 3 dimensions, including basic aspect, processing aspect as well as sustainability aspect; Secondly, the fuzzy PROMETHEE II approach was presented by combining the fuzzy set theory with PROMETHEE II method; Finally, based on the case study of a Chinese petrochemical enterprise and sensitivity analysis of the decision framework, the effectiveness of the performance evaluation criteria and the applicability of the employed method were verified.