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Green supply chain management (GSCM) is one of the key directions for the sustainable development of steel enterprises. However, due to the low energy efficiency and high emissions of steel enterprises, there are still difficulties in implementing GSCM. To this end, a comprehensive performance analysis method was proposed. To analyze the performance level of enterprises implementing GSCM, a performance evaluation model integrating Three-scale Analytic Hierarchy Process (TAHP) and Levenberg-Marquardt back propagation (LMBP) is proposed. Furthermore, considering the influencing factors of GSCM performance of steel enterprises, a factor analysis model based on the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method is proposed. Through the analysis of key driving factors affecting performance, suggestions are made for enterprises to improve GSCM. This approach takes the GSCM of a steel enterprise as an example to verify the feasibility of the method. Influencing factors, such as corporate sustainable development image, goods supply, inventory management, production management have been identified as the driving factors affecting GSCM performance, and effective measures to improve the performance of GSCM of steel enterprises have been proposed for the driving factors. The results can provide support for the effective implementation of GSCM in steel enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effective identification of remanufacturing design requirements is crucial to ensure that remanufactured products meet the required standards and demands. However, in addition to considering the performance demands of customers for products, remanufactured products should also take into account the various types and degrees of failure across diverse parts. To this end, under the dual demands, a knowledge graph – based requirement identification model is proposed to intelligently transform complex remanufacturing demands into standardised design requirements. Firstly, excavation of design information from representative cases is conducted, including failure characteristics, customer demands and design requirements (FCDR). A FCDR ontology model is proposed by establishing the mapping relationship between demands and design requirements. Secondly, the triplet of design information is integrated into the BERT-BiLSTM-CRF model to obtain the accurate entity, and the ALBERT-BiLSTM-Attention model is used to extract the FCDR relationship, so that a knowledge graph can be constructed. Thirdly, by using coupling weighting technique to consider the relevance of the dual demands, normalised failure characteristics and customer demands are accurately extracted and mapped to similar design requirement nodes in knowledge graph. Finally, a machine tool remanufacturing design is used as an example to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the necessary ways to achieve the efficient, clean utilization of coal resources is to reduce the amount of coal gangue in raw coal to ensure the development of clean, low-carbon, and green energy in China. The application of conventional coal gangue separation equipment is severely limited due to the large investment in early construction, high production costs, and large water consumption and waste in production. Intelligent coal gangue separation equipment has the advantages of fast speed, high precision, strong modularity, and integration scalability. It also has the advantages of low operation cost and energy consumption, convenient operation and maintenance, and no water use. All of that could effectively improve the utilization rate of coal resources and expand the economic benefits of enterprises. The application of high-speed, high-precision, and anti-interference online element rapid analysis technology in intelligent coal gangue separation equipment will become an inevitable trend of equipment development in the future with the continuous improvement of coal product demand. Online rapid element analysis technology includes laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, dual-energy X-ray, and transient neutron activation analysis. Improving and applying more high-speed, high-precision algorithms such as partial least squares and Monte Carlo library least squares in the future are important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid upgrading of mechanical products has caused serious waste of resources and environmental pollution. For improving the level of resources utilization and reduce the environmental pollution, this paper proposes a model to comprehensively evaluate the benefits of active remanufacturing (AR) of mechanical products based on big data analysis. The proposed model makes a comparison of the benefits of AR products and original products from the three aspects of economy, environment and user experience, and highlights the AR advantages of in-service mechanical products. Firstly, after collecting and analyzing various feedback information from the original manufacturers (OM), retailers (Rs), maintenance personnel (Ms) and end users, quality function deployment (QFD) is used to forecast the AR cost and evaluate of the economic benefits employing the smoothing index method. Secondly, the environmental benefits of different products are evaluated when analyzing the actual operating environment, operating specifications and remanufactured energy consumption of in-service products. Then, the user satisfaction survey of in-service mechanical products is conducted through market research, and the user experience evaluation is performed separately using fuzzy quantification and smoothing index methods. Finally, the feasibility and accuracy of model is verified by an in-service machine tool CA6180. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the most important components of machine tool, guideway has an important driving force to comprehensively improve the remanufacturability of machine tools. To select optimal guideway for machine tool remanufacturing, an integrated multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach that combines improved analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and connection degree-based technique of ranking preferences by similarity to the ideal solution (CD-TOPSIS) method is proposed. The improved AHP is employed to calculate the weights of each criterion and the CD-TOPSIS is adapted to complete the task of sorting; finally, the comprehensive evaluation of the alternatives is carried out. A case study, i.e. eight types of guideways, is illustrated to verify the proposed MCDM method. In addition, comparison with existing methods is performed to validate the effective and reliability for the proposed hybrid approach. Also, sensitivity analysis is provided to evaluate the robustness of the method. The final result shows the method provides reliable decision support for the selection of machine tool guideways for remanufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many ungulates are reported to use natural or artificial licks with seasonal patterns around the world. From December 2016 to August 2017, we used infrared camera to record the use of artificial licks in wild sika deer (Cervus nippon) in Zhejiang Qingliangfeng National Nature Reserve, China. We explored the daily rhythm, seasonal pattern and sex difference in lick utilization. In total, 12,043 videos and 22,901 pictures were collected. Our results showed that: (1) the lick visiting frequency was higher at night than that during daytime; (2) the difference in lick visiting frequency between females and males disappeared after taking into account of sex ratio; (3) the lick duration peaked in April during a year. These findings suggested that there were clear daily rhythm and seasonal pattern of lick use in sika deer. Seasonal change in lick use intensity was consistent with our prediction. These variations in lick use might be driven by both the physiological needs of the mineral elements in different life stages and the seasonal changes in climate and food. The reserve management authority should pay more attention to the supplement of licks in spring and summer to fulfill animal's physiological needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musk deer is threatened by poaching for musk pod and habitat fragmentation. The species is endangered within its distribution range including Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Mongolia, China, Korea and Russia. In Nepal, the deer is confined to protected areas throughout the Himalaya. It is a solitary and shy forest dweller with a crepuscular activity pattern. It prefers and repeatedly uses one or more specific defecation sites. Such behaviour is believed to function in chemical communication among individuals. This study was conducted in Neshyang valley in the Annapurna Conservation Area, and aims to evaluate how musk deer selects the latrine site in its habitat taking into account both biotic and abiotic factors. In order to achieve this aim, we laid out a total of 23 transects of 500 m length throughout the study area. Within each transect, 20 m × 20 m nested structured quadrats were located at an interval of 100 m. We found that musk deer preferred to use latrine sites in fir forest while they avoid both blue pine forest and open areas. Furthermore, distance from water sources and mixed forests have a crucial role in selecting latrine sites by musk deer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of a hair hormone concentration assay is increasingly recognized as a useful and noninvasive technique for monitoring the endocrinological status of animals. However, few studies have focused on reproductive and stress hormones together. We used a chemiluminescent immunoassay to determine whether the progesterone, estradiol, and cortisol concentrations could be measured from hair and whether these hormone concentrations varied in different hair segments of captive Père David deer hinds. We found that progesterone, estradiol, and cortisol could be measured in the hair samples and that the progesterone concentration varied but the estradiol and cortisol concentrations did not among different hair segments. Contrary to the segmental decline in hair cortisol found in many studies, we found that progesterone concentration was higher near the tip than at the base of hair in Père David deer. This suggests that the variation in segmental hair steroid hormone concentration in seasonal molting animals may be mainly due to internal reproductive cycles and that hair steroid hormones may reflect long-term physiological changes and can thus be used for the conservation and management of wildlife. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bear bile is a traditional Chinese medicine that has been used for millennia. Several arguments support and oppose the use of bear farming in terms of conservation and nonhuman animal welfare. This study involved designing a questionnaire and surveying a random sample of general citizens and college students in Beijing to elicit their attitudes on bile extraction from living bears. Older people and people with lower education levels used more bear bile medicines. In total, 29.47% (n= 204) of citizens and 23.14% (n= 81) of students surveyed used bear bile medicine since 1990. Students were less willing to use bear bile medicines than citizens (p< .05). The level the respondents agreed with the blue side (against the extraction of bile from living bears; anti for short) was significantly higher than that for the red side (support the extraction of bile from living bears; pro for short;p< .05). Additionally, college students had a more distinct attitude toward the opposing views, which indicates they were more inclined to oppose bile extraction from living bears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To learn the seasonal home range pattern and its role in the ecological adaptation of rewild Père David’s deer, we took the investigation from spring to winter in three-collared females that released into the coastal wetlands of the Yellow Sea, China. Using GPS collars, minimum convex polygons and fixed kernel estimation, we recorded the movement and estimated the home ranges of the deer. The results showed that the collared deer inhabited only 42.85% of the coastal wetland habitat that had been designated for them. The home ranges were larger during winter and spring than in autumn and summer. In summer and autumn, the collared deer remained in the reserve, which was dominated by spartina grass. In the spring and winter, they were lured by the green leaves of wheat in the farmlands outside the reserve but were then driven back by people. Home range patterns reflected the seasonality of the availability of food resources and human activity. In addition to the frequently utilized habitats, much larger wetland areas are required for such deer. As the population density increases gradually, more available space will be needed to meet the fundamental needs of the seasonal dispersal of rewild Père David’s deer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To understand the circadian rhythms of the glucose metabolism and related hormones in desert reptiles, we studied the daily changes in plasma leptin, insulin, and glucose in the toad-headed lizard,Phrynocephalus versicolor, in the semi-desert of the Alashan Plateau. Blood samples were obtained from groups of 20 lizards (about equal sex ratio for each group) at 4-h intervals throughout a 24-h period. Leptin, insulin, and glucose levels were determined using ELISA, RIA, and the glucose oxidase method, respectively. Ambient temperature and humidity were also measured when the blood samples were taken. We found that: (1) there was a significant difference in plasma leptin concentrations at different times of day; (2) no significant circadian rhythm could be measured for plasma insulin and glucose; (3) ambient temperature, humidity, and body condition had no significant effect on plasma leptin, insulin, and glucose levels; and (4) there were significant correlations between plasma glucose concentrations and leptin concentrations 8 h later, and between insulin concentrations and leptin concentration 8–12 h later. These results suggested that the secretions of leptin and insulin played an important role in glucose metabolism in reptiles in an arid environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The diversity and uncertainty of dimension, damage degree and remaining life characteristics of used parts make the remanufacturing process route decision more complicated. In order to select the optimal remanufacturing process route, an integrated model based on quality function deployment (QFD), fuzzy linear regression and zero–one goal programming is proposed in which machining time (T), machining quality (Q), machining costs (C), resources consumption (R), environmental emissions (E) and engineering characteristics of each remanufacturing process stage are considered as decision objectives and decision variables, respectively. The proposed model provides the means for incorporating not only the relationships between decision objectives and decision variables but also the interactions between decision variables through adopting the QFD principles. The potential use of the proposed model is illustrated through an application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective evaluating environmental performance of a machining system is critical for continuous environmental improvement and a long-term survival of intense competition. Manufacturers face difficulties during the environmental performance evaluating process due to vague and subjective considerations. To help enterprises economically and effectively improve environmental performance, a new method for evaluating environmental performance of a machining system is presented. In this method, a multi-criteria decision-making technique (analytical hierarchy process) is employed to set baselines for environmental performance evaluation, and a back-propagation neural network is used to express the preferences and knowledge of the decision makers about the evaluating problems. An illustrative example is used to illustrate how the assessment method may be applied and to demonstrate its applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]