A web-based workforce management system for Sainsburys Supermarkets Ltd

Labour scheduling plays an important and critical role in Sainsburys day to day operations and profitability. The integrated workforce management solution for Sainsburys is an intelligent solution for the operational deployment of human resources, integrated business forecasting, generation and calculation of workload and staff scheduling. The workforce management technology has provided Sainsburys with a fully web-based and centralised system that produces optimised schedules for all employees satisfying the forecasted demand of work with granularity of fifteen minutes. The system is configured to respect all operational and business requirements as well as employee contractual constraints. This paper introduces the workforce management solution system designed, developed and implemented for Sainsburys. We concentrate on two modelling structures, namely the work pattern model and optimisation model, and briefly discuss the optimisation process.     

Preparation of magnetic polyurethane rigid foam nanocomposites

Super paramagnetic Fe₃O₄@SiO₂ nanoparticle was incorporated into polyurethane rigid foams in order to prepare new corresponded magnetic nanocomposite foams via one-shot method. The core–shell-structured nanoparticles were prepared by sol–gel method and characterized by transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, as well as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy techniques. Magnetic nanoparticles were used up to 3 % in the foam formulations and the samples prepared successfully. Thermal, mechanical, and magnetic properties of nanocomposites were studied and the results showed superior properties in comparison with pristine foams.     

A PYRIDYL-TRIAZINE COMPLEX OF Co(II): SPECTROSCOPIC,STRUCTURAL, AND DOCKING STUDIES

Journal of Structural Chemistry - A new cobalt(II) complex of 5-phenyl-3-(pyridin-2-yl)-1,2,4-triazine (PPTA), [Co(PPTA)2(NO3)2] (1), is prepared and identified by the elemental analysis, FTIR...     

Mannich reaction of secondary amines,aldehydes and alkynes in water using Cu/C nanoparticles as a heterogeneous catalyst

The use of 2 mol% of Cu/C nanoparticles, as an easily accessible and inexpensive heterogeneous catalyst, promoted a one-pot three-component condensation of an amine, aldehyde, and an alkyne in water to produce the corresponding propargylamine in good to high yields. This method was proved to be applicable to a wide range of substrates and is especially practical for the synthesis of new azacrown ether derivatives. The catalyst was quantitatively recovered from the reaction by a simple filtration and reused for at least ten times with almost consistent activity.     

An efficient Levenberg–Marquardt method with a new LM parameter for systems of nonlinear equations

A modified Levenberg–Marquardt method for solving singular systems of nonlinear equations was proposed by Fan [J Comput Appl Math. 2003;21;625–636]. Using trust region techniques, the global and quadratic convergence of the method were proved. In this paper, to improve this method, we decide to introduce a new Levenberg–Marquardt parameter while also incorporate a new nonmonotone technique to this method. The global and quadratic convergence of the new method is proved under the local error bound condition. Numerical results show the new algorithm is efficient and promising.     

Fitting the three-parameter Weibull distribution with Cross Entropy

The Weibull distribution is widely used in applications such as reliability and lifetime studies. Although this distribution has three parameters, for simplicity, literature pertaining to Weibull parameter estimation relaxes one of its parameters in order to estimate the other two. When the three-parameter Weibull distribution is of interest, the estimation procedure is complicated. For example, the likelihood function for a three-parameter Weibull distribution is hard to maximize. In this paper, a Cross Entropy (CE) method is developed in the context of maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of a three-parameter Weibull distribution. Performing a simulation study, a comparative analysis between the newly developed method and two existing methods is conducted. The results show the proposed method has better performance in terms of accuracy, precision and run time for different parameter settings and sample sizes.     

Artificial neural network for quantitative determination of total protein in yogurt by infrared spectrometry

A method has been introduced for quantitative determination of protein content in yogurt samples based on the characteristic absorbance of protein in 1800-1500 cm^− 1 spectral region by mid-FTIR spectroscopy and chemometrics. Successive Projection Algorithm (SPA) wavelength selection procedure, coupled with feed forward Back-Propagation Artificial Neural Network (BP-ANN) model was the benefited chemometric technique. Relative Error of Prediction (REP) in BP-ANN and SPA-BP-ANN methods for training set was 7.25 and 3.70 respectively. Considering the complexity of the sample, the ANN model was found to be reliable, while the proposed method is rapid and simple, without any sample preparation step.     

Numeric kinetic energy operators for molecules in polyspherical coordinates

Generalized curvilinear coordinates, as, e.g., polyspherical coordinates, are in general better adapted to the resolution of the nuclear Schro?dinger equation than rectilinear ones like the normal mode coordinates. However, analytical expressions of the kinetic energy operators (KEOs) for molecular systems in polyspherical coordinates may be prohibitively complicated for large systems. In this paper we propose a method to generate a KEO numerically and bring it to a form practicable for dynamical calculations. To examine the new method we calculated vibrational spectra and eigenenergies for nitrous acid (HONO) and compare it with results obtained with an exact analytical KEO derived previously [F. Richter, P. Rosmus, F. Gatti, and H.-D. Meyer, J. Chem. Phys. 120, 6072 (2004)]. In a second example we calculated π → π* photoabsorption spectrum and eigenenergies of ethene (C(2)H(4)) and compared it with previous work [M. R. Brill, F. Gatti, D. Lauvergnat, and H.-D. Meyer, Chem. Phys. 338, 186 (2007)]. In this ethene study the dimensionality was reduced from 12 to 6 by freezing six internal coordinates. Results for both molecules show that the proposed method for obtaining an approximate KEO is reliable for dynamical calculations. The error in eigenenergies was found to be below 1 cm(-1) for most states calculated.     

An efficient nonmonotone trust-region method for unconstrained optimization

The monotone trust-region methods are well-known techniques for solving unconstrained optimization problems. While it is known that the nonmonotone strategies not only can improve the likelihood of finding the global optimum but also can improve the numerical performance of approaches, the traditional nonmonotone strategy contains some disadvantages. In order to overcome to these drawbacks, we introduce a variant nonmonotone strategy and incorporate it into trust-region framework to construct more reliable approach. The new nonmonotone strategy is a convex combination of the maximum of function value of some prior successful iterates and the current function value. It is proved that the proposed algorithm possesses global convergence to first-order and second-order stationary points under some classical assumptions. Preliminary numerical experiments indicate that the new approach is considerably promising for solving unconstrained optimization problems.     

Spectral,structural and theoretical study of the effects of thiocyanato and dicyanamido ligands on the geometry of PbII complexes containing a triazinic ligand

Two lead(II) complexes of 5,6‐bis(furan‐2‐yl)‐3‐(pyridin‐2‐yl)‐1,2,4‐triazine (DFPT), namely one‐dimensional (1D) catena‐poly[[bis[5,6‐bis(furan‐2‐yl)‐3‐(pyridin‐2‐yl‐κN)‐1,2,4‐triazine‐κN²]lead(II)]‐di‐μ‐thiocyanato‐κ²N:S;κ²S:N], [Pb(NCS)₂(C₁₆H₁₀N₄O₂)₂]_n, 1 , and binuclear di‐μ‐dicyanamido‐κ²N¹:N⁵;κ²N⁵:N¹‐bis{[5,6‐bis(furan‐2‐yl)‐3‐(pyridin‐2‐yl‐κN)‐1,2,4‐triazine‐κN²](nitrato‐κ²O,O′)lead(II)}, [Pb₂(C₂N₃)₂(NO₃)₂(C₁₆H₁₀N₄O₂)₄], 2 , as well as DFPT itself, were prepared and identified by elemental analysis, FT–IR, ¹H NMR spectroscopy and single‐crystal X‐ray structural analyses. In the double‐chain 1D coordination polymer of 1 and the binuclear structure of 2 , the Pb atom has a hemidirected‐PbN₆S₂ and a rare holodirected‐PbN₆O₂ environment, respectively, with a distorted cubic geometry. All the coordination modes of dicyanamide ligands within lead complexes were studied using the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) to compare them with the structures of 1 and 2 . In addition to hydrogen bonds, the crystal networks are stabilized by π–π stacking interactions between the triazine, furyl and pyridine aromatic rings. The most stable theoretical structures of the title compounds predicted by density functional theory (DFT) calculations were compared with the solid‐state results.