Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2007. / "Graduate Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering." Includes bibliographical references (p. 140-144).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Florida, 2005. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 112 pages. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Randy B. Machemehl. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Nemhauser,George, Committee Member ; Gu, Zonghao, Committee Member ; Ergun, Ozlem, Committee Member ; Sokol, Joel, Committee Co-Chair ; Ahmed, Shabbir, Committee Chair.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 36-39). Also available in electronic version.

by Dimitri P. Bertsekas, Eli M. Gafni, Robert G. Gallager. / Bibliography: p. 34-35. / "October, 1983." / Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grant No. ONR-N00014-75-C-1183 National Science Foundation Grant NSF/ECS 79-19880

Sustainable Supply Chain Management has become a topic of increased importance within the research domain. There is a greater need than ever before for companies to be able to assess and make informed decisions about their sustainability in the Supply Chains. There is a proliferation of research about its understanding and how to implement it in practice. This is mainly since sustainability has been assessed from various disciplines, organizational industries and organizational functional silos . There is a lack of comprehension, unified definition and appropriate implementation of Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM), leading to failure in decision making for sustainability implementation within supply chains. The proposed research identifies the research gaps through the novel application of Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA) to SSCM literature. In doing so, methods including Systematic Literature Review (SLR), Citation Network Analysis (CNA) and Citation Network Mapping of literature have been used to identify definitions, KPIs, barriers and drivers of SSCM from the literature. Furthermore, a combination of methods from Text Mining and Content Analysis has been used to identify KPIs, barriers and drivers from sustainability reports of top global manufacturing companies, to better understand the practices of organizations for SSCM. The consolidation of the findings from literature and practice led to the development of an SSCM Performance Evaluation Framework built on multiple methods. A 4-level hierarchical model has been developed by classifying the identified KPIs into Economic, Environment and Social as well as considering the key decision areas including tactical, strategic and operational. Furthermore, a rigorous data collection process was conducted among supply chain and sustainability managers from top global manufacturing firms and leading academicians in the field, assessing the identified SSCM KPIs. The collected data were analyzed through novel application of hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methods, which includes Values Focused Thinking (VFT), Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process (FAHP), Fuzzy Technique of Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (FTOPSIS) and Total Interpretive Structural Modelling (TISM), for prioritizing and modelling of interdependencies, interactions and weightages among SSCM KPIs. The results obtained were subsequently used to develop a Decision Support System (DSS) that allows managers to evaluate their sustainability by identifying problem areas and yielding guidance on the KPIS and most important areas to focus on for SSCM implementation. The application of DSS has been demonstrated in the context of a case company. From a theoretical development point of view, a Tree perspective framework contributing to the ecological Theory of Sustainability has been proposed through the identification of the most influential organizational theories, and how they interrelate with each other. Overall, the proposed research provides a holistic perspective of SSCM that incorporates the various aspects of organizations, relevant organizational theories and perspectives of academics and practitioners together. The proposed DSS may act as a guiding tool for managers and practitioners for SSCM implementation in companies.

In the past decade, the study of disease dynamics on complex networks has at­tracted great attention from both theoretical and empirical viewpoints. Under such a framework, people try to predict the outbreak of disease and propose im­munization mechanisms. However, this framework possesses a limitation, which makes it inconsistent with realistic cases. That is, this framework does not con­sider the impact of human behavior or decision-making progress on disease dy­namic characters and prevention measures. To further resolve this problem, we in this thesis propose behavioral epidemiology based on game theory, which in­volves the interactions between disease dynamics and human behavior in complex networks. Motivated by realistic cases, we proceed with the research from theo­retical models and consider the following aspects. We .rst re-construct a scheme of risk perception incorporating local and global information and show that this new evaluation scenario not only promotes vaccination uptake, but also eliminates the disease spreading. This interesting .nding could be attributed to the positive feedback mechanism between vaccination uptake and disease spreading. Then, we introduce a self-protection measure, which, due to low cost, can only provide tem­porary protection. By simulations and analysis we show that this measure leads to multiple e.ects: contrary with cases of low (high) e.ciency and cost of the self-protection measure, middle values drive more infection and larger cost, which is related to the loss of positive feedback between prevention measures and disease propagation. Subsequently, another scheme of adaptive protection is proposed, where a healthy agent can cut the connection with infected ones. We .nd that adaptive protection can e.ectively eradicate the disease and result in an optimal level of pruning infected links. Di.erent from these proposals focusing on indi­vidual interest, we lastly study a subsidy policy from the viewpoint of population bene.t. We .nd that disease can be well controlled with an increase of the vac­cination level, while the total expense reduces. Taken together, these .ndings of the thesis further demonstrate that the interplay between disease dynamics and human behavior plays an important role in the control of diseases. The models presented in this thesis, especially combining with empirical data, may serve as a foundation for further investigation of the subject in the future.

Proprioception is an ability to perceive the position and speed of body parts that is important for construction of the body schema in the brain. Proper updating of the body schema is necessary for appropriate voluntary movement. However, the mechanisms mediating such an updating are not well understood. To study these mechanisms when the body part was at rest, electroencephalography (EEG) and evoked potentials studies were employed, and when the body was in motion, kinematic studies were performed. An experimental approach to elicit proprioceptive P300 evoked potentials was developed providing evidence that processing of novel passive movements is similar to processing of novel visual and auditory stimuli. The latencies of the proprioceptive P300 potentials were found to be greater than those elicited by auditory, but not different from those elicited by the visual stimuli. The features of the functional networks that generated the P300s were analyzed for each modality. Cross-correlation networks showed both common features, e.g. connections between frontal and parietal areas, and the stimulus-specific features, e.g. increases of the connectivity for temporal electrodes in the visual and auditory networks, but not in the proprioceptive ones. The magnitude of coherency networks showed a reduction in alpha band connectivity for most of the electrodes groupings for all stimuli modalities, but did not demonstrate modality-specific features. Kinematic study compared performances of 19 models previously proposed in the literature for movements at the shoulder and elbow joints in terms of their ability to reconstruct the speed profiles of the wrist pointing movements. It was found that lognormal and beta function models are most suitable for wrist speed profile modeling. In addition, an investigation of the blinking rates during the P300 potentials recordings revealed significantly lower rates in left-handed participants, compared to the right-handed ones. Future work will include expanding the experimental and analytical methodologies to different kinds of proprioceptive stimuli (displacements and speeds) and experimental paradigms (error-related negativity potentials), and comparing the models of the speed profiles produced by the feet to those of the wrists, as well as replicating the observations made on the blinking rates in a larger scale study.