Clothing longevity supports sustainability, but the paper questions the implementation of this strategy. The research, based on industry and expert experiences, posits the technical possibility of achieving longer-lasting clothing, but identifies norms of agency and interaction within the global clothing supply chain as factors limiting the business case and processes.

The significant exodus of containers inland due to the container revolution has increased the salience of inland terminals for efficient freight distribution. Further, the migration of containers gradually inland has forced seaports to depend on these inland terminals to determine their competitiveness and offer a mechanism for competitive freight price to the consumer. The performance of dry ports need to be improved along with the dynamic nature of maritime business, to efficiently fulfil the demand all the key players in the container seaport system, provide economies of scale and scope to their respective clients and enhances the importance of inland networks to improve and consistently elongate the competitiveness of container seaports. Predicated to these importance, this paper aims to enhance dry port performance by adapting a process benchmarking strategy among the Malaysian dry ports. Prior to the adaptation of the process benchmarking approach, a grounded theory had been conducted as a method of analysis among the key players of the Malaysian container seaport system in order to provide essential inputs for the benchmarking. Through this paper, the outcome shows all four Malaysian dry ports need to improve their transportation infrastructure and operation facilities, container planning strategy, competition, location and externalities in order to assist all the key players in the container seaport system efficiently and effectively.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of estrus synchronization to altrenogest regumate (progesterone), PMSG/hCG, and artificial insemination (AI) on galectin-3, FGF-9 gene and protein expression. The morpho-metrical parameters of the endometrium and the number of corpora lutea (CL) were recorded. RNA was isolated from endometrial, oviduct and ovary tissues of non-synchronized (Control; n = 7) and AI synchronized (regumate, PMSG/hCG; n = 7) sows. The total number of CL was higher (P<0.05) in pigs treated with regumate/PMSG/hCG. The content of gelactin-3 and FGF-9 mRNA in pre-embryonic development stages increased on particular days, in control and studied in regumate/PMSG/hCG administered pigs. Gelactin-3 and FGF-9 were affected by regumate/PMSG/hCG treatment in the both pre-embryonic development stages (P<0.001, P<0.05) and encdometrial tissue (P<0.001, P<0.01). The regumate/PMSG/hCG treatment resulted in elevated expression of gelactin-3 (P<0.001) and FGF-9 (P<0.005) in oviduct and ovary tissues in comparison to control sows. Moreover, oviduct amount of gelectin-3 mRNA was higher in regumate/PMSG/hCG sows in comparison to the control group (P<0.05), whereas, expression characteristics of gelactin-3 and FGF-9 were investigated by hematoxylin and eosin stained and immunohistochemical staining. The results showed that galectin-3 and FGF-9 were significantly shown in the endometrium, oviduct and ovary tissues of the regumate/PMSG/ hCG. Presented data show that exogenous hormones administration can affect gene and protein expression in the sow reproductive tract.

This research aims to analyze the potential possibility of the butyl ether (BE, oxygenates of di-ether group) as a fuel additives for a naturally aspirated direct injection diesel engine fuel. Compared with the diesel fuel, smoke emission decreased approximately 26% by applying the blended fuel(diesel fuel 80 vol-% + BE 20vol-%) at the engine speed of 2,500 rpm and with full engine load. There was none significant difference between the blended fuel and the diesel fuel on the power, torque, and brake specific energy consumption rate of the diesel engine. But, NOx emission from the blended fuel was higher than that of the commercial diesel fuel. As a counter plan, the EGR method was employed to reduce the NOx. We found the possible area where the simultaneous reduction of the smoke and the NOx emission from the diesel engine was achieved by applying the BE blended fuel and the cooled EGR method.

We investigate two abnormal CME-Storm pairs that occurred on 2014 September 10 - 12 and 2015 March 15 - 17, respectively. The first one was a moderate geomagnetic storm (Dstmin  -75 nT) driven by the X1.6 high speed flare-associated CME (1267 km s−1) in AR 12158 (N14E02) near solar disk center. The other was a very intense geomagnetic storm (Dstmin  -223 nT) caused by a CME with moderate speed (719 km s−1) and associated with a filament eruption accompanied by a weak flare (C9.1) in AR 12297 (S17W38). Both CMEs have large direction parameters facing the Earth and southward magnetic field orientation in their solar source region. In this study, we inspect the structure of Interplanetary Flux Ropes (IFRs) at the Earth estimated by using the torus fitting technique assuming self-similar expansion. As results, we find that the moderate storm on 2014 September 12 was caused by small-scale southward magnetic fields in the sheath region ahead of the IFR. The Earth traversed the portion of the IFR where only the northward fields are observed. Meanwhile, in case of the 2015 March 17 storm, our IFR analysis revealed that the Earth passed the very portion where only the southward magnetic fields are observed throughout the passage. The resultant southward magnetic field with long- duration is the main cause of the intense storm. We suggest that 3D magnetic field geometry of an IFR at the IFR-Earth encounter is important and the strength of a geomagnetic storm is strongly affected by the relative location of the Earth with respect to the IFR structure.

We report a spatial uctuation analysis of the sky brightness in the near-infrared from observations towards the north ecliptic pole (NEP) by AKARI at 2.4 and 3.2 μm. As a follow up study of our previous work on the Monitor eld of AKARI, we used NEP deep survey data, which covered a circular area of about 0.4 square degrees, in order to extend uctuation analysis at angular scales up to 1000". After pre-processing, additional correction procedures were done to correct time varying components and instrumental effects such as MUXbleed. To remove resolved objects, we applied 2α clipping and point spread function (PSF) subtraction. We finally obtained mosaicked images which can be used for the study of various diffuse emissions in the near-infrared sky and found that there are spatial structures in the mosaicked images using a power spectrum analysis.

We built a 8 μm selected sample of galaxies in the NEP-AKARI eld by defining 4 redshift bins with the four AKARI bands at 11, 15, 18 and 24 microns (0:15 < z < 0:49, 0:75 < z < 1:34, 1:34 < z < 1:7 and 1:7 < z < 2:05) . Our sample contains 4079 sources, 599 are securely detected with Herschel/PACS. Also adding ultraviolet (UV) data from GALEX, we fit the spectral energy distributions using the physically motivated code CIGALE to extract the star formation rate, stellar mass, dust attenuation and the AGN contribution to the total infrared luminosity (LIR). We discuss the impact of the adopted attenuation curve and that of the wavelength coverage to estimate these physical parameters. We focus on galaxies with a luminosity close the characteristic L* IR in the different redshift bins to study the evolution with redshift of the dust attenuation in these galaxies.

The AKARI NEP Deep Field Survey is an international multiwavelength survey over 0.4 deg2 of the sky. This is the deepest survey made by the InfraRed Camera (IRC) of the infrared astronomical satellite AKARI with 9 filters continuously covering the 2-25 μm range, including three filters in the Spitzer gap between the IRAC and MIPS coverages. This enabled us to make sensitive MIR detection of AGN candidates at z~ 1, based on hot dust emission in the AGN torus. It is also eficient in detecting highly obscured Compton-thick AGN population. In this article, we report the rst results of X-ray observations on this eld. The field was covered by 15 overlapping Chandra ACIS-I observations with a total exposure of ~300 ks, detecting  450 X-ray sources. We utilize rest-frame stacking analysis of the MIR AGN candidates that are not detected individually. Our preliminary analysis shows a marginal detection of the rest-frame stacked Fe Kα line from our strong Compton-thick candidates.