This paper investigates the effects of corruption and long-term investment of businesses in Vietnam using the General Least Square (GLS) estimation method for businesses in 63 provinces in Vietnam from 2016-2018. The results show that corruption was an important factor affecting the long-term investment decisions of Vietnamese enterprises. The ability to predict corruption of businesses can explain the phenomenon of part of the cash flow of businesses flowing out of production and business. Informal costs related to low-level administrative procedures act as “grease” to help businesses reduce time costs, but when the total amount of unofficial expenses exceeds 10% of revenue of businesses, they become a burden for businesses and restrain them from making long-term investments. Corrupted public officials' behavior has led businesses to misallocate resources and prevent them from making long-term investments. The result shows that the East Asia paradox holds only for the case of informal costs related to administrative procedures in Vietnam.

The construction process is inherently prone to risks. Risk management is an essential and integral part of project management on all construction projects. Risk analysis is one of the core components of risk management that enables professionals to quantify and analyze risks that may pose potential threats to project performance in terms of various parameters. This research was conducted to identify and analyze risks associated with residential construction in Bangalore. In this study, risk and its impact on time and cost was identified and analyzed. Schedule impacts of project risks were supplemented by conducting quantitative risk analysis such as Monte Carlo simulation and sensitivity analysis using the Primavera risk analysis software. In case of cost, the cost variance was found out and mitigation measures were given. Thus, by effectively managing the risks, organization has more timely, comprehensive and deeper understanding of risks which in turn facilitates better decision making and confidence to take on new ventures or even to accept higher level of risk.

A review of some recent data from multiaxial fatigue data from different notched materials is carried out in the paper. The approach based on the strain energy density (SED) averaged over a control volume is first used to summarise uniaxial and multiaxial fatigue strength data of welded joints made of structural steel and aluminium alloys. In all welded joints, the weld toe and weld root regions are modelled like sharp, zero radius, V-notches with different opening angles. The control volume radius is 0.28 mm for structural steels, 0.12 mm for aluminium alloys. Afterwards the SED approach is applied to multi-axial fatigue data from plain and V-notched specimens made of AISI 416 stainless steel (hardened and tempered state), subjected to tension, torsion and combined tension and torsion, both in-phase and out-of-phase. Notched specimens are characterised by a very small root radius, ρ=0.1 mm, which results in high nonlinear effects ahead of the notch tips. All results are summarised in terms of Δ W-N (SED range versus cycles to failure) scatterbands. Together with the new results, a number of multi-axial fatigue data recently obtained from sharply notched specimens made of C40 steel (normalised state) and 39NiCrMo3 steel (hardened and tempered state) are represented with the aim to provide a global synthesis in terms of local SED. Finally a synthesis from Ti6Al4V alloy is carried out showing the capability of the SED approach to be applied also to light alloys.

The problem of thermoelastic nanoscale beam based on a modified couple stress theory with diffusion subjected to ramp type heating is investigated. The Laplace transform technique and eigen value approach are applied to solve the equations which are written in the dimensionless form. The expressions for displacement, lateral deflection, temperature change, mass concentration, axial stress and chemical potential are derived in the transformed domain. A general algorithm of the inverse Laplace transform is developed to compute the results numerically. The mathematical model is prepared for Copper material. The resulting quantities are depicted graphically to show the effects of time. Some particular cases of interest are also deduced from the present problem.

The cost of road construction or its repair is among the most concerns for the pavements engineers. Cracking and degradation is common mode of failure in asphalt pavements that occurs due to increasing traffic loads or even environmental conditions. For facing with these damages, some solutions are proposed including correction, quality improvement and increasing the asphalt resistance. In this research, by adding different percent amounts of black nano-carbon and polyester fibers as modifier in the asphalt mixtures and conducting several Marshall tests, it was observed that adding these two additives can improve generally the Marshall results. Polyester fiber causes preventing crack and damages of asphalt because of armed effect specification. According to the results, Marshall stability is increased up to 61%. Furthermore, an economic analysis was performed to investigate the cost of using such modified asphalt mixtures for constructing 1 km of a six line road and suitable percentages of additives were found from mechanical-economic analyses.

Portland cement concrete (PCC) / asphalt concrete (AC) bonded components are seen in both conventional pavement structures as well as overlays. Due to the environmental and traffic loads, cracks occur at the interface of the PCC and AC layers and finally, may propagate through the interface or one of the layers. Therefore, the evaluation of bond strength between these layers is important. This paper investigates bond strength between asphalt concrete and Portland cement concrete using a new sandwich test specimen. The developed specimen, called Bi-material semi-circular bend (BSCB) is made of asphalt concrete and the Portland cement concrete, cracked at the interface of the materials. First, the suggested specimen is introduced and characterized using finite element simulation. Then, the specimen is employed to obtain bond strength between asphalt concrete and Portland cement concrete under mixed mode loading, and at two temperatures: -20C and 20C. The fracture toughness at different mixed mode conditions is obtained, and finally, fracture criterion for the tested bonded joints is presented.

Municipal solid waste management is one of the main challenges in mega cities. Consequences of landfilling and importance of using alternative energies contribute to the popularity of incineration facilities for city authorities. This article tries to determine the location and allocation decisions on landfills and incineration facilities regarding social and environmental effects. The proposed model minimizes revenue of selling recovered energy and minimizes visual pollution impacts. In addition, the environmental impacts of incineration and landfilling operations are considered as part of constraints. Using the data of Tehran's waste management organization, numerical results show the number of active transfer stations and traffic reduce leading to an increase on waste collection network's efficiency. The results also show a decrease on the landfilling and the amount of hazardous methane emissions as well as an improvement on power and heat energy recovery.

This paper optimizes joint mixed bundling, assortment planning and pricing problems for complementary retail categories that comprise substitutable items. These categories are divided into one primary category and multiple secondary categories and based on cross-selling effect, customers of primary category can opt to buy from other categories. It is assumed that the bundle can comprise one product of each offered complementary categories. A mixed-integer nonlinear programming is proposed that maximizes total profit by optimizing strategy of bundling, assortment selection and prices of single products and the bundle under a maximum-surplus customer choice model. Then because of computational considerations, this model is linearized and converted to a mixed-integer linear programming; whereby exact solution for even large-scale problems can be obtained. The results show that if cross-selling effect between product categories is overlooked or bundling of products is not allowed, then significant profit losses, will be resulted. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on bundling strategies in assortment selection decisions.

This paper is an attempt to examine the implementation of Lean Manufacturing system in the Indian industries. Predominant elements of Lean Manufacturing, benefits gained after its implementation and obstacles observed by Indian Industry have been recognized. The results of this survey support the opinion that Lean Manufacturing had potential to improve the organizational performance of Indian industries. Nevertheless, Indian industries are required to be passionate to transform their manufacturing by adopting Lean manufacturing to gain the full benefits. A large numbers of literature papers are available on the better side of Lean manufacturing approach and its benefits gained by manufacturing organizations after implementation. But the adverse impacts of Lean manufacturing are not discussed to a great extent. Some drawbacks of Lean manufacturing are also highlighted in this paper.

Deterioration of items is a phenomenon which cannot be neglected as it may provide absurd result. In high-tech business market, deterioration is not always constant but it is time dependent. This paper presents inventory model for time dependent deterioration and time dependent demand under shortages. The mathematical model is provided to optimize the cycle time by minimizing the total cost. Numerical results are discussed to validate the proposed model. The variation of the optimal solution for different parameters is discussed for some instances.