Assessment of Physico-Chemical and Microbial Quality of Sugarcane Juice Sold by Street Vendors in Three Regions of Bangladesh

Sugar cane juice is a popular refreshing drink in most part of Bangladesh. It has great taste and health benefits;also it is available most of the public places at reasonable prices which consumed by road side customers including general public, shopping personals, tourists, students. In our country, street vendors crushing sugarcane between roller crusher and sold without any heat treatment or preservative, also served with or without added ice and lemon juice. The study aimed to identify and compare the physico-chemical and microbial quality of sugarcane juice. The chemical qualities of juices including moisture, PH, ash, total soluble solid, total sugar, reducing sugar and titrable acidity were found slightly different in Mymensingh, Gazipur and Narayangonj areas. The highest and lowest value of moisture, ash, PH, total soluble solids, total sugar, reducing sugar and titrable acidity were found in 84.33% - 79.26% (Gazipur-Mymensingh), 0.57% - 0.04% (Mymensingh-Gazipur), 5.9 - 2.9 (Gazipur-Narayangonj), 17.48% - 4.98% (Mymensingh-Narayangonj), 21.9% - 6.56% (Mymensingh-Gazipur), 3.7 - 2.1 (Gazipur-Mymensingh) and 0.523% - 0.007% (Narayangonj-Gazipur) respectively. For microbiological analysis, the total viable count of sugar cane juice in Mymensingh, Gazipur and Narayangonj were ranged from 0.6 × 105 - 43.6 × 105 cfu/ml, 4.6 × 105 - 21.6 × 105 cfu/ml and 3.6 × 105 - 36.6 × 105 cfu/ml respectively, where the permitted value is 1.0 × 104 cfu/ml, whereas the total coliform count was ranged from 0.4 × 105 - 6.4 × 105 cfu/ml, 0.6 × 105 - 8.4 × 105 cfu/ml and 0.00 - 8.4 × 105 cfu/ml, where the permitted value is 100 cfu/ml and total fungal count was ranged from 5.5 × 105 - 56.5 × 105 cfu/ml, 21.5 × 105 - 54.5 × 105 cfu/ml and 32.5 × 105 - 68.5 × 105 cfu/ml, where the permitted value is 1000 cfu/ml. According to the Gulf standard, the microbiological parameters of all the collected sugar cane juice were out of the permitted standards, so that a serious health outbreak can be caused anytime.

High Prevalence of Musculoskeletal Disorders and Self-Medication among Street Vendors in Bangui, Central African Republic (CAR)

Introduction: Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are a set of peri-articular conditions that result mainly in pain and functional discomfort. They represent a major occupational health problem in all areas of activity. The objective of this work was to determine the prevalence of MSDs among street vendors in the city of Bangui in the Central African Republic (CAR). Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from September 01 to October 31, 2021 in Bangui, the capital of CAR. The study population consisted of street vendors which were included at the entrance of 4 large markets of Bangui after giving informed consent. The sample size, calculated according to the Schwartz formula, was 384. Sociodemographic data (age, gender, level of education, marital status), professional data (the duration of sale in hours, the distance traveled per day);and health data (the health problems suffered by itinerant sellers and the means of dealing with them) were collected using a pre-established self-questionnaire. This collected data was processed using Microsoft Excel 2013 and Epi-Info version 7 software. Results: Among 384 street vendors included, women represented a quarter (24.9%). The average age was 27 years;the 25-34 age group was the most represented (50%). About two-thirds (64.8%) sold for at least 12 hours and traveled more than 10 km (69.3%) per day. The main health problems reported by street vendors were musculoskeletal disorders (95.8%). Their locations concerned the upper limbs shoulder 65.36% (251), elbow 24.22% (93). Non-ergonomic postures that stress the back and joints all day long, causing pain are risk factors for MSDs. These MSDs were treated by self-medication with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (22.0%), mainly sold on the street. Conclusion: MSDs dominated the health problems of street vendors. These problems raise the need for recognition and support for these workers to optimize their performance while preserving their health through awareness and good management of MSDs whose chronicity generates a disability.

Short Period Logistics Integrating: a Model for Vendors'Evaluating and Selecting

Vendors’Evaluating and Selecting is one study focu s in SCM and VMO. It is one of the very important operations management and can ad vance to implement the strategic aims. With the increase in use of total quality management and just-in-time concepts by a wide range of firms, the vendor sel ection question has become extremely important. It is necessary for firms to tak e part in the global competition and global manufacture. There are some decision -making techniques which can be used for evaluating and selecting vendors, such as weighting point methods, utility theary, multi-objective programming, analy tic hierarchy process, vendor profile analysis, and so on. Analytic Hierarchy Pr ocess(AHP) is a technique in common use for quantifying the problem. Since AHP i s put forward in 1973 by Satty, it has been accepted. However, this technique ha s its shortcomings, and one of them is that distributing weights is subjective. In recent years,some scholars prove that it is defferent from factual doing usin g subjective ways for vendors’ evaluating and selecting. In fact, the methods f or vendors’evaluating and selecting should be given by practical circs. Today, there’s somebody who has brought forward that it is studied by deviding four ty pes of relationships in view of two major factors: the reference time horizon of the relationship; and the content of the relationship in terms of the nature of the interation between supplier and customer. In the paper, we only consider th e scenario of short-term and logistic intergration brought forward by Cristina and Andrea. In the scenario, we only consider current manufacturing performance. In fact, the scenario is often seen in these developing countries.We bring up a model for grey system analysis on vendors’evaluating and selecting to attempt to expore this problem. The model integrates AHP and the grey system theory and attempt to eliminate the subjective factors in AHP using objective datum. Moreov er, it is based on the feature of data insufficiency and uncertainty and sample information of abnormality in system data.So,it overcomes the issues of deficien t information and absent data(it is often seen in management).

Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Food Hygiene among Food Vendors in Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria

Background: Food vendors play a critical food safety role in the “farm to plate” continuum that is necessary for the prevention and control of food borne diseases and therefore, any lack of its understanding by the food vendors poses a serious challenge to food safety. Objective: To assess the knowledge, attitude and hygienic practices of food vendors in Owerri town of Imo State, Nigeria. Methods: The study was a Cross-Sectional descriptive design that used a proportionate convenience sampling technique to select 200 food vendors from the three Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Owerri town. Data were collected using a pretested semi-structured interviewer administered questionnaire. Descriptive analyses were done with frequencies and summary statistics. Chi square statistics were computed to determine significant relationships and p value was set at 0.05 significant level. Results: While a majority of the respondents had a good level of knowledge (81%) and positive attitude (71%) about food hygiene, only 37% of the respondents had a good level of hygienic practice. It was revealed that 32% and 46% of the respondents received training on food hygiene and environmental health worker inspection respectively. It was also revealed that, there were statistically significant relationships between knowledge (p = 0.001), attitude (p = 0.000), formal training on food hygiene (p = 0.000) and the level of food hygienic practices. Conclusion: The public health management of food vending services should involve the development of strategies that will equip them with the necessary knowledge and skills to provide vending services in a hygienic and safe manner.

Near-Road Exposure to Air Pollution and Allergic Rhinitis: A Cross-Sectional Study among Vendors in Dakar, Senegal

Introduction: The work environment is one of the main causes of allergic rhinitis. The majority of vendors in Dakar work in places close to roads that are very frequented by vehicles, exposing them to increased air pollution. The study determined the prevalence of allergic rhinitis and its associated risk factors in these vendors. Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey based on a structured questionnaire, conducted among vendors in the neighborhoods of HLM, Medina and Petersen in Dakar, Senegal. A total of 200 vendors were interviewed. Symptoms of allergic rhinitis were defined as the simultaneous presence of rhinorrhea, nasal congestion and sneezing in the absence of respiratory infection. A logistic regression analysis was performed to determine the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics, occupational factors, and allergic rhinitis. Results: Results of the study show a prevalence of 43% of allergic rhinitis among vendors. Multivariate analysis showed that the independent factors associated with allergic rhinitis in these vendors were age [OR: 3.28 (1.02 - 10.51)], working area [OR: 8.31 (2.39 - 28.95)], exposure to multiple sources of pollution [OR: 4.08 (1.43 - 11.63)], and recurrent cold [OR: 4.39 (1.15 - 16.85)]. Conclusion: The prevalence of allergic rhinitis was high among vendors in Dakar. Our data suggest that exposure to air pollution at the workplace in vendors could lead to allergic rhinitis.

ZTE Joins World's Top Three GSM Vendors

ZTE Corporation, a leading global provider of telecommunications equipment and networking, has announced at the GSMA World Mobile Congress Barcelona 2010 that its global GSM sales continued to grow fast in 2009, with a shipment of over 750,000 carrier frequencies in the past year. As its share in the global newly added market rose to almost 20%, ZTE is now one of the top 3 equipment vendors in the industry. In 2009, ZTE successfully sold its GSM products to world-class multinational operators such as Telenor, Teliasonera and Cell C, making large-scale advancements in European and emerging markets.

ZTE Ranked Third Globally Among LTE Infrastructure Vendors

ZTE Corporation announced on February 18 that it is now among the top three vendors in the LTE infrastructure industry, according to a recently announced market tracker report by Open Vista Consulting.

Urban traffic modeling and pattern detection using online map vendors and self-organizing maps

Typical traffic modeling approaches,such as network-based methods and simulation models,have been shown inadequate for urban-scale studies due to the fidelity issue of models.As a go-around,data-driven models have received increasing attention recently.However,most data-driven methods have been restricted by their data source and cannot be scaled up to manage urban-and regional-scale studies.Regarding this issue,this research proposes a pipeline that collects traffic data from online map vendors to bypass data limitations for large-scale studies.The study consists of two experiments:1)recognizing the dominant traffic patterns of cities and 2)site-specific predictions of typical traffic or the most probable locations of patterns of interests.The experiments were conducted on 32 Swiss cities using traffic data that were collected for a two-month period.The results show that dominant patterns can be extracted from the temporal traffic data,and similar patterns exist not only in various parts of a city but also in different cities.Moreover,the results reveal that a country-level lockdown decreased traffic congestions in regional highways but increased those connections near the city centers and the country borders.

Women Vendors Vital Force in Yiwu

YIWU is the smallest point of southern Hangzhou, a scenic area of historic interest in China. Like many small cities south of the Yangtze River, Yiwu was virtually unknown for many years. Recently, however, Yiwu has gained almost sudden fame. A front-page story in People’s Daily newspaper declared: "Yiwu has become China’s largest wholesale market of small commodities." It is in Yiwu that a large, uniquely styled three-storey building with an area of 228,000 square meters houses more than 23,000 vendors’ stalls. More

Offshore Software Maintenance Outsourcing Process Model Validation:A Case Study Approach

The successful execution and management of Offshore Software Maintenance Outsourcing(OSMO)can be very beneficial for OSMO vendors and the OSMO client.Although a lot of research on software outsourcing is going on,most of the existing literature on offshore outsourcing deals with the outsourcing of software development only.Several frameworks have been developed focusing on guiding software systemmanagers concerning offshore software outsourcing.However,none of these studies delivered comprehensive guidelines for managing the whole process of OSMO.There is a considerable lack of research working on managing OSMO from a vendor’s perspective.Therefore,to find the best practices for managing an OSMO process,it is necessary to further investigate such complex and multifaceted phenomena from the vendor’s perspective.This study validated the preliminary OSMO process model via a case study research approach.The results showed that the OSMO process model is applicable in an industrial setting with few changes.The industrial data collected during the case study enabled this paper to extend the preliminary OSMO process model.The refined version of the OSMO processmodel has four major phases including(i)Project Assessment,(ii)SLA(iii)Execution,and(iv)Risk.

基于供应商管理库存模式的配送路径优化问题

基于供应商管理库存(vendor managed inventory,VMI)模式制定科学的产品配送决策,可以合理优化库存水平、有效提高物流运输效率。针对VMI模式下的配送路径优化问题开展研究,考虑客户的产品消耗率和服务时间窗等因素,以总配送成本最小为目标建立混合整数规划模型,并设计了贪婪算法。利用Gurobi求解器对小规模算例进行求解,分析了VMI模式的优越性,结果表明:基于VMI模式的配送路径规划方案可以有效减少库存水平,降低总配送成本;然后利用中等规模算例分析贪婪算法的求解效果,结果显示,对于40个点的中等规模算例,求解器在240 min内无法得到最优解,而贪婪算法可以在0.2 s之内得到近似最优解。

力量不对等供应链VMI模式演化机理研究

从演化博弈论的角度探讨了力量不对等供应链供应商管理库存(vendor managed inventory,VMI)在实施前及实施过程中的有关问题。首先采用单种群演化模型,分析了供应商是否实施模式创新,投资VMI模式,其次采用双种群演化模型,分析了在VMI模式实施过程中,零售商和供应商合作关系的双种群演化均衡,及影响均衡的参数。

小微外贸企业网上寻找新客户途径的做法

“客户是上帝”,这句反映商界经营理念的至理名言对小微外贸企业而言尤其重要。从某种意义上讲,客户就是小微外贸企业的“生命液”,而如何开发客户是一直困扰着我国的小微外贸企业的经营难题。尽管参加交易会和展销会是我国外贸企业传统的开发客户模式,但是,由于我国小微外贸企业具有财力有限和信誉记录记载较弱的特点,通过频繁的参与交易会和展销会的途径寻找新客户对他们来讲不太现实。

An Ensemble Approach to Identify Firearm Listing on Tor Hidden-Services

The ubiquitous nature of the internet has made it easier for criminals to carry out illegal activities online.The sale of illegal firearms and weaponry on dark web cryptomarkets is one such example of it.To aid the law enforcement agencies in curbing the illicit trade of firearms on cryptomarkets,this paper has proposed an automated technique employing ensemble machine learning models to detect the firearms listings on cryptomarkets.In this work,we have used partof-speech(PoS)tagged features in conjunction with n-gram models to construct the feature set for the ensemble model.We studied the effectiveness of the proposed features in the performance of the classification model and the relative change in the dimensionality of the feature set.The experiments and evaluations are performed on the data belonging to the three popular cryptomarkets on the Tor dark web from a publicly available dataset.The prediction of the classification model can be utilized to identify the key vendors in the ecosystem of the illegal trade of firearms.This information can then be used by law enforcement agencies to bust firearm trafficking on the dark web.

Possible Effects of Location and Handling on Some Fungi Associated with Rotting <i>Citrullus lanatus</i>Thunb. (Watermelon)

An experiment was conducted to examine probable impact of location and handling on the fungi commonly associated with rotting watermelon (Citrullus lanatus). The rotting watermelon samples were obtained from two vendors each from five different markets (Bodija, Sango, Mokola, Eleyele, Agbowo and Ojoo) in Ibadan, Oyo state. They were placed in different sterile sample bags which were labeled appropriately before bringing them to the Pathology Laboratory, Department of Botany, University of Ibadan. Isolation of fungi from the rotting samples was carried out using pour plate method on acidified Potato Dextrose Agar (APDA). Pathogenicity test was also conducted for the isolated fungi. All experiments were done in duplicates and all plates were incubated at 25&deg;C ± 2&deg;C for 7 days. Pure cultures were obtained and identified and each isolated fungus was recorded as 1 which means present and 0 which means absent. The data obtained were analyzed using SAS version 9.3 at p ≤ 0.05. A total of three fungi were isolated viz., Aspergillus flavus, Saccharomyces cerevisae and Aspergillus niger. Occurrence of A. niger and A. flavus in samples obtained from Bodija, Mokola, Sango and Ojoo markets were significantly (P ≤ 0.05) higher than those from the other two markets. Occurrence of S. cerevisae in samples obtained from Bodija and Mokola markets were significantly (P ≤ 0.05) higher than those from the other three markets. Location had significant impact on the occurrence of isolated fungi in the rotting watermelons. However, handling by vendors had no significant impact on occurrence of the isolated fungi. Vendors and consumers are advised to be mindful of place of purchase and to also maintain good general hygiene before consumption.

Respiratory Symptoms Associated with Workplaces Located along a Road with High-Traffic at Cotonou, Benin

Objective: Air pollution is becoming one of the public concerns requiring urgent feasible response per local context. Defining accurately the level of exposure of outdoor air pollution effect on health of venders working along main roads and roundabouts with high traffic is important. This study was conducted to assess respiratory health risks on venders associated with different geographical positions in Cotonou. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted along the main road with high traffic including three roundabouts in Cotonou. The 194 study participants from all shops, one respondent per shop, were given a unique GPS data associated to indicate the shop’s geographical position. The study employed validated questionnaire on respiratory symptoms. Results: Study participants had mean age of 36.26 (±11.65) years with sex ratio of (M/F) 1.8. Majority (72.7%) of study participates reported to have at least one respiratory symptom and 69% of them were working in non-ventilated rooms. The proportion of having at least one respiratory symptom was significantly different (p Conclusion: Working in roundabout is associated with more respiratory symptoms than working in shops along main road. Air pollution mitigation efforts should focus in such settings, taking into account the sub-population of workers in resource limited countries.

Optimization purchase price and the profit policy undervendor managed inventory

The optimization policy of the purchase price and the profit under vendor managed inventory(VMI) is studied. For a salable product, supply chain mode of VMI is established, which is based on deterministic demand, having initial stock and having stock-out cost. With the further analysis of the mode, VMI is found to increase profits of the buyer in the short-term motivation. But VMI will reduce profits of the supplier under the matching condition. And in the short-term motivation, VMI will increase the purchase price to compensate the transfer cost of the supplier. As a result, the foundation of theory is provided to implement VMI in the supply chain, and have some definituded project significance.

Vendor Evaluation and Selection Using Fuzzy AHP

Vendor evaluation and selection is one of the most important issues in manufacturing management. It is a multi-criteria decision problem including various factors. Traditional methods have many shortcomings. Fuzzy AHP model is established to solve this problem. A general evaluation method is provided and steps are presented. As a case study,the model is implemented in an electro-mechanical product company. And a detailed example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of this approach.

Extending raw materials ordering policy with genetic algorithm

A fractional-integral multiple ordering method was proposed to improve the integral multiple ordering method in material procurements. To illustrate the improvement effect, a new model considering a fractional-integral multiple ordering method was presented to extend the model proposed by Woo, Hsu, and Wu (2001), and a genetic algorithm was developed to resolve the modified model. Finally a numerical study based on the example used by Woo, Hsu, and Wu was presented to illustrate that the proposed model provided a lower or equal joint total relevant cost compared with Woo, Hsu, and Wu’s model.

Frost & Sullivan Recognizes ZTE as 2011 LTE Vendor of the Year

ZTE Corporation announced on November 10, 2011 that it has been named LTE Vendor of the Year by leading consulting firm Frost ＆ Sullivan. The Frost ＆ Sullivan LTE Vendor of the Year award is given to companies that have achieved excellence in LTE. ZTE won the award for its growing number of secured contracts and also for its patent applications.