The rationalization of logistics activities and processes is very important in the business and efficiency of every company. In this respect, transportation as a subsystem of logistics, whether internal or external, is potentially a huge area for achieving significant savings. In this paper, the emphasis is placed upon the internal transport logistics of a paper manufacturing company. It is necessary to rationalize the movement of vehicles in the company’s internal transport, that is, for the majority of the transport to be transferred to rail transport, because the company already has an industrial track installed in its premises. To do this, it is necessary to purchase at least two used wagons. The problem is formulated as a multi-criteria decision model with eight criteria and eight alternatives. The paper presents a new approach based on a combination of the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) method and rough numbers, which is used for ranking the potential solutions and selecting the most suitable one. The rough Best–Worst Method (BWM) was used to determine the weight values of the criteria. The results obtained using a combination of these two methods in their rough form were verified by means of a sensitivity analysis consisting of a change in the weight criteria and comparison with the following methods in their conventional and rough forms: the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Technique for Ordering Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and MultiAttributive Border Approximation area Comparison (MABAC). The results show very high stability of the model and ranks that are the same or similar in different scenarios.

Widely considered as one of the cradles of human civilization, Mesopotamia is largely situated in the Republic of Iraq, which is also the birthplace of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian civilizations. These lands were subsequently ruled by the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mongolians, Ottomans and finally British prior to the independence. As a direct consequence of this rich history, the contemporary Iraqi population comprises a true mosaic of different ethnicities, which includes Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, and Yazidis among others. As such, the genetics of the contemporary Iraqi populations are of anthropological and forensic interest. In an effort to contribute to a better understanding of the genetic basis of this ethnic diversity, a total of 500 samples were collected from Northern Iraqi volunteers belonging to five major ethnic groups, namely: Arabs (n = 102), Kurds (n = 104), Turkmens (n = 102), Yazidis (n = 106) and Syriacs (n = 86). 17-loci Y-STR analyses were carried out using the AmpFlSTR Yfiler system, and subsequently in silico haplogroup assignments were made to gain insights from a molecular anthropology perspective. Systematic comparisons of the paternal lineages of these five Northern Iraqi ethnic groups, not only among themselves but also in the context of the larger genetic landscape of the Near East and beyond, were then made through the use of two different genetic distance metric measures and the associated data visualization methods. Taken together, results from the current study suggested the presence of intricate Y-chromosomal lineage patterns among the five ethic groups analyzed, wherein both interconnectivity and independent microvariation were observed in parallel, albeit in a differential manner. Notably, the novel Y-STR data on Turkmens, Syriacs and Yazidis from Northern Iraq constitute the first of its kind in the literature. Data presented herein is expected to contribute to further population and forensic investigations in Northern Iraq in particular and the Near East in general.

Aerial base stations are a promising technology to increase the capabilities of existing communication networks. However, existing analytical frameworks do not sufficiently characterize the impact of ground interferers on aerial base stations. In order to address this issue, we model the effect of interference coming from coexisting ground networks on the aerial link, which could be the uplink of an aerial cell served by a drone base station. By considering a Poisson field of ground interferers, we characterize aggregate interference experienced by the drone. This result includes the effect of drone antenna pattern, the height-dependent shadowing, and various types of environment. We show that benefits a drone obtains from a better line-of-sight (LoS) at high altitudes is counteracted by a high vulnerability to the interference coming from ground. However, by deriving link coverage probability and transmission rate we show that a drone base station is still a promising technology if the overall system is properly dimensioned according to given density and transmission power of interferers. Particularly, our results illustrate how benefits of such network is maximized by defining the optimal drone altitude and signal-to-interference (SIR) requirement.

This study investigates relations between debt contracting and asymmetries in timely recognition of firms' earnings in emerging market economy. The asymmetric timelines of earnings, as a measure that determines predictive power of financial reports, is observed proxy explaining borrowers' earnings management. This study use longitudinal research design to explore asymmetric timeliness of earnings and its association to debt contracting. The study result suggests that the change in asymmetric timelines of earnings is significantly associated with intention of long term debt contracting application that ends with the long term debt contract closure. In more particular, the positive (or negative) change in net income in previous period is associated with the decrease in net income change in consecutive periods for firm-years when no contract is closed. Vice versa, negative net income change in prior period, reported by firm-years prior long term debt application, is associated with an increase of net income change in consecutive period. On the other hand, there is no earnings management detected in years prior to long term debt application for the firms that have reported prior positive change in net income. The research is based on specific data set extracted from financial reports in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Wiener index W ( G ) of a simple connected graph G is defined as the sum of distances over all pairs of vertices in a graph. We denote by W [ T n ] the set of all values of the Wiener index for a graph from the class T n of trees on n vertices. The largest interval of consecutive integers (consecutive even integers in case of odd n ) contained in W [ T n ] is denoted by W int [ T n ]. In this paper we prove that both sets are of cardinality 1 ⁄ 6 n 3 + O ( n 5/2 ) in the case of even n , while in the case of odd n we prove that the cardinality of both sets equals 1 ⁄ 12 n 3 + O( n 5/2 ), which essentially solves two conjectures posed in the literature.

Article history: Received 29 June 2017 Received in revised form 4 September 2017 Accepted 5 September 2017 A model was made for prediction of the trajectory of an irregularly shaped body moving through a resistive medium with high velocities, using data for aerodynamic forces obtained from numerical simulations. For a different orientation of the body with respect to the velocity vector of the center of mass, the aerodynamic resistance force is different for two reasons: the exposed surface area is different and the shape is different. In this regard, 216 numerical simulations of airflow around of the body of an irregularly shaped body in different orientations were carried out, for one full rotation (around one axis of rotation) of the body, with angular increments of 15 (0 360), for the following velocities: 0.6, 0.8, 1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, 2, 3 and 4 Mach. The outcome of these simulations is the resistance forces and aerodynamic moments as the result of motion of the body in various directions relatively to the body. After the simulations had been performed, the results of the resistance forces and aerodynamic moments were used to integrate the equations of motion with an assumption that the irregularly shaped body had a continuous rotation all the way along the trajectory with relatively high angular velocities. With this assumption, an effective aerodynamic force was calculated which takes into consideration that the aerodynamic force varies due to the rotation of the body. The results show that the trajectory of an irregularly shaped body is curved in space because the side component of the aerodynamic force cannot be ignored because of the irregular shape of the body, which leads to significant lateral movement of the body from the initial direction of flight.