Virtual Chain Research Articles

Numerical investigation of temperature heterogeneousness during cold chain export: A virtual cold chain approach

AbstractIn‐transit quality loss and wastage of perishables, during cold chain export, is a critical issue faced globally. Owing to increasing population, reducing food wastages by enhancing the efficacy of supply chain is imperative to meet the increasing demand. This paper presents a virtual cold chain‐based approach to model quality loss of horticultural produce prior to actual logistics operations. It is a combination of different models for predicting the temperature heterogeneity among the perishables, its related quality decay and remaining shelf‐life. An innovative simulation‐based approach is also presented which predicts the temperature of perishables inside a domain based upon its storage conditions, at a reduced computational expense. The proposed approach is demonstrated for Indian mango cold chain export. The simulation results are validated with an experimental setup, using mangoes and a standard refrigerated (reefer) container. Different metrices shows a RMSE and MAPE of 0.8 K and 10.02%, respectively. The calculated remaining quality is also found to be in accordance with experimental findings. The results report uneven air circulation and hence, heterogeneity in temperature distribution of about 3–4 K after 15 days of sea transport. This induces variations in remaining quality and shelf‐life among the mangoes placed at different locations. The maximum variation in quality is found to be 19% at 25th day of export at a location near the door of the reefer. The export transit time should be less than or equal to 26 days, to avoid spoilage, as it is the minimum shelf life of mangoes inside the container under given conditions.Practical applicationsThis study is concerned with managing the loss in quality and wastage of perishables, during cold chain export. Predicting the storage temperature, prior to actual logistics operations, can aid the decision makers in appropriate planning of export mode so as to minimize the loss and wastage during real export process. A virtual or simulation‐based approach is proposed to analyze the cooling behavior of individual mangoes and hence predict the evolution of its various quality attributes, passing through different stages of the cold chain. To illustrate this approach, a case study of Indian mango export is presented.

Sections and Unirulings of Families over $\mathbb{P}^{1}$

AbstractWe consider morphisms $\pi : X \to \mathbb{P}^{1}$ of smooth projective varieties over $\mathbb{C}$. We show that if π has at most one singular fibre, then X is uniruled and π admits sections. We reach the same conclusions, but with genus zero multisections instead of sections, if π has at most two singular fibres, and the first Chern class of X is supported in a single fibre of π.To achieve these result, we use action completed symplectic cohomology groups associated to compact subsets of convex symplectic domains. These groups are defined using Pardon’s virtual fundamental chains package for Hamiltonian Floer cohomology. In the above setting, we show that the vanishing of these groups implies the existence of unirulings and (multi)sections.

Virtual Idol Fan Culture: The "Third Space" of The Digital Age

Virtual idol fan groups have gradually integrated with mainstream culture from the initial subcultural tribes, and formed a mature virtual idol fan group regional chain. The fan group space it creates not only carries specific commercial purposes, but also is a social collective memory and imagination community. The fan group regards virtual idols as totems for gathering, and individuals with values and resonance play their respective roles in the fan group. The various spatial members in the group are worth exploring. This article analyzes the most popular virtual idols and discusses the universality of attraction aggregation maintenance in the fan group space. It also studies the dissemination logic of the spatial form of virtual idol fan groups in the internet era.

Космическое христианство Мирчи Элиаде, подходы к интерпретации

The article deals with the construct of cosmic Christianity in Mircea Eliade's project of the history of religion. Links are established with other concepts of the author, such as creative hermeneutics, homo religiosus, the horror of history, etc. Parallels are also drawn with German Idealism, Protestantism, traditionalism, Jungian psychoanalysis, and conservative-revolutionary thought. The criticism of A. Lenel-Lavastin and D. Dubuisson is drawn upon, arguing that the construct of cosmic Christianity can work within a national-conservative synthesis, so that the nation becomes the guarantor of the purity of church tradition. Eliade's method by which he contrasts cosmic Christianity with Judeo-Christian messianism is discussed. As part of the concept of cosmic Christianity the implicit use of the author's original concept of tradition as a virtual chain of initiations is found. Eliade's assembly is viewed through the lens of P. Berger's social constructivism. It is argued that Berger bases his theory of secularization on Eliade's working definition of religion and concept of cosmization. The metaphysical opposition of Eliade's vital immanentism to Berger's transcendentalism is stated. Immanentism is correlated with the traditional and archetypal folk re-evaluation within cosmic Christianity, transcendentalism with the radical and historical interpretation of the Gospel in Lutheran theology. Eliade's history of religion is characterized as a modernist theory, with inherent qualities of M. such as: a desire for a totalizing worldview, an interest in building a synthetic ideology on the border of archaic myth and scientific knowledge, a sense of the removal of the divine and an acceleration of the end of history. A connection is established between Eliade's theory of religion and the metaphysical framework of the "natural" in Modern science and culture. The reality of the sacred is characterized as a living self-organizing system, and its manifestation as a hierophany of the natural. The conclusion is made that the essentialism and naturalism of such metaphysics do not allow the history of religion to transcend the categories of Modern science and culture, which, according to the author of the article, was the goal of Eliade's project.

On the Averaging and Closure of Fiber Orientation Tensors in Virtual Process Chains

Fiber orientation tensors (FOT) are widely used to approximate statistical orientation distributions of fibers within fiber-reinforced polymers. The design process of components made of such fiber-reinforced composites is usually accompanied by a virtual process chain. In this virtual process chain, process-induced FOT are computed in a flow simulation and transferred to the structural simulation. Within the structural simulation, effective macroscopic properties are identified based on the averaged information contained in the FOT. Solving the field equations in flow simulations as well as homogenization of effective stiffnesses necessitates the application of a closure scheme, computing higher-order statistical moments based on assumptions. Additionally, non-congruent spatial discretizations require an intermediate mapping operation. This mapping operation is required, if the discretization, i.e., mesh, of the flow simulation differs from the discretization of the structural simulation. The main objective of this work is to give an answer to the question: Does the sequence of closure and mapping influence the achieved results? It will turn out, that the order influences the result, raising the consecutive question: Which order is beneficial? Both questions are addressed by deriving a quantification of the closure-related uncertainty. The two possible sequences, mapping followed by closure and closure followed by mapping, yield strongly different results, with the magnitude of the deviation even exceeding the magnitude of a reference result. Graphical consideration reveals that for both transversely isotropic and planar FOT-input, invalid results occur if the mapping takes place prior to closure. This issue is retrieved by orientation averaging stiffness tensors. As a by-product, we explicitly define for the first time the admissible parameter space of orthotropic fourth-order fiber orientation tensors and define a distance measure in this parameter space.

Virtual agri-food supply chains: A holistic digital twin for sustainable food ecosystem design, control and transparency

The transition of Agri-Food Supply Chains (AFSC) toward sustainable patterns able to secure safe, quality, and affordable food whilst preserving natural and anthropogenic ecosystems is a key challenge of this century. Increasing production and distribution operations' transparency and impact visibility uncovers hidden complexities and the food ecosystem's externalities. To this attempt, this paper introduces a novel Agri-Food Supply Chain digital twin (AFSC-DT) able to virtualize the agricultural, processing, warehousing, and distribution operations holistically from-field-to-consumer and estimate economic, logistic, environmental, safety, and nutritional indicators associated with any food order, assumed as the functional unit. The AFSC-DT behaves as a control tower, providing a multi-dimensional dashboard of indicators and labels to enhance practitioners' and consumers' knowledge of FSC entities and operations. The practitioner's visibility drives top-down operational and tactical feedback controls through real-time monitoring and a-posteriori multi-dimensional performance analysis, whilst consumers, with their informed choices, perform a strategic bottom-up pressure on the food industry toward a sustainable redesign. A what-if simulation analysis conducted over four virtual scenarios within a regional horticultural AFSC proves how the AFSC-DT aids informed decision-making across the AFSC echelons, stimulating a virtuous cycle and favoring a progressive transition toward more sustainable patterns.

Ontology‐Based Battery Production Dataspace and Its Interweaving with Artificial Intelligence‐Empowered Data Analytics

One of the key challenges of data management for smart manufacturing is dealing with data originating from both physical processes and virtual digital technologies. As image and sensor‐based production monitoring deliver a wealth of data along the process chain, artificial intelligence (AI) enables enhanced data analysis and new insight regarding relevance of observed process deviations. With constantly increased availability of data from manifold and specific sources, the complexity and heterogeneity of information structures are also growing rapidly. This is especially true for highly variable research, scale‐up, and pilot production, which poses new demands on data acquisition, data management, and data preprocessing. Herein, a unified framework for integrating an ontology and graph‐based data space with data acquisition and data analytics to improve data consistency, documentation of workflows, as well as the reproducibility of observations and results is presented. The framework consists of several open‐source web services that form an ontology‐based data space where physical and virtual process chains are represented by a semantic data fabric built from findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable resource descriptions framework self‐descriptions. The feasibility of the proposed framework is demonstrated for a laboratory‐scale Li‐ion battery cell production facility with AI applied to two data analytics use cases.

Design and optimization of a novel sagittal-plane knee exoskeleton with remote-center-of-motion mechanism

Powered exoskeleton is a wearable robot that can provide power-assisted motion for the human body. One of the challenges in the exoskeleton research is how to improve its kinematic synergy. In this paper, a novel knee exoskeleton robot is designed to improve the kinematic synergy between the exoskeleton and the human body. The novel exoskeleton adopts the sagittal-plane layout to reduce the bias moment, and uses a remote-center-of-rotation mechanism to ensure the coincidence of the rotation centers of the exoskeleton and the human body. To analyze the influence of the interaction error on the performance of the exoskeleton, this paper proposes a human-exoskeleton fusion model based on the virtual equivalent parallel mechanism method, and parameterize the interaction error through virtual kinematic chains. Finally, the assisting performance of the novel exoskeleton is analyzed and verified through simulation experiments, motion experiments, body motion experiments and human simulation experiments. The human-exoskeleton fusion model proposed in this paper has positive significance for the configuration design, biomechanical analysis and application of exoskeleton robots.

Type Synthesis of a Novel 4‐Degrees‐of‐Freedom Parallel Bipedal Mechanism for Walking Robot

In this study, the conventional virtual chain method is refined and a 4‐degrees‐of‐freedom (DOF) parallel bipedal mechanism (PBM) for walking robots is presented. The proposed design has the advantages of low inertia, high load‐to‐weight ratio, and impact resistance. First, to solve the redundant motion‐transmission problem, a refined virtual chain method is proposed for the type synthesis of the 4‐DOF parallel thigh mechanism. Second, the relationship equation for each actuated wrench component in a reasonable actuated joint arrangement is derived, and the number and location of the actuated joints are determined. Third, by optimizing the design of the hip joint as a 2‐DOF counter‐centered five‐link spherical mechanism with different rotation centers, passive knee and ankle joints are designed based on the bionic principle. This design is performed to make the PBM isotropic and minimize inertia. The proposed PBM can withstand heavy loads and impacts owing to its humanoid crossed four‐link knee joint mechanism and compliant calf mechanism. Finally, the prototype is processed, and the rationality of the design and excellent performance of the PBM design are verified by dynamic and static simulations and gait experiments.

Using the Literature Analysis Method to Analyze the Marketing Strategy of Virtual Image in the Meta-universe

With the development of the Internet, the phenomenon of breaking the circle of dimensional culture makes many avatars gradually increase their influence on consumers. And under the rise of virtual image and dimensional culture, digital marketing also plays an increasingly important role in advertising means. How to deal with the relationship between virtual image and advertising in the dimensional culture is the key to the next research. Solving this problem can not only make advertising stand out under the background of digital economy era, but also promote the academic research on virtual image and digital marketing further. Based on the analysis of previous literature, this paper will combine the meta-universe virtual image with marketing strategy, and on the basis of analyzing the virtual idol industry chain and commercial value, combine the virtual image with brand marketing through cross-border cooperation, to clarify the opportunities and risks in the development of virtual image. On the one hand, the creative, virtual and digital character of virtual image plays a positive role in brand marketing and provides guarantee for brand cooperation and long-term development. On the other hand, the inauthenticity and instability of the virtual image will hinder the further development of the virtual image. Therefore, meta-universe marketing should focus on the creation of virtual image, excellent content output and authenticity close to the audience to promote the further development of meta-universe marketing.

Distributed Diagnoses Based on Constructing a Private Chain via a Public Network.

Secure online consultations can provide convenient medical services to patients who require experts from different regions. Moreover, this process can save time, which is critical in emergency cases, and cut medical costs. However, medical services need a high level of privacy protection that advances the difficulty of a construction method. It is a good idea to construct a virtual private chain through public networks by means of cryptology and identity verification. For this purpose, novel protocols are proposed to finish the package layout, secure transmission, and authorization. By mining the special characteristics of this application, two different kinds of encryption channels were designed to support the proposed protocol to ensure the secure transmission of data. And Hash values and multiple checking were employed in the transmission package to find the incompleteness of data related to network errors or attacks. Besides the secure communication of medical information, the Extended Chinese Remainder Theorem was utilized to finish the approval during a change in committee in emergency situations. Finally, example case was used to verify the effectiveness of the total methods.

Deployment of VNF service chains with grooming and resilience in elastic optical networks

Network function virtualization (NFV) uses virtual network functions (VNFs) and VNF service chains (VNF-SCs) as a flexible and cost-efficient way of providing network services. This new backbone plays a vital role in dealing with the outbreak of traffic patterns generated by diverse services. Elastic optical networks (EONs) can be used for maximum flexibility to interconnect the computing infrastructure and data centers (DCs) required to host these VNFs and effectively transport the heterogeneous traffic flowing through the VNF-SC. The aim of the paper is to provide a complete mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulation for the problem of VNF-SC deployment with survivability to minimize the total number of functions, balance the load utilization through grooming, and avoid spectrum fragmentation in EONs. In addition, we propose an efficient heuristic solution in dealing with the problem of large networks. The performance of the proposed strategies is evaluated based on the availability of resources (function computing capability). Simulation results show that the proposed MILP and heuristic can reduce the total amount of allocated VNFs, thereby, allowing for a certain level of resilience.

Double-Agent Reinforced vNFC Deployment in EONs for Cloud-Edge Computing

With an effective service provisioning strategy that relies on Network Function Virtualization (NFV), cloud-edge computing can enhance the Quality of Service (QoS) in Elastic Optical Networks (EONs). NFV emerges as a promising technology to provide flexible services by orchestrating different virtual Network Function Chains (vNFCs). However, the vNFC deployment process is complex and involves two stages, i.e., allocating diverse Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) onto different physical nodes and routing suitable paths for Virtual Links (VLs). How to coordinate the above two stages to deploy vNFCs efficiently in EONs for cloud-edge computing is extremely important. Previous vNFC deployment algorithms are heuristic policies that disregard heterogeneous characteristics in cloud-edge computing. Recently, single-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) can provide adaptive allocation schemes by perceptual learning from the environment. Whereas, its performance is not as good as expected since it makes the process of VFNs deployment and VLs deployment independent. Therefore, we propose a Double-Agent Reinforced vNFC Deployment algorithm (DARD) to integrate the VNFs and VLs deployment stages by two cooperative DRL agents. Additionally, we formulate the vNFC deployment problem as a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model to achieve optimal solutions. The performance of DARD is evaluated in both static and dynamic scenarios. Simulation results show that DARD can achieve approaching performance with the MILP model. Moreover, it performs better than the other five state-of-art algorithms.

A Generic Framework for Deploying Video Analytic Services on the Edge

This paper introduces a novel distributed model for handling in real-time, edge-based Artificial Intelligence analytics, such as the ones required for smart video surveillance. The novelty of the model relies on decoupling and distributing the services into several decomposed functions which are linked together, creating virtual function chains ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$VFC$</tex-math></inline-formula> model). The model considers both computational and communication constraints. Theoretical, simulation and experimental results have shown that the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$VFC$</tex-math></inline-formula> model can enable the support of heavy-load services to an edge environment while improving the footprint of the service compared to state-of-the art frameworks. In detail, results on the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$VFC$</tex-math></inline-formula> model have shown that it can reduce the total edge cost, compared with a Monolithic and a Simple Frame Distribution models. For experimenting on a real-case scenario, a testbed edge environment has been developed, where the aforementioned models, as well as a general distribution framework (Spark ©) and an edge-deployement framework (Kubernetes©), have been deployed. A cloud service has also been considered. Experiments have shown that <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$VFC$</tex-math></inline-formula> can outperform all alternative approaches, by reducing operational cost and improving the QoS. Finally, a caching and a QoS monitoring service based on Long-Term-Short-Term models are introduced and evaluated.

Virtual Cold Chain Method to Evaluate the Effect of Rising Temperature on the Quality Evolution of Peach Fruit.

Poor temperature management along a cold chain leads to fruit quality deterioration and loss. In order to determine the threshold value of temperature fluctuation in a cold chain, peach fruits were stored in four different virtual cold chains applying different temperature-time scenarios. Core temperature profiling, the physicochemical qualities, and the activities of the peaches' antioxidant enzymes were monitored during cold storage and shelf life. Abusive temperature management (temperature increased to 20 and 15 °C three times) resulted in a significant increase in a peach's core temperature to the highest temperature measured: 17.6 °C. The ethylene production rate at the end of the shelf life of peaches under these temperatures was 21.03-28.16% higher than the constant-temperature group and accompanied by significantly lower levels of flesh firmness, titratable acid content, total phenol and flavonoid content, and peroxidase (POD) and catalase (CAT) activities (p < 0.05). The results of a principal component analysis (PCA) and heatmap confirmed the results. Limited temperature increases (10 °C) in a cold chain had little impact on the quality of the peaches, while temperature increases higher than 15 °C three times would negatively affect the quality of the peaches significantly. The temperature of a cold chain needs to be controlled precisely to reduce the loss of peaches.

Synonymic monopredicative utterances with the interjectional head lexeme (based on French fiction of the 20th – the 21st centuries)

In this article interjectional monopredicative utterances (MPU) of modern French fiction are defined as compressed one-basis (with one transformational terminal chain) synonymic transforms of virtual (linguistic) primary proposition actualized in the form of mono- and polysynonymic (with the intra-, interphrastic and intra-interphrastic bi- and polysynonymy) elliptic complex lingua-discursive signs‑preferential options with the interjectional head lexeme.&#x0D; The goal of this research is to identify the structural and semantic types and to reveal the co(n)textual (linguistic and / or situational) functions of the interjectional MPU of French fiction of the 20th – the 21st centuries and to determine the degree of their co(n)textual pertinence.&#x0D; In this article they use the procedure of the inverse reconstruction (discourse → language) of virtual transformational processes with the aim to identify the primary proposition of each synonymic transform; and the «alternative» linguistic experiment consisting in the artificial substitution by the addresser of some utterance of the analyzed discursive fragment with the synonymic utterance that allows to determine the degree of co(n)textual pertinence of all the members of virtual synonymic chains.&#x0D; It is revealed that in the synonymic interjectional MPU with non-derivative (primary) interjections of modern French fiction the author doesn’t exteriorize the structure subject + personal performative predicate with the referentially determined or non-determined actant, explicated in the contact, interphrastic or distant co(n)text (+ circumstance) and the existential structure c’est with the demiactive (active and passive simultaneously) actant referentially non-determined or determined in the intra- or interphrastic co(n)text. The structural and semantic (qualificative, processual, emotional-specificative, volitional-specificative) types of interjectional elliptic structures are distinguished, their co(n)textual functions are revealed and the degree of their co(n)textual pertinence, according to the pragmatic planification of the narration or to the author’s idiostylistic peculiarities, is justified.

Blockchain-enabled cross-chain collaboration model for elderly health information from a whole process perspective.

Due to people having less children and the aging population, the demand for elderly health services is increasing, which leads to an increase in demand for elderly health information. However, there is a gap between elderly medical health information and elderly care information due to different storage institutions and storage methods, which makes it difficult for the medical service industry and the elderly service industry to fully grasp and utilize the health information of the elderly. Therefore, it is difficult to provide whole process services that combine elderly medical health and elderly care. To solve the problem of the poor collaborative utilization of elderly healthcare information, this paper, based on blockchain cross-chain technology and the literature and field research, studies the specific contexts that are needed to realize elderly health information collaboration. Based on the system theory viewpoint, the component-based modular design concept is used to identify the attributes and types of current health information of the elderly from health information related to the five modules of prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation in the process of elderly healthcare. This paper explores the structure, elements, and interactions between the medical health information chains and the elderly care information chains. We build a blockchain-enabled cross-chain collaboration model of elderly health information from the perspective of the whole process with the help of the underlying logic of virtual chain, and to realize the applicability and flexibility of cross-chain collaboration for health information for the elderly in the whole process. The research results show that the proposed cross-chain collaboration model can realize the cross-chain collaboration of health information for the elderly with easy implementation, high throughput, and strong privacy protection.

3D microstructure evolution in Na[formula omitted]FePO[formula omitted] storage particles for sodium-ion batteries

The cathode material NaxFePO4 of sodium-ion batteries exhibits complex phase segregation thermodynamics with the existence of an intermediate phase, and large volume change during (dis)charging. A virtual multiscale modeling chain is established to construct a 3D anisotropic electro-chemo-mechanical phase-field model based on first-principles calculations for NaxFePO4, which considers phase changes, electrochemical reactions, anisotropic diffusion, anisotropic misfit strain, and anisotropic elasticity, as well as the concentration-dependence of the elasticity tensor. The elastic properties of NaxFePO4 are determined by first-principles for the first time. We investigate how surface reaction kinetics and crystal anisotropy influence the full 3D microstructure evolution, with results that include phase evolution, interface morphology, and stress evolution in NaxFePO4 particles. We find that the existence of 1D Na diffusion channels leads to a kinetically arrested state of single wave propagation along [010]. Furthermore, defect-actuated in-plane diffusion induces low-energy single wave propagation along [100] controlled by the concentration dependent anisotropic elasticity tensor. In addition, the morphology of the double wave propagation along [010] is more prone to particle cracking and mechanical degradation. Beyond NaxFePO4, the findings of this work point towards opportunities to engineer desired phase behavior with better mechanical stability by defect-actuated out-of-1D diffusion of an intercalation electrode material.

An intelligent model for supporting edge migration for virtual function chains in next generation internet of things

The developments on next generation IoT sensing devices, with the advances on their low power computational capabilities and high speed networking has led to the introduction of the edge computing paradigm. Within an edge cloud environment, services may generate and consume data locally, without involving cloud computing infrastructures. Aiming to tackle the low computational resources of the IoT nodes, Virtual-Function-Chain has been proposed as an intelligent distribution model for exploiting the maximum of the computational power at the edge, thus enabling the support of demanding services. An intelligent migration model with the capacity to support Virtual-Function-Chains is introduced in this work. According to this model, migration at the edge can support individual features of a Virtual-Function-Chain. First, auto-healing can be implemented with cold migrations, if a Virtual Function fails unexpectedly. Second, a Quality of Service monitoring model can trigger live migrations, aiming to avoid edge devices overload. The evaluation studies of the proposed model revealed that it has the capacity to increase the robustness of an edge-based service on low-powered IoT devices. Finally, comparison with similar frameworks, like Kubernetes, showed that the migration model can effectively react on edge network fluctuations.

Economic and virtual water multilayer networks in China

Supply chains are complex systems that can be conceptualized as networks. Several studies have examined the structural properties of economic networks (i.e., given in units of financial value) and virtual water supply chain networks (i.e., where economic connections are reported in terms of their embodied water). In both cases, connections both within and between economic sectors are important to fully represent structural network properties, highlighting the importance of multilayer network analyses. The similarities and differences between economic and virtual water multilayer networks are yet to be well understood. The goal of this study is to consistently compare the economic and virtual water multilayer networks within China. Environmentally extended multi-regional input–output (EE-MRIO) data is used to build multilayer networks between 31 provinces and 41 economic sectors (nodes are province-sectors) for commodities and services in the year 2017, using both economic [¥] and virtual water [m3] weights. This study shows that virtual water multilayer networks are relevant to address questions of water sustainability, scarcity, and hazards in supply chains, but that examining virtual water networks in isolation may not identify the economically important core nodes. Consideration of both economic and embedded resource networks could enhance our understanding of complex supply chains.