On invertible substitutions with two fixed points

Let ? be a primitive substitution on a two-letter alphabet {a,b} having two fixed points ξ_a and ξ_b. We show that the substitution ? is invertible if and only if one has ξ_a=abξ and ξ_b=baξ. To cite this article: Z.-X. Wen et al., C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 334 (2002) 727–731.     

Optical spectroscopy of Yb/Er codoped NaY(WO4)2 crystal

Erbium and ytterbium codoped double tungstates NaY(WO₄)₂ crystals were prepared by using Czochralski (CZ) pulling method. The absorption spectra in the region 290-2000 nm have been recorded at room temperature. The Judd-Ofelt theory was applied to the measured values of absorption line strengths to evaluate the spontaneous emission probabilities and stimulated emission cross sections of Er³⁺ ions in NaY(WO₄)₂ crystals. Intensive green and red lights were measured when the sample were pumped by a 974 nm laser diode (LD), especially, the intensities of green upconversion luminescence are very strong. The mechanism of energy transfer from Yb³⁺ to Er³⁺ ions was analyzed. Energy transfer and nonradiative relaxation played an important role in the upconversion process. Photoexcited luminescence experiments are also fulfilled to help analyzing the transit processes of the energy levels.     

Assigning patients to nurses in neonatal intensive care

An intensive care nursery provides health care for critically ill newborn infants. During a typical shift, infants range from those needing only occasional care to those requiring constant attention. At the beginning of each shift, the head nurse groups the patients for assignment to staff nurses. Typically each nurse cares for one group of infants throughout the shift. The large variation in infant conditions along with several complicating side constraints makes it difficult to develop balanced nurse work loads. We develop a mathematical programming approach for achieving better workload balance. We first develop a detailed neonatal acuity system that quantifies the nursing workload of each patient. We then develop an integer linear program that assigns patients to nurses while balancing nurse workloads. Because this model is computationally intractable, we develop a heuristic that exploits the fact that most nurseries are divided into a number of physical zones. We use ten case studies taken from a major university hospital to benchmark the performance of this heuristic. We also perform a designed experiment using randomly generated problems that examines the effect of nursery parameters on heuristic performance.     

Fleet configuration subject to stochastic demand: an application in the distribution of liquefied petroleum gas

We study the problem of configuring a fleet, in which vehicles receive information on-line about the demand that they should fulfil while they are on the road. In each district it must be decided the number of vehicles and their capacity. The objective function is to minimise the operational cost subject to constraints for the minimum delivery capacity, the maximum vehicle size and the average waiting time for customers. The last constraint is modelled as a queuing system that is adjusted according to the simulation of the delivery process of a Chilean company that distributes liquefied petroleum gas in portable cylinders. We provide the analytical form of all the components of the model, so it can be solved using a standard non-linear programming package. We show that the fleet may increase its sales by 3% and reduce the waiting time of customers 10% by allowing a set of vehicles to share the buffer of orders rather than having vehicles to exclusively serve smaller sectors.     

自控液晶光阀组式光刻快门研究

通过理论推导，构建了抗蚀剂的感光特性、光源的光效与曝光量之间的数学模型，为液晶光阀代替穿孔带提供了理论依据.结合液晶光阀的工作原理和光刻快门的控制原理，对液晶光阀组的控制进行了研究并给出了其控制电路图.通过实际光刻试验，自控液晶光阀组光刻快门机构可以完成编码图案的控制，通光控制达到了预计要求，刻出的图案清晰，线条陡直.证明液晶光阀组替代穿孔带用作光刻快门是完全可行的.     

高效透明导电膜荧光屏的研究

介绍了一种新型荧光屏结构，采用透明导电膜代替传统荧光屏中的铝膜作电极.分别测试了新型荧光屏和传统荧光屏的加电特性.实验结果表明新型荧光屏具有较高的耐压性能，对提高X射线变像管的空间分辨率有重要作用，而且能延长变像管的寿命.采用透明导电膜制作荧光屏还具有工艺简单，成本低和成品率高的优点.     

Ab Initio Study on the Isomerization and Dehydrogenation of Methylnitrene

The ab initio calculations were performed at the RHF/4-31G level with the reaction pathways of the iso-merization and dehydrogenation of methylnitrene by the intrinsic reaction coordinate method. The results show that the transformation from methylnitrene to methylenimine would be very easy. This accountes for the experimental fact that one couldn' t find the methylnitrene, but only obtained the methylenimine in the pyrolysis of methyl azide. The mode-selective study reveals the reaction coordinates (IRC) of isomerization and dehydrogenation of methylnitrene are associated with the molecular deformation mode of 1191 cm-1 and the methyl group unsymmetrical stretch mode, respectively. The coupling between normal coordinates is favourable to select the reaction channel of isomerization.     

Multiporous hollow polymer particles

Hollow particles with interconnected cavities have been prepared by a simple modified suspension polymerization of acrylate monomers in the incorporation of a phase inversion process and polymerizable emulsifier. The morphology of particles has been characterized by scanning electron micrographs (SEMs). Based on observations made using an optical microscope equipped with a digital camera and SEM images of particles obtained under different conditions, the formation mechanisms for multiporous hollow particles are discussed.     

Scheduling multi-stage parallel-processor services to minimize average response time

The problem of scheduling on a multi-stage parallel-processor architecture in computer centres is addressed with the objective of minimizing average completion time of a set of requests. The problem is modelled as a flexible flowshop problem for which few heuristics exist in the flowshop scheduling literature. A new three-phase heuristic is proposed in this paper. An extensive computational experiment has been conducted to compare the performance of the existing heuristics and the proposed heuristic. The results indicate that the proposed heuristic significantly outperforms the existing ones. More specifically, the overall average error of the best existing heuristic is about five times that of the proposed heuristic while the overall average CPU time of the proposed heuristic is about half of the best existing one. More importantly, as the number of requests increases, the CPU time of the proposed heuristic decreases considerably (compared to the best existing heuristic) while the ratio of the error (of the best existing to the proposed heuristic) of about five times remains almost the same.     

An inverse radiative transfer problem of simultaneously estimating profiles of temperature and radiative parameters from boundary intensity and temperature measurements

A parallel-plane space filled with absorbing, emitting, isotropically scattering, gray medium is studied in this paper. The boundary intensity and boundary temperature profiles are calculated for the inverse analysis. For the simultaneous estimation of temperature, absorption and scattering coefficient profiles in the medium, the sum of residuals of boundary intensity and temperature after being weighted by a balance factor is minimized through using a Newton-type iteration algorithm and the least-squares method. To avoid over-updating for the parameters, the relative updating magnitude during the iteration process is constrained not to be >0.5. It is shown that the boundary intensity measurement alone is not enough to estimate simultaneously the temperature (source) and the radiative properties (both absorption and scattering coefficients) when the measurement data contain sensitive random errors. The boundary temperature measurement can serve as a necessary supplementation to the boundary intensity to make this kind of inverse radiative transfer problem resolvable. It was shown that a compensation relationship between absorption and scattering coefficients makes it difficult to fix them accurately. Parabolic profiles for the three parameters are used to validate the estimation method. When the optical thickness approaches 4.0, the results for the radiative properties are not acceptable, although the result for temperature profile is reasonable. This means the method needs further improvements.