An algorithm to locate perinatal facilities in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro

In order to reduce infant mortality in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro it is desired to encourage all mothers-to-be to attend the appropriate health care facilities. A 3-level hierarchical prenatal–neonatal health care system is described together with a basic model for optimising accessibility to facilities. A genetic algorithm to solve the basic model is developed and some numerical experience reported. Extensions to the basic model and planned future research are briefly indicated.     

Inversion of adjunction for non-degenerate hypersurfaces

 We prove a precise inversion of adjunction formula for the log variety (ℂ ^{d +1},X), where X is a non-degenerate hypersurface. As a corollary, the minimal log discrepancies of non-degenerate normal hypersurface singularities are bounded by dimension. Received: 17 September 2002 / Revised version: 22 November 2002 Published online: 14 February 2003 Current address: DPMMS, CMS, University of Cambridge, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0WB, England. e-mail: f.ambro@dpmms.cam.ac.uk Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): Primary 14B05; Secondary 14M25, 52B20     

Structural hierarchy of rock masses and the mechanisms of its formation

The formation mechanisms for the structural hierarchy in geological media are discussed. It is shown that the formation of such a hierarchy is caused by certain external and internal circumstances. The first ones consist in the fact that, because of external actions, the Earth’s poles continuously execute the translational and rotational motions responsible for a regular structure of rock fracture and for the appearance of the scale factor √2. The second ones consist in the fact that, under the action of many random factors and because of external actions, during the formation of geological media there appear dissipative structures and, hence, some self-similar fractal structures are formed.     

Adaptive server staffing in the presence of time-varying arrivals: a feed-forward control approach

We study the short-term staffing problem of systems that experience random, non-stationary demand. The typical method to accommodate changes in arrival rate is to use historical data to identify peak periods and associated forecasting for upcoming time windows. In this paper, we develop a method that instead detects change as it happens. Motivated by an automatic call distributor system in a call centre with time-varying arrivals, we propose a change detection algorithm based upon non-homogeneous Poisson processes. The proposed method is general and may be thought of as a feed-forward strategy, in which we detect a change in the arrival process, estimate the new magnitude of the arrival rate, and assign an appropriate number of servers to the tasks. The generalized likelihood ratio statistic is used and a recommendation for its decision limit is developed. Simulation results are used to evaluate the performance of the detector in the context of a telephone call centre.     

Receiver set partitioning and sequencing for multicasting traffic in a WDM lightwave single-hop network

This paper considers a receiver set partitioning and sequencing problem in a wavelength division multiplexing single-hop lightwave network for multicasting traffic. The problem is analysed in the approach of uncapacitated single batch-processing machine scheduling. In the analysis, several solution properties are characterized with respect to a mean flow time measure, based upon which two heuristic algorithms are developed, along with a dynamic programming algorithm. Several numerical experiments show that the heuristic algorithms generate good schedules. The problem is extended to consider two measures simultaneously including the mean flow time and the number of transmissions, for which the proposed algorithms also perform well.     

MC模式下顾客需求与厂商供应的纳什均衡

在大规模定制(MC，Mass Customization)模式下，基于市场需求的复杂化，厂商对个性化的顾客需求很难做出及时准确的反应，而且由于其自身生产能力的限制，不可能对所有的个性化用户进行一一地满足，只可能对已经存在的个性化需求，根据自身的生产能力和规模，以利润最大化及顾客对产品的满意度为目标，对个性化需求进行较准确地预测，从而正确指导生产。本通过博弈论的方法，提出了一个基于顾客对产品的满意度及企业的利润的一个非合作博弈模型，并给出求解纳什均衡的方法。     

An Additive Problem with Primes in Arithmetic Progressions

In this paper, we extend a classical result of Hua to arithmetic progressions with large moduli. The result implies the Linnik Theorem on the least prime in an arithmetic progression.     

Low Cost, High Efficiency, Gain Flattened L Band EDFA Using FBGs as C Band Seed Generators

A low cost, coolerless 980nm diode pumped, gain flattened L band EDFA with fast transient control, high pump efficiency and gain clamping effect was realized by using FBGs as C band seed generators.