Berth and quay crane allocation: a moldable task scheduling model

We study the problem of allocating berths to incoming ships and assigning the necessary quay cranes to the ships at a port container terminal. We formulate the problem as the moldable task scheduling problem by considering the tasks as ships and processors as quay cranes assigned to the ships based on the observation that the berthing duration of a ship depends on the number of quay cranes allocated to it. In the model, the processing speed of a task is considered to be a non-linear function of the number of processors allocated to it. We present a suboptimal algorithm that obtains a feasible solution to the discrete version of the problem from the continuous version, that is, where the tasks may require fractional quantities of the resources. We conducted computational experiments to evaluate the performance of the algorithm. The computational results show that the average behaviour of the algorithm is very good.     

Femtosecond pulsed laser deposition of Ge quantum dot growth on Si(1 0 0)-(2 × 1)

Ge quantum dots were grown on Si(1 0 0)-(2 × 1) by femtosecond pulsed laser deposition at various substrate temperatures using a femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser. In situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction and ex situ atomic force microscopy were used to analyze the film structure and morphology. The morphology of germanium islands on silicon was studied at different coverages. The results show that femtosecond pulsed laser deposition reduces the minimum temperature for epitaxial growth of Ge quantum dots to ∼280 °C, which is 120 °C lower than previously observed in nanosecond pulsed laser deposition and more than 200 °C lower than that reported for molecular beam epitaxy and chemical vapor deposition.     

Cavity and flow measurements of reproducible bubble entrainment following drop impacts

High-speed motion pictures of air–water interface dynamics of drop impacts that reproducibly make bubbles are presented. The pictures show previously unobserved details of the phenomenon. Measurements are compared with available computational methods. Experimental and numerical results agree with each other on the overall shape of the interface and the occurrence of bubble detachment. Measurements, however, show that the cavity depth stagnates before bubble entrapment. This behavior is not predicted by simulation. Also discussed are the presence of a jet that strikes the new bubble after formation and the possible effect of droplet surface oscillations on bubble entrainment. Received: 25 April 2000 / Accepted: 26 April 2001     

Gel growth in free radical crosslinking copolymerization: Effect of inactive gel radicals

A kinetic model is presented for the post‐gelation period of free‐radical crosslinking copolymerization. The model takes into account the trapped radical centers in the gel forming system. It was shown that the weight fraction of sol, W_s, relates to the number of crosslinked units per weight‐average primary molecule, ε, through the equation where n = 2 for Flory's most probable molecular weight distribution, and n = 3 for primary molecules formed by radical combination. Calculation results demonstrate that the existence of trapped radicals significantly affects the growth rate of the gel molecule. It increases the total radical concentration and accelerates the gel growth. The difference in the predictions with and without considering the trapped radicals becomes significant as the crosslinker concentration decreases or, as the vinyl group reactivity on the crosslinker or on the polymer decreases.