THE RATE OF DISCOUNT AND THE PRESERVATION OF NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS

This paper examines the relationship between the rate of discount and the the optimal level of permanently preserved natural environments. A lower rate of discount increases the demand for both preserved environments and capital accumulation. The greater demand for capital indirectly increases the demand for the productive resource inputs found within the natural environments thereby reducing the level of preservation. This indirect effect outweighs the direct effect of the rate of discount on the level of preservation if the elasticity of output with respect to capital is greater that the elasticity of output with respect to the resource input. In general, the asymptotic values of the output elasticities depend upon the rate of discount and so there can be a nonmonotonic relationship between the rate of discount and the optimal level of permanently preserved natural environments.     

Comparative study of electrochemical capacitance of multi-walled carbon nanotubes before and after chopping

In the work, short multi-walled carbon nanotubes (S-CNTs) were synthesized by chopping conventional μm-long multi-walled carbon nanotubes (L-CNTs) under ultrasonication in H₂SO₄/HNO₃ mixed acids. A comparative electrochemical investigation performed in 6 M KOH solution demonstrated that a specific capacitance (SC) of ca. 14.6 μF cm⁻² was delivered by the S-CNTs with the specific surface area (SSA) of 207 m² g⁻¹, much larger than that of ca. 10.1 μF cm⁻² for the L-CNTs with the SSA of 223 m² g⁻¹, the reason for which was that S-CNTs with two open ends, due to good ion penetrability, provided more entrances for electrolyte ions to access the inner surface easily through their shorter inner pathway so as to enhance their SSA utilization and geometric SC. The surface structure disruption of S-CNTs, owing to ultrasonication and oxidation during chopping process, deteriorated their electronic conductivity and resulted in an inferior power property in contrast to L-CNTs.     

基于博弈论的铁路集装箱中心站装卸作业研究

考虑铁路集装箱中心站不同装卸任务之间的竞争性因素,采用博弈论的方法,研究中心站在客户竞争驱动下的装卸资源调度及作业顺序问题。建立博弈模型并设计遗传算法,通过求解该问题的典型算例,将得到的均衡解与静态最优解进行对比,分析考虑竞争因素的作业方案与最优作业方案的差异。结果表明该方法在对最优方案影响较小的情况下,充分考虑了各装卸任务间的竞争公平性,为中心站确定更加合理的装卸作业顺序和资源调度提供科学的依据。     

带凸资源和恶化效应的单机松弛窗口排序

研究带凸资源和恶化效应的单机窗口指派排序问题,其中窗口指的是松弛窗口,凸资源和恶化效应指的是工件的实际加工时间是其开始加工时间的线性函数,是其资源消耗量的凸函数。目标是确定工件的加工顺序,资源分配量以及窗口的开始加工时间和长度使其在总资源消耗费用(与窗口有关的排序费用)有上界限制的条件下,极小化与窗口有关的排序费用(总资源消耗费用)。获得了求解上述问题的最优算法,证明了该问题是多项式时间可解的。     

Scheduling elective surgery under uncertainty and downstream capacity constraints

The objective of this study is to generate an optimal surgery schedule of elective surgery patients with uncertain surgery operations, which includes uncertainty in surgery durations and the availability of downstream resources such as surgical intensive care unit (SICU) over multi-periods. The stochastic optimization is adapted and the sample average approximation (SAA) method is proposed for obtaining an optimal surgery schedule with respect to minimizing the total cost of patient costs and overtime costs. A computational experiment is presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed method.     

An exact algorithm for a vehicle routing problem with time windows and multiple use of vehicles

The vehicle routing problem with multiple use of vehicles is a variant of the classical vehicle routing problem. It arises when each vehicle performs several routes during the workday due to strict time limits on route duration (e.g., when perishable goods are transported). The routes are defined over customers with a revenue, a demand and a time window. Given a fixed-size fleet of vehicles, it might not be possible to serve all customers. Thus, the customers must be chosen based on their associated revenue minus the traveling cost to reach them. We introduce a branch-and-price approach to address this problem where lower bounds are computed by solving the linear programming relaxation of a set packing formulation, using column generation. The pricing subproblems are elementary shortest path problems with resource constraints. Computational results are reported on euclidean problems derived from well-known benchmark instances for the vehicle routing problem with time windows.     

基于MAS协作机制的动态计算资源调度模型

针对网格环境的自治性、动态性、分布性和异构性等特征.提出基于多智能体系统(Mutil Agent System,MAS)博弈协作的资源动态分配和任务调度模型,建立了能够反映供求关系的网格资源调度模型和任务求解算法,证明了资源分配博弈中Nash均衡点的存在性、唯一性和Nash均衡解,该方法能够利用消费者agent的学习和协商能力,考虑和引入消费者的心理行为,使得消费者的资源申请和任务调度具有较高的合理性和有效性.实验结果表明,资源调度算法不但可以有效减少不必要的延迟,而且在响应时间的平滑性、吞吐率及资源利用率方面比传统算法要好,从而使得整个资源的供需合理、负载均衡.     

Use of Isotope Methods for the Development of a New Structural-Geological Model in the Finne Region

Abstract

Since the 1960s intensive isotope hydrogeological studies have been carried out in the Finne mountain range between Herrengosserstedt in Thuringia and the River Unstrut near Karsdorf in Saxony-Anhalt. The new railway line Erfurt-Leipzig/Halle, a part of the traffic projects German Union - Railway-No. 8-, will cross this area with two tunnels, each of which is 6 km long. The tunnelling of the Middle Bunter rocks on the west side involves the crossing of an area with deep wells used for drinking water supply.

To clarify the hydrodynamic situation in this area, the planning company for railway construction German Union (PB DE) contracted Trischler und Partner to carry out an extensive exploration programme. This programme included not only investigations using the isotopes ²H, ¹⁸O, ³H, ¹³C and ¹⁴C, but also single measurements of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) and a multitude of hydrochemical analyses.

Because of stratum related ground water sampling, an aquifer related evaluation of the investigation results was possible. Based on these results a fundamentally new structural-geological model for the investigation area was developed. In addition to its great importance for the tunnel planning, with the new model it will be possible to solve urgent questions concerning the drinking water supply in this region.     

送粉角度对激光熔覆铁基复合涂层形状特征的影响

通过分析激光熔覆过程中光束、粉末和熔池间的作用机理,建立了送粉式激光熔覆材料有效利用率的数学模型,在此基础上推导了送粉角度与工艺参数之间的定量关系式,并计算了不同送粉角度下的熔覆材料有效利用率、熔高和横截面积。结果表明,在熔覆工艺参数不变的条件下,理论计算的熔覆材料有效利用率、熔覆层高度和横截面积均随送粉角度的增加而增大,且均高于实验检测值。激光熔覆过程中,由于粉末烧损和机械损失,使熔覆材料有效利用率、熔高和横截面积随送粉角度变化出现最大值,理想送粉角度为60。     

Physics and applications of aligned carbon nanotubes

Ever since the discovery of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by Iijima in 1991, there have been extensive research efforts on their synthesis, physics, electronics, chemistry, and applications due to the fact that CNTs were predicted to have extraordinary physical, mechanical, chemical, optical, and electronic properties. Among the various forms of CNTs, single-walled and multi-walled, random and aligned, semiconducting and metallic, aligned CNTs are especially important since fundamental physics studies and many important applications will not be possible without alignment. Even though there have been significant endeavors on growing CNTs in an aligned configuration since their discovery, little success had been realized before our first report on growing individually aligned CNTs on various substrates by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) [Science 282 (1998) 1105–1108]. Our report spearheaded a new field on growth, characterization, physics, and applications of aligned CNTs. Up to now, there have been thousands of scientific publications on synthesizing, studying, and utilizing aligned CNTs in various aspects. In this communication, we review the current status of aligned CNTs, the physics for their alignment, their applications in field emission, optical antennas, subwavelength light transmission in CNT-based nanocoax structures, nanocoax arrays for novel solar cell structures, etc.

The focus of this review is to examine various aligned CNT systems, either as an individual or as an array, either the orientation is vertical, parallel, or at other angles to the substrate horizon, either the CNT core structures are mostly hollow channels or are composed of complex compartments. Major fabrication methods are illustrated in detail, particularly the most widely used PECVD growth technique on which various device integration schemes are based, followed by applications whereas current limitations and challenges will also be discussed to lay down the foundation for future developments.