The impact of environmental regulations on forest product trade in China

Forest product trade plays an important role in the development of the Chinese forest industry. The trading value of forest product has shown a yearly growth rate of 12% during the last five recent years. Stringent environmental regulations in China have a profound impact on raw material supplies and industrial production in the forest sector; however, their impact on the forest product trade is still unclear. This study applies fixed and random effects models as well as a seemingly unrelated regression model to investigate the impact of environmental regulations on the trade of forest product from 2002 to 2015. The results indicate that the stringent environmental regulations promoted the import but restricted the export of forest product in general. Specifically, the stringent environmental regulations stimulated the import but had an ambiguous impact on the export of the paper product. The stringent environmental regulations had also stimulated the import of wood product but inhibited the export. In contrast, wooden furniture had been affected minimally; only export got slightly negatively affected by environmental regulations. Recommendations for resource managers:

• Trade‐offs between economic growth and environmental regulations are needed to smoothly promote the forest product trade in China.
• Paper and wooden furniture product sectors are less likely to be affected by stringent environmental regulations, because high value‐added products could compensate for environmental costs.
• The wood product sector is more likely to be negatively affected by stringent environmental regulations because environmental costs could severely impact the competitiveness of low value‐added products.

     

基于语义的软件服务故障自动诊断模型

模仿学习是机器人仿生机制研究的主要内容之一,即通过观察、理解、学习、模仿示教行为实现机器人的仿生特性。基于高斯过程分别表达采集离散示教信号所构成的示教轨迹和含有未知参数策略的模仿轨迹,构建模仿学习方法框架,将概率模型匹配引入到模仿学习中,以KL散度为代价函数比较两种轨迹的概率分布,运用梯度下降法寻求使KL散度最小的最优模仿控制策略,将策略应用于模仿机器人以完成与示教相同的模仿任务。以关节型机器人的机械臂摆动行为模仿为学习任务进行仿真,结果表明基于概率轨迹匹配的模仿学习方法能够实现机械臂摆动行为模仿,学习过程较传统方法简易且学习效果较好。     

The cycle structure of two rows in a random Latin square

Let L be chosen uniformly at random from among the latin squares of order n ≥ 4 and let r,s be arbitrary distinct rows of L. We study the distribution of σ_r,s, the permutation of the symbols of L which maps r to s. We show that for any constant c > 0, the following events hold with probability 1 ‐ o(1) as n → ∞: (i) σ_r,s has more than (log n)^1?c cycles, (ii) σ_r,s has fewer than 9 cycles, (iii) L has fewer than n^5/2 intercalates (latin subsquares of order 2). We also show that the probability that σ_r,s is an even permutation lies in an interval and the probability that it has a single cycle lies in [2n^‐2,2n^‐2/3]. Indeed, we show that almost all derangements have similar probability (within a factor of n^3/2) of occurring as σ_r,s as they do if chosen uniformly at random from among all derangements of {1,2,…,n}. We conjecture that σ_r,s shares the asymptotic distribution of a random derangement. Finally, we give computational data on the cycle structure of latin squares of orders n ≤ 11. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 2008     

连续时间马尔可夫决策过程的折扣模型

本文考虑的是转移速率族任意且费用率函数可能无界的连续时间马尔可夫决策过程的折扣模型．放弃了传统的要求相应于每个策略的　Ｑ　－过程唯一等条件,而首次考虑相应每个策略的　Ｑ　－过程不一定唯一,　转移速率族也不一定保守,　费用率函数可能无界,　且允许行动空间非空任意的情形．　本文首次用"α－折扣费用最优不等式"更新了传统的α－折扣费用最优方程,并用"最优不等式"和新的方法,不仅证明了传统的主要结果即最优平稳策略的存在性,　而且还进一步探讨了（　∈＞０　　）－最优平稳策略,具有单调性质的最优平稳策略,　以及（∈≥０）　－最优决策过程的存在性,　得到了一些有意义的新结果．　最后,　提供了一个迁移率受控的生灭系统例子,　它满足本文的所有条件,　而传统的假设（见文献［１－１４］）均不成立．     

展望21世纪风能的利用与发展

本介绍了国内外风能利用的现状,并对我国未来风能的利用与发展提出了很多建设性的意见,诸如：发展目标的确立,政策、法规体系的建立,技术性能的提高及新产品的开发,经济鼓励政策及其实施,产业化体系的建设等。     

THE ECONOMICS OF TIMBER SUPPLY: AN ANALYTICAL SYNTHESIS OF MODELING APPROACHES

The joint supply of timber and other services from forest environments plays a central role in most forest land debates. This paper defines a general conceptual model of timber supply that provides the context for discussing both individual harvest choice and aggregate supply models. While the structure and breadth of these models has developed considerably over the last twenty years, unresolved issues remain. Supply formulations that account for the quality and vintage distribution of forest capital will be necessary for improving medium- and long-run forecasts. This will be especially important for examining the potential impacts of structural changes in forest production and timber markets. In addition, consistent aggregation of individual owners to total supply will be required to address changing forest land ownership patterns.     

Time,Complex Systems,and Public Policy: A Theoretical Foundation for Adaptive Policy Making

Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences - Can public policy development and implementation be improved by closely tracking and coordinating its timing with that of the regulated sector?...     

An optimal service rate in a Poisson arrival queue with two-stage service policy*

We consider a two-stage service policy for a Poisson arrival queueing system. The idle server starts to work with ordinary service rate when a customer arrives. If the number of customers in the system reaches N, the service rate gets faster and continues until the system becomes empty. Otherwise, the server finishes the busy period with ordinary service rate. After assigning various operating costs to the system, we show that there exists a unique fast service rate minimizing the long-run average cost per unit time.This work was supported by Korea Research Foundation Grant(KRF-2002-070-C00021).     

Optimal strategy policy in batch arrival queue with server breakdowns and multiple vacations

This paper considers a like-queue production system in which server vacations and breakdowns are possible. The decision-maker can turn a single server on at any arrival epoch or off at any service completion. We model the system by an M^[x]/M/1 queueing system with N policy. The server can be turned off and takes a vacation with exponential random length whenever the system is empty. If the number of units waiting in the system at any vacation completion is less than N, the server will take another vacation. If the server returns from a vacation and finds at least N units in the system, he immediately starts to serve the waiting units. It is assumed that the server breaks down according to a Poisson process and the repair time has an exponential distribution. We derive the distribution of the system size through the probability generating function. We further study the steady-state behavior of the system size distribution at random (stationary) point of time as well as the queue size distribution at departure point of time. Other system characteristics are obtained by means of the grand process and the renewal process. Finally, the expected cost per unit time is considered to determine the optimal operating policy at a minimum cost. The sensitivity analysis is also presented through numerical experiments.     

Production systems with interruptions, arbitrary topology and finite buffers

We consider a production system with finite buffers and arbitrary topology where service time is subject to interruptions in one of three ways, viz. machine breakdown, machine vacations or Npolicy. We develop a unified approximation (analytical) methodology to calculate the throughput of the system using queueing networks together with decomposition, isolation and expansion techniques. The methodology is rigorously tested covering a large experimental region. Orthogonal arrays are used to design the experiments in order to keep the number of experiments manageable. The results obtained using the approximation methodology are compared to the simulation results. The ttests carried out to investigate the differences between the two results show that they are statistically insignificant. Finally, we test the methodology by applying it to several arbitrary topology networks. The results show that the performance of the approximation methodology is consistent, robust and produces excellent results in a variety of experimental conditions.