Strategic commitment to price to stimulate downstream innovation in a supply chain

It is generally in a firm’s interest for its supply chain partners to invest in innovations. To the extent that these innovations either reduce the partners’ variable costs or stimulate demand for the end product, they will tend to lead to higher levels of output for all of the firms in the chain. However, in response to the innovations of its partners, a firm may have an incentive to opportunistically increase its own prices. The possibility of such opportunistic behavior creates a hold-up problem that leads supply chain partners to underinvest in innovation. Clearly, this hold-up problem could be eliminated by a pre-commitment to price. However, by making an advance commitment to price, a firm sacrifices an important means of responding to demand uncertainty. In this paper we examine the trade-off that is faced when a firm’s channel partner has opportunities to invest in either cost reduction or quality improvement, i.e. demand enhancement. Should it commit to a price in order to encourage innovation, or should it remain flexible in order to respond to demand uncertainty. We discuss several simple wholesale pricing mechanisms with respect to this trade-off.     

Large-scale computer simulation of fully developed turbulent channel flow with heat transfer

Recently, with the advent of supercomputers, there has been considerable interest in the use of direct numerical simulation to obtain information about turbulent shear flow at low Reynolds number. This paper presents a pseudospectral technique to solve the full three-dimensional time-dependent Navier-Stokes and advection-diffusion equations without the use of subgrid-scale modelling. The technique has not been previously used for fully developed turbulent channel flow simulation and is based on methods applied in other contexts. The emphasis of this paper is to provide a reasonably detailed account of how the simulation is done rather than to present new calculations of turbulence. The details of an algorithm for turbulent channel flow simulation and the grid and time step sizes needed to integrate through transient behaviour to steady state turbulence have not been published before and are presented here. Results from a Cray-2 simulation of fully developed turbulent flow in a channel with heat transfer are presented along with a critical comparison between experiment and computation. The first- and second-order moments agree well with experimental measurements; the agreement is poor for higher-order moments such as the skewness and flatness near the walls of the channel. Detailed information given about the effects of spatial grid resolution on a computed results is important for estimating the size of the computation required to study various aspects of a turbulent flow.     

A tentative approach to the direct simulation of drag reduction by polymers

An efficient technique for drag reduction uses dilute solutions of a few p.p.m. of polymers. A possible reduction in drag of up to 80% is achieved. Several experimental observations have been made which tend to indicate that the polymers modify the turbulence structures within the buffer layer. Flow visualisations have shown that the changes consist of a weakening of the strength of the streamwise vortices. Existing literature reveals no attempts of numerical simulation of this phenomenon. In this paper an approach is pursued by using a constitutive equation which relates the elongation viscosity to the local properties of the flow. According to this model this viscosity is large in zones where the amount of strain rate is greater than the amount of vorticity, and is zero when the vorticity exceeds the strain rate. Simulations have been performed in a “minimal channel” to give good resolution with a limited number of grid points. The accuracy of the method is tested by comparison with the results of other techniques. For simulations with polymers, quantitative comparisons cannot be made, but the results reproduce the qualitative outputs of the experiments. The mean streamwise velocity is modified in the buffer layer; the peak of the streamwise turbulent intensity, in wall units, increases and its maximum moves far from the wall; and the vertical turbulent intensity is largely reduced in the wall region. An interesting outcome from both the simulation and the experiments is that the strength of the longitudinal vortices is reduced when the polymers are present.     

Voltammetry Under Microfluidic Control,a Flow Cell Aproach

A generic approach to the design, construction and experimental characterization of novel microelectrochemical reactors (MECR) is presented. Structurally well‐defined rectangular microchannels incorporating electrochemical sensors were fabricated using a propriety photosensitive glass and photolithographic techniques. Microelectrode sensors were produced via evaporation to yield, gold, silver or platinum bands of approximate lengths 10–50 μm. The approach outlined permits cells of dimensions in the range: height 50–100 μm, width 100–500 μm and length 1–3 cm to be accurately constructed, in single or array configurations and were characterized via a voltammetric study utilizing electrolyte solutions containing N,N,N′N′‐Tetramethyl‐1,4‐phenylenediamine. In all cases, the test cells were constructed so that the three dimensional hydrodynamic boundary layer within the cells would significantly influence the reagent transport and therefore the observed current density at the microelectrodes. The current/flow rate relationship observed was analogous to the response of the observed within the macroscopic channel flow cells, where typically the cell design is restricted to configurations where a two dimensional transport analysis can be performed.     

Heterogeneous ECE Processes at Channel Electrodes: Analytical Solution for all Reaction Rate Constants and Different Diffusion Coefficients

An analytical solution is developed for heterogeneous ECE processes occurring at channel electrode surface for both laminar and turbulent flow. The solution explicitly links the behavior of ECE processes and the parameters. A simple expression of the effective number of electrons transferred, covering all the reaction rate constants and different diffusion coefficients of the reactant A and the intermediate product B, is obtained. Excellent agreement with previous numerical and analytical results is shown . Parametric studies illustrate the effects of diffusion coefficients, hydrodynamic factors and reaction rate constants on the effective number of electrons transferred and the currents.     

带有可调通道的嵌段共聚物胶束对药物的控制释放

用聚丙烯酸叔丁酯-b-聚乙二醇(PtBA45-b-PEG114)和聚丙烯酸叔丁酯-b-聚4-乙烯基吡啶(PtBA60-b-P4VP80)制备了复合胶束. 该胶束在pH=2.5的酸性水溶液中形成以PtBA为核, PEG和P4VP为壳的稳定球型结构. 在pH=12时, 壳层的P4VP链段变为疏水, 塌缩在PtBA的核上形成内壳, PEG链段继续保持溶解状态, 与成核的PtBA连接并穿过塌陷的P4VP内壳, 形成胶束的冠, 由于PEG处于溶解状态, 其分子链间有比较大的空隙, 可以控制一些小分子通过, 在胶束的表面形成通道. 该通道类似于生物膜的蛋白通道, 可以控制PtBA核与外界进行能量或物质交换的速度. 以布洛芬为模型分子, 负载在胶束内进行药物控制释放研究的结果表明, 胶束表面的通道可以起到明显控制布洛芬释放速度的作用, 并且药物的释放速度与通道在胶束表面的比例成正比.     

Time reversal acoustic communication receivers: DSP implementation and fast channel estimation

A communication system is implemented on digital signal processors (DSPs) for the underwater acoustic environment. The implemented receiver uses time reversal multi-channel combining followed by a single-channel decision feedback equalizer. Periodic channel estimation is employed to track the channel fluctuations. These techniques are used to mitigate time-varying inter-symbol interference, which is the main challenge in the underwater acoustic channel at operating frequencies greater than 10 kHz. Various optimization tasks are performed to reduce the receiver computational complexity. A fast implementation of the matching pursuit algorithm is tested on the DSP platform. Its performance, in terms of accuracy and run-time, is compared with that of the basic matching pursuit algorithm. Experimental results of the transmission and demodulation of binary phase-shift keying signals at three different symbol rates were obtained in the local Delaware Bay. The low bit error rates demonstrate the effectiveness of our implementation.     

Tubular structures bearing channels in organic crystals composed of adamantane-based macrocycles

Five macrocyclic molecules (1–5) were efficiently synthesized from the dimerization and trimerization of di-substituted adamantane derivatives, which were composed of three different aromatic units and two different linker groups. Three single-crystals were obtained from these macrocyclic molecules, including a set of pseudopolymorphs (3a and 3b) of macrocycle 3 and another macrocycle 5 (5a). Single crystal X-ray analysis revealed that the three monocyclic compounds were rectangular or square in shape with solvent molecules in the cavity. Macrocycle 3 in 3a formed stacks to produce tubular structures with channels that assembled into three-dimensional networks through CH/π interactions.     

Adaptive RAKE receiver in chaos based pilot-added DS-CDMA system

This paper presents the theoretical analysis of adaptive multiuser RAKE receiver scheme in frequency selective fading channel for direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) system. Least mean square (LMS) algorithm is used to estimate the channel coefficients. Chaotic sequences are used as spreading sequence and corresponding bit error rate (BER) in closed form is derived for imperfect channel estimation conditions. Performances of chaotic sequences are compared with pseudorandom noise (PN) sequences. Under perfect synchronization assumption, various simulation results are shown to investigate the performance of the proposed system.