Vendor managed inventory contracts – coordinating the supply chain while looking from the vendor’s perspective

The paper studies coordination of a supply chain when the inventory is managed by the vendor (VMI). We also provide a general mathematical framework that can be used to analyze contracts under both retailer managed inventory (RMI) and VMI. Using a simple newsvendor scenario with a single vendor and single retailer, we study five popular coordinating supply chain contracts: buyback, quantity flexibility, quantity discount, sales rebate, and revenue sharing contracts. We analyze the ability of these contracts to coordinate the supply chain under VMI when the vendor freely decides the quantity. We find that even though all of them coordinate under RMI, quantity flexibility and sales rebate contracts do not generally coordinate under VMI. Furthermore, buyback and revenue sharing contracts are equivalent. Hence, we propose two new contracts which coordinate under VMI (one of which coordinates under RMI too, provided a well-known assumption holds). Finally, we extend our analysis to consider multiple independent retailers with the vendor incurring linear or convex production cost, and show that our results are qualitatively unchanged.     

Reich’s problem concerning Halpern’s convergence

We discuss Halpern’s convergence for nonexpansive mappings in Hilbert spaces. We prove that one of the conditions in [R. Wittmann, Approximation of fixed points of nonexpansive mappings, Arch. Math. (Basel), 58 (1992), 486–491] is the weakest sufficient condition among the conditions known to us. We also improve a necessary condition, which is close to Wittmann’s. This is one step to solve the problem raised by Reich in 1974 and 1983. Received: 15 July 2008     

Bergmann’s Dilemma and Internalism’s Escape

Michael Bergmann has argued that internalist accounts of justification face an insoluble dilemma. This paper begins with an explanation of Bergmann??s dilemma. Next, I review some recent attempts to answer the dilemma, which I argue are insufficient to overcome it. The solution I propose presents an internalist account of justification through direct acquaintance. My thesis is that direct acquaintance can provide subjective epistemic assurance without falling prey to the quagmire of difficulties that Bergmann alleges all internalist accounts of justification cannot surmount.     

Warfield’s Duality and Malcev’s Matrix

In this work, we investigate relations between Malcev’s matrices of a torsion-free group G of finite rank and Malcev’s matrices of groups Hom(R,G) and Hom(G,R), where G is a locally free group and R is a torsion-free group of rank 1.     

Generalizations of Sherman’s Inequality Via Fink’s Identity and Green’s Function

Ukrainian Mathematical Journal - New generalizations of Sherman’s inequality for n-convex functions are obtained with the help of Fink’s identity and Green’s function. By using...     

On Andrunakievich’s chain and Koethe’s problem

In 1969 Andrunakievich asked whether one gets a ring without nonzero nil left ideals from an arbitrary ring R by factoring out the ideal A(R) which is the sum of all nil left ideals of R. Recently, it was shown that this problem is equivalent to Koethe’s problem. In this context one may consider the chain of ideals, which starts with A ₁(R) = A(R) ⊆ A ₂(R), where A ₂(R)/A ₁(R) = A(R/A ₁(R)), and extends by repeating this process. We study the properties of this chain and show that, assuming a negative solution of Koethe’s problem, this chain can terminate at any given ordinal number.     

Plateau’s Problem and Riemann’s Mapping Theorem

First the connection between conformal mappings and Plateau’s problem is pointed out. Then the relation between minimizers of area and energy under Plateau boundary conditions is discussed (joint work with F. Sauvigny). Finally, generalizations of the mapping theorems of Riemann and Koebe for Riemannian metrics are presented (joint work with H. von der Mosel).     

Kantorovich’s majorants principle for Newton’s method

We prove Kantorovich’s theorem on Newton’s method using a convergence analysis which makes clear, with respect to Newton’s method, the relationship of the majorant function and the non-linear operator under consideration. This approach enables us to drop out the assumption of existence of a second root for the majorant function, still guaranteeing Q-quadratic convergence rate and to obtain a new estimate of this rate based on a directional derivative of the derivative of the majorant function. Moreover, the majorant function does not have to be defined beyond its first root for obtaining convergence rate results. The research of O.P. Ferreira was supported in part by FUNAPE/UFG, CNPq Grant 475647/2006-8, CNPq Grant 302618/2005-8, PRONEX–Optimization(FAPERJ/CNPq) and IMPA. The research of B.F. Svaiter was supported in part by CNPq Grant 301200/93-9(RN) and by PRONEX–Optimization(FAPERJ/CNPq).     

Dedekind’s and Frege’s views on logic

A contextual and comparative analysis shows that Dedekind and Frege do not understand the terms “logic” and “arithmetic” in the same way. More specifically the meaning and the scope of the corresponding concepts are essentially different for them. Consequently Dedekind and Frege have different conceptions of the relationship between arithmetic and logic.     

On Hilbert’s solution of Waring’s problem

In 1909, Hilbert proved that for each fixed k, there is a number g with the following property: Every integer N ≥ 0 has a representation in the form N = x ₁ ^k + x ₂ ^k + … + x _g ^k , where the x _i are nonnegative integers. This resolved a conjecture of Edward Waring from 1770. Hilbert’s proof is somewhat unsatisfying, in that no method is given for finding a value of g corresponding to a given k. In his doctoral thesis, Rieger showed that by a suitable modification of Hilbert’s proof, one can give explicit bounds on the least permissible value of g. We show how to modify Rieger’s argument, using ideas of F. Dress, to obtain a better explicit bound. While far stronger bounds are available from the powerful Hardy-Littlewood circle method, it seems of some methodological interest to examine how far elementary techniques of this nature can be pushed.     

Gol’dberg’s constants

We study two extremal problems of geometric function theory introduced by A. A. Gol’dberg in 1973. For one problem we find the exact solution, and for the second one we obtain partial results. In the process, we study the lengths of hyperbolic geodesics in the twice punctured plane, prove several results about them, and make a conjecture. Gol’dberg’s problems have important applications to control theory.     

A note on Stone’s,Baire’s,Ky Fan’s and Dugundji’s theorem in tvs-cone metric spaces

Recently, Ayse Sonmez [A. Sonmez, On paracompactness in cone metric spaces, Appl. Math. Lett. 23 (2010) 494–497] proved that a cone metric space is paracompact when the underlying cone is normal. Also, very recently, Kieu Phuong Chi and Tran Van An [K.P. Chi, T. Van An, Dugundji’s theorem for cone metric spaces, Appl. Math. Lett. (2010) doi:10.1016/j.aml.2010.10.034] proved Dugundji’s extension theorem for the normal cone metric space. The aim of this paper is to prove this in the frame of the tvs-cone spaces in which the cone does not need to be normal. Examples are given to illustrate the results.     

On Karatsuba’s problem related to Gram’s law

A number of new results related to Gram’s law in the theory of the Riemann zetafunction are proved. In particular, a lower bound is obtained for the number of ordinates of the zeros of the zeta-function that lie in a given interval and satisfy Gram’s law.     

Bartnik’s Mass and Hamilton’s Modified Ricci Flow

We provide estimates on the Bartnik mass of constant mean curvature surfaces which are diffeomorphic to spheres and have positive mean curvature. We prove that the Bartnik mass is bounded from above by the Hawking mass and a new notion we call the asphericity mass. The asphericity mass is defined by applying Hamilton’s modified Ricci flow and depends only upon the restricted metric of the surface and not on its mean curvature. The theorem is proven by studying a class of asymptotically flat Riemannian manifolds foliated by surfaces satisfying Hamilton’s modified Ricci flow with prescribed scalar curvature. Such manifolds were first constructed by the first author in her dissertation conducted under the supervision of M. T. Wang. We make a further study of this class of manifolds which we denote Ham₃, bounding the ADM masses of such manifolds and analyzing the rigid case when the Hawking mass of the inner surface of the manifold agrees with its ADM mass.     

Higher dimensional Schwarz’s surfaces and Scherk’s surfaces

Higher dimensional generalizations of Schwarz’s P-surface, Schwarz’s D-surface and Scherk’s second surface are constructed as complete embedded periodic minimal hypersurfaces in \(\mathbb {R}^n\).