Improving sample preparation of gold-containing ores of the second and third groups for assay analysis

A procedure is proposed for the sample preparation of gold-containing ores of the second and third groups for assay analysis; it allows for an improvement in the accuracy of the results of analysis.     

Vibrational relaxation of CO2(00°1) and N2O(00°1) by NO

The far-from-resonance transfers and the de-excitation processes in CO₂-NO and N₂O-NO systems have been studied by measuring fluorescence decay rate constants of CO₂ or N₂O excited to the (00°1) level by laser radiation. The diagrams giving the variations of these rate constants versus the molar fraction of CO₂ or N₂O have been set out. From these diagrams, the relative importance of the V-V transfer and V-T de-excitation rate constants is discussed. The transfer rate constants have been calculated from a semiclassical theory in which the interaction potential is a sum of four atom-atom Morse potentials. The disagreement observed between calculated and experimental values probably results from the attractive multipolar forces which the theory does not take into account.     

Generalized Weber Problem with Rectangular Regions

The problem of locating one or more new facilities relative to a number of existing rectangular regions is treated for the case where the rectilinear norm is used. The new facilities are to be located such that the total weighted distance is minimized. If there is interfacility interaction among the new facilities, a gradient-free nonlinear search algorithm is utilized. Computational experience suggests that this algorithm is expedient even in the solution of large problems.     

Steiner's problem and fagnano's result on the sphere

This note describes the nature of optimal solutions for the spherical Steiner-Weber location problem for the case of unit weights and either 3 or 4 demand points (requireing 4 demand points to lie in an open hemisphere). Geometrically appealing results which are necessary conditions for optimum solutions and spherical analogs of known planar results are obtained.     

Pd-Xantphos-catalyzed direct arylation of nucleosides

Direct arylation of the exocyclic amino groups of nucleosides represents a simple approach to N-aryl nucleoside derivatives. To date, one limitation has been that only electron-deficient aryl bromides and triflates possessed adequate reactivity for efficient, direct N-arylation of nucleosides. We demonstrate herein that Pd-Xantphos catalytic systems lead to successful N-arylation of suitably protected 2'-deoxyadenosine and 2'-deoxyguanosine with a wide range of aryl bromides.     

Reliable electron affinities of perfluorocyclopropane and perfluorocyclobutane from convergent ab initio computations

To resolve discrepancies concerning the magnitude of the electron affinities of perfluorocyclopropane and perfluorocyclobutane, quantum chemical calculations have been carried out with the MP2 and CCSD(T) methods in conjunction with augmented correlation consistent basis sets (aug-cc-pVX Z, X = D, T, Q). Though no experimental values have been found for perfluorocyclopropane, we estimate its electron affinity to be 0.17 eV (0.00 eV without zero-point vibrational energy corrections). In addition, determination of the electron affinity of perfluorocyclobutane (0.61 and 0.44 eV with and without zero-point vibrational energy corrections, respectively) is in good agreement with experimental values reported by Miller and co-workers (0.63 +/- 0.05 eV). This study also demonstrates that the widely prescribed B3LYP/DZP++ model chemistry for computing electron affinities does not correctly describe these systems.     

Efficiency analysis in two-stage structures using fuzzy data envelopment analysis

Two-stage data envelopment analysis (TsDEA) models evaluate the performance of a set of production systems in which each system includes two operational stages. Taking into account the internal structures is commonly found in many situations such as seller-buyer supply chain, health care provision and environmental management. Contrary to conventional DEA models as a black-box structure, TsDEA provides further insight into sources of inefficiencies and a more informative basis for performance evaluation. In addition, ignoring the qualitative and imprecise data leads to distorted evaluations, both for the subunits and the system efficiency. We present the fuzzy input and output-oriented TsDEA models to calculate the global and pure technical efficiencies of a system and sub-processes when some data are fuzzy. To this end, we propose a possibilistic programming problem and then convert it into a deterministic interval programming problem using the α-level based method. The proposed method preserves the link between two stages in the sense that the total efficiency of the system is equal to the product of the efficiencies derived from two stages. In addition to the study of technical efficiency, this research includes two further contributions to the ancillary literature; firstly, we minutely discuss the efficiency decompositions to indicate the sources of inefficiency and secondly, we present a method for ranking the efficient units in a fuzzy environment. An empirical illustration is also utilised to show the applicability of the proposed technique.     

The design of robust value-creating supply chain networks: A critical review

This paper discusses Supply Chain Network (SCN) design problem under uncertainty, and presents a critical review of the optimization models proposed in the literature. Some drawbacks and missing aspects in the literature are pointed out, thus motivating the development of a comprehensive SCN design methodology. Through an analysis of supply chains uncertainty sources and risk exposures, the paper reviews key random environmental factors and discusses the nature of major disruptive events threatening SCN. It also discusses relevant strategic SCN design evaluation criteria, and it reviews their use in existing models. We argue for the assessment of SCN robustness as a necessary condition to ensure sustainable value creation. Several definitions of robustness, responsiveness and resilience are reviewed, and the importance of these concepts for SCN design is discussed. This paper contributes to framing the foundations for a robust SCN design methodology.     

Localization from Incomplete Noisy Distance Measurements

We consider the problem of positioning a cloud of points in the Euclidean space ? ^d , using noisy measurements of a subset of pairwise distances. This task has applications in various areas, such as sensor network localization and reconstruction of protein conformations from NMR measurements. It is also closely related to dimensionality reduction problems and manifold learning, where the goal is to learn the underlying global geometry of a data set using local (or partial) metric information. Here we propose a reconstruction algorithm based on semidefinite programming. For a random geometric graph model and uniformly bounded noise, we provide a precise characterization of the algorithm’s performance: in the noiseless case, we find a radius r ₀ beyond which the algorithm reconstructs the exact positions (up to rigid transformations). In the presence of noise, we obtain upper and lower bounds on the reconstruction error that match up to a factor that depends only on the dimension d, and the average degree of the nodes in the graph.     

Une formulation hybride du modèle de coque de Naghdi

We present a new version of the Naghdi model for shells with curvature discontinuities. The unknowns – the displacement and the rotation of the normal to the shell midsurface – are described respectively in Cartesian and local covariant or contravariant basis. Our purpose here is to consider a constraint-free formulation instead of the one introduced by Blouza et al. (Two finite element approximation of Naghdi?s shell model in Cartesian coordinates, SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 44 (2) (2006) 636–654), where the tangency character of the rotation is enforced by penalization or by duality. This new version enables us, in particular, to approximate by conforming finite elements the solution with less degrees of freedom compared to the method of Blouza et al.