Measurement of the thermoelectric power of lead sulphide

The thermoelectric power of natural specimens of lead sulphide crystals has been measured between room temperature and 700° K. Specimens which are of then-type remain as such throughout the temperature range. Thep-type specimens, however, show an initial small rise followed by a gradual decrease and a subsequent change of sign ata temperature which, in some specimens, is well defined. Further increase of temperature results in a negative extremum. From this stage onwards there seems to develop a common behaviour for both types of specimens. Some crystals which were initially of thep-type changed over to then-type and remained as such throughout subsequent investigation. Among the crystals one showed a metallic conduction and an extraordinary large thermoelectric power.     

On managerial risk-taking incentives when compensation may be hedged against

We consider a continuous time principal-agent model where the principal/firm compensates an agent/manager who controls the output’s exposure to risk and its expected return. Both the firm and the manager have exponential utility and can trade in a frictionless market. When the firm observes the manager’s choice of effort and volatility, there is an optimal contract that induces the manager to not hedge. In a two factor specification of the model where an index and a bond are traded, the optimal contract is linear in output and the log return of the index. We also consider a manager who receives exogenous share or option compensation and illustrate how risk taking depends on the relative size of the systematic and firm-specific risk premia of the output and index. Whilst in most cases, options induce greater risk taking than shares, we find that there are also situations under which the hedging manager may take less risk than the non-hedging manager.     

Influential DMUs and outlier detection in data envelopment analysis with an application to health care

This paper explains some drawbacks on previous approaches for detecting influential observations in deterministic nonparametric data envelopment analysis models as developed by Yang et al. (Annals of Operations Research 173:89–103, 2010). For example efficiency scores and relative entropies obtained in this model are unimportant to outlier detection and the empirical distribution of all estimated relative entropies is not a Monte-Carlo approximation. In this paper we developed a new method to detect whether a specific DMU is truly influential and a statistical test has been applied to determine the significance level. An application for measuring efficiency of hospitals is used to show the superiority of this method that leads to significant advancements in outlier detection.     

Viscosity iterative scheme for generalized mixed equilibrium problems and nonexpansive semigroups

In this paper, we propose a new general iterative scheme based on the viscosity approximation method for finding a common element of the set of solutions of the generalized mixed equilibrium problem and the set of all common fixed points of a finite family of nonexpansive semigroups. Then, we prove the strong convergence of the iterative scheme to find a unique solution of the variational inequality that is the optimality condition for the minimization problem. Our results extend and improve some recent results of Cianciaruso et al. (J. Optim. Theory Appl. 146:491–509, 2010), Kamraksa and Wangkeeree (J. Glob. Optim. 51:689–714, 2011), and many others.     

On intensities of perturbed random measures on Hausdorff spaces

Abstract

This article studies classes of random measures on topological spaces perturbed by stochastic processes (a.k.a. modulated random measures). We render a rigorous construction of the stochastic integral of functions of two variables and showed that such an integral is a random measure. We establish a new Campbell-type formula that, along with a rigorous construction of modulation, leads to the intensity of a modulated random measure. Mathematical formalism of integral-driven random measures and their stochastic intensities find numerous applications in stochastic models, physics, astrophysics, and finance that we discuss throughout the article.     

Evaluating Parallel Simulated Evolution Strategies for VLSI Cell Placement

Simulated Evolution (SimE) is an evolutionary metaheuristic that has produced results comparable to well established stochastic heuristics such as SA, TS and GA, with shorter runtimes. However, for optimization problems with a very large set of elements, such as in VLSI cell placement and routing, runtimes can still be very large and parallelization is an attractive option for reducing runtimes. Compared to other metaheuristics, parallelization of SimE has not been extensively explored. This paper presents a comprehensive set of parallelization approaches for SimE when applied to multiobjective VLSI cell placement problem. Each of these approaches are evaluated with respect to SimE characteristics and the constraints imposed by the problem instance. Conclusions drawn can be extended to parallelization of SimE when applied to other optimization problems.      

Ergodic theory of amenable semigroup actions

In this paper, among other things, we state and prove the mean ergodic theorem for amenable semigroup algebras.     

Differential evolution algorithms using hybrid mutation

Differential evolution (DE) has gained a lot of attention from the global optimization research community. It has proved to be a very robust algorithm for solving non-differentiable and non-convex global optimization problems. In this paper, we propose some modifications to the original algorithm. Specifically, we use the attraction-repulsion concept of electromagnetism-like (EM) algorithm to boost the mutation operation of the original differential evolution. We carried out a numerical study using a set of 50 test problems, many of which are inspired by practical applications. Results presented show the potential of this new approach.     

Batching deteriorating items with applications in computer communication and reverse logistics

We study two deterministic scheduling problems that combine batching and deterioration features. In both problems, there is a certain demand for identical good quality items to be produced in batches. In the first problem, each batch is assigned an individual machine that requires a cost and a time to be activated. All the machines are identical, work in parallel, and always produce good quality items. All the items are available at time zero and they deteriorate while waiting for production. Deterioration results in a linear increase of time and cost of production. In the second problem, there is a single machine that produces good quality as well as defective items in batches. Each batch is preceded by a setup time and requires a setup cost. Defective items have to be reworked on the same machine. They deteriorate while waiting for rework. At a time to be decided, the machine switches from production to rework defective items of the current batch. After rework, every defective item has the required good quality. In both problems, the objective is to find batch partitioning such that a linear combination of the production cost and production completion time is minimized. The two problems are observed at computer service providers and also reverse logistics. In computer service providers, machines and items correspond to communication service channels and information transfer tasks, respectively. We reduce both problems to minimizing a function of one variable representing the number of batches. In an optimal solution of either problem, there are at most two different batch sizes. Linear time algorithms are proposed for both problems.