Combining PSMs with hard OR methods: the philosophical and practical challenges

Combinations of problem structuring methods with hard OR methodologies are seldom described in the literature. This paper will reflect on the barriers to such combinations that can be seen at the philosophical level—paradigm incommensurability—and cognitive level—type of personality and difficulty of switching paradigm. This paper examines the combination of Soft Systems Methodology and Discrete Event Simulation within an Intermediate Care case study. The paper will argue, by way of the practical application, that these problems are not insurmountable and that the result can be seen as interplay of the soft and hard paradigms. The idea of yin and yang is proposed as a metaphor for this process.     

Aryl pyrrolidinones via radical 1,4-aryl migration and 5-endo-trig cyclisation of N-(2-bromoallyl)arylcarboxamides

Radical reaction of a series of N-(2-bromoallyl)arylcarboxamides led to the production of 4-arylpyrrolidin-2-ones and directly reduced materials in comparable yields. A cascade process, involving sequential 5-exo-trig spirocyclisation, β-scission, and 5-endo-trig cyclisation of the resulting acyl radical, is proposed to explain the pyrrolidinone products.     

Solution of a Duffing-harmonic oscillator by the method of harmonic balance

The first-order harmonic balance method via first Fourier coefficient is used to construct an approximate frequency-amplitude relation for a Duffing-harmonic oscillator. This relation is in agreement with the result obtained by the Ritz procedure.     

A finite cutting plane method for facial disjunctive programs

This paper shows that any linear disjunctive program with a finite number of constraints can be transformed into an equivalent facial program. Based upon linear programming technique, a new, finite cutting plane method is presented for the facial programs.

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Zusammenfassung Die Arbeit zeigt, daß jedes lineare disjunktive Optimierungsproblem mit endlich vielen Restriktionen in ein äquivalentes Fazetten-Problem transformiert werden kann. Auf der Grundlage von linearer Optimierungstechnik wird für das Fazetten-Problem ein neues, endliches Schnittebenenverfahren vorgestellt.

     

Particle scattering in Euclidean Lattice Field Theories

A Haag-Ruelle Scattering Theory for Euclidean Lattice Field Theories is developed.Work supported by DAAD, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. Partially supported by CNPq     

Pulsed reactive crossed beam laser ablation of La0.6Ca0.4CoO3 using O: Where does the oxygen come from?

The composition of thin perovskite films, especially the oxygen content, is a crucial parameter which influences many physical properties, such as conductivity and catalytic activity. Films produced by pulsed laser deposition are normally annealed in an oxygen atmosphere after deposition to achieve a desired oxygen content. In pulsed reactive crossed beam laser ablation, no annealing step is necessary, but a fundamental question regarding this deposition technique is still open: where does the oxygen in the films come from?There are three possibilities, i.e. from the target, from the gas background, or from the gas pulse. To answer this question two experiments were performed: ¹⁸O₂ was used during the deposition process as background gas with ¹⁶O anions in the target and ¹⁶O₂ gas pulse, and a ¹⁸O₂ gas pulse with ¹⁶O from the target and background. These experiments revealed that the quantification of the oxygen origin is only possible, when no oxygen exchange occurs at the deposition temperature. The films are characterized after deposition by elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA) to determine the ¹⁶O/¹⁸O ratio. Experiments with different oxidizing species in the gas pulse (N₂O and O₂) confirm that the oxidizing potential (N₂O > O₂) as well as the number of molecules are important.     

Thickness induced transversal percolation in Pt-Al2O3 nano-composites

Investigations of thickness induced percolation process in Pt_ξ-Al₂O₃ nano-composites were carried out using grazing angle X-ray scattering. It is shown that the morphological characteristics of the nano-scaled Pt particles change significantly within the growth transversal direction. The initially non percolated two phases Pt_ξ-Al₂O₃ nano-composites show a noteworthy tendency to a percolated morphology with a gradual transversal increase of Pt nano-particles' average diameter in addition to the increase of the Pt nano-particles' poly-dispersity. This transversal morphological evolution is followed by a percolation phenomenon of the Pt nano-particles for a thickness of about ∼119.5 nm. This transversal morphological evolution seems to corroborate far too much with a columnar growth process.     

Linear sorting withO(logn) processors

A file ofn records can be sorted in linear time givenO(log(n)) processors. Four such algorithms are presented and analyzed. All of them have reasonable hardware requirements; no memory access conflicts are generated; a constant number of communication lines per processor are needed (except for one case); and the space requirements areO(n) orO(n log(log(n))).     

A telescope illumination system for a wide-field endoscope

Endoscopic illumination systems conduct light down a built-in fibre-optic bundle to illuminate the object. Many modern endoscopes employ wide-field imaging optical systems and therefore require an illuminating beam of large divergence. This is commonly provided by placing a strong diverging lens at the far end of the fibre bundle, but it results in a poor uniformity of illumination in the object space. This paper describes the design of a telescopic illumination system to overcome this problem.