Controlling the GI/M/1 queue by conditional acceptance of customers

In this paper we consider the problem of controlling the arrival of customers into a GI/M/1 service station. It is known that when the decisions controlling the system are made only at arrival epochs, the optimal acceptance strategy is of a control-limit type, i.e., an arrival is accepted if and only if fewer than n customers are present in the system. The question is whether exercising conditional acceptance can further increase the expected long run average profit of a firm which operates the system. To reveal the relevance of conditional acceptance we consider an extension of the control-limit rule in which the nth customer is conditionally admitted to the queue. This customer may later be rejected if neither service completion nor arrival has occurred within a given time period since the last arrival epoch. We model the system as a semi-Markov decision process, and develop conditions under which such a policy is preferable to the simple control-limit rule.     

Optimal investment, pricing and allocation of electrical energy in the USA

The problem posed here is to develop a model which will yield an efficient solution with regard to the generation, consumption, and pricing of electrical energy over space and time. Within the confines of the model, opportunities exist for increasing the efficiency of pricing and allocating electrical energy in the USA if a departure from past policy is undertaken.     

Investigation of a nanostrip patch antenna in optical frequencies

This is the first report and investigation of a patch antenna in optical frequency range. Variety of plasmonic nanoantenna reported so far is good at enhancing the local field intensity of light by orders of magnitude. However, their far-field radiation efficiency is very poor. The proposed patch antenna emits a directional beam with high efficacy in addition to enhancing the intensity of near field. The nano-patch antenna (NPA) consists of a square patch of gold film of dimension 480 nm², placed on a substrate of dielectric constant \( \varepsilon_{\text{r}} \)  = 3.9 and thickness 150 nm with a ground plane of gold film of dimension 1,080 nm². The NPA resonates at 210 THz and has gain nearly 2 dB and radiation efficiency 45.18 %. The NPA might be useful in variety of applications such as optical communication, nano-photonics, biosensing, and spectroscopy.     

Modeling of micromachined silicon–polymer 2-2 composite matching layers for 15 MHz ultrasound transducers

Silicon–polymer composites fabricated by micromachining technology offer attractive properties for use as matching layers in high frequency ultrasound transducers. Understanding of the acoustic behavior of such composites is essential for using them as one of the layers in a multilayered transducer structure. This paper presents analytical and finite element models of the acoustic properties of silicon–polymer composites in 2-2 connectivity. Analytical calculations based on partial wave solutions are applied to identify the resonance modes and estimate effective acoustic material properties. Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations were used to investigate the interaction between the composite and the surrounding load medium, either a fluid or a solid, with emphasis on the acoustic impedance of the composite. Composites with lateral periods of 20, 40 and 80 μm were fabricated and used as acoustic matching layers for air-backed transducers operating at 15 MHz. These composites were characterized acoustically, and the results were compared with analytical calculations. The analytical model shows that at low to medium silicon volume fraction, the first lateral resonance in the silicon–polymer 2-2 composite is defined by the composite period, and this lateral resonant frequency is at least 1.2 times higher than that of a piezo-composite with the same polymer filler. FEM simulations showed that the effective acoustic impedance of the silicon–polymer composite varies with frequency, and that it also depends on the load material, especially whether this is a fluid or a solid. The estimated longitudinal sound velocities of the 20 and 40 μm period composites match the results from analytical calculations within 2.7% and 2.6%, respectively. The effective acoustic impedances of the 20 and 40 μm period composites were found to be 10% and 26% lower than the values from the analytical calculations. This difference is explained by the shear stiffness in the solid, which tends to even out the surface displacements of the composites.     

On the solid polymorphs of the discotic mesogen hexa-octanoyloxytriphenylene

Abstract

In an earlier study by van Hecke et al., it was shown that the discotic mesogen hexa-octanoyloxytriphenylene (HAT8) crystallizes in four different solid forms, depending on the thermal history of the sample. The present study is an attempt to characterize three of these solids in more detail using X-ray, carbon-13 and deuterium NMR techniques. It is shown that van Hecke's modification IV is a metastable amorphic solid, while modifications III and II are highly ordered crystalline solids. Both are apparently monoclinic, but with different unit cell dimensions. In all solid phases, the triphenylene core is static on the NMR time-scale, but the side chains are disordered to different degrees in the different modifications. Further NMR studies on the discotic mesophase of HAT8 are also reported.     

Fast Surface Mesh Denoising with Regularization and Edge Preservation

We describe a hybrid algorithm that is designed to smooth, but not only smooth, noisy polygonal surface meshes with sharp edges. While denoising, our method simultaneously regularizes triangle meshes on flat regions for further mesh processing and preserves edge sharpness for faithful reconstruction. A clustering technique, which combines K-means and geometric a priori information, is first developed and refined. It is then used to implement vertex classification so that we can subsequently apply different smoothing operators on different vertex groups. This yields a highly efficient robust algorithm that is capable of handling both edge sharpness and mesh sampling irregularity without any significant cost increase. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)