Optimality with telecommunications network

This paper studies a telecommunications company's optimal networkinvestment strategies. The objective of the company is to maximizethe value of the network. According to our numerical exampleswe are not able to consider a single point-to-point connectionseparately from the network, because the network demands andcapacities affect each other. Therefore, the whole network structurehas to be considered in the point-to-point investments.     

Low temperature nanoparticle sintering with continuous wave and pulse lasers

New manufacturing methods are being sought for electronics production. Printable electronics is a promising method for producing low cost and large-scale electronics. In printable electronics nanoparticle inks printed on the surface of substrate contain additives, such as dispersing agent and carrier fluids that provide good printing properties by changing the viscosity and separating the nanoparticles of the ink. In the sintering process ink particles are heated to a certain, ink-specific temperature. During the sintering process the carrier fluid and dispersing agents are evaporated from the ink. Additional heating after evaporation causes the nanoparticles to start to agglomerate. A small particle size allows the use of a considerably lower sintering temperature than with bulk silver, for example 220 °C. The sintering process is usually utilized with a convection oven, with a long sintering time, and the thermal load on the surrounding material can become too great as components and patterns are formed from layers of different type inks. Hence, alternative sintering methods are sought. This paper describes tests done with two different types of laser; pulsed and continuous wave lasers. Laser sintering enables short sintering times and selective sintering, making it possible for printed structures to contain fragile active components produced with other technologies.     

An Inverse Problem of Calderón Type with Partial Data

A generalized variant of the Calderón problem from electrical impedance tomography with partial data for anisotropic Lipschitz conductivities is considered in an arbitrary space dimension n ≥ 2. The following two results are shown: (i) The selfadjoint Dirichlet operator associated with an elliptic differential expression on a bounded Lipschitz domain is determined uniquely up to unitary equivalence by the knowledge of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map on an open subset of the boundary, and (ii) the Dirichlet operator can be reconstructed from the residuals of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map on this subset.     

Convergence of 2D-Schrödinger operators with local scaled short-range interactions to a Hamiltonian with infinitely many δ-point interactions

We prove, that a Hamiltonian with infinitely many δ-point interactions in the plane can be approximated in the norm resolvent sense by a family of Schrödinger operators with regular, local scaled short-range potentials. Similar well known results from the 1D and the 3D case are complemented thereby. (© 2014 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

On Finite Rank Perturbations of Selfadjoint Operators in Krein Spaces and Eigenvalues in Spectral Gaps

It is shown that the finiteness of eigenvalues in a spectral gap of a definitizable or locally definitizable selfadjoint operator in a Krein space is preserved under finite rank perturbations. This results is applied to a class of singular Sturm–Liouville operators with an indefinite weight function.     

Management of legacy nutrient stores through nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization,catch crops,and gypsum treatment

We develop a modeling framework, based on discrete-time dynamic optimization, to study the effect of legacy nutrient stores and soil nutrient dynamics on optimal nutrient management and agri-environmental policy in crop production. Three alternative measures are studied to reduce nutrient loss: reduced fertilization, nonlegume catch crop cultivation and gypsum amendment. According to our results, landowner can bring down excessively high phosphorus stocks causing environmental damage within decades, by simultaneous optimization of the nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers on the economic basis of profit maximization. Our results suggest that nitrogen loss abatement with catch crops is socially optimal, whereas the use of gypsum is well justified as a temporary measure on soils with high soil phosphorus levels. A dynamic tax-subsidy-scheme, which takes into account the current soil nutrient levels and field attributes such as soil texture, can enforce the socially optimal outcome. The welfare losses of the static steady-state-based tax-subsidy-schemes are increasing functions of the legacy nutrient stores and soil's ability to hold nutrients. Recommendations for Resource Managers

• We develop a modeling framework to study the effect of the legacy nutrient stores and the soil nutrient dynamics on the optimal nutrient management and agri-environmental policy in crop production.
• Nonlegume catch crop cultivation is a socially optimal long-term measure for nitrogen loss abatement, whereas phosphorus loss abatement with gypsum is socially optimal on soils with high soil phosphorus levels.
• A dynamic tax-subsidy-scheme, which is adjusted annually according to the soil nutrient stocks, leads to social optimum. Although this can be difficult to implement in practice, it can be useful in the derivation of the simpler, static tax-subsidy-schemes.
• If a gypsum subsidy is paid for those years, where the soil P level is above the threshold level for the gypsum application, the welfare loss of the static steady-state-based tax-subsidy-schemes is almost zero.
• Simultaneous adjustment of the N and P fertilizer rates enables the use of simple, static and soil-texture-ignorant tax-subsidy schemes, without a notable social welfare loss

     

Automatic statistical shape analysis of cerebral asymmetry in 3D T1-weighted magnetic resonance images at vertex-level: Application to neuroleptic-naïve schizophrenia

The study of the structural asymmetries in the human brain can assist the early diagnosis and progression of various neuropsychiatric disorders, and give insights into the biological bases of several cognitive deficits. The high inter-subject variability in cortical morphology complicates the detection of abnormal asymmetries especially if only small samples are available. This work introduces a novel automatic method for the local (vertex-level) statistical shape analysis of gross cerebral hemispheric surface asymmetries which is robust to the individual cortical variations. After segmentation of the cerebral hemispheric volumes from three-dimensional (3D) T1-weighted magnetic resonance images (MRI) and their spatial normalization to a common space, the right hemispheric masks were reflected to match with the left ones. Cerebral hemispheric surfaces were extracted using a deformable model-based algorithm which extracted the salient morphological features while establishing the point correspondence between the surfaces. The interhemispheric asymmetry, quantified by customized measures of asymmetry, was evaluated in a few thousands of corresponding surface vertices and tested for statistical significance.     

Tritium analysis in building dismantling process using digital autoradiography

The aim of our study was to develop a sensitive analytical technique to investigate tritium traces on concrete floor, ceiling and walls of a laboratory under dismantling process. In dismantling process, the behaviour of tritium must be followed very closely and in particular releases to atmosphere and exposure to public must be prevented. The investigations were carried out using liquid scintillation counting (LSC) and digital autoradiography techniques. The LSC investigations were carried out using wipe tests. It was concluded that even though LSC technique provided accurate information on the level of contamination, the loss of exact localisation of contamination spots was considered to be a major disadvantage in this application. The digital autoradiography was shown to provide both quantitative information and localisation of contamination spots. The exposure time on the digital autoradiography films were optimized, the matrix effect and the selectivity of the films were studied using polymethylmethacrylate standards. The studies showed that the digital autoradiography technique can give quantitative results, especially if standards of the investigated material (concrete) are used.     

BRUTUS: optimization of a grid-based similarity function for rigid-body molecular superposition. II. Description and characterization

Finding novel lead molecules is one of the primary goals in early phases of drug discovery projects. However, structurally dissimilar compounds may exhibit similar biological activity, and finding new and structurally diverse lead compounds is difficult for computer algorithms. Molecular energy fields are appropriate for finding structurally novel molecules, but they are demanding to calculate and this limits their usefulness in virtual screening of large chemical databases. In our approach, energy fields are computed only once per superposition and a simple interpolation scheme is devised to allow coarse energy field lattices having fewer grid points to be used without any significant loss of accuracy. The resulting processing speed of about 0.25 s per conformation on a 2.4 GHz Intel Pentium processor allows the method to be used for virtual screening on commonly available desktop machines. Moreover, the results indicate that grid-based superposition methods could be efficiently used for the virtual screening of compound libraries.