Fabrication of Monodisperse Toroidal Particles by Polymer Solidification in Microfluidics

Microdoughnuts: Polymer toroidal particles such as the one shown in the left picture have been prepared by a capillary microfluidic technique. Droplets of polymer solution undergo non‐uniform solidification to form the anisotropic polymer particles. By incorporating functional materials inside the polymer network, functional toroidal particles (center and right images) can be tailor‐made for specific applications such as magnetic actuation.

     

The EOQ with defective items and partially permissible delay in payments linked to order quantity derived algebraically

Most researchers established their inventory lot-size models under trade credit financing by assuming that the supplier offers the retailer fully permissible delay in payments and the products received are all non-defective. However, in the real business environment, it often can be observed that the supplier offers the retailer a fully permissible delay in payments only when the order quantity is greater than or equal to the predetermined quantity Q _d . In addition, an arriving order lot usually contains some defective items due to imperfect production processes or other factors. To capture this reality, the paper extends Huang (2007) economic order quantity (EOQ) model with partially permissible delay in payments to consider defective items. We formulate the proposed problem as a profit maximization EOQ model in which the replenishment cycle time is the decision variable. Then we use the arithmetic-geometric mean inequality approach to determine the optimal solution under various situations. An algorithm to obtain the optimal solution is also provided. Finally, the numerical examples and sensitivity analysis are given to illustrate the results.     

A long-reach WDM passive optical network enabling broadcasting service with centralized light source

We propose a long-reach wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) passive optical network (PON) to provide conventional point-to-point (P2P) data and downstream broadcasting service simultaneously by superimposing, for each WDM channel, the differential-phase-shift-keying (DPSK) broadcasting signal with the subcarrier multiplexing (SCM) modulated downstream P2P signal, at the optical line terminal (OLT). In the optical network units (ONUs), by re-modulating part of the downstream signal with a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA), we realize color-less ONUs for upstream data transmission. The proposed scheme is numerically verified with a 5 Gb/s downstream P2P signal and broadcasting services, as well as 2.5 Gb/s upstream data through a 60 km bidirectional fiber link. In particular, the influence of the downstream lightwave's optical carrier–subcarrier ratio (OCSR) on the system performance is also investigated.