Polling systems in heavy traffic: Exhaustiveness of service policies

We study the expected delay in cyclic polling models with general ‘branching-type’ service disciplines. For this class of models, which contains models with exhaustive and gated service as special cases, we obtain closed-form expressions for the expected delay under standard heavy-traffic scalings. We identify a single parameter associated with the service discipline at each queue, which we call the ‘exhaustiveness’. We show that the scaled expected delay figures depend on the service policies at the queues only through the exhaustiveness of each of the service disciplines. This implies that the influence of different service disciplines, but with the same exhaustiveness, on the expected delays at the queues becomes the same when the system reaches saturation. This observation leads to a new classification of the service disciplines. In addition, we show monotonicity of the scaled expected delays with respect to the exhaustiveness of the service disciplines. This induces a complete ordering in terms of efficiency of the service disciplines. The results also lead to new rules for optimization of the system performance with respect to the service disciplines at the queues. Further, the exact asymptotic results suggest simple expected waiting-time approximations for polling models in heavy traffic. Numerical experiments show that the accuracy of the approximations is excellent for practical heavy-traffic scenarios. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Effective potentials and Bogoliubov’s quasi-averages

The effective potential method, used in quantum field theory to study spontaneous symmetry violation, is discussed from the point of view of Bogoliubov’s quasi-averaging procedure. It is shown that the effective potential method is a disguised type of this procedure. The catastrophe theory approach to the study of phase transitions is discussed and the existence of the potentials used in that approach is proved from the statistical point of view. It is shown that in the case of broken symmetry, the nonconvex effective potential is not a Legendre transform of the generating functional for connected Green’s functions. Instead, it is a part of the potential used in catastrophe theory. The relationship between the effective potential and the Legendre transform of the generating functional for connected Green’s functions is given by Maxwell’s rule. A rigorous rule for evaluating quasi-averaged quantities within the framework of the effective potential method is established. Translated from Teoreticheskaya i Matematicheskaya Fizika, Vol. 113, No. 1, pp. 149–161, October, 1997.     

Orbifolds, Sheaves and Groupoids

We characterize orbifolds in terms of their sheaves, and show that orbifolds correspond exactly to a specific class of smooth groupoids. As an application, we construct fibered products of orbifolds and prove a change-of-base formula for sheaf cohomology.     

类铜离子的电子碰撞参数及其规律

用准相对论扭曲波方法系统地计算了Ｂａ、Ｎｄ、Ｇｄ、Ｙｂ、Ａｕ、Ｐｂ类铜离子组态能级之间的电子碰撞激发强度Ω（ｎｌ－ｎｌ），３≤ｎ≤７，４≤ｎ≤７，同时给出了高能极限的碰撞强度和外推到阈值的碰撞强度，用最小二乘样条方法拟合了全能域碰撞强度及热平均速率系数。对于一个激发过程，用１０个参数可以得到碰撞电子在任意能量下的碰撞强度以及任意温度下的速率系数。     

Chemical composition and reaction analysis of single aerosol particles

In situ measurements of gas-liquid surface reactions of single aerosol microdroplets are presented. By means of optical levitation in combination with elastic (Mie) and inelastic (Raman) light scattering it is possible to get information on the chemistry of e.g. acid/base reactions as well as the physical behavior of single microparticles.     

Optimal purchase and advertising for a product with immediate sale start

Summary We consider the problem of maximizing the discounted net profit of a firm which purchases a quantity of some product at a given time and afterwards advertises and sells the product progressively. We distinguish among the three possibilities of assuming the final time to be either fixed, or bounded, or free. In all cases, after stating the problem in the optimal control theory framework, we prove the existence of an optimal solution and characterize it using the Maximum Principle necessary conditions. Furthermore, we prove that the convexity of the purchase cost function is a sufficient condition for the uniqueness of the optimal solution. Partially supported by MURST.     

Thermal activation of complexation reaction on aerosil surface

The influence of temperature in the 20–100°C range on processes of bimolecular interaction in the aerosil-phenanthrene-trinitrobenzene system has been studied. Temperature-stimulated CTC accumulation on the surface is found. Activation energies of complex formation are estimated. Quenching of phenanthrene fluorescence by acceptor has a mixed static and dynamic character.     

Reactivity of sites on Al2O3 surface modified by Ni

It has been established that CO oxidation with excess O₂ on Ni/Al₂O₃ forms an inhomogeneous NiO contact surface that smoothes critical effects in the sharp reactivity change.     

The Assessment of Reservation Prices of an Intermediate R&D Result and Patent Reward Under Oligopolistic Competitive Behaviour

One of the shortcomings of R&D evaluation is a lack of emphasis on analytical assessment of the value of an on-going R&D project. This paper addresses the problem concerning the distributive aspect of access to superior knowledge. Decision tree analysis and probability models appear to be appropriate tools for assessing the values of an intermediate result and patent reward of a firm's R&D decision in an environment of perfect information and oligopolistic competition. The assessed values are used as minimum prices acceptable to the firm when the knowledge is disseminated to the public. This paper will attempt to resolve this problem through the determination of the appropriate values of the reservation price of the first-stage invention in terms of the final reward and of a patent reward for which the inventor is willing to apply.     

Direct SCF structure optimization of large molecules on networks of workstations

A program to optimize the structure of large molecules at the Hartree–Fock level of theory running concurrently on a network of workstations is presented. Problems encountered in obtaining nearly optimal speedup and their solutions are discussed. A simple scheduling algorithm is presented that enables up to 99.5% of the code to run in parallel. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.