The Use of Soft Systems Methodology in Practice

This paper reports the results of a survey intended to discover the extent to which Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is used in practice. Some 300 questionnaires were sent to people who had had some exposure to SSM and, surprisingly, nearly half were returned. The majority described in detail their uses of SSM and most felt that it had been successful. This paper describes the overall quantitative results from the survey as well as presenting a qualitative analysis of the experiences of using SSM.     

Smoothing minimally supported frequency wavelets: Part II

The main purpose of this paper is to give a procedure to “mollify” the low-pass filters of a large number ofMinimally Supported Frequency (MSF) wavelets so that the smoother functions obtained in this way are also low-pass filters for an MRA. Hence, we are able to approximate (in the L ² -norm) MSF wavelets by wavelets with any desired degree of smoothness on the Fourier transform side. Although the MSF wavelets we consider are bandlimited, this may not be true for their smooth approximations. This phenomena is related to the invariant cycles under the transformation x ↦2x (mod2π). We also give a characterization of all low-pass filters for MSF wavelets. Throughout the paper new and interesting examples of wavelets are described.     

Compensated Compactness, Paracommutators, and Hardy Spaces

LetB₁: ⁿ× ^N₁→ ^m₁,B₂: ⁿ× ^N₂→ ^m₂andQ: ^m₂→ ^m₁be bilinear forms which are related as follows: ifμandνsatisfyB₁(ξ, μ)=0 andB₂(ξ, ν)=0 for someξ≠0, thenμ^τQν=0. Supposep⁻¹+q⁻¹=1. Coifman, Lions, Meyer and Semmes proved that, ifuL^p( ⁿ) andvL^q( ⁿ), and the first order systemsB₁(D, u)=0,B₂(D, v)=0 hold, thenu^τQvbelongs to the Hardy spaceH¹( ⁿ), provided that both (i)p=q=2, and (ii) the ranks of the linear mapsB_j(ξ, ·) : ^N_j→ ^m₁are constant. We apply the theory of paracommutators to show that this result remains valid when only one of the hypotheses (i), (ii) is postulated. The removal of the constant-rank condition whenp=q=2 involves the use of a deep result of Lojasiewicz from singularity theory.     

用于光学神经网络硬件系统误差纠正的虚拟神经网络

提出了一种用于修正光学神经网络硬件系统误差的虚拟神经网络模型，光学实验结果表明该网络能够有效地消除硬件系统误差对实验结果的影响。     

Order splitting in single sourcing with scheduled-release orders

Traditional inventory models assume that a buyer places one order with a supplier in each order cycle. A large number of researchers have studied the benefits of dual sourcing such that an order quantity is split and placed simultaneously with two suppliers. We show that many of the benefits of dual sourcing are due to order splitting rather than using two suppliers. We investigate order splitting with one supplier such that the first part of the order is sent out immediately but the second part of the order is released later (scheduled-release). Through extensive computational results, we show that in many situations where dual sourcing or the use of a cheaper supplier would be cost effective, single sourcing with order splitting using scheduled-release orders is better. The paper provides a quantitative rationale to continue with one supplier. We also summarize the qualitative reasons to prefer single sourcing or multiple sourcing.     

Flat rank of automorphism groups of buildings

The flat rank of a totally disconnected locally compact group G, denoted flat-rk(G), is an invariant of the topological group structure of G. It is defined thanks to a natural distance on the space of compact open subgroups of G. For a topological Kac-Moody group G with Weyl group W, we derive the inequalities alg-rk(W) ≤ flat-rk(G) ≤ rk(|W|₀). Here, alg-rk(W) is the maximal Z-rank of abelian subgroups of W, and rk(|W|₀) is the maximal dimension of isometrically embedded flats in the CAT0-realization |W|₀. We can prove these inequalities under weaker assumptions. We also show that for any integer n ≥ 1 there is a simple, compactly generated, locally compact, totally disconnected group G, with flat-rk(G) = n and which is not linear.     

Shape Hessian for generalized Oseen flow by differentiability of a minimax: A Lagrangian approach

The goal of this paper is to compute the shape Hessian for a generalized Oseen problem with nonhomogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition by the velocity method. The incompressibility will be treated by penalty approach. The structure of the shape gradient and shape Hessian with respect to the shape of the variable domain for a given cost functional are established by an application of the Lagrangian method with function space embedding technique. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Fund of China (No. 10371096) for ZM Gao and YC Ma.     

Study on a Cross Diffusion Parabolic System

This paper considers a kind of strongly coupled cross diffusion parabolic system,which can be usedas the multi-dimensional Lyumkis energy transport model in semiconductor science.The global existence andlarge time behavior are obtained for smooth solution to the initial boundary value problem.When the initialdata are a small perturbation of an isothermal stationary solution,the smooth solution of the problem under theinsulating boundary condition,converges to that stationary solution exponentially fast as time goes to infinity.