Zum Gudden-Pohl-Effekt bei einem Zink-Kadmium-Sulfid-Phosphor

Luminescence flashes in an excited ZnCdS(Ag)-phosphor occur when electric fields are put on. At ?120° C such flashes also occur if the electric field is applied some time after excitation is removed. The intensity depends on additional fields acting while the phosphor is excited by light. The observations can be interpreted if the flashes are assumed to arise near the surface instead of the interior of the phosphor.     

Competence-driven project portfolio selection,scheduling and staff assignment

This paper presents a new model for project portfolio selection, paying specific attention to competence development. The model seeks to maximize a weighted average of economic gains from projects and strategic gains from the increment of desirable competencies. As a sub-problem, scheduling and staff assignment for a candidate set of selected projects must also be optimized. We provide a nonlinear mixed-integer program formulation for the overall problem, and then propose heuristic solution techniques composed of (1) a greedy heuristic for the scheduling and staff assignment part, and (2) two (alternative) metaheuristics for the project selection part. The paper outlines experimental results on a real-world application provided by the E-Commerce Competence Center Austria and, for a slightly simplified instance, presents comparisons with the exact solution computed by CPLEX.     

Multi-objective decision analysis for competence-oriented project portfolio selection

This paper develops a multi-objective optimization model for project portfolio selection taking employee competencies and their evolution into account. The objectives can include economic gains as well as gains expressed in terms of aggregated competence increments according to pre-defined profiles. In order to determine Pareto-optimal solutions, the overall problem is decomposed into a master problem addressing the portfolio selection itself, and a slave problem dealing with a suitable assignment of personnel to the work packages of the selected projects over time. We provide an asymptotic approximation of the problem by a linearized formulation, which allows an efficient and exact solution of the slave problem. For the solution of the master problem, we compare the multi-objective metaheuristics NSGA-II and P-ACO. Experimental results both for synthetically generated test instances and for real-world test instances, based on an application case from the E-Commerce Competence Center Austria, are presented.     

Multicriteria tour planning for mobile healthcare facilities in a developing country

A multiobjective combinatorial optimization (MOCO) formulation for the following location-routing problem in healthcare management is given: For a mobile healthcare facility, a closed tour with stops selected from a given set of population nodes has to be found. Tours are evaluated according to three criteria: (i) An economic efficiency criterion related to the tour length, (ii) the criterion of average distances to the nearest tour stops corresponding to p-median location problem formulations, and (iii) a coverage criterion measuring the percentage of the population unable to reach a tour stop within a predefined maximum distance. Three algorithms to compute approximations to the set of Pareto-efficient solutions of the described MOCO problem are developed. The first uses the P-ACO technique, and the second and the third use the VEGA and the MOGA variant of multiobjective genetic algorithms, respectively. Computational experiments for the Thiès region in Senegal were carried out to evaluate the three approaches on real-world problem instances.     

A Q-band pulsed ENDOR spectrometer for the study of transition metal ion complexes in solids

We describe the design of a pulsed electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) spectrometer operating at Q-band frequencies (35 GHz) for studies of transition metal ion complexes in the temperature range between 4.2 and 297 K. Specific features of the spectrometer are a microwave IMPATT generator, a homebuilt cavity, and a commercial Bruker magnet. Standard Davies and Mims ENDOR sequences have been implemented. The performance of the spectrometer is demonstrated for a broad radio frequency range by¹H,¹⁴N,³¹P,¹³³Cs, and²⁰⁷Pb pulsed ENDOR experiments of Cu²⁺, Cr⁵⁺, and V⁴⁺ transition metal ion complexes in both single crystals and disordered materials.     

On the Finite-Time Dynamics of Ant Colony Optimization

An analytical framework for investigating the finite-time dynamics of ant colony optimization (ACO) under a fitness-proportional pheromone update rule on arbitrary construction graphs is developed. A limit theorem on the approximation of the stochastic ACO process by a deterministic process is demonstrated, and a system of ordinary differential equations governing the process dynamics is identified. As an example for the application of the presented theory, the behavior of ACO on three different construction graphs for subset selection problems is analyzed and compared for some basic test functions. The theory enables first rough theoretical predictions of the convergence speed of ACO. AMS 2000 Subject classification 68W20, 68W40     

The Variance of Level Numbers in Certain Families of Trees

For the families of t-ary trees and planted plane trees, the variance of the level numbers (i.e., the depths of specified endnodes) is determined. We apply different types of techniques, such as singularity analysis (Kirschenhofer's diagonalization method) or a probabilistic approach using weak convergence and uniform integrability. In the case of binary trees, an exact variance formula for finite tree size is established; in the other cases, asymptotic equivalents are derived. Also some results on higher moments are presented.     

Uncertainty,economics and optimization: recent developments

Computational Management Science -