Strategic commitment to price to stimulate downstream innovation in a supply chain

It is generally in a firm’s interest for its supply chain partners to invest in innovations. To the extent that these innovations either reduce the partners’ variable costs or stimulate demand for the end product, they will tend to lead to higher levels of output for all of the firms in the chain. However, in response to the innovations of its partners, a firm may have an incentive to opportunistically increase its own prices. The possibility of such opportunistic behavior creates a hold-up problem that leads supply chain partners to underinvest in innovation. Clearly, this hold-up problem could be eliminated by a pre-commitment to price. However, by making an advance commitment to price, a firm sacrifices an important means of responding to demand uncertainty. In this paper we examine the trade-off that is faced when a firm’s channel partner has opportunities to invest in either cost reduction or quality improvement, i.e. demand enhancement. Should it commit to a price in order to encourage innovation, or should it remain flexible in order to respond to demand uncertainty. We discuss several simple wholesale pricing mechanisms with respect to this trade-off.     

Large-scale computer simulation of fully developed turbulent channel flow with heat transfer

Recently, with the advent of supercomputers, there has been considerable interest in the use of direct numerical simulation to obtain information about turbulent shear flow at low Reynolds number. This paper presents a pseudospectral technique to solve the full three-dimensional time-dependent Navier-Stokes and advection-diffusion equations without the use of subgrid-scale modelling. The technique has not been previously used for fully developed turbulent channel flow simulation and is based on methods applied in other contexts. The emphasis of this paper is to provide a reasonably detailed account of how the simulation is done rather than to present new calculations of turbulence. The details of an algorithm for turbulent channel flow simulation and the grid and time step sizes needed to integrate through transient behaviour to steady state turbulence have not been published before and are presented here. Results from a Cray-2 simulation of fully developed turbulent flow in a channel with heat transfer are presented along with a critical comparison between experiment and computation. The first- and second-order moments agree well with experimental measurements; the agreement is poor for higher-order moments such as the skewness and flatness near the walls of the channel. Detailed information given about the effects of spatial grid resolution on a computed results is important for estimating the size of the computation required to study various aspects of a turbulent flow.     

A tentative approach to the direct simulation of drag reduction by polymers

An efficient technique for drag reduction uses dilute solutions of a few p.p.m. of polymers. A possible reduction in drag of up to 80% is achieved. Several experimental observations have been made which tend to indicate that the polymers modify the turbulence structures within the buffer layer. Flow visualisations have shown that the changes consist of a weakening of the strength of the streamwise vortices. Existing literature reveals no attempts of numerical simulation of this phenomenon. In this paper an approach is pursued by using a constitutive equation which relates the elongation viscosity to the local properties of the flow. According to this model this viscosity is large in zones where the amount of strain rate is greater than the amount of vorticity, and is zero when the vorticity exceeds the strain rate. Simulations have been performed in a “minimal channel” to give good resolution with a limited number of grid points. The accuracy of the method is tested by comparison with the results of other techniques. For simulations with polymers, quantitative comparisons cannot be made, but the results reproduce the qualitative outputs of the experiments. The mean streamwise velocity is modified in the buffer layer; the peak of the streamwise turbulent intensity, in wall units, increases and its maximum moves far from the wall; and the vertical turbulent intensity is largely reduced in the wall region. An interesting outcome from both the simulation and the experiments is that the strength of the longitudinal vortices is reduced when the polymers are present.     

Voltammetry Under Microfluidic Control,a Flow Cell Aproach

A generic approach to the design, construction and experimental characterization of novel microelectrochemical reactors (MECR) is presented. Structurally well‐defined rectangular microchannels incorporating electrochemical sensors were fabricated using a propriety photosensitive glass and photolithographic techniques. Microelectrode sensors were produced via evaporation to yield, gold, silver or platinum bands of approximate lengths 10–50 μm. The approach outlined permits cells of dimensions in the range: height 50–100 μm, width 100–500 μm and length 1–3 cm to be accurately constructed, in single or array configurations and were characterized via a voltammetric study utilizing electrolyte solutions containing N,N,N′N′‐Tetramethyl‐1,4‐phenylenediamine. In all cases, the test cells were constructed so that the three dimensional hydrodynamic boundary layer within the cells would significantly influence the reagent transport and therefore the observed current density at the microelectrodes. The current/flow rate relationship observed was analogous to the response of the observed within the macroscopic channel flow cells, where typically the cell design is restricted to configurations where a two dimensional transport analysis can be performed.     

Heterogeneous ECE Processes at Channel Electrodes: Analytical Solution for all Reaction Rate Constants and Different Diffusion Coefficients

An analytical solution is developed for heterogeneous ECE processes occurring at channel electrode surface for both laminar and turbulent flow. The solution explicitly links the behavior of ECE processes and the parameters. A simple expression of the effective number of electrons transferred, covering all the reaction rate constants and different diffusion coefficients of the reactant A and the intermediate product B, is obtained. Excellent agreement with previous numerical and analytical results is shown . Parametric studies illustrate the effects of diffusion coefficients, hydrodynamic factors and reaction rate constants on the effective number of electrons transferred and the currents.     

OFDM水声通信CS限幅失真补偿与LS信道估计优化算法

正交频分复用技术应用于水声通信系统时,会引起较高的峰均比,当采用限幅法对峰均比进行抑制时,会产生非线性失真.另外,系统采用最小二乘法进行信道估计受噪声的影响较大.针对以上问题,提出了一种基于压缩感知技术的补偿限幅非线性失真与最小二乘信道估计相组合的新算法,在接收端利用导频数据采用压缩感知算法对限幅失真进行补偿,同时对最...     

光子四维量子态隐形传输

多维量子纠缠态比二维纠缠态可加载更多的信息,多维量子系统是量子信息处理中一个很重要的资源.本文采用已实现的光子四维纠缠态,给出了光子四维量子态的张量表达式,并描述了四维量子态隐形传输的一般表示方法;通过讨论光子四维量子态系统的量子通道参数矩阵和测量矩阵的特性,得到实现完全传输和非零概率传输的充要条件.最后,本文给出在多种量子通道下的四维态的量子隐形传态方案,这一过程在张量分析表示下十分清晰明了.     

使用稀疏贝叶斯学习的水声多途信道盲估计

提出了一种使用稀疏贝叶斯学习(SBL)的多途信号盲解卷积方法对水声多途信道的信道脉冲响应(CIR)进行盲估计。该方法利用垂直阵和多频SBL获得宽带舰船声源在不同垂直到达角上的复数域多频点信号,取其相位对垂直阵接收信号匹配滤波,得到每条路径上的CIR,将多路径CIR相干叠加得到最终的多途CIR结果。仿真与海试数据处理结果表明,相比于原有的基于交替投影的多途信号盲解卷积方法,所提出方法有以下几个好处:(1)无需准确预估多途信号数目;(2)分离的多途信号的方位更准确且信号相位更可靠;(3)有效获取了舰船与阵列之间的CIR.并且将弱路径CIR的平均时间估计误差从4.7 ms缩小到1.0 ms.显著提高了弱路径CIR的时间估计精度。使用稀疏贝叶斯学习的多途信号盲解卷积方法能够有效提高多途环境下水声信道盲估计的性能。     

Time reversal acoustic communication receivers: DSP implementation and fast channel estimation

A communication system is implemented on digital signal processors (DSPs) for the underwater acoustic environment. The implemented receiver uses time reversal multi-channel combining followed by a single-channel decision feedback equalizer. Periodic channel estimation is employed to track the channel fluctuations. These techniques are used to mitigate time-varying inter-symbol interference, which is the main challenge in the underwater acoustic channel at operating frequencies greater than 10 kHz. Various optimization tasks are performed to reduce the receiver computational complexity. A fast implementation of the matching pursuit algorithm is tested on the DSP platform. Its performance, in terms of accuracy and run-time, is compared with that of the basic matching pursuit algorithm. Experimental results of the transmission and demodulation of binary phase-shift keying signals at three different symbol rates were obtained in the local Delaware Bay. The low bit error rates demonstrate the effectiveness of our implementation.