Survey of approaches to readiness

About thirty references that feature naval logistics environments are considered. All are unclassified and all appear in the open literature or are available from the Defense Logistics Studies Information Exchange. Three approaches are identified–data analysis, theoretical models, and readiness indexes–and conclusions are presented as to possibilities for answering two questions: (a) Can the unit do the job? (b) How does readiness depend on resources? Four cases are treated in detail to illustrate methodology.     

Optimal investment,pricing and replacement of computer resources

The problem of multiple-resource capacity planning under an infinite time horizon is analyzed using a nonlinear programming model. The analysis generalizes to the long term the short-run pricing model for computer networks developed in Kriebel and Mikhail [5]. The environment assumes heterogeneous resource capacities by age (vingate), which service a heterogeneous and relatively captive market of users with known demand functions in each time period. Total variable operating costs are given by a continuous psuedoconcave function of system load, capacity, and resource age. Optimal investment, pricing, and replacement decision rules are derived in the presence of economies of scale and exogenous technological progress. Myopic properties of the decision rules which define natural (finite) planning subhorizons are discussed.     

On labeling the vertices of products of complete graphs with distance constraints

Variations of Hale's channel assignment problem, the L(j, k)‐labeling problem and the radio labeling problem require the assignment of integers to the vertices of a graph G subject to various distance constraints. The λ_j,k‐number of G and the radio number of G are respectively the minimum span among all L(j, k)‐labelings, and the minimum span plus 1 of all radio labelings of G (defined in the Introduction). In this paper, we establish the λ_j,k‐number of ∏ K for pairwise relatively prime integers t₁ < t₂ < … < t_q, t₁ ≥ 2. We also show the existence of an infinite class of graphs G with radio number |V(G)| for any diameter d(G). © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2005     

Untruthful probabilistic demand forecasts in vendor‐managed revenue‐sharing contracts: Coordinating the chain

Vendor‐managed revenue‐sharing arrangements are common in the newspaper and other industries. Under such arrangements, the supplier decides on the level of inventory while the retailer effectively operates under consignment, sharing the sales revenue with his supplier. We consider the case where the supplier is unable to predict demand, and must base her decisions on the retailer‐supplied probabilistic forecast for demand. We show that the retailer's best choice of a distribution to report to his supplier will not be the true demand distribution, but instead will be a degenerate distribution that surprisingly induces the supplier to provide the system‐optimal inventory quantity. (To maintain credibility, the retailer's reports of daily sales must then be consistent with his supplied forecast.) This result is robust under nonlinear production costs and nonlinear revenue‐sharing. However, if the retailer does not know the supplier's production cost, the forecast “improves” and could even be truthful. That, however, causes the supplier's order quantity to be suboptimal for the overall system. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007     

Swords,sandals, and insurgencies: Ancient history goes to the movies

This article explores the question of why so few insurgencies from the ancient world have ever made it onto the big screen. Many of these stories have been made into documentaries, but have been ignored by Hollywood. Even those events that have been made into Hollywood films, like the uprising of Spartacus, do not show any of the successful uprisings, only the defeats. Among the possible reasons may be Hollywood's fascination with big wars and big battles rather than small wars because they are more cinematic. Another reason is that American movies are reluctant to show successful slave uprisings or insurgencies against great powers. In the end, all movies are about the present, not the past, and thus Western bias will side with the imperial power, not the terrorist.