Does military spending stimulate growth? An empirical investigation in Italy

This paper investigates the effect of military burden on economic growth and extends previous works on the optimal size of government expenditure by exploring how external threat affects the preferences of the households and, in turn, economic growth. Post World War II Italian data are used to estimate nonlinear growth models using time-series semi-parametric methods. The estimates show that total government and civilian burdens are productive, whereas, military burden has significant effects on economic growth through the expenditure for peacekeeping missions, which reduces the insecurity in the home country. This may justify economically the current not negligible budget devoted to peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.     

Analysis of down times of jib cranes—A stochastic approach

In this paper a case study dealing with the maintenance problem of jib cranes is presented. A jib crane is viewed as a complex system whose performance is observed as a single realization over period of time. After pointing out limitations of existing stochastic models to analyze the observed realization a new family of bivariate stochastic processes is introduced. The data of jib crane is analyzed using new model and cross‐validated using part of the data set. It is noted that the new family of stochastic processes is useful to analyze bivariate data where one of the variables is finitely valued and the other is nonnegative and continuous. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 231–243, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/nav.10006     

Optimal control policies in service systems with limited information on the downstream stage

Existing models in multistage service systems assume full information on the state of downstream stages. In this paper, we investigate how much the lack of such information impacts jobs' waiting time in a two‐stage system with two types of jobs at the first stage. The goal is to find the optimal control policy for the server at the first stage to switch between type‐1 and type‐2 jobs, while minimizing the long‐run average number of jobs in the system. We identify control policies and corresponding conditions under which having no or partial information, the system can still capture the most benefit of having full information.     

Trade credit contract in the presence of retailer investment opportunity

This paper presents a model for designing a trade credit contract between a supplier and a retailer that would coordinate a supply chain in the presence of investment opportunity for the retailer. Specifically, we study a newsvendor model where the supplier offers a trade credit contract to the retailer who, by delaying the payment, can invest the accounts payable amount and earn returns. We find that when the channel partners have symmetric information about the retailer's investment return, a conditionally concessional trade credit (CTC) contract, which includes a wholesale price, an interest‐free period, and a minimum order requirement, can achieve channel coordination. We then extend the model to the information asymmetry setting in which the retailer's investment return is unobservable by the supplier. We show that, although the CTC contract cannot achieve the coordination in this setting, it can effectively improve channel efficiency as well as profitability for individual partners.     

并联TBCC动力对高超声速飞行器性能的影响

针对马赫数为6的一级高超声速巡航飞行器的动力需求,提出涡轮/亚燃冲压/双模态超燃冲压组合动力（T/RJ/DMSJ）和射流预冷涡轮/亚燃冲压/双模态超燃冲压组合动力(PCT/RJ/DMSJ)两种方案。在给定的飞行任务下,分析起飞推重比分别为0.8和1.0时,飞行器完成任务时的航程和飞行时间,并对比了PCT/RJ/DMSJ在两种工作模态下的性能。研究结果表明：在相同的起飞推重比下,两种组合动力方案的航程和飞行时间相差不大。当起飞推重比为0.8时,采用PCT/RJ/DMSJ组合动力方案比T/RJ/DMSJ组合动力方案的航程高出3.6%,飞行时间高出3.8%;当起飞推重比为1.0时,PCT/RJ/DMSJ的航程和飞行时间比T/RJ/DMSJ的分别高出4.6%和4.8%。在小推重比下,跨声速段的燃料消耗和飞行时间占整个加速爬升段的比例较大,随着推重比的增加,这个比例减小,巡航可用的燃料比例增大,巡航距离增加,提高起飞推重比可以提高超声速飞行器的航程并缩短飞行时间。     

The military as a learning organisation: establishing the fundamentals of best-practice in lessons-learned

The post-Cold War era has witnessed the rapid expansion of organisational learning initiatives within NATO militaries, especially formal “lessons-learned” processes. The effectiveness of national lessons-learned processes in recalibrating military activity to the demands of ongoing operations has been highly-differentiated. However, the academic literature on military change and practitioner guidance has been slow to investigate the key features of best-practice in military learning. This article breaks new ground by drawing upon the literature on dynamic organisational capabilities to explore the fundamental organisational processes and activities which are necessary to implement successful lessons-learned. It examines, in particular, the organisational features which facilitate “knowledge transformation”: the effective combination of new knowledge gained from intra- and inter-organisational learning with existing organisational knowledge. The article concludes by highlighting several potential future empirical and theoretical research agendas in military learning and the importance of engagement between lessons-learned practitioners and organisational learning scholars.     

美国国防部后勤转型

简要介绍了美军后勤的定义与管理构架,分析了美国国防部（DoD）后勤转型的背景和实施过程,研究了DOD后勤转型的特点,并结合军队后勤体制变革总结几点启示。     

Scheduling with variable time slot costs

In this article, we study a class of new scheduling models where time slot costs have to be taken into consideration. In such models, processing a job will incur certain cost which is determined by the time slots occupied by the job in a schedule. The models apply when operational costs vary over time. The objective of the scheduling models is to minimize the total time slot costs plus a traditional scheduling performance measure. We consider the following performance measures: total completion time, maximum lateness/tardiness, total weighted number of tardy jobs, and total tardiness. We prove the intractability of the models under general parameters and provide polynomial‐time algorithms for special cases with non‐increasing time slot costs.© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010     

Equivalent accelerated life testing plans for log‐location‐scale distributions

Accelerated life testing (ALT) is widely used to determine the failure time distribution of a product and the associated life‐stress relationship in order to predict the product's reliability under normal operating conditions. Many types of stress loadings such as constant‐stress, step‐stress and cyclic‐stress can be utilized when conducting ALT. Extensive research has been conducted on the analysis of ALT data obtained under a specified stress loading. However, the equivalency of ALT experiments involving different stress loadings has not been investigated. In this article, a log‐location‐scale distribution under Type I censoring is considered in planning ALT. An idea is provided for the equivalency of various ALT plans involving different stress loadings. Based on this idea, general equivalent ALT plans and some special types of equivalent ALT plans are explored. For demonstration, a constant‐stress ALT and a ramp‐stress ALT for miniature lamps are presented and their equivalency is investigated. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010     

基于两阶段感染过程分析的蠕虫传播模型SSI

合理的蠕虫传播模型可以准确地描述蠕虫类恶意代码在网络中的传播行为,有助于在开展蠕虫防护、检测和抑制技术的研究时更深入地分析蠕虫的传播机制。通过引入和分析蠕虫的感染时间这个在经典的传染病模型研究中被忽略的重要因素,使用确定性建模分析方法推导得出SSI蠕虫传播模型,合理地反映网络中的脆弱性主机在蠕虫传播时可能的状态转换。模拟仿真表明,SSI模型可以相对准确地描述蠕虫类恶意代码在网络中的传播过程。