A ‘transparent gold’ rush?

Abstract

The signing of a new treaty on the equitable sharing of the Nile waters – signed last May in Kampala by Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania – has the potential of derailing relations with Sudan and Egypt. According to the latter countries, this new agreement replaces the 1959 Nile agreement – that awarded them with 90 per cent control over the Nile water – giving other Nile Basin countries the possibility to implement water-related projects in agriculture and energy. This new development, according to Egypt and Sudan, places their water level security in jeopardy. Furthermore, the use of land grabs and water consumption for food security by wealthy foreign countries contributes to the sensitive situation the nine Nile Basin countries are now facing. Water is a red line when it comes to Egypt and Sudan and the future of the whole region depends on whether this line will be crossed.     

Elements of ‘armed non-state actors’ power: The case of al-Qaeda in Yemen

Over the past few years there is an apparent re-regionalization of al-Qaeda activity, intensified by the ongoing Middle East turmoil. Its main characteristic is a trend towards the abandonment of focoist strategies and their replacement by more popular-based ones. This article aims at evaluating their capacity to implement such a strategy shift and sustain the required level of violence. As a means of evaluating this capacity, this article proposes the use of a DIME (diplomatic, informational, military, and economic) framework, which will hopefully provide an alternative angle of theorizing and understanding ‘armed non-state actors’ (ANSAs). The model is applied in the case of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which appears to have effectively developed the military and informational dimensions, due partly to its own prowess and partly to the Yemeni state's weaknesses and the shortcomings of counterinsurgency. In contrast, the economic and diplomatic dimensions suffer from the lack of resources and the anti-systemic nature of AQAP.     

南阳膨胀土三向膨胀力规律研究

湿胀干缩是膨胀土的一个典型特征。膨胀土与水作用时,随着含水量的增加, 其体积将明显地增大,显示了强烈的膨胀性。当这种膨胀性受到限制时,必然产生膨胀力。膨胀力的大小与膨胀土的含水量和干密度有很大关系,研究膨胀力对深入了解膨胀土的变形和强度特性很有价值。通过12个三向膨胀力试验,研究了南阳陶岔重塑膨胀土膨胀力随含水量和干密度的变化规律。试验结果表明重塑膨胀土的三向膨胀力不等,水平膨胀力小于竖向膨胀力;给出了膨胀力与初始含水量和干密度的关系式,为工程建筑物的稳定分析提供了依据。     

典型机舱火灾喷雾冷却效果数值仿真

针对船舶机舱火灾喷雾冷却效果问题,分析了机舱封闭环境中喷雾灭火的传热传质过程,构建并设置了具体的船舶机舱典型火灾环境;结合船舶机舱火灾发生条件下可能遭遇的典型故障状态,运用火灾动力学软件进行了数值仿真,进一步分析了喷头压力、数量以及火源位置等单因素和多因素耦合作用对船舶机舱喷雾系统冷却效果的影响,并给出了一种验证喷雾系统控制火灾能力的仿真计算方法.仿真分析表明:该方法可以模拟机舱喷雾灭火过程,对于分析并掌握救援过程中船舶机舱温度场的变化具有应用价值.     

水雾扩散模型仿真

建立水雾红外衰减模型时,通常把水雾空间看作单一均匀整体处理,然而雾滴的扩散现象使水雾的雾滴密度无法保证处处相等,所以仿真结果与实际情况相比普遍存在较大偏差。针对这一问题,基于高斯扩散理论与Mie散射理论,提出了一种新的建模方案。通过将水雾空间划分为多个子空间,并计算每个子空间内水雾消光性能的建模方法,提高建模的准确性。同时结合红外制导导弹来袭的方向变化,计算出不同方向上的水雾消光性能。从仿真结果可以看出,这种建模方式能够很好地克服以往建模方法的缺陷,为探索水雾的精确建模提供了一种新思路。     

简易自动喷水灭火系统常见问题探讨

根据国家现行规范及技术标准,对简易自动喷水灭火系统的特点以及适用性进行了讨论,对系统中的过滤器、报警阀、水箱等在设计和施工中容易出现的问题进行了分析,并结合工程实践提出了相应的纠正措施。     

Production/distribution system design with inventory considerations

This study addresses the design of a three‐stage production/distribution system where the first stage includes the set of established retailers and the second and third stages include the sets of potential distribution centers (DCs) and potential capacitated suppliers, respectively. In this problem, in addition to the fixed location/operating costs associated with locating DCs and suppliers, we consider the coordinated inventory replenishment decisions at the located DCs and retailers along with the appropriate inventory costs explicitly. In particular, we account for the replenishment and holding costs at the retailers and selected DCs, and the fixed plus distance‐based transportation costs between the selected plants and their assigned DCs, and between the selected DCs and their respective retailers, explicitly. The resulting formulation is a challenging mixed‐integer nonlinear programming model for which we propose efficient heuristic solution approaches. Our computational results demonstrate the performance of the heuristic approaches as well as the value of integrated decision‐making by verifying that significant cost savings are realizable when the inventory decisions and costs are incorporated in the production distribution system design. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 59: 172–195, 2012     

A generalized assignment model for dynamic supply chain capacity planning

We consider a generalization of the well‐known generalized assignment problem (GAP) over discrete time periods encompassed within a finite planning horizon. The resulting model, MultiGAP, addresses the assignment of tasks to agents within each time period, with the attendant single‐period assignment costs and agent‐capacity constraint requirements, in conjunction with transition costs arising between any two consecutive periods in which a task is reassigned to a different agent. As is the case for its single‐period antecedent, MultiGAP offers a robust tool for modeling a wide range of capacity planning problems occurring within supply chain management. We provide two formulations for MultiGAP and establish that the second (alternative) formulation provides a tighter bound. We define a Lagrangian relaxation‐based heuristic as well as a branch‐and‐bound algorithm for MultiGAP. Computational experience with the heuristic and branch‐and‐bound algorithm on over 2500 test problems is reported. The Lagrangian heuristic consistently generates high‐quality and in many cases near‐optimal solutions. The branch‐and‐bound algorithm is also seen to constitute an effective means for solving to optimality MultiGAP problems of reasonable size. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2012     

马尔科夫对称离散信道级联信道容量研究

基于有限维的级联马尔科夫对称信道矩阵,其转移概率的极限一定存在,推导出当n足够大时,输出符号的概率分布不依赖于输入的概率分布,使得信道容量为零,信道阻塞。n为信道级联的上限。针对主对角元素概率值不同将信道矩阵划分为惰性信道和灵敏信道,并通过仿真分析得出信道的级联上限n与矩阵维数无关,与信道矩阵主对角元素呈正相关。     

收发深度变化对浅海混响的影响研究

海洋中,由于种种原因可能造成声呐发射深度或接收深度发生变化,针对这一问题,研究了水听器的晃动给混响强度带来的影响。在波束位移射线简正波理论的基础上推导了浅海混响模型,仿真比较了负跃层浅海情况发射深度或接收深度上下变化1m时（小幅度变化）的混响衰减曲线,结果表明发射深度或接收深度上下变化1m时对混响衰减曲线的影响不大。可以认为水听器小幅度晃动时浅海混响相对于声源深度及接收深度是稳定的。