Conditional commitments: Why states use caveats to reserve their efforts in military coalition operations

Why do states make substantial military contributions to coalition operations, while at the same time apply reservations, or caveats, to how the coalition can use the military contributions? Caveats rose to prominence in defense and policy circles with NATO’s campaign in Afghanistan. In the scholarly security literature, the term remains a buzzword for all types of reserved efforts by states in coalition warfare, but there are few theoretical accounts addressing caveats. This article contributes to the knowledge gap on caveats through a comparative case study of Denmark’s, the Netherlands’, and Norway’s contributions to NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011. It demonstrates that caveats can occur through three different causal pathways: compromises from domestic bargaining, handling of alliance commitments, and implementation and civil–military relations. Insights into the complexity that causes caveats are highly relevant for both political and military decision-makers that are trying to coordinate states’ effort in coalition operations.     

带数据传输的光学卫星成像调度系统关键技术研究

针对光学小卫星成像调度系统设计需求,考虑侧视、存储容量、能量和数据传输等复杂约束,面向小规模问题应用,设计了问题求解流程.建立了顶点和边都带权的成像约束图模型,并提出了基于标记更新最短路算法的复杂约束成像卫星调度算法解决成像方案生成过程;对数传方案生成过程,给出背包模型并采用带回看策略的贪婪启发式方法进行问题求解.实验结果表明,该方法是可行和适用的.     

孔子与苏格拉底思想比较研究

孔子和苏格拉底分别被誉为东西方的伦理学之父，作为轴心时代的文化英雄，他们的思想言行对后世产生了巨大的影响，例如孔子对中国重史、伦理本位及注入式教学等的影响，苏格拉底对西方理性、平等、自由及启发式教学的影响等。在当下时代，东西方文化都遇到了较大的困境，需要在碰撞与融合中获得新生。     

中学英语启发式语法教学探索与实践

当前中学英语语法教学仍采用传统的教学方法，从而忽视了学生学习主体性、经验性和能动性。本研究提出将启发式教学方法运用于中学英语语法课堂教学实践之中，并通过建构中学英语启发式教学的5阶段，即预备阶段、提示阶段、联想阶段、统合阶段及应用阶段，试图激发学生积极参与教学活动意识，促进师生及生生间的互动，提高英语语法课堂教学质量。     

Level workforce planning for multistage transfer lines

In this article, we define two different workforce leveling objectives for serial transfer lines. Each job is to be processed on each transfer station for c time periods (e.g., hours). We assume that the number of workers needed to complete each operation of a job in precisely c periods is given. Jobs transfer forward synchronously after every production cycle (i.e., c periods). We study two leveling objectives: maximin workforce size () and min range (R). Leveling objectives produce schedules where the cumulative number of workers needed in all stations of a transfer line does not experience dramatic changes from one production cycle to the next. For and a two‐station system, we develop a fast polynomial algorithm. The range problem is known to be NP‐complete. For the two‐station system, we develop a very fast optimal algorithm that uses a tight lower bound and an efficient procedure for finding complementary Hamiltonian cycles in bipartite graphs. Via a computational experiment, we demonstrate that range schedules are superior because not only do they limit the workforce fluctuations from one production cycle to the next, but they also do so with a minor increase in the total workforce size. We extend our results to the m‐station system and develop heuristic algorithms. We find that these heuristics work poorly for min range (R), which indicates that special structural properties of the m‐station problem need to be identified before we can develop efficient algorithms. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 577–590, 2016     

Dynamic pricing and replenishment: Optimality,bounds, and asymptotics

In many applications, managers face the problem of replenishing and selling products during a finite time horizon. We investigate the problem of making dynamic and joint decisions on product replenishment and selling in order to improve profit. We consider a backlog scenario in which penalty cost (resulting from fulfillment delay) and accommodation cost (resulting from shortage at the end of the selling horizon) are incurred. Based on continuous‐time and discrete‐state dynamic programming, we study the optimal joint decisions and characterize their structural properties. We establish an upper bound for the optimal expected profit and develop a fluid policy by resorting to the deterministic version of the problem (ie, the fluid problem). The fluid policy is shown to be asymptotically optimal for the original stochastic problem when the problem size is sufficiently large. The static nature of the fluid policy and its lack of flexibility in matching supply with demand motivate us to develop a “target‐inventory” heuristic, which is shown, numerically, to be a significant improvement over the fluid policy. Scenarios with discrete feasible sets and lost‐sales are also discussed in this article.     

Tilting at windmills: The flawed U.S. policy toward the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war

ABSTRACT

This article examines decision-making mistakes made by U.S. President Nixon and national security advisor Kissinger during the 1971 India-Pakistan crisis and war. It shows that Nixon and Kissinger routinely demonstrated psychological biases that led them to overestimate the likelihood of West Pakistani victory against Bengali rebels as well as the importance of the crisis to broader U.S. policy. The evidence fails to support Nixon and Kissinger’s own framing of the 1971 crisis as a contest between cool-headed realpolitik and idealistic humanitarianism, and instead shows that Kissinger and Nixon’s policy decisions harmed their stated goals because of repeated decision-making errors.     

基于不可信证据源与冲突重分配的证据合成方法

针对D-S证据理论在高冲突下失效的问题,在比较修正原始证据源和重新分配冲突两种方法的基础上,提出一种新的合成规则,新方法用可信度修正证据的同时,把全局冲突分为两部分,并依据"全局冲突在全局分配、局部冲突在局部分配"的原则对冲突进行细化分配。通过仿真分析,并与其他方法比较,新的合成方法能更好地融合冲突证据,收敛速度快,具有较强的抗干扰能力。     

数据处理的实用方法和算法

通过对正交多项式的构造和逼近准则的研究,得到了一类数据处理问题的一种较理想的逼近准则和算法。理论分析和模拟计算表明,用本文方法处理这类问题有较高的拟合精度并容易计算。     

航天测控调度问题的拉格朗日启发式算法

通过分析航天测控调度问题的测控需求,建立了航天测控调度0-1整数规划模型,运用拉格朗日松弛方法对模型中的任务约束和设备约束进行了松弛,运用次梯度优化算法求得了航天测控调度问题上界,同时得到了决策变量对应的拉格朗日权重,可以作为决策变量在最优解中是否被调度的启发式信息,对拉格朗日权重进行分析,提出了求解问题可行解的拉格朗日启发式算法。最后,通过对两个场景的试验分析验证了拉格朗日启发式算法所求可行解的优越性。