艰难的“氢弹决策”

第二次世界大战后,美苏展开了长达40余年的冷战,以核武器为重要标志的军备竞赛,如同“达摩克利斯之剑”,将全世界都笼罩在“第三次世界大战”、“核冬天”的阴影之下。1950年1月,美国总统杜鲁门作出研发氢弹的决定,成为一项在整个冷战期间具有里程碑意义的战略决策。     

The Randomization of Terrorist Attacks

The purpose of this article is to explore the economic theoretical foundations of the idea that rational terrorist organizations deliberately randomize their attacks (by type, timing, location, and targets) to generate uncertainty and intimidation. A choice theoretic framework is applied to the analysis of the terrorist organization's behavior to determine whether welfare (utility) gains from the randomization of terrorist attacks are plausible and feasible. The randomization of attacks can appear to promise higher amounts of political influence for each resource input but it turns out that randomization cannot manufacture a situation where higher amounts of political influence are obtained for each resource input.The results imply that, rather than randomization and instability, the rational terrorist organization is more likely to prefer stability. The findings and implications provide a theoretical explanation for the non-randomness of terrorist attacks.Thismay be one small step towards explaining the patterns – non-randomness – in the time-series of terrorist incidents.     

Transient behavior of large Markovian multiechelon repairable item inventory systems using a truncated state space approach

Calculations for large Markovian finite source, finite repair capacity two-echelon repairable item inventory models are shown to be feasible using the randomization technique and a truncated state space approach. More complex models (involving transportation pipelines, multiple-item types and additional echelon levels) are also considered.     

Estimates of circular error probabilities

The general problem we are concerned with here is the estimation of P_θ(C) where C is some fixed event and P_θ is unknown in some class. The various available estimation procedures seem to involve the choice of some random probability measure. In particular we consider this problem when C is a disk in R² centered at o and P_θ is restricted to be bivariate normal. Details concerning the implementation of the estimation procedures and a Monte Carlo study are discussed for this case. This particular problem arises when we are concerned with assessing the accuracy of a targeting procedure.     

Robustness of preallocated preferential defense with assumed attack size and perfect attacking and defending weapons

The problem is to protect a set of t targets by n perfect interceptors against an attack by m perfect weapons. If the defender solves for an optimal preallocated preferential defense and associated game value assuming m₁ attackers, and the attacker knows the assumption of the defender and utilizes m₂ attackers, he may be able to achieve significantly more damage than had the defender assumed that there would be m₂ attackers. The article treats the robustness of preallocated preferential defense to assumptions about the size of the attack and presents results of an alternative approach.     

A dual criteria sequencing problem with earliness and tardiness penalties

We consider the problem of sequencing n jobs on a single machine, with each job having a processing time and a common due date. The common due date is assumed to be so large that all jobs can complete by the due date. It is known that there is an O(n log n)‐time algorithm for finding a schedule with minimum total earliness and tardiness. In this article, we consider finding a schedule with dual criteria. The primary goal is to minimize the total earliness and tardiness. The secondary goals are to minimize: (1) the maximum earliness and tardiness; (2) the sum of the maximum of the squares of earliness and tardiness; (3) the sum of the squares of earliness and tardiness. For the first two criteria, we show that the problems are NP‐hard and we give a fully polynomial time approximation scheme for both of them. For the last two criteria, we show that the ratio of the worst schedule versus the best schedule is no more than . © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 422–431, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/nav.10020     

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     

What is the global landpower network and what value might it provide?

US national security guidance, as well as the US Army’s operational experiences since 2001, emphasizes the importance of working closely with partner countries to achieve US strategic objectives. The US Army has introduced the global landpower network (GLN) concept as a means to integrate, sustain and advance the Army’s considerable ongoing efforts to meet US national security guidance. This study develops the GLN concept further, and addresses three questions. What benefits can the GLN provide the Army? What are the essential components of the GLN? What options exist for implementing the GLN concept? By developing the GLN concept, the Army has the opportunity to transition the GLN from an often ad hoc and reactive set of relationships to one that the Army more self-consciously prioritizes and leverages as a resource to meet US strategic objectives.     

Benders' cuts guided large neighborhood search for the traveling umpire problem

This article introduces the use of Benders' cuts to guide a large neighborhood search to solve the traveling umpire problem, a sports scheduling problem inspired by the real‐life needs of the officials of a sports league. At each time slot, a greedy matching heuristic is used to construct a schedule. When an infeasibility is recognized first a single step backtracking is tried to resolve the infeasibility. If unsuccessful, Benders' cuts are generated to guide a large neighborhood search to ensure feasibility and to improve the solution. Realizing the inherent symmetry present in the problem, a large family of cuts are generated and their effectiveness is tested. The resulting approach is able to find better solutions to many instances of this problem. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

Polynomial‐time approximation scheme for concurrent open shop scheduling with a fixed number of machines to minimize the total weighted completion time

In this article, we consider the concurrent open shop scheduling problem to minimize the total weighted completion time. When the number of machines is arbitrary, the problem has been shown to be inapproximable within a factor of 4/3 ‐ ε for any ε > 0 if the unique games conjecture is true in the literature. We propose a polynomial time approximation scheme for the problem under the restriction that the number of machines is fixed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011