An algorithm for solving general fractional interval programming problems

A Linear Fractional Interval Programming problem (FIP) is the problem of extremizing a linear fractional function subject to two-sided linear inequality constraints. In this paper we develop an algorithm for solving (FIP) problems. We first apply the Charnes and Cooper transformation on (FIP) and then, by exploiting the special structure of the pair of (LP) problems derived, the algorithm produces an optimal solution to (FIP) in a finite number of iterations.     

溶胶一凝胶法制备二氧化钛及其转化为氮化钛的研究

本文以钛酸丁酯为原料，通过溶胶一凝胶法制备了ＴｉＯ２凝胶，在高温下烧结此凝胶得到ＴｉＯ２。将ＴｉＯ２粉末在９００°Ｃ以上用氨进行氮化，制得金黄色的氮化钛。通过使用热分析、色谱分析、扫描电镜及Ｘ一射线衍射等手段，研究并揭示了凝胶在陶瓷化生成ＴｉＯ２的过程中的化学反应，结晶及晶型随温度的变化规律。发现了氮化钛陶瓷的生成率与ＴｉＯ２溶胶的制备条件之间的关系。     

并行科学计算应用的动态I/O模式分析

设计高性能并行文件系统的关键前提是对 Ｉ／ Ｏ 访问模式的分析和研究。并行文件系统的界面、组织结构、ｃａｃｈｅ 预取算法等都与具体应用的 Ｉ／ Ｏ 模式紧密相关。目前，大多数对 Ｉ／ Ｏ 模式的分析局限于其静态模式，而动态 Ｉ／ Ｏ 模式对并行文件系统的设计至关重要。本文通过分析并行科学计算应用的动态 Ｉ／ Ｏ 访问模式，总结出科学计算应用在访问数据量、时间间隔、访问顺序性等空间、时间上的一般访问特性，并在此基础上提出设计面向并行科学计算应用的并行文件系统应考虑的因素。     

The long shadow of colonial cartography: Britain and the Sino-Indian war of 1962

ABSTRACT

This article examines British responses to the Sino-Indian border war of 1962. It illustrates how, in the years leading up to the war, Britain’s colonial legacy in the Indian subcontinent saw it drawn reluctantly into a territorial dispute between Asia’s two largest and most powerful nations. It analyses disagreements in Whitehall between the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Relations Office over the relative strength of India and China’s border claims, and assesses how these debates reshaped British regional policy. It argues that the border war was instrumental in transforming Britain’s post-colonial relationship with South Asia. Continuing to filter relations with India through an imperial prism proved unsatisfactory, what followed was a more pragmatic Indo-British association.     

Slow failure: Understanding America’s quagmire in Afghanistan

ABSTRACT

The United States government has no organised way of thinking about war termination other than seeking decisive military victory. This implicit assumption is inducing three major errors. First, the United States tends to select military-centric strategies that have low probabilities of success. Second, the United States is slow to modify losing or ineffective strategies due to cognitive obstacles, internal frictions, and patron-client challenges with the host nation government. Finally, as the U.S. government tires of the war and elects to withdraw, bargaining asymmetries prevent successful transitions (building the host nation to win on its own) or negotiations.     

Scheduling workers in a constricted area

A generalization of the equi-partitioning problem, termed the 2D-Partition Problem, is formulated. The motivation is an aircraft maintenance scheduling problem with the following characteristics. The complete maintenance overhaul of a single aircraft requires the completion of some 350 tasks. These tasks require a varying number of technicians working at the same time. For large subsets of these 350 tasks, the constraining resource is physical space—tasks must be completed in a physical space of limited size such as the cockpit. Furthermore, there is no precedence relationship among the tasks. For each subset, the problem is to schedule the tasks to minimize makespan. Let m denote the maximum number of technicians that can work at the same time in the physical area under consideration. We present optimization algorithms for m = 2 and 3. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A lost sales (S — 1, S) perishable inventory system with renewal demand

This article analyzes a one-to-one ordering perishable inventory model with renewal demands and exponential lifetimes. The leadtimes are independently and exponentially distributed and the demands that occur during stock out periods are lost. Although the items are assumed to decay at a constant rate, the output process is not renewal and the Markov renewal techniques are successfully employed to obtain the operating characteristics. The problem of minimizing the long run expected cost rate is discussed and numerical values of optimal stock level are also provided. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

An evaluation of scheduling heuristics for dynamic single-processor scheduling with early/tardy costs

In an endeavor to broaden the application of scheduling models to decisions involving the use of a manager's time we use simulation to investigate the performance of a number of simple algorithms (including eight priority rules and a construction heuristic) in a dynamic setting with tasks arriving (randomly) and scheduling decisions being made, over time. We compare these simple methods relative to a bound that uses an adjacent pairwise interchange algorithm. We model uncertainty in task durations, and costs being incurred for early and tardy task completion (representative of JIT settings). In addition to evaluating the efficacy of the scheduling rules and various preemption strategies (using ANOVA), we highlight the managerial implications of the effects of eight environmental parameters. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Ordering policies for an inventory system with three supply modes

This article explores ordering policies for inventory systems with three supply modes. This model is particularly interesting because the optimal ordering decision needs to balance the inventory and purchase costs, as well as the costs for earlier and later periods. The latter cost trade-off is present only in inventory systems with three or more supply modes. Therefore, the result not only offers guidelines for the operation of the concerned inventory systems, but also provides valuable insight into the complex cost trade-offs when more supply modes are available. We assume that the difference between the lead times is one period, and the inventory holding and shortage costs are linear. We analyze two cases and obtain the structure of the optimal ordering policy. Moreover, in the first case, explicit formulas are derived to calculate the optimal order-up-to levels. In the second case, although the optimal order-up-to levels are functions of the initial inventory state and are not obtained in closed form, their properties are discussed. We also develop heuristic ordering policies based on the news-vendor model. Our numerical experiments suggest that the heuristic policies perform reasonably well. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.