Mailed Fists and Velvet Gloves: The Relevance of Smart Power to Singapore’s Evolving Defence and Foreign Policy

Abstract

This paper critically assesses the conceptual utility of smart power to Singapore’s evolving defence and foreign policy and behaviour. First, as a political concept adopted by the United States for its post-Afghanistan strategy, smart power does not travel easily. With qualifications, however, the notion is relevant to Singapore’s policy pragmatism and its emphasis on deterrence and diplomacy. Second, Singapore’s willingness to employ its military assets in disaster relief and peacekeeping arguably hews most closely to smart power’s mix of hard and soft approaches. Third, Singapore’s contributions to global governance, albeit limited, imply a rethinking among its leaders on the place of values in its policy.     

Q_2黄土调整吸力的非饱和三轴压缩试验研究

通过对Q2黄土进行调整吸力的非饱和三轴压缩试验,研究了浸水湿化程度对Q2黄土力学特性的影响。试验表明:不同浸水湿化程度的Q2黄土,其应力应变曲线为弱软化型,浸水湿化程度越高,软化程度越弱,浸水湿化至饱和时可近似看作理想硬化型;轴向应变较小时,Q2黄土的天然结构保持良好,应力随应变的增大而增大,随着轴向应变进一步增大,其天然结构逐渐被破坏,应力随之先缓慢上升后逐渐减小直至稳定;浸水湿化会同时引起土体应力状态和土体结构的改变,屈服应力随浸水湿化程度的提高而减小,在浸水湿化接近饱和时屈服应力变化最快,土体结构变化最大;形成年代早的Q2黄土细粒质量分数高,结构特征区别于Q3黄土,因而呈现出不同的力学特征。     

不确定性作战任务形式化描述方法

针对复杂作战环境下作战任务的不可预知性特点,对不确定性任务的形式化描述方法进行了深入研究。分析不确定环境导致的任务分解和执行过程中存在的不确定性因素,从任务本身的不确定性、任务之间关系不确定性以及作战单元执行不确定性等方面,对不确定性任务进行了形式化描述,提出了不确定性任务形式化描述流程,最后通过一个实例对所提方法进行了验证。     

膨润土-砂混合型缓冲／回填材料液塑限试验

为研究掺砂率对高庙子膨润土一砂混合型缓冲／回填材料液塑限的影响,利用液塑限联合测定仪进行了试验研究,并运用最小二乘法对混合物液塑限试验数据进行了分析。试验结果表明膨润土一砂混合物的可塑性、液塑限值和塑性指数均随掺砂率的增大而降低。对试验结果进行分析,得到了考虑掺砂率影响的混合物液塑限经验公式。混合物的液塑限并不是随掺砂率增大成比例降低,而是液限的实测值小于理论值,塑限的实测值大于理论值。得到的不同掺砂率的膨润土一砂混合型缓冲／回填材料液塑限试验数据可为高放废物深地质处置库建设提供科学依据。     

Controllable combustion behaviors of the laser-controlled solid propellant

Microsatellites have been widely applied in the fields of communication,remote sensing,navigation and science exploration due to its characteristics of low cost,flexible launch mode and short development period.However,conventional solid-propellant have difficulties in starting and interrupting combustion because combustion is autonomously sustained after ignition.Herein,we proposed a new type of solid-propellant named laser-controlled solid propellant,which is sensitive to laser irradiation and can be started or interrupted by switching on/off the continuous wave laser.To demonstrate the feasibility and investigate the controllable combustion behaviors under different laser on/off conditions,the combus-tion parameters including burning rate,ignition delay time and platform pressure were tested using pressure sensor,high-speed camera and thermographic camera.The results showed that the increase of laser-on or laser-off duration both will lead to the decrease of propellant combustion performance during re-ignition and re-combustion process.This is mainly attributed to the laser attenuation caused by the accumulation of combustion residue and the change of chamber ambient temperature.Simultaneously,the multiple ignition tests revealed that the increased chamber ambient temperature after combustion can make up for the energy loss of laser attenuation and expansion of chamber cavity.However,the laser-controlled combustion performance of solid propellant displayed a decrease trend with the addi-tion of ignition times.Nevertheless,the results still exhibited good laser-controlled agility of laser-controlled solid propellant and manifested its inspiring potential in many aspects of space missions.     

Exact algorithms for integrated facility location and production planning problems

We consider a class of facility location problems with a time dimension, which requires assigning every customer to a supply facility in each of a finite number of periods. Each facility must meet all assigned customer demand in every period at a minimum cost via its production and inventory decisions. We provide exact branch‐and‐price algorithms for this class of problems and several important variants. The corresponding pricing problem takes the form of an interesting class of production planning and order selection problems. This problem class requires selecting a set of orders that maximizes profit, defined as the revenue from selected orders minus production‐planning‐related costs incurred in fulfilling the selected orders. We provide polynomial‐time dynamic programming algorithms for this class of pricing problems, as well as for generalizations thereof. Computational testing indicates the advantage of our branch‐and‐price algorithm over various approaches that use commercial software packages. These tests also highlight the significant cost savings possible from integrating location with production and inventory decisions and demonstrate that the problem is rather insensitive to forecast errors associated with the demand streams. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

Exact expected values of variance estimators for simulation

We formulate exact expressions for the expected values of selected estimators of the variance parameter (that is, the sum of covariances at all lags) of a steady‐state simulation output process. Given in terms of the autocovariance function of the process, these expressions are derived for variance estimators based on the simulation analysis methods of nonoverlapping batch means, overlapping batch means, and standardized time series. Comparing estimator performance in a first‐order autoregressive process and the M/M/1 queue‐waiting‐time process, we find that certain standardized time series estimators outperform their competitors as the sample size becomes large. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007