Information security: Designing a stochastic‐network for throughput and reliability

Todas information and communication network requires a design that is secure to tampering. Traditional performance measures of reliability and throughput must be supplemented with measures of security. Recognition of an adversary who can inflict damage leads toward a game‐theoretic model. Through such a formulation, guidelines for network designs and improvements are derived. We opt for a design that is most robust to withstand both natural degradation and adversarial attacks. Extensive computational experience with such a model suggests that a Nash‐equilibrium design exists that can withstand the worst possible damage. Most important, the equilibrium is value‐free in that it is stable irrespective of the unit costs associated with reliability vs. capacity improvement and how one wishes to trade between throughput and reliability. This finding helps to pinpoint the most critical components in network design. From a policy standpoint, the model also allows the monetary value of information‐security to be imputed. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2009     

Approximating the nondominated frontiers of multi‐objective combinatorial optimization problems

Finding all nondominated vectors for multi‐objective combinatorial optimization (MOCO) problems is computationally very hard in general. We approximate the nondominated frontiers of MOCO problems by fitting smooth hypersurfaces. For a given problem, we fit the hypersurface using a single nondominated reference vector. We experiment with different types of MOCO problems and demonstrate that in all cases the fitted hypersurfaces approximate all nondominated vectors well. We discuss that such an approximation is useful to find the neighborhood of preferred regions of the nondominated vectors with very little computational effort. Further computational effort can then be spent in the identified region to find the actual nondominated vectors the decision maker will prefer. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2009     

Energy‐efficient scheduling for sustainable manufacturing systems with renewable energy resources

Environmentally friendly energy resources open a new opportunity to tackle the problem of energy security and climate change arising from wide use of fossil fuels. This paper focuses on optimizing the allocation of the energy generated by the renewable energy system to minimize the total electricity cost for sustainable manufacturing systems under time‐of‐use tariff by clipping the peak demand. A rolling horizon approach is adopted to handle the uncertainty caused by the weather change. A nonlinear mathematical programming model is established for each decision epoch based on the predicted energy generation and the probability distribution of power demand in the manufacturing plant. The objective function of the model is shown to be convex, Lipchitz‐continuous, and subdifferentiable. A generalized benders decomposition method based on the primal‐dual subgradient descent algorithm is proposed to solve the model. A series of numerical experiments is conducted to show the effectiveness of the solution approach and the significant benefits of using the renewable energy resources.     

Regular and irregular forces in conflict: nineteenth century insurgencies in South America

ABSTRACT

In the decades following independence from Spain, ‘civil wars’ ravaged the newly established polities in South America. Former vice-regal capitals inherited a larger portion of the colonial administration and had larger economic resources and a hegemonic project they were able to have permanent and professional armed forces, capable of leading the offensive and giving battle following the European rules of military art. The central hypothesis of this work is that there is a necessary relationship between the shape of these asymmetrical conflicts, their outcome and the political territorial configuration of each country in post-revolutionary Spanish America. When permanent armies took over from local militias, the capital kept the integrity of its territories and there was a tendency towards political centralization. When this did not happen and the militias managed to find a way to defeat their centralizing enemies, the local powers had an opportunity to renegotiate their participation in the political body, and sought to maintain their independence, which was manifest in federal agreements, otherwise a process of territorial fragmentation began. More than a difference between regular and irregular forces there was one between intermittent, and permanent mobilization.     

Optimal allocation of minimal repairs in parallel and series systems

In reliability engineering, the concept of minimal repair describes that the repair brings the failed unit (eg, system or component) to the situation which is same as it was just before the failure. With the help of the well‐known Gamma‐Poisson relationship, this paper investigates optimal allocation strategies of minimal repairs for parallel and series systems through implementing stochastic comparisons of various allocation policies in terms of the hazard rate, the reversed hazard rate, and the likelihood ratio orderings. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate these findings as well. These results not only strengthen and generalize some known ones in the seminal work of Shaked and Shanthikumar, but also solve the open problems proposed by Chahkandi et al.'s study and Arriaza et al.'s study.     

Single‐machine scheduling with deadlines to minimize the total weighted late work

We consider scheduling a set of jobs with deadlines to minimize the total weighted late work on a single machine, where the late work of a job is the amount of processing of the job that is scheduled after its due date and before its deadline. This is the first study on scheduling with the late work criterion under the deadline restriction. In this paper, we show that (i) the problem is unary NP‐hard even if all the jobs have a unit weight, (ii) the problem is binary NP‐hard and admits a pseudo‐polynomial‐time algorithm and a fully polynomial‐time approximation scheme if all the jobs have a common due date, and (iii) some special cases of the problem are polynomially solvable.     

Oligopolistic contracting: Channel coordination under competition

We study contracts between a single retailer and multiple suppliers of two substitutable products, where suppliers have fixed capacities and present the retailer cost contracts for their supplies. After observing the contracts, the retailer decides how much capacity to purchase from each supplier, to maximize profits from the purchased capacity from the suppliers plus his possessed inventory (endowment). This is modeled as a noncooperative, nonzero‐sum game, where suppliers, or principals, move simultaneously as leaders and the retailer, the common agent, is the sole follower. We are interested in the form of the contracts in equilibrium, their effect on the total supply chain profit, and how the profit is split between the suppliers and the retailer. Under mild assumptions, we characterize the set of all equilibrium contracts and discuss all‐unit and marginal‐unit quantity discounts as special cases. We also show that the supply chain is coordinated in equilibrium with a unique profit split between the retailer and the suppliers. Each supplier's profit is equal to the marginal contribution of her capacity to supply chain profits in equilibrium. The retailer's profit is equal to the total revenue collected from the market minus the payments to the suppliers and the associated sales costs.     

Buy now,pay later: American military intervention and the strategic cost paradox

This paper explores the notion that US efforts to evade the political costs of war paradoxically contribute to the subsequent exacerbation of costs over time. Leaders seek to purchase political capital in the short term by limiting the costs and requirements of military operations, but in doing so cause strategic and political liabilities to mount in the long run. While identification of such behaviour is not new, insufficient attention has been devoted to explaining its causes, dynamics, and manifestations in relation to key decisions on and in war. Evidence derived from studies of recent American discretionary campaigns is analysed to advance an argument with respect to this pattern of self-defeating strategic behaviour.     

The Gravity of Arms

The aim of this paper is to investigate the determinants of international arms transfers in a gravity model framework. By distinguishing between the decision to export arms (extensive margin) and the value of the arms exported (intensive margin), while also considering its interdependence, is what differentiates this paper from previous research. A theoretically justified gravity model of trade augmented with political and security motives is estimated using a two-stage panel data approach for 104 exporting countries over the period from 1950 to 2007. In addition to the usual gravity variables related to the economic mass of the trading countries and the trade cost factors, the model is extended with political and security factors. The level of democracy in both trading partners, political differences between trading partners and voting similarity with the United States in the UN General Assembly of the countries engaged in trade are the main political factors, whereas the existence of conflicts, military pacts, and embargoes are taken as security motives. The key result indicates that both political and security motives are an important determinant of an arms trade, but their effects on the extensive margin of exports (the decision to order a transfer) differs from their effect on the intensive margin (average value of exports). Moreover, the relative importance of the factors under study has changed since 1989. In the post-cold war period, countries that are less democratic are more likely to export arms, military pacts are less relevant and embargoes play a role.     

On the roles of free play in army exercises and the Russians

The article outlines the essential role of free play elements in various types of exercises for the development of in-depth and practical military professionalism. It thereafter argues why such use of free play contradicts the military science founded Russian Way of War.