Does Military Spending Nonlinearly Affect Economic Growth in South Africa?

Using annual data collected from 1988 to 2015, this study provides evidence of a non-linear relationship between military spending, economic growth and other growth determinants for the South African economy. The empirical study is based on estimates of a logistic smooth transition regression (LSTR) model and our empirical results point to an inverted U-shaped relationship between military spending and economic growth for the data. Furthermore, our empirical results suggest that the current levels of military spending, as a component of total government expenditure, are too high in the South African economy and need to be transferred towards more productive non-military expenditure in order to improve the performance of economic growth and other growth determinants.     

Optimal inventory control policy for periodic‐review inventory systems with inventory‐level‐dependent demand

We consider a setting in which inventory plays both promotional and service roles; that is, higher inventories not only improve service levels but also stimulate demand by serving as a promotional tool (e.g., as the result of advertising effect by the enhanced product visibility). Specifically, we study the periodic‐review inventory systems in which the demand in each period is uncertain but increases with the inventory level. We investigate the multiperiod model with normal and expediting orders in each period, that is, any shortage will be met through emergency replenishment. Such a model takes the lost sales model as a special case. For the cases without and with fixed order costs, the optimal inventory replenishment policy is shown to be of the base‐stock type and of the (s,S) type, respectively. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2012     

A branch‐and‐cut algorithm for the quay crane scheduling problem in a container terminal

The quay crane scheduling problem consists of determining a sequence of unloading and loading movements for cranes assigned to a vessel in order to minimize the vessel completion time as well as the crane idle times. Idle times originate from interferences between cranes since these roll on the same rails and a minimum safety distance must be maintained between them. The productivity of container terminals is often measured in terms of the time necessary to load and unload vessels by quay cranes, which are the most important and expensive equipment used in ports. We formulate the quay crane scheduling problem as a vehicle routing problem with side constraints, including precedence relationships between vertices. For small size instances our formulation can be solved by CPLEX. For larger ones we have developed a branch‐and‐cut algorithm incorporating several families of valid inequalities, which exploit the precedence constraints between vertices. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2006     

Optimal pricing and inventory control policy in periodic‐review systems with fixed ordering cost and lost sales

This paper studies a periodic‐review pricing and inventory control problem for a retailer, which faces stochastic price‐sensitive demand, under quite general modeling assumptions. Any unsatisfied demand is lost, and any leftover inventory at the end of the finite selling horizon has a salvage value. The cost component for the retailer includes holding, shortage, and both variable and fixed ordering costs. The retailer's objective is to maximize its discounted expected profit over the selling horizon by dynamically deciding on the optimal pricing and replenishment policy for each period. We show that, under a mild assumption on the additive demand function, at the beginning of each period an (s,S) policy is optimal for replenishment, and the value of the optimal price depends on the inventory level after the replenishment decision has been done. Our numerical study also suggests that for a sufficiently long selling horizon, the optimal policy is almost stationary. Furthermore, the fixed ordering cost (K) plays a significant role in our modeling framework. Specifically, any increase in K results in lower s and higher S. On the other hand, the profit impact of dynamically changing the retail price, contrasted with a single fixed price throughout the selling horizon, also increases with K. We demonstrate that using the optimal policy values from a model with backordering of unmet demands as approximations in our model might result in significant profit penalty. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2006     

型号研制与产品数据管理

介绍了产品数据管理(PDM)的概念和基本功能,结合当前型号研制的特点和计算机信息技术应用的状况、发展,研究了型号研制产品数据管理的需求、功能及实施,为当前型号研制依靠CIMS技术实现产品数据管理提出了8条基本原则。     

基于门限的无线传感器网络密钥管理方案

由于无线传感器网络在能量消耗、内存开销和计算能力等方面的局限性,传统的网络密钥管理方法已不适用。为此提出了一种适用于无线传感器网络的密钥预分配方法——基于（t,n）-门限方案,给出了密钥分配方法,并从方案的连通性、安全性等方面进行了有效的分析,结果表明该算法在这些方面有一定的优势。     

面向C程序的测试用例自动生成实现

软件测试工具很难达到通用的目标,大多数该类工具都是具体针对某一种或几种程序语言的.对于目前我军常用的程序编写语言开发相应的软件自动测试工具是十分必要的.介绍了一个面向C程序的测试用例自动生成系统,重点阐述了其系统结构的构成以及所采用的一个新的搜索寻优算法.该算法有效地改善了前有算法的一些缺陷,显示出不错的效果.     

Dynamic signatures and their use in comparing the reliability of new and used systems

The signature of a system with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) component lifetimes is a vector whose ith element is the probability that the ith component failure is fatal to the system. System signatures have been found to be quite useful tools in the study and comparison of engineered systems. In this article, the theory of system signatures is extended to versions of signatures applicable in dynamic reliability settings. It is shown that, when a working used system is inspected at time t and it is noted that precisely k failures have occurred, the vector s [0,1]^n‐k whose jth element is the probability that the (k + j)th component failure is fatal to the system, for j = 1,2,2026;,n ‐ k, is a distribution‐free measure of the design of the residual system. Next, known representation and preservation theorems for system signatures are generalized to dynamic versions. Two additional applications of dynamic signatures are studied in detail. The well‐known “new better than used” (NBU) property of aging systems is extended to a uniform (UNBU) version, which compares systems when new and when used, conditional on the known number of failures. Sufficient conditions are given for a system to have the UNBU property. The application of dynamic signatures to the engineering practice of “burn‐in” is also treated. Specifically, we consider the comparison of new systems with working used systems burned‐in to a given ordered component failure time. In a reliability economics framework, we illustrate how one might compare a new system to one successfully burned‐in to the kth component failure, and we identify circumstances in which burn‐in is inferior (or is superior) to the fielding of a new system. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2009     

无源RFID系统中推断式二进制搜索算法

在现有的RFID标准中,一般标签ID都由几个不同含义区间组成。针对这种特点,提出推断式二进制防碰撞算法：在识别每个区间段的ID时,利用某个特定读写器中的前缀库推断该区间段各个位的取值,以便减少待识别标签ID的位数。同时,通过调整参数u,可以对系统可靠性进行控制。仿真实验表明,在没有新前缀出现的情况下,推断式二进制防碰撞算法能够将QT算法的识别速度提高3倍、标签平均响应次数降低3／4。