The Potential of Servicizing as a Green Business Model

It has been argued that servicizing business models, under which a firm sells the use of a product rather than the product itself, are environmentally beneficial. The main arguments are: First, under servicizing the firm charges customers based on the product usage. Second, the quantity of products required to meet customer needs may be smaller because the firm may be able to pool customer needs. Third, the firm may have an incentive to offer products with higher efficiency. Motivated by these arguments, we investigate the economic and environmental potential of servicizing business models. We endogenize the firm's choice between a pure sales, a pure servicizing, and a hybrid model with both sales and servicizing options, the pricing decisions and, the resulting customer usage. We consider two extremes of pooling efficacy, viz., no versus strong pooling. We find that under no pooling servicizing leads to higher environmental impact due to production but lower environmental impact due to use. In contrast, under strong pooling, when a hybrid business model is more profitable, it is also environmentally superior. However, a pure servicizing model is environmentally inferior for high production costs as it leads to a larger production quantity even under strong pooling. We also examine the product efficiency choice and find that the firm offers higher efficiency products only under servicizing models with strong pooling

Discovery of a Quasi-Periodic Oscillation in the Ultraluminous X-ray Source IC 342 X-1: XMM-Newton Results

We report the discovery of a quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) at 642 mHz in an {\it XMM-Newton} observation of the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) IC 342 X-1. The QPO has a centroid at $\nu_{QPO} = 642 \pm 20$ mHz, a coherence factor of $Q = 11.6$, and an amplitude (rms) of 4.1\% with significance of $3.6\sigma$. The energy dependence study shows that the QPO is stronger in the energy range 0.3 - 5.0 keV. A subsequent observation (6 days later) does not show any signature of the QPO in the power density spectrum. The broadband energy spectra (0.3 - 40.0 keV) obtained by quasi-simultaneous observations of {\it XMM-Newton} and {\it NuSTAR} can be well described by an absorbed {\it diskbb} plus {\it cutoffpl} model. The best fitted spectral parameters are power-law index ($\Gamma$) $\sim$ 1.1, cutoff energy ($E_c$) $\sim$ 7.9 keV and disc temperature ($kT_{in}$) $\sim$ 0.33 keV, where the QPO is detected. The unabsorbed bolometric luminosity is $\sim$ 5.34$\times$ 10$^{39}$ erg~s$^{-1}$. Comparing with the well known X-ray binary GRS 1915+105, our results are consistent with the mass of the compact object in IC 342 X-1 being in the range $\sim 20 - 65 ~ M_\odot$. We discuss the possible implications of our results.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures (2 colour), in press (MNRAS

Multicomputer communication system

A local area network is provided for a plurality of autonomous computers which operate at different rates and under different protocols coupled by network bus adapters to a global bus. A host computer (HC) divides a message file to be transmitted into blocks, each with a header that includes a data type identifier and a trailer. The associated network bus adapter (NBA) then divides the data into packets, each with a header to which a transport header and trailer is added with frame type code which specifies one of three modes of addressing in the transmission of data, namely a physical address mode for computer to computer transmission using two bytes for source and destination addresses, a logical address mode and a data type mode. In the logical address mode, one of the two addressing bytes contains a logical channel number (LCN) established between the transmitting and one or more receiving computers. In the data type mode, one of the addressing bytes contains a code identifying the type of data

Production of a KK-graviton and a Vector Boson in ADD Model via Gluon fusion

In the models with large extra-dimensions, we examine the production of a vector boson (\gamma / Z) in association with the Kaluza-Klein (KK) modes of the graviton via gluon fusion. At the leading order, the process takes place through quark-loop box and triangle diagrams and it is ultraviolate finite. We report the results for the LHC. We also discuss the issues of anomaly and decoupling of heavy quarks in the amplitude.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, some references and a note in the appendix adde

Coded Caching based on Combinatorial Designs

We consider the standard broadcast setup with a single server broadcasting information to a number of clients, each of which contains local storage (called \textit{cache}) of some size, which can store some parts of the available files at the server. The centralized coded caching framework, consists of a caching phase and a delivery phase, both of which are carefully designed in order to use the cache and the channel together optimally. In prior literature, various combinatorial structures have been used to construct coded caching schemes. In this work, we propose a binary matrix model to construct the coded caching scheme. The ones in such a \textit{caching matrix} indicate uncached subfiles at the users. Identity submatrices of the caching matrix represent transmissions in the delivery phase. Using this model, we then propose several novel constructions for coded caching based on the various types of combinatorial designs. While most of the schemes constructed in this work (based on existing designs) have a high cache requirement (uncached fraction being $\Theta(\frac{1}{\sqrt{K}})$ or $\Theta(\frac{1}{K})$, $K$ being the number of users), they provide a rate that is either constant or decreasing ($O(\frac{1}{K})$) with increasing $K$, and moreover require competitively small levels of subpacketization (being $O(K^i), 1\leq i\leq 3$), which is an extremely important parameter in practical applications of coded caching. We mark this work as another attempt to exploit the well-developed theory of combinatorial designs for the problem of constructing caching schemes, utilizing the binary caching model we develop.Comment: 10 pages, Appeared in Proceedings of IEEE ISIT 201

Toward a Neutrino Mass Matrix

One may identify the general properties of the neutrino mass matrix by generating many random mass matrices and testing them against the results of the neutrino experiments.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, talk at DPF200

Semi-Contained Neutrino Events in MACRO

Updated results are presented of low-energy ($\bar{E_\nu} \sim 5 GeV$) neutrino interactions observed by the MACRO detector. Two analyses (of different topologies) are presented; individually, and especially in their ratio, they are inconsistent with no oscillations and consistent with maximal mixing at $\Delta m^2$ of a few times $10^{-3}$.Comment: Paper presented at DPF2000, the American Physical Society's Division of Particles and Fields conferenc

ACAR Conductors-A Techno-Economic Evaluation

USE of aluminium for making electrical conductors is now univeraslly well-established . Large quantities of conductors will he required in India to sustain the rapid pace of electrification and industrialisation and this demand has to be almost completely met by aluminium conductors owing to an acute shortage of cop- per in the country . At present two principal types of conductors viz. AAC( All Aluminium Conductors) and ACSR ( Aluminium Conductors Steel Reinforced) are used for overhead transmission lines. The former make use of all strands of 99.5% purity EC grade aluminium metal, whereas in the latter a reinforcement with steel wires is provided to meet the strength requirements of longer spans . Both these types of conductors require EC grade aluminium strands for electrical conduction for which an acute shortage exists in the country and it is likely to persist in spite of the rapid and remarkable growth in our aluminium manufacturing capacity

Inverse scattering method for square matrix nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation under nonvanishing boundary conditions

Matrix generalization of the inverse scattering method is developed to solve the multicomponent nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with nonvanishing boundary conditions. It is shown that the initial value problem can be solved exactly. The multi-soliton solution is obtained from the Gel'fand--Levitan--Marchenko equation.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figures; (v2) title changed, typos in equations corrected, sec.3.1 modified and extende