1,173 research outputs found
The General N-Location Distribution Problem
This paper studies the one-period, general network distribution problem with linear costs. The approach is to decompose the problem into a transportation problem that represents a stocking decision, and decoupled newsboy problems that represent the realization of demand with the usual associated holding and shortage costs. This approach leads to a characterization of optimal policies in terms of the dual of the transportation problem. Specifically, it is shown that there is a correspondence between the optimal policies and the extreme points, edges, faces etc. of the dual feasible region. This method is not directly suitable for the solution of large problems but the exact solution for small problems can be obtained. It is shown that the three location case involves 37 policies as compared to seven for the two location case. For the numerical solutions of large problems, the problem has been formulated as a linear program with column generation. This latter approach is quite robust in the sense that it is easily extended to incorporate capacity constraints and the multiproduct case. Extensions of this work are briefly discussed.Supported in part by the Office o Naval Research under contract 67-A-0204-007
A non-linear structure preserving matrix method for the low rank approximation of the Sylvester resultant matrix
A non-linear structure preserving matrix method for the computation of a structured low rank approximation S((f) over bar , (g) over bar) of the Sylvester resultant matrix S(f , g) of two inexact polynomials f = f(y) and g = g(y) is considered in this paper. It is shown that considerably improved results are obtained when f (y) and g(y) are processed prior to the computation of S((f) over bar , (g) over bar), and that these preprocessing operations introduce two parameters. These parameters can either be held constant during the computation of S((f) over bar , (g) over bar), which leads to a linear structure preserving matrix method, or they can be incremented during the computation of S((f) over bar, (g) over bar), which leads to a non-linear structure preserving matrix method. It is shown that the non-linear method yields a better structured low rank approximation of S((f) over bar , (g) over bar) and that the assignment of f (y) and g(y) is important because S((f) over bar , (g) over bar) may be a good structured low rank approximation of S(f, g), but S((f) over bar , (g) over bar) may be a poor structured low rank approximation of S (g f) because its numerical rank is not defined. Examples that illustrate the differences between the linear and non-linear structure preserving matrix methods, and the importance of the assignment off (y) and g(y), are shown. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
Random Costs in Combinatorial Optimization
The random cost problem is the problem of finding the minimum in an
exponentially long list of random numbers. By definition, this problem cannot
be solved faster than by exhaustive search. It is shown that a classical
NP-hard optimization problem, number partitioning, is essentially equivalent to
the random cost problem. This explains the bad performance of heuristic
approaches to the number partitioning problem and allows us to calculate the
probability distributions of the optimum and sub-optimum costs.Comment: 4 pages, Revtex, 2 figures (eps), submitted to PR
Antibodies to group A streptococcal virulence factors, SIC and DRS, increase predilection to GAS pyoderma
Room temperature reversible colossal volto-magnetic effect in all-oxide metallicmagnet/topotactic-phase-transition material heterostructures
Multiferroic materials have undergone extensive research in the past two
decades in an effort to produce a sizable room-temperature magneto-electric
(ME) effect in either exclusive or composite materials for use in a variety of
electronic or spintronic devices. These studies have looked into the ME effect
by switching the electric polarization by the magnetic field or switching the
magnetism by the electric field. Here, an innovative way is developed to knot
the functional properties based on the tremendous modulation of electronics and
magnetization by the electric field of the topotactic phase transitions (TPT)
in heterostructures composed of metallic-magnet/TPT-material. It is divulged
that application of a nominal potential difference of 2-3 Volts induces
gigantic changes in magnetization by 100-250% leading to colossal Voltomagnetic
effect, which would be tremendously beneficial for low-power consumption
applications in spintronics. Switching electronics and magnetism by inducing
TPT through applying an electric field requires much less energy, making such
TPT-based systems promising for energy-efficient memory and logic applications
as well as opening a plethora of tremendous opportunities for applications in
different domains
Magnetic control of large room-temperature polarization
Numerous authors have referred to room-temperature magnetic switching of
large electric polarizations as The Holy Grail of magnetoelectricity.We report
this long-sought effect using a new physical process of coupling between
magnetic and ferroelectric relaxor nano-regions. Here we report magnetic
switching between the normal ferroelectric state and the ferroelectric relaxor
state. This gives both a new room-temperature, single-phase, multiferroic
magnetoelectric, PbZr0.46Ti0.34Fe0.13W0.07O3, with polarization, loss (<4%),
and resistivity (typically 108 -109 ohm.cm) equal to or superior to BiFeO3, and
also a new and very large magnetoelectric effect: switching not from +Pr to
negative Pr with applied H, but from Pr to zero with applied H of less than a
Tesla. This switching of the polarization occurs not because of a conventional
magnetically induced phase transition, but because of dynamic effects:
Increasing H lengthens the relaxation time by x500 from 100 ?s, and
it couples strongly the polarization relaxation and spin relaxations. The
diverging polarization relaxation time accurately fits a modified Vogel-Fulcher
Equation in which the freezing temperature Tf is replaced by a critical
freezing field Hf that is 0.92 positive/negative 0.07 Tesla. This field
dependence and the critical field Hc are derived analytically from the
spherical random bond random field (SRBRF) model with no adjustable parameters
and an E2H2 coupling. This device permits 3-state logic (+Pr,0,negative Pr) and
a condenser with >5000% magnetic field change in its capacitance.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure
Distortions of Subjective Time Perception Within and Across Senses
Background: The ability to estimate the passage of time is of fundamental importance for perceptual and cognitive processes. One experience of time is the perception of duration, which is not isomorphic to physical duration and can be distorted by a number of factors. Yet, the critical features generating these perceptual shifts in subjective duration are not understood.
Methodology/Findings: We used prospective duration judgments within and across sensory modalities to examine the effect of stimulus predictability and feature change on the perception of duration. First, we found robust distortions of perceived duration in auditory, visual and auditory-visual presentations despite the predictability of the feature changes in the stimuli. For example, a looming disc embedded in a series of steady discs led to time dilation, whereas a steady disc embedded in a series of looming discs led to time compression. Second, we addressed whether visual (auditory) inputs could alter the perception of duration of auditory (visual) inputs. When participants were presented with incongruent audio-visual stimuli, the perceived duration of auditory events could be shortened or lengthened by the presence of conflicting visual information; however, the perceived duration of visual events was seldom distorted by the presence of auditory information and was never perceived shorter than their actual durations.
Conclusions/Significance: These results support the existence of multisensory interactions in the perception of duration and, importantly, suggest that vision can modify auditory temporal perception in a pure timing task. Insofar as distortions in subjective duration can neither be accounted for by the unpredictability of an auditory, visual or auditory-visual event, we propose that it is the intrinsic features of the stimulus that critically affect subjective time distortions
Bounds on the Complexity of Halfspace Intersections when the Bounded Faces have Small Dimension
We study the combinatorial complexity of D-dimensional polyhedra defined as
the intersection of n halfspaces, with the property that the highest dimension
of any bounded face is much smaller than D. We show that, if d is the maximum
dimension of a bounded face, then the number of vertices of the polyhedron is
O(n^d) and the total number of bounded faces of the polyhedron is O(n^d^2). For
inputs in general position the number of bounded faces is O(n^d). For any fixed
d, we show how to compute the set of all vertices, how to determine the maximum
dimension of a bounded face of the polyhedron, and how to compute the set of
bounded faces in polynomial time, by solving a polynomial number of linear
programs
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