Dynamic Pricing and Inventory Management with Regular and Expedited Supplies

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102647/1/poms12047.pd

Newsvendor bounds and heuristics for serial supply chains with regular and expedited shipping

We study an infinite-horizon, N -stage, serial production/inventory system with two transportation modes between stages: regular shipping and expedited shipping. The optimal inventory policy for this system is a top–down echelon base-stock policy, which can be computed through minimizing 2 N nested convex functions recursively (Lawson and Porteus, Oper Res 48 (2000), 878–893). In this article, we first present some structural properties and comparative statics for the parameters of the optimal inventory policies, we then derive simple, newsvendor-type lower and upper bounds for the optimal control parameters. These results are used to develop near optimal heuristic solutions for the echelon base-stock policies. Numerical studies show that the heuristic performs well. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64894/1/20388_ftp.pd

Optimal Uniform Pricing Strategy of a Service Firm When Facing Two Classes of Customers

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106838/1/poms12171.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106838/2/poms12171-sup-0001-Onlinesupplement.pd

Optimal Policies for Selling New and Remanufactured Products

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138248/1/poms12724.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138248/2/poms12724-sup-0001-Supinfo.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138248/3/poms12724_am.pd

Combined Pricing and Portfolio Option Procurement

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90569/1/poms1255.pd

Remediation of Copper Contaminated Kaolin by Electrokinetics Coupled with Permeable Reactive Barrier

AbstractElectrokinetics is an in situ soil remediation technique by which the flow direction of the pollutants can be controlled and the soil with low permeability can be treated. In this study, the remediation of copper contaminated kaolin by electrokinetic process coupled with activated carbon permeable reactive barrier (PRB) was investigated. The experimental results showed that the integration of PRB with electrokinetics successfully removed copper from kaolin with pH control of the catholyte. The average removal rate reached the highest of 96.60% when the initial Cu2+ concentration was 2000mg/kg. Compared to the electrokinetic process without PRB, the application of the coupled system could reduce the pollution of the electrolyte

Pyrrolidine Dithiocarbamate Attenuates Paraquat-Induced Lung Injury in Rats

Paraquat (PQ) has been demonstrated that the main target organ for the toxicity is the lung. This study aimed to investigate the potential protective effect of PDTC on the PQ-induced pulmonary damage. Fifty-four rats were divided into control, PQ-treated and PQ+PDTC-treated groups. Rats in the PQ group were administrated 40 mg/kg PQ by gastric gavage, and PDTC group with 40 mg/kg PQ followed by injection of 120 mg/kg PDTC (IP). On the days 3, 7, 14 and 21 after treatments, the activities of GSH-Px, SOD, MDA level and the content of HYP were measured. TGF-β1 mRNA and protein were assayed by RT-PCR and ELISA. MDA level in plasma and BALF was increased and the activities of GSH-Px and SOD were decreased significantly in the PQ-treated groups (P < .05) compared with control group. While the activities of GSH-Px and SOD in the PQ+PDTC-treated groups was markedly higher than that of PQ-treated groups (P < .05), and in contrast, MDA level was lower. TGF-β1 mRNA and protein were significantly lower in the PQ+PDTC-treated groups than that of PQ-treated groups (P < .05). The histopathological changes in the PQ+PDTC-treated groups were milder than those of PQ groups. Our results suggested that PDTC treatment significantly attenuated paraquat-induced pulmonary damage

Elite Opposition-Based Water Wave Optimization Algorithm for Global Optimization

Water wave optimization (WWO) is a novel metaheuristic method that is based on shallow water wave theory, which has simple structure, easy realization, and good performance even with a small population. To improve the convergence speed and calculation precision even further, this paper on elite opposition-based strategy water wave optimization (EOBWWO) is proposed, and it has been applied for function optimization and structure engineering design problems. There are three major optimization strategies in the improvement: elite opposition-based (EOB) learning strategy enhances the diversity of population, local neighborhood search strategy is introduced to enhance local search in breaking operation, and improved propagation operator provides the improved algorithm with a better balance between exploration and exploitation. EOBWWO algorithm is verified by using 20 benchmark functions and two structure engineering design problems and the performance of EOBWWO is compared against those of the state-of-the-art algorithms. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has faster convergence speed, higher calculation precision, with the exact solution being even obtained on some benchmark functions, and a higher degree of stability than other comparative algorithms

Mass Loss and Chemical Structures of Wheat and Maize Straws in Response to Ultravoilet-B Radiation and Soil Contact

The role of photodegradation, an abiotic process, has been largely overlooked during straw decomposition in mesic ecosystems. We investigated the mass loss and chemical structures of straw decomposition in response to elevated UV-B radiation with or without soil contact over a 12-month litterbag experiment. Wheat and maize straw samples with and without soil contact were exposed to three radiation levels: a no-sunlight control, ambient solar UV-B, and artificially elevated UV-B radiation. A block control with soil contact was not included. Compared with the no-sunlight control, UV-B radiation increased the mass loss by 14-19% and the ambient radiation by 9-16% for wheat and maize straws without soil contact after 12 months. Elevated UV-B exposure decreased the decomposition rates of both wheat and maize straws when in contact with soil. Light exposure resulted in decreased O-alkyl carbons and increased alkyl carbons for both the wheat and maize straws compared with no-sunlight control. The difference in soil contact may influence the contribution of photodegradation to the overall straw decomposition process. These results indicate that we must take into account the effects of photodegradation when explaining the mechanisms of straw decomposition in mesic ecosystems