bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Procurement Contracts
Authors: Bassok Yehuda 
Published: February 2011

Abstract
In this article, we discuss supply contracts. We consider environments in which some type of uncertainty plays an important role. In general, the main objective of supply contracts is to coordinate the supply chain and to (i) ensure that buyers are able to meet their customers' uncertain and changing demand, (ii) provide mechanisms so that suppliers (manufacturers) and buyer share system's risks and costs (more specifically, ensure that suppliers do not assume the entire risk of buffering raw materials and finished goods to meet the final demand for goods), and (iii) provide incentives for suppliers (manufacturers) to build enough capacity.
We discuss several different supply contracts. All contracts balance between the flexibility of the buyer adapting to changing market conditions and the stability of the production environment. These contracts differ in their assumptions and complexities. The main differences between these supply contracts are that some are single‐period contracts; the Buy Back contract is a good example of the above. Others are multiperiod contracts and they capture the dynamics of a long horizon. The Periodical Commitments and Flexibility contract is a good example of the multiperiod models. The different contracts consider different mechanism to balance flexibility and stability: Fixed delivery contracts ensure that the sellers deliver a fixed quantity every period, while the option contracts use options to achieve the same objective. The Periodical Commitments and Flexibility contract provides buyers with limited flexibility to change previously made commitments.
Stochastic Search Methods for Global Optimization
Authors: Zabinsky Zelda B. 
Published: February 2011

AbstractStochastic search methods, also known as random search algorithms, are popular for ill‐structured global optimization problems because they are straightforward to implement and usually find a relatively good solution quickly. These algorithms have been inspired by physics, such as simulated annealing and interacting particle algorithms, as well as by biology, including genetic algorithms, evolutionary programming, particle swarm, and ant colony optimization. This article highlights the use of a Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling method called Hit‐and‐Run in random search algorithms for global optimization.
Backtrack Search Techniques And Heuristics
Authors: Lecoutre Christophe 
Published: February 2011

AbstractSatisfying a set of constraints is known as an instance of the constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), which is the subject of intense research in both artificial intelligence and operations research. Practical solution of CSP instances usually involves backtrack search. This is a complete approach that performs an exhaustive exploration of the search space of the instance to be solved. There have been considerable efforts during the last three decades to maximize the practical efficiency of backtrack search, relying on the concepts of constraint propagation, intelligent backtracking, restarting policy, variable (and value) ordering heuristic, and so on. In particular, the development of general‐purpose adaptive heuristics has shown impressive progress in guiding search.
Forecasting Approaches for the High‐Tech Industry
Authors: Gilliland Michael 
Published: February 2011

Abstract
Challenges in the high‐tech industry, such as long supply chain lead times, short product lifecycles, and frequent new product introductions, make it unrealistic to expect highly accurate forecasting. However, there are methods to help high‐tech organizations deal with this extra uncertainty, and this article focuses on two such methods: the “structured analogy” approach to new product forecasting, and forecast value added (FVA) analysis. The structured analogy approach utilizes data visualization and analytical software to augment “forecasting by analogy” (i.e., like items) with structured judgment. FVA analysis is a method adopted across a broad range of industries for identifying wasteful and bad practices in the forecasting process and is consistent with the “lean” approach to supply chain management. While neither method can guarantee highly accurate forecasts (nothing can do that), these methods help high‐tech organizations forecast more efficiently (in less time, at less cost), more effectively (by eliminating process steps that just make the forecast worse), and to better understand and deal with the uncertainties and risks.
Allocation Games
Authors: Roberson Brian 
Published: February 2011

AbstractThere are a number of important applications in the economic, military, and political sciences that may be characterized as resource allocation games in which budget‐constrained players strategically allocate resources across multiple simultaneous contests. Partly because it is a foundational problem that is well suited for abstract theoretical modeling, multidimensional strategic resource allocation was one of the first problems examined in modern game theory. Borel (1921) formulates this problem as a constant‐sum game involving two symmetric players who each allocate a fixed amount of resources across a finite number of contests. Each player must distribute their resources without knowing their opponent's distribution of resources. In each of the component contests, the player who allocates the higher level of resources wins the contest, and each player maximizes the sum of the wins across the individual contests. This chapter provides an introduction to this class of games (known asColonel Blotto games) with a focus on the intuition for the key results and briefly summarizes several of the recent developments in this literature including: non‐constant‐sum formulations of the Colonel Blotto game, additional restrictions on the strategy space, a simplified form of the Colonel Blotto game, and alternative objectives for the players.
Quality and Pricing Decisions
Authors: Chambers Chester 
Published: February 2011

Abstract

When firms decide to offer a product or service, they make integrated decisions regarding the characteristics of the product to be offered and the price that will be charged. These interrelated decisions are often referred to as
product positioning
. In this article, the topic within the contexts of several different settings are introduced. Research in this field can be parsed into groups based upon whether the focus is on a single firm acting as a monopolist or on multiple firms non‐cooperatively competing among themselves. The relevant works can also be grouped depending on how they handle the subject of production/delivery costs. Some works ignore all cost components. Another set of works includes only fixed costs, while a different set includes variable costs in an economic model. This note provides introductory illustrations regarding each of these settings and outlines major results in each problem category. While this work is not intended to be exhaustive, it does introduce seminal works in the field and explains several major findings. These findings include (i) a monopolist in settings in which costs are negligible or sunk will offer only the highest quality product possible and there is no need to offer a menu of items; (ii) a monopolist facing production costs is motivated to offer a menu of offerings to achieve some measure of price discrimination, and the range of offerings is wider than would be seen under perfect competition; (iii) duopolists sharing a market in the absence of cost will strive for maximum product differentiation; (iv) when only fixed costs are relevant the provider of the higher quality good makes the greater profit; and (v) when only variable costs are considered the provider of the lower quality good often makes the greater profit. This work also discusses several recent extensions of the seminal works, which relax key assumptions of earlier efforts. Finally, we end this article with a discussion of open questions in the field.
Reviews of Maintenance Literature and Models
Authors: Leung Francis K. N. 
Published: February 2011

AbstractModeling of the maintenance (inspection, overhaul, repair, replacement, etc.) of deteriorating systems has been of significant importance for the past 70 years, especially because of its applications in industry and medicine. There is an extensive literature on various types of preventive maintenance (PM) policies for stochastically failing single‐unit and multiunit systems. In this article, we review part of the literature that deals with the problem of PM of a stochastically failing single‐unit system. We emphasize how certain features of the various models affect their analysis and the conclusions that can be drawn from them. It should be noted that what we present in this article is only a very small portion of the maintenance field; so many mathematically outstanding papers have been omitted because of space considerations. However, many good surveys, monographs, and handbooks mentioned in this article can provide an extensive overview of the field and can be helpful as guidance through the literature.
Multiarmed Bandits and Gittins Index
Authors: Weber Richard 
Published: February 2011

Abstract

The multiarmed bandit problem is a sequential decision problem about allocating effort (or resources) amongst a number of alternative projects, only one of which may receive effort at a time. For example, we might be allocating the processing effort of a single machine amongst
n
jobs, or allocating research effort amongst
n
drugs that are alternatives for treating some disease. When projects receive effort they generate uncertain rewards. The objective is to maximize an expected discounted sum of rewards over the infinite horizon. The multiarmed bandit problem well points up the trade‐off between exploitation and exploration. On the one hand, we might pursue the project that we currently think offers the greatest expected reward; on the other hand, we might be willing to pass up immediate reward in order to become better informed about the other projects and thereby obtain greater reward later. This article describes the problem, its solution in terms of the Gittins index, some applications, and generalizations.
An Introduction toR&DPortfolio Decision Analysis
Authors: Duncan Kelly J. , Merrick Jason R.W. 
Published: February 2011

AbstractA portfolio is a purposeful combination of items. For research and development (R&D) portfolios these items are technologies, projects, or products. Companies have widely varying practices for portfolio selection. This article examines existing literature to determine the key characteristics of a good portfolio and how decision analysis is used to find one. The approach needs to handle multiple objectives, account for project interactions, and address the social aspect of decision making. The resulting portfolio should be aligned with business strategy, balanced, and maximize value. The article introduces general concepts that have been used to select portfolios and reviews specific applications.
The Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows: State‐of‐the‐Art Exact Solution Methods
Authors: Desaulniers Guy , Desrosiers Jacques , Spoorendonk Simon 
Published: February 2011

Abstract
The vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) consists of finding least‐cost vehicle routes to service given customers exactly once each while satisfying the vehicle capacity and customer time windows. The VRPTW has been widely studied. We present here a short survey on the successful exact methods for solving it. These are branch‐cut‐and‐price algorithms, except the most efficient one which solves, by a mixed‐integer programming solver, a reduced set partitioning model obtained by performing variable elimination based on reduced cost. This method was able to solve all well‐known Solomon's benchmark instances except one, outperforming all the other algorithms previously published.
Semi‐Infinite Programming
Authors: Guerra‐Vázquez Francisco , Rückmann Jan‐J. 
Published: February 2011

AbstractThis article presents a short introduction to semi‐infinite programming (SIP), which over the last two decades has become a vivid research area in mathematical programming with a wide range of applications. An SIP problem is characterized by infinitely many inequality constraints in a finite‐dimensional space. We consider first and second order optimality conditions as well as the reduction approach, which allows a local reduction of an SIP problem to a finite programming problem. Furthermore, we discuss several stability concepts including the strong stability of a stationary point and the structural stability. Finally, we briefly refer to solution methods and generalized semi‐infinite programming problems.
Public Health, Emergency Response, and Medical PreparednessIII: Communication Infrastructure
Authors: Lee Eva K. , Yang Anna Yang , Guilford Tyrus , Pietz Ferdinand , Benecke Bernard 
Published: February 2011

AbstractDeveloping and maintaining a robust communication infrastructure among hospitals, emergency medical services, and other health‐care facilities, as well as private medical transport companies and medical supplies vendors, is vital to providing relief operations and services during emergency situations. Such infrastructure provides the core foundation for basic knowledge‐sharing such as patient volume and severity, emergency room capacity, hospital bed availability; special wards availability; medical personnel specialties; transport vehicle availability; and blood, medicine, and medical supplies inventories. During an emergency situation, such critical information can be communicated to a regional coordinating control center, which can assess available resources, identify surpluses and shortages, and coordinate distribution efforts. In fact, building capacity for an interoperable communication system for emergency response is identified as one of the areas that must be prioritized according to The Hospital Preparedness Program established by the US Department of Health and Human Services. In this article, we highlight some important issues related to an effective communication infrastructure. Various communication tools and infrastructure will be contrasted. Organizational and sociological factors as well as human behavior are discussed. Beyond communicating horizontally and vertically across the jurisdictions and federal, state, and local government agencies, we also highlight the importance of multimedia public information and risk communication factors that are essential for mounting an effective emergency response.
Operations Research in Forestry and Forest Products Industry
Authors: D'Amours Sophie , Epstein Rafael , Weintraub Andres , Rönnqvist Mikael 
Published: February 2011

Abstract
Over the years, operational research (OR) has been used extensively to support the forest products industry and public forestry organizations in their respective planning activities concerning the flow of wood fiber from the forest to the customer. The planning decisions range from long‐term strategic planning decisions related to forest management or company development to very short‐term operational decisions, such as planning for real‐time log/chip transportation or cutting. This chapter presents an overview of the different planning problems and explains how these are solved in the field of forestry using operational research.
Introduction to Tabu Search
Authors: Smith J. Cole , Cochran James J. 
Published: February 2011

AbstractThis article provides an introductory treatment to tabu search, which is one of the most popular metaheuristic methods for solving difficult combinatorial optimization problems. Tabu search is based on local search, but attempts to avoid early termination at local optima, as these might have objective function values that are far inferior to the globally optimal one. Tabu search employs a limited memory of attributes of recent moves to avoid move reversals and looping, and also to guide the search procedure into unexplored areas of the solution space, thus improving the likelihood of finding a near‐optimal solution. We present the basic tabu search approach, discuss common enhancements with respect to implementing this method, and provide a brief review of sample applications to which tabu search has been effectively applied.
Mapping of Domain Orientation and Molecular Order in Polycrystalline Semiconducting Polymer Films with Soft X‐Ray Microscopy
Authors: Watts Benjamin , Schuettfort Torben , McNeill Christopher R. 
Published: February 2011

AbstractWe utilize scanning transmission X‐ray microscopy (STXM) to study the domain structure of polycrystalline films of the semiconducting polymer poly(9,9’‐dioctylfluorene‐co‐benzothiadiazole) (F8BT). By taking several images at different orientations of the film with respect to the polarization of the X‐ray beam, we are able to compute quantitative maps of molecular alignment/order and molecular orientation, including both the backbone direction and phenyl ring plane orientation, as well as the in‐plane and out‐of‐plane components. We show that polycrystalline F8BT films consist of well‐ordered micron‐sized domains with the transition from one domain orientation to another characterized either by a smooth transition of orientation or by ∼ 200 nm wide disordered domain boundaries. The morphology of the disordered domain boundaries resemble the electroluminescence patterns observed previously in F8BT light‐emitting field‐effect transistors suggesting that charge trapping at these disordered domain boundaries facilitates charge recombination in ambipolar operation. A relatively narrow distribution of local average tilt angles is observed that correlates with film structure, with the ordered domains in general showing a higher tilt angle than the disordered domain boundaries. We also use secondary electron detection to image the surface domain structure of polycrystalline F8BT films and demonstrate that the polycrystalline structure extends to the film/air interface. Finally, we calculate ideal NEXAFS spectra corresponding to a perfect F8BT crystal oriented with the 1s – π* transition dipole moment parallel and perpendicular to the electric field vector of a perfectly linearly polarized X‐ray beam.
Emerging Transparent Electrodes Based on Thin Films of Carbon Nanotubes, Graphene, and Metallic Nanostructures
Authors: Hecht David S. , Hu Liangbing , Irvin Glen 
Published: February 2011

AbstractTransparent electrodes are a necessary component in many modern devices such as touch screens, LCDs, OLEDs, and solar cells, all of which are growing in demand. Traditionally, this role has been well served by doped metal oxides, the most common of which is indium tin oxide, or ITO. Recently, advances in nano‐materials research have opened the door for other transparent conductive materials, each with unique properties. These include CNTs, graphene, metal nanowires, and printable metal grids. This review will explore the materials properties of transparent conductors, covering traditional metal oxides and conductive polymers initially, but with a focus on current developments in nano‐material coatings. Electronic, optical, and mechanical properties of each material will be discussed, as well as suitability for various applications.
Iron‐Doped Single‐Walled Carbon Nanotubes as New Heterogeneous and Highly Efficient Catalyst for Acylation of Alcohols, Phenols, Carboxylic Acids and Amines under Solvent‐Free Conditions
Authors: Sharghi Hashem , Jokar Mahboubeh , Doroodmand Mohammad Mahdi 
Published: February 2011

AbstractIron‐doped single‐walled carbon nanotubes (Fe/SWCNTs) represent an efficient and new heterogeneous reusable catalyst for the acylation of a variety of alcohols, phenols, carboxylic acids and amines with acid chlorides or acid anhydrides under solvent‐free conditions. The reactions of various primary, secondary, tertiary, and benzylic alcohols, diols, phenols, as well as aromatic and aliphatic amines give acylated adducts in good to excellent yields.
One‐Pot Synthesis of Spirooxindole Derivatives Catalyzed by Lipase in the Presence of Water
Authors: Chai She‐Jie , Lai Yi‐Feng , Xu Jiang‐Cheng , Zheng Hui , Zhu Qing , Zhang Peng‐Fei 
Published: February 2011

AbstractA facile one‐pot synthesis route to spirooxindole derivatives was developed by combining the three types of catalytic activities of lipase from porcine pancreas (PPL) in the presence of water, i.e., the Knoevengel condensation, Michael addition and cyclization. PPL showed excellent catalytic activity and have a good adaptability to different substrates in the reaction. All the reactions go smoothly and provide spirooxindole derivatives with high yield under the mild conditions. This lipase‐catalyzed multistep conversion method has provided a new strategy to synthesize spirooxindole derivatives and expanded the application of biocatalysts.
Synthesis of 3H‐Quinazolin‐4‐ones and 4H‐3,1‐Benzoxazin‐4‐ones via Benzylic Oxidation and Oxidative Dehydrogenation using Potassium Iodide‐tert‐Butyl Hydroperoxide
Authors: Kumar R. Arun , Maheswari C. Uma , Ghantasala Satheesh , Jyothi C. , Reddy K. Rajender 
Published: February 2011

AbstractA simple and elegant method for benzylic activation was demonstrated employing the potassium iodide/tert‐butyl hydrogen peroxide catalytic system. This methodology was further extended for the synthesis of biologically important heterocycles namely, 3H‐quinazolin‐4‐ones and 4H‐3,1‐benzoxazin‐4‐ones including mecloqualone and etaqualone which are important quinazolinone‐based drugs used for the treatment of insomnia in good yields.
Gold‐Catalyzed Cascade Friedel–Crafts/Furan‐Yne Cyclization/Heteroenyne Metathesis for the Highly Efficient Construction of Phenanthrene Derivatives
Authors: Chen Yifeng , Li Guijie , Liu Yuanhong 
Published: February 2011

AbstractA rapid access to highly substituted phenanthrenyl ketones through gold‐catalyzed cyclization of 1,6‐diyn‐4‐en‐3‐ols with furans has been developed. Gold catalysts are effective to catalyze three cascade processes involving Friedel–Crafts/furan‐yne cyclization/heteroenyne metathesis through CO bond and alkyne activation. This method offers several advantages such as high selectivities and easily accessible starting materials.
Calcium‐Catalyzed Direct Amination of π‐Activated Alcohols
Authors: Haubenreisser Stefan , Niggemann Meike 
Published: February 2011

AbstractA calcium‐catalyzed direct amination of π‐activated alcohols with different nitrogen nucleophiles under very mild reaction conditions is presented. The high reactivity of the calcium catalyst allows for an efficient conversion of secondary and tertiary benzylic and allylic as well as tertiary propargylic alcohols. Nitrogen nucleophiles such as carbamates, tosylamides and anilines are readily alkylated at room temperature.
Highly Enantio‐ and Diastereoselective Synthesis of γ‐Amino Alcohols from α,β‐Unsaturated Imines through a One‐Pot β‐Boration/Reduction/Oxidation Sequence
Authors: Solé Cristina , Whiting Andrew , Gulyás Henrik , Fernández Elena 
Published: February 2011

AbstractA simple one‐pot three‐step synthetic route towards chiral γ‐amino alcohols has been established. Considering the overall stereocontrol of the synthetic protocol, the first and key step is the enantioselective β‐boration of α,β‐unsaturated imines. By screening a small library of potential chiral auxiliaries, several chiral phosphorus ligands have been identified which induce exceptional enantioselectivities (up to 99% ee). For the stoichiometric reduction of the imino group, it has been found that high levels of 1,3‐diastereocontrol can be achieved using achiral reducing agents. A new methodology for the synthesis of both diastereoisomers, syn and anti, has been established. The last step of the reaction sequence, oxidative substitution of the boryl unit with a hydroxy group, proceeds with complete retention of the configuration at the Cβ‐atom. Most importantly, the three simple steps can be carried out in one pot without significant change in the overall stereoselectivity.