Digital Commons Network^™

Integrated Resource Allocation And Scheduling In Bidirectional Flow Shop With Multi-Machine And Cos Constraints, Hoong Chuin Lau, Zhengyi Zhao, Shuzhi Sam Ge

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An integer programming (IP) model is proposed for integrated resource allocation and operation scheduling for a multiple job-agents system. Each agent handles a specific job-list in a bidirectional flowshop. For the individual agent scheduling problem, a formulation is proposed in continuous time domain and compared with an IP formulation in discrete time domain. Of particular interest is the formulation of the machine utilization function-- both in continuous time and discrete time. Fast heuristic methods are proposed with the relaxation of the machine capacity. For the integrated resource allocation and scheduling problem, a linear programming relaxation approach is applied to solve …

Chinese Philanthropy In Southeast Asia: Between Continuity And Change, Thomas Menkhoff

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

What makes ethnic Chinese philanthropy tick? Thomas Menkhoff looks at what drives prominent Chinese business leaders to give back to society and offers a glimpse of the changing face of ethnic philanthropy.

The Price Of Stability In Selfish Scheduling Games, Lucas Agussurja, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Game theory has gained popularity as an approach to analysing and understanding distributed systems with self-interested agents. Central to game theory is the concept of Nash equilibrium as a stable state (solution) of the system, which comes with a price − the loss in efficiency. The quantification of the efficiency loss is one of the main research concerns. In this paper, we study the quality and computational characteristics of the best Nash equilibrium in two selfish scheduling models: the congestion model and the sequencing model. In particular, we present the following results: (1) In the congestion model: first, the best …

If We Seek, Do We Learn?: Predicting Knowledge Of Global Warming, Leeann Kahlor, Sonny Rosenthal

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Derived from the risk information seeking and processing model (RISP), this study sought to isolate predictors of the public's knowledge of global warming. Using a national sample ( N = 805), multiple regression yielded a number of significant relationships among 13 moderators. Notably, the number of media sources used for information about global warming, information seeking effort, and general education were relatively strong predictors of knowledge. Counter to expectations, informational subjective norms were inversely related to knowledge.

Maximizing Throughput Of Bucket Brigades On Discrete Work Stations, Yun Fong Lim, Kum Khiong Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

One way to coordinate workers along an assembly line that has fewer workers than work stations is to form a bucket brigade. The throughput of a bucket brigade on discrete work stations may be compromised due to blocking even if workers are sequenced from slowest to fastest. For a given work distribution on the stations we find policies that maximize the throughput of the line. When workers have very different production rates, fully cross-training the workers and sequencing them from slowest to fastest is almost always the best policy. This policy outperforms other policies for most work distributions except for …

Predicting The Perforation Response Of Honeycomb Sandwich Panels Using Ballistic Limit Equations, William P. Schonberg, Frank Schäfer, Robin Putzar

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Man-made debris from previous spacecraft missions poses a serious threat to spacecraft that are launched to operate in Earth orbit because it can strike such spacecraft at extremely high velocities and consequently damage mission-critical systems. Most satellites are constructed with honeycomb sandwich panels as their primary structural elements. to be able to perform a risk analysis, it is important to know, in the event of such a meteoroid or orbital debris particle impact, whether or not the impacting particle or parts thereof will exit the rear of the sandwich panel. a recently developed set of ballistic limit equations for two …

Quality-Aware Collaborative Question Answering: Methods And Evaluation, Maggy Anastasia Suryanto, Ee Peng Lim, Aixin Sun, Roger Hsiang-Li Chiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Community Question Answering (QA) portals contain questions and answers contributed by hundreds of millions of users. These databases of questions and answers are of great value if they can be used directly to answer questions from any user. In this research, we address this collaborative QA task by drawing knowledge from the crowds in community QA portals such as Yahoo! Answers. Despite their popularity, it is well known that answers in community QA portals have unequal quality. We therefore propose a quality-aware framework to design methods that select answers from a community QA portal considering answer quality in addition to …

Risk Indexes For Draft Ccl3 Chemicals, J. Alan Roberson, Matthew Lueders, Craig Adams, Jeffrey S. Rosen

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

To supplement the processes used for developing the draft third Contaminant Candidate List (CCL3) and better inform decisions made by the US Environmental Protection Agency on future CCLs, the authors offer an evaluation tool for efficiently synthesizing, visualizing, and organizing data for effective comparisons among contaminants. Graphical presentations of health effects-occurrence indexes were developed for more than 300 chemical contaminants, including those on the draft CCL3. a risk indexes framework was then used to elucidate the extent of available data, the data quality, and the underlying uncertainties for occurrence and toxicity. Choosing the appropriate contaminant for regulation is a complex …

Tilting The Balance Between Capital And Labor? The Effects Of Regulatory Arbitrage In European Corporate Law On Employees, Martin Gelter

Fordham International Law Journal

This Article examines an issue of regulatory competition that seems to be of greater interest for the corporate governance of large, publicly traded firms: the position of the employees. The Article proceeds in three parts. Part I sets out the basic premise of the analysis by describing why employees may be relevant to the corporate governance structure. This Part will briefly draw on economic theory to explain why, at least under certain circumstances, it can be beneficial to create an institutional structure that facilitates long-term commitment between firms and their employees. Part II identifies aspects of European corporate law that …

A Control-Theoretical Fault Prognostics And Accommodation Framework For A Class Of Nonlinear Discrete-Time Systems, Balaje T. Thumati

Doctoral Dissertations

"Fault diagnostics and prognostics schemes (FDP) are necessary for complex industrial systems to prevent unscheduled downtime resulting from component failures. Existing schemes in continuous-time are useful for diagnosing complex industrial systems and no work has been done for prognostics. Therefore, in this dissertation, a systematic design methodology for model-based fault prognostics and accommodation is undertaken for a class of nonlinear discrete-time systems. This design methodology, which does not require any failure data, is introduced in six papers. In Paper I, a fault detection and prediction (FDP) scheme is developed for a class of nonlinear system with state faults by assuming …

Analysis Using Surface Wave Methods To Detect Shallow Manmade Tunnels, Niklas Henry Putnam

Doctoral Dissertations

"Multi-method seismic surface wave approach was used to locate and estimate the dimensions of shallow horizontally-oriented cylindrical voids or manmade tunnels. The primary analytical methods employed were Attenuation Analysis of Rayleigh Waves (AARW), Surface Wave Common Offset (SWCO), and Spiking Filter (SF). Surface wave data were acquired at six study sites using a towed 24-channel land streamer and elastic-band accelerated weight-drop seismic source. Each site was underlain by one tunnel, nominally 1 meter in diameter and depth. The acquired surface wave data were analyzed automatically. Then interpretations compared to the field measurements to ascertain the degree of accuracy. The purpose …

Hydrogen Infrastructure: Resource Evaluation And Capacity Modeling, Kevin B. Martin

Doctoral Dissertations

"A hydrogen economy could offer energy stability, economical, and environmental benefits. Several issues are involved in the design and implementation of a hydrogen economy such as the selection of feedstocks, generation and storage technologies, transportation methods, appropriate equipment capacity, codes/standards and public awareness. The design of a hydrogen infrastructure may seem insurmountable; however, as the system is deconstructed a proper design can be achieved. In order to better understand how a hydrogen system for light duty vehicles might operate, both hydrogen resource and capacity analysis and modeling is conducted. Specifically, an evaluation of leading near term production and distribution technologies …

Meta-Learning Computational Intelligence Architectures, Ryan J. Meuth

Doctoral Dissertations

"In computational intelligence, the term 'memetic algorithm' has come to be associated with the algorithmic pairing of a global search method with a local search method. In a sociological context, a 'meme' has been loosely defined as a unit of cultural information, the social analog of genes for individuals. Both of these definitions are inadequate, as 'memetic algorithm' is too specific, and ultimately a misnomer, as much as a 'meme' is defined too generally to be of scientific use. In this dissertation the notion of memes and meta-learning is extended from a computational viewpoint and the purpose, definitions, design guidelines …

Spacecraft Formation Flight At Sun-Earth/Moon Libration Points, Douglas Robert Tolbert

Doctoral Dissertations

"Formations of spacecraft, positioned near the libration points of the Sun- Earth/Moon system, have recently received an increase in interest in response to a variety of mission needs. Specifically, missions such as the Micro Arcsecond X-Ray Imaging Mission (MAXIM), Terrestrial Pathfinder (TPF), Stellar Imager (SI) and the European Space Agency's DARWIN all baseline formations of spacecraft to satisfy mission requirements. Replacing the traditional single spacecraft mission with multiple small spacecraft flying in formation is advantageous for these missions, especially when establishing a virtual aperture. These types of formations allow for higher resolution observations than with a single, conventional aperture. The …

Taproot™ Technology: Tree Coring For Fast, Noninvasive Plume Delineations, Joel Gerard Burken, Sallie Bailey, Matt Shurtliff, Jeff Mcdermott

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In Efforts to Evaluate the Use of Plants as a Forensic Tool for Delineating Contaminated Soil and Groundwater, a Laboratory Experiment and a Field Sampling Effort Were Undertaken. Site Assessments Are Often Costly and Inaccurate, Requiring Multiple Mobilizations to Hone in on Source Areas and Getting Accurate Estimates of Contaminant Extent and Distribution. as These Extensive Site Delineations Take Place, Valuable Time and Resources Are Lost. the Findings of This Study Show that Plants Can Be Used as a Tool to Evaluate a Variety of Subsurface Contaminants, Either in the Vadose Zone or in the Saturated Zone. in the First …

Analysis Of Privacy And Security Policies, Elisa Bertino, Carolyn Brodie, Seraphin Calo, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Clare Marie Karat, John Karat, Ninghui Li, Dan Lin, Jorge Lobo, Qun Ni, Prathima Rao, Xiping Wang

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The distributed nature of the environment in which privacy and security policies operate requires tools that help enforce consistency of policy rules across different domains. Furthermore, because changes to policy rules are required as policies evolve over time, such tools can be used by policy administrators to ensure the consistency of policy changes. in this paper, we describe a number of different policy analysis tools and techniques that we have developed over the years and present them in a unified framework in which both privacy and security policies are discussed. We cover dominance analyses of general policies, conflicts among authorizations …

Maxwell Garnett Rule For Dielectric Mixtures With Statistically Distributed Orientations Of Inclusions, Marina Koledintseva, Richard E. Dubroff, Robert W. Schwartz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An analytical model of an effective permittivity of a composite taking into account statistically distributed orientations of inclusions in the form of prolate spheroids will be presented. In particular, this paper considers the normal Gaussian distribution for either zenith angle, or azimuth angle, or for both angles describing the orientation of inclusions. The model is an extension of the Maxwell Garnett (MG) mixing rule for multiphase mixtures. The resulting complex permittivity is a tensor in the general case. The formulation presented shows that the parameters of the distribution law for orientation of inclusions affect the frequency characteristics of the composites, …

Labor Flexibility, Legal Reform And Economic Development, Alvaro Santos

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The current global financial crisis has provoked intense criticism of the regulatory framework for financial markets. Financial market flexibility, once considered the key to successful financial institutions and economic growth, has now come under intense scrutiny. In contrast, labor market flexibility is still promoted by scholars and international policymakers as an essential part of the recipe for economic development. This Article argues that the predominant understanding of labor flexibility is misguided and needs to be revised. To illustrate why, the Article undertakes a critical examination of labor flexibility as developed by a leading World Bank project, called “Doing Business.” It …

Quality Of Service Provisioning Through Resource Allocation And Data Aggregation In Wireless Sensor Networks, Carl Larsen

Doctoral Dissertations

"In this dissertation, improvement of quality of service (QoS) provisioning in wireless sensor networks (WSN) is examined using four different methods. The first two focus on allocation of limited resources in the face of changing network and channel conditions, and thus improving performance in terms of throughput and delay. The second two methods focus on using data aggregation to minimize the size and number of packet transmissions reducing the energy consumption and improving network lifetime.

Therefore, in the first paper a novel adaptive and distributed fair scheduling (ADFS) protocol for WSN is presented that allocates the channel bandwidth in proportion …

F₂-Isoprostanes Study After Exposure To Selected Nanoparticles By Liquid Chromatography/Tandem Mass Spectrometry And Investigation Of Nanoparticles On The Cytotoxicity Effect Of Arsenic In Vitro, Xiaoqian Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

"Nanopartices as a new class of materials found their applications in industry, aerospace, clinical diagnosis and cancer therapy. Recently, the health effects of nanoparticles have caused people great concerns. This dissertation studies the mechanisms of nanoparticle cytotoxicity in human lung epithelial cells (A549). F₂-isoprostanes are novel reliable biomarkers for lipid peroxidation. In the first part of this work, total free F₂-isoprostanes were quantified by high performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry followed by the exposure of SiO₂ (15 nm), CeO₂ (20 nm), Fe₂O₃ (30 nm), and ZnO (70 nm) nanoparticles for 24 hours. For the first time, the results showed that F₂-isoprostanes …

Modeling And Analysis Of Noise Coupling In Multilayer Power/Ground Planes, Gang Feng

Doctoral Dissertations

"The simultaneous switching noise (SSN) in a multilayer power delivery network (PDN) is a critical problem in high-speed printed circuit board (PCB) designs. Full-wave methods are not computationally efficient for analyzing PCB structures normally with a multi-scale nature. In this thesis, a model for multilayer power/ground planes is proposed using basic plane pair blocks derived from the cavity model combined with the segmentation technique. Vias and other circuit elements can further be easily integrated in the multilayer plane model. As a result, the entire PDN model is much more computationally efficient than full-wave methods. Experimental and numerical results have validated …

Applications Of Sensor Arrays In Acoustic And Seismic Signal Processing, Peng Xie

Doctoral Dissertations

"This work investigates the applications of sensor arrays in the areas of acoustic and seismic signal processing. It comprises three papers.

The first paper explores the problem of blind source separation (BSS) for convolutive acoustic signals. It concentrates on the well known permutation and amplitude problems in frequency-domain BSS and proposes a new hybrid approach to solve them. This approach connects the separation processes across all frequency bins, and relies on a novel permutation control unit. This framework could greatly reduce computational load and improve separation performance. Synthesized and real-world experiments demonstrate its efficiency.

The second paper investigates a new …

Fundamentals Of Friction Stir Spot Welding, Harsha Badarinarayan

Doctoral Dissertations

"The recent spike in energy costs has been a major contributor to propel the use of light weight alloys in the transportation industry. In particular, the automotive industry sees benefit in using light weight alloys to increase fuel efficiency and enhance performance. In this context, light weight design by replacing steel with Al and/or Mg alloys have been considered as promising initiatives. The joining of structures made of light weight alloys is therefore very important and calls for more attention. Friction Stir Spot Welding (FSSW) is an evolving technique that offers several advantages over conventional joining processes.

The fundamentals aspects …

On Unified Computational Intelligence: Neural Networks, Dynamic Programming, And Applications To Economics And Finance, John E. Seiffertt Iv

Doctoral Dissertations

"This dissertation introduces the concept of unified computational intelligence and encompasses algorithm design, applications, theoretical developments, and the identification of new frontiers for multidisciplinary research. It presents a new way to look at unified learning systems and presents a novel Adaptive Resonance Theory-based unified learning architecture. An application to robotic security and sensor fusion is given in detail.

Work on the theoretical developments of unified computational intelligence is also presented. A new theorem in the time scales calculus is proven and theorems on the Hamilton-Jacobi-Ballman equation of dynamic programming and the dynamic programming algorithm are presented, both for various general …

Tennessee Archivist 32, No. 1, Society Of Tennessee Archivists

Tennessee Archivist newsletters

Winter 2009 issue of the Tennessee Archivist, a newsletter produced by the Society of Tennessee Archivists.

On Capturing The Possible Significance Of Institutional Design And Ethos, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

At a recent conference, a new judge from one of the federal courts of appeal – for the United States, the front line in judicial control of administrative action-made a plea to the lawyers in attendance. Please, he urged, in briefing and arguing cases reviewing agency actions, help us judges to understand their broader contexts. So often, he complained, the briefs and arguments are limited to the particular small issues of the case. We get little sense of the broad context in which it arises – the agency responsibilities in their largest sense, the institutional issues that may be at …

Contracting For Innovation: Vertical Disintegration And Interfirm Collaboration, Ronald J. Gilson, Charles F. Sabel, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Rapidly innovating industries are not behaving the way theory expects. Conventional industrial organization theory predicts that, when parties in a supply chain have to make transaction-specific investments, the risk of opportunism will drive them away from contracts and toward vertical integration. Despite the conventional theory, however, contemporary practice is moving in the other direction. Instead of vertical integration, we observe vertical disintegration in a significant number of industries, as producers recognize that they cannot themselves maintain cutting-edge technology in every field required for the success of their products. In doing this, the parties are developing forms of contracting beyond the …

Heller High Water? The Future Of Originalism, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Has originalism won? It's easy to think so, judging from some of the reaction to the Supreme Court's recent decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. The Heller Court held that the District of Columbia could neither ban possession of handguns nor require that all other firearms be either unloaded and disassembled or guarded by a trigger lock. In finding for the first time in the Court's history that a gun control law violated the Second Amendment, Justice Scalia's opinion for the 5-4 majority appeared to be a sterling exemplar of originalism, the method of constitutional interpretation that he …

Design Complexity And Its Relationship With Sn Ratio - Larger-The-Better Characteristics With Finite Target, Naresh K. Sharma, Elizabeth A. Cudney, Sonali Sharma

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The concept of complexity is an essential constituent of axiomatic design and axiomatic quality. a reciprocal transformation is used to compute quality loss for larger-the-better performance characteristics in Taguchi's methodology. El-Haik's work on connecting robust design and axiomatic design with the help of mathematical relationships also considers the reciprocal methodology for larger-the-better functional requirements. Because of reciprocal transformation axiomatic complexity formulation for larger-the-better performance characteristics is different from that for smaller-the-better and nominal-the-best characteristics. Second, the signal-to-noise ratio based on complexity is also different for the same reason. This paper shows that a simple linear transformation in which a finite …

Predicting Gas Mileage Using The T-Method, Parthiv Shah, Elizabeth A. Cudney, Vivek Jikar

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The T-method is a technique developed by Genichi Taguchi to calculate an overall prediction based on the signal-to-noise ratio without the use of Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization. the Taguchi methods, also known as Robust Design principles, are used for optimization through planning, conducting, and evaluating the results of experiments to determine the best levels of control factors. the primary goal of Robust Design is to minimize variance in the presence of noise factors to achieve a robust process. This paper outlines the T-method steps using a forecasting case study to calculate miles per gallon for vehicles with a univariate response to illustrate …