A warehouse location-routing problem

The interdependence between distribution center location and vehicle routing has been recognized by both academics and practitioners. However, only few attempts have been made to incorporate routing in location analysis. This paper defines the Warehouse Location-Routing Problem (WLRP) as one of simultaneously solving the DC location and vehicle routing problems. We present a mixed integer programming formulation of the WLRP. Based on this formulation, it can be seen that the WLRP is a generalization of well-known and difficult location and routing problems, such as the Location-Allocation Problem and the Multi-depot Vehicle Dispatch Problem. It is therefore a large and complex problem which cannot be solved using existing mixed-integer programming techniques. We present a heuristic solution method for the WLRP, based on decomposing the problem into three subproblems. The proposed method solves the subproblems in a sequential manner while accounting for the dependence between them. We discuss a large-scale application of the proposed method to a national distribution company at a regional level.     

Serum levels of RBP4 might not be determined by diabetes mellitus but by kidney function and renal replacement therapy

It has been reported that retinol-binding protein 4(RBP4) is associated to adiposity,insulin resistance,and type 2 diabetes.Meanwhile,circulating RBP4 levels are also affected by renal function.The aim of the present study is to investigate whether serum levels of RBP4 are primarily associated with different stages of chronic kidney disease(CKD) or type 2 diabetes,if there is more potential relevance between RBP4 and renal replacement therapy.The serum levels of RBP4 were assessed by commercial competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA)kit in 212 patients with the CKD stages 1—5 and in 24 healthy controls,while its correlation with clinical and metabolic parameters was analyzed.The serum level of RBP4 had a strong correlation with estimated glomerular filtration rate(e GFR)(P 0.001).Stratified by e GFR and treatment,no more differences in RBP4 serum concentration were detected between type 2 diabetic and non-diabetic subjects [CKD stages 1—5,non-dialysis(ND),hemodialysis(HD) and peritoneal dialysis(PD);P 0.05 for all].The elevation of RBP4 become higher in HD than in PD and ND in CKD5 patients(P = 0.008 and P = 0.04,respectively),while there was no significant difference between PD and ND groups.Multivariate linear regression analysis demonstrated three independent predictors of e GFR(β =-0.676,P 0.001),C-reactive protein(CRP)(β =-0.573,P 0.001) and creatine(β = 0.509,P = 0.024) in the study population.The study results demonstrated that the serum level of RBP4 was negatively related to the e GFR,whether diabetes mellitus(DM) affected the blood concentration of RBP4 or not.And the serum level of RBP4 exhibited significant difference in different renal replacement therapies.     

Numerical study for turbulent flow of drag and flow noise with wavy wall

In this paper, a numerical simulation of flow-induced noise by the low Mach number turbulent flow with a sinusoidal wavy wall was presented based on the unsteady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations and Lighthill’s acoustic analogy. Large eddy simulation (LES) was used to investigate the space-time flow field and the Smagorinsky sub-grid scale (SGS) model was introduced for turbulence model. Using Lighthill’s acoustics analogy, the flow field simulated by LES was taken as near-field sound sources and radiated sound from turbulent flow was computed by the Curle’s integral formulation under the low Mach number approximation. Both spanwise wavy wall and streamwise wavy wall with various wall wave amplitudes were discussed to investigate their effects on reducing the drag and flow noise. The relationship between flow noise and drag on the wavy wall is also studied.     

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作为一种公共交通付费手段的智能卡技术的出现，对于世界各国公交产业的经营人来说不但是可行的，而且有着很好的应用背景。对于公交乘客和营运人来说，公交智能卡的优势已经带来了非常明显的方便性和好处，与传统的付费方式相比（现金支付和月票卡），使用智能卡有较快的上车时间，较低的数据调查成本，更加充分的规划利息，更有效的防止逃票和假票，以及在应用综合收费上较好的扩展能力。本文回归了世界上具有代表性的公交智能卡的应用，并阐述了今后智能卡的发展趋势，同时通过文献回顾，今后的工作将随中国公交智能卡与世界其他国家应用进行比较，以提出对中国公交智能卡发展的建议。     

Performance analysis of AF relaying based on water-filling power allocation over Nakagami-<Emphasis Type="Italic">m</Emphasis> fading

This paper investigates exact performance of an amplify-and-forward (AF) relay system based on water-filling power allocation in Nakagami-m fading environment, where m is a nonnegative integer plus one half. We first offer the cumulative distribution function (CDF) and probability density function (PDF) of the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at a destination. Then outage probability, moments of SNR, higher-order statistics of the capacity are explicitly conducted. Especially, average symbol error rate (SER) under an additive white generalized Gaussian noise (AWGGN) is developed for water-filling power allocation scheme. While the average SER subjected by an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) can be regarded as a special case. Finally, all theoretical formulas are truly attested by various simulation results.     

Heuristics for the identical machine scheduling problem with preventive maintenances

In this paper, two mixed integer programming models integrating production scheduling and preventive maintenances are proposed to derive the optimal solutions for the identical machine scheduling problem with unavailability constraints. In the first model, the maintenance activities are performed periodically and the objective is to minimize the makespan. In the second model, the maintenance activities are flexible and the machines’ continuous working time cannot exceed a maximum allowed time T; the objective is to minimize the total completion time of jobs. For the first problem, we propose a heuristic longest batch time (LBT) and prove that the worst case error bound of LBT is 2. For the second problem, we develop a heuristic modified smallest processing time (MSPT) based on some properties of the optimal solutions. Computational experiments show that both of the heuristics are effective and efficient compared with the results obtained by CPLEX and the other algorithms.     

Hardware architecture design of block-matching and 3D-filtering denoising algorithm

Block-matching and 3D-filtering(BM3D) is a state of the art denoising algorithm for image/video,which takes full advantages of the spatial correlation and the temporal correlation of the video. The algorithm performance comes at the price of more similar blocks finding and filtering which bring high computation and memory access. Area, memory bandwidth and computation are the major bottlenecks to design a feasible architecture because of large frame size and search range. In this paper, we introduce a novel structure to increase data reuse rate and reduce the internal static-random-access-memory(SRAM) memory. Our target is to design a phase alternating line(PAL) or real-time processing chip of BM3 D. We propose an application specific integrated circuit(ASIC) architecture of BM3 D for a 720 × 576 BT656 PAL format. The feature of the chip is with 100 MHz system frequency and a 166-MHz 32-bit double data rate(DDR). When noise is σ = 25, we successfully realize real-time denoising and achieve about 10 d B peak signal to noise ratio(PSNR) advance just by one iteration of the BM3 D algorithm.     

Study on Oxidation Activity of CuCeZrO<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis></Subscript> Doped with K for Diesel Engine Particles in NO/O<Subscript>2</Subscript>

CuCeZrO_x and KCuCeZrO_x catalysts were synthesized and coated on the blank diesel particulate filter (DPF) substrate and a particulate matter (PM) loading apparatus was used for soot loading. The catalytic performances of soot oxidation were evaluated by temperature programmed combustion (TPC) test and characterization tests were conducted to investigate the physicochemical properties of the catalysts. The reaction mechanism in the oxidation process was analyzed with diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy. The results demonstrated that CuCeZrO_x catalyst exhibited high activities of soot oxidation at low temperature and the best results have been attained with Cu_0.9Ce_0.05Zr_0.05O_x over which the maximum soot oxidation rate decreased to 410 °C. Characterization tests have shown that catalysts containing 90% Cu have uniformly distributed grains and small particle sizes, which provide excellent oxidation activity by providing more active sites and forming a good bond between the catalyst and the soot. The low-temperature oxidation activity of soot could be further optimized due to the excellent elevated NO’s conversion rate by partially substituting Cu with K. The maximum particle oxidation rate can be easily realized at such a low temperature as 347°C.     

Vehicle trajectory challenge in predictive active steering rollover prevention

High center of mass vehicles are likely to rollover in extreme maneuvers. Available works present control strategies to prevent rollover. In these works, however, other important parameters such as path trajectory tracking are not a main concern. In this paper conflicts between rollover prevention and trajectory tracking is investigated. Model predictive control (MPC) is adopted to predict and avoid rollover while tracking desired trajectory. For this regard a model based future error estimation is introduced. The control framework predicts both rollover and trajectory error simultaneously. It avoids rollover while tries to track the trajectory. Simulation results for two controllers with and without trajectory tracking are presented. The results indicate that the controllers effectively limit rollover as a hard constraint while the trajectory tracking controller also minimizes and recovers the path error.