Hierarchical multi-reservoir optimization modeling for real-world complexity with application to the Three Gorges system

High dimensionality in real-world multi-reservoir systems greatly hinders the application and popularity of evolutionary algorithms, especially for systems with heterogeneous units. An efficient hierarchical optimization framework is presented for search space reduction, determining the best water distributions, not only between cascade reservoirs, but also among different types of hydropower units. The framework is applied to the Three Gorges Project (TGP) system and the results demonstrate that the difficulties of multi-reservoir optimization caused by high dimensionality can be effectively solved by the proposed hierarchical method. For the day studied, power output could be increased by 6.79 GWh using an optimal decision with the same amount of water actually used; while the same amount of power could be generated with 2.59 × 10⁷ m³ less water compared to the historical policy. The methodology proposed is general in that it can be used for other reservoir systems and other types of heterogeneous unit generators.     

An unsupervised approach to generating generic summaries of documents

We present an optimization-based unsupervised approach to automatic document summarization. In the proposed approach, text summarization is modeled as a Boolean programming problem. This model generally attempts to optimize three properties, namely, (1) relevance: summary should contain informative textual units that are relevant to the user; (2) redundancy: summaries should not contain multiple textual units that convey the same information; and (3) length: summary is bounded in length. The approach proposed in this paper is applicable to both tasks: single- and multi-document summarization. In both tasks, documents are split into sentences in preprocessing. We select some salient sentences from document(s) to generate a summary. Finally, the summary is generated by threading all the selected sentences in the order that they appear in the original document(s). We implemented our model on multi-document summarization task. When comparing our methods to several existing summarization methods on an open DUC2005 and DUC2007 data sets, we found that our method improves the summarization results significantly. This is because, first, when extracting summary sentences, this method not only focuses on the relevance scores of sentences to the whole sentence collection, but also the topic representative of sentences. Second, when generating a summary, this method also deals with the problem of repetition of information. The methods were evaluated using ROUGE-1, ROUGE-2 and ROUGE-SU4 metrics. In this paper, we also demonstrate that the summarization result depends on the similarity measure. Results of the experiment showed that combination of symmetric and asymmetric similarity measures yields better result than their use separately.     

Study on maximum power point tracking of photovoltaic array in irregular shadow

Traditional maximum power point tracking (MPPT) methods can hardly find global maximum power point (MPP) because output characteristics curve of photovoltaic (PV) array may have multi local maximum power points in irregular shadow, and thus easily fall into the local maximum power point. To address this drawback, Considering that sliding mode variable structure (SMVS) control strategy have such advantages as simple structure, fast response and strong robustness, and P&O method have the advantages of simple principle and convenient implementation, so a new algorithm combining SMVS control method and P&O method is proposed, besides, PI controller is applied to reduce system chattering caused by switching sliding surface. It is applied to MPPT control of PV array in irregular shadow to solve the problem of multi-peak optimization in partial shadow. In order to verity the rationality of the proposed algorithm, the experimental circuit is built, which achieves MPPT control by means of the proposed algorithm and P&O method. The experimental results show that compared with the traditional P&O algorithm, the proposed algorithm can fast track the global MPP, tracking speed increases by 60% and the relative error decreased by 20%. Moreover, the system becomes more stable near the MPP, the fluctuations of output power is greatly reduced, and thus make full use of solar energy.     

Price ceilings as focal points to reach price uniformity: Evidence from a Chinese gasoline market

This paper studies the price uniformity in the Chinese gasoline market, using station-level data of Hohhot city, Inner Mongolia. We first document that the mode prices of the gasoline stations are consistent with the price ceilings set by the government, implying that the price ceiling regulation in the Chinese gasoline market may serve as a focal point for the gasoline stations to reach price uniformity. We corroborate the focal point hypothesis by providing evidence showing that some stations would “jump” to the ceilings as their prices approach the ceilings. Also, we find that local market structure, distance between stations, station capacity, market characteristics, and past pricing behavior could affect the probability of gas stations to price at the ceilings. Moreover, a higher price ceiling would reduce the probability that stations reach price uniformity. Our results provide another piece of evidence to the literature regarding the unintended effect of price ceiling regulation.     

High birefringence photonic bandgap fiber with elliptical air holes

In this paper, we proposed a high birefringence photonic bandgap fiber (PBGF) with elliptical air holes in cladding and circular air hole in core. The forbidden gaps of the honeycomb structure are calculated when the circular air holes are deformed to the elliptical shape. And the birefringence of the PBGFs is investigated by using a full-vector finite element method (FEM) and the numerical results are presented.     

Investigation of performance variations due to the amplitude of group-delay ripple in chirped fiber Bragg gratings

We measure the system impacts due to the amplitude of group-delay (GD) ripple in single and cascaded chirped fiber Bragg gratings (CFBGs). Signals with smaller pulse width result in smaller performance variation at the same data rate. A 65-ps peak-to-peak GD ripple induces 0.9, 1.7, and 2.7 dB maximum penalties for 10, 20, and 40-Gb/s, respectively. We also find that cascading gratings with random ripple causes much less degradation than cascading gratings with the same ripple profile.     

Optimization of Vane-Parameters for Gain-Frequency Response of Vane-Loaded Gyro-TWT

This paper discusses an analytical method to study the effects of the vane-parameters on the gain-frequency response of an azimuthally periodic vane-loaded cylindrical waveguide interaction structure for the gyro-traveling wave tube (gyro-TWT) amplifier in the small-orbit TE₀₁ waveguide mode configuration. The vane-loaded gyro-TWT enables the higher gain than that of the smooth-wall device. An optimum choice of the vane dimensions causes a change in the frequency corresponding to the peak-gain.     

Analysis of asphalt pavement structural response from an accelerated loading test

This study was to compare theoretical calculation and practical measurement structure response of asphalt pavement. Analysis of the pavement layer moduli was determined from a Back-calculation of Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) data and the measured stiffness moduli of asphalt layer cores. The pavement response was calculated using a theoretical model and the measured strain response at the bottom different layers. Layered elastic theory was used to back-calculate the layer moduli and three different theory models were used to forward calculate the strain and deflection. The models were: Layered Elastic Theory (LET), the Method of Equivalent Thicknesses (MET) with linear elastic and the Finite Element Method (FEM) where asphalt layer may be viscoelastic. The results showed that the calculation structure response from FEM was consistent with measured results.     

Fixed collision rate back-off scheme for collision resolution in wireless networks

This investigation proposes a fixed collision rate (FCR) back-off algorithm for wireless networks. The proposed scheme takes advantage of the central unit (CU) in a wireless network to broadcast a common back-off window size to all the users, significantly alleviating the unfairness of bandwidth utilization in conventional binary exponential back-off (BEB) algorithms. It is shown that, when maximum throughput is achieved, collision rate is almost a constant for any traffic load. In the operation of the FCR, the CU dynamically adjusts the back-off window size to keep the collision rate at a constant level for maximum throughput. Simulation results demonstrate that the unfairness of bandwidth utilization in the BEB is significantly lessened and the throughput can be maintained at e^-1≈0.368 when the number of users approaches infinity. The capture effect even further improves system performance.