Dynamic Customer Value Management: Asset Values under Demand Uncertainty using Airline Yield Management and Related Techniques

The focus of this paper is to demonstrate the close links between the airline and the manufacturing industry in so far as some of their decision support problems are concerned. We show that the yield management (YM) problem for the airline characterized by perishable and limited resources has counterparts in manufacturing and retail although with some variations. In the process of establishing similarities we highlight the importance of the concept of value of assets/resources, known as bid price in the airline terminology, that ties the two together. Several examples of its calculations and uses are provided. We believe that this new paradigm will open up new avenues for profits for manufacturers in the new era of e-commerce where the businesses shall have to be increasingly customer centric including pricing functions.     

Fin shape influence on analog and RF performance of junctionless accumulation-mode bulk FinFETs

Microsystem Technologies - The non-planar 3D structure of multi-gate FinFETs makes them able to be scaled down to 20 nm and beyond and also have greater performance. But any variation of...     

Design of a linear array of fractal antennas with high directivity and low cross‐polarization for dedicated short range communication application

In this article, the authors proposed an eight‐element linear array of fractal antennas for dedicated short range communication (DSRC; 5.9 GHz) service band. The single element of the array is a newly proposed fractal antenna whose radiating patch is derived from the Fibonacci series with the incorporation of Koch snowflake, and it poses a 2D quadrantal symmetry. The gain of the structure is improved by down shifting the radiating patch with respect to its ground plane. The feed network of the array is designed in such a manner to make the structure compact as well as to use the advantage of array mutual coupling for improving the array radiation pattern. The fabricated single element gives 7.54 dB gain and 128 MHz bandwidth with a radiation efficiency of η = 85.11%. The prototype array gives 15.18 dB gain with 105 MHz bandwidth and radiation efficiency of η = 72.12%. The measured cross‐polarization of single element and the array along the direction of the main beam are less than ?80 dB and ?60 dB, respectively, in both the xz‐ and yz‐plane. Both single element and the array are capable of satisfying the bandwidth requirements for DSRC applications.     

Entropy difference-based early skip detection technique for high-efficiency video coding

Recently, high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) has been developed as a new video coding standard focusing on the coding of ultrahigh definition videos as high-resolution and high-quality videos are getting more popular. However, one of the most important challenges in this new standard is its encoding time complexity. Due to this it is quite difficult to implement the HEVC encoder as a real-time system. In this paper, we have addressed this problem in a new way. Generally, for a natural video sequence good amount of coding blocks are “skip” in nature, which need not be transmitted and can be generated in the decoder side using the reference pictures. In this paper, we propose an early skip detection technique for the HEVC. Our proposed method is based on identifying the motionless and homogeneous regions in a video sequence. Moreover, a novel entropy difference-based calculation is proposed in this paper which can predict the skip coding blocks more accurately in a natural video sequence. The experimental result shows our proposed technique can achieve more than 30 % encoding time reduction than the conventional HEVC encoder with negligible degradation in video quality.     

Bilinear Coffin–Manson Relationship in Thin Sheets of Interstitial-Free Steel

Bilinear Coffin–Manson (C-M) as well as cyclic stress–strain (CSS) relationship is observed during low-cycle fatigue study (strain amplitude ?ε _t/2 = 0.0015 to 0.004) of an interstitial-free (IF) steel sheet unlike some of the earlier reports. In this work, an attempt has been made to correlate the observed bilinearity with the evolution of dislocation substructure and the nature of cyclic strain hardening in the selected steel. To achieve this goal, some of the low-cycle fatigue (LCF) tests were interrupted after the elapse of 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 pct of fatigue life, and the microstructures at various stages were examined using TEM. Cyclic hardening at low-strain amplitudes (?ε _t/2 ≤ 0.0020) is predominantly due to dislocation–dislocation and dislocation–precipitation interaction. On the other hand, at high-strain amplitudes (?ε _t/2 > 0.0020), subgrains start forming much earlier in fatigue life, and there is an additional contribution of subgrains toward the total hardening. The above phenomenon leads to a difference in the values of cyclic strain-hardening exponents, e.g., 0.24 at low (?ε _t/2 ≤ 0.0020) and 0.45 at high ?ε _t/2, respectively. The above difference is reflected in the bilinear C-M plot around the transition ?ε _t/2 of 0.0020 as also observed in the CSS plot.     

Effects of ash fouling on heat transfer during combustion of cattle biomass in a small‐scale boiler burner facility under unsteady transition conditions

Combustion of cattle biomass (CB) as a supplementary fuel has been proposed for reducing emissions of NO_x, Hg, SO₂, and nonrenewable CO₂ in large coal‐fired power plants; however, its high ash content resulted in fouling and slagging problems when the CB was co‐fired with coals during small‐ and pilot‐scale tests. Ash depositions during combustion of the CB as a reburn fuel were investigated using a 30 kW_t (100 000 Btu h^?1) boiler burner facility with water‐cooled heat exchangers (HEXs) under unsteady transition conditions and short‐term operations. Two parameters were used to characterize the effects of the ash deposition: (1) Overall heat transfer coefficient (U) and (2) Burnt fraction (BF). A methodology was presented and empirically demonstrated for the effects of ash deposition on heat transfer under unsteady transition conditions. Experiments involving ash deposition during reburning the CB with coals were compared with experiments involving only ash‐less natural gas. It was found that the growth of the ash layer during reburning the CB and coals lowered the heat transfer rate to water in the HEXs. In low‐temperature regions, the thin layer of the ash deposition promoted radiation effects, while the thick layer of the ash deposition promoted the thermal resistance of the ash layer. A chemical analysis of the heavy ash indicated that the BF increased when a larger fraction of the CB was used in the reburn fuels, indicating better performance compared with coal combustion alone. However, the results of ash fusion temperature indicated the ash deposited during combustion of the CB and coals was more difficult to remove than the ash deposited during coal combustion alone. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Impact of Interrupting Nurses on Mental Workload in Emergency Departments

The primary objective of this study was to investigate the impact of interrupting nurses on mental workload in emergency departments by using a Natural Goals Operators Methods and Selection rules Language (NGOMSL) simulation model. The model advanced our understanding of how interrupting nurses influenced their mental workload. A time study was conducted to collect emergency nurses’ behaviors related to clinical activities at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. After that, the NGOMSL simulation model was developed based on the time study data. Compared to the non-interruption scenario, the result showed that the nurse’s mental workload was 2.04 times higher during patient care activities and 4.72 times higher during EMR charting in the interruption scenario. The simulation results indicated that the NGOMSL model could demonstrate the impact on mental workload caused by interruptions in emergency departments. The findings of this study will contribute to developing a new way to measure nursing mental workload caused by the interruptions.     

Glass-ceramic glazes for future generation floor tiles

Glaze in the CaO–MgO–Al₂O₃–SiO₂ system was heated at 950–1190 °C for 2 h and characterized. X-ray diffraction showed that only trace amount of mullite was formed in the glass-ceramic glaze heated at 950 °C. Both mullite and α-cordierite were formed in the glass-ceramic glaze heated at 1050 °C as primary and secondary phases. Glass-ceramic glazes heated at 1120 °C and 1190 °C contained α-cordierite and mullite as major and minor phases. Rietveld analysis revealed that the amount of α-cordierite increased and mullite decreased with increasing heating temperature. Field emission scanning electron microscopy showed presence of mullite crystals dispersed within residual glassy phase in the glass-ceramic glazes heated at 950 °C and 1050 °C. In the microstructures of glass-ceramic glazes heated at 1120 °C and 1190 °C α-cordierite crystals were mainly appeared. Energy Dispersive X-ray analysis corroborated X-ray diffraction results. Vickers microhardness measurement demonstrated highest hardness (8.38 ± 0.07 GPa) of the glass-ceramic glaze heated at 1190 °C.     

Controllable synthesis of a hollow Cr2O3 electrocatalyst for enhanced nitrogen reduction toward ammonia synthesis

As a fascinating alternative to the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process,the electrochemically-driven N2 reduction reaction (NRR) utilizing the N2 and H2O for the production of NH3 has received enormous attention.The development and preparation of promising electrocatalysts are requisite to realize an effi-cient N2 conversion for NH3 production.In this research,we propose a template-assisted strategy to con-struct the hollow electrocatalyst with controllable morphology.As a paradigm,the hollow Cr2O3 nanocatalyst with a uniform size (～170 nm),small cavity and ultrathin shell (～15 nm) is successfully fabricated with this strategy.This promising hollow structure is favourable to trap N2 into the cavity,pro-vides abundant active sites to accelerate the three-phase interactions,and facilitates the reactant transfer across the shell.Attributed to these synergetic effects,the designed catalyst displays an outstanding behaviour in N2 fixation for NH3 production in ambient condition.In the neutral electrolyte of 0.1 mol·L-1 Na2SO4,an impressive electrocatalytic performance with the NH3 generation rate of 2.72 μg·h-1·cm 2 and a high FE of 5.31％ is acquired respectively at-0.85 V with the hollow Cr2O3 cat-alyst.Inspired by this work,it is highly expected that this approach could be applied as a universal strat-egy and extended to fabricating other promising electrocatalysts for realizing highly efficient nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR).