Managing Fashion Goods Inventories: Dynamic Recourse for Retailers with Outlet Stores

The proliferation of both online and bricks and mortar outlet stores underscores the observation that secondary markets are readily accessible to retailers of short-life-cycle products. These secondary markets provide recourse channels for retailers to sell excess inventory of out-of-favor items at reduced prices when overstocking occurs in a primary market. We study the problem of determining when a retailer should terminate its primary selling season by selling remaining inventory on a secondary market. The retailer has a single opportunity to procure prior to a primary selling season consisting of multiple periods. Demand in each period is random, but correlated. At the end of each period, any remaining inventory incurs a holding cost. Then, based upon the current level of inventory and the cumulative demand-to-date, the retailer decides either to terminate the primary selling season by selling all or part of the remaining inventory on a secondary market, or to extend the current primary selling season by another period. We develop structural properties of the optimal policy for determining when to terminate the primary selling season, and we develop corresponding implications for procurement.     

Use of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale to measure success in a psychosocial day program

This study contrasted six subscales of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) to determine their sensitivity to psychosocial treatment outcome. An expanded version of the BPRS was administered to 216 clients on admission to a day program. The subscale measuring hostility and suspiciousness discriminated at intake clients who were therapeutically discharged from clients who did not complete the program and predicted discharge status after the investigators controlled for the effects of demographic variables. Significant reductions in scores were obtained on five subscales for a subset of clients to whom the BPRS was readministered before discharge. The results support the use of the expanded BPRS as an evaluative tool in psychosocial rehabilitation programs.     

Self and mutual admittance of slot antennas on a dielectric half-space

In this paper, an efficient implementation of the spectral domain moment technique is presented for computing the self and mutual coupling between slot antennas on a dielectric half-space. It is demonstrated that by the proper selection of the weighting functions in the method of moments, the analytic evaluation or simplification of the transverse moment integrals is enabled. This results into a significant reduction of the required computational labor. The method is then utilized in order to provide design data for the self and mutual admittances between two slot antennas on a dielectric substrate lens in the case of fused quartz (∈ _r =3.80), crystal quartz (∈ _r =4.53), silicon (∈ _r =11.9) and GaAs (∈ _r =12.8). The presented technique and associated results are useful when designing twin slot quasi-optical receivers, imaging arrays, phased arrays or power-combining arrays of slot elements at millimeter-wave frequencies.     

Modeling of Diffusion in Capillary Porous Materials During the Drying Process

This paper presents a model of heterogenous diffusion in capillary porous materials during the process of drying. The governing heat and mass transfer equations have been established using the liquid as well as vapor flow. Two models have been presented. Model 1 does not consider the heat conduction while the model 2 has been established by considering the conduction. The developed models and the numerical solutions of the resulting differential equations can take into account the moisture and temperature dependent thermophysical properties of the product. All equations have been established in spherical coordinates but the programme written for the purpose of calculations can be used for other geometries also. Numerical calculations have been performed for gas concrete and tiles using model 1, while model 2 has been used for gas concrete only because of the lack of data for thermophysical properties of the tile. For gas concrete it was seen that conduction has only marginal effect on the drying process and the numerical predictions of the drying process were reasonably accurate.     

Sequential tripping strategy for a transmission network back-upprotection expert system

This paper describes a sequential tripping strategy used in a wide area back-up protection expert system (BPES) to combat situations in which protection relays have maloperated or information is missing. The BPES is an innovative back-up protection scheme designed to prevent the occurrence of widespread blackouts. The BPES evaluates the certainty that transmission lines are likely to be affected by the fault and uses a sequential tripping strategy to isolate the fault if a firm decision is not available due to maloperated relays and/or missing information. The mode of analysis and the sequential tripping strategy ensures that the BPES will clear a fault at minimum risk to the network. An example is included to demonstrate how the certainty factor based sequential tripping strategy is employed by the BPES to clear a fault which occurred on the South Western part of the UK National Grid System     

Contextualizing is not nullifying: Reply to Mills (2005).

In omitting crucial words and sentencees, neglecting relevant citations, and overlooking important distinctions, Jon Mills' (see record 2005-04819-001) critique of relational psychoanalysis significantly misrepresents the authors' viewpoint. This viewpoint seeks to contextualize, but not to nullify, individual worlds of experience and their limiting horizons. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)