scholarly journals Optimal Supply & Demand Balance In Service Environments

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-52
Author(s):  
Eylem Koca ◽  
Mohammad Sedaghat ◽  
K. Paul Yoon

We study service environments that can be modeled as stochastic finite-capacity double-ended queues, where supply and demand arrive in independent Poisson processes to be instantly paired-off. In the case where throughput (output rate) is not a significant metric of system performance (as typically studied in the literature), we derive analytical results to gain managerial insights. We find that the operational decision on optimal supply/demand balance and the strategic decision on how to achieve that optimal balance can be decoupled and stratified. With the purpose of providing a managerial guide, we identify conditions for when to manipulate demand rather than supply, and vice versa. For the first time in the literature, we study throughput considerations in this context, and we analytically characterize the optimal strategy. Specifically, we show that it is optimal to manipulate either demand, or supply (and not both), and that the optimal system balance and the strategy on how to achieve it are strongly tied. Our findings can shed light on the managerial decision making process in these environments, and they can be used to revisit any governing strategies dictating management of demand (or supply) as a first course of action.

2020 ◽  
pp. 128-138
Author(s):  
A. S. Bik-Bulatov

The article uses little known letters of M. Gorky, many of which were published for the first time in 1997, as well as findings of Samara-based experts in local history to shed light on the writer’s work as editor-in-chief of the Samarskaya Gazeta newspaper in 1895. The researcher introduces hitherto unstudied reminiscences of the journalist D. Linyov (Dalin) about this period, which reference a letter by Gorky, now lost. The paper details a newly discovered episode of Gorky’s professional biography as a journalist: it concerns his campaign against a Samara ‘she-wolf,’ the madam of a local brothel A. Neucheva. Linyov’s reminiscences turn out to be an important and interesting source, offering an insight into the daily grind of the young editor Gorky, providing new evidence of his excellent organizational skills, and describing his moral and social stance. The author presents his work in the context of a recently initiated broader discussion about the need to map out all Russian periodicals for the period until 1917, as well as all research devoted to individual publications.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 66-77
Author(s):  
Vassiliki Markidou

This article attempts for the first time to shed light on the politics of simulation and dissimulation in Isabella Whitney’s ‘Wyll and Testament’. It also argues that the poem both reflects its creator’s awareness of the celebrated English historical and topographical narratives and deviates from them by crucially omitting a seminal part of London’s history, namely its Troynovant tradition. In so doing, as well as by defining a paradoxical urban landscape, Whitney presents a tale not of the (mythic) founding of the English capital with its patriarchal and nation-building connotations, but of its (satiric) bequeathal by benevolent femininity, as such offering its reader a different angle from which to explore and interpret early modern London.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mika Koverola ◽  
Marianna Drosinou ◽  
Jussi Palomäki ◽  
Juho Halonen ◽  
Anton Kunnari ◽  
...  

AbstractThe idea of sex with robots seems to fascinate the general public, raising both enthusiasm and revulsion. We ran two experimental studies (Ns = 172 and 260) where we compared people’s reactions to variants of stories about a person visiting a bordello. Our results show that paying for the services of a sex robot is condemned less harshly than paying for the services of a human sex worker, especially if the payer is married. We have for the first time experimentally confirmed that people are somewhat unsure about whether using a sex robot while in a committed monogamous relationship should be considered as infidelity. We also shed light on the psychological factors influencing attitudes toward sex robots, including disgust sensitivity and interest in science fiction. Our results indicate that sex with a robot is indeed genuinely considered as sex, and a sex robot is genuinely seen as a robot; thus, we show that standard research methods on sexuality and robotics are also applicable in research on sex robotics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 147 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tse-Chun Chen ◽  
Eugenia Kalnay

Proactive quality control (PQC) is a fully flow-dependent QC for observations based on the ensemble forecast sensitivity to observations technique (EFSO). It aims at reducing the forecast skill dropout events suffered in operational numerical weather prediction by rejecting observations identified as detrimental by EFSO. Past studies show that individual dropout cases from the Global Forecast System (GFS) were significantly improved by noncycling PQC. In this paper, we perform for the first time cycling PQC experiments in a controlled environment with the Lorenz model to provide a systematic testing of the new method and possibly shed light on the optimal configuration of operational implementation. We compare several configurations and PQC update methods. It is found that PQC improvement is insensitive to the suboptimal configurations in DA, including ensemble size, observing network size, model error, and the length of DA window, but the improvements increase with the flaws in observations. More importantly, we show that PQC improves the analysis and forecast even in the absence of flawed observations. The study reveals that reusing the exact same Kalman gain matrix for PQC update not only provides the best result but requires the lowest computational cost among all the tested methods.


Author(s):  
N. V. Koval ◽  
N. L. Korzhenivska ◽  
E. V. Dobrovolska

Development of trading activities is carried out in accordance with the current Concept of development of internal trade of Ukraine. At a rapid pace, changes are occurring in consumer preferences, assortment conditions, and the expansion of the influence of the geographical and species capabilities of the presented goods. The analysis of internal changes in the volume of goods turnover of enterprises by product groups, business entities at the country level and its individual regions made it possible to argue and justify the importance of observing the totality of organization principles, the balance of supply and demand, purchasing power, economic feasibility and payback. The used methods of author generalizations, analytical and statistical calculations, comparisons made it possible to systematize the digital material of the study and substantiate conclusions regarding the state and dynamics of the development of trade activities in Ukraine, as well as the Khmelnitsky region, as one of its regions. The study focuses on network marketing, as one of the forms of development and improvement of trade and the determination of the necessary nomenclature and bottlenecks in the activities of trade entities, including markets. The prospects of the use of electronic commerce (purchase and sales) are substantiated, which significantly expands the possibilities for carrying out trading activities for both buyers and trade enterprises. It is proposed to take into account the influence of demographic security, as one of the factors that shape the country's product policy and its export potential. It is determined that the influence on the increase in turnover indicators has an extensive factor in the growth of prices for consumed goods, in a certain way introduces distortions in the perception of digital information. The use of innovative technologies, modern methods of managerial decision-making in the field of marketing, logistics allows us to improve the trading process, satisfy consumer demand and ensure the effectiveness of enterprises in the trading sphere.


Author(s):  
Gianmarco De Angelis

A long Eighteenth Century, in continuity with the erudite tradition and the editorial method of Muratori, and a very brief Nineteenth Century, between the first decade after Italian Unification and the eve of the Great War, when a new and (at last) professional generation of scholars (Bonelli, Vittani, Torelli, Manaresi) brought a sweeping change in the field of palaeographic and diplomatic researches and of publications of medieval legal documents: these two are the coordinates (conceptual earlier than chronological) of the present monography, that for the first time deals in a historiographical perspective with a crucial season of Medieval studies in Lombardy, concentrating upon careers, projects and works of its protagonists. The focus is on the editors and editions of charters, but around them we find many other individuals and institutions of the regional and national cultural scene. The Leitmotiv is the delineation of a modern philogical method in the editions of Lombard sources, but the wider context is represented by more general (and stronger, and ideologically characterised) themes of Medieval Studies before and after the national Unification of Italy: the problems of Lombard legacy, the myth of communal age in the Risorgimento culture, the Visconti-Sforza state identity. Finally, this study about editors and editions of medieval charters in Lombardy allows to shed light on the organization of regional historical research, within an intense (and not always simple) dialogue between the hegemonic Milanese capital and the proud local traditions of the other towns and provinces.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mainak Bhattacharya

A hundred years since the first mention of the word empathy in the English language, scientists and philosophers have been unable to arrive at a common consensus on its precise definition. Common wisdom associates empathy with vicarious emotional arousal or altruism. This study conducts a systematic review of research work in business studies dealing with empathy. The method used comprises applying lower-level abstract taxonomy to empathy, for the first time, in external business stakeholder interaction situations of sales, marketing, and customer service. The measurement scales used in the studies are analyzed to showcase mental processes at stake during the act of empathy, the theorized functions, and expected business outcomes of empathy. Implications are drawn for various aspects of managerial decision making. The study suggests a novel framework to execute a more nuanced grade examination of processes involved in empathy and reducing subjectivity in conceptual definitions. The study also calls for overhauling empathy measurement scales, mainly to suit adaptations in empirical business studies.


PMLA ◽  
1947 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 1095-1099
Author(s):  
Herbert Eveleth Greene

That Robert Browning, the poet, possessed wide and multifarious learning is evident to a casual reader of his poems. The careful reader is impressed by the range and extent of his learning which includes much of what is called hole-in-the-corner knowledge, a familiarity with out-of-the-way topics and incidents that few readers possess. The scholarship of the past two decades has begun to give us a good deal of knowledge upon the nature of Browning's learning, and we are in a fair position now to estimate how much of the poet's knowledge was systematic and well-ordered, and how much of it was haphazard and based upon a following-up of this or that temporary interest. The letter which is the heart of this paper and which is published for the first time below will shed light upon this problem in an area in which Browning's training was probably most systematic.


2001 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 447-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. E. Burke ◽  
A. M. Degtyarenko ◽  
E. S. Simon

We have examined the linkage between patterns of activity in several hindlimb motor pools and the modulation of oligosynaptic cutaneous reflex pathways during fictive locomotion in decerebrate unanesthetized cats to assess the notion that such linkages can shed light on the structure of the central pattern generator (CPG) for locomotion. We have concentrated attention on the cutaneous reflex pathways that project to the flexor digitorum longus (FDL) motor pool because of that muscle's unique variable behavior during normal and fictive locomotion in the cat. Differential locomotor control of last-order excitatory interneurons in pathways from low-threshold cutaneous afferents in the superficial peroneal and medial plantar afferents to FDL motoneurons is fully documented for the first time. The qualitative patterns of differential control are shown to remain the same whether the FDL muscle is active in early flexion, as usually found, or during the extension phase of fictive locomotion, which is less common during fictive stepping. The patterns of motor pool activity and of reflex pathway modulation indicate that the flexion phase of fictive locomotion has distinct early versus late components. Observations during “normal” and unusual patterns of fictive stepping suggest that some aspects of locomotor pattern formation can be separated from rhythm generation, implying that these two CPG functions may be embodied, at least in part, in distinct neural organizations. The results are discussed in relation to a provisional circuit diagram that could explain the experimental findings.


2017 ◽  
Vol 81 (6) ◽  
pp. 1397-1404 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Menchetti ◽  
L. Bindi ◽  
D. Belakovskiy ◽  
F. Zaccarini

AbstractThe crystal structure and the chemical composition of uklonskovite from the holotype material was reinvestigated to shed light on its correct chemical formula. On the basis of information gained from this characterization, we revised the formula from NaMg(SO4)OH·2H2O to NaMg(SO4)F·2H2O (F instead of OH). A careful analysis of the structural details together with a critical review of all the chemical data listed in the scientific literature for uklonskovite support our redefinition. We also present Raman data for the mineral for the first time. Our proposal was approved by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification of the International Mineralogical Association (voting proposal 16-J).


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