FROM MANUFACTURING SCHEDULING TO SUPPLY CHAIN COORDINATION：THE CONTROL OF COMPLEXITY AND UNCERTAINTY

With time-based competition and rapid technology advancements, effective manufacturingscheduling and supply chain coordination are critical to quickly respond to changing marketconditions. These problems, however, are difficult in view of inherent complexity and variousuncertainties involved. Based on a series of results by the authors, decomposition and coordination byusing Lagrangian relaxation is identified in this paper as an effective way to control complexity anduncertainty.A manufacturing scheduling problem is first formulated within the job shop context withuncertain order arrivals, processing times, due dates, and part priorities as a separable optimizationproblem. A solution methodology that combines Lagrangian relaxation, stochastic dynamicprogramming, and heuristics is developed. Method improvements to effectively solve large problemsare also highlighted. To extend manufacturing scheduling within a factory to coordinate autonomicmembers across chains of suppliers, a decentralized supply chai     

Subset threshold autoregression

We develop in this paper an efficient way to select the best subset threshold autoregressive model. The proposed method uses a stochastic search idea. Differing from most conventional approaches, our method does not require us to fix the delay or the threshold parameters in advance. By adopting the Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques, we can identify the best subset model from a very large of number of possible models, and at the same time estimate the unknown parameters. A simulation experiment shows that the method is very effective. In its application to the US unemployment rate, the stochastic search method successfully selects lag one as the time delay and five best models from more than 4000 choices. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

PDE-Based Medial Axis Extraction and Shape Manipulation of Arbitrary Meshes

Shape skeletonization （i.e., medial axis extraction） is powerful in many visual computing applications, such as pattern recognition, object segmentation, registration, and animation. In this paper, the authors expand the use of diffusion equations combined with distance field information to approximate medial axes of arbitrary 3D differential properties. It offers an alternative solids represented by polygonal meshes based on their but natural way for medial axis extraction for commonly used 3D polygonal models. By solving the PDE along time axis, this system can not only quickly extract diffusion-based medial axes of input meshes, but also allow users to visualize the extraction process at each time step. In addition, the proposed model provides users a set of manipulation toolkits to sculpt extracted medial axes, then use diffusion-based techniques to recover corresponding deformed shapes according to the original input datasets. This skeleton-based shape manipulation offers a fast and easy way for animation and deformation of complicated mesh objects.     

Systemic Intervention in a University Department: Reflections on Arrested Action Research

This paper reflects on my experience as an insider researcher attempting to use critical systems ideas and practices to promote quality improvement in a university engineering department. Reflection is a key part of learning. This paper is intended to contribute to critically, self-reflective learning for the community of systems practitioners. These reflections on my questions about participation, ethics, politics of process, and the choices and actions resulting from them may help others to formulate their own. The complexity of systems practice places substantial demands on the researcher, particularly in the case of insider, practitioner research. Nevertheless, the exploration of critical systems approaches to critique boundaries and structure ‘problems’ in the core aspects of higher education in locally meaningful ways should continue. While demanding, it still can work to promote learning about authentic quality.     

Variation in FTO contributes to childhood obesity and severe adult obesity

We identified a set of SNPs in the first intron of the FTO (fat mass and obesity associated) gene on chromosome 16q12.2 that is consistently strongly associated with early-onset and severe obesity in both adults and children of European ancestry with an experiment-wise P value of 1.67 x 10(-26) in 2,900 affected individuals and 5,100 controls. The at-risk haplotype yields a proportion of attributable risk of 22% for common obesity. We conclude that FTO contributes to human obesity and hence may be a target for subsequent functional analyses.     

PEAK COVARIANCE STABILITY OF A RANDOM RICCATI EQUATION ARISING FROM KALMAN FILTERING WITH OBSERVATION LOSSES

We consider the stability of a random Riccati equation with a Markovian binary jump coefficient. More specifically, we are concerned with the boundedness of the solution of a random Riccati difference equation arising from Kalman filtering with measurement losses. A sufficient condition for the peak covariance stability is obtained which has a simpler form and is shown to be less conservative in some cases than a very recent result in existing literature. Furthermore, we show that a known sufficient condition is also necessary when the observability index equals one.