1,203 research outputs found

    Limits on WIMP cross-sections from the NAIAD experiment at the Boulby Underground Laboratory

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    The NAIAD experiment (NaI Advanced Detector) for WIMP dark matter searches at the Boulby Underground Laboratory (North Yorkshire, UK) ran from 2000 until 2003. A total of 44.9 kg × years of data collected with 2 encapsulated and 4 unencapsulated NaI(Tl) crystals with high light yield were included in the analysis. We present final results of this analysis carried out using pulse shape discrimination. No signal associated with nuclear recoils from WIMP interactions was observed in any run with any crystal. This allowed us to set upper limits on the WIMP–nucleon spin-independent and WIMP–proton spin-dependent cross-sections. The NAIAD experiment has so far imposed the most stringent constraints on the spin-dependent WIMP–proton cross-section

    The Optimization of the Performance Management for Operators in GJ Company Xiamen

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    本文以绩效管理的基本理论和GJ厦门厂的实际情况为基础,分析了GJ厦门厂一线作业员绩效管理的问题点,并结合公司目前的实际情况提出一线作业员的绩效管理改善方案。该方案以平衡计分卡的绩效管理体系为逻辑,将公司的战略目标分解到制造处,再分解至一线作业员,让作业员的绩效也能从财务面、客户面、内部运营面、学习成长面四个维度上对公司的战略发展起到支撑作用,以促进组织战略目标的实现。 在绩效管理改进方案中,作者特别强调沟通在绩效管理过程中的重要作用,它贯穿了绩效管理的整个过程。沟通有助于促进员工个人绩效的提升和员工个人的成长,从而提升组织的整体效益。 根据GJ厦门厂的实际情况,将一线作业员的绩效考核结...In this paper, operators’ performance management problems in GJ Company are analyzed based on the basic theory of performance management and the real situation of the company. The author propose to break down the company’s strategic targets to lower levels with balanced scorecard system by four levels of financial, customer, internal operation, learning and developing. So that operators’ performa...学位:管理学硕士院系专业:管理学院_工商管理硕士(工商管理硕士)学号:1792012115103

    Exergy comparison of lunar propellant manufacturing and insertion into LEO using a fully reusable refueling rocket

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    Quantifying the exergy requirement of propellant insertion into LEO can lead to insight into the feasibility of a lunar propellant-generating architecture. Spacecraft leaving from Earth can greatly reduce their lift-off mass if in-space refueling would possible. Exergy analyses quantify the available energy of a system and show where a reduction in usable energy occurs. Insight into the exergy destruction and input provides a key parameter into the scaling and design of processes and corresponding power systems. The present study aims to define an exergy environment in the lunar PSRs and then to analyze the exergy destruction related to the production of oxygen, ALICE, and hydrolox, in terms of both manufacturing and transportation using a two-stage fully reusable rocket. Extraction processes for ALICE and hydrolox were selected and analyzed w.r.t. the lunar environment to get an understanding of the exergy input. The behavior and exergy requirements of an LEO propellant depot was described. Two fully reusable two-stage rockets using ALICE and hydrolox were designed and compared based on their payload-to-propellant ratio for the oxygen, ALICE, and hydrolox payloads. The study found that the exergetic cost for the insertion of oxygen, hydrolox, and ALICE in LEO were 1.32 GJ/kg , 1.64 GJ/kg, and GJ/kg and 23.3 GJ/kg, 23.4 GJ/kg and 26.9 GJ/kg for the hydrolox and ALICE rocket, respectively.Aerospace Engineerin

    Diagnosing Intermittent Faults

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    In this working report we outline how to determine the intermittency parameters gj from the activity matrix A (context: DX’08 paper Abreu, Zoeteweij, Van Gemund). We start with the single fault (SF) case and show that averaging over the error vector e is the exact way. We also show that in this way the probability of obtaining exactly this e vector in A is optimal. This is the key insight that allows us to determine g in the general multiple-fault (MF) case. We formulate the gj problem as a (probability) maximization problem, which we solve using a simple gradient ascent technique.Software Computer TechnologyElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc

    Testing contributor & translator roles - harvest

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    GJ author, edited to add dc.contributor and dc.contributor.translator; cc-by-nc-n

    Agent-Based Modeling of Culture's Consequences for Trade

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    In this thesis, culture is interpreted as a property of a group of people who share the meaning they attach to symbols, have a common way of expressing their opinions and feelings, and share value systems to judge what is good or bad. The unwritten rules of a culture govern the interpretation of observations and emotions and how to react appropriately. The rules are embedded in an individuals’ mind, form childhood on, by interactions with group members. People often are not aware of differences between their own unwritten rules and those of people having a different cultural background. This may result in unwarranted distrust or unwarranted trust, with serious consequences for the future of relationships. Cultural differences are known to have their effects on trade. Signals that indicate benevolence and trustworthiness of a trade partner in one’s own culture may be interpreted differently by people having a different cultural background. Hofstede (2001) has identified five dimensions of cultural differences: ? Given ingroup relation with relatives and community members may have a different impact on professional relationships in different cultures. ? The impact of hierarchical relationships on the freedom of action of trade partners may be different across cultures. ? Some cultures are oriented toward cooperation and care-taking; others are oriented toward performance and competition. ? Xenophobia is a wide-spread phenomenon in some cultures, while people in other cultures may be more open to the unknown. ? In some cultures people are anxious to keep up their status and display their societal success, while in other cultures thrift and perseverance are seen as virtues. Cultural differences may have their effects in trade on the acceptability of potential partners, on progress and success of negotiations, and on the extent to which partners live up to the negotiated contracts. In a research project Meijer (2009) developed a gaming simulation to study the role of trust in supply networks of food products. The game is called the TRUST & TRACING game. In this game, the producers are informed about product quality. The other players either have to trust the suppliers on their quality statements, or they can have the products traced by an independent authority, but the latter will cost them a fee. In addition to the financial considerations, they must take into account that showing distrust may bring damage to their relationships. Experiments with human subjects in different cultures have shown that the considerations lead to different actions in different countries. It was also found that the inclination to grab an opportunity to defect was different across countries. The subject of this thesis is a computer simulation of the TRUST & TRACING GAME. The purposes of the computer simulation are: ? Validation of theories about, implemented in models of, the players’ behaviors ? testing of hypotheses about relations of rules of the game and parameters of individual players with aggregated game statistics, ? the design of useful game configurations to be played with human players. In the computer simulation the players’ rolls are realized by software agents. The questions which are answered in this thesis concern the modeling of culture’s consequences for the decisions taken by the agents. Such an agent is a computer program which simulates the behavior of human players. In a multi-agent simulation a group of software agents is acting and interacting simultaneously. Autonomy is an important property of software agents. The agents decide what to do; there is no central computer program that imposes decisions on them. Important functions of agents in the present simulation are to approach new potential trade partners, to negotiate about a transaction and to exchange proposals, and, when the negotiation has ended successfully, to exchange products, and to decide and request a trace to be performed. The agents’ decision mechanisms are implemented according to models and data available from scientific literature. To model the influence of culture on the decision making, an expert systems approach is taken, using the Synthetic Cultures according to Hofstede en Pedersen (1999). To develop an expert system, knowledge engineers represent knowledge about some domain of application as a set of rules that can be interpreted by a computer system. Since culture is considered as a set of rules, such an approach is a natural way to model it. The development of expert systems always is an interdisciplinary project. In this case the work of Geert Hofstede has been used and an expert on this work and on Synthetic Cultures has been involved in the formulation of the rules. Synthetic Cultures are imaginary cultures in which the effects of a single dimension of culture are emphasized, isolated from the effects of the other dimensions. The purpose is to make the differences related to that dimension teachable. In reality the differences may be less pronounced and may be mixed with differences related with the other dimensions. In this thesis an approach has been elaborated to compute the simultaneous effect of several dimensions. The approach is based on the principle of weak disjunction, which implies that, if several dimensions have a similar effect, only the strongest effects counts. For instance, if dimension A would have an effect of 75% and dimension B would have an effect of 25%, then their simultaneous effect would be 75%. Expert systems must at least have face validity. An expert in the domain of application mustaccept the decisions that the system produces and the reasoning that leads to these decisions, as being believable. For this purpose computations for specific cases can be made, of which the results are judged by the expert. Further, the results of sensitivity analysis can be judged by an expert. Sensitivity analysis of a model is performed by studying how model outputs vary in relation with systematic variation of input parameter. In addition to face validity, the model must be tested empirically. To that end outputs from gaming simulations with human participants can be compared with outputs from multi-agent simulations. For example, Meijer et al. (2006) found different outcomes from the TRUST & TRACING game between games played in the United States and in the Netherlands. Compared with the Dutch, American players are found to be more eager to buy top quality products, have a stronger inclination to opportunism, anticipate to a greater extent on their partners to defect, and have a stronger preference for quality certification. These differences where reproduced by the multi-agent simulation. The main question of this research is, whether an expert systems approach is feasible to develop a valid model of cultural differentiation in multi-agent simulations, to be applied in research with gaming simulations. The conclusions are: 1. Effects of dimensions of culture can be modeled as an expert system based on Synthetic Cultures. Modeling the simultaneous effects of several dimensions as an expert system proved not feasible: the complexity exceeded the intellectual powers of both expert and modeler. 2. The simultaneous effect of several dimensions can be modeled by weak disjunction of effects. The results have face validity and have empirically been verified for a limited number of cases. 3. Sensitivity analysis of this model is a complex undertaking if both cultural parameters and other parameters are simultaneously varied, because of the strong interactions between these types of parameters. When only the culture parameters are varied (with a fixed setting of the other parameters), or only the other parameters are varied (in a fixed cultural setting), straightforward sensitivity analysis is feasible. Furthermore, it was found that the sensitivity of aggregate model outputs may greatly differ from sensitivity of individual level outputs: parameters that do not affect the aggregate system performance, may affect results of individual agents. 4. This thesis proves that multi-agent simulation is a potent instrument to be used in research with gaming simulations, in particular for the purpose of validation of behavioral models. A problematic issue is, that similarity of the outputs of gaming simulations and multi-agent simulations is no sound proof that the agent correctly implements the human decision making mechanism. This issue is known as under-determination. A validation method is proposed, which builds on the model’s composed structure. Under-determination can be avoided by separate validation of the components in micro-games. The results of this research contribute to the methodology of cultural adaptation of intelligent software agents. This is relevant for the development of research instruments (like the TRUST & TRACING game), educational and training applications to make people aware of cultural differences, and affective human-computer interfaces in a globalizing world.MediamaticsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc

    Exergoeconomic and multi-objective optimization of a solar thermochemical hydrogen production plant with heat recovery

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    A solar hydrogen production plant based on a four-step copper-chlorine (Cu-Cl) thermochemical cycle is presented and analyzed in this paper. The integrated system includes a pressurized solar power tower, gas turbine unit, phase change material (PCM) for thermal energy storage (TES), Cu-Cl cycle, regenerative steam Rankine cycle (SRC), and a heat recovery unit. A predictive model is developed for energy, exergy, and exergo-economic analyses of the proposed system. A parametric study is also conducted to investigate the effect of major parameters on the system performance. The system is optimized with a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) considering exergy efficiency and product cost per unit exergy as the two objective functions. The results indicate that the energy and exergy efficiencies of the overall system are 48.2% and 45%, respectively, while the total product cost per unit of exergy is found to be 10.97/GJ.Theintegratedsolarsystemproduceshydrogen,electricity,andsteamatarateof0.1kg/s,50.49MW,and13.93kg/s,respectively.Paretosolutionsformultiobjectiveoptimizationindicatethattheoptimaldesignpointofthesystemhasanexergyefficiencyandtotalproductcostperunitofexergyof50.110.97/GJ. The integrated solar system produces hydrogen, electricity, and steam at a rate of 0.1 kg/s, 50.49 MW, and 13.93 kg/s, respectively. Pareto solutions for multi-objective optimization indicate that the optimal design point of the system has an exergy efficiency and total product cost per unit of exergy of 50.1% and 11.94/GJ, respectively
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