Survival in the U.S. petroleum refining industry

Of the 324 petroleum refineries operating in the U.S. in 1982, only 149 were still in the hands of their original owners in 2007. Using duration analysis, this paper explores why refineries change ownership or shut down. Plants are more likely to ‘survive’ with their original owners if they are older or larger, but less likely if the owner is a major integrated firm, or the refinery is a more technologically complex one. This latter result differs from existing research on the issue. This paper also presents a split population model to relax the general assumption of the duration model that all refiners will eventually close down; the empirical results show that the split population model converges on a standard hazard model; the log-logistic version fits best. Finally, a multinomial logit model is estimated to analyze the factors that influence the refinery plant's choices of staying open, closing, or changing ownership. Plant size, age and technology usage have positive impacts on the likelihood that a refinery will stay open, or change ownership (rather than close down).     

干渴的梯田:王金庄村水资源的分配与管理

河北省涉县旱作梯田系统是中国重要农业文化遗产。 其核心保护区域王金庄村位于太行山东麓,地形条件复杂,缺土少水、旱涝频发,但梯田系统因独特的人文智慧延续近八百年而不衰。 文章以水为切入点,阐释水资源短缺情形下百姓的生存逻辑与生计策略。 村庄作为一个系统对自然环境进行着补救性适应、抗风险适应与常态适应,这些文化适应性举措使旱作梯田的可持续发展得以实现,也展示出古老农耕智慧对于农业永续发展的重要意义。 因此,保护农业文化遗产不仅是对传统文化与社会系统的保护,更是对现代农业后果的生态补救,对农业与农村发展的现实反思,对可持续发展之路的探寻。     

Optimal designs for multivariate logistic mixed models with longitudinal data

This paper considers the optimal design problem for multivariate mixed-effects logistic models with longitudinal data. A decomposition method of the binary outcome and the penalized quasi-likelihood are used to obtain the information matrix. The D-optimality criterion based on the approximate information matrix is minimized under different cost constraints. The results show that the autocorrelation coefficient plays a significant role in the design. To overcome the dependence of the D-optimal designs on the unknown fixed-effects parameters, the Bayesian D-optimality criterion is proposed. The relative efficiencies of designs reveal that both the cost ratio and autocorrelation coefficient play an important role in the optimal designs.     

Reliability analysis of load-sharing systems with memory

The load-sharing model has been studied since the early 1940s to account for the stochastic dependence of components in a parallel system. It assumes that, as components fail one by one, the total workload applied to the system is shared by the remaining components and thus affects their performance. Such dependent systems have been studied in many engineering applications which include but are not limited to fiber composites, manufacturing, power plants, workload analysis of computing, software and hardware reliability, etc. Many statistical models have been proposed to analyze the impact of each redistribution of the workload; i.e., the changes on the hazard rate of each remaining component. However, they do not consider how long a surviving component has worked for prior to the redistribution. We name such load-sharing models as memoryless. To remedy this potential limitation, we propose a general framework for load-sharing models that account for the work history. Through simulation studies, we show that an inappropriate use of the memoryless assumption could lead to inaccurate inference on the impact of redistribution. Further, a real-data example of plasma display devices is analyzed to illustrate our methods.

     

施工企业投标优化的问题与对策

通过对某大型施工企业多个铁路、公路施工项目部的调查，总结了企业当前投标优化方面存在的问题。针对企业以铁路、公路项目为主业的特点，提出了优势项目滚动发展、建立有效激励制度、做好投标准备、优化施工组织设计、应用报价技巧等优化对策。对于施工企业改善市场经营效果，提高中标质量，增加项目盈利有重要的借鉴作用。     

洛必答法则使用技巧及注意事项浅析

洛必答法则是求解极限的一个非常重要的方法,一般教材的编写,只是着重例题类型的分类专门讨论,在技巧的讨论上着墨较少,文章则从洛必答法则使用技巧以及注意事项方面针对一些实例做出浅析.     

Internal consistency of demographic assumptions in the shared socioeconomic pathways

A new set of alternative socioeconomic scenarios for climate change researches—the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs)—includes for the first time a more comprehensive set of demographic conditions on population, urbanization, and education as the central scenario elements, along with other aspects of society, in order to facilitate better analyses of challenges to climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, it also raises a new question about the internal consistency of assumptions on different demographic and economic trends under each SSP. This paper examines whether the interactions between the demographic and economic factors implied by the assumptions in the SSP projections are consistent with the research literature, and whether they are consistently represented in the projection results. Our analysis shows that the interactions implied by the demographic assumptions in the SSPs are generally consistent with findings from the literature, and the majority of the assumed relationships are also evident in the projected trends. It also reveals some inconsistency issues, resulting mainly from the use of inconsistent definitions of regions and limitations in our understanding of future changes in the patterns of interactions at different stages of socioeconomic development. Finally, we offer recommendations on how to improve demographic assumptions in the extended SSPs, and how to use the projections of SSP central elements in climate change research.     

Flood Catastrophe Model for Designing Optimal Flood Insurance Program: Estimating Location‐Specific Premiums in the Netherlands

As flood risks grow worldwide, a well‐designed insurance program engaging various stakeholders becomes a vital instrument in flood risk management. The main challenge concerns the applicability of standard approaches for calculating insurance premiums of rare catastrophic losses. This article focuses on the design of a flood‐loss‐sharing program involving private insurance based on location‐specific exposures. The analysis is guided by a developed integrated catastrophe risk management (ICRM) model consisting of a GIS‐based flood model and a stochastic optimization procedure with respect to location‐specific risk exposures. To achieve the stability and robustness of the program towards floods with various recurrences, the ICRM uses stochastic optimization procedure, which relies on quantile‐related risk functions of a systemic insolvency involving overpayments and underpayments of the stakeholders. Two alternative ways of calculating insurance premiums are compared: the robust derived with the ICRM and the traditional average annual loss approach. The applicability of the proposed model is illustrated in a case study of a Rotterdam area outside the main flood protection system in the Netherlands. Our numerical experiments demonstrate essential advantages of the robust premiums, namely, that they: (1) guarantee the program's solvency under all relevant flood scenarios rather than one average event; (2) establish a tradeoff between the security of the program and the welfare of locations; and (3) decrease the need for other risk transfer and risk reduction measures.     

Convergence rates for uniform confidence intervals based on local polynomial regression estimators

We investigate the convergence rates of uniform bias-corrected confidence intervals for a smooth curve using local polynomial regression for both the interior and boundary region. We discuss the cases when the degree of the polynomial is odd and even. The uniform confidence intervals are based on the volume-of-tube formula modified for biased estimators. We empirically show that the proposed uniform confidence intervals attain, at least approximately, nominal coverage. Finally, we investigate the performance of the volume-of-tube based confidence intervals for independent non-Gaussian errors.