Improving Voting Systems through Service‐Operations Management

We apply service‐operations‐management concepts to improve the efficiency and equity of voting systems. Recent elections in the United States and elsewhere have been plagued by long lines, excessive waiting times, and perceptions of unfairness. We build models for the waiting lines at voting precincts using both traditional steady‐state queueing methods and simulation models. We develop solution methods to allocate voting machines optimally to precincts. Our objective functions consider both the efficiency and the equity of the voting system. We compare our allocation algorithm to several competing methods, including those used in practice. We examine several different strategies for improving voting operations on both the demand and the capacity side of voting systems, and we present a complete case study of applying our method to data from the 2008 election for Franklin County, Ohio. We conclude that our method is superior to existing polices in terms of efficiency and equity and that it is robust in terms of uncertainties regarding turnout rates on Election Day. We also suggest several operational improvements to the voting process drawn from the service‐operations literature.     

Therapeutic Applications of Online Gaming

ABSTRACT

This article discusses online gaming in the twenty-first century, describes online gaming, considers negative and positive aspects of gaming, and proposes several possible research, practice, and educational strategies for subsequent development of this genre into a useful tool for human service interventions. Positive characteristics of online gaming environments such as high levels of social interaction and the potential for transformative experiences strongly suggest that many clients will be utilizing such environments. In addition, practitioners must not only learn to assess client use of gaming but also develop the necessary knowledge and skills to utilize online games as therapeutic tools.     

Risk‐Informed Regulation and Safety Management of Nuclear Power Plants—On the Prevention of Severe Accidents

There are four operating nuclear power plant (NPP) units in Finland. The Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) power company has two 840 MWe BWR units supplied by Asea‐Atom at the Olkiluoto site. The Fortum corporation (formerly IVO) has two 500 MWe VVER 440/213 units at the Loviisa site. In addition, a 1600 MWe European Pressurized Water Reactor supplied by AREVA NP (formerly the Framatome ANP—Siemens AG Consortium) is under construction at the Olkiluoto site. Recently, the Finnish Parliament ratified the government Decision in Principle that the utilities' applications to build two new NPP units are in line with the total good of the society. The Finnish utilities, Fenno power company, and TVO company are in progress of qualifying the type of the new nuclear builds. In Finland, risk‐informed applications are formally integrated in the regulatory process of NPPs that are already in the early design phase and these are to run through the construction and operation phases all through the entire plant service time. A plant‐specific full‐scope probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is required for each NPP. PRAs shall cover internal events, area events (fires, floods), and external events such as harsh weather conditions and seismic events in all operating modes. Special attention is devoted to the use of various risk‐informed PRA applications in the licensing of Olkiluoto 3 NPP.     

Modified Asymptotic Formulas for Critical Values of the Kolmogorov Test Statistic

A brief discussion is given of the Kolmogorov test of goodness of fit. Modified asymptotic formulas for critical values of the test statistic, much more accurate for small-to-moderate sample sizes than the usual asymptotic formulas, are given.     

采用IBM——PC微机的多参数实时测量系统

本文所述系统能对各种几何量及其他物理量进行实时测量。在微机控制下,自动完成数据采集、处理及图形显示等工作。文中着重论述了IBM-PC微机软件定点自动数据采集原理及主轴运动误差测量软件等方面的设计要点。     

热电偶温度电势特性二次回归拟合的计算机处理

本文提出了一种应用计算机对热电偶传输特性进行二次回归拟合的方法。该法以标准热电偶传输特性的高次方程为基础,用户根据所选用热电偶的实际工作温度范围与允许误差,应用本文所介绍的处理方法及程序使可获得一组能满足给定精度要求的热电偶二次回归拟合方程,且这组方程的数自为最少。     

微机在变水头流量标准装置中的应用

本文讨论了应用在变水头流量标准装置中的Z-80计算机系统,详述了其硬件设计和软件设计。实践证明,用带有微机的变水头流量标准装置校验电磁流量计所得结果与通常的恒水头流量标准装置一致,说明变水头流量标准装置及微机系统是可行的。     

高校应用型专业自考生学习动机的激励与培养

学习动机是学习活动的原动力 ,对学习具有激活特性、始动机能、定向与导向机能、内隐性等特点。正是由于它在学习中的重要作用和高校应用型专业自考生的学习动机现状迫切要求采取措施激励和培养学习动机。作者结合工作实际 ,从创建“三环”模型、加强学习动机的内部激励与运用“圆环”模型进行学习动机的外部激励两个方面探讨激励和培养措施     

Applications in business,medical and industrial statistics of bi-aspect nonparametric tests for location problems

Starting from the theory of the Nonparametric Combination of Dependent Permutation Tests (Pesarin, 1992, 2001), Marozzi (2002a, b) proposed two bi-aspect nonparametric tests for the two-sample and the multi-sample location problems. These tests are shown by simulation to be remarkably more powerful than the traditional parametric and permutation competitors (which can be seen as uni-aspect tests) under heavy-tailed and skewed distributions. After a brief presentation of the bi-aspect idea to location testing problems, three actual applications are discussed. The first one is a problem of business statistics and deals with the analysis of time for service calls. The second one is in medical statistics and deals with the analysis of the effect of cigarette smoking on maternal airway function during pregnancy. The third one is in industrial statistics and deals with the analysis of the setting of machines that produce steel ball bearings. The bi-aspect testing allows us to draw deeper and more informative inference than that allowed by traditional competitors.Marco Marozzi: Part of the research was done when the author was in Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche, Universitá di Bologna, Italy.     

A winner determination problem of tendering transportation services

Summary  For the tendering of long-term transportation contracts in the bulk industry, shippers use bidbooks that specify for each lane the load location, the destination, the product and the volume that has to be transported over the next so many years. Bidbooks are sent out to a preselected group of carriers, who subsequently quote a price for each of the lanes. After the return of the bidbooks, the shipper determines the winning carriers. The winner determination problem is the problem of finding an allocation of the lanes to the carriers so as to minimize total transportation costs. The winner determination problem is NP-hard in the strong sense. We model the winner determination problem as an integer linear programming (ILP) problem and try and solve the model by use of CPLEX, a state-of-the-art ILP solver. It turns out, that the model can solve problems optimally with no more than 270 lanes. We also develop a fast randomized heuristic, and we show that it performs remarkably well, with a gap of no more than 0.8% from optimality.

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Zusammenfassung  Zum Abschluss langfristiger Transportvertr?ge in der Massengüterindustrie bedienen sich die Spediteure bestimmter Angebotsbücher, in denen für jede Tour die Ladestation, der Zielort, sowie die zu transportierende Produktart und deren Volumen für die n?chsten Jahre spezifiziert werden. Die Angebotsbücher werden an eine ausgew?hlte Gruppe von Transportunternehmen geschickt, die dann für jede Tour einen Preis angeben. Auf dieser Grundlage bestimmt der Spediteur dann die Transportunternehmen, die die Zuteilung der Touren erhalten. Dabei wird die Verteilung der Touren auf die Transportunternehmen in der Weise vorgenommen, dass die gesamten Transportkosten minimiert werden. Das Auswahlproblem ist NP-hard in strengem Sinne. Wir modellieren das Auswahlproblem als ganzzahliges lineares Programmierungsproblem (ILP) und testen bzw. l?sen es mit Hilfe mit CPLEX, einem Standardl?sungsansatz für ganzzahlige lineare Programmierung. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Modelle bis zu 270 Touren optimal gel?st werden k?nnen. Zugleich wird auch eine Heuristik entwickelt und vorgestellt, deren L?sung nur unwesentlich von der Optimall?sung entfernt liegt.