In blending problems there are typically specification constraints that limit the content of various properties of the blend that it acquires from the ingredients to certain maximum or minimum percentages of the total blend. For sake of linearity, these constraints are commonly included in the problem in a way that precludes direct sensitivity analysis with respect to changes in these percentag...

s--By making the controller adaptive, ideal performance and granted stability of the closed loop system can be achieved for even a large change in system parameters. In the present study, adaptive controllers based on minimum variance, pole placement and linear quadratic techniques are investigated. The controller based on minimum variance is noise sensitive and actuator voltage changes sign af...

Real-effort tasks are used frequently in economics experiments for various purposes. One example is to study the behavior of agents in contests. In this paper, we study the effort choices of subjects in real-effort tasks within a contest environment. Subjects participate in pairs in a tournament with two equal prizes. Despite the absence of monetary incentives, we find that subjects exert a pos...

When an activity-on-arc (AoA) project network is to be constructed, one typically seeks to minimize the number of dummy arcs. Recent investigations have shown, however, that the computational effort of many network-oriented project management techniques depends strongly on the so-called complexity index ( C l ) of a network. We show other justifications for minimizing the Cl rather than the num...

Pythagorean fuzzy sets provide stronger ability than intuitionistic fuzzy sets to model uncertainty information and knowledge, but little effort has been paid to conflict analysis of Pythagorean fuzzy information systems. In this paper, we present three types of positive, central, and negative alliances with different thresholds, and employ examples to illustrate how to construct the positive, ...

We study the moral hazard problem without the first-order approach or other common structure. We present sufficient conditions under which the shadow value of simultaneously tightening the minimum payment and individual rationality constraints has a simple and intuitive expression. We then show how this expression can be used to perform comparative statics exercises in which we study (i) the ef...

A revolutionary entrepreneur strategically chooses the revolutionary agenda to maximize the likelihood of revolution. Citizens have different preferences and can contribute varying degrees of support. This presents the revolutionary entrepreneur with a tradeoff between extensive and intensive margins of support. We show: (1) Extremists exert a disproportionate influence over the revolutionary a...

In this paper, we present two methods for calibration of acceleration sensors that are inexpensive, in-situ, require minimum user interaction and are targeted to a broad set of acceleration sensor applications and devices. We overcome the necessity of orthogonal axes alignment by extending existing calibration methods with a non-orthogonal axes model. Our non-orthogonal method can furthermore b...

An imploding annular shock wave driven by a jet of air was used to initiate detonations inside a 76 mm diameter tube. The tube was filled with a test gas composed of either stoichiometric ethylene-oxygen or propane-oxygen diluted with nitrogen. The strength of the imploding shock wave and the sensitivity of the test gas were varied in an effort to find the minimum shock strength required for de...

By systematically altering the in-plane flight path and velocity of an aircraft and the rate at which the cable is deployed, the tip of a cable being towed behind an aircraft is shown to rendezvous with a ground-based surface location in minimum time, with minimum control effort required. This is achieved through optimal control, formulated as a nonlinear programming problem using the Legendre-...