this paper investigates the performances of artificial neural networks approximation, the translog and the fourier flexible functional forms for the cost function, when different production technologies are used. using simulated data bases, the author provides a comparison in terms of capability to reproduce input demands and in terms of the corresponding input elasticities of substitution esti...

Buffer capacity allocation problems for flow-line manufacturing systems with unreliable machines are studied. These problems arise in a wide range of manufacturing systems and concern determining buffer capacities with respect to a given optimality criterion which can depend on the average production rate of the line, buffer cost, inventory cost, etc. Here, this problem is proven to be NP-hard ...

iran is one of the most energy-rich countries subsidizing energy carriers, especially in the agricultural sector, to the extent that the resulting growth is at the expense of the environment. this study tries to investigate the potential impacts of energy price reform on the agro-environment, based on the marginal abatement costs (macs) of emissions. firstly, the energy demand function of the a...

Numerous studies have used historical datasets to build and validate models for estimating software development effort. Very few used a chronological split (where projects’ end dates are used so that training sets only contain projects that were completed before the start date of each project in the validation set), and only one compared chronological split to random split. Therefore the aim of...

the most costly operation in the oil exploration is the well network drilling. one of the most effectiveways to reduce the cost of drilling networks is decreasing the number of the required wells byselecting the optimum situation of the rig placement. in this paper, balas algorithm is used as a modelfor optimizing the cost function in oil well network, where the vertical and directional drillin...

Cryopreservation nearly universally depends on the equilibration of cells and tissues with high concentrations of permeating chemicals known as cryoprotective agents, or CPAs. Despite their protective properties, CPAs can cause damage as a result of osmotically-driven cell volume changes, as well as chemical toxicity. In this study, we have used previously published data to determine a toxicity...

this paper addresses a multi-criteria decision based methodology to develop a road network cost function for route finding analysis in a geographic information system (gis). over the years, several studies relating to route planning process in gis and intelligent transportation systems (its) have been conducted, most of which rely on the use of one-dimensional variables like distance or time as...

A new cost function based on stochastic fuzzy discrimination information measure is introduced in this paper. Focusing on their significant parts, this cost function is used to find the optimal value of threshold for denoising image. It is, in fact, an extension of fuzzy entropy cost function by the present author. Multivariable normal distribution is used for creating focus on significant part...

Designing distributed databases is an issue of paramount importance for executing transactions eeciently. The distributed database design process consists of three phases namely, the initial design, redesign and materialization of the redesign. The initial design consists of a fragmentation and an allocation scheme which minimize the irrelevant data access cost and data transfer cost. Over a pe...