The private pension structure in the United States, once dominated by defined benefit (DB) plans, is currently divided between defined contribution (DC) and DB plans. Wealth accumulation in DC plans depends on the participant's contribution behavior and on financial market returns, while accumulation in DB plans is sensitive to a participant's labor market experience and to plan parameters. Thi...

Many proposed health insurance reforms would establish a federal minimum benefit standard--a baseline set of benefits to ensure that people have adequate coverage and financial protection when they purchase insurance. Currently, benefit mandates are set at the state level; these vary greatly across states and generally target specific areas rather than set an overall standard for what qualifies...

In this paper, we reformulate the diffuse interface model of the tumor growth (S.M. Wise et al., Three-dimensional multispecies nonlinear tumor growth-I: model and numerical method, J. Theor. Biol. 253 (2008) 524--543). In the new proposed model, we use the conservative second-order Allen--Cahn equation with a space--time dependent Lagrange multiplier instead of using the fourth-order Cahn--Hil...

We study the one-dimensional Cahn-Hilliard equation with an additional driving term representing, say, the effect of gravity. We find that the driving field E has an asymmetric effect on the solution for a single stationary domain wall (or ‘kink’), the direction of the field determining whether the analytic solutions found by Leung [J. Stat. Phys. 61, 345 (1990)] are unique. The dynamics of a k...

Many ecosystems develop strikingly regular spatial patterns because of small-scale interactions between organisms, a process generally referred to as spatial self-organization. Self-organized spatial patterns are important determinants of the functioning of ecosystems, promoting the growth and survival of the involved organisms, and affecting the capacity of the organisms to cope with changing ...

We propose an extension of Saaty's AHP based on Choquet integration. In our model an appropriate measure of inconsistency is explicitly considered in the aggregation process in order to attenuate (resp. emphasize) the priority values of the criteria with higher (resp. lower) average inconsistency with the remaining criteria.

This study deals with the application of Fuzzy AHP method for evaluating Green supply chain management strategies for cement manufacturing company. The strategies are calculated by the model of Fuzzy AHP, the main attributes, sub attributes and measurement indicators are defined based on the cement manufacturing process. The weights are calculated based on the pair-wise comparison of matrices o...

The grounding process relies on the evidence that speakers give about their understanding (Clark and Schaefer, 1989). However in existing models of grounding (Cahn, 1992; Cahn and Brennan, 1999; Traum, 1999) evidence of understanding is assumed to be symmetrically and synchronously shared by the speakers. We propose a grounding model based on (Cahn, 1992) that removes these simplifications; we ...