Search

The recent evolution and outburst risk of two typical moraine-dammed lakes, Galong and Gangxi, central Chinese Himalaya, are analyzed using topographic maps from 1974 and Landsat satellite imagery acquired in 1988, 2000 and 2014. The datasets show the areas of Galong and Gangxi lakes increasing at rates of 0.45 and 0.34 km2/year during the period 1974–2014, an expansion of 501% and 107%, respectively, in the past 41 years, while the areas of the parent glaciers, Reqiang and Jipucong decreased by 44.22% and 37.76%, respectively. The accelerating retreat of the glaciers not only reflects their generally negative mass balance but is consistent with the rapid expansion of the moraine-dammed lakes. When acted upon by external forces such as earthquakes, heavy rainfall, rapid melting of glaciers and dead ice, and snow/ice/rock avalanches, these lakes can become extremely dangerous, easily forming outburst mudslides, which can potentially spread to the Poiqu river basin and develop into cross-border (China and Nepal) GLOF disasters. Therefore, there is an urgent need to strengthen integrated risk management of glacial lake outburst disasters with multiple objectives and modes.

Scheduling for the flexible job-shop is a very important issue in both fields of combinatorial optimization and production operations. However, due to combination of the routing and sequencing problems, flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) presents additional difficulty than the classical job-shop scheduling problem and requires more effective algorithms. This paper developed a filtered-beam-search-based heuristic algorithm (named as HFBS) to find sub-optimal schedules within a reasonable computational time for the FJSP with multiple objectives of minimising makespan, the total workload of machines and the workload of the most loaded machine. The proposed algorithm incorporates dispatching rules based heuristics and explores intelligently the search space to avoid useless paths, which makes it possible to improve the search speed. Through computational experiments, the performance of the presented algorithm is evaluated and compared with those of existing literature and those of commonly used dispa...

The transport of solar flare particles in the corona is studied. Considering the problems in terms of the characteristics of a sunspot group producing solar cosmic rays and solar flare processes, we find that formation of the fast propagation process is associated with annihilation of sunspots in the group with magnetic multipolarity. The slower propagation process depends on magnetic irregularities in the corona, and the evolution of the transport is related to the flare processes. Equations for the coronal transport are proposed and their initial and boundary conditions are given. The predicted results agree with the main observational features.

In this paper, an agent-based Decision Support System (DSS) for the effective dynamic scheduling of a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) is proposed. The proposed DSS mainly includes six components: User Interface Agent (UIA), Criteria And Rules Selection Agent (CRSA), Performance Evaluation Agent (PEA), Scheduling Decision Selection Agent (SDSA), FMS database and Scheduling Knowledge Base (SKB). Functions of each component are discussed and a corresponding prototype system is developed. Finally, some examples are used to illustrate the decision process and to study the performance of the FMS under different dynamic disturbances.

Combining the merits of linear and toroidal configurations with the fast and slow process concepts, we consider a fusion reactor concept consisting of two axisymmetric tandem mirrorlike sections and two heliac stellarator U-bends. The D-D reactor parameters are presented. The radio frequency (RF), energetic components and the plugs are needed only at the startup phase. These greatly cut down the cost and relax the technical requirements of engineering.

In the slab model the so-called universal modes are absolutly stable. How about the cylindrical plasma? The main difference is that instead of the out-going boundary condition in the slab mode, in the cylindrical plasma there is not any wave energy outgoing at r=0 and r=∞. This may change the stabilities of the modes effectively.Assuming exponential plasma density and current profiles, the integral eigen-equa-tion of drift wave has been derived. In the ease of slow radial variation, it can be converted into a second order differential equation. The equation has been solved numerically. The results show that the unstable modes do exist. The comparison between the two models (cylindrical one and slab one) has been made.