Recently, several new pari-mutuel mechanisms have been introduced to organize markets for contingent claims. Hanson introduced a market maker derived from the logarithmic scoring rule, and later Chen and Pennock developed a cost function formulation for the market maker. On the other hand, the...

When the surface temperature of the outdoor coil in an air source heat pump (ASHP) unit is lower than both freezing point of water and the air dew point, frost can be formed and accumulated over outdoor coil surface. Frosting affects the energy efficiency, and periodic defrosting therefore is...

Usually, a medium such as water and electrical current is transported through an energy distribution network for delivering energy. Driving the medium through the network will lead to power loss. In this paper, a fundamental study was conducted to find out the optimal/near-optimal shape of an...

Reverse cycle defrosting is the most widely used standard defrosting method for air source heat pump (ASHP) units. It was suggested in previous experimental studies that during reverse cycle defrosting, downwards flowing of the melted frost due to gravity over a vertically installed...

The experimental part of the study of the reverse cycle defrosting performance on a four-circuit outdoor coil unit in an experimental 6.5kW heating capacity residential ASHP has been reported in Part I of a two-part series. The experimental results indicated that downwards flowing of the melted...

When an air source heat pump (ASHP) unit operates in heating mode, frost can be accumulated on the surface of its finned outdoor coil which normally has multiple parallel circuits on its refrigerant side for minimized refrigerant pressure loss and enhanced heat transfer efficiency. On its...

Investment income tax planning requires informed, strategic choices. One must determine the amount of qualified dividends and net long-term capital gain to be included in investment income (against which investment interest expense can be deducted). This choice also determines the residual...

We consider the problem of setting prices and choosing production quantities for a single product over a finite horizon for a capacity-constrained manufacturer facing price-sensitive demands. There is a fixed cost per production run and a variable cost per unit produced, both of which may vary...