Special economic zones (SEZs) have been adopted by many countries, particularly in the Asia region, as a popular means by which to foster and stimulate economic development (Wong and Chu 1985; Oborne 1986). Encouraged by the success of SEZs in other Asian regions and countries in the 1960s and...

For a repairable k-out-of-n:G system consisting of line-replaceable units, its operational availability depends on component reliability, its redundancy level, and spare parts availability. As a result, it is important to consider redundancy allocation and spare parts provisioning simultaneously...

This paper deals with the global exponential synchronization of a class of delayed chaotic networks. Under some simple conditions, the global synchronization of a network about its all variables is derived by only considering the global synchronization of its partial variables. Furthermore,...

When we think about the loss caused by natural disasters, we generally think about the direct economic loss. Although the direct economic loss is often obvious, the subsequent indirect economic loss can also be quite substantial. This research is a case study about the indirect economic impact...

Recent studies on the kernel function-based primal-dual interior-point algorithms indicate that a kernel function not only represents a measure of the distance between the iteration and the central path, but also plays a critical role in improving the computational complexity of an...

Cascading effects are usually one of the common ways through which relatively minor hazards can substantially impact society and economy; the failure of a single industrial sector or cluster of sectors can result in cascading effect on other interlinked sectors. This paper attempts to quantify...

Prognostics and remaining useful life (RUL) estimation for lithium-ion batteries play an important role in intelligent battery management systems (BMS). The capacity is often used as the fade indicator for estimating the remaining cycle life of a lithium-ion battery. For spacecraft requiring...

This paper is Selected for presentation at the Southern Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, January 31-February 3, 2009. The research is partially funded by ERS/USDA China Project and Social Science Fund of Jiangsu Province in China. The authors are grateful for...