<Emphasis Type="Italic">FCC/BCC</Emphasis> competition and enhancement of saturation magnetization in nanocrystalline Co-Ni-Fe films

The structure, chemical composition, and magnetic properties of electrochemically deposited nanocrystalline Co-Ni-Fe films were investigated using a number of techniques. A high saturation magnetic induction up to B _s = 21 kG was attained. An enhancement of the saturation magnetization compared to the ideal anticipated one was revealed, which correlated with the nonlinear behavior of the structural phase composition and lattice parameters with the change of the composition. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Forecasting call frequency at a financial services call centre

A forecasting model is developed for the number of daily applications for loans at a financial services telephone call centre. The purpose of the forecasts and the associated prediction intervals is to provide effective staffing policies within the call centre. The model building process is constrained by the availability of only 2 years and 7 months of data. The distinctive feature of the data is that demand is driven in the main by advertising. The analysis given focuses on applications stimulated by press advertising. Unlike previous analyses of broadly similar data, where ARIMA models were used, a model with a dynamic level, multiplicative calendar effects and a multiplicative advertising response is developed and shown to be effective.     

A Unified Constructive Approach to the Topological Degree in Rn

The paper gives an approach to the topological degree in Rⁿ which takes into account numerical requirements and permits derivation of the known degree computation formulas in a simple way. The new approach subsumes several earlier approaches and represents a general principle of construction of degree computation formulas. The basic idea consists of computing the degree of a continuous function relative to a bounded open subset Ω of Rⁿ by means of an auxiliary function which is defined on a polyhedron approximating Ω and maps into a known fixed convex polyhedron containing the origin of Rⁿ. It is further shown that the topological degree of a continuous function relative to an n-dimensional polyhedron P can be computed alone by means of a subset of the boundary of P .     

Quadratic data envelopment analysis

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) offers a piece-wise linear approximation of the production frontier. The approximation tends to be poor if the true frontier is not concave, eg in case of economies of scale or of specialisation. To improve the flexibility of the DEA frontier and to gain in empirical fit, we propose to extend DEA towards a more general piece-wise quadratic approximation, called Quadratic Data Envelopment Analysis (QDEA). We show that QDEA gives statistically consistent estimates for all production frontiers with bounded Hessian eigenvalues. Our Monte-Carlo simulations suggest that QDEA can substantially improve efficiency estimation in finite samples relative to standard DEA models.     

Extrusion of pastes with a piston extruder for the determination of the local solid and fluid concentration, the local porosity and saturation and displacement profiles by means of NMR imaging

 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) was used to investigate the extrusion behaviour of PTFE pastes in a ram extruder. By means of ¹H-NMR imaging (MRI) it is possible to determine the local proton density and therefore, the local fluid concentration. The ¹⁹F-MRI provides the local solid concentration. Thus the local saturation and the local porosity can be calculated with the information of the local fluid and solid concentration. Furthermore displacement profiles can be derived from NMR images by means of correlation techniques without any preparation or marking of the pastes. Received: 8 May 2000   Accepted: 1 May 2001     

A Language for Teaching Discrete-event Simulation

Courses which teach discrete-event simulation are based on many different simulation languages. The requirements for a language to support teaching simulation are discussed. In particular, it is recommended that such languages separate into distinct modules those aspects of simulation which are taught as separate topics. Implementation of the separation is discussed. The SEESIM language, developed as a teaching aid, is described, and examples of its use are given. Straightforward use of SEESIM can be learned quickly, yet the language provides facilities for a staged introduction to advanced concepts of simulation.     

Complete ideals and singularities of space curves

We consider complete ideals supported on finite sequences of infinitely near points, in regular local rings with dimensions greater than two. We study properties of factorizations in Lipman special *-simple complete ideals. We relate it to a type of proximity, linear proximity, of the points, and give conditions in order to have unique factorization. Several examples are presented. Received: 2 February 2000 / in final form: 14 March 2001 / Published online: 18 January 2002