Design Of Balancing System Research Articles

Catch–quota matching allowances balance economic and ecological targets in a fishery managed by individual transferable quota

Fishers with individual catch quota, but limited control over the mix of species caught, depend on trade and catch-quota balancing allowances to fully utilize their quota without discarding. However, these allowances can theoretically lead to overfishing if total allowable catches (TACs) are consistently exceeded. This study investigates usage of balancing allowances by the Icelandic demersal fleet over 2001-2017, for over 1,900 vessels. When a vessel's demersal catch exceeds owned and leased quota for a given species, the gap can be bridged by borrowing quota from the subsequent fishing period or transforming unutilized quota in other species, restricted by limits. Conversely, excess quota can be saved or transformed into quota for species where there is a shortfall. We found evidence that balancing behavior is frequently similar across the fleet. Transformations are consistent with indicators of a general quota shortage and potential for arbitrage caused by differences in conversion ratios used for transformation and lease prices. Larger companies contribute more to these patterns. Nevertheless, TAC overages are generally modest especially in recent years-key reasons appear to be the tightening of vessel transformation limits and the central role of Atlantic cod, which is the main target species but cannot be persistently overfished due to a specific prohibition on positive transformations into the species. These results show how the tailored design of the Icelandic catch-quota balancing system has helped in balancing economic and ecological goals of management. We suggest policy changes that could further reduce ecological risks, e.g., prioritizing between-year transfers over transformations.

Where is my infusion pump? Harnessing network dynamics for improved hospital equipment fleet management.

Timely availability of intravenous infusion pumps is critical for high-quality care delivery. Pumps are shared among hospital units, often without central management of their distribution. This study seeks to characterize unit-to-unit pump sharing and its impact on shortages, and to evaluate a system-control tool that balances inventory across all care areas, enabling increased availability of pumps. A retrospective study of 3832 pumps moving in a network of 5292 radiofrequency and infrared sensors from January to November 2017 at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. We used network analysis to determine whether pump inventory in one unit was associated with inventory fluctuations in others. We used a quasi-experimental design and segmented regressions to evaluate the effect of the system-control tool on enabling safe inventory levels in all care areas. We found 93 care areas connected through 67,111 pump transactions and 4 discernible clusters of pump sharing. Up to 17% (95% confidence interval, 7%-27%) of a unit's pump inventory was explained by the inventory of other units within its cluster. The network analysis supported design and deployment of a hospital-wide inventory balancing system, which resulted in a 44% (95% confidence interval, 36%-53%) increase in the number of care areas above safe inventory levels. Network phenomena are essential inputs to hospital equipment fleet management. Consequently, benefits of improved inventory management in strategic unit(s) are capable of spreading safer inventory levels throughout the hospital.

The Issue of Balancing Internal Combustion Engines with Non-Conventional Crank Mechanism

It is possible to use not only classical crank mechanisms, but also non-conventional mechanisms in design of combustion engines. Balancing these mechanisms is a fundamental prerequisite of their proper function and long life. The concept of measuring system for balancing analysis is applied to a special type of piston machines with wobble mechanism. First part of the paper deals with description of FIK nonconventional mechanism (named after the inventors Fitz, Istenik, Kukuca), main parts and its functionality. Second part deals with measuring system, which is designed to measure dynamic parameters of non-conventional piston mechanism. The measuring system concept is applied to a special type of piston machines with wobble board. Analysis compares the three basic states, without balancing mass and with first and second type of balancing mass. Balancing system is determined from the calculation of the dynamical model. Design of balancing system and placement of sensor for acceleration measurement corresponds to the constructional possibilities of prototype model FIK.

Basic Dynamical Analysis and Comparison of Balancing Systems of Non-conventional Piston Machine FIK

The paper is divided into two main sections. First part deals with description of FIK non-conventional mechanism, main parts and its functionality. Second part deals with measuring system, which is designed to measure dynamic parameters of non-conventional piston mechanism. The concept of measuring system is applied to a special type of piston machine with wobble mechanism, which is used in this instance of Stirling engine type. Analysis compares the three basic states, without balancing mass and with first and second type of balancing mass. Balancing system is determined from the calculation of the dynamic model. Design of balancing system and placement of sensor for acceleration measurement corresponds to the constructional possibilities of prototype model FIK.

Load Balancing for Disaster Recovery and Management

In this paper, the design and working of a patient load balancing system is described to enhance the automated patient handling in mass disasters involving scores of injured victims. The MEDTOC system developed earlier is augmented to handle the larger size of disasters resulting from mass casualty events. This load balancing system can be deployed urgently if the scope of the disaster is larger than estimated initially. It starts to operate when a large number of patients have been assigned to area hospitals and some hospitals have become overloaded. This system assigns affinity values to patients based on their trauma condition and moves the selected patients between hospitals until all the hospitals have stabilized. The system is implemented on a simulated disaster and results are presented. The results show improvement in the load conditions of hospitals.

Energy-aware and QoS-aware load balancing for HetNets powered by renewable energy

Cellular networks are now rapidly evolving to renewable heterogeneous network (HetNet) architectures, where a mixture of macro base stations (BSs) and small cell BSs coexist within the cellular network. Particularly, these BSs are partly-powered or self-powered by renewable energy sources (RES). Load awareness has been elevated to a central problem for HetNets, while RES also poses relevant technical challenges. Thus, load balancing for RES powered HetNets is quite challenging. Focusing on this, we study the energy-aware and quality of service (QoS)-aware load balancing for this type of HetNets. With the objective of maximizing network-wide weighted utility of load efficiency in a time duration, where the weight is the corresponding amount of consumed resources, we formulate a user association optimization problem. Based on relaxing, discretization and dual decomposition, an optimal offline algorithm is firstly obtained. Then, distributed and low-complexity suboptimal online algorithms are proposed. Last, given load balancing index and call blocking probability as metrics, numerical results evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms, which demonstrates the accuracy of the theoretical analysis and provides further insights into the design and operation of the energy-aware load balancing system.

Design and Implementation of a Web Service Load Balancing System Based on HTTP Redirection Technology

Design and Implementation of a Web Service Load Balancing System Based on HTTP Redirection Technology