Scope Of Operations Research Articles

Development of Muruntau–Myutenbai joint open pit mine

Muruntau open pit mine has been in operation since 1967 and is one of the largest open pit mines in the world. As per the project of mining phase V effective since 2020, it is among the world’s three largest open pit mines. The distribution of ore reserves per horizons is analyzed with regard to nature-and-process zones delineated in Muruntau–Myutenbai joint open pit mine. The project parameters of the pit and the scope of mining operations were determined from the geological and mathematical modeling including the detailed survey data and borehole assay results. The open pit mining scenarios within the project limits of mining phase V up to 2030 are considered. The open pit mining scheduling is performed with regard to operational specifics of the deposit, number of nature-and-process zones and duration of the scheduling period. It is concluded that maintenance of the required gold content of ore to be processed needs stimulation of the annual mining output up to 50–60 Mm3 in the easterly direction of the pit at the preserved production output in all nature-and-process zones. To this effect, it is required to formulate a sustainable action plan, with the assigned performance indicators, with regard to the Extra Activity Progr am to Improve Production of Precious Metals at Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Combinat over the period to 2026 and further on to 2040. The authors appreciate participation of Head of a Department at VNIPIpromtekhnologii, Candidate of Engineering Sciences A. V. Seleznev in this study.

Reflecting on the Role and Impact of the Constitutional Value of uBuntu on the Concept of Contractual Freedom and Autonomy in South Africa

Private parties have the freedom and autonomy to enter into a contract. This autonomy is deeply rooted in their dignity and personal liberties. Private individuals, in furtherance of their autonomy and freedom to enter into a contract, have certain reasonable expectations, most fundamental of which is the desire that maximum respect is given to their legitimately concluded agreement. The concept of contractual freedom and autonomy connotes the idea that private individuals (natural and juristic) have the liberty to arrange their affairs in a manner that meets their economic interest without governmental inhibition, control and/or interference. However, the operative scope and the practical manifestations of the concept of contractual freedom are circumscribed in the constitutional, statutory, legislative and other socio-cultural orders of States. This article seeks to reflect on the role and influence of the constitutional value of ubuntu on the principle of contractual freedom and autonomy, and the naturally accompanying concepts of pacta sunt servanda and sanctity of contract in South Africa. The article provides an analysis of the judicial interpretation and views on the concept of contractual freedom and autonomy relative to other competing values that underlie the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. Furthermore, the article appraises the impact of those judicial views on international commercial agreements. The article also discusses the extent to which communitarian values such as the concept of ubuntu have been infused into South African contract law and further reflects on the implication of infusing such communitarian values in both domestic and international contracts. The article concludes with a suggestion that the introduction of traditional African values in South African contract law fundamentally alters the theoretical foundations of the principle of contractual freedom and autonomy in both domestic and international contracts.

Open Letter to Mothers against Drunk Driving

Although I shall be criticizing you, even severely, please do not take this amiss. I mean your organization no harm. Quite the contrary. My two children, in their early 20’s, are both new dri-vers. I would suffer more than I can tell you if anything were to happen to them as a result of drunken driving. I am thus a sup-porter of yours. I am on your side. Please take what I say as no more than friendly amendments to your plans and proposals. Some of the following critiques may sound harsh, but friends do not mince words with each other in life and death situations, and I would like you to consider me a friend of yours. We may disagree on means, but certainly not on ends.
 First, you must expand your scope of operations. While drunk driving is of course a major calamity on our nation’s roads, it is far from the only one. There are quite a few others, even besides the «big three» of speed, weather conditions and driver error1.
 What difference does it really make if our children and loved ones die in a traffic fatality emanating from drunkenness or any of these other conditions? Happily there is no need to change even the MADD name if you adopt this suggestion. Only instead of the first «D» standing for «drunk» it could refer to «death,» as in Mothers Against Death Drivers. All of these things —alco-hol, drugs, speeding, malfunctioning vehicles, badly engineered roads, weather conditions, whatever— are threats to our fami-ly’s lives. Why single out any one of them?
 A possible defense of the status quo is to borrow a leaf from the economists, and defend the present, limited, status of MADD on grounds of specialization and division of labor2. True, no one organization can do everything. Better to take on a limited agenda and do it well, than to take on too much and accomplish little or nothing.

Military technology in mine rescue

The sense of security is an individual’s one-sided personal expression referring to one’s awareness of existing threats and potential possibilities of their prevention. Thus we can observe a permanent development of technologies developed to meet the needs of military operations aimed at neutralizing threats related to explosives of military origin, as well as any improvised explosive devices. Threats are the events that adversely affect life, health, property or the environment, therefore, the mentioned technologies can be used in the civilian market as well. This article presents military systems that have been developed by Alford Technologies Ltd. (‘The World’s Leading Provider of User-Filled Explosive Chargers and Disruptors’). The systems that have been named ReBar Cutters™ and DIOPLEX™ have been developed to save the lives of soldiers, military equipment and any relevant infrastructure while conducting a wide scope of combat operations throughout the world. The systems can for example be easily used as an alternative support for mining rescue teams during mine rescue operations. The authors intend to present the above-mentioned systems due to their precision, accuracy, and most importantly, because the products are user-filled and therefore can be prepared on site and ready to use very fast. Tests of systems named ReBar Cutters™ and DIOPLEX™ presented in the study were carried out in Zakłady Górnicze Polkowice-Sieroszowice Oddział KGHM Polska Miedź S.A. at a depth of 850 m in order to check their effectiveness in the future environment (pressure, humidity, temperature, dust). The presented shaped charges with cumulative insert were elaborated with explosives used in mining – RIOPRIME 25 (Mini Primer) and ERGODYN 22E – and used for the cut steel structural elements (steel anchor rod), steel leveling cable, sheathed electric mining cable and an element form bucket loader type LKP 903. The tests were not financed, and the obtained results were part of the research in one of the author’s PhD dissertation.

Spatial effects of nutrient pollution on drinking water production

According to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), nutrient pollution was viewed as America’s most “widespread, costly and challenging environmental problem” (USEPA 2020a, https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-03/documents/facts_about_nutrient_pollution_what_is_hypoxia.pdf ). The economic damages accruing to nutrient pollution are extensive and substantial. Not only do such “spillovers” affect tourism but also recreational and commercial fishing. Property values are impacted as drinking water is often tapped from aquifers, etc., when groundwater is either not available or its quality has been compromised by the sort of nutrient spillovers we analyze in our paper. The EPA estimates that home prices are up to 25% higher when clean water is available and waterfront property values can decline because of the many problems associated with algal blooms. The costs of treating water that has been polluted from nutrients are substantial. An example is the case of Minnesota where nitrate and algal blooms required nitrate-removal systems that increased the drinking water costs from 5 to 10 cents per 1000 gallons to over $4 per 1000 gallons (USEPA 2020b, https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/effects-economy ). Although the notion that “spillovers” from nutrient pollution exist is intuitive, such externalities have not been evaluated empirically using recent advances in spatial panel econometrics, especially in the context of how such externalities spillover into the supply of drinking water supplied by local water utilities. Such an analysis requires a substantial understanding of how water management decisions are made, the technologies in play, and how various environmental policies, regulations, and directives interact with the generation of clean drinking water when contagion caused by nutrient runoff and poor or illegal pollution abatement strategies by firms pollute our country’s drinking water. Although our study does not formally imbed such factors into a structural model, they do inform our modeling approach and motivate our discussion of sometimes arcane issues surrounding environmental policy, the science of nutrient generation, and how nutrient pollution impacts water quality spatially. Our study explores the spatial effects of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) pollution and drinking water production patterns in agriculture. Two important examples are that water utilities that deliver and treat drinking water in agricultural areas have to deal with excess nitrogen and phosphorus released to the environment by crop and livestock operations, an externality created by the agricultural sector; also, the drinking water production sector in rural areas is highly fragmented, with a multitude of enterprise sizes, organizational forms and network densities that have spatial components. We analyze nutrient pollution based on data collected via the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 to estimate how water bodies and sub-basins impaired by nutrient pollution to spatially affect drinking water utilities based on input distance functions that address varying productive efficiencies of water utilities as well as their scale and scope of operations.

Accurate Classification of COVID-19 Based on Incomplete Heterogeneous Data using a KNN Variant Algorithm.

Great efforts are now underway to control the coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19). Millions of people are medically examined, and their data keep piling up awaiting classification. The data are typically both incomplete and heterogeneous which hampers classical classification algorithms. Some researchers have recently modified the popular KNN algorithm as a solution, where they handle incompleteness by imputation and heterogeneity by converting categorical data into numbers. In this article, we introduce a novel KNN variant (KNNV) algorithm that provides better results as demonstrated by thorough experimental work. We employ rough set theoretic techniques to handle both incompleteness and heterogeneity, as well as to find an ideal value for K. The KNNV algorithm takes an incomplete, heterogeneous dataset, containing medical records of people, and identifies those cases with COVID-19. We use in the process two popular distance metrics, Euclidean and Mahalanobis, in an effort to widen the operational scope. The KNNV algorithm is implemented and tested on a real dataset from the Italian Society of Medical and Interventional Radiology. The experimental results show that it can efficiently and accurately classify COVID-19 cases. It is also compared to three KNN derivatives. The comparison results show that it greatly outperforms all its competitors in terms of four metrics: precision, recall, accuracy, and F-Score. The algorithm given in this article can be easily applied to classify other diseases. Moreover, its methodology can be further extended to do general classification tasks outside the medical field.

On the shifted interpretation of appositives in embedded contexts

Appositives convey not-at-issue meaning and as such do not generally fall within the scope of operators. Recent research shows that they are, however, capable of shifting interpretation in embedded contexts (Amaral et al., 2007; Harris and Potts, 2009; Sæbø, 2011). This poses the question of whether, and to what extent, they act like presuppositions (i.e. not-at-issue meaning contributing to the semantics of embedded complements) and of how their content becomes intensionally relativized to the attitude holder of an embedding predicate. In this work, I will provide answers to these questions on the basis of new and old evidence from appositives occurring in embedded clausal complements. I propose that, syntactically, appositives are flexibly attached to different (embedded and matrix) sentence positions (Nowen, 2014; Schlenker, 2013). Meaning-wise, the application of the general interpretive requirement on appositives that they be eliminable (Schlenker, 2013) causes their low-attached instantiations to be possibly entailed in their local context. For embedded complements, this local context corresponds to the modal base of the quantification conveyed by the relevant attitude predication (Heim, 1992). This predicts the similarities and differences between them and presupposition triggers in embedded contexts. It also accounts for a wealth of data regarding the behavior of shifted appositives that are otherwise left unexplained.

Electronic fence device based on UWB positioning technology

The UWB high-precision positioning in the substation can realize the accurate judgment of indoor switch cabinet aisle spacing, limit the working scope of operators, and form an invisible electronic fence device. By installing positioning tags in the helmets worn by operators, real-time observation of personnel positioning can reduce the incidence of accidents and ensure the safety of electricity use.

Theories Of Marketing Strategies To Increase The Competitiveness Of Light Industry Enterprises

As the light industry market differs from the consumer goods, services and industrial market in a number of features, their marketing activities, scope, strategies and methods of operation also differ.

Vehicle Routing Optimisation in Humanitarian Operations: A Survey on Modelling and Optimisation Approaches

The growing field of humanitarian operations is driven by frequent events of disasters seen in the world today. Within this field, Operations Research (OR) plays a critical role in alleviating the suffering of victims that are impacted by disasters. This paper focuses on the branch of a well-known OR problem, known as the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), within the selected scope of humanitarian operations. A total of 123 papers of the last decade are reviewed and classified under the humanitarian operations of supply and delivery, evacuation as well as rescue operations. Besides specific disaster management phases and disaster types, various modelling challenges are highlighted, hinting towards a richer and more complex VRP seen under selected model characteristic classifications. Furthermore, established solution approaches, including hybrid solutions, are highlighted and classified, discussing how they are applied in the context of these humanitarian operations. The inclusion of a machine learning solution approach under the same classification is proposed. Finally, the trend and future outlook of VRP for the suggested humanitarian operations are discussed and highlighted.

Scope, Scale and Competition: The 21st Century Firm

We provide evidence that over the past 30 years, U.S. firms have expanded their scope of operations. Increases in scope and scale were achieved largely without increasing traditional operating segments. Scope expansion significantly increases valuation and is primarily realized through acquisitions and investment in R&D, but not through capital expenditures. We show that traditional concentration ratios do not capture this expansion of scope and are upward biased. Our findings point to a new type of firm that increases scope through related expansion, which is highly valued by the market.

Sova: A Software-Defined Autonomic Framework for Virtual Network Allocations

With the rise of network virtualization, the workloads deployed on data center are dramatically changed to support diverse service-oriented applications, which are in general characterized by the time-bounded service response that in turn puts great burden on the data-center networks. Although there have been numerous techniques proposed to optimize the virtual network allocation in data center, the research on coordinating them in a flexible and effective way to autonomically adapt to the workloads for service time reduction is few and far between. To address these issues, in this article we propose Sova, an autonomic framework that can combine the virtual dynamic SR-IOV (DSR-IOV) and the virtual machine live migration (VLM) for virtual network allocations in data centers. DSR-IOV is a SR-IOV-based virtual network allocation technology, but its operation scope is very limited to a single physical machine, which could lead to the local hotspot issue in the course of computation and communication, likely increasing the service response time. In contrast, VLM is an often-used virtualization technique to optimize global network traffic via VM migration. Sova exploits the software-defined approach to combine these two technologies with reducing the service response time as a goal. To realize the autonomic coordination, the architecture of Sova is designed based on the MAPE-K loop in autonomic computing. With this design, Sova can adaptively optimize the network allocation between different services by coordinating DSR-IOV and VLM in autonomic way, depending on the resource usages of physical servers and the network characteristics of VMs. To this end, Sova needs to monitor the network traffic as well as the workload characteristics in the cluster, whereby the network properties are derived on the fly to direct the coordination between these two technologies. Our experiments show that Sova can exploit the advantages of both techniques to match and even beat the better performance of each individual technology by adapting to the VM workload changes.

Infrastructural, Decisional and Organizational Aspects to Use Mode Shift to Handle Disruptions in Freight Transport: Literature and Expert Survey

Freight transport disruptions in recent years caused production shutdowns in the industry, supply shortages and high economic damage around the world. In practice, contingency strategies from transport operators are often weak and disruption management fails to handle the situation sufficiently. Despite availability of data collection, academic optimization approaches, and multiple initiatives for coordinated multimodal management in case of disruptions, there are multiple infrastructural, decisional and organizational issues, which limit their applicability. We study those factors by a literature analysis, and a survey in which we ask practitioners, authorities and academic experts to discuss specific aspect in structured and unstructured form. We summarize some parameters, which can be influenced by strategic, tactical, operational actions, and those others referring to systemic properties; or disruption characteristics, which can only be hedged against. Hereby, we offer a knowledge base to future projects aiming to optimize multimodal management at strategic tactical and operational scope, to counter disruptions in freight transport networks.

Features of training economists in education

The article provides theoretical knowledge on the methods, principles, criteria, mechanisms of management of the training of economists in the education system and the assessment of the impact of the management of the training of economists in the education system on the economy. In this regard, the issue of economic development of the country directly depends on the effectiveness of training economists in the education system. The concept of "qualification" is directly related to the category of "specialist". This concept usually has two meanings: first, it is an indicator that determines the employee's mastery of the relevant scope of work and operations, and second, it is an indicator that describes the employee's ability to perform a task with a certain level of complexity.

Advanced removal of water NOM by Pre-ozonation, Enhanced coagulation and Bio-augmented Granular Activated Carbon

Natural organic matters as intrinsic microorganic pollutants are a major concern in drinking water in scopes of water supply systems operation, consumer health, aesthetic and so on. This study was done on the real water samples that was first experienced in using integrated processes (pre-ozonation, enhanced coagulation and bio-augmented carbon) for upgrading existing processes of water treatment plant. The parameters of TOC, DOC, UV254, SUV, appearance color, turbidity, pH, TDS, heterotrophic plate count (HPC) and residual bromate were tested after each process. It was revealed that, using 0.5 mg O3/mg TOC, 15 mg/l polyaluminium chloride (PACl), pH = 7.5 and empty bed contact time (EBCT) of 5 min in bio-filter, the removal of TOC is 87%. The concentration of TOC in finished water was 0.8 mg/l that less than standard limit for chlorination (2 mg/l) without formation of bromate as carcinogenic by-product. Upgrading of existing plant by suggested process, not only could remove natural organic matters (NOMs) significantly but also protect reservoir and distribution network against regrowth of biofilm.

Corporate sustainability: increasing the quality of information in B2B companies’ reporting

Research background: Our research demonstrates that corporate accounting as a rule contains no frames connected with the disclosure of information about operations on digital platforms and indirect taxes on В2В operations, including tax risks. Purpose of the article: Our research revealed that corporate accounting as a rule contains no frames connected with disclosure of information about operations on digital platforms and indirect taxes on В2В operations, including tax risks. This information can be hidden in some reports, which are usually compiled on the initiative of the company. Methods: We can select information needs of the users as a starting point of raising sustainability of corporate governance. This is why companies compile different forms of reports containing both financial and non-financial information. Country reports reflect different financial, tax, and other indicators of international groups of companies in the countries, where participants of such groups operate (and, if necessary, explanations). At the same time, methodologically country reports are a chance to establish disproportion between the scope of company operations and the amount of taxes paid in different jurisdictions. Findings & Value added: Information about indirect taxes and B2B operations is of inconsistent, unstructured character, making its retrospective assessment both for an individual company and as comparative analysis for a group of companies impossible. We see further development of this issue in research of corporate websites and information disclosure centers for structuring and detailing the information of many companies participating in the B2B sector and developing common approaches to information disclosure.

Testing heat supply networks for heat losses

The scope of operations of the branch where the survey was carried out is: transmission and distribution of heat and heating medium to consumers through heat supply networks, maintaining the proper quality and amount of thermal power and heating medium supplied, ensuring contractual activities with heat consumers, as well as control of compliance with the consumption regimes stipulated by contracts, ensuring payments from consumers for supplied heat and heating medium, development and implementation of measures ensuring maximum efficiency of heat supply activities. The purpose of the work performed is to determine the actual heat losses through the thermal insulation of the surveyed heating networks and to compare them with normative values. The article presents an analysis of materials on the heat supply system; test findings for actual heat losses in a heat supply pipeline; calculation of actual heat losses for each section and their adjustment to average annual operating conditions of the given heat supply network; comparison of calculation results with normative characteristics. The test findings are used in developing the output performance for the «Heat Loss» indicator and in setting of norms for operating heat losses. The heat supply source for the heat pipeline is the CHP-plant. The pipelines are routed above ground on high and low supports, as well as in crawl ways. The thermal insulation of the pipelines is mainly made of 50 mm blankets of mineral wool and is typical for heat supply networks. In overhauls of heat supply networks, polyurethane foam is partly used as thermal insulation.

The fleet of regional air carriers in Europe commonality analyses in a broader context of business models research

While the tools of business model´s analyses focused on traditional and low-cost carriers are well elaborated by current economic research, regional air carriers stand aside from this research trajectory. This paper is aimed at answering the question whether the fleet commonality analysis is an adequate set-forwarding standard point to analyse business models of regional air carriers. Our analysis, covering 31 European regional air carriers (based on the descriptive data on fleet´s commonality and two variants of Herfindahl-Hirschman Index), reveals the spectrum of obtained results what indicates that there is more than one business model within the group of regional air carriers, and that fleet commonality itself is not an attribute differentiating regional air carriers from low cost carriers and traditional air carriers, nor identifying the business model of regional air carriers. This finding calls for spurring the research focused on further symptomatic features of regional air carriers in a broader context of their operation such as travel and reservation classes, customer´s loyalty programmes, network configuration, cooperation with other air carriers, domestic vs international scope of operation, cooperative arrangements with regional airports and regions within countries, participation in public service operation, and institutional framework of operation. From methodological point of view, the combination of approaches which have been already applied in the research of air carriers´ business models as well as new methodologies will be inevitable to be developed to understand more the business models of regional air carriers.

Data-Driven Incentive Alignment in Capitation Schemes

This paper explores whether Big Data, taking the form of extensive high dimensional records, can reduce the cost of adverse selection by private service providers in government-run capitation schemes, such as Medicare Advantage. We argue that using data to improve the ex ante precision of capitation regressions is unlikely to be helpful. Even if types become essentially observable, the high dimensionality of covariates makes it infeasible to precisely estimate the cost of serving a given type: Big Data makes types observable, but not necessarily interpretable. This gives an informed private operator scope to select types that are relatively cheap to serve. Instead, we argue that data can be used to align incentives by forming unbiased and non-manipulable ex-post estimates of a private operator’s gains from selection.

Developing a strategy for modernizing passenger ships by the optimal distribution of funds

The life cycle of a passenger ship consists of such stages as designing, construction, operation, modernization, and disposal. Modernization includes a certain variety of operations on the vessel upgrading and thus contributes to the extension of the vessel life cycle. It is possible to determine the types, scope, and cost of operations for each vessel under consideration after analyzing its technical condition. It is advisable to alternate the operations of direct and indirect influence on the would-be profit from vessel operation when compiling a list of necessary modernization operations. Those vessels that as a result of preliminary calculations will not bring profit after modernization should not be included in the modernization plan.Modernization is not able to replace shipbuilding as the main way to renew the fleet. However, under conditions of limited monetary funds, it should be used to smooth the need for new vessels.The optimal distribution of funds between the groups of operations on vessel modernization was determined using a mathematical model. Objective function maximizes the profit gain from modernization operations. The controlled system in this case is a passenger ship. The state of the system before each step is characterized by the number of still undistributed funds. As a result of solving the problem, a shipowner receives an answer regarding the amount of funds available for him, the groups of operations on the passenger ship modernization in which to invest to have the highest profit gain.Thus, the strategy of modernization of passenger ships by optimal distribution of funds is based on determining the types and volume of operations, their cost, utility, the ability to gain profit from the operation of a modernized vessel. It is also based on the optimization problem of allocating funds to modernization, provided they are limited