Key positions: Operations Analyst, U.S. Army, Ft. Monroe, Virginia (1955–56); Assistant Professor of Operations Research, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (1957–60); Associate Professor of Operations Research, Case Western Reserve University (1960–62); Associate Professor of Operations Research and Management, Sloan School, M.I.T. (1962– 67); Professor of Operations Research and...

Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) are a collection of algorithms inspired by aspects of the human immune system. The arguably most obvious application of AIS was to detect intrusions in computer networks. If we can fight viruses with our immune systems, then surely we can fight computer viruses with a computer immune system? Early AIS approaches used a technique called Negative Selection, which d...

Operational research aims to identify interventions, strategies, or tools that can enhance the quality, effectiveness, or coverage of programs where the research is taking place. Médecins Sans Frontières admitted ≈5,200 patients with confirmed Ebola virus disease during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and from the beginning nested operational research within its emergency response. This resea...

"PRECISE determination of the optimal allocation of resources within the health service, and between the health service and other wants of society, may be impossible. But to think in terms of optimal allocation, instead of 'meeting needs,' will produce better decisions." This is a quotation fronm a critical review (Feldstein, 1963) of the recent Nuffield study of operational research in the hea...

A major cause of the failure of information technology system (ITS) projects is the problem of fully understanding customer requirements. In this paper we introduce the idea of a Knowledge Requirement System (KRS) as an approach to overcoming the customer requirements problem. This approach combines in a novel way techniques from operational research (OR) and soft systems methodology (SSM). In ...

Soft Switcing techniques have recently been applied in the design of dc-ac converters, in order to achive better performance, higher efficiency, and power density. One of the soft switching techniques uesd in inverters is resonant dc links. These topologies have some disadvantages such as irregular current peaks, large voltage peaks, uncotrollble pulse width, etc. Another soft switching method ...

The Advanced Photon Source (APS), a third-generation synchrotron light source, was commissioned in 1995 at Argonne National Laboratory and has been fully operational for beamline users since 1997. The APS storage ring can accommodate up to 68 user beamlines (Figure 1); about 70% of the available beamlines are currently in use by various collaborative access teams (CATs). The 7-GeV synchrotron l...

This article provides an overview of the knowledge management challenges for practitioners and examines the extent to which existing information systems and operational research modelling approaches cater for the practice of knowledge management. It concludes that the current focus of modelling approaches on problem solving needs to be extended in order to deal with the human and social aspects...