Time and cost are among the important aspects considered for every construction project. Many research approaches have been followed to model time-cost relationship. There is a constant rise in the use of innovative contract methods which provide incentives for maximizing quality. There is an increasing pressure to improve the project performance due to the innovative contracting methods which ...

magnetic levitation (maglev) is amongst the most advanced technologies that are available to the transportation industries. it has already been noticed by decision makers in many countries around the globe. contrary to such high levels of interest, there are no practical algorithms available to the engineers and/or managers to assist them in analyzing economics of the maglev systems. therefore,...

This paper deals with optimal control problems for dynamical systems governed by constrained functional-differential inclusions of neutral type. Such control systems contain time-delays not only in state variables but also in velocity variables, which make them essentially more complicated than delaydifferential (or differential-difference) inclusions. Our main goal is to derive necessary optim...

BACKGROUND One of the most unexpected outcomes arising from the efforts towards maternal and child mortality reduction is that all too often the objective success has been coupled with increased inequity in the population. The aim of this study is to analyze the determinants of the complex interplay between cost-effectiveness and equity and suggest strategies that will promote an impact on mort...

the complex-step derivative approximation is applied to compute numerical derivatives. in this study, we propose a new formula of fractional complex-step method utilizing jumarie definition. based on this method, we illustrated an approximate analytic solution for the fractional cauchy-euler equations. application in image denoising is imposed by introducing a new fractional mask depending on s...

in this paper, we consider an implicit block backwarddifferentiation formula (bbdf) for solving volterraintegro-differential equations (vides). the approach given in thispaper leads to numerical methods for solving vides which avoid theneed for special starting procedures. convergence order and linearstability properties of the methods are analyzed. also, methods withextensive stability region ...

objective: the purpose of this study was to identify reasons domestic violence occurs within intimate relationships. methods: the target group was female victims and male offenders. the offenders group consisted of 25 men from a batterer’s intervention group. the victims group composed of 9 women from center against spouse abuse (casa) intervention group. results: domestic violence occurred at ...

information asymmetry in stock market can increase the risk of investment which in turn increases the capital cost of firms. bhattacharya (1979) proposed a hypothesis that states dividend can act as a powerful signal in order to solve information asymmetry problem. we measured information asymmetry by lack of earnings transparency. therefore we examine the effect of earnings transparency on cap...

We introduce a new algorithm based on linear programming for optimization of average-cost Markov decision processes (MDPs). The algorithm approximates the differential cost function of a perturbed MDP via a linear combination of basis functions. We establish a bound on the performance of the resulting policy that scales gracefully with the number of states without imposing the strong Lyapunov c...

Abstract. In this paper, we study one kind of stochastic recursive optimal control problem with the obstacle constraints for the cost function where the cost function is described by the solution of one reflected backward stochastic differential equations. We will give the dynamic programming principle for this kind of optimal control problem and show that the value function is the unique visco...