We analyze a panel of 230 Canadian manufacturing industries to investigate whether trade liberalization promotes e ciency through increased scale. During the six years following the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, Canadian manufacturing exhibited substantial rationalization|a decline in the number of plants accompanied by increases in output per plant. We nd that the bilateral tari...

Numerical layout optimization provides a computationally efficient and generally applicable means of identifying the optimal arrangement of bars in a truss. When the plastic layout optimization formulation is used, a wide variety of problem types can be solved using linear programming. However, the solutions obtained are frequently quite complex, particularly when fine numerical discretizations...

In mechanical engineering and architecture, structural elements with low material consumption and high loadbearing capabilities are essential for light-weight and even self-supporting constructions. This paper deals with so called point-folding elements – non-planar, pyramidal panels, usually formed from thin metal sheets, which exploit the increased structural capabilities emerging from folds ...

Planware has several types of knowledge, all encoded through parameterized theories. The first is knowledge of the scheduling domain, including the constraints on use of the different types of resources, such as reusable or sharable resources. Another type of knowledge is algorithm knowledge, such as generate-and-test, branch-and-bound, divide-and-conquer, dynamic programming, and hill-climbin...

BACKGROUND Complete and accurate ascertainment of mortality is critically important in any longitudinal study. Tracking of mortality is particularly essential among US military members because of unique occupational exposures (e.g., worldwide deployments as well as combat experiences). Our study objectives were to describe the early mortality experience of Panel 1 of the Millennium Cohort, cons...