Sales forecasting models in the fresh food supply chain

We address the problem of supply chain management for a set of fresh and highly perishable products. Our activity mainly concerns forecasting sales. The study involves 19 retailers (small and medium size stores) and a set of 156 different fresh products. The available data is made of three year sales for each store from 2011 to 2013. The forecasting activity started from a pre-processing analysis to identify seasonality, cycle and trend components, and data filtering to remove noise.

Energy production forecasting in a PV plant using transfer function models

This paper deals with the issue of forecasting energy production of a Photo-Voltaic (PV) plant, needed by the Distribution System Operator (DSO) for grid planning. As the energy production of a PV plant is strongly dependent on the environmental conditions, the DSO has difficulties to manage an electrical system with stochastic generation. This implies the need to have a reliable forecasting of the irradiance level for the next day in order to setup the whole distribution network. To this aim, this paper proposes the use of transfer function models.

Least Recently Used Caches Under the Shot Noise Model

In this paper we develop an analytical framework, based on Che's approximation [2], for the analysis of Least Recently Used (LRU) caches operating under the Shot Noise requests Model (SNM). The SNM was recently proposed in [12] to better capture the main characteristics of today Video on Demand (Vod) traffic. In this context, Che's approximation is derived as the application of a mean field principle to the cache eviction time. We investigate the validity of this approximation through an asymptotic analysis of the cache eviction time.

Numerical assessment of a subglacial lake at Svalbard, Spitzbergen

The likelihood of a subglacial lake beneath Amundsenisen Plateau at Southern Spitzbergen, Svalbard, pointed out by the flat signal within the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) remote survey of the area, is justified, here, via numerical simulation. This investigation has been developed under the assumption that the icefield thickness does not change on average, as it is confirmed by recently published physical measurements taken over the past forty years.

CFD analysis of propeller-rudder interaction

Interaction of the vortex systems detached from a propeller with a rudder installed in its wake is investigated by CFD. The correct prediction of this phenomenon is of great interest in naval hydrodynamics research, it being the source of irradiated noise and vibratory loads. The phenomenology is addressed by simulating a single bladed propeller (INSEAN E779A) and a rudder characterized by a rectangular plane area and symmetric sectional shape (NACA0020 profiles).

Improved Lanczos algorithms for blackbox MRS data quantitation

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) has been shown to be a potentially important medical diagnostic tool. The success of MRS depends on the quantitative data analysis, i.e., the interpretation of the signal in terms of relevant physical parameters, such as frequencies, decay constants, and amplitudes. A variety of time-domain algorithms to extract parameters have been developed. On the one hand, there are so-called blackbox methods. Minimal user interaction and limited incorporation of prior knowledge are inherent to this type of method.

The Stein and Chen-Stein methods for functionals of non-symmetric Bernoulli processes

Based on a new multiplication formula for discrete multiple stochastic integrals with respect to non-symmetric Bernoulli random walks, we extend the results of Nourdin et al. (2010) on the Gaussian approximation of symmetric Rademacher sequences to the setting of possibly non-identically distributed independent Bernoulli sequences. We also provide Poisson approximation results for these sequences, by following the method of Peccati (2011).

Time asymptotic high order schemes for dissipative BGK hyperbolic systems

We introduce a new class of finite differences schemes to approximate one dimensional dissipative semilinear hyperbolic systems with a BGK structure. Using precise analytical time-decay estimates of the local truncation error, it is possible to design schemes, based on the standard upwind approximation, which are increasingly accurate for large times when approximating small perturbations of constant asymptotic states. Numerical tests show their better performances with respect to those of other schemes.

An inner-point modification of PSO for constrained optimization

In the last two decades, PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) gained a lot of attention among the different derivative-free algorithms for global optimization. The simplicity of the implementation, compact memory usage and parallel structure represent some key features, largely appreciated. On the other hand, the absence of local information about the objective function slow down the algorithm when one or more constraints are violated, even if a penalty approach is applied.

Monitoring of an ancient landslide phenomenon by GBSAR technique in the Maierato town (Calabria, Italy)

The work deals the monitoring of a single ancient landslide detected in the Vonace area, southwards of Maierato (Calabria, Italy). A 18-hour-measurement campaign has been carried out using the Ground-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (GBSAR) interferometry technique carried between March, 25th and 26th. Displacement maps have been geolocated and overlaid to a Digital Elevation Model of the scene. It has been observed that the Vonace area is almost stable except two portions located at the foot of the ancient landslide and at the centre of the town, respectively.