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This paper presents an approximate procedure for computing selected performance characteristics of an urban emergency service system. Based on a recently developed hypercube queuing model, the procedure requires for N servers solution of only N simultaneous equations, rather than 2N as in the exact model. The procedure relies on the theory of M/M/N queues in which servers are selected randomly and without replacement until the first available (free) server is found. The underlying model is intended for analyzing problems of vehicle location and response district design in urban emergency services, includes interdistrict as well as intradistrict responses, and allows computation of several point-specific as well as area-specific performance measures.

The academic job market has become increasingly competitive for PhD graduates. In this note, we ask the basic question of ‘Are we producing more PhDs than needed?’ We take a systems approach and offer a ‘birth rate’ perspective: professors graduate PhDs who later become professors themselves, an analogue to how a population grows. We show that the reproduction rate in academia is very high. For example, in engineering, a professor in the US graduates 7.8 new PhDs during his/her whole career on average, and only one of these graduates can replace the professor’s position. This implies that in a steady state, only 12.8% of PhD graduates can attain academic positions in the USA. The key insight is that the system in many places is saturated, far beyond capacity to absorb new PhDs in academia at the rates that they are being produced. Based on the analysis, we discuss policy implications.

Automatic teller machines and gasoline service stations are two examples of a growing number of "discretionary service facilities." In consuming service from these facilities, a significant fraction of customers do so on an otherwise preplanned trip (e.g., on the daily commute to and from work). A system planner, in determining the best locations of such facilities, is more concerned with placing the facilities along paths of customer flow rather than, say, near the center of a cluster of residences or work places. We formally model this problem and present a method for determining the optimal locations of m discretionary service facilities so as to intercept the maximum possible potential customer flow. We also show how to determine the minimal number of facilities required to intercept a prespecified fraction of total customer flow. Computational results are included.-2-

The last decade has seen considerable concern regarding a shortage of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers to meet the demands of the labor market. At the same time, many experts have presented evidence of a STEM worker surplus. A comprehensive literature review, in conjunction with employment statistics, newspaper articles, and our own interviews with company recruiters, reveals a significant heterogeneity in the STEM labor market: the academic sector is generally oversupplied, while the government sector and private industry have shortages in specific areas.

he Energy Box is proposed as a 24/7 background processor operating on a local computer or in a remote location, silently managing one's home or small business electrical energy usage hour-by-hour and even minute-by-minute. It operates best in an environment of demand-sensitive real-time pricing, now made feasible via 'smart grid' technology. We assume that, in time, virtually every electrical device in a home or small business will be controllable from the Energy Box. There are multiple motivations for an Energy Box: (1) By delaying or pushing forward various uses of electricity (e.g. space conditioning), widespread use of the Energy Box could 'shave the peaks and fill in the valleys of demand,' thereby reducing the need for capacity expansion in electrical power generation and distribution; (2) The system should result in reduced electrical energy costs to the consumer; (3) The system supports local generation, storage and sale of electricity back to the grid; (4) The system supports graceful reductions in power consumption by allowing voluntary partial load shedding as requested by the electric utility during times of extreme high demand; (5) Requiring numerous minute-by-minute decisions over the course of a day, the system alleviates the home owner or small business manager from making such decisions, each only involving pennies but in the aggregate involving significant dollars. The primary integrating method of optimization and control is stochastic dynamic programming.

This paper considers the optimal location of p facilities in the plane, under the assumption that all travel occurs according to the Manhattan (or rectilinear or I1) metric in the presence of impenetrable barriers to travel. Facility users are distributed over a finite set of demand points, with the weight of each point proportional to its demand intensity. Each demand point is assigned to the closest facility. The objective is to locate facilities so as to minimize average Manhattan travel distance to a random demand. We show that an optimal set of facility locations can be drawn from a finite set of candidate points, all of which are easy to determine.