Lightning-related fatalities, injuries and property damages reported in China from 1997 to 2009 are summarized by using the National Lightning Hazards Database. Therefore, characteristics of the incidents including 5,033 deaths, 4,670 injuries and 61,614 damage reports are analyzed. For the...

Our paper reports on the use of data envelopment analysis (DEA) for the assessment of performance of secondary schools in Malaysia during the implementation of the policy of teaching and learning mathematics and science subjects in the English language (PPSMI). The novelty of our application is...

Pyrolysis is a potential recovery method for waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs), but the organic brominated products are toxic and hazardous. Iron has been used as a catalyst for debromination from pyrolysis oil, but the effects of in-situ iron on WPCBs pyrolysis is still not well understood....

Due to the rapid progress in printed circuit board (PCB) industries, plenty of waste etchants, characterized by the high concentration of copper chloride and hydrochloric acid, are generated continuously, which has placed a heavy burden on the environment and metal resources. Herein, a succinct...

Dispatching rules are simple scheduling heuristics that are widely applied in industrial practice. Their popularity can be attributed to their ability to flexibly react to shop floor disruptions that are prevalent in many real-world manufacturing environments. However, it is a challenging and...

Many practical optimization problems are dynamically changing, and require a tracking of the global optimum over time. However, tracking usually has to be quick, which excludes re-optimization from scratch every time the problem changes. Instead, it is important to make good use of the history...