Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

About: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is a education organization based out in Troy, New York, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Terahertz radiation & Population. The organization has 19024 authors who have published 39922 publications receiving 1414699 citations. The organization is also known as: RPI & Rensselaer Institute.

Quasi-variational inequalities, generalized Nash equilibria, and multi-leader-follower games

Abstract: In Pang and Fukushima (Comput Manage Sci 2:21–56, 2005), a sequential penalty approach was presented for a quasi-variational inequality (QVI) with particular application to the generalized Nash game. To test the computational performance of the penalty method, numerical results were reported with an example from a multi-leader-follower game in an electric power market. However, due to an inverted sign in the penalty term in the example and some missing terms in the derivatives of the firms’ Lagrangian functions, the reported numerical results in Pang and Fukushima (Comput Manage Sci 2:21–56, 2005) are incorrect. Since the numerical examples of this kind are scarce in the literature and this particular example may be useful in the future research, we report the corrected results.

Privatization matters: Bank efficiency in transition countries

Abstract: To investigate the impact of bank privatization in transition countries, we take the largest banks in six relatively advanced countries, namely, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Income and balance sheet characteristics and efficiency measures computed from stochastic frontiers are compared across four bank ownership types. Our empirical results support the hypotheses that foreign-owned banks are most efficient and government-owned banks are least efficient. In addition, the importance of attracting a strategic foreign owner in the privatization process is confirmed. However, counter to the conjecture that foreign banks cherry pick the most profitable opportunities, we find that domestic banks have a local advantage in pursuing fee-for-service business. Finally, we show that both the method and the timing of privatization matter to performance; specifically, voucher privatization does not lead to increased efficiency and early-privatized banks are more efficient than later-privatized banks, even though we find no evidence of a selection effect.

Nanostructured copper interfaces for enhanced boiling.

Abstract: Phase change through boiling is used in a variety of heat-transfer and chemical reaction applications. The state of the art in nucleate boiling has focused on increasing the density of bubble nucleation using porous structures and microchannels with characteristic sizes of tens of micrometers. Traditionally, it is thought that nanoscale surfaces will not improve boiling heat transfer, since the bubble nucleation process is not expected to be enhanced by such small cavities. In the experiments reported here, we observed unexpected enhancements in boiling performance for a nanostructured copper (Cu) surface formed by the deposition of Cu nanorods on a Cu substrate. Moreover, we observed striking differences in the dynamics of bubble nucleation and release from the Cu nanorods, including smaller bubble diameters, higher bubble release frequencies, and an approximately 30-fold increase in the density of active bubble nucleation sites. It appears that the ability of the Cu surface with nanorods to generate stable nucleation of bubbles at low superheated temperatures results from a synergistic coupling effect between the nanoscale gas cavities (or nanobubbles) formed within the nanorod interstices and micrometer-scale defects (voids) that form on the film surface during nanorod deposition. For such a coupled system, the interconnected nanoscale gas cavities stabilize (or feed) bubble nucleation at the microscale defect sites. This is distinct from conventional-scale boiling surfaces, since for the nanostructured surface the bubble nucleation stability is provided by features with orders-of-magnitude smaller scales than the cavity-mouth openings.