A hybrid constraint programming approach to?the?log-truck scheduling problem

Scheduling problems in the forest industry have received significant attention in the recent years and have contributed many challenging applications for optimization technologies. This paper proposes a solution method based on constraint programming and mathematical programming for a log-truck scheduling problem. The problem consists of scheduling the transportation of logs between forest areas and woodmills, as well as routing the fleet of vehicles to satisfy these transportation requests. The objective is to minimize the total cost of the non-productive activities such as the waiting time of trucks and forest log-loaders and the empty driven distance of vehicles. We propose a constraint programming model to address the combined scheduling and routing problem and an integer programming model to deal with the optimization of deadheads. Both of these models are combined through the exchange of global constraints. Finally the whole approach is validated on real industrial data.     

A Boolean satisfiability approach to the resource-constrained project scheduling problem

We formulate the resource-constrained project scheduling problem as a satisfiability problem and adapt a satisfiability solver for the specific domain of the problem. Our solver is lightweight and shows good performance both in finding feasible solutions and in proving lower bounds. Our numerical tests allowed us to close several benchmark instances of the RCPSP that have never been closed before by proving tighter lower bounds and by finding better feasible solutions. Using our method we solve optimally more instances of medium and large size from the benchmark library PSPLIB and do it faster compared to any other existing solver.     

A graph theoretic approach to the investigation of system‐environment relationships†

For any empirical structure consisting of a system S and its environment E, there is an associated digraph D whose points and arcs (directed lines) correspond to the elements and relationships of the structure. The arcs of D are thus of four types: (1) internal arcs, which join two points of S; (b) external arcs, which join two points of E; (c) out‐liaisons of S, which join a point of S to one of E; and (d) in‐liaisons of S, which join a point of E to one of S. The boundary of S is defined as the subgraph of D induced by the liaisons of S and corresponds to those elements and relationships of the structure directly involved in transactions between the system and its environment. The basic structural properties of boundaries are then identified, and it is shown how the points of S and E can be stratified according to their distances to (or from) the boundary of S. Next, several results are derived concerning system‐environment relationships in structures whose digraphs are symmetric, transitive, or signed. The concept of convexity is then introduced to deal with a certain kind of segregation of a system relative to its environment. And, finally, it is shown how the adjacency matrix of D can be employed to facilitate the analysis of such structures and the calculation of various indexes of system‐environment relationships.     

A large neighbourhood search approach to the multi-activity shift scheduling problem

The challenge in shift scheduling lies in the construction of a set of work shifts, which are subject to specific regulations, in order to cover fluctuating staff demands. This problem becomes harder when multi-skill employees can perform many different activities during the same shift. In this paper, we show how formal languages (such as regular and context-free languages) can be enhanced and used to model the complex regulations of the shift construction problem. From these languages we can derive specialized graph structures that can be searched efficiently. The overall shift scheduling problem can then be solved using a Large Neighbourhood Search. These approaches are able to return near optimal solution on traditional single activity problems and they scale well on large instances containing up to 10 activities.     

Stochastic bilinear spectral systems †

A class of bilinear stochastic partial differential equations is investigated using a semigroup approach. Existence of a mild solution is obtained by proving a maximal inequality for stochastic convolution integrals with a stochastic evolution operator U(t,s) as integrand; moreover, we show the existence of a regular version in t. Under an additional assumption we show the existence of a continuous version of U (.,.) in the space of bounded operators on the state space. Finally, we analyse a p.d.e. model of a simply supported beam to illustrate the applicability of our results to modelling uncertainty in large flexible space structures     

A new approach with new solutions to the Matkowski and Wesołowski problem

Aequationes mathematicae - Based on a result of de Rham, we give a family of functions solving the Matkowski and Weso?owski problem. This family consists of Hölder continuous...     

A filter-and-fan approach to the 2D HP model of?the?protein folding problem

We examine a prominent and widely-studied model of the protein folding problem, the two-dimensional (2D) HP model, by means of a filter-and-fan (F&F) solution approach. Our method is designed to generate compound moves that explore the solution space in a dynamic and adaptive fashion. Computational results for standard sets of benchmark problems show that the F&F algorithm is highly competitive with the current leading algorithms, requiring only a single solution trial to obtain best known solutions to all problems tested, in contrast to a hundred or more trials required in the typical case to evaluate the performance of the best of the alternative methods.     

A note on the probabilistic approach to Turán's problem

The Turán number T(n, l, k) is the smallest possible number of edges in a k-graph on n vertices such that every l-set of vertices contains an edge. Given a k-graph H = (V(H), E(H)), we let X_s(S) equal the number of edges contained in S, for any s-set S?V(H). Turán's problem is equivalent to estimating the expectation E(X_l), given that min(X_l) ≥ 1. The following lower bound on the variance of X_s is proved:

$\text{Var(X}{}_{\mathrm{s}}\text{)?mm}\text{n?2k}\text{s?k}\text{n}\text{s}{}^{\mathrm{?1}}\text{n}\text{k}{}^1$

, where m = |E(H)| and $\text{m}\text{= (}{}_{\mathrm{k}}{}^{\mathrm{n}}\text{) ? m}$. This implies the following: putting t(k, l) = lim_n→∞T(n, l, k)(_kⁿ)^?1 then t(k, l) ≥ T(s, l, k)((_k^s) ? 1)^?1, whenever s ≥ l > k ≥ 2. A connection of these results with the existence of certain t-designs is mentioned.     

A viscosity approach to the Dirichlet problem for complex Monge–Ampère equations

We present a viscosity approach to the Dirichlet problem for the complex Monge–Ampère equation ${\det u_{\bar{j} k} = f (x, u)}$ . Our approach differs from previous viscosity approaches to this equation in several ways: it is based on contact set techniques (the Alexandrov–Bakelman–Pucci estimate), on extensive applications of sup-inf convolutions, and on a relation between real and complex Hessians. More specifically, this paper includes a notion of viscosity solutions; a comparison principle and a solvability theorem; the equivalence between viscosity and pluripotential solutions; an estimate of the modulus of continuity of a solution in terms of that of a given subsolution and of the right-hand side f; and an Alexandrov–Bakelman–Pucci type of L ^∞-estimate.     

A note on “a dual-ascent approach to the fixed-charge capacitated network design problem”

We show by a counterexample that the dual-ascent procedure proposed by Herrmann, Ioannou, Minis and Proth in a 1996 issue of the European Journal of Operational Research is incorrect in the sense that it does not generate a valid lower bound to the optimal value of fixed-charge capacitated network design problems. We provide a correct dual-ascent procedure based on the same ideas and we give an interpretation of it in terms of a simple Lagrangean relaxation. Although correct, this procedure is not effective, as in general, it provides a less tighter bound than the linear programming relaxation.     

A boundary value approach to the numerical solution of initial value problems by multistep methos †

A boundary value appraoch to the numerical solution of initial value problems by means of linear multistep methods is presented. This theory is based on the study of linear difference equations when their general solution is computed by imposing boundary conditions. All the main stability and convergence properties of the obtained methods are investigated abd compared to those of the classical multistep methods. Then, as an example, new itegration formulas, called extended trapezoidal rules, are derived. For any order they have the same stability properties (in the sense of the definitions given in this paper) of the trapezoidal rule, which is the first method in this class. Some numerical examples are presented to confirm the theoretical expectations and to allow us to trust a future code based on boundary value methods.     

Recurrent approach to Blaschke’s problem

We have obtained a recurrence formula $I_{n+3} = \frac{4(n+3)}{\pi(n+4)}VI_{n+1}We have obtained a recurrence formula I_n+3 = \frac4(n+3)p(n+4)VI_n+1I_{n+3} = \frac{4(n+3)}{\pi(n+4)}VI_{n+1} for integro-geometric moments in the case of a circle with the area V, where I_n = ò\nolimits_{K ?G}sⁿd GI_n = \int \nolimits_{K \cap G}\sigma^{n}{\rm d} G, while in the case of a convex domain K with the perimeter S and area V the recurrence formula

In+3 = \frac8(n+3)V2(n+1)(n+4)p[\fracd In+1d V - \fracIn+1S \fracd Sd V ] I_{n+3} = \frac{8(n+3)V^2}{(n+1)(n+4)\pi}\Big[\frac{{\rm d} I_{n+1}}{{\rm d} V} - \frac{I_{n+1}}{S} \frac{{\rm d} S}{{\rm d} V} \Big]      16. A simple approach to the Cauchy problem for complex Ginzburg–Landau equations by compactness methods      Philippe Clément  Noboru Okazawa  Motohiro Sobajima  Tomomi Yokota 《Journal of Differential Equations》2012,253(4):1250-1263       17. A stochastic approach to the Šilov boundary      《Journal of Functional Analysis》1987,74(2):415-429       18. A Borel solution to the Horn–Tarski problem      Stevo Todorcevic 《Acta Mathematica Hungarica》2014,142(2):526-533 We describe a Borel poset satisfying the σ-finite chain condition but failing to satisfy the σ-bounded chain condition.      19. Global optimization approach to Malfatti’s problem      Rentsen Enkhbat 《Journal of Global Optimization》2016,64(1):33-48       20. A variational approach to the Navier–Stokes equations      Nicola Gigli  Sunra J.N. Mosconi 《Bulletin des Sciences Mathématiques》2012,136(3):256-276

A Borel solution to the Horn–Tarski problem

We describe a Borel poset satisfying the σ-finite chain condition but failing to satisfy the σ-bounded chain condition.