Integrated exact,hybrid and metaheuristic learning methods for confidentiality protection

A vital task facing government agencies and commercial organizations that report data is to represent the data in a meaningful way and simultaneously to protect the confidentiality of critical components of this data. The challenge is to organize and disseminate data in a form that prevents such critical components from being inferred by groups bent on corporate espionage, to gain competitive advantages, or having a desire to penetrate the security of the information underlying the data. Controlled tabular adjustment is a recently developed approach for protecting sensitive information by imposing a special form of statistical disclosure limitation on tabular data. The underlying model gives rise to a mixed integer linear programming problem involving both continuous and discrete (zero-one) variables. We develop stratified ordered (s-ordered) heuristics and a new meta-heuristic learning approach for solving this model, and compare their performance to previous heuristics and to an exact algorithm embodied in the state-of-the-art ILOG- CPLEX software. Our new approaches are based on partitioning the problem into its discrete and continuous components, first creating an s-ordered heuristic that reduces the number of binary variables through a grouping procedure that combines an exact mathematical programming model with constructive heuristics. To gain further advantages we then replace the mathematical programming model with an evolutionary scatter search approach that makes it possible to extend the method to large problems with over 9000 entries. Finally, we introduce a new metaheuristic learning method that significantly improves the quality of solutions obtained.     

Neighborhood analysis: a case study on curriculum-based course timetabling

In this paper, we present an in-depth analysis of neighborhood relations for local search algorithms. Using a curriculum-based course timetabling problem as a case study, we investigate the search capability of four neighborhoods based on three evaluation criteria: percentage of improving neighbors, improvement strength and search steps. This analysis shows clear correlations of the search performance of a neighborhood with these criteria and provides useful insights on the very nature of the neighborhood. This study helps understand why a neighborhood performs better than another one and why and how some neighborhoods can be favorably combined to increase their search power. This study reduces the existing gap between reporting experimental assessments of local search-based algorithms and understanding their behaviors.     

Characterization of reactive intermediates generated during photolysis of 4-acetoxy-4-aryl-2,5-cyclohexadienones: oxenium ions and aryloxy radicals

Aryloxenium ions 1 are reactive intermediates that are isoelectronic with the better known arylcarbenium and arylnitrenium ions. They are proposed to be involved in synthetically and industrially useful oxidation reactions of phenols. However, mechanistic studies of these intermediates are limited. Until recently, the lifetimes of these intermediates in solution and their reactivity patterns were unknown. Previously, the quinol esters 2 have been used to generate 1, which were indirectly detected by azide ion trapping to generate azide adducts 4 at the expense of quinols 3, during hydrolysis reactions in the dark. Laser flash photolysis (LFP) of 2b in the presence of O(2) in aqueous solution leads to two reactive intermediates with lambda(max) 360 and 460 nm, respectively, while in pure CH(3)CN only one species with lambda(max) 350 nm is produced. The intermediate with lambda(max) 460 nm was previously identified as 1b based on direct observation of its decomposition kinetics in the presence of N(3)(-), comparison to azide ion trapping results from the hydrolysis reactions, and photolysis reaction products (3b). The agreement between the calculated (B3LYP/6-31G(d)) and observed time-resolved resonance Raman (TR(3)) spectra of 1b further confirms its identity. The second intermediate with lambda(max) 360 nm (350 nm in CH(3)CN) has been characterized as the radical 5b, based on its photolytic generation in the less polar CH(3)CN and on isolated photolysis reaction products (6b and 7b). Only the radical intermediate 5b is generated by photolysis in CH(3)CN, so its UV-vis spectrum, reaction products, and decay kinetics can be investigated in this solvent without interference from 1b. In addition, the radical 5a was generated by LFP of 2a and was identified by comparison to a published UV-vis spectrum of authentic 5a obtained under similar conditions. The similarity of the UV-vis spectra of 5a and 5b, their reaction products, and the kinetics of their decay confirm the assigned structures. The lifetime of 1b in aqueous solution at room temperature is 170 ns. This intermediate decays with first-order kinetics. The radical intermediate 5b decomposes in a biphasic manner, with lifetimes of 12 and 75 mus. The decay processes of 5a and 5b were successfully modeled with a kinetic scheme that included reversible formation of a dimer. The scheme is similar to the kinetic models applied to describe the decay of other aryloxy radicals.     

Role of Rydberg states in the photochemical dynamics of ethylene

We use the ab initio multiple spawning method with potential energy surfaces and nonadiabatic coupling vectors computed from multistate multireference perturbation theory (MSPT2) to follow the dynamics of ethylene after photoexcitation. We introduce an analytic formulation for the nonadiabatic coupling vector in the context of MSPT2 calculations. We explicitly include the low-lying 3s Rydberg state which has been neglected in previous ab initio molecular dynamics studies of this process. We find that although the 3s Rydberg state lies below the optically bright ππ* state, little population gets trapped on this state. Instead, the 3s Rydberg state is largely a spectator in the photodynamics, with little effect on the quenching mechanism or excited state lifetime. We predict the time-resolved photoelectron spectrum for ethylene and point out the signature of Rydberg state involvement that should be easily observed.     

Hamiltonian cycles in cubic Cayley graphs: the 〈2,4k,3〉 case

It was proved by Glover and Maru?i? (J. Eur. Math. Soc. 9:775–787, 2007), that cubic Cayley graphs arising from groups G=〈a,x∣a ²=x ^s =(ax)³=1,…〉 having a (2,s,3)-presentation, that is, from groups generated by an involution a and an element x of order s such that their product ax has order 3, have a Hamiltonian cycle when |G| (and thus also s) is congruent to 2 modulo 4, and have a Hamiltonian path when |G| is congruent to 0 modulo 4. In this article the existence of a Hamiltonian cycle is proved when apart from |G| also s is congruent to 0 modulo 4, thus leaving |G| congruent to 0 modulo 4 with s either odd or congruent to 2 modulo 4 as the only remaining cases to be dealt with in order to establish existence of Hamiltonian cycles for this particular class of cubic Cayley graphs.