AI and OR in management of operations: history and trends

The last decade has seen a considerable growth in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for operations management with the aim of finding solutions to problems that are increasing in complexity and scale. This paper begins by setting the context for the survey through a historical perspective of OR and AI. An extensive survey of applications of AI techniques for operations management, covering a total of over 1200 papers published from 1995 to 2004 is then presented. The survey utilizes Elsevier's ScienceDirect database as a source. Hence, the survey may not cover all the relevant journals but includes a sufficiently wide range of publications to make it representative of the research in the field. The papers are categorized into four areas of operations management: (a) design, (b) scheduling, (c) process planning and control and (d) quality, maintenance and fault diagnosis. Each of the four areas is categorized in terms of the AI techniques used: genetic algorithms, case-based reasoning, knowledge-based systems, fuzzy logic and hybrid techniques. The trends over the last decade are identified, discussed with respect to expected trends and directions for future work suggested.     

Banach-Saks property in Marcinkiewicz spaces

We catalogue all Marcinkiewicz function and sequence spaces with the Banach-Saks property and present necessary and sufficient conditions for a wide subclass of spaces to possess the p-Banach-Saks property, 1<p<∞. We apply our results to several open problems.     

On the weakened Siegel’s conjecture

In the paper, we prove that two definitions of E-functions present in mathematics are equivalent if E-functions satisfy second-order linear differential equations. For this set of functions, a weakened variant of the well-known Siegel conjecture about representability of any E-function by a polynomial of hypergeometric functions is also proved. __________ Translated from Fundamentalnaya i Prikladnaya Matematika, Vol. 11, No. 6, pp. 33–39, 2005.     

Clustering of spectra and fractals of regular graphs

We exhibit a characteristic structure of the class of all regular graphs of degree d that stems from the spectra of their adjacency matrices. The structure has a fractal threadlike appearance. Points with coordinates given by the mean and variance of the exponentials of graph eigenvalues cluster around a line segment that we call a filar. Zooming-in reveals that this cluster splits into smaller segments (filars) labeled by the number of triangles in graphs. Further zooming-in shows that the smaller filars split into subfilars labeled by the number of quadrangles in graphs, etc. We call this fractal structure, discovered in a numerical experiment, a multifilar structure. We also provide a mathematical explanation of this phenomenon based on the Ihara-Selberg trace formula, and compute the coordinates and slopes of all filars in terms of Bessel functions of the first kind.     

Regularization of singular systems of linear algebraic equations by shifts

Regularization of singular systems of linear algebraic equations by shifts is examined. New equivalent conditions for the shift regularizability of such systems are derived.     

Moving and oscillating transversely one-dimensional laser solitons

Transversely one-dimensional moving and oscillating solitons in a wide-aperture laser with saturable absorber with fast (inertialess) nonlinearity are found by numerical simulation. The regions of existence of such solitons and of their complexes are presented.     

Regularities of the interaction of hydrogen jets during combustion in a supersonic high-temperature flow

The efficiency of combustion in a supersonic high-temperature flow at spread and local hydrogen feed is considered. Similarities and distinctions of combustion in open and confined space were examined with consideration given to the effect of gasdynamic structures typical of supersonic air jets.     

Algebraically Special Gravitational Fields with the Cosmological Constant and Energy-Momentum Tensor of Electromagnetic Radiation

A class of rigorous solutions of the Einstein–Maxwell equations is obtained within the Newman–Penrose formalism for algebraically special gravitational fields with the cosmological constant and energy-momentum tensor of electromagnetic radiation given that the photon flux specifying electromagnetic radiation determines isotropic-geodesic congruence. Designations within the Newman–Penrose formalism and numbers of formulas in references are the same as in [1].