A Hybrid Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm for Solving Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows

Vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) involves the routing of a set of vehicles with limited capacity from a central depot to a set of geographically dispersed customers with known demands and predefined time windows. The problem is solved by optimizing routes for the vehicles so as to meet all given constraints as well as to minimize the objectives of traveling distance and number of vehicles. This paper proposes a hybrid multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (HMOEA) that incorporates various heuristics for local exploitation in the evolutionary search and the concept of Pareto's optimality for solving multiobjective optimization in VRPTW. The proposed HMOEA is featured with specialized genetic operators and variable-length chromosome representation to accommodate the sequence-oriented optimization in VRPTW. Unlike existing VRPTW approaches that often aggregate multiple criteria and constraints into a compromise function, the proposed HMOEA optimizes all routing constraints and objectives simultaneously, which improves the routing solutions in many aspects, such as lower routing cost, wider scattering area and better convergence trace. The HMOEA is applied to solve the benchmark Solomon's 56 VRPTW 100-customer instances, which yields 20 routing solutions better than or competitive as compared to the best solutions published in literature.     

交流源作用下介观RLC电路系统量子态随时间的演化

根据量子不变量理论，同时考虑介观电容器极板间电子波函数的耦合作用和电路的耗散,研究介观RLC电路系统在交流电流源作用下动力学的演化过程，并且得到描述系统量子态随时间的演化算符.进一步的分析结果表明，介观RLC电路系统的波函数将由任意的初态演化到一般的压缩态. 关键词： 介观RLC电路 交变电源 不变量理论 时间演化算符     

退火温度对低温生长MgxZn1－xO薄膜光学性质的影响

用射频磁控溅射法在80℃衬底温度下制备出Mg_xZn_1-xO(x=0.16)薄膜，用X射线衍射(XRD)、光致发光(PL)和透射谱研究了退火温度对Mg_xZn_1-xO薄膜结构和光学性质的影响.测量结果显示，Mg_xZn_1-xO薄膜为单相六角纤锌矿结构，并且具有沿c轴的择优取向；随着退火温度的升高，(002)XRD峰强度、平均晶粒尺寸和紫外PL峰强度增大，(002)XRD峰半高宽(F 关键词： xZn_1-xO薄膜')" href="#">Mg_xZn_1-xO薄膜 射频磁控溅射 退火     

Preparation of antimicrobial poly(vinyl alcohol) nanofibers containing silver nanoparticles

Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanofibers containing Ag nanoparticles were prepared by electrospinning PVA/silver nitrate (AgNO₃) aqueous solutions, followed by short heat treatment, and their antimicrobial activity was investigated for wound dressing applications. Since PVA is a water soluble and biocompatible polymer, it is one of the best materials for the preparation of wound dressing nanofibers. After heat treatment at 155 °C for 3 min, the PVA/AgNO₃ nanofibers became insoluble, while the Ag⁺ ions therein were reduced so as to produce a large number of Ag nanoparticles situated preferentially on their surface. The residual Ag⁺ ions were reduced by subsequent UV irradiation for 3 h. The average diameter of the Ag nanoparticles after the heat treatment was 5.9 nm and this value increased slightly to 6.3 nm after UV irradiation. It was found that most of the Ag⁺ ions were reduced by the simple heat treatment. The PVA nanofibers containing Ag nanoparticles showed very strong antimicrobial activity. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 44: 2468–2474, 2006     

Iterative solutions for low lying excited states of a class of SchrSdinger equation

The convergent iterative procedure for solving the groundstate Schr?dinger equation is extended to derive the excitation energy and the wavefunction of the low-lying excited states. The method is applied to the one-dimensional quartic potential problem. The results show that the iterative solution converges rapidly when the coupling g is not too small.     

Scientist up to the highest level

Dr. Miroslav Kyrš, DrSc. passed away prematurely and unexpectedly in August 2006 at age of 75. He was a leading person of the Czech radiochemistry during the second half of the 20th century and his results have of world-wide impact. His diligence, intelligence and permanent activity led him to be at first a laboratory chief and subsequently for about 25 years to be a chief of the Radiochemical Department of Czech Nuclear Research Institute (NRI) at Řež near Prague.     

Dispersion Compensation in Externally Modulated Transmission System Using Chirped Fiber Grating

We present an externally modulated NTSC AM-VSB erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA)-repeated system in the 1550 nm region which uses a chirped fiber grating (CFG) as a dispersion compensation device. In contrast to the conventional externally modulated fiber optical CATV systems, either with or without dispersion compensation fiber (DCF), good performances of carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) ≥50 dB, composite second order (CSO) ≥74 dB, and composite triple beat (CTB) ≥65 dB were achieved for the full channel band after a 100-km single-mode fiber (SMF) transmission.     

Design and Experimental Characterization of Low‐Volume PM10/2.5/1.0 Trichotomous Sampler Inlet

This paper presents the development and laboratory evaluation of a PM10/2.5/1.0 trichotomous sampling inlet that consists of two main parts: a previously designed PM10 size‐selective inlet part and a PM2.5/1.0 two‐stage virtual impactor, which was newly fabricated and attached serially to the PM10 size selective inlet part. Particles are collected in three locations through the trichotomous sampling inlet to provide for not only particle concentration measurements of PM10, PM2.5 and PM1.0, but also those of PM2.5–10 and PM1.0–2.5.     

A Lagrangean heuristic algorithm for disassembly scheduling with capacity constraints

This paper considers the problem of determining the disassembly schedule (quantity and timing) of products in order to satisfy the demand of their parts or components over a finite planning horizon. The objective is to minimize the sum of set-up, disassembly operation, and inventory holding costs. As an extension of the uncapacitated versions of the problem, we consider the resource capacity restrictions over the planning horizon. An integer program is suggested to describe the problem mathematically, and to solve the problem, a heuristic is developed using a Lagrangean relaxation technique together with a method to find a good feasible solution while considering the trade-offs among different costs. The effectiveness of the algorithm is tested on a number of randomly generated problems and the test results show that the heuristic suggested in this paper can give near optimal solutions within a short amount of computation time.     

Theoretical STM images of alkaline-earth metal adsorbed Si(1 1 1)3 × 2 surfaces

We have performed total-energy calculations to study theoretical scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) images of the Si(1 1 1)3 × 2 surfaces induced by the adsorption of alkaline-earth metals (AEMs). Previously, in a series of works on Ba/Si(1 1 1) system, we have found that the observed Si(1 1 1)3 × 1-Ba LEED phase indeed has a 3 × 2 periodicity with a Ba coverage of 1/6 ML and the HCC substrate structure. Based on results of the Ba case, we proposed that the HCC structure is also adopted for other AEM atoms, which was confirmed by our recent work. In this paper, we mainly report the STM simulations for different AEM systems to compare with existing experimental data. We discuss the difference in the detailed STM images for different AEM adsorbates. Especially, the difference in filled-state images between Mg and other AEM atoms is attributed to the strong Mg-Si interaction.