Heuristics for multi-attribute vehicle routing problems: A survey and synthesis

The attributes of vehicle routing problems are additional characteristics or constraints that aim to better take into account the specificities of real applications. The variants thus formed are supported by a well-developed literature, including a large variety of heuristics. This article first reviews the main classes of attributes, providing a survey of heuristics and meta-heuristics for Multi-Attribute Vehicle Routing Problems (MAVRP). It then takes a closer look at the concepts of 64 remarkable meta-heuristics, selected objectively for their outstanding performance on 15 classic MAVRP with different attributes. This cross-analysis leads to the identification of “winning strategies” in designing effective heuristics for MAVRP. This is an important step in the development of general and efficient solution methods for dealing with the large range of vehicle routing variants.     

Synthesis and mesogenic properties of four series of polyesters derived from dicarboxylic and dihydroxylic aromatic monomers

Some members of four series of polyesters were synthesized by the direct polycondensation of two types of dicarboxylic acids (4,4′-dicarboxy-α,ω-diphenoxyalkanes and 4,4′-dicarboxy-α,ω-dibenzoyloxyalkanes) with two types of bisphenols (4,4′-dihydroxy-α,ω-diphenoxyalkanes and 4,4′-dihydroxy-α,ω-dibenzoyloxyalkanes) using tosyl chloride in pyridine in the presence of N, N-dimethylformamide. The ¹H-NMR spectra of the polymers synthesized showed that these polymers have an ordenated structure. The mesogenic properties of these polymers were studied by optical microscopy and differential scanning calorimetry. Many of the polymers show nematic mesomorphism.     

Speciation of Cr(VI)/Cr(III) by electrothermal atomisation AAS after electrodeposition on a L'vov platform

Summary The pyrolysed graphite L'vov platform of a tube furnace is considered as an electrode for the electrodeposition and speciation of chromium by electrothermal atomisation atomic absorption spectrometry (ETA-AAS). Firstly, a preliminary study of the Cr(VI)/Cr(III) voltammetric behavior at pH 4.70 on a glassy-carbon electrode is carried out. Secondly, the L'vov platform is used as a cathodic macro-electrode for the selective preconcentration of Cr(VI)/Cr(III) on a mercury film. Speciation of Cr(VI)/Cr(III) is carried out on the basis of the electrolysis potential (E_e): at pH 4.70 and E_e=–0.30 V, only Cr(VI) is reduced to Cr(III) and accumulated as Cr(OH)₃ by adsorption on a mercury film; at E_e=–1.80 V both Cr(VI) and Cr(III) are accumulated forming an amalgam with added mercury(II) ions. Once the film has been formed, the platform is transferred to a graphite tube to atomise the element. The reliability of the method was tested for the speciation of chromium in natural waters and it proves to be highly sensitive thanks to the electroanalytical step. In all samples, the Cr(VI) concentration was less than the detection limit (0.15 ng ml^–1), and the concentration of Cr(III) agrees with those of total chromium. The analytical recovery of Cr(VI) added to water samples [3.50 ng ml^–1 of Cr(VI)] was 105±6.2%.     

Entanglement renormalization

We propose a real-space renormalization group (RG) transformation for quantum systems on a D-dimensional lattice. The transformation partially disentangles a block of sites before coarse-graining it into an effective site. Numerical simulations with the ground state of a 1D lattice at criticality show that the resulting coarse-grained sites require a Hilbert space dimension that does not grow with successive RG transformations. As a result we can address, in a quasi-exact way, tens of thousands of quantum spins with a computational effort that scales logarithmically in the system's size. The calculations unveil that ground state entanglement in extended quantum systems is organized in layers corresponding to different length scales. At a quantum critical point, each relevant length scale makes an equivalent contribution to the entanglement of a block.     

Variational quantum Monte Carlo simulations with tensor-network states

We show that the formalism of tensor-network states, such as the matrix-product states (MPS), can be used as a basis for variational quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Using a stochastic optimization method, we demonstrate the potential of this approach by explicit MPS calculations for the transverse Ising chain with up to N=256 spins at criticality, using periodic boundary conditions and D x D matrices with D up to 48. The computational cost of our scheme formally scales as ND3, whereas standard MPS approaches and the related density matrix renormalization group method scale as ND5 and ND6, respectively, for periodic systems.