An agent-based approach to the two-dimensional guillotine bin packing problem

The two-dimensional guillotine bin packing problem consists of packing, without overlap, small rectangular items into the smallest number of large rectangular bins where items are obtained via guillotine cuts. This problem is solved using a new guillotine bottom left (GBL) constructive heuristic and its agent-based (A–B) implementation. GBL, which is sequential, successively packs items into a bin and creates a new bin every time it can no longer fit any unpacked item into the current one. A–B, which is pseudo-parallel, uses the simplest system of artificial life. This system consists of active agents dynamically interacting in real time to jointly fill the bins while each agent is driven by its own parameters, decision process, and fitness assessment. A–B is particularly fast and yields near-optimal solutions. Its modularity makes it easily adaptable to knapsack related problems.     

Heuristic approaches to large-scale periodic packing of irregular shapes on a rectangular sheet

The nesting problem is a two-dimensional cutting and packing problem where the small pieces to cut have irregular shapes. A particular case of the nesting problem occurs when congruent copies of one single shape have to fill, as much as possible, a limited sheet. Traditional approaches to the nesting problem have difficulty to tackle with high number of pieces to place. Additionally, if the orientation of the given shape is not a constraint, the general nesting approaches are not particularly successful. This problem arises in practice in several industrial contexts such as footwear, metalware and furniture. A possible approach is the periodic placement of the shapes, in a lattice way. In this paper, we propose three heuristic approaches to solve this particular case of nesting problems. Experimental results are compared with published results in literature and additional results obtained from new instances are also provided.     

Non-linear anonymous pricing combinatorial auctions

In combinatorial auctions the pricing problem is of main concern since it is the means by which the auctioneer signals the result of the auction to the participants. In order for the auction to be regarded as fair among the various participants the price signals should be such that a participant that has won a subset of items knows why his bid was a winning bid and that agents that have not acquired any item easily can detect why they lost. The problem in the combinatorial auction setting is that the winner determination problem is a hard integer programming problem and hence a linear pricing scheme supporting the optimal allocation might not exist.     

Exact algorithms for the two-dimensional strip packing problem with and without rotations

We propose exact algorithms for the two-dimensional strip packing problem (2SP) with and without 90° rotations. We first focus on the perfect packing problem (PP), which is a special case of 2SP, wherein all given rectangles are required to be packed without wasted space, and design branch-and-bound algorithms introducing several branching rules and bounding operations. A combination of these rules yields an algorithm that is especially efficient for feasible instances of PP. We then propose several methods of applying the PP algorithms to 2SP. Our algorithms succeed in efficiently solving benchmark instances of PP with up to 500 rectangles and those of 2SP with up to 200 rectangles. They are often faster than existing exact algorithms specially tailored for problems without rotations.     

Optimal grid holey packings with block size 3 and 4

The notion of a grid holey packing (GHP) was first proposed for the construction of constant composite codes. For a GHP (k, 1; n ×  g) of type [w ₁, . . . , w _g ], where , the fundamental problem is to determine the packing number N([w ₁, . . . , w _g ], 1; n ×  g), that is, the maximum number of blocks in such a GHP. In this paper we determine completely the values of N([w ₁, . . . , w _g ], 1; n ×  g) in the case of block size .      

Single-walled carbon nanotubes as stationary phase in gas chromatographic separation and determination of argon, carbon dioxide and hydrogen

A chromatographic technique is introduced based on single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) as stationary phase for separation of Ar, CO₂ and H₂ at parts per million (ppm) levels. The efficiency of SWCNTs was compared with solid materials such as molecular sieve, charcoal, multi-walled carbon nanotubes and carbon nanofibers. The morphology of SWCNTs was optimized for maximum adsorption of H₂, CO₂ and Ar and minimum adsorption of gases such as N₂, O₂, CO and H₂O vapour. To control temperature of the gas chromatography column, peltier cooler was used. Mixtures of Ar, CO₂ and H₂ were separated according to column temperature program. Relative standard deviation for nine replicate analyses of 0.2 mL H₂ containing 10 μL of each Ar or CO₂ was 2.5% for Ar, 2.8% for CO₂ and 3.6% for H₂. The interfering effects of CO, and O₂ were investigated. Working ranges were evaluated as 40-600 ppm for Ar, 30-850 ppm for CO₂ and 10-1200 ppm for H₂. Significant sensitivity, small relative standard deviation (RSD) and acceptable limit of detection (LOD) were obtained for each analyte, showing capability of SWCNTs for gas separation and determination processes. Finally, the method was used to evaluate the contents of CO₂ in air sample.     

Hardness of approximation for orthogonal rectangle packing and covering problems

Bansal and Sviridenko [N. Bansal, M. Sviridenko, New approximability and inapproximability results for 2-dimensional bin packing, in: Proceedings of the 15th Annual ACM–SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA, 2004, pp. 189–196] proved that there is no asymptotic PTAS for 2-dimensional Orthogonal Bin Packing (without rotations), unless P=NP. We show that similar approximation hardness results hold for several 2- and 3-dimensional rectangle packing and covering problems even if rotations by ninety degrees are allowed. Moreover, for some of these problems we provide explicit lower bounds on asymptotic approximation ratio of any polynomial time approximation algorithm. Our hardness results apply to the most studied case of 2-dimensional problems with unit square bins, and for 3-dimensional strip packing and covering problems with a strip of unit square base.     

化学接枝改进ZnO-有机硅纳米复合材料的光学性能

采用N-(三甲氧基硅丙基)-4-叠氮-2,3,5,6-四氟苯甲酰胺(PFPA-silane)改性纳米氧化锌,并将PFPA-silane接枝在有机硅聚合物链上.接枝反应改变了纳米复合物的折光指数,并使ZnO纳米粒子与有机硅基体的折光指数更加匹配.这减少了纳米氧化锌粒子对光的散射作用,增加了纳米ZnO-有机硅纳米复合物的透明性.所制备的复合物通过接枝改性后透光率最多可提高50%.研究结果表明无机物和聚合物的折光指数的匹配程度可以通过偶联剂与聚合物基体的反应来进行调控.