Iterative-improvement 2-way min-cut partitioning is an important phase in most circuit placement tools, and finds use in many other CAD applications. Most iterative improvement techniques for circuit netlists like the FiducciaMattheyses (FM) method compute the gains of nodes using local netlist information that is only concerned with the immediate improvement in the cutset. This can lead to mis...

The shrinkage temperature of collagen is related to its stability. When shrinkage takes place, it is thought that the hydrothermal agitation at this temperature is sufficient to overcome the forces, chiefly hydrogen bonds, which hold together the polypeptide chains. When stability is reduced by removal of hydrogen bonds with hydrogen bond breakers or by chemical damage, less energy is required ...

Merge-and-shrink abstraction is a general approach to heuristic design whose key advantage is its capability to make very fine-grained choices in defining abstractions. The Mergeand-shrink planner uses two different strategies for making these choices, both based on the well-known notion of bisimulation. The resulting heuristics are used in two sequential runs of A∗ search.

We consider the fundamental Mutual Visibility problem for a set of n identical autonomous point robots (n is not known to the robots) that operate following Look-Compute-Move cycles starting from arbitrary distinct positions in the Euclidean plane under obstructed visibility – a robot ri can see robot rj , rj 6= ri, if and only if there is no other robot in the line segment joining their positi...