Alphavirus-based replicon systems are frequently used as preclinical vectors and as antigen discovery tools, and they have recently been assessed in clinical vaccine trials. Typically, alphavirus replicon RNAs are delivered within virus-like replicon particles (VRP) that are produced following transfection of replicon RNA and two helper RNAs into permissive cells in vitro. The non-structural pr...

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a central problem for many transportation applications, and although it is well known that it is difficult to solve, how much of this difficulty is due to the formulation of the problem is less understood. In this paper we experimentally investigate how the solution times to solve a VRP with a general IP solver are affected by the formulation of the VRP used...

Pheromone-based heuristic column generation (ACO-HCG) is a hybrid algorithm that combines ant colony optimization and a MIP solver to tackle vehicle routing problems (VRP) with black-box feasibility. Traditionally, the experimental analysis of such a complex algorithm has been carried out manually by trial and error. Moreover, a full-factorial statistical analysis is infeasible due to the large...

The two-echelon vehicle routing problem (2E-VRP) consists in making deliveries to a set of customers using two distinct fleets of vehicles. First-level vehicles pick up requests at a distribution center and bring them to intermediate sites. At these locations, the requests are transferred to second-level vehicles, which deliver them. This paper addresses a variant of the 2E-VRP that integrates ...

In the well-known Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) a set of identical vehicles located at a central depot is to be optimally routed to supply customers with known demands subject to vehicle capacity constraints. An important variant of the VRP arises when a mixed fleet of vehicles, characterized by different capacities and costs, is available for distribution activities. The problem is known as Fl...

The vehicle routing problem (VRP), a well-known combinatorial optimization problem, holds a central place in logistics management. This paper proposes an improved ant colony optimization (IACO), which possesses a new strategy to update the increased pheromone, called ant-weight strategy, and a mutation operation, to solve VRP. The computational results for fourteen benchmark problems are report...

The paper proposes and validates a new method of solving instances of the vehicle routing problem (VRP). The approach is based on a multiple agent system paradigm. The paper contains the VRP formulation, an overview of the multiple agent environment used and a description of the proposed implementation. The approach is validated experimentally. The experiment plan and the discussion of experime...

We have previously shown that delivery of the porcine type I interferon gene (poIFN-α/β) with a replication-defective human adenovirus vector (adenovirus 5 [Ad5]) can sterilely protect swine challenged with foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) 1 day later. However, the need of relatively high doses of Ad5 limits the applicability of such a control strategy in the livestock industry. Venezuelan e...

Dendritic cells (DCs) are a diverse population with the capacity to respond to a variety of pathogens. Because of their critical role in pathogenesis and Ag-specific adaptive immune responses, DCs are the focus of extensive study and incorporation into a variety of immunotherapeutic strategies. The diversity of DC subsets imposes a substantial challenge to the successful development of DC-based...

A key element of many distribution systems is the routing and scheduling of vehicles through a set of nodes requiring service. The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) can be defined as a problem of finding the optimal routes of delivery or collection from one or several depots to a number of cities or customers, while satisfying some constraints. In many practical situations, however, the vehicle is ...