The hybridization of both, genetic algorithms and local search methods, has been shown to be an eeective route to follow for nding high quality solutions for hard optimization problems. Previously proposed genetic local search approaches for the traveling salesman problem focused on the importance of using a high quality local search method in order to yield high quality solutions. This paper p...

1. Local extinctions in habitat patches and asymmetric dispersal between patches are key processes structuring animal populations in heterogeneous environments. Effective landscape conservation requires an understanding of how habitat loss and fragmentation influence demographic processes within populations and movement between populations. 2. We used patch occupancy surveys and molecular data ...

This illustrated paper reports on the early digital games industry in New Zealand, during the late 1970s and 80s. It presents an overview of this largely unknown history, drawing on in depth archival research, interviews with key industry participants and collectors. It discusses the local production of consoles, handhelds, and arcade games in this market, as well as anomalies of distribution o...

Understanding how to prioritize among the most deserving imperilled species has been a focus of biodiversity science for the past three decades. Though global metrics that integrate evolutionary history and likelihood of loss have been successfully implemented, conservation is typically carried out at sub-global scales on communities of species rather than among members of complete taxonomic as...

Millions of species currently exist on earth, and to secure an understanding of how all this magnificent variety arose is no small task. Biologists have long accepted Darwinian selection as the central explanation of adaptation and evolutionary change; yet, to date, no similar agreement has emerged about evolutionary processes that can create two species out of one. Almost 150 years after Darwi...

BACKGROUND Circumferential pulmonary vein (PV) isolation for atrial fibrillation (AF) is occasionally difficult to achieve because electrical breakthrough sites (EBSs) between the left atrium (LA) and PVs cannot be identified during ablation especially in the carina regions. METHODS The left PVs (Lt.PVs) of 60 AF patients and the right PVs (Rt.PVs) of 37 patients undergoing PV isolation were ...

Introduction: Psychological stresses influence brain functions such as learning and memory. Environmental factors like types and durations of stress affect brain responsiveness. This study investigated the effects of two subchronic social and isolation stresses on learning, memory, adrenal glands weight and corticosterone levels in the hippocampus and frontal cortex. Methods: Eighteen male ...

The saga pattern manages transactions and maintains data consistency across distributed microservices via utilizing local sequential that update each service publish messages to trigger the next ones. Failure by one transaction causes execution of compensating counteract preceding one. However, lacks isolation, meaning reading writing from an incomplete is allowed. Therefore, this research prop...

In this paper we present a method called NOVEL (Nonlinear Optimization via External Lead) for solving continuous and discrete global optimization problems. NOVEL addresses the balance between global search and local search, using a trace to aid in identifying promising regions before committing to local searches. We discuss NOVEL for solving continuous constrained optimization problems and show...