approach that simply requires unique numbers, whether generated by the user or the system (or both, in cooperation).

In this paper, we consider a single-item periodic-review stochastic inventory system with both minimum order quantity (MOQ) and batch ordering requirements. In each time period, the firm can order either none or at least as much as the MOQ. At the same time, if an order is placed, the order quantity is required to be an integral multiple of a given specific batch size. We first adopt a heuristi...

During a Cholesky factorization, a zero matrix element may become nonzero, a phenomenon called fill-in. This can increase the storage requirement and computing time by orders of magnitude. It is well-known that a permutation of the coefficient matrix influences the size of the fill-in. So, one is interested in the minimum fill-in problem, finding a permutation that leads to the least possible f...

The locomotive assignment and the freight train scheduling are important problems in railway transportation. Freight cars are coupled to form a freight rake. The freight rake becomes a train when a locomotive is coupled to it. The locomotive assignment problem assigns locomotives to a set of freight rakes in a way that, with minimum locomotive deadheading time, rake coupling delay and locomotiv...

An automatic segmentation technique has been developed and applied to two renal micro-computer tomography (CT) images. With the use of a 20-microm voxel resolution image, the arterial and venous trees were segmented for the rat renal vasculature, distinguishing resolving vessels down to 30 microm in radius. A higher resolution 4-microm voxel image of a renal vascular subtree, with vessel radial...