In this paper, a two-stage metaheuristic based on a new neighborhood structure is proposed to solve the vehicle routing problem with time windows. Our neighborhood construction focuses on the relationship between route(s) and node(s). Unlike the conventional methods for parallel route construction, we construct mutes in a nested parallel manner to obtain higher solution quality. Computational r...

A critical problem in decision analysis is how to evaluate the di€erence between two or more di€erent rankings of a set of alternatives. In this paper it is assumed that a group of decision makers has already established a ranking for each one of a set of alternatives. Then, the problem examined here is how to evaluate the di€erences among these rankings. This problem does not have a unique sol...

Research on civil aircraft inspection and maintenance has shown the importance of teamwork in the aircraft maintenance environment. In addition, training has been identi®ed as one of the primary intervention strategies in improving team performance. With improvements in technology-based training devices, it may be possible to provide aircraft maintenance technicians with training tools to help ...

We consider the problem of scheduling a number of jobs on a single machine against a restrictive common due date. The paper consists of two parts: firstly a new and appropriate problem representation is developed. As the restrictive common due date problem is known to be intractable we decided, secondly, to apply meta-heuristics, namely evolutionary strategies, simulated annealing and threshold...

OBJECTIVES To examine whether a year long programme based on the transtheoretical model of behaviour change, incorporating three sessions using an expert system computer program and three class lessons, could reduce the prevalence of teenage smoking. DESIGN Cluster randomised trial comparing the intervention to a control group exposed only to health education as part of the English national c...

Abstract A total of 8218 pelagic microplastic samples from the world’s oceans were synthesized to create a dataset composed raw, calibrated, processed, and gridded data which are made available public. The raw abundance obtained by different research projects using surface net tows or continuous seawater intake. Fibrous microplastics removed calibrated dataset. Microplastic fluctuates due verti...

Methods Demographic data of FMF patients, followed in the national FMF center at Sheba medical center (n=8352) and Hadassah Medical Center (n=1083) were obtained from FMF patient hospital registries. The prevalence of cancer in the general population, and in the study registries was attained from the cancer registry of Israel and analyzed according to age, origin, and cancer type. The Standardi...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2014.08.006 0360-8352/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. q This manuscript was processed by Area Editor Mohamad Y. Jaber. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Rome ‘‘La Sapienza’’, Via Eudossiana, 18, 00184 Roma, Italy. Tel.: +39 3282777914; fax: +39 0644585746. E-mail addresses: francesco.costantino@u...

We show how the problem of verifying parameterized systems can be reduced to the problem of determining the equivalence of goals in a logic program. We further show how goal equivalences can be established using induction-based proofs. Such proofs rely on a powerful new theory of logicprogram transformations (encompassing unfold, fold and goal replacement over multiple recursive clauses), can b...

Structural queries constitute a special form of content-based retrieval where the user specifies a set of spatial constraints among query variables and searches for all configurations of actual objects that (totally or partially) match these constraints. Processing of such queries can be thought of as a general form of spatial joins, i.e., instead of pairs, the result consists of n-tuples of ob...