In optimizing the area of Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) layouts, circuit interconnections should generally be realized with minimum total interconnect. This chapter addresses several variations of the corresponding fundamental Steiner minimal tree (SMT) problem, where a given set of pins is to be connected using minimum total wirelength. Steiner trees are important in global routing and wi...

Large string datasets are common in a number of emerging text and biological database applications. Common queries over such datasets include both exact and approximate string matches. These queries can be evaluated very efficiently by using a suffix tree index on the string dataset. Although suffix trees can be constructed quickly in memory for small input datasets, constructing persistent tre...

Innovation within the highly fragmented construction industry operating within an uncertain environment requires further development for the traditional planning techniques. Uncertainty that cannot be resolved cannot affect the consequence of the decision analysis to implement innovations. However, improved performance gained from adopting more innovative approaches requires commitment, uncerta...

A dialogue system can present itself and/or address the user as an active agent by means of linguistic constructions in personal style, or suppress agentivity by using impersonal style. We compare system evaluation judgments and input style alignment of users interacting with an in-car dialogue system generating output in personal vs. impersonal style. Although our results are consistent with e...

We present a determinization construction for weighted tree automata using factorizations. Among others, this result subsumes a previous result for determinization of weighted string automata using factorizations (Kirsten and Mäurer, 2005) and two previous results for weighted tree automata, one of them not using factorizations (Borchardt, 2004) and one of them restricted to nonrecursive automa...

A framework for the reduction of scenario trees as inputs of (linear) multistage stochastic programs is provided such that optimal values and approximate solution sets remain close to each other. The argument is based on upper bounds of the Lr -distance and the filtration distance, and on quantitative stability results for multistage stochastic programs. The important difference from scenario r...

An important issue for solving multistage stochastic programs consists in the approximate representation of the (multivariate) stochastic input process in the form of a scenario tree. In this paper, forward and backward approaches are developed for generating scenario trees out of an initial fan of individual scenarios. Both approaches are motivated by the recent stability result in [15] for op...

An important issue for solving multistage stochastic programs consists in the approximate representation of the (multivariate) stochastic input process in the form of a scenario tree. In this paper, we develop (stability) theory-based heuristics for generating scenario trees out of an initial set of scenarios. They are based on forward or backward algorithms for tree generation consisting of re...

Multi-stage financial decision optimization under uncertainty depends on a careful numerical approximation of the underlying stochastic process, which describes the future returns of the selected assets or asset categories. Various approaches towards an optimal generation of discrete-time, discrete-state approximations (represented as scenario trees) have been suggested in the literature. In th...