A New Neighborhood Based on Improvement Graph for Robust Graph Coloring Problem
In this paper, we propose a new neighborhood structure based on the improvement graph for solving the Robust Graph Coloring Problem, an interesting extension of classical graph coloring Different from the traditional neighborhood where the color of only one vertex is modified, the new neighborhood involves several vertices In addition, the questions of how to select the modified vertices and how to modify them are modelled by an improvement graph and solved by a Dynamic Programming method The experimental results clearly show that our new improvement graph based k-exchange cycle neighborhood improves the accuracy significantly, especially for large scale heuristic search.

title: k-Center Problems with Minimum Coverage
abstract: The k-center problem is a well-known facility location problem and can be described as follows: Given a complete undirected graph G=(V,E), a metric d:V×V→ℝ + and a positive integer k, we seek a subset U ⊆ V of at most k centers which minimizes the maximum distances from points in V to U. Formally, the objective function is given by: 
 
$$ \textstyle\min_{U\subseteq V,|U|\leq k}\max_{v\in V}\min_{r\in U}d(v,r).$$ 
 
As a typical example, we may want to set up k service centers (e.g., police stations, fire stations, hospitals, polling centers) and minimize the maximum distances between each client and these centers. The problem is known to be \(\mathcal{NP}\)-hard .

title: On the Selection and Assignment with Minimum Quantity Commitments
abstract: Traditional selection and assignment problems analyze how to select and assign the suppliers to meet demands within minimum total costs. The maximum capacity and the fixed selection costs are two major restrictions imposed on suppliers, and extensively studied in literature.

title: A stochastic beam search for the berth allocation problem
abstract: In this paper, the optimization of the Berth Allocation Problem (BAP) is transformed into a multiple stage decision making procedure and a new multiple stage search method, namely stochastic beam search algorithm, is proposed to solve it. New techniques such as an improved beam search scheme, a two-phase node goodness estimation, and a stochastic node selection criteria are proposed. Real-life information provided by Singapore Port was collected as our test data. Experimental results show that the proposed stochastic beam search is more accurate and efficient than both the state-of-the-art meta-heuristic and the traditional determinist beam search.

title: A compromised large-scale neighborhood search heuristic for capacitated air cargo loading planning
abstract: Cost effectiveness is central to the air freight forwarders. In this work, we study how an air freight forwarder should plan its cargo loading in order to minimize the total freight cost given a limited number of rented containers. To solve the problem efficiently for practical implementation, we propose a new large-scale neighborhood search heuristic. The proposed large-scale neighborhood relaxes the subset-disjoint restriction made in the existing literature; the relaxation risks a possibility of infeasible exchanges while at the same time it avoids the potentially large amount of checking effort required to enforce the subset-disjoint restriction. An efficient procedure is then used to search for improvement in the neighborhood. We have also proposed a subproblem to address the difficulties caused by the fixed charges. The compromised large-scale neighborhood (CLSN) search heuristic has shown stably superior performance when compared with the traditional large-scale neighborhood search and the mixed integer programming model.

title: Flexible Demand Assignment Problem
abstract: This paper proposed a state-of-the-art local search for solving Flexible Demand Assignment problem (FDA) which considers the balance between revenue and cost in demand assignment. Different than the published studies, our research splits the FDA problem into three core subproblems as operators for neighborhood construction. The three specified subproblems One Bin Repack, Two Bins Repack and Unpack are proposed completely based on mathematical modelling, computational complexity, executive conditions and greedy solving methods. Benchmark experimental results have shown that the proposed local search improved to the best published heuristics by 2.34%.

title: Failure probability of wire bonding packages
abstract: This paper presents a methodology/model for elastro-plastic analysis of the wire bonding packages. The methodology is based on finite element method for rate sensitive materials and applicable to very large deformation processes. Ultrasonic power is simulated as displacement boundary condition. Stress induced by the mismatch of the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) in the system because of temperature increase due to application of the ultrasonic or the reflow process is considered. The effect of temperature increase on material property is also accounted for. Nonlinear spring elements are adopted to simulate the gradual formation of intermetallic bonding layer between the ball and the electric pad. With these spring elements, the effect of stress and strain relaxation of the ball in the subsequent procedures such as reflow process is taken into account. The mechanical behavior of the silicon chip during the wire bonding with the ultrasonic irradiation and reflow process is thus revealed. Failure probability with reference to the stress distribution is discussed. The developed FE methodology is simple but effective to evaluate the failure probability of wire-bonding packages.

title: Study of reactive ion etching process to fabricate the PMMA-based polymer waveguide
abstract: To fabricate a PMMA-based polymer waveguide, the reactive ion etching (RIE) process is systematically studied and the fabrication techniques are established. The etch rate and sidewall morphology in oxygen plasma are investigated as a function of the radio frequency power and gas flow rate. The optimum etch parameters are given, taking into account simultaneously minimum sidewall roughness and directional etching. An innovative approach is reported to smooth sidewalls through a treatment process using resolution and recuring. In comparison with the RIE process without treatment, the sidewall roughness is improved by a factor of about 3. The observed near-field pattern illustrates the waveguide, fabricated by using this technique, achieves single-mode transmission at 1550 nm wavelength.

title: Adaptive Meeting Scheduling for Large-Scale Distributed Groupware
abstract: This paper introduces a novel approach of collective scheduling among a community of distributed users. This approach, named Distributed Adaptive Scheduling (DAS), deploys flexible, lightweight agents to quickly find and suggest suitable solutions of scheduling for a large number of users. The DAS agents can move from one machine to another to co-ordinate mutually acceptable solutions for a proposed meeting. They also possess behavioural intelligence, by making adaptive decisions about next actions according to current environment and conditions. As a consequence, quick and efficient scheduling can be achieved for users located at different places. Experimental results have proved that DAS is especially suitable for large-scale distributed scheduling, and scheduling with complex calendars. The DAS approach has been successfully integrated with a personal assistant agent platform to provide completely automatic meeting scheduling for both stationary and mobile users.

title: A high-resolution electron momentum spectroscopy and density functional theory study into the complete valence electronic structure of allene
abstract: A study of the electronic structure of the complete valence shell of allene (1,2-propadiene) is reported. New high-resolution binding-energy spectra were measured in the energy regime 6–34.5 eV over a range of different target electron momenta, so that momentum distributions (MDs) could be determined for each molecular orbital. These data supersede the low-resolution work of Braidwood et al. [ (1994) 2075–2087], and also clarify some ambiguities with the earlier results. Theoretical MDs were calculated using a plane wave impulse approximation (PWIA) model for the reaction mechanism and density functional theory (DFT) for the wave function. Three basis sets, at the local spin density (LSD) approximation level and, additionally, incorporating nonlocal corrections such as the generalized gradient approximation (GGA), were studied. A critical comparison between the experimental and theoretical MDs was made, and it allowed us to determine the “optimum” wave function for allene from the basis sets we considered. This wave function is then used to derive allene's chemically interesting molecular properties. A summary of some of these results and a comparison of them with those of other workers is also presented with the level of agreement typically being good.

title: A New Multi-view Learning Algorithm Based on ICA Feature for Image Retrieval
abstract: In content-based image retrieval (CBIR), most techniques involve an important issue of how to efficiently bridge the gap between the high-level concepts and low-level visual features. We propose a novel semi-supervised learning method for image retrieval, which makes full use of both ICA feature and general low-level feature. Our approach can be characterized by the following three aspects: (1) The ICA feature, as proved to be representative of human vision, is adopted as a view to describe human perception; (2) A multi-view learning algorithm is introduced to make the most use of different features and dramatically reduce human relevance feedback needed to achieve a satisfactory result; (3) A new semi-supervised learning algorithm is proposed to adapt to the small sample problem and other special constrains of our multi-view learning algorithm. Our experimental results and comparisons are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.