k-Center Problems with Minimum Coverage
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: A Survey on Reviewer Assignment Problem
abstract: Research into Reviewer Assignment Problem (RAP) is still in its early stage but there is great world-wide interest, as the foregoing process of peer-review which is the brickwork of science authentication. The RAP approach can be divided into three phases: identifying assignment procedure, computing the matching degree between manuscripts and reviewers, and optimizing the assignment so as to achieve the given objectives. Methodologies for addressing the above three phases have been developed from a variety of research disciplines, including information retrieval, artificial intelligent, operations research, etc. This survey is not only to cover variations of RAP that have appeared in the literature, but also to identify the practical challenge and current progress for developing intelligent RAP systems.

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 Cargo Loading Planning
abstract: In this work, we propose a compromised large-scale neighborhood, which is embedded in simulated annealing to solve a cargo loading planning problem arising in logistics industry. It is "compromised" because it makes a tradeoff between the extensive backward checking work incurred in traditional subset-disjoint restriction and the possible infeasibility resulting from the relaxing the restriction. Extensive experiments have shown the competitive advantages of the heuristic approach. The proposed neighborhood search method is generally applicable.

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: Meta-heuristic Algorithm for the Transshipment Problem with Fixed Transportation Schedules
abstract: In this work, we develop an efficient meta-heuristic genetic algorithm for a different type of transshipment problem with supplier and customer time windows, where flow through the crossdock (a kind of transshipment center) is constrained by fixed transportation schedules and crossdocks capacities, and which was proved to be NP -complete in the strong sense. And computational experiments are conducted to show the proposed heuristic outperforms CPLEX.

title: On the competitiveness of on-line real-time task scheduling
abstract: With respect to on-line scheduling algorithms that must direct the service of sporadic task requests we quantify the benefit of clairvoyancy, i.e., the power of possessing knowledge of various task parameters of future events. Specifically, we consider the problem of preemptively sheduling sporadic task requests in both uni- and multi-processor environments. If a task request is successfuly scheduled to completion, a value equal to the task's execution time is obtained; otherwise no value is obtained. We prove that no on-line scheduling algorithm can guarantee a cumulative value greater than 1/4th the value obtainable by a clairvoyant scheduler; i.e., we prove a 1/4th upper bound on the competitive factor of on-line real-time schedulers. We present an online uniprocessor scheduling algorithm TD1 that actually has a competitive factor of 1/4; this bound is thus shown to be tight. We further consider the effect of restricting the amount of overloading permitted (the loading factor), and quantify the relationship between the loading factor and the upper bound on the competitive factor. Other results of a similar nature deal with the effect of value densities (measuring the importance of type of a task). Generalizations to dual-processor on-line scheduling are also considered. For the dual-processor case, we prove an upper bound of 1/2 on the competitive factor. This bound is shown to be tight in the special case when all the tasks have the same density and zero laxity.

title: On scheduling concurrent multicast sessions over resource reserved network
abstract: Resource reserved network can provide guaranteed quality of service to end users, especially those services requiring high bandwidth and short delay, such as video conferencing, video on demand, etc. In this paper, we consider the multicast packing problem, where multiple multicast sessions request network services simultaneously. To maximize the profit, network service provider need to carefully schedule these multicast sessions under the capacity constraint. We first formulate the problem as an integer programming problem and propose an optimization algorithm using branch-and-bound technique. A valid upper bound and a lower bound are then derived by using a statistical method and a greedy heuristic, respectively. The simulation results illustrate that our optimization algorithm performs effectively within the two boundaries.

title: Analytical energy gradient evaluation in relativistic and nonrelativistic density functional calculations
abstract: The expressions of analytical energy gradients in density functional theory and their implementation in programs are reported. The evaluation of analytical energy gradients can be carried out in the fully 4-component relativistic, approximate relativistic, and nonrelativistic density functional calculations under local density approximation or general gradient approximation with or without frozen core approximation using different basis sets in our programs. The translational invariance condition and the fact that the one-center terms do not contribute to the energy gradients are utilized to improve the calculation accuracy and to reduce the computational effort. The calculated results of energy gradients and optimized geometry as well as atomization energies of some molecules by the analytical gradient method are in very good agreement with results obtained by the numerical derivative method.

title: Extracting Output Metadata from Scientific Deep Web Data Sources
abstract: Increasingly, many data sources appear as online databases, hidden behind query forms, thus forming the deep web. The popularity of this new medium for data dissemination is leading to new problems in data integration. Particularly, to enable data integration from multiple deep web data sources, one needs to obtain the metadata for each of the data sources. Obtaining the metadata, particularly, the output schema, can be very challenging. This is because, given an input query, many deep web data sources only return a subset of the output schema attributes, i.e, the ones that have a non-NULL value for the corresponding input. In this paper, we propose two approaches, which are the sampling model approach and the mixture model approach, respectively, to efficiently obtain an approximately complete set of output schema attributes from a deep web data source. Our experiments show while each of the above two approaches has limitations, a hybrid strategy, where we combine the two approaches, achieves high recall with good precision for most data sources.

title: Erratum to: "Deployment of an AEC industry sector product model [Computer-Aided Design 37 (12) 1214-1228]"
abstract: CIMsteel Integration Standard, Version 2 (CIS/2) is an industry-developed product model based on ISO-STEP technology that has been widely adopted within the steel construction industry. CIS/2 is an early success story of broad use of a product model for both data exchange and improving the productivity of those companies taking advantage of its capabilities. Here, we review the history of CIS/2, the methods and issues arising from its deployment, the benefits it has thus far realized and the research issues these activities have identified.