Nonlinear Assignment Problems (NAPs) are natural extensions of the classic Linear Assignment Problem, and despite the efforts of many researchers over the past three decades, they still remain some of the hardest combinatorial optimization problems to solve exactly. The purpose of this book is to provide in a single volume, major algorithmic aspects and applications of NAPs as contributed by leading international experts. The chapters included in this book are concerned with major applications and the latest algorithmic solution approaches for NAPs. Approximation algorithms, polyhedral methods, semidefinite programming approaches and heuristic procedures for NAPs are included, while applications of this problem class in the areas of multiple-target tracking in the context of military surveillance systems, of experimental high energy physics, and of parallel processing are presented. Audience: Researchers and graduate students in the areas of combinatorial optimization, mathematical programming, operations research, physics, and computer science.

Advances in Mechanics and Mathematics (AMMA) is intended to bridge the gap by providing multi-disciplinary publications. This volume, AMMA 2002, includes two parts with three articles by four subject experts. Part 1 deals with nonsmooth static and dynamic systems. A systematic mathematical theory for multibody dynamics with unilateral and frictional constraints and a brief introduction to hemivariational inequalities together with some new developments in nonsmooth semi-linear elliptic boundary value problems are presented. Part 2 provides a comprehensive introduction and the latest research on dendritic growth in fluid mechanics, one of the most profound and fundamental subjects in the area of interfacial pattern formation, a commonly observed phenomenon in crystal growth and solidification processes.

Non-scalar variational problems appear in different fields. In geometry, for in stance, we encounter the basic problems of harmonic maps between Riemannian manifolds and of minimal immersions; related questions appear in physics, for example in the classical theory of a-models. Non linear elasticity is another example in continuum mechanics, while Oseen-Frank theory of liquid crystals and Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity require to treat variational problems in order to model quite complicated phenomena. Typically one is interested in finding energy minimizing representatives in homology or homotopy classes of maps, minimizers with prescribed topological singularities, topological charges, stable deformations i. e. minimizers in classes of diffeomorphisms or extremal fields. In the last two or three decades there has been growing interest, knowledge, and understanding of the general theory for this kind of problems, often referred to as geometric variational problems. Due to the lack of a regularity theory in the non scalar case, in contrast to the scalar one - or in other words to the occurrence of singularities in vector valued minimizers, often related with concentration phenomena for the energy density - and because of the particular relevance of those singularities for the problem being considered the question of singling out a weak formulation, or completely understanding the significance of various weak formulations becames non trivial."

This volume contains, in part, a selection of papers presented at the sixth Australian Optimization Day Miniconference (Ballarat, 16 July 1999), and the Special Sessions on Nonlinear Dynamics and Optimization and Operations Re search - Methods and Applications, which were held in Melbourne, July 11-15 1999 as a part of the Joint Meeting of the American Mathematical Society and Australian Mathematical Society. The editors have strived to present both con tributed papers and survey style papers as a more interesting mix for readers. Some participants from the meetings mentioned above have responded to this approach by preparing survey and 'semi-survey' papers, based on presented lectures. Contributed paper, which contain new and interesting results, are also included. The fields of the presented papers are very large as demonstrated by the following selection of key words from selected papers in this volume: * optimal control, stochastic optimal control, MATLAB, economic models, implicit constraints, Bellman principle, Markov process, decision-making under uncertainty, risk aversion, dynamic programming, optimal value function. * emergent computation, complexity, traveling salesman problem, signal estimation, neural networks, time congestion, teletraffic. * gap functions, nonsmooth variational inequalities, derivative-free algo rithm, Newton's method. * auxiliary function, generalized penalty function, modified Lagrange func tion. * convexity, quasiconvexity, abstract convexity.

Recent revolutions in the world of finance have created a need for the expertise of research mathematicians in solving problems. The articles in this volume are based on recent research in methods in mathematical finance.

Preface to the English Edition The present monograph is a revised and enlarged alternative of the author's monograph 19] which was devoted to the development of a unified approach to studying differential inclusions, whose values of the right hand sides are compact, not necessarily convex subsets of a Banach space. This approach relies on ideas and methods of modem functional analysis, general topology, the theory of multi-valued mappings and continuous selectors. Although the basic content of the previous monograph has been remained the same this monograph has been partly re-organized and the author's recent results have been added. The contents of the present book are divided into five Chapters and an Appendix. The first Chapter of the J>ook has been left without changes and deals with multi-valued differential equations generated by a differential inclusion. The second Chapter has been significantly revised and extended. Here the au thor's recent results concerning extreme continuous selectors of multi-functions with decomposable values, multi-valued selectors ofmulti-functions generated by a differential inclusion, the existence of solutions of a differential inclusion, whose right hand side has different properties of semicontinuity at different points, have been included. Some of these results made it possible to simplify schemes for proofs concerning the existence of solutions of differential inclu sions with semicontinuous right hand side a.nd to obtain new results. In this Chapter the existence of solutions of different types are considered."

This textbook examines a broad range of problems in science and engineering, describing key numerical methods applied to real life. The case studies presented are in such areas as data fitting, vehicle route planning and optimal control, scheduling and resource allocation, sensitivity calculations and worst-case analysis.

Chapters are self-contained with exercises provided at the end of most sections. Nonlinear Optimization with Engineering Applications is ideal for self-study and classroom use in engineering courses at the senior undergraduate or graduate level. The book will also appeal to postdocs and advanced researchers interested in the development and use of optimization algorithms.

The first chapter deals with idempotent analysis per se . To make the pres- tation self-contained, in the first two sections we define idempotent semirings, give a concise exposition of idempotent linear algebra, and survey some of its applications. Idempotent linear algebra studies the properties of the semirn- ules An , n E N , over a semiring A with idempotent addition; in other words, it studies systems of equations that are linear in an idempotent semiring. Pr- ably the first interesting and nontrivial idempotent semiring , namely, that of all languages over a finite alphabet, as well as linear equations in this sern- ing, was examined by S. Kleene [107] in 1956 . This noncommutative semiring was used in applications to compiling and parsing (see also [1]) . Presently, the literature on idempotent algebra and its applications to theoretical computer science (linguistic problems, finite automata, discrete event systems, and Petri nets), biomathematics, logic , mathematical physics , mathematical economics, and optimizat ion, is immense; e. g. , see [9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16 , 17, 22, 31 , 32, 35,36,37,38,39 ,40,41,52,53 ,54,55,61,62 ,63,64,68, 71, 72, 73,74,77,78, 79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,88,114,125 ,128,135,136, 138,139,141,159,160, 167,170,173,174,175,176,177,178,179,180,185,186 , 187, 188, 189]. In 1. 2 we present the most important facts of the idempotent algebra formalism . The semimodules An are idempotent analogs of the finite-dimensional v- n, tor spaces lR and hence endomorphisms of these semi modules can naturally be called (idempotent) linear operators on An .

This book is devoted to one of the main questions of the theory of extremal prob lems, namely, to necessary and sufficient extremality conditions. It is intended mostly for mathematicians and also for all those who are interested in optimiza tion problems. The book may be useful for advanced students, post-graduated students, and researchers. The book consists of four chapters. In Chap. 1 we study the abstract minimization problem with constraints, which is often called the mathemati cal programming problem. Chapter 2 is devoted to one of the most important classes of extremal problems, the optimal control problem. In the third chapter we study one of the main objects of the calculus of variations, the integral quadratic form. In the concluding, fourth, chapter we study local properties of smooth nonlinear mappings in a neighborhood of an abnormal point. The problems which are studied in this book (of course, in addition to their extremal nature) are united by our main interest being in the study of the so called abnormal or degenerate problems. This is the main distinction of the present book from a large number of books devoted to theory of extremal problems, among which there are many excellent textbooks, and books such as, e.g., 13, 38, 59, 78, 82, 86, 101, 112, 119], to mention a few."

The purpose of this book is to acquaint the reader with the developments in bilinear systems theory and its applications. Bilinear systems can be used to represent a wide range of physical, chemical, biological, and social systems, as well as manufacturing processes, which cannot be effectively modeled under the assumption of linearity. This book provides a unified approach for the identification and control of nonlinear complex objects that can be transformed into bilinear systems, with a focus on the control of open physical processes functioning in a non-equilibrium mode.

The material is intended for graduate students, researchers, and specialists engaged in the fields of quantum and molecular computing, control of physical processes, biophysics, superconducting magnetism, physical information science, mathematics, and engineering.

Give, and it shall be given unto you. ST. LUKE, VI, 38. The book is based on several courses of lectures on control theory and appli cations which were delivered by the authors for a number of years at Moscow Electronics and Mathematics University. The book, originally written in Rus sian, was first published by Vysshaya Shkola (Higher School) Publishing House in Moscow in 1989. In preparing a new edition of the book we planned to make only minor changes in the text. However, we soon realized that we like many scholars working in control theory had learned many new things and had had many new insights into control theory and its applications since the book was first published. Therefore, we rewrote the book especially for the English edition. So, this is substantially a new book with many new topics. The book consists of an introduction and four parts. Part One deals with the fundamentals of modern stability theory: general results concerning stability and instability, sufficient conditions for the stability of linear systems, methods for determining the stability or instability of systems of various type, theorems on stability under random disturbances."

This book is the first to be devoted to the theory of vector-valued functions with one variable. This theory is one of the fundamental tools employed in modern physics, the spectral theory of operators, approximation of analytic operators, analytic mappings between vectors, and vector-valued functions of several variables. The book contains three chapters devoted to the theory of normal functions, Hp-space, and vector-valued functions and their applications. Among the topics dealt with are the properties of complex functions in a complex plane and infinite-dimensional spaces, and the solution of vector-valued integral equations and boundary value problems by complex analysis and functional analysis, which involve methods which can be applied to problems in operations research and control theory. Much original research is included. This volume will be of interest to those whose work involves complex analysis and control theory, and can be recommended as a graduate text in these areas.

The use of the internet for commerce has spawned a variety of auctions, marketplaces, and exchanges for trading everything from bandwidth to books. Mechanisms for bidding agents, dynamic pricing, and combinatorial bids are being implemented in support of internet-based auctions, giving rise to new versions of optimization and resource allocation models. This volume, a collection of papers from an IMA "Hot Topics" workshop in internet auctions, includes descriptions of real and proposed auctions, complete with mathematical model formulations, theoretical results, solution approaches, and computational studies.
This volume also provides a mathematical programming perspective on open questions in auction theory, and provides a glimpse of the growing area of dynamic pricing.

Written in a clear and concise manner this book provides a theoretical and application oriented analysis of deterministic scheduling problems arising in computer and manufacturing environments. Various scheduling problems are discussed where different problem parameters such as task processing times, urgency weights, arrival times, deadlines, precedence constraints, and processor speed factor are involved. Polynomial and exponential time optimization algorithms as well as approximation and heuristic approaches are presented and discussed. Moreover, resource-constrained, imprecise computation, flexible flow shop and dynamic job shop scheduling, as well as flexible manufacturing systems, are considered. An excellent analysis based on real-world applications with plenty of examples.

The concept of "reformulation" has long been playing an important role in mathematical programming. A classical example is the penalization technique in constrained optimization that transforms the constraints into the objective function via a penalty function thereby reformulating a constrained problem as an equivalent or approximately equivalent unconstrained problem. More recent trends consist of the reformulation of various mathematical programming prob lems, including variational inequalities and complementarity problems, into equivalent systems of possibly nonsmooth, piecewise smooth or semismooth nonlinear equations, or equivalent unconstrained optimization problems that are usually differentiable, but in general not twice differentiable. Because of the recent advent of various tools in nonsmooth analysis, the reformulation approach has become increasingly profound and diversified. In view of growing interests in this active field, we planned to organize a cluster of sessions entitled "Reformulation - Nonsmooth, Piecewise Smooth, Semismooth and Smoothing Methods" in the 16th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ismp97) held at Lausanne EPFL, Switzerland on August 24-29, 1997. Responding to our invitation, thirty-eight people agreed to give a talk within the cluster, which enabled us to organize thirteen sessions in total. We think that it was one of the largest and most exciting clusters in the symposium. Thanks to the earnest support by the speakers and the chairpersons, the sessions attracted much attention of the participants and were filled with great enthusiasm of the audience."

'Et moi ... si j'avait su comment en revenir. One service mathematics has rendered thl je n'y serais point aile: human race. It has put common sense back where it belongs. on the topmost shelf nexl Jules Verne to the dusty canister labelled 'discarded non. The series is divergent; therefore we may be sense'. Eric T. Bell able to do something with it O. Heaviside Mathematics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non. Iinearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics serve as tools for other parts and fO other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics .. .'; 'One service logic has rendered com. puter science ... .'; 'One service category theory has rendered mathematics .. .'. All arguably true. And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'etre of this series."

This book represents a thoroughly comprehensive treatment of computational intelligence from an electrical power system engineer's perspective. Thorough, well-organised and up-to-date, it examines in some detail all the important aspects of this very exciting and rapidly emerging technology, including: expert systems, fuzzy logic, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms and hybrid systems. Written in a concise and flowing manner, by experts in the area of electrical power systems who have had many years of experience in the application of computational intelligence for solving many complex and onerous power system problems, this book is ideal for professional engineers and postgraduate students entering this exciting field. This book would also provide a good foundation for senior undergraduate students entering into their final year of study.

The material of the present book has been used for graduate-level courses at the University of Ia i during the past ten years. It is a revised version of a book which appeared in Romanian in 1993 with the Publishing House of the Romanian Academy. The book focuses on classical boundary value problems for the principal equations of mathematical physics: second order elliptic equations (the Poisson equations), heat equations and wave equations. The existence theory of second order elliptic boundary value problems was a great challenge for nineteenth century mathematics and its development was marked by two decisive steps. Undoubtedly, the first one was the Fredholm proof in 1900 of the existence of solutions to Dirichlet and Neumann problems, which represented a triumph of the classical theory of partial differential equations. The second step is due to S. 1. Sobolev (1937) who introduced the concept of weak solution in partial differential equations and inaugurated the modern theory of boundary value problems. The classical theory which is a product ofthe nineteenth century, is concerned with smooth (continuously differentiable) sollutions and its methods rely on classical analysis and in particular on potential theory. The modern theory concerns distributional (weak) solutions and relies on analysis of Sob ole v spaces and functional methods. The same distinction is valid for the boundary value problems associated with heat and wave equations. Both aspects of the theory are present in this book though it is not exhaustive in any sense.

At present, in order to resolve problems of ecology and to save mineral resources for future population generations, it is quite necessary to know how to maintain nature arrangement in an efficient way. It is possible to achieve a rational nature arrangement when analyzing solutions to problems concerned with optimal control of distributed systems and with optimization of modes in which main ground medium processes are functioning (motion of liquids, generation of temperature fields, mechanical deformation of multicomponent media). Such analysis becomes even more difficult because of heterogeneity of the region that is closest to the Earth surface, and thin inclusions/cracks in it exert their essential influence onto a state and development of the mentioned processes, especially in the cases of mining. Many researchers, for instance, A.N. Tikhonov - A.A. Samarsky [121], L. Luckner - W.M. Shestakow [65], Tien-Mo Shih, K.L. Johnson [47], E. Sanchez-Palencia [94] and others stress that it is necessary to consider how thin inclusions/cracks exert their influences onto development of these processes, while such inclusions differ in characteristics from main media to a considerable extent (moisture permeability, permeability to heat, bulk density or shear strength may be mentioned). Xll An influence exerted from thin interlayers onto examined processes is taken into account sufficiently adequately by means of various constraints, namely, by the conjugation conditions [4, 8, 10, 15, 17-20, 22-26, 38, 44, 47, 52, 53, 68, 76, 77, 81, 83, 84, 90, 95, 96-100, 112-114, 117, 123].

Recent years have seen a rapid development of neural network control tech niques and their successful applications. Numerous simulation studies and actual industrial implementations show that artificial neural network is a good candidate for function approximation and control system design in solving the control problems of complex nonlinear systems in the presence of different kinds of uncertainties. Many control approaches/methods, reporting inventions and control applications within the fields of adaptive control, neural control and fuzzy systems, have been published in various books, journals and conference proceedings. In spite of these remarkable advances in neural control field, due to the complexity of nonlinear systems, the present research on adaptive neural control is still focused on the development of fundamental methodologies. From a theoretical viewpoint, there is, in general, lack of a firmly mathematical basis in stability, robustness, and performance analysis of neural network adaptive control systems. This book is motivated by the need for systematic design approaches for stable adaptive control using approximation-based techniques. The main objec tives of the book are to develop stable adaptive neural control strategies, and to perform transient performance analysis of the resulted neural control systems analytically. Other linear-in-the-parameter function approximators can replace the linear-in-the-parameter neural networks in the controllers presented in the book without any difficulty, which include polynomials, splines, fuzzy systems, wavelet networks, among others. Stability is one of the most important issues being concerned if an adaptive neural network controller is to be used in practical applications."

This monograph is mostly devoted to the problem of the geome- trizing of Lagrangians which depend on higher order accelerations. It naturally prolongs the theme of the monograph "The Geometry of La- grange spaces: Theory and Applications", written together with M. Anastasiei and published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1994. The existence of Lagrangians of order k > 1 has been contemplated by mechanicists and physicists for a long time. Einstein had grasped their presence in connection with the Brownian motion. They are also present in relativistic theories based on metrics which depend on speeds and accelerations of particles or in the Hamiltonian formulation of non- linear systems given by Korteweg-de Vries equations. There resulted from here the methods to be adopted in their theoretical treatment. One is based on the variational problem involving the integral action of the Lagrangian. A second one is derived from the axioms of Analytical Mechanics involving the Poincare-Cartan forms. The geometrical methods based on the study of the geometries of higher order could invigorate the whole theory. This is the way adopted by us in defining and studying the Lagrange spaces of higher order. The problems raised by the geometrization of Lagrangians of order k > 1 investigated by many scholars: Ch. Ehresmann, P. Libermann, J. Pommaret; J.T. Synge, M. Crampin, P. Saunders; G.S. Asanov, P.Aringazin; I. Kolar, D. Krupka; M. de Leon, W. Sarlet, P. Cantrjin, H. Rund, W.M. Tulczyjew, A. Kawaguchi, K. Yano, K. Kondo, D.

A cooperative system is defined to be multiple dynamic entities that share information or tasks to accomplish a common, though perhaps not singular, objective. Examples of cooperative control systems might include: robots operating within a manufacturing cell, unmanned aircraft in search and rescue operations or military surveillance and attack missions, arrays of micro satellites that form a distributed large aperture radar, employees operating within an organization, and software agents. The term entity is most often associated with vehicles capable of physical motion such as robots, automobiles, ships, and aircraft, but the definition extends to any entity concept that exhibits a time dependent behavior. Critical to cooperation is communication, which may be accomplished through active message passing or by passive observation. It is assumed that cooperation is being used to accomplish some common purpose that is greater than the purpose of each individual, but we recognize that the individual may have other objectives as well, perhaps due to being a member of other caucuses. This implies that cooperation may assume hierarchical forms as well. The decision-making processes (control) are typically thought to be distributed or decentralized to some degree. For if not, a cooperative system could always be modeled as a single entity. The level of cooperation may be indicated by the amount of information exchanged between entities. Cooperative systems may involve task sharing and can consist of heterogeneous entities. Mixed initiative systems are particularly interesting heterogeneous systems since they are composed of humans and machines. Finally, one is often interested in how cooperative systems perform under noisy or adversary conditions. In December 2000, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the University of Florida successfully hosted the first Workshop on Cooperative Control and Optimization in Gainesville, Florida. This book contains selected refereed papers summarizing the participants' research in control and optimization of cooperative systems. Audience: Faculty, graduate students, and researchers in optimization and control, computer sciences and engineering.

This is the 9th volume in Avner Friedman's collection of Mathematics in Industrial problems. This book aims to foster interaction between industry and mathematics at the "grass roots" level of specific problems. The problems presented in this book arise from models developed by industrial scientists engaged in research and development of new or improved products. The topics explored in this volume include diffusion in porous media and in rubber/glass transition, coating flows, solvation of molecules, semiconductor processing, optoelectronics, photographic images, density-functional theory, sphere packing, performance evaluation, causal networks, electrical well logging, general positioning system, sensor management, pursuit-evasion algorithms, and nonlinear viscoelasticity. Open problems and references are incorporated into most of the chapters. The final chapter contains some solutions to problems raised in earlier volumes.

Advanced Design Problems in Aerospace Engineering, Volume 1: Advanced Aerospace Systems presents six authoritative lectures on the use of mathematics in the conceptual design of various types of aircraft and spacecraft. It covers the following topics: design of rocket-powered orbital spacecraft (Miele/Mancuso), design of Moon missions (Miele/Mancuso), design of Mars missions (Miele/Wang), design of an experimental guidance system with a perspective flight path display (Sachs), neighboring vehicle design for a two-stage launch vehicle (Well), and controller design for a flexible aircraft (Hanel/Well). This is a reference book of interest to engineers and scientists working in aerospace engineering and related topics.

The articles that comprise this distinguished annual volume for the Advances in Mechanics and Mathematics series have been written in honor of Gilbert Strang, a world renowned mathematician and exceptional person. Written by leading experts in complementarity, duality, global optimization, and quantum computations, this collection reveals the beauty of these mathematical disciplines and investigates recent developments in global optimization, nonconvex and nonsmooth analysis, nonlinear programming, theoretical and engineering mechanics, large scale computation, quantum algorithms and computation, and information theory.