The field of metaheuristics has been fast evolving in recent years. Techniques such as simulated annealing, tabu search, genetic algorithms, scatter search, greedy randomized adaptive search, variable neighborhood search, ant systems, and their hybrids are currently among the most efficient and robust optimization strategies to find high-quality solutions to many real-life optimization problems. A very large number of successful applications of metaheuristics are reported in the literature and spread throughout many books, journals, and conference proceedings. A series of international conferences entirely devoted to the theory, applications, and computational developments in metaheuristics has been attracting an increasing number of participants, from universities and the industry. Essays and Surveys in Metaheuristics goes beyond the recent conference-oriented volumes in Metaheuristics, with its focus on surveys of recent developments of the main metaheuristics. Well-known specialists have written surveys on the following subjects: simulated annealing (E. Aarts and J. Korst, The Netherlands), noising methods (I. Charon and O.Hudry, France), strategies for the parallel implementation of metaheuristics (V.-D. Cung and C. Roucairol, France, and S.L. Martins and C.C. Ribeiro, Brazil), greedy randomized adaptive search procedures (P. Festa, Italy, and M.G.C. Resende, USA), tabu search (M. Gendreau, Canada), variable neighborhood search (P. Hansen and N. Mladenovic, Canada), ant colonies (V. Maniezzo and A. Carbonaro, Italy), and evolutionary algorithms (H. Muhlenbein and Th. Mahnig, Germany). Several further essays address issues or variants of metaheuristics, as well as innovative or successful applications of metaheuristics to classical or new combinatorial optimization problems.

OmeGA: A Competent Genetic Algorithm for Solving Permutation and Scheduling Problems addresses two increasingly important areas in GA implementation and practice. OmeGA, or the ordering messy genetic algorithm, combines some of the latest in competent GA technology to solve scheduling and other permutation problems. Competent GAs are those designed for principled solutions of hard problems, quickly, reliably, and accurately. Permutation and scheduling problems are difficult combinatorial optimization problems with commercial import across a variety of industries. This book approaches both subjects systematically and clearly. The first part of the book presents the clearest description of messy GAs written to date along with an innovative adaptation of the method to ordering problems. The second part of the book investigates the algorithm on boundedly difficult test functions, showing principled scale up as problems become harder and longer. Finally, the book applies the algorithm to a test function drawn from the literature of scheduling.

This book is a compilation of a selected subset of research articles presented at the Eighth INFORMS Computing Society Conference, held in Chandler, Arizona, from January 8 to 10, 2003. The articles in this book represent the diversity and depth of the interface between ORiMS (operations research and the management sciences) and CS/AI (computer science and artificial intelligence ). This volume starts with two papers that represent the reflective and integrative thinking that is critical to any scientific discipline. These two articles present philosophical perspectives on computation, covering a variety of traditional and newer methods for modeling, solving, and explaining mathematical models. The next set includes articles that study machine learning and computational heuristics, and is followed by articles that address issues in performance testing of solution algorithms and heuristics. These two sets of papers demonstrate the richness of thought that takes place at the ORiMS and CSI AI interface. The final set of articles demonstrates the usefulness of these and other methods at the interface towards solving problems in the real world, covering e-commerce, workflow, electronic negotiation, music, parallel computation, and telecommunications. The articles in this collection represent the results of cross-fertilization between ORiMS and CSI AI, making possible advances that could have not been achieved in isolation. The continuing aim ofthe INFORMS Computing Society and this research conference is to invigorate and further develop this interface.

Nonstandard Methods of Analysis is concerned with the main trends in this field; infinitesimal analysis and Boolean-valued analysis. The methods that have been developed in the last twenty-five years are explained in detail, and are collected in book form for the first time. Special attention is paid to general principles and fundamentals of formalisms for infinitesimals as well as to the technique of descents and ascents in a Boolean-valued universe. The book also includes various novel applications of nonstandard methods to ordered algebraic systems, vector lattices, subdifferentials, convex programming etc. that have been developed in recent years. For graduate students, postgraduates and all researchers interested in applying nonstandard methods in their work.

Dynamic Portfolio Strategies: Quantitative Methods and Empirical Rules for Incomplete Information investigates optimal investment problems for stochastic financial market models. It is addressed to academics and students who are interested in the mathematics of finance, stochastic processes, and optimal control, and also to practitioners in risk management and quantitative analysis who are interested in new strategies and methods of stochastic analysis. While there are many works devoted to the solution of optimal investment problems for various models, the focus of this book is on analytical strategies based on "technical analysis" which are model-free. The technical analysis of these strategies has a number of characteristics. Two of the more important characteristics are: (1) they require only historical data, and (2) typically they are more widely used by traders than analysis based on stochastic models. Hence it is the objective of this book to reduce the gap between model-free strategies and strategies that are "optimal" for stochastic models. We hope that researchers, students and practitioners will be interested in some of the new empirically based methods of "technical analysis" strategies suggested in this book and evaluated via stochastic market models.

The last decade has seen a remarkable development of the "Marginal and Moment Problems" as a research area in Probability and Statistics. Its attractiveness stemmed from its lasting ability to provide a researcher with difficult theoretical problems that have direct consequences for appli cations outside of mathematics. The relevant research aims centered mainly along the following lines that very frequently met each other to provide sur prizing and useful results : -To construct a probability distribution (to prove its existence, at least) with a given support and with some additional inner stochastic property defined typically either by moments or by marginal distributions. -To study the geometrical and topological structure of the set of prob ability distributions generated by such a property mostly with the aim to propose a procedure that would result in a stochastic model with some optimal properties within the set of probability distributions. These research aims characterize also, though only very generally, the scientific program of the 1996 conference "Distributions with given marginals and moment problems" held at the beginning of September in Prague, Czech Republic, to perpetuate the tradition and achievements of the closely related 1990 Roma symposium "On Frechet Classes" 1 and 1993 Seattle" AMS Summer Conference on Marginal Problem".

Strategies for Quasi-Monte Carlo builds a framework to design and analyze strategies for randomized quasi-Monte Carlo (RQMC). One key to efficient simulation using RQMC is to structure problems to reveal a small set of important variables, their number being the effective dimension, while the other variables collectively are relatively insignificant. Another is smoothing. The book provides many illustrations of both keys, in particular for problems involving Poisson processes or Gaussian processes. RQMC beats grids by a huge margin. With low effective dimension, RQMC is an order-of-magnitude more efficient than standard Monte Carlo. With, in addition, certain smoothness - perhaps induced - RQMC is an order-of-magnitude more efficient than deterministic QMC. Unlike the latter, RQMC permits error estimation via the central limit theorem. For random-dimensional problems, such as occur with discrete-event simulation, RQMC gets judiciously combined with standard Monte Carlo to keep memory requirements bounded. This monograph has been designed to appeal to a diverse audience, including those with applications in queueing, operations research, computational finance, mathematical programming, partial differential equations (both deterministic and stochastic), and particle transport, as well as to probabilists and statisticians wanting to know how to apply effectively a powerful tool, and to those interested in numerical integration or optimization in their own right. It recognizes that the heart of practical application is algorithms, so pseudocodes appear throughout the book. While not primarily a textbook, it is suitable as a supplementary text for certain graduate courses. As a reference, it belongs on the shelf of everyone with a serious interest in improving simulation efficiency. Moreover, it will be a valuable reference to all those individuals interested in improving simulation efficiency with more than incremental increases.

This special volume focuses on optimization and control of processes governed by partial differential equations. The contributors are mostly participants of the DFG-priority program 1253: Optimization with PDE-constraints which is active since 2006. The book is organized in sections which cover almost the entire spectrum of modern research in this emerging field. Indeed, even though the field of optimal control and optimization for PDE-constrained problems has undergone a dramatic increase of interest during the last four decades, a full theory for nonlinear problems is still lacking. The contributions of this volume, some of which have the character of survey articles, therefore, aim at creating and developing further new ideas for optimization, control and corresponding numerical simulations of systems of possibly coupled nonlinear partial differential equations. The research conducted within this unique network of groups in more than fifteen German universities focuses on novel methods of optimization, control and identification for problems in infinite-dimensional spaces, shape and topology problems, model reduction and adaptivity, discretization concepts and important applications. Besides the theoretical interest, the most prominent question is about the effectiveness of model-based numerical optimization methods for PDEs versus a black-box approach that uses existing codes, often heuristic-based, for optimization.

Project management has become a widespread instrument enabling organizations to efficiently master the challenges of steadily shortening product life cycles, global markets and decreasing profit margins. With projects increasing in size and complexity, their planning and control represents one of the most crucial management tasks. This is especially true for scheduling, which is concerned with establishing execution dates for the sub-activities to be performed in order to complete the project. The ability to manage projects where resources must be allocated between concurrent projects or even sub-activities of a single project requires the use of commercial project management software packages. However, the results yielded by the solution procedures included are often rather unsatisfactory. Scheduling of Resource-Constrained Projects develops more efficient procedures, which can easily be integrated into software packages by incorporated programming languages, and thus should be of great interest for practitioners as well as scientists working in the field of project management. The book is divided into two parts. In Part I, the project management process is described and the management tasks to be accomplished during project planning and control are discussed. This allows for identifying the major scheduling problems arising in the planning process, among which the resource-constrained project scheduling problem is the most important. Part II deals with efficient computer-based procedures for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem and its generalized version. Since both problems are NP-hard, the development of such procedures which yield satisfactory solutions in a reasonable amount of computation time is very challenging, and a number of new and very promising approaches are introduced. This includes heuristic procedures based on priority rules and tabu search as well as lower bound methods and branch and bound procedures which can be applied for computing optimal solutions.

This book contains translations of papers from the second volume of the new Russian-language journal published at the Sobolev Institute of Mathematics (Sibe- rian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk) since 1994. In 1994 the journal was titled Sibirskil Zhurnal Issledovaniya Oper- atsil. Since 1995 this journal has the title Diskretny'l Analiz i Issledovanie Operatsi'l (Discrete Analysis and Operations Research). The aim of this journal is to bring together research papers in different areas of discrete mathematics and computer science. The journal DiskretnYl Analiz i Issledovanie Operatsil covers the following fields: * discrete optimization * synthesis and complexity * discrete structures and * of control systems extremal problems * automata * combinatorics * graphs * control and reliability * game theory and its of discrete devices applications * mathematical models and * coding theory methods of decision making * scheduling theory * design and analysis * functional systems theory of algorithms Contributions presented to the journal can be original research papers and occasional survey articles of moderate length. The journal is published in one volume of four issues per year that appear in March, June, September, and December. Each volume contains approximately 400 pages. I express my sincere gratitude to Professor S. S. Kutateladze for his help in editing the English translation.

Data uncertainty is a concept closely related with most real life applications that involve data collection and interpretation. Examples can be found in data acquired with biomedical instruments or other experimental techniques. Integration of robust optimization in the existing data mining techniques aim to create new algorithms resilient to error and noise.

This work encapsulates all the latest applications of robust optimization in data mining. This brief contains an overview of the rapidly growing field ofrobust data mining research field and presents the most well known machine learning algorithms, their robust counterpart formulations and algorithms for attacking these problems.

Thisbrief will appeal to theoreticians and data miners working in this field.

"

H-infinity engineering continues to establish itself as a discipline of applied mathematics. As such, this extensively illustrated monograph makes a significant application of H-infinity theory to electronic amplifier design, demonstrating how recent developments in H-infinity engineering equip amplifier designers with new tools and avenues for research. The presentation, at the interface of applied mathematics and engineering, emphasizes how to (1) compute the best possible performance available from any matching circuits; (2) benchmark existing matching solutions; and (3) generalize results to multiple amplifiers. As the monograph develops, many research directions are pointed out for both disciplines. The physical meaning of a mathematical problem is made explicit for the mathematician, while circuit problems are presented in the H-infinity framework for the engineer. A final chapter organizes these research topics into a collection of open problems ranging from electrical engineering, numerical implementations, and generalizations to H-infinity theory.

Sample-Path Analysis of Queueing Systems uses a deterministic (sample-path) approach to analyze stochastic systems, primarily queueing systems and more general input-output systems. Among other topics of interest it deals with establishing fundamental relations between asymptotic frequencies and averages, pathwise stability, and insensitivity. These results are utilized to establish useful performance measures. The intuitive deterministic approach of this book will give researchers, teachers, practitioners, and students better insights into many results in queueing theory. The simplicity and intuitive appeal of the arguments will make these results more accessible, with no sacrifice of mathematical rigor. Recent topics such as pathwise stability are also covered in this context. The book consistently takes the point of view of focusing on one sample path of a stochastic process. Hence, it is devoted to providing pure sample-path arguments. With this approach it is possible to separate the issue of the validity of a relationship from issues of existence of limits and/or construction of stationary framework. Generally, in many cases of interest in queueing theory, relations hold, assuming limits exist, and the proofs are elementary and intuitive. In other cases, proofs of the existence of limits will require the heavy machinery of stochastic processes. The authors feel that sample-path analysis can be best used to provide general results that are independent of stochastic assumptions, complemented by use of probabilistic arguments to carry out a more detailed analysis. This book focuses on the first part of the picture. It does however, provide numerous examples that invoke stochastic assumptions, which typically are presented at the ends of the chapters.

Andreas Potschka discusses a direct multiple shooting method for dynamic optimization problems constrained by nonlinear, possibly time-periodic, parabolic partial differential equations. In contrast to indirect methods, this approach automatically computes adjoint derivatives without requiring the user to formulate adjoint equations, which can be time-consuming and error-prone. The author describes and analyzes in detail a globalized inexact Sequential Quadratic Programming method that exploits the mathematical structures of this approach and problem class for fast numerical performance. The book features applications, including results for a real-world chemical engineering separation problem.

The intensive use of automatic data acquisition system and the use of cloud computing for process monitoring have led to an increased occurrence of industrial processes that utilize statistical process control and capability analysis. These analyses are performed almost exclusively with multivariate methodologies. The aim of this Brief is to present the most important MSQC techniques developed in R language. The book is divided into two parts. The first part contains the basic R elements, an introduction to statistical procedures, and the main aspects related to Statistical Quality Control (SQC). The second part covers the construction of multivariate control charts, the calculation of Multivariate Capability Indices.

The symposiumwas motivatedby theincreasing need for modelling of material behaviourundervarious mechan icalconditions. This need is driven by the evolut ion ofcomputer capac ityand the resulting ability for engineers and scien tiststo address complexproblems . Reliable models formaterialbehaviour, including accurate numericalvalues of parameters ,are necessary for a continued beneficial development ofthe computational side of solid mechanics .High rate plasticity ,thermally assisted creep and phasetransformationsare only a fewexamplesof areas where more accurate modelsare needed. Experiments are necessary for the establishment ofmodels and parameters , and modified versionsof conventional test methods can make important contributions . Also modern optical methodsoffer a highpotentialfor futureexperimental development. Numerical simulations ofexperiments and so-called inverse modelling arealso frequentlyused techniques. The aim of the symposium was to bring together researchers with an interest in the areaofexperimental and computational aspects ofmaterial modelling for exchange and discussionofpromising methodsandresults. Abisko,a national park in the Swedish mountain district about 200 km north of the arctic circle and about one hourve dri from the airport ofKiruna,was chosen for the symposium. The tourist hotel in the park , overlookinga beautiful lake , offered a suitablevenue for the symposium. This environment with tracks for short walks (and long hikes),goals for small excursions and a hotel with restaurant and bar ve the ga delegatesmany opportunitiesto meet , socialiseand discuss during breaks and evenings.

This book is an introduction to the fundamental concepts and tools needed for solving problems of a geometric nature using a computer. It attempts to fill the gap between standard geometry books, which are primarily theoretical, and applied books on computer graphics, computer vision, robotics, or machine learning. This book covers the following topics: affine geometry, projective geometry, Euclidean geometry, convex sets, SVD and principal component analysis, manifolds and Lie groups, quadratic optimization, basics of differential geometry, and a glimpse of computational geometry (Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay triangulations). Some practical applications of the concepts presented in this book include computer vision, more specifically contour grouping, motion interpolation, and robot kinematics. In this extensively updated second edition, more material on convex sets, Farkas's lemma, quadratic optimization and the Schur complement have been added. The chapter on SVD has been greatly expanded and now includes a presentation of PCA. The book is well illustrated and has chapter summaries and a large number of exercises throughout. It will be of interest to a wide audience including computer scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. Reviews of first edition: "Gallier's book will be a useful source for anyone interested in applications of geometrical methods to solve problems that arise in various branches of engineering. It may help to develop the sophisticated concepts from the more advanced parts of geometry into useful tools for applications." (Mathematical Reviews, 2001) "...it will be useful as a reference book for postgraduates wishing to find the connection between their current problem and the underlying geometry." (The Australian Mathematical Society, 2001)

The theory of Vector Optimization is developed by a systematic usage of infimum and supremum. In order to get existence and appropriate properties of the infimum, the image space of the vector optimization problem is embedded into a larger space, which is a subset of the power set, in fact, the space of self-infimal sets. Based on this idea we establish solution concepts, existence and duality results and algorithms for the linear case. The main advantage of this approach is the high degree of analogy to corresponding results of Scalar Optimization. The concepts and results are used to explain and to improve practically relevant algorithms for linear vector optimization problems.

Noise is a common factor in most real-world optimization problems. Sources of noise can include physical measurement limitations, stochastic simulation models, incomplete sampling of large spaces, and human-computer interaction. Evolutionary algorithms are general, nature-inspired heuristics for numerical search and optimization that are frequently observed to be particularly robust with regard to the effects of noise. Noisy Optimization with Evolution Strategies contributes to the understanding of evolutionary optimization in the presence of noise by investigating the performance of evolution strategies, a type of evolutionary algorithm frequently employed for solving real-valued optimization problems. By considering simple noisy environments, results are obtained that describe how the performance of the strategies scales with both parameters of the problem and of the strategies considered. Such scaling laws allow for comparisons of different strategy variants, for tuning evolution strategies for maximum performance, and they offer insights and an understanding of the behavior of the strategies that go beyond what can be learned from mere experimentation. This first comprehensive work on noisy optimization with evolution strategies investigates the effects of systematic fitness overvaluation, the benefits of distributed populations, and the potential of genetic repair for optimization in the presence of noise. The relative robustness of evolution strategies is confirmed in a comparison with other direct search algorithms. Noisy Optimization with Evolution Strategies is an invaluable resource for researchers and practitioners of evolutionary algorithms.

Semi-infinite optimization is a vivid field of active research. Recently semi infinite optimization in a general form has attracted a lot of attention, not only because of its surprising structural aspects, but also due to the large number of applications which can be formulated as general semi-infinite programs. The aim of this book is to highlight structural aspects of general semi-infinite programming, to formulate optimality conditions which take this structure into account, and to give a conceptually new solution method. In fact, under certain assumptions general semi-infinite programs can be solved efficiently when their bi-Ievel structure is exploited appropriately. After a brief introduction with some historical background in Chapter 1 we be gin our presentation by a motivation for the appearance of standard and general semi-infinite optimization problems in applications. Chapter 2 lists a number of problems from engineering and economics which give rise to semi-infinite models, including (reverse) Chebyshev approximation, minimax problems, ro bust optimization, design centering, defect minimization problems for operator equations, and disjunctive programming."

The International Conference on Finsler and Lagrange Geometry and its Applications: A Meeting of Minds, took place August 13-20, 1998 at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. The main objective of this meeting was to help acquaint North American geometers with the extensive modern literature on Finsler geometry and Lagrange geometry of the Japanese and European schools, each with its own venerable history, on the one hand, and to communicate recent advances in stochastic theory and Hodge theory for Finsler manifolds by the younger North American school, on the other. The intent was to bring together practitioners of these schools of thought in a Canadian venue where there would be ample opportunity to exchange information and have cordial personal interactions. The present set of refereed papers begins .with the Pedagogical Sec tion I, where introductory and brief survey articles are presented, one from the Japanese School and two from the European School (Romania and Hungary). These have been prepared for non-experts with the intent of explaining basic points of view. The Section III is the main body of work. It is arranged in alphabetical order, by author. Section II gives a brief account of each of these contribu tions with a short reference list at the end. More extensive references are given in the individual articles."

Since the building of all the Universe is perfect and is cre- ated by the wisdom Creator, nothing arises in the Universe in which one cannot see the sense of some maXImum or mInImUm Euler God moves the Universe along geometrical lines Plato Mathematical models of most closed physical systems are based on vari- ational principles, i.e., it is postulated that equations describing the evolu- tion of a system are the Euler~Lagrange equations of a certain functional. In this connection, variational methods are one of the basic tools for studying many problems of natural sciences. The first problems related to the search for extrema appeared as far back as in ancient mathematics. They go back to Archimedes, Appolonius, and Euclid. In many respects, the problems of seeking maxima and minima have stimulated the creation of differential calculus; the variational prin- ciples of optics and mechanics, which were discovered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, gave impetus to an intensive development of the calculus of variations. In one way or another, variational problems were of interest to such giants of natural sciences as Fermat, Newton, Descartes, Euler, Huygens, 1. Bernoulli, J. Bernoulli, Legendre, Jacobi, Kepler, La- grange, and Weierstrass.

Meta-Heuristics: Advances and Trends in Local Search Paradigms for Optimizations comprises a carefully refereed selection of extended versions of the best papers presented at the Second Meta-Heuristics Conference (MIC 97). The selected articles describe the most recent developments in theory and applications of meta-heuristics, heuristics for specific problems, and comparative case studies. The book is divided into six parts, grouped mainly by the techniques considered. The extensive first part with twelve papers covers tabu search and its application to a great variety of well-known combinatorial optimization problems (including the resource-constrained project scheduling problem and vehicle routing problems). In the second part we find one paper where tabu search and simulated annealing are investigated comparatively and two papers which consider hybrid methods combining tabu search with genetic algorithms. The third part has four papers on genetic and evolutionary algorithms. Part four arrives at a new paradigm within meta-heuristics. The fifth part studies the behavior of parallel local search algorithms mainly from a tabu search perspective. The final part examines a great variety of additional meta-heuristics topics, including neural networks and variable neighbourhood search as well as guided local search. Furthermore, the integration of meta-heuristics with the branch-and-bound paradigm is investigated.

"Data Correcting Approaches in Combinatorial Optimization" focuses on algorithmic applications of thewell known polynomially solvable special cases of computationally intractable problems. The purpose of this text is to design practically efficient algorithms for solving wide classes of combinatorial optimization problems. Researches, students and engineers will benefit from new bounds and branching rules in development efficient branch-and-bound type computational algorithms. This book examines applications for solving the Traveling Salesman Problem and its variations, Maximum Weight Independent Set Problem, Different Classes of Allocation and Cluster Analysis as well as some classes of Scheduling Problems. Data Correcting Algorithms in Combinatorial Optimization introduces the data correcting approach to algorithms which provide an answer to the following questions: how to construct a bound to the original intractable problem and findwhich element of the corrected instance one should branch such that the total size of search tree will be minimized. The PC time needed for solving intractable problems will be adjusted with the requirements for solving real world problems. "

This collection of papers presents a series of in-depth examinations of a variety of advanced topics related to Boolean functions and expressions. The chapters are written by some of the most prominent experts in their respective fields and cover topics ranging from algebra and propositional logic to learning theory, cryptography, computational complexity, electrical engineering, and reliability theory. Beyond the diversity of the questions raised and investigated in different chapters, a remarkable feature of the collection is the common thread created by the fundamental language, concepts, models, and tools provided by Boolean theory. Many readers will be surprised to discover the countless links between seemingly remote topics discussed in various chapters of the book. This text will help them draw on such connections to further their understanding of their own scientific discipline and to explore new avenues for research.