To the non-specialist, large ears in elephants used to mean African, small ears, Indian. But to taxonomists African elephants have long posed a more complex puzzle. During the nineteenth century, it was fashionable for wealthy trophy hunters to assign their own names to species they had shot destined for the museums of Europe. At least 18 elephant subspecies were claimed following this fashion....

Today’s supply chains require more dynamic trading practices to better match suppliers with their customers. Additionally, the purchase decisions faced are rarely made on price alone; but rather on a bundle of attribute values. With ubiquitous computing and Internet connectivity, newer types of negotiation are emerging such as reverse auctions. This paper presents a heuristic algorithm for mult...