The design of effective neighborhood structures is fundamentally important for creating better local search and metaheuristic algorithms for combinatorial optimization. Significant efforts have been made to develop larger and more powerful neighborhoods that are able to explore the solution space more effectively while keeping computation complexity within acceptable levels. The most important ...

In this paper a developed method has been introduced to study flocs or agglomerates and their interaction with turbulence. The images have been taken from a flow having particles, which have a tendency to form flocs. PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) has been used to locate the specific „high turbulence areas“ in the flow. The same images have been processed digitally in order to find flocs or a...

In this paper, we propose a retrospective filter trust region algorithm for unconstrained optimization, which is based on the framework of the retrospective trust region method and associated with the technique of the multi-dimensional filter. The new algorithm gives a good estimation of trust region radius, relaxes the condition of accepting a trial step for the usual trust region methods. Und...

BACKGROUND We report a prospective, randomized study to evaluate ultrasound guidance for epidural catheter placement in children 0-6 yr of age. METHODS Epidural catheters were placed at lumbar or thoracic cord levels in 64 children undergoing major surgery, using either ultrasonography or loss-of-resistance (LOR) for guidance. Using a 5-10 MHz linear ultrasound probe, the neuraxial structures...

The modified quark-meson coupling model, which features a density dependent bag constant and bag radius in nuclear matter, is checked against the EMC effect within the framework of dynamical rescaling. Our emphasis is on the change in the average bag radius in nuclei, as evaluated in a local density approximation, and its implication for the rescaling parameter. We find that when the bag consta...

In this paper, we present a new trust region method for nonlinear equations with the trust region converging to zero. The new method preserves the global convergence of the traditional trust region methods in which the trust region radius will be larger than a positive constant. We study the convergence rate of the new method under the local error bound condition which is weaker than the nonsin...

We present a non-smooth optimization technique for non-convex maximum eigenvalue functions and for non-smooth functions which are infinite maxima of eigenvalue functions. We prove global convergence of our method in the sense that for an arbitrary starting point, every accumulation point of the sequence of iterates is critical. The method is tested on several problems in feedback control synthe...

We propose a new algorithm called DPC+ to enforce partial path consistency (PPC) on qualitative constraint networks. PPC restricts path consistency (PC) to a triangulation of the underlying constraint graph of a network. As PPC retains the sparseness of a constraint graph, it can make reasoning tasks such as consistency checking and minimal labelling of large qualitative constraint networks muc...

(2011) 'A new trust-region method with line search for solving symmetric nonlinear equations', This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express o...

BACKGROUND Patients undergoing long-term hemodialysis have a high prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriage, which may lead to serious infections. Mupirocin ointment has been used intranasally to eradicate S. aureus carriage in health human volunteers and health care workers. Chlorhexidine, an antiseptic with excellent antistaphylococcal activity, is widely used for handwashing and ski...