abstract While previous studies on buy-it-now (BIN) auctions focus on the impact of BIN format on economic performances, our study focuses on factors that affect the level of use of BIN auctions by sellers. We propose a conceptual model where culture and product categories are two important factors on the level of use of BIN auctions. Our empirical investigation shows that the level of use of B...

This paper studies auctions with a temporary Buy-It-Now (BIN) price using a two-stage model. In the first stage, a group of bidders (early bidders) are offered a ”Buy-It-Now” (BIN) option to purchase the item immediately at a listed price (BIN price). If no early bidder accepts the BIN price, the BIN option disappears and the second stage starts with an additional group of bidders (late bidders...

Type 2 diabetes (2DM), obesity, and coronary artery disease (CAD) are frequently coexisted being as key components of metabolic syndrome. Whether there is shared genetic background underlying these diseases remained unclear. We performed a meta-analysis of 35 genome screens for 2DM, 36 for obesity or body mass index (BMI)-defined obesity, and 21 for CAD using genome search meta-analysis (GSMA),...

The focus of this thesis is on algorithmic questions that are directly linked to practical problems from diverse applications like manufacturing, train scheduling or telecommunications. We present four problem settings together with combinatorial problems (or mathematical models) that are at the core of the practical applications. From this we derive both interesting theoretical and relevant pr...

The computer program WPACKING was validated using bin data for three different bin conditions: 1) a smooth-walled bin filled with wheat, 2) a corrugated-walled bin filled with wheat, and 3) a corrugated-walled bin filled with corn. WPACKING is a computer program which utilizes the differential form of Janssen’s equation to predict the pressures and amount of material stored in a bin. The differ...

A steganographic method called adjacent bin mapping (ABM) is presented. Firstly, it is applied to 3D geometries by mapping the coordinates within two adjacent bins for data embedding. When applied to digital images, it becomes a kind of LSB hiding, namely the LSB algorithm. In order to prevent the detection using a metric named histogram tail, the hiding is performed in a pseudorandom order. Th...

The Variable Sized Bin Packing Problem has a wide range of application areas including packing, scheduling, and manufacturing. Given a list of items and variable sized bin types, the objective is to minimize the total size of the used bins. This problem is known to be NP-hard. In this article, we present two new heuristics for solving the problem using a new variation of P systems with active m...

This paper studies the dynamic bin packing problem, in which items arrive and depart at arbitrary time. We want to pack a sequence of unit fractions items (i.e., items with sizes 1/w for some integer w ≥ 1) into unit-size bins such that the maximum number of bins used over all time is minimized. Tight and almost-tight performance bounds are found for the family of any-fit algorithms, including ...

In this paper, we show that the business rules knowledge representation paradigm, which is widely used in the industry, can be developped as a front-end modelling language for constraint programming. We present a general purpose rule-based modelling language, called Rules2CP, and describe its compilation to constraint programs over finite domains with reified constraints and global constraints,...

Two-dimensional bin packing problems are highly relevant combinatorial optimization problems. They find a large number of applications, for example, in the context of transportation or warehousing, and for the cutting of different materials such as glass, wood or metal. In this work we deal with the oriented two-dimensional bin packing problem under free guillotine cutting. In this specific pro...