A cycle cover of a graph G is a collection of disjoint cycles that spans G. Generally, a (possibly disconnected) cycle cover is easier to construct than a connected (Hamiltonian) cycle cover. One might expect this since the cycle cover property is local whereas connectivity is a global constraint. We compare the hardness of CONNECTED CYCLE COVER and CYCLE COVER under various constraints (both l...

Abstract: We show that with a class of penalty functions, numerical problems associated with the implementation of the penalized least square estimators are equivalent to the exact cover by 3-sets problem, which belongs to a class of NP-hard problems. We then extend this NP-hardness result to the cases of penalized least absolute deviation regression and penalized support vector machines. We di...

This paper presents a comparative study between a state-ofthe-art clause weighting local search method for satisfiability testing and a variant modified to obtain longer-term memory from a global measure of clause perturbation. We present empirical evidence indicating that by learning which clauses are hardest to satisfy, the modified method can offer significant performance improvements for a ...

This paper presents the study of hardness profile of spur gear heated by induction heating process in function of the machine parameters, such as the power (kW), the heating time (s) and the generator frequency (kHz). The global work is realized by 3D finite-element simulation applied to the process by coupling and resolving the electromagnetic field and the heat transfer problems, and it was p...

Structural and dynamic properties of the building block of silica nanowires, (SiO2)6, are investigated by Born-Oppenheimer quantum molecular dynamics simulations. Thirteen conformers have been identified, seven of which have not been reported before. The energy component analysis shows that the lower electrostatic interaction differentiates the global minimum from the other structures. We also ...

An accumulative swaging and bundling technique is used to prepare composite wires made of Ti and an Al alloy. These wires show reasonable higher yield stresses than expected from the pure material flow curves. The additional strengthening in the composite is analyzed using nanoindentation measurements, tensile testings and investigations of the microstructure. In addition, these properties are ...

Non-uniformity in process quality was investigated during in-pack thermal sterilization of food products. This was accomplished through the combined application of the Monte Carlo procedure and a reliable mathematical method for process evaluation. Despite the large coefficients of variation found, the optimum quality process could be designed. The influence of the statistical variability of he...

This work is concerned with approximating constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) with an additional global cardinality constraints. For example, Max Cut is a boolean CSP where the input is a graph G = (V, E) and the goal is to find a cut S ∪ S̄ = V that maximizes the number of crossing edges, |E(S , S̄ )|. The Max Bisection problem is a variant of Max Cut with an additional global constraint tha...