Similarities are more important than differences. The importance of these common components is set forth by the commonality hypothesis: schemata common to aboveaverage solutions are above average. This hypothesis is corroborated by the isolation of commonality-based selection. It follows that uncommon components should be below average (relative to their parents). In genetic algorithms, the tra...

During the last decades, the production enterprises have gone through a strong global change in terms of shorter product life cycles, fluctuations in the order income and increased demand of customized products. Basically, a company needs to develop appealing products in terms of cost and quality that are brought to the market in timely manner. As many studies show that over 70% of the total li...

BACKGROUND Charcot neuroarthopathy (CN), a rare foot and ankle condition usually complicating diabetes mellitus, leads to deformity, poor quality of life, and increased mortality and morbidity. The prevalence of this condition in the diabetic patient population is not currently known but has been reportedly misdiagnosed in up to 95% of cases. METHODS We sought to evaluate general knowledge re...

Nitriles have been shown to be effective vibrational probes of local environments in proteins but have yet to be fully utilized for the study of nucleic acids. The potential utility of 5-cyano-2'-deoxyuridine ( 1) as a probe of local nucleic acid environment was investigated by measuring the dependence of the IR nitrile stretching frequency (nu CN), line shape, and absorbance on solvent and tem...

We consider a firm that produces multiple variants of a product. Products are assembled using a combination of common and dedicated components. We characterize the optimal assortment and derive the optimal inventory levels for the common and dedicated components under various bill-ofmaterial configurations. We investigate the effect of commonality on product variety and compare its benefits und...