Presents an approach to optimize the service configurations of a student canteen utilizing computer simulation and a total cost function that incorporates both the cost of services and the cost of waiting. The cost of waiting is measured in terms of the impact of waiting on the customer satisfaction and the resulting changes in future repurchases. By collecting data of waiting time and customer...

In this research, some concepts of linear programming and critical path method are reviewed to describe recent modeling structures that have been of great value in analyzing extended planning horizon project time-cost trade-offs problems. A simplified representation of a small project and a linear programming model is formulated to represent this system. Procedures to solve these various proble...

Human-mediated dispersal among aquatic ecosystems often results in biotic transfer between drainage basins. Such activities may circumvent biogeographic factors, with considerable ecological, evolutionary, and economic implications. However, the efficacy of predictions concerning community changes following inter-basin movements are limited, often because the dispersal mechanism is poorly under...

Theories of cognition that posit complementary dual-route processes afford better fits to the data when each route explains a part of the data not explained by the other route. However, such theories must also explain why each route is invoked, lest one can fit any data set with enough routes. One possible explanation is that route selection is based on a least-cost principle: the route that re...

In microeconomics, a standard framework is used for determining the optimal input mix for a two-input production process. Here we adapt this framework for understanding the way plants use water and nitrogen (N) in photosynthesis. The least-cost input mixture for generating a given output depends on the relative cost of procuring and using nitrogen versus water. This way of considering the issue...

Proximity searching consists in retrieving from a database those elements that are similar to a query. As the distance is usually expensive to compute, the goal is to use as few distance computations as possible to satisfy queries. Indexes use precomputed distances among database elements to speed up queries. As such, a baseline is AESA, which stores all the distances among database objects, bu...

Minimum MSE plays an indispensable role in learning and adaptation of neural systems. Nevertheless, the instantaneous value of the modeling error alone does not convey sufficient information about the accuracy of the estimated model in representing the underlying structure of the data. In this paper, we propose an extension to the traditional MSE cost function, a regularization term based on th...

As you walk around during your daily life, you commonly make path finding decisions based on the world around you. For example, when you are walking in the outdoors, you take the path of least resistance over a terrain. We present two applications which demonstrate the importance of using the least cost caloric cost path computation in two different domain settings. One application uses the pop...

Concerns over the potential negative health effects from exposure to air pollution have led to interest in assessing personal exposure and finding ways to reduce it. As journey-time exposure accounts for a disproportionately high amount of an individual’s total exposure, this paper assesses the potential to apply least-cost techniques within a GIS in order to identify paths of lower journey-tim...