38,119 research outputs found
Pre-emptive resource-constrained multimode project scheduling using genetic algorithm: a dynamic forward approach
Purpose: The issue resource over-allocating is a big concern for project engineers in the process
of scheduling project activities. Resource over-allocating drawback is frequently seen after
scheduling of a project in practice which causes a schedule to be useless. Modifying an
over-allocated schedule is very complicated and needs a lot of efforts and time. In this paper, a
new and fast tracking method is proposed to schedule large scale projects which can help project
engineers to schedule the project rapidly and with more confidence.
Design/methodology/approach: In this article, a forward approach for maximizing net
present value (NPV) in multi-mode resource constrained project scheduling problem while
assuming discounted positive cash flows (MRCPSP-DCF) is proposed. The progress payment
method is used and all resources are considered as pre-emptible. The proposed approach
maximizes NPV using unscheduled resources through resource calendar in forward mode. For
this purpose, a Genetic Algorithm is applied to solve.
Findings: The findings show that the proposed method is an effective way to maximize NPV in
MRCPSP-DCF problems while activity splitting is allowed. The proposed algorithm is very fast
and can schedule experimental cases with 1000 variables and 100 resources in few seconds. The
results are then compared with branch and bound method and simulated annealing algorithm and
it is found the proposed genetic algorithm can provide results with better quality. Then algorithm
is then applied for scheduling a hospital in practice.
Originality/value: The method can be used alone or as a macro in Microsoft Office Project®
Software to schedule MRCPSP-DCF problems or to modify resource over-allocated activities
after scheduling a project. This can help project engineers to schedule project activities rapidly
with more accuracy in practice.Peer Reviewe
A Survey on Metric Learning for Feature Vectors and Structured Data
The need for appropriate ways to measure the distance or similarity between
data is ubiquitous in machine learning, pattern recognition and data mining,
but handcrafting such good metrics for specific problems is generally
difficult. This has led to the emergence of metric learning, which aims at
automatically learning a metric from data and has attracted a lot of interest
in machine learning and related fields for the past ten years. This survey
paper proposes a systematic review of the metric learning literature,
highlighting the pros and cons of each approach. We pay particular attention to
Mahalanobis distance metric learning, a well-studied and successful framework,
but additionally present a wide range of methods that have recently emerged as
powerful alternatives, including nonlinear metric learning, similarity learning
and local metric learning. Recent trends and extensions, such as
semi-supervised metric learning, metric learning for histogram data and the
derivation of generalization guarantees, are also covered. Finally, this survey
addresses metric learning for structured data, in particular edit distance
learning, and attempts to give an overview of the remaining challenges in
metric learning for the years to come.Comment: Technical report, 59 pages. Changes in v2: fixed typos and improved
presentation. Changes in v3: fixed typos. Changes in v4: fixed typos and new
method
Exploiting Non-Causal CPU-State Information for Energy-Efficient Mobile Cooperative Computing
Scavenging the idling computation resources at the enormous number of mobile
devices can provide a powerful platform for local mobile cloud computing. The
vision can be realized by peer-to-peer cooperative computing between edge
devices, referred to as co-computing. This paper considers a co-computing
system where a user offloads computation of input-data to a helper. The helper
controls the offloading process for the objective of minimizing the user's
energy consumption based on a predicted helper's CPU-idling profile that
specifies the amount of available computation resource for co-computing.
Consider the scenario that the user has one-shot input-data arrival and the
helper buffers offloaded bits. The problem for energy-efficient co-computing is
formulated as two sub-problems: the slave problem corresponding to adaptive
offloading and the master one to data partitioning. Given a fixed offloaded
data size, the adaptive offloading aims at minimizing the energy consumption
for offloading by controlling the offloading rate under the deadline and buffer
constraints. By deriving the necessary and sufficient conditions for the
optimal solution, we characterize the structure of the optimal policies and
propose algorithms for computing the policies. Furthermore, we show that the
problem of optimal data partitioning for offloading and local computing at the
user is convex, admitting a simple solution using the sub-gradient method.
Last, the developed design approach for co-computing is extended to the
scenario of bursty data arrivals at the user accounting for data causality
constraints. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed
algorithms.Comment: Submitted to possible journa
Observational Constraints on Theories with a Blue Spectrum of Tensor Modes
Motivated by the string gas cosmological model, which predicts a blue tilt of
the primordial gravitational wave spectrum, we examine the constraints imposed
by current and planned observations on a blue tilted tensor spectrum. Starting
from an expression for the primordial gravitational wave spectrum normalized
using cosmic microwave background observations, pulsar timing, direct detection
and nucleosynthesis bounds are examined. If we assume a tensor to scalar ratio
on scales of the CMB which equals the current observational upper bound, we
obtain from these current observations constraints on the tensor spectral index
of , , and
respectively.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, 2 references added, relationship of this work
with Ref. 20 adde
Logic Programming Applications: What Are the Abstractions and Implementations?
This article presents an overview of applications of logic programming,
classifying them based on the abstractions and implementations of logic
languages that support the applications. The three key abstractions are join,
recursion, and constraint. Their essential implementations are for-loops, fixed
points, and backtracking, respectively. The corresponding kinds of applications
are database queries, inductive analysis, and combinatorial search,
respectively. We also discuss language extensions and programming paradigms,
summarize example application problems by application areas, and touch on
example systems that support variants of the abstractions with different
implementations
Enhancing Reuse of Constraint Solutions to Improve Symbolic Execution
Constraint solution reuse is an effective approach to save the time of
constraint solving in symbolic execution. Most of the existing reuse approaches
are based on syntactic or semantic equivalence of constraints; e.g. the Green
framework is able to reuse constraints which have different representations but
are semantically equivalent, through canonizing constraints into syntactically
equivalent normal forms. However, syntactic/semantic equivalence is not a
necessary condition for reuse--some constraints are not syntactically or
semantically equivalent, but their solutions still have potential for reuse.
Existing approaches are unable to recognize and reuse such constraints.
In this paper, we present GreenTrie, an extension to the Green framework,
which supports constraint reuse based on the logical implication relations
among constraints. GreenTrie provides a component, called L-Trie, which stores
constraints and solutions into tries, indexed by an implication partial order
graph of constraints. L-Trie is able to carry out logical reduction and logical
subset and superset querying for given constraints, to check for reuse of
previously solved constraints. We report the results of an experimental
assessment of GreenTrie against the original Green framework, which shows that
our extension achieves better reuse of constraint solving result and saves
significant symbolic execution time.Comment: this paper has been submitted to conference ISSTA 201
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