Scheduling Jobs in Flowshops with the Introduction of Additional Machines in the Future

This is the author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Elsevier and can be found at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/expert-systems-with-applications/.The problem of scheduling jobs to minimize total weighted tardiness in flowshops,\ud with the possibility of evolving into hybrid flowshops in the future, is investigated in\ud this paper. As this research is guided by a real problem in industry, the flowshop\ud considered has considerable flexibility, which stimulated the development of an\ud innovative methodology for this research. Each stage of the flowshop currently has\ud one or several identical machines. However, the manufacturing company is planning\ud to introduce additional machines with different capabilities in different stages in the\ud near future. Thus, the algorithm proposed and developed for the problem is not only\ud capable of solving the current flow line configuration but also the potential new\ud configurations that may result in the future. A meta-heuristic search algorithm based\ud on Tabu search is developed to solve this NP-hard, industry-guided problem. Six\ud different initial solution finding mechanisms are proposed. A carefully planned\ud nested split-plot design is performed to test the significance of different factors and\ud their impact on the performance of the different algorithms. To the best of our\ud knowledge, this research is the first of its kind that attempts to solve an industry-guided\ud problem with the concern for future developments

Comet Machholz (C/2004 Q2): morphological structures in the inner coma and rotation parameters

Extensive observations of comet C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) were carried out between August 2004 and May 2005. The images obtained were used to investigate the comet's inner coma features at resolutions between 350 and 1500 km/pixel. A photometric analysis of the dust outflowing from the comet's nucleus and the study of the motion of the morphological structures in the inner coma indicated that the rotation period of the nucleus was most likely around 0.74 days. A thorough investigation of the inner coma morphology allowed us to observe two main active sources on the comet's nucleus, at a latitude of +85{\deg} \pm 5{\deg} and +45{\deg} \pm 5{\deg}, respectively. Further sources have been observed, but their activity ran out quite rapidly over time; the most relevant was at latcom. = 25{\deg} \pm 5{\deg}. Graphic simulations of the geometrical conditions of observation of the inner coma were compared with the images and used to determine a pole orientation at RA=95{\deg} \pm 5{\deg}, Dec=+35{\deg} \pm 5{\deg}. The comet's spin axis was lying nearly on the plane of the sky during the first decade of December 2004.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures, 3 table

Kinetic energy spectrum of horizontal motions in middle-atmosphere models

Data from several middle-atmosphere general circulation models are used to calculate kinetic energy spectra as a function of total horizontal wavenumber n. The horizontal and vertical resolution between models varies but all have upper. boundaries at heights greater than or similar to 80 km. Tropospheric spectra show power-law behavior with slopes slightly shallower than -3 for wavenumbers n greater than or similar to 10 (horizontal wavelengths less than or similar to 4000 km) and are dominated by the rotational part of the flow. These spectra agree well with those calculated using data obtained from a global assimilation model and with the results of previous observational studies. Stratospheric spectra have larger amplitudes than tropospheric ones at planetary scales and smaller amplitudes at smaller scales. Mesospheric spectra are characterized by enhanced spectral amplitudes at all wavenumbers compared to the stratosphere and spectral slopes in the wavenumber range n greater than or similar to 10 are generally shallower. Stratospheric and mesospheric spectra include approximately equal contributions from the rotational and divergent parts of the flow for n greater than or similar to 20 in all models. These features appear to be independent of model resolution. The divergent part of the flow, presumably associated with explicitly resolved inertiogravity waves in the models, increases more rapidly with height above the lower stratosphere than the rotational part. The divergent part is fairly insensitive to season, whereas the rotational part changes considerably between January and July in the middle-atmosphere region. Spectral amplitudes and vertical growth rates of both parts vary widely between models for a given season. The horizontal diffusion schemes used by the models are compared in an attempt to explain some of these differences

EEF1A1 (eukaryotic translation elongation factor 1 alpha 1)

Review on EEF1A1 (eukaryotic translation elongation factor 1 alpha 1), with data on DNA, on the protein encoded, and where the gene is implicated

Optimizing food ordering in a multi-stage catering supply chain network using reusable containers

Reusable plastic containers (RPCs) prevent packaging waste in the food supply chains. Food Catering Supply Chain (FCSC) made of multi-stage logistic networks represents a challenging scenario for adopting RPCs to optimize, particularly when the container's flow meets the food supplies. This paper fosters the application of RPCs in such FCSC by proposing a food-ordering MILP model to aid the cross-docking player in selecting the suppliers and releasing packaged food orders efficiently. This model optimizes logistic costs and operations as well as the influence of the container pooler's facilities network in the FCSC. A numerical example extracted by a larger case study provides validation of the model and offers insights for future research investigations

Matching Reads to Many Genomes with the r-Index

The r-index is a tool for compressed indexing of genomic databases for exact pattern matching, which can be used to completely align reads that perfectly match some part of a genome in the database or to find seeds for reads that do not. This article shows how to download and install the programs ri-buildfasta and ri-align; how to call ri-buildfasta on an FASTA file to build an r-index for that file; and how to query that index with ri-align

Efficient Construction of a Complete Index for Pan-Genomics Read Alignment

While short read aligners, which predominantly use the FM-index, are able to easily index one or a few human genomes, they do not scale well to indexing databases containing thousands of genomes. To understand why, it helps to examine the main components of the FM-index in more detail, which is a rank data structure over the Burrows-Wheeler Transform () of the string that will allow us to find the interval in the string\u2019s suffix array () containing pointers to starting positions of occurrences of a given pattern; second, a sample of the that\u2014when used with the rank data structure\u2014allows us access to the . The rank data structure can be kept small even for large genomic databases, by run-length compressing the , but until recently there was no means known to keep the sample small without greatly slowing down access to the . Now that Gagie et al. (SODA 2018) have defined an sample that takes about the same space as the run-length compressed \u2014we have the design for efficient FM-indexes of genomic databases but are faced with the problem of building them. In 2018 we showed how to build the of large genomic databases efficiently (WABI 2018) but the problem of building Gagie et al.\u2019s sample efficiently was left open. We compare our approach to state-of-the-art methods for constructing the sample, and demonstrate that it is the fastest and most space-efficient method on highly repetitive genomic databases. Lastly, we apply our method for indexing partial and whole human genomes and show that it improves over Bowtie with respect to both memory and time

Prefix-free parsing for building big BWTs

High-throughput sequencing technologies have led to explosive growth of genomic databases; one of which will soon reach hundreds of terabytes. For many applications we want to build and store indexes of these databases but constructing such indexes is a challenge. Fortunately, many of these genomic databases are highly-repetitive - a characteristic that can be exploited to ease the computation of the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT), which underlies many popular indexes. In this paper, we introduce a preprocessing algorithm, referred to as prefix-free parsing, that takes a text T as input, and in one-pass generates a dictionary D and a parse P of T with the property that the BWT of T can be constructed from D and P using workspace proportional to their total size and O(|T|)-time. Our experiments show that D and P are significantly smaller than T in practice, and thus, can fit in a reasonable internal memory even when T is very large. In particular, we show that with prefix-free parsing we can build an 131-MB run-length compressed FM-index (restricted to support only counting and not locating) for 1000 copies of human chromosome 19 in 2 h using 21 GB of memory, suggesting that we can build a 6.73 GB index for 1000 complete human-genome haplotypes in approximately 102 h using about 1 TB of memory

Behavioral implications of shortlisting procedures

We consider two-stage “shortlisting procedures” in which the menu of alternatives is first pruned by some process or criterion and then a binary relation is maximized. Given a particular first-stage process, our main result supplies a necessary and sufficient condition for choice data to be consistent with a procedure in the designated class. This result applies to any class of procedures with a certain lattice structure, including the cases of “consideration filters,” “satisficing with salience effects,” and “rational shortlist methods.” The theory avoids background assumptions made for mathematical convenience; in this and other respects following Richter’s classical analysis of preference-maximizing choice in the absence of shortlisting

Changes in Gut Microbiota Composition after Bariatric Surgery: a New Balance to Decode

Background: Recently, the link between obesity and gut microbiota has become a focus for research. This study shed some light on the modification of postoperative gut microbial composition after bariatric surgery. Methods: A prospective longitudinal study on healthy lean subjects and patients who underwent bariatric surgery (Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy) was carried out. Anthropometric and metabolic data, smoking, food preferences data, and stool samples were collected from lean subjects and from obese patients before and 3 and 6\ua0months after surgery (T0, T3, and T6, respectively). Results: We collected stool samples from 25 obese patients before surgery and 3 and 6\ua0months thereafter and from 25 normal weight patients. After Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, Yokenella regensburgei (p < 0.05), Fusobacterium varium (p < 0.05), Veillonella dispar/atypica (p < 0.05), and Streptococcus australis/gordonii (p < 0.05) were transiently identified in the gut at T3. Roux-en-Y gastric bypass patients had a permanent increase in Akkermansia muciniphila (p < 0.05), which is associated with healthy metabolism, both at T3 and T6. There were no significant changes in gut microbiota in laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy patients. Conclusions: In our study, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass induced major microbial differences and greater weight loss compared with laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy. Analyzing the microbiota composition, a proliferation of potential pathogens and the onset of beneficial bacteria was observed. The effects of these bacteria on human health are still far from clear. Understanding the mechanisms of action of these bacteria could be the keystone in developing new therapeutic strategies for obesity