A Lagrange Relaxation Method for Solving Weapon-Target Assignment Problem

We study the weapon-target assignment (WTA) problem which has wide applications in the area of defense-related operations research. This problem calls for finding a proper assignment of weapons to targets such that the total expected damaged value of the targets to be maximized. The WTA problem can be formulated as a nonlinear integer programming problem which is known to be NP-complete. There does not exist any exact method for the WTA problem even small size problems, although several heuristic methods have been proposed. In this paper, Lagrange relaxation method is proposed for the WTA problem. The method is an iterative approach which is to decompose the Lagrange relaxation into two subproblems, and each subproblem can be easy to solve to optimality based on its specific features. Then, we use the optimal solutions of the two subproblems to update Lagrange multipliers and solve the Lagrange relaxation problem iteratively. Our computational efforts signify that the proposed method is very effective and can find high quality solutions for the WTA problem in reasonable amount of time

Changes of Circulating Transforming Growth Factor-²1 Level During Radiation Therapy Are Correlated with the Prognosis of Locally Advanced Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

IntroductionWe hypothesized that plasma transforming growth factor-²1 (TGF-²1) level and its dynamic change are correlated with the prognosis of locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with radiation therapy (RT).MethodsPatients with stage IIIA or IIIB NSCLC treated with RT with or without chemotherapy were eligible for this study. Platelet poor plasma was collected from each patient within 1 week before RT (pre-RT) and at the 4th week during RT (during-RT). TGF-²1 level was measured with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The primary end point was overall survival (OS) and the secondary end point was progression-free survival (PFS). Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression were used for risk factor evaluation.ResultsA total of 65 patients were eligible for the study. The median OS and PFS were 17.7 and 13.7 months, respectively. In univariate analysis, performance status, weight loss, radiation dose, and TGF-²1 ratio (during-RT/pre-RT TGF-²1 level) were all significantly correlated with OS. In the multivariate analysis, performance status, radiation dose, and TGF-²1 ratio were still significantly correlated with OS. The median OS was 30.7 months for patients with TGF-²1 ratio ≤1 versus 13.3 months for those with TGF-²1 ratio more than 1 (p = 0.0029); and the median PFS was 16.8 months versus 7.2 months, respectively (p = 0.010).ConclusionsIn locally advanced NSCLC, the decrease of TGF-²1 level during RT is correlated with favorable prognosis

North Atlantic Oscillation in winter is largely insensitive to autumn Barents-Kara sea ice variability

Arctic sea ice extent in autumn is significantly correlated with the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) in the satellite era. However, questions about the robustness and reproducibility of the relationship persist. Here, we show that climate models are able to simulate periods of strong ice-NAO correlation, albeit rarely. Furthermore, we show that the winter circulation signals during these periods are consistent with observations and not driven by sea ice. We do so by interrogating a multimodel ensemble for the specific time scale of interest, thereby illuminating the dynamics that produce large spread in the ice-NAO relationship. Our results support the importance of internal variability over sea ice but go further in showing that the mechanism behind strong ice-NAO correlations, when they occur, is similar in longer observational records and models. Rather than sea ice, circulation anomalies over the Urals emerge as a decisive precursor to the winter NAO signal

Philosophical Analysis on the Nature and Forms of Information—From the Perspective of Marxist Philosophy

The aim of this research essay attempt to reveal the nature of information form the perspective of Marxist Philosophy. The nature of Information is the first question that philosophy of information science and technology research must be answered, thus the problem is still debated. According to Marxist dialectical materialism method to the essence of information has made the analysis and argumentation, points out the essence of information between what is and its internal contact things, and this contact information is presented. Due to the connection between the protean and endless things, thus produce the endless, full of beautiful things in eyes, each are not identical information. To grasp the nature of information, must pay attention to and the specific form of information and information processing, the reorganization, transmission, storage, use and so on

A New Implementable Prediction-Correction Method for Monotone Variational Inequalities with Separable Structure

The monotone variational inequalities capture various concrete applications arising in many areas. In this paper, we develop a new prediction-correction method for monotone variational inequalities with separable structure. The new method can be easily implementable, and the main computational effort in each iteration of the method is to evaluate the proximal mappings of the involved operators. At each iteration, the algorithm also allows the involved subvariational inequalities to be solved in parallel. We establish the global convergence of the proposed method. Preliminary numerical results show that the new method can be competitive with Chen's proximal-based decomposition method in Chen and Teboulle (1994)

Sensitivity Analysis of the Proximal-Based Parallel Decomposition Methods

The proximal-based parallel decomposition methods were recently proposed to solve structured convex optimization problems. These algorithms are eligible for parallel computation and can be used efficiently for solving large-scale separable problems. In this paper, compared with the previous theoretical results, we show that the range of the involved parameters can be enlarged while the convergence can be still established. Preliminary numerical tests on stable principal component pursuit problem testify to the advantages of the enlargement