Evaluation of the Simulated Annealing and the Discrete Artificial Bee Colony in the Weight Tardiness Problem with Taguchi Experiments Parameterization

Meta-Heuristics (MH) are the most used optimization techniques to approach Complex Combinatorial Problems (COPs). Their ability to move beyond the local optimums make them an especially attractive choice to solve complex computational problems, such as most scheduling problems. However, the knowledge of what Meta-Heuristics perform better in certain problems is based on experiments. Classic MH, as the Simulated Annealing (SA) has been deeply studied, but newer MH, as the Discrete Artificial Bee Colony (DABC) still need to be examined in more detail. In this paper DABC has been compared with SA in 30 academic benchmark instances of the weighted tardiness problem (1 parallel to Sigma w(j)T(j)). Both MH parameters were fine-tuned with Taguchi Experiments. In the computational study DABC performed better and the subsequent statistical study demonstrated that DABC is more prone to find near-optimum solutions. On the other hand SA appeared to be more efficient.This work is supported by FEDER Funds through the "Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade - COMPETE" program and by National Funds through FCT "Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia" under the project: PEst-OE/EEI/UI0760/2014, and PEst2015-2020.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Study on the Impact of the NS in the Performance of Meta-Heuristics in the TSP

Meta-heuristics have been applied for a long time to the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) but information is still lacking in the determination of the parameters with the best performance. This paper examines the impact of the Simulated Annealing (SA) and Discrete Artificial Bee Colony (DABC) parameters in the TSP. One special consideration of this paper is how the Neighborhood Structure (NS) interact with the other parameters and impacts the performance of the meta-heuristics. NS performance has been the topic of much research, with NS proposed for the best-known problems, which seem to imply that the NS influences the performance of meta-heuristics, more that other parameters. Moreover, a comparative analysis of distinct meta-heuristics is carried out to demonstrate a non-proportional increase in the performance of the NS.This work is supported by FEDER Funds through the "Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade - COMPETE" program and by National Funds through FCT "FundaqAo para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia" under the project: FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-PEst-OE/EEl/U10760/2011, PEst-OE/EEI/UI0760/2014, and PEst2015-2020.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Thickness dependence of the exchange bias in epitaxial manganite bilayers

Exchange bias has been studied in a series of La2/3Ca1/3MnO3 / La1/3Ca2/3MnO3 bilayers grown on (001) SrTiO3 substrates by ozone-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. The high crystalline quality of the samples and interfaces has been verified using high-resolution X-ray diffractometry and Z-contrast scanning transmission electron microscopy with electron energy loss spectroscopy. The dependence of exchange bias on the thickness of the antiferromagnetic layer has been investigated. A critical value for the onset of the hysteresis loop shift has been determined. An antiferromagnetic anisotropy constant has been obtained by fitting the results to the generalized Meiklejohn-Bean model.Comment: 7 pages. 8 figure

Effect of oxidizing and reducing atmospheres on Ba(Ti0.90Zr0.10)O3:2V ceramics as characterized by piezoresponse force microscopy

The effect of annealing atmospheres (At amb, N2 and O2) on the electrical properties of Ba(Ti0.90Zr0.10)O3:2V (BZT10:2V) ceramics obtained by the mixed oxide method was investigated. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis indicates that oxygen vacancies present near Zr and Ti ions reduce ferroelectric properties, especially in samples treated in an ambient atmosphere (At amb). BZT10:2V ceramics sintered in a nitrogen atmosphere showed better dielectric behaviour at room temperature with a dielectric permittivity measured at a frequency of 10 kHz equal to 16800 with dielectric loss of 0.023. Piezoelectric force microscopy (PFM) images reveal improvement in the piezoelectric coefficient by sintering the sample under nitrogen atmosphere. Thus, BZT10:2V ceramics sintered under a nitrogen atmosphere can be useful for practical applications which include nonvolatile digital memories, spintronics and data-storage media

Mutations in the Schmallenberg virus Gc glycoprotein facilitate cellular protein synthesis shutoff and restore pathogenicity of NSs deletion mutants in mice

Serial passage of viruses in cell culture has been traditionally used to attenuate virulence and identify determinants of viral pathogenesis. In a previous study, we found that a strain of Schmallenberg virus (SBV) serially passaged in tissue culture (termed SBVp32) unexpectedly displayed increased pathogenicity in suckling mice compared to wild type SBV. In this study, we mapped the determinants of SBVp32 virulence to the viral genome M segment. SBVp32 virulence is associated with the capacity of this virus to reach higher titers in the brains of experimentally infected suckling mice. We also found that the Gc glycoprotein, encoded by the M segment of SBVp32, facilitates host cell protein shutoff in vitro. Interestingly, while the M segment of SBVp32 is a virulence factor, we found that the S segment of the same virus confers by itself an attenuated phenotype to wild type SBV as has lost the ability to block the innate immune system of the host. Single mutations present in the Gc glycoprotein of SBVp32 are sufficient to compensate both the attenuated phenotype of the SBVp32 S segment and the attenuated phenotype of NSs deletion mutants. Our data also indicate that the SBVp32 M segment does not act as an IFN antagonist. Therefore SBV mutants can retain pathogenicity even when they are unable to fully control the production of IFN by the infected cells. Overall, this study suggests that the viral glycoprotein of orthobunyaviruses can compensate, at least in part, the function of NSs. In addition, we also provide evidence that the induction of total cellular protein shutoff by SBV is determined by multiple viral proteins while the ability to control the production of IFN maps to the NSs protein. Importance The identification of viral determinants of pathogenesis is key to the development of prophylactic and interventions measures. In this study we found that the bunyavirus Gc glycoprotein is a virulence factor. Importantly, we show that mutations in the Gc glycoprotein can restore pathogenicity of attenuated mutants resulting from deletions or mutations in the non-structural protein NSs. Our findings highlight the fact that careful consideration should be taken when designing live attenuated vaccines based on deletions of non-structural proteins since single mutations in the viral glycoproteins appear to revert attenuated mutants to virulent phenotypes

An integer programming approach for Balancing and Scheduling in Extended Manufacturing Environment

In the fiercely competitive era induced by expansion of open business archetypes, the managerial aspects of Extended Manufacturing Environments (EMEs) are experiencing growing concerns. There is no scope of leaving a possible operational improvement unexplored. For enhanced operational efficiency and capacity utilization the balancing and scheduling problems of EMEs are, therefore, rightfully considered and an integer programme is proposed in this paper. The model is designed in a spread sheet and solved through What'sBest optimizer. The model capabilities is assessed through a test problem. The results have demonstrated that the model is capable of defining optimized production schedules for EMEs.This study has been conducted under FRGS project (FRGS14- 102-0343) funded by Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE), Malaysia. The authors are grateful to MOHE and Research Management Centre (RMC), International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) for their support.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Production distribution planning in a multiechelon supply chain using carbon policies: A review and reflections

Sustainability of a supply chain has gained more attention from economists, environmentalists, consumers, manufacturers, government and the academia. In this paper, the literature survey has been performed on production allocation problem in a multi-echelon supply chain with carbon policies. With web-based search engines such as Scopus and Web of Science several resources such as journals, conference proceedings and books are selected and reviewed. It is observed from the literature that the mentioned problem traces the progression of carbon policies in a supply chain over the past 22 years to provide substantiation for Green Supply Chain. The research papers are then analyzed and categorized to construct the useful foundation of previous studies. Moreover, the importance of this problem in recent years needs has been highlighted by mentioning the gaps in the literature. Further, at the end of the paper, several future work directions in this area also suggested.(undefined)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Investigation of reconfiguration effect on makespan with social network method for flexible job shop scheduling problem

This paper presents a novel social network analysis based method (SNAM) to evaluate the reconfiguration effect i.e., identification of key machines and their influence on the system performance in the context of Flexible job shop scheduling problem (FJSSP). This research formulates a mathematical model along with the constraints by incorporating the total completion time of jobs as an objective function. The proposed SNAM has been applied to generate the collaboration networks by transforming the input data and presenting them in the form of an affiliation matrix to the network analysis software. Thereafter, to analyze the collaboration networks various SNA measures that have been calculated and different functional properties are evaluated. Finally, to investigate the reconfiguration effect on makespan integration of process planning and scheduling (IPPS) has been implemented with adopted effective game theory based hybrid deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) algorithm. The validation of the proposed approach and its effectiveness is conducted through comparisons with benchmark instances and results confirm the efficiency of the proposed approach.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A DNA damage repair gene-associated signature predicts responses of patients with advanced soft-tissue sarcoma to treatment with trabectedin

Signatura genètica; Biomarcadors predictius; TrabectedinaFirma genética; Biomarcadores predictivos; TrabectedinaGene signature; Predictive biomarkers; TrabectedinPredictive biomarkers of trabectedin represent an unmet need in advanced soft-tissue sarcomas (STS). DNA damage repair (DDR) genes, involved in homologous recombination or nucleotide excision repair, had been previously described as biomarkers of trabectedin resistance or sensitivity, respectively. The majority of these studies only focused on specific factors (ERCC1, ERCC5, and BRCA1) and did not evaluate several other DDR-related genes that could have a relevant role for trabectedin efficacy. In this retrospective translational study, 118 genes involved in DDR were evaluated to determine, by transcriptomics, a predictive gene signature of trabectedin efficacy. A six-gene predictive signature of trabectedin efficacy was built in a series of 139 tumor samples from patients with advanced STS. Patients in the high-risk gene signature group showed a significantly worse progression-free survival compared with patients in the low-risk group (2.1 vs 6.0 months, respectively). Differential gene expression analysis defined new potential predictive biomarkers of trabectedin sensitivity (PARP3 and CCNH) or resistance (DNAJB11 and PARP1). Our study identified a new gene signature that significantly predicts patients with higher probability to respond to treatment with trabectedin. Targeting some genes of this signature emerges as a potential strategy to enhance trabectedin efficacy.This study was funded by the Spanish Group for Research on Sarcoma (GEIS) and partially by PharmaMar. The authors would like to thank the GEIS data center for data management. The authors also thank the donors and the Hospital Universitario Virgen del Rocío—Instituto de Biomedicina de Sevilla Biobank (Andalusian Public Health System Biobank and ISCIII-Red de Biobancos PT17/0015/0041) for part of the human specimens used in this study. David S. Moura is recipient of a Sara Borrell postdoctoral fellowship funded by the National Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII) (CD20/00155)