Service for a New Generation: Implications for Implementing Video Game Service in an Academic Library

This paper reports on an exploratory study conducted to discover the potential value of a gaming service in an academic library setting. The study was inspired by reports of declining campus library use and the resulting efforts to reconnect with Net Generation students. A survey questionnaire was employed to collect data from a random sample of 250 undergraduate students at North Carolina State University. Questions were designed to explore student perceptions of gaming in the library, impact on building visitation, and overall reception of the service. In addition, the researcher performed an analysis of a library-run online forum and conducted an interview with a staff librarian. The resulting data reveal a majority of students have an overall positive view of gaming in the library and use the service for a variety of reasons. Study data may be used to establish a best-practice for gaming implementation in the academic library environment

The capacitated general windy routing problem with turn penalties

In this paper we present the capacitated general windy routing problem with turn penalties. This new problem subsumes many important and well-known arc and node routing problems, and it takes into account turn penalties and forbidden turns, which are crucial in many real-life applications, particularly in downtown areas and for large vehicles. We provide a way to solve this problem both optimally and heuristically by transforming it into a generalized vehicle routing problem. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work has been partially supported by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia of Spain (project TIN2008-06441-C02-01). We are also indebted to the two anonymous referees for their valuable comments.Micó Ruiz, JC.; Soler Fernández, D. (2011). The capacitated general windy routing problem with turn penalties. Operations Research Letters. 39(4):265-271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orl.2011.04.007S26527139

A new genetic algorithm for the asymmetric traveling salesman problem

The asymmetric traveling salesman problem (ATSP) is one of the most important combinatorial optimization problems. It allows us to solve, either directly or through a transformation, many real-world problems. We present in this paper a new competitive genetic algorithm to solve this problem. This algorithm has been checked on a set of 153 benchmark instances with known optimal solution and it outperforms the results obtained with previous ATSP heuristic methods. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work has been partially supported by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia of Spain (Project No. TIN2008-06441-C02-01).Yuichi Nagata; Soler Fernández, D. (2012). A new genetic algorithm for the asymmetric traveling salesman problem. Expert Systems with Applications. 39(10):8947-8953. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2012.02.029S89478953391

The Unbelieved and historians, part III : Responses and Elaborations

The first two parts of "The Unbelieved" argued for the possibility of the existence of supernatural beings and for their agency in historical writing. This instalment is a roundtable assessing the problems and potential in the category of the Unbelieved and in its knowability. Space limitations prevented our following the rich avenues of further inquiry our extraordinary peer reviewers suggested, but we remain grateful, especially for their reminders of the complexity of motivations of historians who avoid the Unbelieved and their emphasis on the importance of humility as a historian's tool

The mixed capacitated general routing problem with turn penalties

In this paper we deal with the mixed capacitated general routing problem with turn penalties. This problem generalizes many important arc and node routing problems, and it takes into account turn penalties and forbidden turns, which are crucial in many real-life applications, such as mail delivery, waste collection and street maintenance operations. Through a polynomial transformation of the considered problem into a Generalized Vehicle routing problem, we suggest a new approach for solving this new problem by transforming it into an Asymmetric Capacitated Vehicle routing problem. In this way, we can solve the new problem both optimally and heuristically using existing algorithms. A powerful memetic algorithm and a set of 336 new benchmark instances are also suggested. The experimental results show that the average deviation of the suggested solution method is less than 0.05% with respect to optimum. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work has been partially supported by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia of Spain (project TIN2008-06441-C02-01).Braysy, O.; Martínez Molada, E.; Nagata, Y.; Soler Fernández, D. (2011). The mixed capacitated general routing problem with turn penalties. Expert Systems with Applications. 38(10):12954-12966. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2011.04.092S1295412966381

Focus Down East commentary piece by Harold Clossey, executive director of Sunr

Focus Down East commentary piece by Harold Clossey, executive director of Sunrise County Economic Council, on programs that are helping to create a stronger economy in the Down East region. He discusses three in particular: Mobilize Down East Maine provides a planning framework that will help regions focus on their specific assets; the GROWashington-Aroostook initiative uses federal funds to support regional planning efforts; and the GreenME project, which hopes to creates jobs in the renewable energy sector