Generic Pareto local search metaheuristic for optimization of targeted offers in a bi-objective direct marketing campaign

Cross-selling campaigns seek to offer the right products to the set of customers with the goal of maximizing expected profit, while, at the same time, respecting the purchasing constraints set by investors. In this context, a bi-objective version of this NP-Hard problem is approached in this paper, aiming at maximizing both the promotion campaign total profit and the risk-adjusted return, which is estimated with the reward-to-variability ratio known as Sharpe ratio. Given the combinatorial nature of the problem and the large volume of data, heuristic methods are the most common used techniques. A Greedy Randomized Neighborhood Structure is also designed, including the characteristics of a neighborhood exploration strategy together with a Greedy Randomized Constructive technique, which is embedded in a multi-objective local search metaheuristic. The latter combines the power of neighborhood exploration by using a Pareto Local Search with Variable Neighborhood Search. Sets of non-dominated solutions obtained by the proposed method are described and analyzed for a number of problem instances

State of the climate in 2013

In 2013, the vast majority of the monitored climate variables reported here maintained trends established in recent decades. ENSO was in a neutral state during the entire year, remaining mostly on the cool side of neutral with modest impacts on regional weather patterns around the world. This follows several years dominated by the effects of either La Niña or El Niño events. According to several independent analyses, 2013 was again among the 10 warmest years on record at the global scale, both at the Earths surface and through the troposphere. Some regions in the Southern Hemisphere had record or near-record high temperatures for the year. Australia observed its hottest year on record, while Argentina and New Zealand reported their second and third hottest years, respectively. In Antarctica, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station reported its highest annual temperature since records began in 1957. At the opposite pole, the Arctic observed its seventh warmest year since records began in the early 20th century. At 20-m depth, record high temperatures were measured at some permafrost stations on the North Slope of Alaska and in the Brooks Range. In the Northern Hemisphere extratropics, anomalous meridional atmospheric circulation occurred throughout much of the year, leading to marked regional extremes of both temperature and precipitation. Cold temperature anomalies during winter across Eurasia were followed by warm spring temperature anomalies, which were linked to a new record low Eurasian snow cover extent in May. Minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic was the sixth lowest since satellite observations began in 1979. Including 2013, all seven lowest extents on record have occurred in the past seven years. Antarctica, on the other hand, had above-average sea ice extent throughout 2013, with 116 days of new daily high extent records, including a new daily maximum sea ice area of 19.57 million km2 reached on 1 October. ENSO-neutral conditions in the eastern central Pacific Ocean and a negative Pacific decadal oscillation pattern in the North Pacific had the largest impacts on the global sea surface temperature in 2013. The North Pacific reached a historic high temperature in 2013 and on balance the globally-averaged sea surface temperature was among the 10 highest on record. Overall, the salt content in nearsurface ocean waters increased while in intermediate waters it decreased. Global mean sea level continued to rise during 2013, on pace with a trend of 3.2 mm yr-1 over the past two decades. A portion of this trend (0.5 mm yr-1) has been attributed to natural variability associated with the Pacific decadal oscillation as well as to ongoing contributions from the melting of glaciers and ice sheets and ocean warming. Global tropical cyclone frequency during 2013 was slightly above average with a total of 94 storms, although the North Atlantic Basin had its quietest hurricane season since 1994. In the Western North Pacific Basin, Super Typhoon Haiyan, the deadliest tropical cyclone of 2013, had 1-minute sustained winds estimated to be 170 kt (87.5 m s-1) on 7 November, the highest wind speed ever assigned to a tropical cyclone. High storm surge was also associated with Haiyan as it made landfall over the central Philippines, an area where sea level is currently at historic highs, increasing by 200 mm since 1970. In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide all continued to increase in 2013. As in previous years, each of these major greenhouse gases once again reached historic high concentrations. In the Arctic, carbon dioxide and methane increased at the same rate as the global increase. These increases are likely due to export from lower latitudes rather than a consequence of increases in Arctic sources, such as thawing permafrost. At Mauna Loa, Hawaii, for the first time since measurements began in 1958, the daily average mixing ratio of carbon dioxide exceeded 400 ppm on 9 May. The state of these variables, along with dozens of others, and the 2013 climate conditions of regions around the world are discussed in further detail in this 24th edition of the State of the Climate series. © 2014, American Meteorological Society. All rights reserved

Highly-parallelized simulation of a pixelated LArTPC on a GPU

The rapid development of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is allowing the implementation of highly-parallelized Monte Carlo simulation chains for particle physics experiments. This technique is particularly suitable for the simulation of a pixelated charge readout for time projection chambers, given the large number of channels that this technology employs. Here we present the first implementation of a full microphysical simulator of a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) equipped with light readout and pixelated charge readout, developed for the DUNE Near Detector. The software is implemented with an end-to-end set of GPU-optimized algorithms. The algorithms have been written in Python and translated into CUDA kernels using Numba, a just-in-time compiler for a subset of Python and NumPy instructions. The GPU implementation achieves a speed up of four orders of magnitude compared with the equivalent CPU version. The simulation of the current induced on 10^3 pixels takes around 1 ms on the GPU, compared with approximately 10 s on the CPU. The results of the simulation are compared against data from a pixel-readout LArTPC prototype

Experimental assessment of a full scale prototype thermal energy storage tank using paraffin for space heating application

In this work, a full scale prototype latent heat thermal energy storage unit has been designed, constructed, and experimentally analysed for its performance considering heating application conditions and two energy sources, solar and geothermal energy. It comprises a rectangular tank filled with phase change material and a finned tube staggered heat exchanger. Water is used as heat transfer fluid. To study its performance, selected heat transfer fluid inlet temperatures and flow rates were applied and two commercial organic phase change materials were tested, A44 and A46. Heat transfer fluid outlet temperature, heat transfer rate and stored energy were evaluated as a function of the conditions studied. Based on the results, it is concluded that A44 is more efficient during the charging period, taking into account the two energy sources, solar and heat pump. The water outlet temperature has a more stable evolution when using A44 instead of A46 and the heat transfer rate is higher too. A44 also exhibits higher storage capacity than A46 during the discharging process and more stable heat transfer rate for both flow rates The developed methodology can be applied to study different PCMs and building © 2019 The Author

Coronary artery calcification score is an independent predictor of the no-reflow phenomenon after reperfusion therapy in acute myocardial infarction

Abundant evidence shows that coronary artery calcification (CAC) is a strong marker of structural and functional changes within the artery wall. Thus far, the implications of CAC in patients with acute coronary syndromes remain unclear. We aimed to investigate whether the CAC score is associated with impaired reperfusion during the acute phase of ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). We enrolled 60 consecutive STEMI patients to undergo cardiac computed tomography for assessment of the CAC score within 1 week after STEMI. Coronary thrombus burden, coronary blood flow (TIMI flow), and myocardial blush grade (MBG) were evaluated systematically. Patients with maximal TIMI flow and MBG were grouped as optimal reperfusion (n=27) and their counterparts as no-reflow (NR, n=33). There were no differences in the clinical characteristics between groups. Patients in the NR group had higher heart rate, coronary angiographic severity, and CAC score. CAC score greater than 100 was associated independently with the presence of NR (odds ratio 4.4, 95% confidence interval 1.17-16.3). The CAC score of nonculprit coronary arteries was higher in NR individuals than in their counterparts (P=0.04). In addition, the CAC score of the isnfarct-related artery correlated negatively with the TIMI-flow rate (r=-0.54, P<0.001) and with the MBG (r=-0.32, P=0.04). The CAC score is associated with the presence of the NR phenomenon in STEMI patients.Abundant evidence shows that coronary artery calcification (CAC) is a strong marker of structural and functional changes within the artery wall. Thus far, the implications of CAC in patients with acute coronary syndromes remain unclear. We aimed to investigate whether the CAC score is associated with impaired reperfusion during the acute phase of ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). We enrolled 60 consecutive STEMI patients to undergo cardiac computed tomography for assessment of the CAC score within 1 week after STEMI. Coronary thrombus burden, coronary blood flow (TIMI flow), and myocardial blush grade (MBG) were evaluated systematically. Patients with maximal TIMI flow and MBG were grouped as optimal reperfusion (n=27) and their counterparts as no-reflow (NR, n=33). There were no differences in the clinical characteristics between groups. Patients in the NR group had higher heart rate, coronary angiographic severity, and CAC score. CAC score greater than 100 was associated independently with the presence of NR (odds ratio 4.4, 95% confidence interval 1.17-16.3). The CAC score of nonculprit coronary arteries was higher in NR individuals than in their counterparts (P=0.04). In addition, the CAC score of the isnfarct-related artery correlated negatively with the TIMI-flow rate (r=-0.54, P<0.001) and with the MBG (r=-0.32, P=0.04). The CAC score is associated with the presence of the NR phenomenon in STEMI patients2656256