Search

This paper studies the constrained two-dimensional guillotine cutting problem with defects, whose objective is to cut a subset of given items from a defective sheet such that the profit of selected items is maximised. The guillotine cut constraint, which requires each cut must go through one side of the sheet to the opposite side, is considered. We solve this problem via a recursive dynamic programming approach. A set of upper bounds is proposed to keep the promising nodes. The normal points and raster points are extended to reduce the number of vertical and horizontal cuts by considering the effect of the defect. The experiment results show that our approach can solve most of the instances in the literature and outperforms existing approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major open problem of AF-embedding is whether every separable exact quasidiagonal C ∗ -algebra can be embedded into an AF-algebra. In this paper we characterize AF-embeddable C ∗ -algebras by representations to observe their similarity to the separable exact quasidiagonal C ∗ -algebras. As an application, we show that every separable exact quasidiagonal C ∗ -algebra is AF-embeddable if and only if every faithful essential representation of a separable exact quasidiagonal C ∗ -algebra is a certain kind of ∗ -representation. We also show that a separable C ∗ -algebra is AF-embeddable if and only if it can be embedded into a particular C ∗ -algebra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RationaleIt has been suggested that patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) experience considerable daily respiratory symptom fluctuation. A standardized measure is needed to quantify and understand the implications of day-to-day symptom variability.ObjectivesTo compare standard deviation with other statistical measures of symptom variability and identify characteristics of individuals with higher symptom variability.MethodsIndividuals in the SubPopulations and InteRmediate Outcome Measures In COPD Study (SPIROMICS) Exacerbations sub-study completed an Evaluating Respiratory Symptoms in COPD (E-RS) daily questionnaire. We calculated within-subject standard deviation (WS-SD) for each patient at week 0 and correlated this with measurements obtained 4 weeks later using Pearson's r and Bland Altman plots. Median WS-SD value dichotomized participants into higher versus lower variability groups. Association between WS-SD and exacerbation risk during 4 follow-up weeks was explored.Measurements and main resultsDiary completion rates were sufficient in 140 (68%) of 205 sub-study participants. Reproducibility (r) of the WS-SD metric from baseline to week 4 was 0.32. Higher variability participants had higher St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) scores (47.3 ± 20.3 versus 39.6 ± 21.5, p=.04) than lower variability participants. Exploratory analyses found no relationship between symptom variability and health care resource utilization-defined exacerbations.ConclusionsWS-SD of the E-RS can be used as a measure of symptom variability in studies of patients with COPD. Patients with higher variability have worse health-related quality of life. WS-SD should be further validated as a measure to understand the implications of symptom variability.

In this study, we investigate the behavior of inertial active Brownian particles in a d -dimensional harmonic trap in the presence of translational diffusion. While the solution of the Fokker–Planck equation is generally challenging, it can be utilized to compute the exact time evolution of all time-dependent dynamical moments using a Laplace transform approach. We present the explicit form for several moments of position and velocity in d -dimensions. An interplay of time scales assures that the effective diffusivity and steady-state kinetic temperature depend on both inertia and trap strength, unlike passive systems. The distance from equilibrium, measured by the violation of equilibrium fluctuation-dissipation and the amount of entropy production, decreases with increasing inertia and trap strength. We present detailed ‘phase diagrams’ using kurtosis of velocity and position, showing possibilities of re-entrance to equilibrium.

Radiotherapy is a recommended procedure, in average, for 52% of cancer cases as one of the treatment forms, therefore, it is important for the clinical practice to investigate the affecting factors in dose distribution received by the patients, and for example, devices and treatment couch. With the introduction of treatments with modulated intensity techniques like IMRT and VMAT, the number of incidence fields used for patient treatment increased, which makes the couch’s dosimetric effect more significant in these modalities. The attenuation data acquisition referring to the treatment couches, as well as the TPS data evaluation, show as important parameters for the clinical practice because they show what happens with the dose delivery during the treatment, ensuring a better quality and safety to the treatments. This research presents experimental results evaluating the couch’s impact in the treatments by a study of perturbation in the distribution of surface dose, dose attenuation according to the gantry’s angle for the couches BrainLABTM, ExactTM and iBEAMTM. Then we propose better density values for the couches BrainLABTM and ExactTM for their inclusion in EclipseTM TPS. Lastly, we compare the dose difference considering the presence or not of couch in the planning. In conclusion, the beam’s attenuation increase by the couches and the doses alterations on the skin must be taken in consideration in the treatment planning process. It is of great relevance that each treatment center perform internal tests to determinate the best density values for available TPS.

We expand upon work from many hands on the decomposition of nuclear maps. Such maps can be characterised by their ability to be approximately written as the composition of maps to and from matrices. Under certain conditions (such as quasidiagonality), we can find a decomposition whose maps behave nicely, by preserving multiplication up to an arbitrary degree of accuracy and being constructed from order-zero maps (as in the definition of nuclear dimension). We investigate these conditions and relate them to a W*-analogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Man asks himself; who am I? Man thinks for his true identity. He wants to know his source and destination. Thus he wants to know his past and future existence. The baby was not into existence yesterday. Today it comes into existence. The process of birth astonishes him. He hears the throb of life. Very soon it will inherit an identity from its parents. Philosophical emotion isolates a person from mundane existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we compare 10 (ten) optimization methods both exact algorithm (B&B) and approximate algorithm: GA, SA, TS, ACO, PSO, ABC, A³, NN, 2-Opt for symmetric traveling salesman problem. By using software Lingo18 and Matlab R18a, these algorithms are tested in five cases: 30 cities of Sumatera, 70 cities of Java, 9 cities of Kalimantan, 11 cities of Sulawesi, and 29 cities in Papua. Exact method (B&B) yields the shortest distance and time for less than 30 cities, on the other hand, metaheuristics (ABC) yields better than other metaheuristics algorithms both time and distance for more than 30 cities. To test the effectivity of ABC algorithm, this algorithm is also tested in tsplib and has error rate in Danzig42 (0.00%), Brazil58 (0.02%), Gr120 (10.13%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]