This paper presents a state transition based formal framework for a new search method, called Evolutionary Ruin and Stochastic Recreate, which tries to learn and adapt to the changing environments during the search process. It improves the performance of the original Ruin and Recreate principle...

We present a hybrid approach of goal programming and meta-heuristic search to find compromise solutions for a difficult employee scheduling problem, i.e. nurse rostering with many hard and soft constraints. By employing a goal programming model with different parameter settings in its objective...

Service network design under uncertainty is fundamentally crucial for all freight transportation companies. The main challenge is to strike a balance between two conflicting objectives: low network setup costs and low expected operational costs. Together these have a significant impact on the...

This paper presents a hybrid multi-objective model that combines integer programming (IP) and variable neighbourhood search (VNS) to deal with highly-constrained nurse rostering problems in modern hospital environments. An IP is first used to solve the subproblem which includes the full set of...

We consider a stochastic knapsack problem in which the event of overflow results in the problem ending with zero return. We assume that there are n types of items available where each type has infinite supply. An item has an exponentially distributed random weight with a known mean depending on...

China has suffered from severe earthquake disasters in recent years. In order to explore the impact of severe earthquakes on public risk perception on different time scales, four surveys were conducted twice each after the severe Wenchuan and Yushu earthquakes. t tests were performed between two...

This paper tests the hypothesis in the revised endogenous dynamic Solow model that there exists dynamic convergence to the moving steady-state as a single economy grows. The convergence in the revised endogenous dynamic Solow model implies that the real interest rate and the growth rate of...