To overcome the contradiction between the requirement of knowing the optimal expected payoff of the subprocess after any state at any time and the inability to know in the actual decision process in the backward recursive method for solving Markov decision processes (MDP), this paper proposes a...

The problem of packing equal spheres in a spherical container is a classic global optimization problem, which has attracted enormous studies in academia and found various applications in industry. This problem is computationally challenging, and many efforts focus on small-scale instances with...

Due to the economic liberalization processes and the ongoing opening of the Chinese economy for foreign trade and investment, which have been carried out since 1980, Chinese consumer goods markets have been transformed from sellers markets into buyers markets throughout the last years. In such...

The standardization of compulsory education schools is an essen-tial measure to promote education balance and improve education quality. However, when the implementation effect of this policy was evaluated, the improvement of input factors such as facilities and equipments, teaching faculty and...