Meta-Heuristics: Advances and Trends in Local Search Paradigms for Optimizations comprises a carefully refereed selection of extended versions of the best papers presented at the Second Meta-Heuristics Conference (MIC 97). The selected articles describe the most recent developments in theory and applications of meta-heuristics, heuristics for specific problems, and comparative case studies. The book is divided into six parts, grouped mainly by the techniques considered. The extensive first part with twelve papers covers tabu search and its application to a great variety of well-known combinatorial optimization problems (including the resource-constrained project scheduling problem and vehicle routing problems). In the second part we find one paper where tabu search and simulated annealing are investigated comparatively and two papers which consider hybrid methods combining tabu search with genetic algorithms. The third part has four papers on genetic and evolutionary algorithms. Part four arrives at a new paradigm within meta-heuristics. The fifth part studies the behavior of parallel local search algorithms mainly from a tabu search perspective. The final part examines a great variety of additional meta-heuristics topics, including neural networks and variable neighbourhood search as well as guided local search. Furthermore, the integration of meta-heuristics with the branch-and-bound paradigm is investigated.

A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java has two main goals. The first is for novice programmers to learn progressively the basic concepts underlying most imperative programming languages using Java. The second goal is to introduce new programmers to the very basic principles of thinking the algorithmic way and turning the algorithms into programs using the programming concepts of Java. The book is divided into two parts and includes: The fundamental notions of variables, expressions and assignments with type checking - Conditional and loop statements - Explanation of the concepts of functions with pass-by-value arguments and recursion - Fundamental sequential and bisection search techniques - Basic iterative and recursive sorting algorithms. Each chapter of the book concludes with a set of exercises to enable students to practice concepts covered.

Computing Handbook, Third Edition: Computer Science and Software Engineering mirrors the modern taxonomy of computer science and software engineering as described by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS). Written by established leading experts and influential young researchers, the first volume of this popular handbook examines the elements involved in designing and implementing software, new areas in which computers are being used, and ways to solve computing problems. The book also explores our current understanding of software engineering and its effect on the practice of software development and the education of software professionals. Like the second volume, this first volume describes what occurs in research laboratories, educational institutions, and public and private organizations to advance the effective development and use of computers and computing in today’s world. Research-level survey articles provide deep insights into the computing discipline, enabling readers to understand the principles and practices that drive computing education, research, and development in the twenty-first century.

When you think about how far and fast computer science has progressed in recent years, it's not hard to conclude that a seven-year old handbook may fall a little short of the kind of reference today's computer scientists, software engineers, and IT professionals need. With a broadened scope, more emphasis on applied computing, and more than 70 chap

This book provides a literature review of techniques used to pass from continuous to combinatorial space, before discussing a detailed example with individual steps of how cuckoo search (CS) can be adapted to solve combinatorial optimization problems. It demonstrates the application of CS to three different problems and describes their source code. The content is divided into five chapters, the first of which provides a technical description, together with examples of combinatorial search spaces. The second chapter summarizes a diverse range of methods used to solve combinatorial optimization problems. In turn, the third chapter presents a description of CS, its formulation and characteristics. In the fourth chapter, the application of discrete cuckoo search (DCS) to solve three POCs (the traveling salesman problem, quadratic assignment problem and job shop scheduling problem) is explained, focusing mainly on a reinterpretation of the terminology used in CS and its source of inspiration. In closing, the fifth chapter discusses random-key cuckoo search (RKCS) using random keys to represent positions found by cuckoo search in the TSP and QAP solution space.

The notion of complexity is an important contribution of logic to theoretical computer science and mathematics. This volume attempts to approach complexity in a holistic way, investigating mathematical properties of complexity hierarchies at the same time as discussing algorithms and computational properties. A main focus of the volume is on some of the new paradigms of computation, among them Quantum Computing and Infinitary Computation. The papers in the volume are tied together by an introductory article describing abstract properties of complexity hierarchies. This volume will be of great interest to both mathematical logicians and theoretical computer scientists, providing them with new insights into the various views of complexity and thus shedding new light on their own research.

This text provides an excellent balance of theory and application that enables you to deploy powerful algorithms, frameworks, and methodologies to solve complex optimization problems in a diverse range of industries. Each chapter is written by leading experts in the fields of parallel and distributed optimization. Collectively, the contributions serve as a complete reference to the field of combinatorial optimization, including details and findings of recent and ongoing investigations.