This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Solving Irregularly Structured Problems in Parallel, IRREGULAR'97, held in Paderborn, Germany, in June 1997. The 18 revised full papers presented were carefully selected by the program committee for inclusion in the volume; also included are full papers by the five invited speakers. Among the topics covered are discrete algorithms, randomized methods and approximation algorithms, implementations, programming environments, systems and applications, and scheduling and load balancing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Parallel Algorithms for Irregularly Structured Problems, IRREGULAR '96, held in Santa Barbara, California, in August 1996. The volume presents 28 revised full papers selected from 51 submissions; also included are one full invited paper by Torben Hagerup and abstracts of four other invited talks. The papers are organized in topical sections on sparse matrix problems, partitioning and domain composition, irregular applications, communication and synchronization, systems support, and mapping and load balancing.

Metaheuristics: Progress as Real Problem Solvers is a peer-reviewed volume of eighteen current, cutting-edge papers by leading researchers in the field. Included are an invited paper by F. Glover and G. Kochenberger, which discusses the concept of Metaheuristic agent processes, and a tutorial paper by M.G.C. Resende and C.C. Ribeiro discussing GRASP with path-relinking. Other papers discuss problem-solving approaches to timetabling, automated planograms, elevators, space allocation, shift design, cutting stock, flexible shop scheduling, colorectal cancer and cartography. A final group of methodology papers clarify various aspects of Metaheuristics from the computational view point.

One of the current main challenges in the area of scientific computing​ is the design and implementation of accurate numerical models for complex physical systems which are described by time dependent coupled systems of nonlinear PDEs. This volume integrates the works of experts in computational mathematics and its applications, with a focus on modern algorithms which are at the heart of accurate modeling: adaptive finite element methods, conservative finite difference methods and finite volume methods, and multilevel solution techniques. Fundamental theoretical results are revisited in survey articles and new techniques in numerical analysis are introduced. Applications showcasing the efficiency, reliability and robustness of the algorithms in porous media, structural mechanics and electromagnetism are presented. Researchers and graduate students in numerical analysis and numerical solutions of PDEs and their scientific computing applications will find this book useful.

The goal of the Encyclopedia of Optimization is to introduce the reader to a complete set of topics that show the spectrum of research, the richness of ideas, and the breadth of applications that has come from this field. The second edition builds on the success of the former edition with more than 150 completely new entries, designed to ensure that the reference addresses recent areas where optimization theories and techniques have advanced. Particularly heavy attention resulted in health science and transportation, with entries such as "Algorithms for Genomics", "Optimization and Radiotherapy Treatment Design", and "Crew Scheduling".

The third edition of this handbook is designed to provide a broad coverage of the concepts, implementations, and applications in metaheuristics. The book’s chapters serve as stand-alone presentations giving both the necessary underpinnings as well as practical guides for implementation. The nature of metaheuristics invites an analyst to modify basic methods in response to problem characteristics, past experiences, and personal preferences, and the chapters in this handbook are designed to facilitate this process as well. This new edition has been fully revised and features new chapters on swarm intelligence and automated design of metaheuristics from flexible algorithm frameworks. The authors who have contributed to this volume represent leading figures from the metaheuristic community and are responsible for pioneering contributions to the fields they write about. Their collective work has significantly enriched the field of optimization in general and combinatorial optimization in particular.Metaheuristics are solution methods that orchestrate an interaction between local improvement procedures and higher level strategies to create a process capable of escaping from local optima and performing a robust search of a solution space. In addition, many new and exciting developments and extensions have been observed in the last few years. Hybrids of metaheuristics with other optimization techniques, like branch-and-bound, mathematical programming or constraint programming are also increasingly popular. On the front of applications, metaheuristics are now used to find high-quality solutions to an ever-growing number of complex, ill-defined real-world problems, in particular combinatorial ones. This handbook should continue to be a great reference for researchers, graduate students, as well as practitioners interested in metaheuristics.

Graph partitioning is a theoretical subject with applications in many areas, principally: numerical analysis, programs mapping onto parallel architectures, image segmentation, VLSI design. During the last 40 years, the literature has strongly increased and big improvements have been made. This book brings together the knowledge accumulated during many years to extract both theoretical foundations of graph partitioning and its main applications.