Characterizing polynomials with roots in a semi-algebraic set

Consider a real polynomial $p$ and a semi-algebraic subset $S$ of the complex plane, defined by finitely many polynomial inequalities $g_k(z,\bar{z}) \geq 0$ for some complex polynomials $\{g_k\}$. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions on the coefficients of $p$ for the zeros of $p$ to be in $S$. Citation IEEE Trans. Automatic Control 49 (2004), … Read more

The Reduced Density Matrix Method for Electronic Structure Calculations and the Role of Three-Index Representability Conditions

The variational approach for electronic structure based on the two-body reduced density matrix is studied, incorporating two representability conditions beyond the previously used $P$, $Q$ and $G$ conditions. The additional conditions (called $T1$ and $T2$ here) are implicit in work of R.~M.~Erdahl [Int.\ J.\ Quantum Chem.\ {\bf13}, 697–718 (1978)] and extend the well-known three-index diagonal … Read more

A GRASP/VND heuristic for the phylogeny problem using a new neighborhood structure

A phylogeny is a tree that relates taxonomic units, based on their similarity over a set of characters. The phylogeny problem consists in finding a phylogeny with the minimum number of evolutionary steps. We propose a new neighborhood structure for the phylogeny problem. A GRASP heuristic based on this neighborhood structure and using VND for … Read more

Randomized Algorithms for Scene Recognition by Inexact Graph Matching

We propose a new method for non-bijective graph matching for model-based pattern recognition. We formulate the search for the best correspondence between a model and an over-segmented image as a new combinatorial optimization problem, defined by the relational attributed graphs representing the model and the image where recognition has to be performed, together with the … Read more

Heuristics for the Phylogeny Problem

A phylogeny is a tree that relates taxonomic units, based on their similarity over a set of characters. The problem of finding a phylogeny with the minimum number of evolutionary steps (the so-called parsimony criterion) is one of the main problems in comparative biology. In this work, we study different heuristic approaches to the phylogeny … Read more

Scheduling Workover Rigs for Onshore Oil Production

Many oil wells in Brazilian onshore fields rely on artificial lift methods. Maintenance services such as cleaning, reinstatement, stimulation and others are essential to these wells. These services are performed by workover rigs, which are avaliable on a limited number with respect to the number of wells demanding service. The decision of which workover rig … Read more

A genetic algorithm for the phylogeny problem using an optimized crossover strategy based on path-relinking

A phylogenetic tree relates taxonomic units, based on their similarity over a set of characters. We propose a new genetic algorithm for the problem of building a phylogenetic tree under the parsimony criterion. This genetic algorithm makes use of an innovative optimized crossover strategy which is an extension of the path-relinking intensification technique originaly proposed … Read more

A masked spectral bound for maximum-entropy sampling

We introduce a new masked spectral bound for the maximum-entropy sampling problem. This bound is a continuous generalization of the very effective spectral partition bound. Optimization of the masked spectral bound requires the minimization of a nonconvex, nondifferentiable function over a semidefiniteness constraint. We describe a nonlinear affine scaling algorithm to approximately minimize the bound. … Read more

A hybrid multistart heuristic for the uncapacitated facility location problem

We present a multistart heuristic for the uncapacitated facility location problem, based on a very successful method we originally developed for the P-median problem. We show extensive empirical evidence to the effectiveness of our algorithm in practice. For most benchmarks instances in the literature, we obtain solutions that are either optimal or a fraction of … Read more