Lift-and-project ranks and antiblocker duality

Recently, Aguilera et al.\ exposed a beautiful relationship between antiblocker duality and the lift-and-project operator proposed by Balas et al. We present a very short proof of their result that the \BCC-rank of the clique polytope is invariant under complementation. The proof of Aguilera et al. relies on their main technical result, which describes a … Read more

Computational study of a cutting plane algorithm for University Course Timetabling

In this paper we describe a successful case-study where a Branch-and-Cut algorithm yields the \lq\lq optimal” solution of a real-world timetabling problem of University courses \emph{(University Course Timetabling problem)}. The problem is formulated as a \emph{Set Packing problem} with side constraints. To tighten the initial formulation, we utilize well-known valid inequalities of the Set Packing … Read more

Approximating the Two-Level Facility Location Problem Via a Quasi-Greedy Approach

We propose a {\em quasi-greedy} algorithm for approximating the classical uncapacitated $2$-level facility location problem ($2$-LFLP). Our algorithm, unlike the standard greedy algorithm, selects a sub-optimal candidate at each step. It also relates the minimization $2$-LFLP problem, in an interesting way, to the maximization version of the single level facility location problem. Another feature of … Read more

A hybrid heuristic for the P-median problem

Given N customers and a set F of M potential facilities, the P-median problem consists in finding a subset of F with P facilities such that the cost of serving all customers is minimized. This is a well-known NP-complete problem with important applications in location science and classification (clustering). We present a multistart hybrid heuristic … Read more

On Semidefinite Programming Relaxations for the Satisfiability Problem

This paper is concerned with the analysis and comparison of semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations for the satisfiability (SAT) problem. Our presentation is focussed on the special case of 3-SAT, but the ideas presented can in principle be extended to any instance of SAT specified by a set of boolean variables and a propositional formula in … Read more

A hybrid genetic algorithm for the weight setting problem in OSPF/IS-IS routing

Intra-domain traffic engineering aims to make more efficient use of network resources within an autonomous system. Interior Gateway Protocols such as OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) and IS-IS (Intermediate System-Intermediate System) are commonly used to select the paths along which traffic is routed within an autonomous system. These routing protocols direct traffic based on link … Read more

Streaming Cache Placement Problems: Complexity and Algorithms

Virtual private networks (VPN) are often used to distribute live content, such as video or audio streams, from a single source to a large number of destinations. Streaming caches or splitters are deployed in these multicast networks to allow content distribution without overloading the network. In this paper, we consider two combinatorial optimization problems that … Read more

A Branch and Cut Algorithm for Hub Location Problems with Single Assignment

The hub location problem with single assignment is the problem of locating hubs and assigning the terminal nodes to hubs in order to minimize the cost of hub installation and the cost of routing the traffic in the network. There may also be capacity restrictions on the amount of traffic that can transit by hubs. … Read more

The integer hull of a convex rational polytope

Given $A\in Z^{m\times n}$ and $b\in Z^m$, we consider the integer program $\max \{c’x\vert Ax=b;x\in N^n\}$ and provide an equivalent and explicit linear program $\max \{\widehat{c}’q\vert M q=r;q\geq 0\}$, where $M,r,\widehat{c}$ are easily obtained from $A,b,c$ with no calculation. We also provide an explicit algebraic characterization of the integer hull of the convex polytope $P=\{x\in\R^n\vert … Read more