Technical Sessions – Monday July 11

MB-08 IFORS 2011 - Melbourne
The placement of a (possibly nonconvex) shape into a container, via translation,
is a fundamental operation useful in containment, packing and layout problems.
Using the Minkowski sum here requires a complement operator with
unbounded sets that can be handled by various limited methods. We discuss
an alternative formulation that eliminates unbounded sets. This is motivated by
work on packing 3D suitcases into a car trunk. We prove that this yields the
same result as the standard translational single-item containment algorithm,
with some restrictions, and that it works in arbitrary dimensions.
3 - A Priority-considering Approach for the Threedimensional
Bin Packing Problem
Jidong Ren, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University,
Yoshida Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, 6068501, Kyoto, Japan,
renjd111@hotmail.com, Yajie Tian, Tetsuo Sawaragi
A heuristic approach is proposed to solve the three-dimensional bin packing
problem in which a given set of three-dimensional rectangular items should
be packed into the minimum number of identical finite containers. The core
idea of this approach is that some items with large volume are preferentially
assigned into the containers. Within the approach a single container algorithm
is used which is generalized from the algorithm proposed in Ren et al. (2011).
The proposed approach achieves excellent results for the test cases suggested
by Ivancic et al. (1989) with reasonable computing time.
4 - Multi-sphere Scheme with a General Nonlinear Programming
Solver
Takashi Imamichi, IBM Research - Tokyo, 1623-14,
Shimotsuruma, 242-8502, Yamato, Kanagawa, Japan,
imamichi@jp.ibm.com, Ernesto G. Birgin
The multi-sphere scheme is a general framework for finding a layout of given
shapes into a container. It first approximates each shape by a set of circles or
spheres and then find a layout of the sets of circles or spheres. The author applied
the quasi-Newton method, which is for unconstrained nonlinear programming
problems, to finding a layout in the previous work. In this talk, we apply
a general nonlinear programming solver ‘ALGENCAN’ instead, construct an
algorithm for the two-dimensional strip packing problem with free-rotations,
and report the results of experiments.
� MB-08
Monday, 14:00-15:30
Meeting Room 107
Algorithms for Nucleic Acid Analysis
Stream: Bioinformatics
Invited session
Chair: Marta Szachniuk, Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, PAS,
Noskowskiego 12/14, 61-704, Poznan, Poland,
Marta.Szachniuk@cs.put.poznan.pl
1 - RNA Structure Prediction from OR Perspective
Marta Szachniuk, Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, PAS,
Noskowskiego 12/14, 61-704, Poznan, Poland,
Marta.Szachniuk@cs.put.poznan.pl
RNA molecules serve diverse structural, catalytic and regulatory function in
living cells. The knowledge of their 3D folds is essential to understand the increasing
number of their biological functions. The talk will present a problem
of RNA structure modeling from the OR perspective. A new approach to the
RNA comparative modeling based on fragment matching and assembly will
be highlighted. We will focus on solutions applied on the different levels of
structure composition process, like graph theory based approach to secondary
structure fragmentation, module alignment and merging.
2 - Match-searching Algorithms for Gene Silencing Assessment
Mark Horn, Mathematics, Informatics & Statistics, CSIRO,
Locked Bag 17, 1670, North Ryde, NSW, Australia,
Mark.Horn@csiro.au
Gene silencing applications involve the use of synthetic RNA silencer
molecules with sequences designed to suppress specific genes. Reliable assessment
of silencer impacts requires the rapid identification of matching sites
in messenger RNA. The paper presents algorithms and data structures for this
task, based on a compact numerical encoding of sequence data. The main algorithm
involves a search for a Boolean dominance relation, which is related
to a database task called skyline search. Computational tests show that the
algorithm is significantly faster than conventional alternatives.
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3 - Inversion Distributions in RNA and Their Roles in Secondary
Structure Prediction
Ming-Ying Leung, The University of Texas at El Paso, TX
79968-0514, El Paso, United States, mleung@utep.edu, Sameera
Viswakula, Michela Taufer, Kyle Johnson
RNA secondary structures (SS) provide information for understanding replication
mechanisms of viruses with critical influence on agricultural resource
sustainability. As sequence lengths of viral genomic RNA often exceed limits
allowed by SS prediction software, we develop strategies to cut long RNA sequences
into shorter chunks to be predicted separately. Individual predictions
are then assembled to form an overall SS. Statistical distribution properties of
inversions, which are essential for all SS, can help establish criteria in the segmentation
process to maximize prediction accuracy.
� MB-09
Monday, 14:00-15:30
Meeting Room 108
Rich Vehicle Routing
Stream: Vehicle Routing
Invited session
Chair: Marc Sevaux, Lab-STICC - CNRS UMR 3192, Université de
Bretagne Sud - UEB, Centre de Recherche - BP 92116, 2 rue de Saint
Maude, 56321, Lorient, France, marc.sevaux@univ-ubs.fr
Chair: Kenneth Sörensen, Faculteit Toegepaste Economische
Wetenschappen, Universiteit Antwerpen, Prinsstraat 13, 2000,
Antwerpen, Belgium, kenneth.sorensen@ua.ac.be
Chair: Richard Hartl, Dept of Management, University of Vienna,
Bruenner Str. 72, A-1210, Vienna, Austria, richard.hartl@univie.ac.at
1 - Fuel Efficient Haul Truck Routing on Mines
Kevin Duffy, Institute of Systems Science, Durban University of
Technology, Berea Rd, 4000, Durban, Kzn, South Africa,
kevind@dut.ac.za
This research investigates computational methods for estimating fuel efficient
path calculations for a mine road network based on fuel consumed by large
haul trucks. Algorithms using both shortest path and fuel efficient path computations
are compared. Depending on road condition the fuel efficient path
can save more fuel. The results are discussed with reference to extreme and
general situations. By scaling the results up to realistic mine proportions it is
shown how significant saving in production costs should be possible where a
fuel efficient haul road utilization system is implemented.
2 - A Tabu Search Method for the Open Vehicle Routing
Problem with Time Windows
Leon Li, Department of Logistics & Maritime Studies, The Hong
Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong,
lgtleon@polyu.edu.hk, Zhuo Fu, Richard Eglese
In this paper, a tabu search heuristic with an intensive search mechanism for
the open vehicle routing problem with soft time windows (OVRPSTW) is proposed,
by which the problem with hard time windows (OVRPHTW) can also be
solved by simply setting appropriate parameters in the penalty function. Computational
results on the benchmark problems are provided and compared with
results in the literature, which show that it can produce good solutions. Comparisons
of the features of two different soft time window constraint types are
also carried out.
3 - A New Solution Approach for the Rollon-rolloff Vehicle
Routing Problem
Juyoung Wy, Industrial and Management Engineering, Pohang
University of Science & Technology, 790-784, Pohang, Korea,
Republic Of, hwiriric@postech.ac.kr, Byung-In Kim
The rollon-rolloff vehicle routing problem, in which large garbage collection
containers are at customer locations such as construction sites and shopping
centers, is handled. Tractors transport a container at a time between locations.
We propose an integrated heuristic algorithm which can construct initial solutions
and improve the solutions iteratively. The construction algorithm is based
on the Sweep Nearest Algorithm and the improvement algorithm includes perturbation,
inter- and intra-route algorithms. New best solutions for the benchmark
problems were found using the proposed approach.