The articles that comprise this distinguished annual volume for the Advances in Mechanics and Mathematics series have been written in honor of Gilbert Strang, a world renowned mathematician and exceptional person. Written by leading experts in complementarity, duality, global optimization, and quantum computations, this collection reveals the beauty of these mathematical disciplines and investigates recent developments in global optimization, nonconvex and nonsmooth analysis, nonlinear programming, theoretical and engineering mechanics, large scale computation, quantum algorithms and computation, and information theory.

This book will present the papers delivered at the first U.S. conference devoted exclusively to global optimization and will thus provide valuable insights into the significant research on the topic that has been emerging during recent years. Held at Princeton University in May 1991, the conference brought together an interdisciplinary group of the most active developers of algorithms for global optimization in order to focus the attention of the mathematical programming community on the unsolved problems and diverse applications of this field. The main subjects addressed at the conference were advances in deterministic and stochastic methods for global optimization, parallel algorithms for global optimization problems, and applications of global optimization. Although global optimization is primarily a mathematical problem, it is relevant to several other disciplines, including computer science, applied mathematics, physical chemistry, molecular biology, statistics, physics, engineering, operations research, communication theory, and economics. Global optimization problems originate from a wide variety of mathematical models of real-world systems. Some of its applications are allocation and location problems and VLSI and data-base design problems. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Optimization is of critical importance in engineering. Engineers constantly strive for the best possible solutions, the most economical use of limited resources, and the greatest efficiency. As system complexity increases, these goals mandate the use of state-of-the-art optimization techniques. In recent years, the theory and methodology of optimization have seen revolutionary improvements. Moreover, the exponential growth in computational power, along with the availability of multicore computing with virtually unlimited memory and storage capacity, has fundamentally changed what engineers can do to optimize their designs. This is a two-way process: engineers benefit from developments in optimization methodology, and challenging new classes of optimization problems arise from novel engineering applications. Advances and Trends in Optimization with Engineering Applications reviews 10 major areas of optimization and related engineering applications, providing a broad summary of state-of-the-art optimization techniques most important to engineering practice. Each part provides a clear overview of a specific area and discusses a range of real-world problems. The book provides a solid foundation for engineers and mathematical optimizers alike who want to understand the importance of optimization methods to engineering and the capabilities of these methods.

This proceedings volume addresses advances in global optimization—a multidisciplinary research field that deals with the analysis, characterization and computation of global minima and/or maxima of nonlinear, non-convex and nonsmooth functions in continuous or discrete forms. The volume contains selected papers from the third biannual World Congress on Global Optimization in Engineering & Science (WCGO), held in the Yellow Mountains, Anhui, China on July 8-12, 2013. The papers fall into eight topical sections: mathematical programming; combinatorial optimization; duality theory; topology optimization; variational inequalities and complementarity problems; numerical optimization; stochastic models and simulation and complex simulation and supply chain analysis.

This book is a collection of research papers in optimization and approximation dedicated to Professor Minyi Yue of the Institute of Applied Mathematics, Beijing, China. The papers provide a broad spectrum of research on optimization problems, including scheduling, location, assignment, linear and nonlinear programming problems as well as problems in molecular biology. The emphasis of the book is on algorithmic aspects of research work in optimization. Special attention is paid to approximation algorithms, including heuristics for combinatorial approximation problems, approximation algorithms for global optimization problems, and applications of approximations in real problems. The work provides the state of the art for researchers in mathematical programming, operations research, theoretical computer science and applied mathematics.

There has been much recent progress in global optimization algo rithms for nonconvex continuous and discrete problems from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. Convex analysis plays a fun damental role in the analysis and development of global optimization algorithms. This is due essentially to the fact that virtually all noncon vex optimization problems can be described using differences of convex functions and differences of convex sets. A conference on Convex Analysis and Global Optimization was held during June 5 -9, 2000 at Pythagorion, Samos, Greece. The conference was honoring the memory of C. Caratheodory (1873-1950) and was en dorsed by the Mathematical Programming Society (MPS) and by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Activity Group in Optimization. The conference was sponsored by the European Union (through the EPEAEK program), the Department of Mathematics of the Aegean University and the Center for Applied Optimization of the University of Florida, by the General Secretariat of Research and Tech nology of Greece, by the Ministry of Education of Greece, and several local Greek government agencies and companies. This volume contains a selective collection of refereed papers based on invited and contribut ing talks presented at this conference. The two themes of convexity and global optimization pervade this book. The conference provided a forum for researchers working on different aspects of convexity and global opti mization to present their recent discoveries, and to interact with people working on complementary aspects of mathematical programming.

Current research results in stochastic and deterministic global optimization including single and multiple objectives are explored and presented in this book by leading specialists from various fields. Contributions include applications to multidimensional data visualization, regression, survey calibration, inventory management, timetabling, chemical engineering, energy systems, and competitive facility location. Graduate students, researchers, and scientists in computer science, numerical analysis, optimization, and applied mathematics will be fascinated by the theoretical, computational, and application-oriented aspects of stochastic and deterministic global optimization explored in this book. This volume is dedicated to the 70th birthday of Antanas Žilinskas who is a leading world expert in global optimization. Professor Žilinskas's research has concentrated on studying models for the objective function, the development and implementation of efficient algorithms for global optimization with single and multiple objectives, and application of algorithms for solving real-world practical problems.