The grammar problem, a generalization of the single-source shortest-path problem introduced by Knuth, is to compute the minimum-cost derivation of a terminal string from each non-terminal of a given context-free grammar, with the cost of a derivation being suitably defined. This problem also subsumes the problem of finding optimal hyperpaths in directed hypergraphs (under varying optimization criteria) that has received attention recently. In this paper we present an incremental algorithm for a version of the grammar problem. As a special case of this algorithm we obtain an efficient incremental algorithm for the single-source shortest-path problem with positive edge lengths. The aspect of our work that distinguishes it from other work on the dynamic shortest-path problem is its ability to handle "multiple heterogeneous modifications": between updates, the input graph is allowed to be restructured by an arbitrary mixture of edge insertions, edge deletions, and edge-length changes.

Shortest Path Problems are among the most studied network flow optimization problems, with interesting applications in various fields. One such field is transportation, where shortest path problems of different kinds need to be solved. Due to the nature of the application, transportation scientists need very flexible and efficient shortest path procedures, both from the running time point of view, and also for the memory requirements. Since no "best" algorithm currently exists for every kind of transportation problem, research in this field has recently moved to the design and implementation of "ad hoc" shortest path procedures, which are able to capture the peculiarities of the problems under consideration. The aim of this work is to present in a unifying framework both the main algorithmic approaches that have been proposed in the past years for solving the shortest path problems arising most frequently in the transportation field, and also some important implementation techniques ...

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For successful ab initio protein structure prediction, a method is needed to identify native-like structures from a set containing both native and non-native protein-like conformations. In this regard, the use of distance geometry has shown promise when accurate inter-residue distances are available. We describe a method by which distance geometry restraints are culled from sets of 500 protein-like conformations for four small helical proteins generated by the method of Simons et al. (1997). A consensus-based approach was applied in which every inter-Calpha distance was measured, and the most frequently occurring distances were used as input restraints for distance geometry. For each protein, a structure with lower coordinate root-mean-square (RMS) error than the mean of the original set was constructed; in three cases the topology of the fold resembled that of the native protein. When the fold sets were filtered for the best scoring conformations with respect to an all-atom knowledge-...

Dynamic shortest path algorithms update the shortest paths to take into account a change in an edge weight. This paper describes a new technique that allows the reduction of heap sizes used by several dynamic shortest path algorithms. For unit weight change, the updates can be done without heaps. These reductions almost always reduce the computational times for these algorithms. In computational testing, several dynamic shortest path algorithms with and without the heap-reduction technique are compared. Speedups of up to a factor of 1.8 were observed using the heap-reduction technique on random weight changes and of over a factor of five on unit weight changes. We compare as well with Dijkstra 's algorithm, which recomputes the paths from scratch. With respect to Dijkstra's algorithm, speedups of up to five orders of magnitude are observed. 1.

We propose an algorithm which reoptimizes shortest paths in a very general situation, that is when any subset of arcs of the input graph is aected by a change of the arc costs, which can be either lower or higher than the old ones. This situation is more general than the ones addressed in the literature so far.

Shortest path problems are among the most studied network flow problems, with interesting applications in various fields. In large scale transportation systems, a sequence of shortest path problems must often be solved, where the (k+1) th problem differs only slightly from the k th one. Significant reduction in computational time may be obtained with an efficient reoptimization procedure that exploits the useful information available after each shortest path computation in the sequence. Such reduction in computational time is essential in many on-line applications. This work is devoted to the development of such reoptimization algorithm. We shall focus on the sequence of shortest path problems to be solved for which problems differ by the origin node of the path set. After reviewing the classical algorithms described in the literature so far, which essentially show a Dijkstra's like behavior, a new dual approach will be proposed, which could be particularly promising in p...

Among the variants of the well known shortest path problem, those that refer to a dynamically changing graphs are theoretically interesting, as well as computationally challenging. Applicationwise, there is an industrial need for computing point-to-point shortest paths on large-scale road networks whose arcs are weighted with a travelling time which depends on traffic conditions. We survey recent techniques for dynamic graph weights as well as dynamic graph topology. 1