Combinatorial problems are indispensable part of many real life applications. For example, the Traveling Salesman Problem, Scheduling, and Propositional Satisfiability are some of the conventional combinatorial problems that are being used as a template for many real life applications. More recently, the area of combinatorial problems attracted much research with the advances in Heuristics and Multi-agent Systems. The dramatic increase in the size of the search space, the non-stationary nature of the environment, and the need for real-time responses motivated research into solving combinatorial problems using heuristic techniques. Nowadays, heuristic techniques went beyond their traditional definition as a simple rule of thumb. They are inspired by nature, biology, statistical mechanics, physics, and neuroscience, to name but a few. Nature inspired heuristics are inspired by natural phenomena or behavior such as Evolution, Ants, Honey-Bees, Immune systems, Forest, etc. This special issue will only accept papers on real life applications of Nature inspired heuristics in combinatorial problems.
Submitted papers must contain original materials not published in nor submitted to other journals. Manuscripts should not exceed 15 typed single-space A4 (printing area 14.7 x 24.7 cm) pages including title page, abstract, text, figures, tables and references. Potential authors should adhere to the "Guidelines for Contributors" of JASS, which can be found at http://www.unipi.gr/jass/. All the submissions for this special issue should be sent to the Guest Editor at the address shown below.
Dr. Hussein A. AbbassThe author(s) of each article need to nominate at least 5 candidates of reviewers (names, institution, mailing address, and email) for their submitted paper. Nominated reviewers should be recognized researchers in the field.