[Couenne] Timer stuck in BB

[Giacomo Nannicini]

Hi,
I have two questions.

1) Sometimes, when I am doing Branch-and-Bound with Couenne, I notice
that the timer gets stuck. I suspect that this may be an issue with
Cbc instead of Couenne - I can't really tell, I've only had this
happen while using Couenne so far. So what happens is that
Branch-and-Bound ignores the time limit, because the timer does not
advance and keeps reporting always the same value. Is there a way to
prevent this? Does it depend on Couenne or Cbc?

2) On the last two lines of CouenneObject.cpp (function
CouenneObject::setEstimates), there is the following assert:
assert (downEstimate_ >= 0. &&
          upEstimate_ >= 0.);
When I compile in debug mode, sometimes this assert fails. If I just
comment it out, everything seems to work. Is this assert needed? What
is its effect?

Thanks

Giacomo