A polar-based guided multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to search for optimal solutions interested by decision-makers in a logistics network design problem

In practical multi-objective optimization problems, respective decision-makers might be interested in some optimal solutions that have objective values closer to their specified values. Guided multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (guided MOEAs) have been significantly used to guide their evolutionary search direction toward these optimal solutions using by decision makers. However, most guided MOEAs need to be iteratively and interactively evaluated and then guided by decision-makers through re-formulating or re-weighting objectives, and it might negatively affect the algorithms performance. In this paper, a novel guided MOEA that uses a dynamic polar-based region around a particular point in objective space is proposed. Based on the region, new selection operations are designed such that the algorithm can guide the evolutionary search toward optimal solutions that are close to the particular point in objective space without the iterative and interactive efforts. The proposed guided MOEA is tested on the multi-criteria decision-making problem of flexible logistics network design with different desired points. Experimental results show that the proposed guided MOEA outperforms two most effective guided and non-guided MOEAs, R-NSGA-II and NSGA-II.     

Probing the state of absorbed water by diffusion technique

The diffusion coefficient of water, D_wm, across homogeneous cellulose acetate membranes of graded porosity ε (water content) are measured. At high values of porosity, D_wm varies monotonously as ε is varied. At a certain porosity ε_c, however, there is a sudden change in D_wm; and thereafter the change becomes linear again, but with a different slope. Diffusion coefficients are interpreted, through the Stokes-Einstein relation, in terms of the overall microscopic viscosities η_wm of the membrane matrix. The values of η_wm are then correlated with the equivalent pore size r of the membranes. It is discovered that the sudden change in D_wm (or η_wm) at ε_c correlates with similar changes in other properties such as hydraulic permeability and selectivity of the membrane. All these observations are then attributed to the water structure inside the membranes.     

Formal process algebraic modeling,verification, and analysis of an abstract Fuzzy Inference Cloud Service

In cloud computing, services play key roles. Services are well defined and autonomous components. Nowadays, the demand of using Fuzzy inference as a service is increasing in the domain of complex and critical systems. In such systems, along with the development of the software, the cost of detecting and fixing software defects increases. Therefore, using formal methods, which provide clear, concise, and mathematical interpretation of the system, is crucial for the design of these Fuzzy systems. To obtain this goal, we introduce the Fuzzy Inference Cloud Service (FICS) and propose a novel discipline for formal modeling of the FICS. The FICS provides the service of Fuzzy inference to the consumers. We also introduce four novel formal verification tests, which allow strict analysis of certain behavioral disciplines in the FICS as follows: (1) Internal consistency, which analyzes the service in a strict and delicate manner; (2) Deadlock freeness; (3) Divergence freeness; and (4) Goal reach ability. The four tests are discussed and the FICS is verified to ensure that it can pass all these tests.     

PGSW-OS: a novel approach for resource management in a semantic web operating system based on a P2P grid architecture

A web operating system is an operating system that users can access from any hardware at any location. A peer-to-peer (P2P) grid uses P2P communication for resource management and communication between nodes in a grid and manages resources locally in each cluster, and this provides a proper architecture for a web operating system. Use of semantic technology in web operating systems is an emerging field that improves the management and discovery of resources and services. In this paper, we propose PGSW-OS (P2P grid semantic Web OS), a model based on a P2P grid architecture and semantic technology to improve resource management in a web operating system through resource discovery with the aid of semantic features. Our approach integrates distributed hash tables (DHTs) and semantic overlay networks to enable semantic-based resource management by advertising resources in the DHT based upon their annotations to enable semantic-based resource matchmaking. Our model includes ontologies and virtual organizations. Our technique decreases the computational complexity of searching in a web operating system environment. We perform a simulation study using the Gridsim simulator, and our experiments show that our model provides enhanced utilization of resources, better search expressiveness, scalability, and precision.     

Admittance—Frequency Response in Zinc Oxide Varistor Ceramics

The lumped parameter/complex plane analysis technique revealed several contributions to the terminal admittance of the ZnO—Bi₂O₃ based varistor grain-boundary ac response. The terminal capacitance has been elucidated via the multiple trapping phenomena, a barrier layer polarization, and a resonance effect in the frequency range 10⁻²≤ f ≤ 10⁹ Hz. The characterization of the trapping relaxation behavior near ∼ 10⁵ Hz (∼ 10⁻⁶ s) provided a better understanding of a previously reported loss-peak. The possible nonuniformity in this trapping activity associated with its conductance term observed via the depression angle of a semicircular relaxation in the complex capacitance ( C *) plane has been postulated.     

An analytical framework for event mining in video data

With the high availability of digital video contents on the internet, users need more assistance to access digital videos. Various researches have been done about video summarization and semantic video analysis to help to satisfy these needs. These works are developing condensed versions of a full length video stream through the identification of the most important and pertinent content within the stream. Most of the existing works in these areas are mainly focused on event mining. Event mining from video streams improves the accessibility and reusability of large media collections, and it has been an active area of research with notable recent progress. Event mining includes a wide range of multimedia domains such as surveillance, meetings, broadcast, news, sports, documentary, and films, as well as personal and online media collections. Due to the variety and plenty of Event mining techniques, in this paper we suggest an analytical framework to classify event mining techniques and to evaluate them based on important functional measures. This framework could lead to empirical and technical comparison of event mining methods and development of more efficient structures at future.     

Environmental Hazard Analysis - a Variant of Preliminary Hazard Analysis for Autonomous Mobile Robots

Robot manufacturers will be required to demonstrate objectively that all reasonably foreseeable hazards have been identified in any robotic product design that is to be marketed commercially. This is problematic for autonomous mobile robots because conventional methods, which have been developed for automatic systems do not assist safety analysts in identifying non-mission interactions with environmental features that are not directly associated with the robot’s design mission, and which may comprise the majority of the required tasks of autonomous robots. In this paper we develop a new variant of preliminary hazard analysis that is explicitly aimed at identifying non-mission interactions by means of new sets of guidewords not normally found in existing variants. We develop the required features of the method and describe its application to several small trials conducted at Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the 2011–2012 period.     

Towards a framework for large-scale multimedia data storage and processing on Hadoop platform

Cloud computing techniques take the form of distributed computing by utilizing multiple computers to execute computing simultaneously on the service side. To process the increasing quantity of multimedia data, numerous large-scale multimedia data storage computing techniques in the cloud computing have been developed. Of all the techniques, Hadoop plays a key role in the cloud computing. Hadoop, a computing cluster formed by low-priced hardware, can conduct the parallel computing of petabytes of multimedia data. Hadoop features high-reliability, high-efficiency, and high-scalability. The numerous large-scale multimedia data computing techniques include not only the key core techniques, Hadoop and MapReduce, but also the data collection techniques, such as File Transfer Protocol and Flume. In addition, distributed system configuration allocation, automatic installation, and monitoring platform building and management techniques are all included. As a result, only with the integration of all the techniques, a reliable large-scale multimedia data platform can be offered. In this paper, we introduce how cloud computing can make a breakthrough by proposing a multimedia social network dataset on Hadoop platform and implementing a prototype version. Detailed specifications and design issues are discussed as well. An important finding of this article is that we can save more time if we conduct the multimedia social networking analysis using Cloud Hadoop Platform rather than using a single computer. The advantages of cloud computing over the traditional data processing practices are fully demonstrated in this article. The applicable framework designs and the tools available for the large-scale data processing are also proposed. We show the experimental multimedia data including data sizes and processing time.     

An improved Differential Evolution algorithm using learning automata and population topologies

A new variant of Differential Evolution (DE), called ADE-Grid, is presented in this paper which adapts the mutation strategy, crossover rate (CR) and scale factor (F) during the run. In ADE-Grid, learning automata (LA), which are powerful decision making machines, are used to determine the proper value of the parameters CR and F, and the suitable strategy for the construction of a mutant vector for each individual, adaptively. The proposed automata based DE is able to maintain the diversity among the individuals and encourage them to move toward several promising areas of the search space as well as the best found position. Numerical experiments are conducted on a set of twenty four well-known benchmark functions and one real-world engineering problem. The performance comparison between ADE-Grid and other state-of-the-art DE variants indicates that ADE-Grid is a viable approach for optimization. The results also show that the proposed ADE-Grid improves the performance of DE in terms of both convergence speed and quality of final solution.     

Prediction of pipeline scour depth in clear-water and live-bed conditions using group method of data handling

In the present study, the Group method of data handling (GMDH) network was utilized to predict the scour depth below pipelines. GMDH network was developed using back propagation. Input parameters that were considered as effective parameters on the scour depth included those of sediment size, geometry of pipeline, and approaching flow characteristics. Training and testing performances of the GMDH networks have been carried out using nondimensional data sets that were collected from the literature. These data sets are related to the two main situations of pipelines scour experiments namely clear-water and live-bed conditions. The testing results of performances were compared with the support vector machines (SVM) and existing empirical equations. The GMDH network indicated that using of back propagation produced lower error of scour depth prediction than those obtained using the SVM and empirical equations. Also, the effects of many input parameters on the scour depth have been investigated.