A Holistic Evolutionary and 3D Pharmacophore Modelling Study Provides Insights into the Metabolism,Function, and Substrate Selectivity of the Human Monocarboxylate Transporter 4 (hMCT4)

Monocarboxylate transporters (MCTs) are of great research interest for their role in cancer cell metabolism and their potential ability to transport pharmacologically relevant compounds across the membrane. Each member of the MCT family could potentially provide novel therapeutic approaches to various diseases. The major differences among MCTs are related to each of their specific metabolic roles, their relative substrate and inhibitor affinities, the regulation of their expression, their intracellular localization, and their tissue distribution. MCT4 is the main mediator for the efflux of L-lactate produced in the cell. Thus, MCT4 maintains the glycolytic phenotype of the cancer cell by supplying the molecular resources for tumor cell proliferation and promotes the acidification of the extracellular microenvironment from the co-transport of protons. A promising therapeutic strategy in anti-cancer drug design is the selective inhibition of MCT4 for the glycolytic suppression of solid tumors. A small number of studies indicate molecules for dual inhibition of MCT1 and MCT4; however, no selective inhibitor with high-affinity for MCT4 has been identified. In this study, we attempt to approach the structural characteristics of MCT4 through an in silico pipeline for molecular modelling and pharmacophore elucidation towards the identification of specific inhibitors as a novel anti-cancer strategy.     

基于遗传算法的产品制造的优化调度

研究了企业产品制造的调度问题 ,并建立了调度的最小模型。引入效率函数 ,运用遗传退火进化算法实现了调度决策的优化 ;提出了将遗传退火算法和分派规则相结合的调度策略和动态编码的方法 ,放宽了约束条件 ,提高了搜索效率和速度 ,保证其全局收敛性。     

Measuring and analyzing agents’ uncertainty in argumentation-based negotiation dialogue games

Nowadays, multiagent systems have become a widely used technology in everyday life, and many authors have adopted the view of communication or interaction between agents as a joint activity regulated by means of dialogue games. Dialogue games are a set of communication rules that agents can combine in their complex interactions. In these games, uncertainty is an important problem that each agent faces when making decisions, especially in the absence of enough information. This paper focuses on the uncertainty in a particular type of dialogue games, namely argumentation-based negotiation. There exist several proposals on this type of dialogue games in the literature, and most of them are concerned with proposing protocols to show how agents can communicate with each other, and how arguments and offers can be generated, evaluated and exchanged. Nevertheless, none of them is directly targeting the agents’ uncertainty about the exchanged arguments and how this uncertainty could be measured at each dialogue step to assist those agents make better decisions. The aim of this paper is to tackle this problem by defining a new set of uncertainty measures in negotiation dialogue games from an external agent’s point of view. In particular, we introduce two types of uncertainty: Type I and Type II. Type I is about the uncertainty index of playing the right move. For this, we use Shannon entropy to measure: (i) the uncertainty index of the agent that he is selecting the right move at each dialogue step; and (ii) the uncertainty index of participating agents in the negotiation about the whole dialogue. This is done in two different ways; the first is by taking the average of the uncertainty index of all moves, and the second is by determining all possible dialogues and applying the general formula of Shannon entropy. Type II is about the uncertainty degree of the agent that the move will be accepted by the addressee. In this context, we introduce a new classification for the arguments based on their certainty to be accepted by the addressee.     

Time series forecasting by neural networks: A knee point-based multiobjective evolutionary algorithm approach

In this paper, we investigate the problem of time series forecasting using single hidden layer feedforward neural networks (SLFNs), which is optimized via multiobjective evolutionary algorithms. By utilizing the adaptive differential evolution (JADE) and the knee point strategy, a nondominated sorting adaptive differential evolution (NSJADE) and its improved version knee point-based NSJADE (KP-NSJADE) are developed for optimizing SLFNs. JADE aiming at refining the search area is introduced in nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II). The presented NSJADE shows superiority on multimodal problems when compared with NSGA-II. Then NSJADE is applied to train SLFNs for time series forecasting. It is revealed that individuals with better forecasting performance in the whole population gather around the knee point. Therefore, KP-NSJADE is proposed to explore the neighborhood of the knee point in the objective space. And the simulation results of eight popular time series databases illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm in comparison with several popular algorithms.     

Learning in a mobile age: an investigation of student motivation

The purpose of this single‐case study was to explore the lived experiences of a grade 6 teacher and students who used tablets as part of their classroom instruction. Malone and Lepper's taxonomy of intrinsic motivations for learning is used as a framework for examining whether and how this particular theory of motivation applies equally well for mobile learning. This study reports on the grade 6 teacher's and students' perceptions regarding the motivational affordances of using these mobile devices for learning. The findings are consistent with those of Malone and Lepper that motivation can be enhanced through challenge, curiosity, control, recognition, competition and cooperation. This model is helpful in informing our understanding of the motivating features of using mobile devices for learning and how mobile technologies can be used to enhance learners' motivation.     

Internal structure of coalitions in competitive and altruistic graphical coalitional games

This paper introduces a certain graphical coalitional game where the internal topology of the coalition depends on a prescribed communication graph structure among the agents. The game Value Function is required to satisfy four Axioms of Value. These axioms make it possible to provide a refined study of coalition structures on graphs by defining a formal graphical game and by assigning a Positional Advantage, based on the Shapley value, to each agent in a coalition based on its connectivity properties within the graph. Using the Axioms of Value the graphical coalitional game can be shown to satisfy properties such as convexity, fairness, cohesiveness, and full cooperativeness. Three measures of the contributions of agents to a coalition are introduced: marginal contribution, competitive contribution, and altruistic contribution. The mathematical framework given here is used to establish results regarding the dependence of these three types of contributions on the graph topology, and changes in these contributions due to changes in graph topology. Based on these different contributions, three online sequential decision games are defined on top of the graphical coalitional game, and the stable graphs under each of these sequential decision games are studied. It is shown that the stable graphs under the objective of maximizing the marginal contribution are any connected graph. The stable graphs under the objective of maximizing the competitive contribution are the complete graph. The stable graphs under the objective of maximizing the altruistic contribution are any tree.     

Emissions control policies under uncertainty and rational learning in a linear-state dynamic model

We compare the use of price-based policies or taxes, and quantity-based policies or quotas, for controlling emissions in a dynamic setup when the regulator faces two sources of uncertainty: (i) market-related uncertainty; and (ii) ecological uncertainty. We assume that the regulator is a rational Bayesian learner and the regulator and firms have asymmetric information. In our model the structure of Bayesian learning is general. Our results suggest that the expected level of emissions is the same under taxes and quotas. However, the comparison of the total benefits related to these policies suggests that taxes dominate quotas, that is, they provide a higher social welfare. Even though taxes have some benefits over quotas, neither learning nor ecological uncertainty affect the choice of policy, i.e., the only factor having such an impact is uncertainty in the instantaneous net emissions benefits (market-related uncertainty). Besides, the more volatile is this uncertainty, the more benefits of taxes over quotas. Ecological uncertainty leads to a difference between the emissions rule under the informed and the rational learning assumptions. However, the direction of this difference depends on the beliefs bias with regard to ecological uncertainty. We also find that a change in the regulator’s beliefs toward more optimistic views will increase the emissions.     

电力系统一二次调频的反馈微分博弈协同控制

风能等间歇式能源并网将是未来电网发展趋势,其输出功率的波动将加剧一二次调频之间的冲突反调问题.本文将反馈微分博弈应用于电力系统频率控制中,建立起一二次调频的协同控制模型,并考虑调速器死区、控制动作幅值限制、机组爬坡速率约束等工程实际因素,用协同进化算法求得该模型的反馈纳什均衡解.用仿真验证了该方法在满足各种工程因素下有效解决一二次调频的冲突反调问题,充分挖掘了系统蕴藏的调频能力.     

基于空间网格划分的多目标进化算法

为了有效求解多目标优化问题,找到分布宽广、均匀的Pareto解集,提出了一个基于空间网格划分的进化算法。将目标空间网格化,利用网格的位置,删除大量被支配个体。在杂交算子中利用了单个目标最优的个体信息,以增加非劣解的宽广性。利用一种新设计的基于最大距离排序的方法删除非劣解集中多余个体。数值实验表明提出的算法是可行有效的。     

一种结合演示数据和演化优化的强化学习方法

强化学习研究智能体如何从与环境的交互中学习最优的策略,以最大化长期奖赏。由于环境反馈的滞后性,强化学习问题面临巨大的决策空间,进行有效的搜索是获得成功学习的关键。以往的研究从多个角度对策略的搜索进行了探索,在搜索算法方面,研究结果表明基于演化优化的直接策略搜索方法能够获得优于传统方法的性能;在引入外部信息方面,通过加入用户提供的演示,可以有效帮助强化学习提高性能。然而,这两种有效方法的结合却鲜有研究。对用户演示与演化优化的结合进行研究,提出iNEAT+Q算法,尝试将演示数据通过预训练神经网络和引导演化优化的适应值函数的方式与演化强化学习方法结合。初步实验表明,iNEAT+Q较不使用演示数据的演化强化学习方法NEAT+Q有明显的性能改善。