An experimental study of adaptive control for evolutionary algorithms

In this paper, we investigate how adaptive operator selection techniques are able to efficiently manage the balance between exploration and exploitation in an evolutionary algorithm, when solving combinatorial optimization problems. We introduce new high level reactive search strategies based on a generic algorithm's controller that is able to schedule the basic variation operators of the evolutionary algorithm, according to the observed state of the search. Our experiments on SAT instances show that reactive search strategies improve the performance of the solving algorithm.     

Sperm metabolism is altered during storage by female insects: evidence from two-photon autofluorescence lifetime measurements in bedbugs

We explore the possibility of characterizing sperm cells without the need to stain them using spectral and fluorescence lifetime analyses after multi-photon excitation in an insect model. The autofluorescence emission spectrum of sperm of the common bedbug, Cimex lectularius, was consistent with the presence of flavins and NAD(P)H. The mean fluorescence lifetimes showed smaller variation in sperm extracted from the male (tau m, τ_m = 1.54–1.84 ns) than in that extracted from the female sperm storage organ (tau m, τ_m = 1.26–2.00 ns). The fluorescence lifetime histograms revealed four peaks. These peaks (0.18, 0.92, 2.50 and 3.80 ns) suggest the presence of NAD(P)H and flavins and show that sperm metabolism can be characterized using fluorescence lifetime imaging. The difference in fluorescence lifetime variation between the sexes is consistent with the notion that female animals alter the metabolism of sperm cells during storage. It is not consistent, however, with the idea that sperm metabolism represents a sexually selected character that provides females with information about the male genotype.     

An unsupervised approach to generating generic summaries of documents

We present an optimization-based unsupervised approach to automatic document summarization. In the proposed approach, text summarization is modeled as a Boolean programming problem. This model generally attempts to optimize three properties, namely, (1) relevance: summary should contain informative textual units that are relevant to the user; (2) redundancy: summaries should not contain multiple textual units that convey the same information; and (3) length: summary is bounded in length. The approach proposed in this paper is applicable to both tasks: single- and multi-document summarization. In both tasks, documents are split into sentences in preprocessing. We select some salient sentences from document(s) to generate a summary. Finally, the summary is generated by threading all the selected sentences in the order that they appear in the original document(s). We implemented our model on multi-document summarization task. When comparing our methods to several existing summarization methods on an open DUC2005 and DUC2007 data sets, we found that our method improves the summarization results significantly. This is because, first, when extracting summary sentences, this method not only focuses on the relevance scores of sentences to the whole sentence collection, but also the topic representative of sentences. Second, when generating a summary, this method also deals with the problem of repetition of information. The methods were evaluated using ROUGE-1, ROUGE-2 and ROUGE-SU4 metrics. In this paper, we also demonstrate that the summarization result depends on the similarity measure. Results of the experiment showed that combination of symmetric and asymmetric similarity measures yields better result than their use separately.     

Elitist clonal selection algorithm for optimal choice of free knots in B-spline data fitting

Data fitting with B-splines is a challenging problem in reverse engineering for CAD/CAM, virtual reality, data visualization, and many other fields. It is well-known that the fitting improves greatly if knots are considered as free variables. This leads, however, to a very difficult multimodal and multivariate continuous nonlinear optimization problem, the so-called knot adjustment problem. In this context, the present paper introduces an adapted elitist clonal selection algorithm for automatic knot adjustment of B-spline curves. Given a set of noisy data points, our method determines the number and location of knots automatically in order to obtain an extremely accurate fitting of data. In addition, our method minimizes the number of parameters required for this task. Our approach performs very well and in a fully automatic way even for the cases of underlying functions requiring identical multiple knots, such as functions with discontinuities and cusps. To evaluate its performance, it has been applied to three challenging test functions, and results have been compared with those from other alternative methods based on AIS and genetic algorithms. Our experimental results show that our proposal outperforms previous approaches in terms of accuracy and flexibility. Some other issues such as the parameter tuning, the complexity of the algorithm, and the CPU runtime are also discussed.     

A review on some classes of algebraic systems

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we review some algebraic control system. Precisely, linear and bilinear systems on Euclidean spaces and invariant and linear systems on Lie groups. The fourth classes of systems have a common issue: to any class, there exists an associated subgroup. From this object, we survey the controllability property. Especially, from those coming from our contribution to the theory.     

GOS+MU:一种查询对象选择新方法

在分析单一MU(Most Uncertainty)采样缺陷的基础上,提出一种"全局最优搜寻"方法 GOS(Global Optimal Search),并结合MU共同完成查询选择。GOS+MU方法中,GOS着眼全局寻找目标,在应用环境能提供的训练样本数量有限、分类器受训不充分时,该方法选择的对象学习价值高,能快速推进分类器学习进程;MU则能够在GOS采样失效情形下,利用分类器当前训练成果,选择查询不确定性最强的样本补充训练集。通过对网络商品的用户评论进行分类仿真,并比较其他采样学习方法的效果,证明了GOS+MU方法在压缩学习成本、提高训练效率方面的有效性。     

Electromagnetism-like algorithms for optimized tool path planning in 5-axis flank machining

Optimization of tool path planning using metaheuristic algorithms such as ant colony systems (ACS) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) provides a feasible approach to reduce geometrical machining errors in 5-axis flank machining of ruled surfaces. The optimal solutions of these algorithms exhibit an unsatisfactory quality in a high-dimensional search space. In this study, various algorithms derived from the electromagnetism-like mechanism (EM) were applied. The test results of representative surfaces showed that all EM-based methods yield more effective optimal solutions than does PSO, despite a longer search time. A new EM-MSS (electromagnetism-like mechanism with move solution screening) algorithm produces the most favorable results by ensuring the continuous improvement of new searches. Incorporating an SPSA (simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation) technique further improves the search results with effective initial solutions. This work enhances the practical values of tool path planning by providing a satisfactory machining quality.     

A scalable architecture for geometric correction of multi-projector display systems

Multi-projector displays allow the realization of large and immersive projection environments by allowing the tiling of projections from multiple projectors. Such tiled displays require real time geometrical warping of the content that is being projected from each projector. This geometrical warping is a computationally intensive operation and is typically applied using high-end graphics processing units (GPUs) that are able to process a defined number of projector channels. Furthermore, this limits the applicability of such multi-projector display systems only to the content that is being generated using desktop based systems. In this paper we propose a platform independent FPGA based scalable hardware architecture for geometric correction of projected content that allows addition of each projector channel at a fractional increase in logic area. The proposed scheme provides real time correction of HD quality video streams and thus enables the use of this technology for embedded and standalone devices.