Infiltrating the zebrafish swarm: design,implementation and experimental tests of a miniature robotic fish lure for fish–robot interaction studies

Robotic fish are nowadays developed for various types of research, such as bio-inspiredrobotics, biomimetics and animal behavior studies. In the context of our research on the social interactions of the zebrafish Danio Rerio, we developed a miniature robotic fish lure for direct underwater interaction with the living fish. This remotely controlled and waterproof device has a total length of 7.5 cm with the same size ratio as zebrafish and is able to beat its tail with different frequencies and amplitudes, while following the group of living animals using a mobile robot moving outside water that is coupled with the robotic lure using magnets. The robotic lure is also equipped with a rechargeable battery and can be used autonomously underwater for experiments of up to 1 h. We performed experiments with the robot moving inside an aquarium with living fish to analyze its impact on the zebrafish behavior. We found that the beating rate of the tail increased the attractiveness of the lure among the zebrafish shoal. We also demonstrated that the lure could influence a collective decision of the zebrafish shoal, the swimming direction, when moving with a constant linear speed inside a circular corridor. This new robotic fish design and the experimental results are promising for the field of fish–robot interaction.     

Gaussian bare-bones artificial bee colony algorithm

As a relatively new global optimization technique, artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm becomes popular in recent years for its simplicity and effectiveness. However, there is still an inefficiency in ABC regarding its solution search equation, which is good at exploration but poor at exploitation. To overcome this drawback, a Gaussian bare-bones ABC is proposed, where a new search equation is designed based on utilizing the global best solution. Furthermore, we employ the generalized opposition-based learning strategy to generate new food sources for scout bees, which is beneficial to discover more useful information for guiding search. A comprehensive set of experiments is conducted on 23 benchmark functions and a real-world optimization problem to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Some well-known ABC variants and state-of-the-art evolutionary algorithms are used for comparison. The experimental results show that the proposed approach offers higher solution quality and faster convergence speed.     

Adaptive image denoising using cuckoo algorithm

This paper presents a novel denoising approach based on smoothing linear and nonlinear filters combined with an optimization algorithm. The optimization algorithm used was cuckoo search algorithm and is employed to determine the optimal sequence of filters for each kind of noise. Noises that would be eliminated form images using the proposed approach including Gaussian, speckle, and salt and pepper noise. The denoising behaviour of nonlinear filters and wavelet shrinkage threshold methods have also been analysed and compared with the proposed approach. Results show the robustness of the proposed filter when compared with the state-of-the-art methods in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio and image quality index. Furthermore, a comparative analysis is provided between the said optimization algorithm and the genetic algorithm.     

Improving the performance of GPU-based genetic programming through exploitation of on-chip memory

Genetic Programming (GP) (Koza, Genetic programming, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1992) is well-known as a computationally intensive technique. Subsequently, faster parallel versions have been implemented that harness the highly parallel hardware provided by graphics cards enabling significant gains in the performance of GP to be achieved. However, extracting the maximum performance from a graphics card for the purposes of GP is difficult. A key reason for this is that in addition to the processor resources, the fast on-chip memory of graphics cards needs to be fully exploited. Techniques will be presented that will improve the performance of a graphics card implementation of tree-based GP by better exploiting this faster memory. It will be demonstrated that both L1 cache and shared memory need to be considered for extracting the maximum performance. Better GP program representation and use of the register file is also explored to further boost performance. Using an NVidia Kepler 670GTX GPU, a maximum performance of 36 billion Genetic Programming Operations per Second is demonstrated.     

On the composition of ISO 25964 hierarchical relations (BTG,BTP, BTI)

Knowledge organization systems (KOS) can use different types of hierarchical relations: broader generic (BTG), broader partitive (BTP), and broader instantial (BTI). The latest ISO standard on thesauri (ISO 25964) has formalized these relations in a corresponding OWL ontology (De Smedt et al., ISO 25964 part 1: thesauri for information retrieval: RDF/OWL vocabulary, extension of SKOS and SKOS-XL. http://purl.org/iso25964/skos-thes, 2013) and expressed them as properties: broaderGeneric, broaderPartitive, and broaderInstantial, respectively. These relations are used in actual thesaurus data. The compositionality of these types of hierarchical relations has not been investigated systematically yet. They all contribute to the general broader (BT) thesaurus relation and its transitive generalization broader transitive defined in the SKOS model for representing KOS. But specialized relationship types cannot be arbitrarily combined to produce new statements that have the same semantic precision, leading to cases where inference of broader transitive relationships may be misleading. We define Extended properties (BTGE, BTPE, BTIE) and analyze which compositions of the original “one-step” properties and the Extended properties are appropriate. This enables providing the new properties with valuable semantics usable, e.g., for fine-grained information retrieval purposes. In addition, we relax some of the constraints assigned to the ISO properties, namely the fact that hierarchical relationships apply to SKOS concepts only. This allows us to apply them to the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), where they are also used for non-concepts (facets, hierarchy names, guide terms). In this paper, we present extensive examples derived from the recent publication of AAT as linked open data.     

Toward a classification of discourse patterns in asynchronous online discussions

The goal of this study was to develop a classification for a range of discourse patterns that occur in text-based asynchronous discussion forums, and that can aid in the distinction of three modes of discourse: knowledge sharing, knowledge construction, and knowledge building. The dataset was taken from Knowledge Forum® databases in the Knowledge Building Teacher Network in Hong Kong, and included three discussion views created for different classes: Grade 5 Science, Grade 10 Visual Arts, and Grade 10 Liberal Studies. We used a combination of qualitative coding and narrative analysis as well as teachers’ understanding of online discourse to analyze student discussions. Nine discourse patterns were identified. These patterns revealed a variety of ways in which students go about their collaborative interactions online and demonstrated how and why students succeed or fail in sustaining collaborative interactions. This study extended the three modes of online discourse and developed different discourse patterns, which are efforts to provide instructional guidance. The implications of supporting productive discourse and the enactment of CSCL innovations in classrooms are discussed.