演化多目标优化中的几何热力学选择

热力学遗传算法(Thermodynamical Genetic Algorithms,TDGAs)借鉴热力学中的自由能极小过程来统一处理多目标优化在逼近性和多样性两方面的任务.为提高TDGA的运行效率和解集分布均匀性,提出了一种几何热力学选择.在该选择中首先定义角度熵通过扇形采样来度量种群逼近方向的多样性.然后利用距离精英定义距离能量来度量种群的逼近程度,避免了耗时的非劣分层操作.此外,引入分量热力学替换规则以较低计算代价驱动种群的几何自由能快速下降.在多目标0/1背包问题上的实验结果表明,几何热力学选择极大地提高了TDGA的运行效率和解集分布均匀性;采用该选择的TDGA算法可生成与NSGA-II在逼近性和分布多样性上性能相当的解,但在运行效率上明显优于NSGA-II.     

A systematic literature review on Internet of things in education: Benefits and challenges

With close to 20.4 billion devices connected to the Internet to be deployed by 2020, Internet of things (IoT) is already being leveraged in diverse sectors. Now, because of the ubiquitous nature of IoT devices, schools and academic institutions are looking to incorporate IoT in educational activities. With the increased use of IoT in the education domain, it is of utmost importance to study how this technology with its distinguished system functions such as sensing and decision making can support and challenge the pedagogical processes for all interrelated actors (faculty, students, and staff) as well as all involved assets (e.g., libraries, classrooms, and labs). Although there have been several contributions on the inclusion of IoT into the education domain, there is still a lack of consolidated and coherent views on this subject. Hence, we are motivated to close the gap of knowledge and embarked on mapping out the published studies available. This study presents the results of a systematic literature review focusing on the benefits and the challenges faced in education in integrating IoT into the curriculum and educational environments. Different mapping views of the extracted studies are provided as long as a summary of the already implemented tools and a list of gap research questions yet to be investigated.     

一种新的语义对象行为语言

针对人类用自然语言与机器交互所面临的巨大鸿沟,提出了一种基于类自然语言的语义对象行为语言。SOBL是一种宣称式的陈述语言,用于开发数据库驱动的应用,支持复杂的用户交互,主要由一个Semantic Objects^TM的对象关系开发框架所支持。该语言扩展结构化自然语言,携带语义信息,能够面向非程序员使用,降低了软件的开发难度。最后通过一个具体的实例验证了该语言的有效性。     

Cameo: an alternative model of concurrency for Eiffel

We present a new concurrency model for the Eiffel programming language. The model is motivated by describing a number of semantic problems with the leading concurrency model for Eiffel, namely SCOOP. Our alternative model aims to preserve the existing behaviour of sequential programs and libraries wherever possible. Comparison with the SCOOP model is made. The concurrency aspects of the alternative model are presented in CSP along with a model of exceptions. The results show that while the new model provides increased parallelism, this comes with the price of increased overhead due to lock management.     

Vision-based obstacle detection for rotorcraft flight

The ability of rotorcraft to fly at low altitude is hindered by the high pilot workload required to avoid obstacles. The development of automation tools that can detect obstacles in the rotorcraft flight path, warn the crew, and interact with the guidance system to avoid detected obstacles would significantly reduce pilot workload and increase safety. This article describes an obstacle detection approach based on feature tracking and recursive range estimation that takes into account the characteristics of rotorcraft flight. The merits and weaknesses of the approach are discussed using image sequences from the laboratory and from flight. © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Quantification of two decades of shallow-water coral reef habitat decline in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary using Landsat data (1984–2002)

The loss of coral reef habitats has been witnessed at a global scale including in the Florida Keys and the Caribbean. In addition to field surveys that can be spatially limited, remote sensing can provide a synoptic view of the changes occurring on coral reef habitats. Here, we utilize an 18-year time series of Landsat 5/TM and 7/ETM+ images to assess changes in eight coral reef sites in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, namely Carysfort Reef, Grecian Rocks, Molasses Reef, Conch Reef, Sombrero Reef, Looe Key Reef, Western Sambo and Sand Key Reef. Twenty-eight Landsat images (1984–2002) were used, with imagery gathered every 2 years during spring, and every 6 years during fall. The image dataset was georectified, calibrated to remote sensing reflectance and corrected for atmospheric and water-column effects. A Mahalanobis distance classification was trained for four habitat classes (‘coral’, ‘sand’, ‘bare hardbottom’ and ‘covered hardbottom’) using in situ ground-truthing data collected in 2003–2004 and using the spectral statistics from a 2002 image. The red band was considered useful only for benthic habitats in depths less than 6 m. Overall mean coral habitat loss for all sites classified by Landsat was 61% (3.4%/year), from a percentage habitat cover of 19% (1984) down to 7.6% (2002). The classification results for the eight different sites were critically reviewed. A detailed pixel by pixel examination of the spatial patterns across time suggests that the results range from ecologically plausible to unreliable due to spatial inconsistencies and/or improbable ecological successions. In situ monitoring data acquired by the Coral Reef Evaluation and Monitoring Project (CREMP) for the eight reef sites between 1996 and 2002 showed a loss in coral cover of 52% (8.7%/year), whereas the Landsat-derived coral habitat areas decreased by 37% (6.2%/year). A direct trend comparison between the entire CREMP percent coral cover data set (1996–2004) and the entire Landsat-derived coral habitat areas showed no significant difference between the two time series (ANCOVA; F-test, p = 0.303, n = 32), despite the different scales of measurements.     

Reasoning about necessity and possibility: A test of the mental model theory of deduction.

This article examined syllogistic reasoning in college students that differs from previous research in 2 significant ways: (a) Participants were asked to decide whether conclusions were possible as well as necessary, and (b) every possible combination of syllogistic premises and conclusions was presented for evaluation with both single-premise (Experiment 1) and double-premise (Experiment 2) problems. Participants more frequently endorsed conclusions as possible than as necessary, and differences in response to the 2 forms of instruction conformed to several predictions derived from the mental model theory of deduction. Findings of Experiments 2 and 3 showed that some fallacies are consistently endorsed and others consistently resisted when people are asked to judge whether conclusions that are only possible follow necessarily. This finding was accounted for by the computational implementation of the model theory: Fallacies are made when the first mental model of the premises considered supports the conclusion presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Summary of the CALPHAD XXXVI 2007 conference

From 6–11 May 2007, 147 registered participants met at State College, Pennsylvania, for the thirty-sixth CALPHAD meeting organized by Zi-Kui Liu, Steve Hansen, Joanne Murray and Phillip Spencer. Activities were held at Toftrees Golf Resort and Conference Center with logistics run by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from The Pennsylvania State University. Over the course of six days, 57 oral presentations and 84 posters were offered, the abstracts and titles of which are summarized in this report. Posters were on display from Sunday evening until Friday morning. In addition to the continuous display of the posters, two dedicated poster sessions were held in the Monday and Tuesday evenings, which were overwhelmingly enjoyed by the participants.

The CALPHAD Gibbs Triangle Award, an honor given only every three to five years, was bestowed upon Gunnar Eriksson. Fourteen CALPHAD scholarships were awarded to promising students in the field, the Best Paper Award for papers published in 2006 in the CALPHAD journal was conferred, and a Best Poster Award was chosen for one of the conference’s posters.     

Not yet human: Implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporary consequences.

Historical representations explicitly depicting Blacks as apelike have largely disappeared in the United States, yet a mental association between Blacks and apes remains. Here, the authors demonstrate that U.S. citizens implicitly associate Blacks and apes. In a series of laboratory studies, the authors reveal how this association influences study participants' basic cognitive processes and significantly alters their judgments in criminal justice contexts. Specifically, this Black-ape association alters visual perception and attention, and it increases endorsement of violence against Black suspects. In an archival study of actual criminal cases, the authors show that news articles written about Blacks who are convicted of capital crimes are more likely to contain ape-relevant language than news articles written about White convicts. Moreover, those who are implicitly portrayed as more apelike in these articles are more likely to be executed by the state than those who are not. The authors argue that examining the subtle persistence of specific historical representations such as these may not only enhance contemporary research on dehumanization, stereotyping, and implicit processes but also highlight common forms of discrimination that previously have gone unrecognized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)