9,872 research outputs found
Evolutionary Subject Tagging in the Humanities; Supporting Discovery and Examination in Digital Cultural Landscapes
In this paper, the authors attempt to identify problematic issues for subject tagging in the humanities, particularly those associated with information objects in digital formats. In the third major section, the authors identify a number of assumptions that lie behind the current practice of subject classification that we think should be challenged. We move then to propose features of classification systems that could increase their effectiveness. These emerged as recurrent themes in many of the conversations with scholars, consultants, and colleagues. Finally, we suggest next steps that we believe will help scholars and librarians develop better subject classification systems to support research in the humanities.NEH Office of Digital Humanities: Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant (HD-51166-10
Decentralized interaction and co-adaptation in the repeated prisoner's dilemma
The purpose of this paper is to propose a nonparametric interest rate term structure model and investigate its implications on term structure dynamics and prices of interest rate derivative securities. The nonparametric spot interest rate process is estimated from the observed short-term interest rates following a robust estimation procedure and the market price of interest rate risk is estimated as implied from the historical term structure data. That is, instead of imposing a priori restrictions on the model, data are allowed to speak for themselves, and at the same time the model retains a parsimonious structure and the computational tractability. The model is implemented using historical Canadian interest rate term structure data. The parametric models with closed form solutions for bond and bond option prices, namely the Vasicek (1977) and CIR (1985) models, are also estimated for comparison purpose. The empirical results not only provide strong evidence that the traditional spot interest rate models and market prices of interest rate risk are severely misspecified but also suggest that different model specifications have significant impact on term structure dynamics and prices of interest rate derivative securities.
From Social Simulation to Integrative System Design
As the recent financial crisis showed, today there is a strong need to gain
"ecological perspective" of all relevant interactions in
socio-economic-techno-environmental systems. For this, we suggested to set-up a
network of Centers for integrative systems design, which shall be able to run
all potentially relevant scenarios, identify causality chains, explore feedback
and cascading effects for a number of model variants, and determine the
reliability of their implications (given the validity of the underlying
models). They will be able to detect possible negative side effect of policy
decisions, before they occur. The Centers belonging to this network of
Integrative Systems Design Centers would be focused on a particular field, but
they would be part of an attempt to eventually cover all relevant areas of
society and economy and integrate them within a "Living Earth Simulator". The
results of all research activities of such Centers would be turned into
informative input for political Decision Arenas. For example, Crisis
Observatories (for financial instabilities, shortages of resources,
environmental change, conflict, spreading of diseases, etc.) would be connected
with such Decision Arenas for the purpose of visualization, in order to make
complex interdependencies understandable to scientists, decision-makers, and
the general public.Comment: 34 pages, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c
An artificial life approach to evolutionary computation: from mobile cellular algorithms to artificial ecosystems
This thesis presents a new class of evolutionary algorithms called mobile cellular evolutionary algorithms (mcEAs). These algorithms are characterized by individuals moving around on a spatial population structure. As a primary objective, this thesis aims to show that by controlling the population density and mobility in mcEAs, it is possible to achieve much better control over the rate of convergence than what is already possible in existing cellular EAs. Using the observations and results from this investigation into selection pressure in mcEAs, a general architecture for developing agent-based evolutionary algorithms called Artificial Ecosystems (AES) is presented. A simple agent-based EA is developed within the scope of AES is presented with two individual-based bottom-up schemes to achieve dynamic population sizing. Experiments with a test suite of optimization problems show that both mcEAs and the agent-based EA produced results comparable to the best solutions found by cellular EAs --Abstract, page iii
Quantitative Perspectives on Fifty Years of the Journal of the History of Biology
Journal of the History of Biology provides a fifty-year long record for
examining the evolution of the history of biology as a scholarly discipline. In
this paper, we present a new dataset and preliminary quantitative analysis of
the thematic content of JHB from the perspectives of geography, organisms, and
thematic fields. The geographic diversity of authors whose work appears in JHB
has increased steadily since 1968, but the geographic coverage of the content
of JHB articles remains strongly lopsided toward the United States, United
Kingdom, and western Europe and has diversified much less dramatically over
time. The taxonomic diversity of organisms discussed in JHB increased steadily
between 1968 and the late 1990s but declined in later years, mirroring broader
patterns of diversification previously reported in the biomedical research
literature. Finally, we used a combination of topic modeling and nonlinear
dimensionality reduction techniques to develop a model of multi-article fields
within JHB. We found evidence for directional changes in the representation of
fields on multiple scales. The diversity of JHB with regard to the
representation of thematic fields has increased overall, with most of that
diversification occurring in recent years. Drawing on the dataset generated in
the course of this analysis, as well as web services in the emerging digital
history and philosophy of science ecosystem, we have developed an interactive
web platform for exploring the content of JHB, and we provide a brief overview
of the platform in this article. As a whole, the data and analyses presented
here provide a starting-place for further critical reflection on the evolution
of the history of biology over the past half-century.Comment: 45 pages, 14 figures, 4 table
Open problems in artificial life
This article lists fourteen open problems in artificial life, each of which is a grand challenge requiring a major advance on a fundamental issue for its solution. Each problem is briefly explained, and, where deemed helpful, some promising paths to its solution are indicated
- …