Opposition-based learning for self-adaptive control parameters in differential evolution for optimal mechanism design

In recent decades, new optimization algorithms have attracted much attention from researchers in both gradient- and evolution-based optimal methods. Many strategy techniques are employed to enhance the effectiveness of optimal methods. One of the newest techniques is opposition-based learning (OBL), which shows more power in enhancing various optimization methods. This research presents a new edition of the Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm in which the OBL technique is applied to investigate the opposite point of each candidate of self-adaptive control parameters. In comparison with conventional optimal methods, the proposed method is used to solve benchmark-test optimal problems and applied to real optimizations. Simulation results show the effectiveness and improvement compared with some reference methodologies in terms of the convergence speed and stability of optimal results. © 2019 The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineer

A hybrid swarm-based algorithm for single-objective optimization problems involving high-cost analyses

In many technical fields, single-objective optimization procedures in continuous domains involve expensive numerical simulations. In this context, an improvement of the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm, called the Artificial super-Bee enhanced Colony (AsBeC), is presented. AsBeC is designed to provide fast convergence speed, high solution accuracy and robust performance over a wide range of problems. It implements enhancements of the ABC structure and hybridizations with interpolation strategies. The latter are inspired by the quadratic trust region approach for local investigation and by an efficient global optimizer for separable problems. Each modification and their combined effects are studied with appropriate metrics on a numerical benchmark, which is also used for comparing AsBeC with some effective ABC variants and other derivative-free algorithms. In addition, the presented algorithm is validated on two recent benchmarks adopted for competitions in international conferences. Results show remarkable competitiveness and robustness for AsBeC.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures, Springer Swarm Intelligenc

Portfolio Selection Problem Using Generalized Differential Evolution 3

This Portfolio selection Problem (PSP) remains an intractable research problem in finance and economics and often regarded as NP-hard problem in optimization and computational intelligence. This paper solved the extended Markowitz mean- variance portfolio selection model with an efficient Metaheuristics method of Generalized Differential Evolution 3 (GDE3). The extended Markowitz mean- variance portfolio selection model consists of four constraints: bounds on holdings, cardinality, minimum transaction lots, and expert opinion. There is no research in literature that had ever engaged the set of four constraints with GDE3 to solve PSP. This paper is the first to conduct the study in this direction. The first three sets of constraints have been presented in other researches in literatures. This paper introduced expert opinion constraint to existing portfolio selection models and solved with GDE3. The computational results obtained in this research study show improved performance when compared with other Metaheuristics methods of Genetic algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA), Tabu Search (TS) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)

Culture and generalized inattentional blindness

A recent mathematical treatment of Baars' Global Workspace consciousness model, much in the spirit of Dretske's communication theory analysis of high level mental function, is used to study the effects of embedding cultural heritage on a generalized form of inattentional blindness. Culture should express itself quite distinctly in this basic psychophysical phenomenon, acting across a variety of sensory and other modalities, because the limited syntactic and grammatical 'bandpass' of the topological rate distortion manifold characterizing conscious attention is itself strongly sculpted by the constraints of cultural context

Autoencoding the Retrieval Relevance of Medical Images

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) of medical images is a crucial task that can contribute to a more reliable diagnosis if applied to big data. Recent advances in feature extraction and classification have enormously improved CBIR results for digital images. However, considering the increasing accessibility of big data in medical imaging, we are still in need of reducing both memory requirements and computational expenses of image retrieval systems. This work proposes to exclude the features of image blocks that exhibit a low encoding error when learned by a $n/p/n$ autoencoder ($p\!<\!n$). We examine the histogram of autoendcoding errors of image blocks for each image class to facilitate the decision which image regions, or roughly what percentage of an image perhaps, shall be declared relevant for the retrieval task. This leads to reduction of feature dimensionality and speeds up the retrieval process. To validate the proposed scheme, we employ local binary patterns (LBP) and support vector machines (SVM) which are both well-established approaches in CBIR research community. As well, we use IRMA dataset with 14,410 x-ray images as test data. The results show that the dimensionality of annotated feature vectors can be reduced by up to 50% resulting in speedups greater than 27% at expense of less than 1% decrease in the accuracy of retrieval when validating the precision and recall of the top 20 hits.Comment: To appear in proceedings of The 5th International Conference on Image Processing Theory, Tools and Applications (IPTA'15), Nov 10-13, 2015, Orleans, Franc

A Comprehensive Survey on Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm and Its Applications

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a heuristic global optimization method, proposed originally by Kennedy and Eberhart in 1995. It is now one of the most commonly used optimization techniques. This survey presented a comprehensive investigation of PSO. On one hand, we provided advances with PSO, including its modifications (including quantum-behaved PSO, bare-bones PSO, chaotic PSO, and fuzzy PSO), population topology (as fully connected, von Neumann, ring, star, random, etc.), hybridization (with genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, Tabu search, artificial immune system, ant colony algorithm, artificial bee colony, differential evolution, harmonic search, and biogeography-based optimization), extensions (to multiobjective, constrained, discrete, and binary optimization), theoretical analysis (parameter selection and tuning, and convergence analysis), and parallel implementation (in multicore, multiprocessor, GPU, and cloud computing forms). On the other hand, we offered a survey on applications of PSO to the following eight fields: electrical and electronic engineering, automation control systems, communication theory, operations research, mechanical engineering, fuel and energy, medicine, chemistry, and biology. It is hoped that this survey would be beneficial for the researchers studying PSO algorithms

Generalized inattentional blindness from a Global Workspace perspective

We apply Baars' Global Workspace model of consciousness to inattentional blindness, using the groupoid network method of Stewart et al. to explore modular structures defined by information measures associated with cognitive process. Internal cross-talk breaks the fundamental groupoid symmetry, and, if sufficiently strong, creates, in a highly punctuated manner, a linked, shifting, giant component which instantiates the global workspace of consciousness. Embedding, exterior, information sources act as an external field which breaks the groupoid symmetry in a somewhat different manner, definng the slowly-acting contexts of Baars' theory and providing topological constraints on the manifestations of consciousness. This analysis significantly extends recent mathematical treatments of the global workspace, and identifies a shifting, topologically-determined syntactical and grammatical 'bottleneck' as a tunable rate distortion manifold which constrains what sensory or other signals can be brought to conscious attention, typically in a punctuated manner. Sensations outside the limits of that filter's syntactic 'bandpass' have lower probability of detection, regardless of their structure, accounting for generalized forms of inattentional blindness

Chaos embedded opposition based learning for gravitational search algorithm

Due to its robust search mechanism, Gravitational search algorithm (GSA) has achieved lots of popularity from different research communities. However, stagnation reduces its searchability towards global optima for rigid and complex multi-modal problems. This paper proposes a GSA variant that incorporates chaos-embedded opposition-based learning into the basic GSA for the stagnation-free search. Additionally, a sine-cosine based chaotic gravitational constant is introduced to balance the trade-off between exploration and exploitation capabilities more effectively. The proposed variant is tested over 23 classical benchmark problems, 15 test problems of CEC 2015 test suite, and 15 test problems of CEC 2014 test suite. Different graphical, as well as empirical analyses, reveal the superiority of the proposed algorithm over conventional meta-heuristics and most recent GSA variants.Comment: 33 pages, 5 Figure