754 research outputs found
Meta-Stability of Interacting Adaptive Agents
The adaptive process can be considered as being driven by two fundamental forces:
exploitation and exploration. While the explorative process may be deterministic, the
resultant effect may be stochastic. Stochastic effects may also exist in the expoitative
process. This thesis considers the effects of stochastic fluctuations inherent in the
adaptive process on the behavioural dynamics of a population of interacting agents. It
is hypothesied that in such systems, one or more attractors in the population space
exist; and that transitions between these attractors can occur; either as a result of
internal shocks (sampling fluctuations) or external shocks (environmental changes). It
is further postulated that such transitions in the (microscopic) population space may
be observable as phase transitions in the behaviour of macroscopic observables.
A simple model of a stock market, driven by asexual reproduction (selection plus
mutation) is put forward as a testbed. A statistical dynamics analysis of the behaviour
of this market is then developed. Fixed points in the space of agent behaviours are
located, and market dynamics are compared to the analytic predictions. Additionally,
an analysis of the relative importance of internal shocks(sampling fluctuations) and external
shocks( the stock dividend sequence) across varying population size is presented
Enhanced parallel Differential Evolution algorithm for problems in computational systems biology
[Abstract] Many key problems in computational systems biology and bioinformatics can be formulated and solved using a global optimization framework. The complexity of the underlying mathematical models require the use of efficient solvers in order to obtain satisfactory results in reasonable computation times. Metaheuristics are gaining recognition in this context, with Differential Evolution (DE) as one of the most popular methods. However, for most realistic applications, like those considering parameter estimation in dynamic models, DE still requires excessive computation times.
Here we consider this latter class of problems and present several enhancements to DE based on the introduction of additional algorithmic steps and the exploitation of parallelism. In particular, we propose an asynchronous parallel implementation of DE which has been extended with improved heuristics to exploit the specific structure of parameter estimation problems in computational systems biology. The proposed method is evaluated with different types of benchmarks problems: (i) black-box global optimization problems and (ii) calibration of non-linear dynamic models of biological systems, obtaining excellent results both in terms of quality of the solution and regarding speedup and scalability.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; DPI2011-28112-C04-03Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; PIE-201170E018Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; TIN2013-42148-PGalicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; GRC2013/05
A memetic particle swarm optimisation algorithm for dynamic multi-modal optimisation problems
Copyright @ 2011 Taylor & Francis.Many real-world optimisation problems are both dynamic and multi-modal, which require an optimisation algorithm not only to find as many optima under a specific environment as possible, but also to track their moving trajectory over dynamic environments. To address this requirement, this article investigates a memetic computing approach based on particle swarm optimisation for dynamic multi-modal optimisation problems (DMMOPs). Within the framework of the proposed algorithm, a new speciation method is employed to locate and track multiple peaks and an adaptive local search method is also hybridised to accelerate the exploitation of species generated by the speciation method. In addition, a memory-based re-initialisation scheme is introduced into the proposed algorithm in order to further enhance its performance in dynamic multi-modal environments. Based on the moving peaks benchmark problems, experiments are carried out to investigate the performance of the proposed algorithm in comparison with several state-of-the-art algorithms taken from the literature. The experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm for DMMOPs.This work was supported by the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation (NNSF) of China under Grant no. 70931001, the Funds for Creative Research Groups of China under Grant no. 71021061, the National Natural Science Foundation (NNSF) of China under Grant 71001018, Grant no. 61004121 and Grant no. 70801012 and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities Grant no. N090404020, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of UK under Grant no. EP/E060722/01 and Grant EP/E060722/02, and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University under Grant G-YH60
Fault tolerant and dynamic evolutionary optimization engines
Mimicking natural evolution to solve hard optimization problems has played an important
role in the artificial intelligence arena. Such techniques are broadly classified
as Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) and have been investigated for around four decades
during which important contributions and advances have been made.
One main evolutionary technique which has been widely investigated is the Genetic
Algorithm (GA). GAs are stochastic search techniques that follow the Darwinian
principle of evolution. Their application in the solution of hard optimization problems
has been very successful. Indeed multi-dimensional problems presenting difficult search
spaces with characteristics such as multi-modality, epistasis, non regularity, deceptiveness,
etc., have all been effectively tackled by GAs.
In this research, a competitive form of GAs known as fine or cellular GAs (cGAs)
are investigated, because of their suitability for System on Chip (SoC) implementation
when tackling real-time problems. Cellular GAs have also attracted the attention
of researchers due to their high performance, ease of implementation and massive
parallelism. In addition, cGAs inherently possess a number of structural configuration
parameters which make them capable of sustaining diversity during evolution and
therefore of promoting an adequate balance between exploitative and explorative stages
of the search.
The fast technological development of Integrated Circuits (ICs) has allowed a considerable
increase in compactness and therefore in density. As a result, it is nowadays
possible to have millions of gates and transistor based circuits in very small silicon
areas. Operational complexity has also significantly increased and consequently other
setbacks have emerged, such as the presence of faults that commonly appear in the
form of single or multiple bit flips. Tough environmental or time dependent operating
conditions can trigger faults in registers and memory allocations due to induced radiation, electron migration and dielectric breakdown. These kinds of faults are known as
Single Event Effects (SEEs).
Research has shown that an effective way of dealing with SEEs consists of a combination
of hardware and software mitigation techniques to overcome faulty scenarios.
Permanent faults known as Single Hard Errors (SHEs) and temporary faults known
as Single Event Upsets (SEUs) are common SEEs. This thesis aims to investigate the
inherent abilities of cellular GAs to deal with SHEs and SEUs at algorithmic level. A
hard real-time application is targeted: calculating the attitude parameters for navigation
in vehicles using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. Faulty critical
data, which can cause a system’s functionality to fail, are evaluated. The proposed
mitigation techniques show cGAs ability to deal with up to 40% stuck at zero and 30%
stuck at one faults in chromosomes bits and fitness score cells.
Due to the non-deterministic nature of GAs, dynamic on-the-fly algorithmic and
parametric configuration has also attracted the attention of researchers. In this respect,
the structural properties of cellular GAs provide a valuable attribute to influence their
selection pressure. This helps to maintain an adequate exploitation-exploration tradeoff,
either from a pure topological perspective or through genetic operations that also
make use of structural characteristics in cGAs. These properties, unique to cGAs, are
further investigated in this thesis through a set of middle to high difficulty benchmark
problems. Experimental results show that the proposed dynamic techniques enhance
the overall performance of cGAs in most benchmark problems.
Finally, being structurally attached, the dimensionality of cellular GAs is another
line of investigation. 1D and 2D structures have normally been used to test cGAs at
algorithm and implementation levels. Although 3D-cGAs are an immediate extension,
not enough attention has been paid to them, and so a comparative study on the dimensionality
of cGAs is carried out. Having shorter radii, 3D-cGAs present a faster
dissemination of solutions and have denser neighbourhoods. Empirical results reported
in this thesis show that 3D-cGAs achieve better efficiency when solving multi-modal
and epistatic problems. In future, the performance improvements of 3D-cGAs will
merge with the latest benefits that 3D integration technology has demonstrated, such
as reductions in routing length, in interconnection delays and in power consumption
Dopaminergic Control of the Exploration-Exploitation Trade-Off via the Basal Ganglia
We continuously face the dilemma of choosing between actions that gather new information or actions that exploit existing knowledge. This “exploration-exploitation” trade-off depends on the environment: stability favors exploiting knowledge to maximize gains; volatility favors exploring new options and discovering new outcomes. Here we set out to reconcile recent evidence for dopamine’s involvement in the exploration-exploitation trade-off with the existing evidence for basal ganglia control of action selection, by testing the hypothesis that tonic dopamine in the striatum, the basal ganglia’s input nucleus, sets the current exploration-exploitation trade-off. We first advance the idea of interpreting the basal ganglia output as a probability distribution function for action selection. Using computational models of the full basal ganglia circuit, we showed that, under this interpretation, the actions of dopamine within the striatum change the basal ganglia’s output to favor the level of exploration or exploitation encoded in the probability distribution. We also found that our models predict striatal dopamine controls the exploration-exploitation trade-off if we instead read-out the probability distribution from the target nuclei of the basal ganglia, where their inhibitory input shapes the cortical input to these nuclei. Finally, by integrating the basal ganglia within a reinforcement learning model, we showed how dopamine’s effect on the exploration-exploitation trade-off could be measurable in a forced two-choice task. These simulations also showed how tonic dopamine can appear to affect learning while only directly altering the trade-off. Thus, our models support the hypothesis that changes in tonic dopamine within the striatum can alter the exploration-exploitation trade-off by modulating the output of the basal ganglia
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