Hybrid harmony search algorithm for continuous optimization problems

Harmony Search (HS) algorithm has been extensively adopted in the literature to address optimization problems in many different fields, such as industrial design, civil engineering, electrical and mechanical engineering problems. In order to ensure its search performance, HS requires extensive tuning of its four parameters control namely harmony memory size (HMS), harmony memory consideration rate (HMCR), pitch adjustment rate (PAR), and bandwidth (BW). However, tuning process is often cumbersome and is problem dependent. Furthermore, there is no one size fits all problems. Additionally, despite many useful works, HS and its variant still suffer from weak exploitation which can lead to poor convergence problem. Addressing these aforementioned issues, this thesis proposes to augment HS with adaptive tuning using Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO). Meanwhile, to enhance its exploitation, this thesis also proposes to adopt a new variant of the opposition-based learning technique (OBL). Taken together, the proposed hybrid algorithm, called IHS-GWO, aims to address continuous optimization problems. The IHS-GWO is evaluated using two standard benchmarking sets and two real-world optimization problems. The first benchmarking set consists of 24 classical benchmark unimodal and multimodal functions whilst the second benchmark set contains 30 state-of-the-art benchmark functions from the Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC). The two real-world optimization problems involved the three-bar truss and spring design. Statistical analysis using Wilcoxon rank-sum and Friedman of IHS-GWO’s results with recent HS variants and other metaheuristic demonstrate superior performance

Capital's Utopia

In the 1890s the Apollo Iron and Steel Company ended a bitterly contested labor dispute by hiring replacement workers from the surrounding countryside. To avoid future unrest, however, the company sought to gain tighter control over its workers not only at the factory but also in their homes. Drawing upon a philosophy of reform movements in Europe and the United States, the firm decided that providing workers with good housing and a good urban environment would make them more loyal and productive. In 1895, Apollo Iron and Steel built a new, integrated, non-unionized steelworks and hired the nation's preeminent landscape architectural firm (Olmsted, Olmsted, and Eliot) to design the model industrial town: Vandergrift.In Capital's Utopia: Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, 1855-1916, Anne E. Mosher offers the first comprehensive geographical overview of the industrial restructuring of an American steelworks and its workforce in the late nineteenth–century. In addition, by offering a thorough analysis of the Olmsted plan, Mosher integrates historical geography and labor history with landscape architectural history and urban studies. As a result, this book is far more than a case study. It is a window into an important period of industrial development and its consequences on communities and environments in the world-famous steel country of southwestern Pennsylvania

Fabricating Modern Societies: Education, Bodies and Minds in the Age of Steel

Fabricating Modern Societies: Education, Bodies, and Minds in the Age of Steel, edited by Karin Priem and Frederik Herman, offers new interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives on the history of industrialization and societal transformation in early-twentieth-century Luxembourg. The individual chapters focus on how industrialists addressed a large array of challenges related to industrialization, borrowing and mixing ideas originating in domains such as corporate identity formation, mediatization, scientification, technological innovation, mechanization, capitalism, mass production, medicalization, educationalization, artistic production, and social utopia, while competing with other interest groups who pursued their own goals. The book looks at different focus areas of modernity, and analyzes how humans created, mediated, and interacted with the technospheres of modern societies

Planning decision for vacant lots in the context of shrinking cities : a survey and comparison of practices in the United States

textPlanning theory and practice in the United States has been dominated by a paradigm of growth; however, since the 1980s, many cities have faced prolonged population decline, prompting questions about how shrinkage is engaged as planners attempt to provide for health, safety, and welfare. This investigation surveys and compares lines of thought being used to make decisions regarding these properties, with particular emphasis on planners located within cities having dissimilar experiences of “shrinking.” Principally, it is focused on vacant and abandoned lots, which are the most immediately visible symptom of population decline and offer the greatest opportunity to reimagine urban form-and-function relationships. The investigation begins with a literature review of the causes and effects of shrinking as well as an investigation into historical research and contemporary thought on vacant land in the United States. Current reasoning supporting decisions about vacant and abandoned lots is identified through a national survey of planning professionals in fifteen cities with either stable-to-growing or shrinking populations. These are augmented by selected follow-up interviews. Both stratified sampling and matching were used to achieve a range of city characteristics and control for them across growth orientation. This approach is new in that while case studies of one or two shrinking cities have been undertaken, there has not been a national survey focused on shrinking cities and vacancy. The goal is to understand regional trends, tools, and obstacles to progress. The results indicate a range in which methods and techniques predicated on the dominant and normative growth paradigm have been both adopted or adapted for use in shrinking cities. Results suggest that concepts regarding quality of life, intentions for the future, and community goals have been reprioritized and redefined in shrinking cities. Finally, results indicate ways in which ideas regarding the built environment and the discontinuities of the urban fabric are being reconceptualized in the face of massive economic and demographic upheaval.Community and Regional Plannin

Heritage Patterns—Representative Models

The Heritage Patterns—Representative Models issue of Heritage welcomed twelve articles that discussed traditional and contemporary methodologies, as well as scholars from different backgrounds who intended to seek patterns of tangible heritage and its underlying principles to understand the diversity of heritage approaches. The Special Issue aims to research the patterns in heritage and the underlying rules that define tangible heritage as a universal value in spatial coexistence, economics, urban life, and design via case studies and theoretical proposals that could be implemented in the future. The pattern language and the heritage phenomenon could act as a base of observation to deduct logic and create generative algorithms (generative design); to understand the importance of spatial connection with tangible heritage and urban forms (space syntax, urban morphology, and urban morphometrics) and its visibility; as well as archaeological, architectural, and urban heritage. Based on the UNESCO-ICOMOS doctrines and the examination of morphological regions, urban morphological research and its different layers (urban forms, structural components, built environment, urban tissue, and their interaction) act as a background and foundation for general urban heritage conservation and protection proposals, and also as the base of specific interventions in the built environment caused by natural disasters

DRONE DELIVERY OF CBNRECy – DEW WEAPONS Emerging Threats of Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption (WMDD)

Drone Delivery of CBNRECy – DEW Weapons: Emerging Threats of Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption (WMDD) is our sixth textbook in a series covering the world of UASs and UUVs. Our textbook takes on a whole new purview for UAS / CUAS/ UUV (drones) – how they can be used to deploy Weapons of Mass Destruction and Deception against CBRNE and civilian targets of opportunity. We are concerned with the future use of these inexpensive devices and their availability to maleficent actors. Our work suggests that UASs in air and underwater UUVs will be the future of military and civilian terrorist operations. UAS / UUVs can deliver a huge punch for a low investment and minimize human casualties.https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1046/thumbnail.jp

Sustainability in China: Bridging Global Knowledge with Local Action

China’s road to sustainability has attracted global attention. Since the “Reform & Opening Up” policy, China’s rapid pace of both urbanization and industrialization has made its being the second largest economy but meantime a heavy environmental price has been paid over the past few decades for addressing the economic developmental target. Today, as the biggest developing country, China needs to take more responsibilities for constructing its local ecological-civilization society as well as for addressing the global challenges such as climate change, resources scary and human beings well-fare; therefore, we need to have deeper understandings into China’s way to sustainability at very different levels, both spatially and structurally, concerns ranging from generating sustainable household livelihoods to global climate change, from developing technological applications to generate institutional changes. In this spirit, this publication, “Sustainability in China: Bridging Global Knowledge with Local Action” aims to investigate the intended and spontaneous issues concerning China’s road to sustainability in a combined top-down and bottom-up manner, linking international knowledge to local-based studies

Life Cycle Concept and Management Practice in Industry

The workshop "Life Cycle Theory and Management Practice" demonstrated the widespread acceptance of the life cycle concept in the scientific community and in management practice. Based on a summary of the main terms and the various stages of life cycles for products, processes, and industries, and an description of the relationships between these phases and various aspects of organizations, industries and products, the value of using different life cycle concepts and the importance of the managerial life cycle for a firm's strategic management was demonstrated and discussed. Examples were given from several different industries, including steel, to clarify the development, structural change, substitution and diffusion of technology within the framework of the life cycle concept. As the relevant discussions show, the life cycle concept can explain the various trends, developments, time-lags, and diffusion patterns and problems in the steel industry and others as well. A new approach making it possible to determine the end of the embryonic (or childhood) phase was also presented. Critical remarks on the life cycle concept, presented both in papers and during discussions, have shown the need for further empirical tests and theoretical research. Some advantages in planning and realizing innovations in the steel (and other) industries based on the concept of the integrated life cycle as a tool in the management of innovations with broader time horizons were also demonstrated. The integrated life cycle includes the phases of invention, innovation, and (important for senescent industries) restructuring or liquidation. With the help of the integrated life cycle concept, the future state of a company could be simulated (in many aspects, better than by methods in use currently). Special software packages for computations are currently being developed. Concentrating on the steel industry, its current problems and future development, possible changes in production and consumption were shown. The changing character of producer-consumer relations in the development of a company's strategy was emphasized. The improved methodology for technological forecasting was also found to be a contributing factor to the development of an appropriate strategy. This, together with the growing importance of management issues during periods of industrial crisis based on the case of steel, as labor and social effects of technological change in this industry led to the conclusion of existing possibility to generalize management issues and tasks along the life cycle of products, processes, and industries. Management of technological and organizational development. and duplication of the life cycle concept in new technologies show the importance of case studies in studies of process life cycles and clarified some relations between different phases and management options. Many participants stressed the importance of case studies on life cycles in various industries in different countries. The presentations and discussions on the deeper connections of time, space, innovation management, and life cycle concepts as well as of systems approach to create a new model of innovation emphasize the inter-relationships of various sciences and necessity of inter-disciplinary approach to study the problem. In the above context, historical methodology was also discussed as a good contribution to developing an adequate management model. Using the life cycle concept on the macro-level, the companies' behavior can be studied from the managerial and organizational points of view. Such studies could be done, not only in the steel industry, but also in other branches such as textiles or robotics. Analysis based not only on statistical data and questionnaires, but on case studies and on in-depth interviews involving companies could give useful insights for the theory and management practice of life cycles. The role of product specialization and differentiation in the life cycle and in the companies' strategy was stressed by many participants. The problem of correct timing and the use of Foster's S-curve ought to be studied and developed as management tools. Interesting examples of how some companies prosper by switching from one obsolete technology to an upcoming one at the right time were discussed. In this connection, the timing decision was defined as an important one. Until now, there are no definite criteria available to determine the appropriate time to switch from one technology to another. At the beginning of a new development, many approaches evolve simultaneously before a winning paradigm appears. Comparing behavior patterns in different companies within the same industry, or even between industries, was accepted as the direction of a study which could help to clarify the possible generalization of the life cycle concept as a useful management tool. An important issue in developing the possible methodologies for determining the right decisions in changing technologies Gas defined to be the use and development of proper indicators. The definition of parameters which could describe management behavior during the life cycle could deliver the necessary information for decision-making