Machine intelligence, adaptive business intelligence, and natural intelligence

Copyright © 2008 IEEEOne of the key observations of the author was that machine intelligence might be defined as the capability of a system to adapt its behavior to meet desired goals in a range of environments. Interestingly, the three components of prediction, adaptation, and optimization constitute the core modules of adaptive business intelligence systems. Clearly, the future of the business intelligence industry lies in systems that can make decisions, rather than tools that produce detailed reports.Zbigniew Michalewicz and Matthew Michalewic

Constraint handling strategies in Genetic Algorithms application to optimal batch plant design

Optimal batch plant design is a recurrent issue in Process Engineering, which can be formulated as a Mixed Integer Non-Linear Programming(MINLP) optimisation problem involving specific constraints, which can be, typically, the respect of a time horizon for the synthesis of various products. Genetic Algorithms constitute a common option for the solution of these problems, but their basic operating mode is not always wellsuited to any kind of constraint treatment: if those cannot be integrated in variable encoding or accounted for through adapted genetic operators, their handling turns to be a thorny issue. The point of this study is thus to test a few constraint handling techniques on a mid-size example in order to determine which one is the best fitted, in the framework of one particular problem formulation. The investigated methods are the elimination of infeasible individuals, the use of a penalty term added in the minimized criterion, the relaxation of the discrete variables upper bounds, dominancebased tournaments and, finally, a multiobjective strategy. The numerical computations, analysed in terms of result quality and of computational time, show the superiority of elimination technique for the former criterion only when the latter one does not become a bottleneck. Besides, when the problem complexity makes the random location of feasible space too difficult, a single tournament technique proves to be the most efficient one

Using Entropy-Based Methods to Study General Constrained Parameter Optimization Problems

In this letter we propose the use of physics techniques for entropy determination on constrained parameter optimization problems. The main feature of such techniques, the construction of an unbiased walk on energy space, suggests their use on the quest for optimal solutions of an optimization problem. Moreover, the entropy, and its associated density of states, give us information concerning the feasibility of solutions.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, references correcte

Case study: An intelligent decision-support system

© 2005 IEEE.The explosive growth in decision-support systems over the past 30 years has yielded numerous "intelligent" systems that have often produced less-than-stellar results. In addition to generating data that users can't immediately apply to their tasks, such systems are often static, rendering them unable to respond to the dynamic nature of both business and the larger world. In this case study, the authors describe a thorny logistical problem: recommending the best distribution for used cars among various automobile auctions. They solved this problem by combining prediction, optimization, and adaptation techniques into one integrated system that has generated impressive profits for a large auto manufacturer.This article is part of a special issue on transportation and logistics.Zbigniew Michalewicz, Martin Schmidt, Matthew Michalewicz, and Constantin Chiria

Effects of Reserpine (Serpasil) on Bloat

Farmers and ranchers have been faced with the problem of bloat for many centuries. Thus far there has been little concrete evidence form research in determining the cause, finding a cure or a preventive for bloat. Numerous preventives for bloat have been practically useless. Investigators have used oils and paraffin’s as prophylactic and therapeutic measure against legume bloat. Antibiotics have been used as preventatives with some success, antifoaming agents have little effect and are of short duration. Tranquilizers, a comparatively a new group of compounds, have produced spectacular results in combatting stress conditions in animals. The ideal effect of tranquilizers is to achieve a reduction in anxiety, tension, and nervousness without evidence of obvious depression or sedation. Of all the tranquilizers studied, reserpine has been most extensively studied in the laboratory and in clinical use. Tranquilizers work on the primitive parts of the brain, especially the hypothalamus and the reticular formation. These areas govern the basic life functions normally beyond voluntary control. These function are kept in exquisite balance by two mutually antagonistic nervous mechanisms, the sympathetic and parasympathetic. In the normal animal a majority of the rumen gases are lost by eructation and diffusion through the rumen wall into the blood stream. In bloated animals, however, eructation is arrested. Although there are many postulations as to the reason for this arrest, none are completely satisfactory. The one most frequently accredited with preventing gaseous escape is that the cardiac orifice cannot open. If this is the reason then any compound that inhibits excessive neural stimulation might prove beneficial. Reserpine is a tranquilizer that dose reduce muscular activity, or at least reduces excessive stress. Thus these experiments using reserpine are based upon the idea that maybe during grazing the cardiac orifice would remain placid enough so that the gas could escape. The information gathered in these experiments is described in the results

Optimally Controlled Field-Free Orientation of the Kicked Molecule

Efficient and long-lived field-free molecular orientation is achieved using only two kicks appropriately delayed in time. The understanding of the mechanism rests upon a molecular target state providing the best efficiency versus persistence compromise. An optimal control scheme is referred to for fixing the free parameters (amplitudes and the time delay between them). The limited number of kicks, the robustness and the transposability to different molecular systems advocate in favor of the process, when considering its experimental feasibility.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures (version 2 contains some minor additions and corrects many misprints

PolyEDA: Combining Estimation of Distribution Algorithms and Linear Inequality Constraints

Algorithmus , Linearität , Ungleichhei