Evolutionary computation in dynamic and uncertain environments

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Editorial to special issue on evolutionary computation in dynamic and uncertain environments

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Rethinking Education Research Methodologies-Dominance of Western Perspectives?

This paper examines the different approaches and methods in comparative education research. It begins with a broad overview of the influences of Western philosophies and how Western education researchers approach social situations. Its differences with Chinese philosophies were highlighted with the concept of dao and Confucianism. More than just an epistemological discussion, this paper argues that Western researchers' biasness towards Asian researchers may be due to their failure or lack of experience in making the connections with Asian social systems. It attempts to provide some plausible explanations of the prevalence of biasness by peer reviewers of Western journals

Superluminal Propagation and Acausality of Nonlinear Massive Gravity

Massive gravity is an old idea: trading geometry for mass. Much effort has been expended on establishing a healthy model, culminating in the current ghost-free version. We summarize here our recent findings -- that it is still untenable -- because it is locally acausal: CTC solutions can be constructed in a small neighborhood of any event.Comment: Contribution to Conference in Honour of the 90th Birthday of Freeman Dyson -- To Appear in Proceeding. v2: Explicit CTC example, and other improvements, adde

Anomalous microwave response of high-temperature superconducting thin-film microstrip resonator in weak dc magnetic fields

We have studied an anomalous microwave (mw) response of superconducting YBa_{2}Cu_{3}O_{7-delta} (YBCO) microstrip resonators in the presence of a weak dc magnetic field, H_{dc}. The surface resistance (R_{s}) and reactance (X_{s}) show a correlated non-monotonic behaviour as a function of H_{dc}. R_{s} and X_{s} were found to initially decrease with elevated H_{dc} and then increase after H_{dc} reaches a crossover field, H_{c}, which is independent of the amplitude and frequency of the input mw signal within the measurements. The frequency dependence of R_{s} is almost linear at fixed H_{dc} with different magnitudes (H_{c}). The impedance plane analysis demonstrates that r_{H}, which is defined as the ratio of the change in R_{s}(H_{dc}) and that in X_{s}(H_{dc}), is about 0.6 at H_{dc}<H_{c} and 0.1 at H_{dc}>H_{c}. The H_{dc} dependence of the surface impedance is qualitatively independent of the orientation of H_{dc}.Comment: REVTex 3.1, 5 pages, 6 EPS figures, submitted to Physica

The Concentration of Manganese, Copper, Zinc, Lead and Thorium in Sediments of Paka Estuary,Terengganu, Malaysia

14 cm cores sediments from the Paka River were analyzed for Mn, Cu, Zn, Pb and Th using the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS). Generally, the concentrations of all elements decreased with depth and have significantly higher concentration at the surface depth of the core. The concentration of Mn and Cu have average value of 151.1 ± 59.1 mg/g dry weights and 29.2 ± 6.9 mg/g dry weights, while Zn and Pb averaged at 72.5 ± 15.5 mg/g dry weights and 54.9 ± 2.5 mg/g dry weights, respectively. Th were slightly varied widely and ranged from 0.6 mg/g dry weights to 1.4 mg/g dry weights. In this study, only Mn and Th have enrichment factor (EF) values close to unity and may therefore be considered to be predominantly terrigenous in origin. On the contrary, the higher EF values found for Cu, Zn and Pb indicate that these metals might have some influenced from the anthropogenic inpu

Bulk Band Gap and Surface State Conduction Observed in Voltage-Tuned Crystals of the Topological Insulator Bi2_2Se3_3

We report a transport study of exfoliated few monolayer crystals of topological insulator Bi$_2$Se$_3$ in an electric field effect (EFE) geometry. By doping the bulk crystals with Ca, we are able to fabricate devices with sufficiently low bulk carrier density to change the sign of the Hall density with the gate voltage $V_g$. We find that the temperature $T$ and magnetic field dependent transport properties in the vicinity of this $V_g$ can be explained by a bulk channel with activation gap of approximately 50 meV and a relatively high mobility metallic channel that dominates at low $T$. The conductance (approximately 2 $\times$ 7$e^2/h$), weak anti-localization, and metallic resistance-temperature profile of the latter lead us to identify it with the protected surface state. The relative smallness of the observed gap implies limitations for EFE topological insulator devices at room temperature.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. In new version, panels have been removed from Figures 1, 2, and 4 to improve clarity. Additional data included in Figure 4. Introduction and discussion revised and expande

Variations in bilingual processing of positive and negative information

Past research suggests that the emotional content of words has greater impact when presented in a bilingual's first language (L1) compared to their second language (L2). This is predicted to be a consequence of automatic processing of emotional words in L1 compared to slower, semantic processing in L2. In the current study 58 Chinese-English bilinguals from Hong Kong rated the valence and arousal of positive, neutral, and negative words presented in Chinese (L1) and English (L2). In contrast to predictions, perceived emotionality of the words was higher in L2, with positive words rated more positively and negative words rated more negatively when presented in English compared to Chinese. The findings suggest that words presented in L2 did not have lower emotional impact than L1, the results indicate that emotional processing of words may be influenced by language proficiency and language complexity