CSM-465: The Sampling Distribution of Particle Swarm Optimisers and their Stability

Several theoretical analyses of the dynamics of particle swarms have been offered in the literature over the last decade. Virtually all rely on substantial simplifications, often including the assumption that the particles are deterministic. This has prevented the exact characterisation of the sampling distribution of the PSO. In this paper we introduce a novel method that allows us to exactly determine all the characteristics of a PSO's sampling distribution and explain how it changes over any number of generations, in the presence stochasticity. The only assumption we make is stagnation, i.e., we study the sampling distribution produced by particles in search for a better personal best. We apply the analysis to the PSO with inertia weight, but the analysis is also valid for the PSO with constriction and other forms of PSO

Spectra of magnetic perturbations triggered by pellets in JET plasmas

Aiming at investigating edge localised mode (ELM) pacing for future application on ITER, experiments have been conducted on JET injecting pellets in different plasma configurations, including high confinement regimes with type-I and type-III ELMs, low confinement regimes and Ohmically heated plasmas. The magnetic perturbations spectra and the toroidal mode number, n, of triggered events are compared with those of spontaneous ELMs using a wavelet analysis to provide good time resolution of short-lived coherent modes. It is found that—in all these configurations—triggered events have a coherent mode structure, indicating that pellets can trigger an MHD event basically in every background plasma. Two components have been found in the magnetic perturbations induced by pellets, with distinct frequencies and toroidal mode numbers. In high confinement regimes triggered events have similarities with spontaneous ELMs: both are seen to start from low toroidal mode numbers, then the maximum measured n increases up to about 10 within 0.3 ms before the ELM burst

Three obstructions: forms of causation, chronotopoids, and levels of reality

The thesis is defended that the theories of causation, time and space, and levels of reality are mutually interrelated in such a way that the difficulties internal to theories of causation and to theories of space and time can be understood better, and perhaps dealt with, in the categorial context furnished by the theory of the levels of reality. The structural condition for this development to be possible is that the first two theories be opportunely generalized

Effect of turbulence on electron cyclotron current drive and heating in ITER

Non-linear local electromagnetic gyrokinetic turbulence simulations of the ITER standard scenario H-mode are presented for the q=3/2 and q=2 surfaces. The turbulent transport is examined in regions of velocity space characteristic of electrons heated by electron cyclotron waves. Electromagnetic fluctuations and sub-dominant micro-tearing modes are found to contribute significantly to the transport of the accelerated electrons, even though they have only a small impact on the transport of the bulk species. The particle diffusivity for resonant passing electrons is found to be less than 0.15 m^2/s, and their heat conductivity is found to be less than 2 m^2/s. Implications for the broadening of the current drive and energy deposition in ITER are discussed.Comment: Letter, 5 pages, 5 figures, for submission to Nuclear Fusio

CES-479 A Linear Estimation-of-Distribution GP System

We present N-gram GP, an estimation of distribution algorithm for the evolution of linear computer programs. The algorithm learns and samples the joint probability distribution of triplets of instructions (or 3-grams) at the same time as it is learning and sampling a program length distribution. We have tested N-gram GP on symbolic regressions problems where the target function is a polynomial of up to degree 12 and lawn-mower problems with lawn sizes of up to 12 ? 12. Results show that the algorithm is e?ective and scales better on these problems than either linear GP or simple stochastic hill-climbing

CSM-423 - Evolutionary Solo Pong Players

An Internet Java Applet http://www.cs.essex.ac.uk/staff/poli/ SoloPong/ allows users anywhere to play the Solo Pong game. We compare people?s performance to a hand coded ?Optimal? player and programs automatically produced by artificial intelligence. The AI techniques are: genetic programming, including a hybrid of GP and a human designed algorithm, and a particle swarm optimiser. The AI approaches are not fine tuned. GP and PSO find good players. Evolutionary computation (EC) is able to beat both human designed code and human players

CSM429: Abstract Geometric Crossover for the Permutation Representation

Abstract crossover and abstract mutation are representation-independent operators that are well-defined once a notion of distance over the solution space is defined. They were obtained as generalization of genetic operators for binary strings and real vectors. In this paper we explore how the abstract geometric framework applies to the permutation representation. This representation is challenging for various reasons: because of the inherent difference between permutations and the representations that inspired the abstraction; because the whole notion of geometry over permutation spaces radically departs from traditional geometries and it is almost unexplored mathematical territory; because the many notions of distance available and their subtle interconnections make it hard to see the right distance to use, if any; because the various available interpretations of permutations make ambiguous what a permutation represents, hence, how to treat it; because of the existence of various permutation-like representations that are incorrectly confused with permutations; and finally because of the existence of many mutation and recombination operators and their many variations for the same representation. This article shows that the application of our geometric framework naturally clarifies and unifies an important domain,the permutation representation and the related operators, in which there was little or no hope to find order. In addition the abstract geometric framework is used to improve the design of crossover operators for well-known problems naturally connected with the permutation representation