321,762 research outputs found
On the convergence of autonomous agent communities
This is the post-print version of the final published paper that is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 IOS Press and the authors.Community is a common phenomenon in natural ecosystems, human societies as well as artificial multi-agent systems such as those in web and Internet based applications. In many self-organizing systems, communities are formed evolutionarily in a decentralized way through agents' autonomous behavior. This paper systematically investigates the properties of a variety of the self-organizing agent community systems by a formal qualitative approach and a quantitative experimental approach. The qualitative formal study by applying formal specification in SLABS and Scenario Calculus has proven that mature and optimal communities always form and become stable when agents behave based on the collective knowledge of the communities, whereas community formation does not always reach maturity and optimality if agents behave solely based on individual knowledge, and the communities are not always stable even if such a formation is achieved. The quantitative experimental study by simulation has shown that the convergence time of agent communities depends on several parameters of the system in certain complicated patterns, including the number of agents, the number of community organizers, the number of knowledge categories, and the size of the knowledge in each category
Cosmological model of the interaction between dark matter and dark energy
In this paper, we test the dark matter-dark energy interacting cosmological
model with a dynamic equation of state , using
type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), Hubble parameter data, baryonic acoustic
oscillation (BAO) measurements, and the cosmic microwave background (CMB)
observation. This interacting cosmological model has not been studied before.
The best-fitted parameters with uncertainties are , , and
with . At the
confidence level, we find , which means that the energy transfer
prefers from dark matter to dark energy. We also find that the SNe Ia are in
tension with the combination of CMB, BAO and Hubble parameter data. The
evolution of indicates that this interacting model is a
good approach to solve the coincidence problem, because the
decrease with scale factor . The transition redshift is in this model.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, published in A&
Architectural implications for context adaptive smart spaces
Buildings and spaces are complex entities containing complex social structures and interactions. A smart space is a composite of the users that inhabit it, the IT infrastructure that supports it, and the sensors and appliances that service it. Rather than separating the IT from the buildings and from the appliances that inhabit them and treating them as separate systems, pervasive computing combines them and allows them to interact. We outline a reactive context architecture that supports this vision of integrated smart spaces and explore some implications for building large-scale pervasive systems
Genetic algorithms with immigrants and memory schemes for dynamic shortest path routing problems in mobile ad hoc networks
This article is posted here with permission of IEEE - Copyright @ 2010 IEEEIn recent years, the static shortest path (SP) problem has been well addressed using intelligent optimization techniques, e.g., artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms (GAs), particle swarm optimization, etc. However, with the advancement in wireless communications, more and more mobile wireless networks appear, e.g., mobile networks [mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs)], wireless sensor networks, etc. One of the most important characteristics in mobile wireless networks is the topology dynamics, i.e., the network topology changes over time due to energy conservation or node mobility. Therefore, the SP routing problem in MANETs turns out to be a dynamic optimization problem. In this paper, we propose to use GAs with immigrants and memory schemes to solve the dynamic SP routing problem in MANETs. We consider MANETs as target systems because they represent new-generation wireless networks. The experimental results show that these immigrants and memory-based GAs can quickly adapt to environmental changes (i.e., the network topology changes) and produce high-quality solutions after each change.This work was supported by the Engineering
and Physical Sciences Research Council of U.K. underGrant EP/E060722/
Analysis of cracks emanating from a circular hole in unidirectional fiber reinforced composites, part 2
An analytical method is developed for cracks emanating from a circular hole in an off-axis unidirectional fiber-reinforced composite. The method which is formulated by using conservation laws of elasticity and fundamental relationships in anisotropic fracture mechanics, provides a convenient and accurate means to examine the complicated crack behavior, when used in conjunction with a suitable numerical scheme such as the finite element method. The formulation is eventually reduced to a system of linear algebraic equations of mixed-mode stress intensity factors. Fracture parameters, describing crack-tip deformation and fracture in the composite, are obtained explicitly. Effects of material anisotropy and crack/hole geometry are examined also. Of particular interest are the energy release rates associated with crack extension; their values are evaluated for various cases. Results show that mixed-mode stress intensity factors and energy release rates associated with the cracks emanating from a hole change very appreciably with fiber orientation in the composite. K sub 1 and G increase monotonically with increasing theta; but K sub 2 reaches its maximum at theta = 45 deg, and then decreases gradually as theta increases further
Measuring dark energy with the correlation of gamma-ray bursts using model-independent methods
In this paper, we use two model-independent methods to standardize long
gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) using the correlation, where
is the isotropic-equivalent gamma-ray energy and is
the spectral peak energy. We update 42 long GRBs and try to make constraint on
cosmological parameters. The full sample contains 151 long GRBs with redshifts
from 0.0331 to 8.2. The first method is the simultaneous fitting method. The
extrinsic scatter is taken into account and assigned to the
parameter . The best-fitting values are ,
, and in the flat
CDM model. The constraint on is at the
1 confidence level. If reduced method is used, the best-fit
results are , and . The
second method is using type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) to calibrate the correlation. We calibrate 90 high-redshift GRBs in the redshift
range from 1.44 to 8.1. The cosmological constraints from these 90 GRBs are
for flat CDM, and
and for non-flat
CDM. For the combination of GRB and SNe Ia sample, we obtain
and for the flat CDM, and
for the non-flat CDM, the results are ,
and . These results from
calibrated GRBs are consistent with that of SNe Ia. Meanwhile, the combined
data can improve cosmological constraints significantly, comparing to SNe Ia
alone. Our results show that the correlation is
promising to probe the high-redshift universe.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, 4 table, accepted by A&A. Table 4 contains
calibrated distance moduli of GRB
Investigation of the utilisation of social networks in e-learning at universities
Over the years universities have considered to use social networks for learning purposes as most of their students now engage on them. However, questions on the impact social networks would have on learning and how they can be utilised further for more effective teaching and learning are still unclear. To solve these questions, an in-depth investigation has been conducted to understand the benefits and drawback of social network features available for students. The investigation results show that students strongly believe that social network features will help enhance learning and the key ways of utilising such features have been suggested
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