Controlling the Balance of Exploration and Exploitation in ACO Algorithm

خوارزمية النمل هي واحده من خوارزميات البحث عن الحلول المثلى ضمن فضاء واسع من الاحتمالات على نحو شبيه بطريقة النمل في البحث والتقفي لإيجاد الحلول لبعض المشاكل المعقدة التي يصعب حلها باستخدام خوارزميات الذكاء الاصطناعي التقليدية. تستخدم هذه الخوارزمية عمليه البحث في فضاء الحالات للاستنتاج حلول مختلفة اثناء عمليه البحث معتمدة على التوازن بين استكشاف حلول جديدة لتوسيع رقعة البحث وبين استغلال الحلول الجيدة لتحسين الحلول المستخرجة مسبقا. ان عمليه خلق توازن بين هاتين العمليتان يؤدي لتحسين النتائج والخروج بحلول أكثر امثليه.  هدف هذا البحث هو ايجاد قانون احتمالي أكثر ملاءمة وقادر على خلق توازن أفضل بين عمليتي الاستكشاف والاستغلال. بعد اجراء ستة تجارب مختلفة من حيث أشكال البينات تم اثبات ان التحسين في هذه الخوارزمية يؤدي الى انتاج حلول عالية الجودة من ناحية قصر طول المسار المكتشفAnt colony optimization is a meta-heuristic algorithm inspired by the foraging behavior of real ant colony. The algorithm is a population-based solution employed in different optimization problems such as classification, image processing, clustering, and so on. This paper sheds the light on the side of improving the results of traveling salesman problem produced by the algorithm. The key success that produces the valuable results is due to the two important components of exploration and exploitation. Balancing both components is the foundation of controlling search within the ACO. This paper proposes to modify the main probabilistic method to overcome the drawbacks of the exploration problem and produces global optimal results in high dimensional space. Experiments on six variant of ant colony optimization indicate that the proposed work produces high-quality results in terms of shortest route

Java-Based NS2 Network Analyzer

The performance of the network may not be as good as the one estimated before the installation. Hence, installing the computer networks in the different peripherals is cost effective when we need to change of the peripherals. Therefore, it is always better to have a simulation of the network rather than the actual establishment. As such, there are many simulators. NS-2 is one of the most popular open source network simulators that widely used in research community, which generates trace file during the simulation experiment. The trace file contains all network events that can be used to calculate network performance. After simulation, the researchers spend much time for analyzing the trace file using traditional scrip tools such as awk or pel to accumulate the result. This project presents Java-Based NS-2 network analyzer (JDNA) as a tool for extracting, analyzing and plotting trace files for the network simulation environment of NS-2. This analyzer enables researcher to analyze and visualize NS-2 trace file quickly and efficiently. It has the ability to visualize more than one trace file simultaneously as well as support all NS-2 trace format. In addition, this project can be a useful guideline to other network researchers or programmers to analyze their networks and to understand how to calculate network performance metrics

Balancing exploration and exploitation in ACS algorithms for data clustering

Ant colony optimization (ACO) is a swarm algorithm inspired by different behaviors of ants. The algorithm minimizes deterministic imperfections by assuming the clustering problem as an optimization problem. A balanced exploration and exploitation activity is necessary to produce optimal results. ACO for clustering (ACOC) is an ant colony system (ACS) algorithm inspired by the foraging behavior of ants for clustering tasks. The ACOC performs clustering based on random initial centroids, which are generated iteratively during the algorithm run. This makes the algorithm deviate from the clustering solution and performs a biased exploration. This study proposes a modified ACOC called the population ACOC (P-ACOC) to address this issue. The proposed P-ACOC allows the ants to process and update their own centroid during the algorithm run, thereby intensifying the search at the neighborhood before moving to another location.However, the algorithm quickly produces a premature convergence due to the exploitation of the same clustering results during centroid update. To resolve this issue, this study proposes a second modification by adding a restart strategy that balances between the exploration and exploitation strategy in P-ACOC.Each time the algorithm begins to converge with the same clustering solution, the restart strategy is performed to change the behavior of the algorithm from exploitation to exploration. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with that of several common clustering algorithms using real-world datasets. The results show that the accuracy of the proposed algorithm surpasses those of other algorithms

Ant-based sorting and ACO-based clustering approaches: A review

Data clustering is used in a number of fields including statistics, bioinformatics, machine learning exploratory data analysis, image segmentation, security, medical image analysis, web handling and mathematical programming.Its role is to group data into clusters with high similarity within clusters and with high dissimilarity between clusters.This paper reviews the problems that affect clustering performance for deterministic clustering and stochastic clustering approaches.In deterministic clustering, the problems are caused by sensitivity to the number of provided clusters.In stochastic clustering, problems are caused either by the absence of an optimal number of clusters or by the projection of data.The review is focused on ant-based sorting and ACO-based clustering which have problems of slow convergence, un-robust results and local optima solution.The results from this review can be used as a guide for researchers working in the area of data clustering as it shows the strengths and weaknesses of using both clustering approaches

An improved ACS algorithm for data clustering

Data clustering is a data mining technique that discovers hidden patterns by creating groups (clusters) of objects. Each object in every cluster exhibits sufficient similarity to its neighbourhood, whereas objects with insufficient similarity are found in other clusters. Data clustering techniques minimise intra-cluster similarity in each cluster and maximise inter-cluster dissimilarity amongst different clusters. Ant colony optimisation for clustering (ACOC) is a swarm algorithm inspired by the foraging behaviour of ants. This algorithm minimises deterministic imperfections in which clustering is considered an optimisation problem. However, ACOC suffers from high diversification in which the algorithm cannot search for best solutions in the local neighbourhood. To improve the ACOC, this study proposes a modified ACOC, called M-ACOC, which has a modification rate parameter that controls the convergence of the algorithm. Comparison of the performance of several common clustering algorithms using real-world datasets shows that the accuracy results of the proposed algorithm surpasses other algorithms

Modified ACS centroid memory for data clustering

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a generic algorithm, which has been widely used in different application domains due to its simplicity and adaptiveness to different optimization problems. The key component that governs the search process in this algorithm is the management of its memory model. In contrast to other algorithms, ACO explicitly utilizes an adaptive memory, which is important to its performance in terms of producing optimal results. The algorithm’s memory records previous search regions and is fully responsible for transferring the neighborhood of the current structures to the next iteration. Ant Colony Optimization for Clustering (ACOC) is a swarm algorithm inspired from nature to solve clustering issues as optimization problems. However, ACOC defined implicit memory (pheromone matrix) inability to retain previous information on an ant’s movements in the pheromone matrix. The problem arises because ACOC is a centroid-label clustering algorithm, in which the relationship between a centroid and instance is unstable. The label of the current centroid value changes from one iteration to another because of changes in centroid label. Thus the pheromone values are lost because they are associated with the label (position) of the centroid. ACOC cannot transfer the current clustering solution to the next iterations due to the history of the search being lost during the algorithm run. This study proposes a new centroid memory (A-ACOC) for data clustering that can retain the information of a previous clustering solution. This is possible because the pheromone is associated with the adaptive instance and not with label of the centroid. Centroids will be identified based on the adaptive instance route. A comparison of the performance of several common clustering algorithms using real-world data sets shows that the accuracy of the proposed algorithm surpasses those of its counterparts

A scientometric analysis of the emerging topics in general computer science

Citations have been an acceptable journal performance metric used by many indexing databases for inclusion and discontinuation of journals in their list. Therefore, editorial teams must maintain their journal performance by increasing article citations for continuous content indexing in the databases. With this aim in hand, this study intended to assist the editorial team of the Journal of Information and Communication Technology (JICT) in increasing the performance and impact of the journal. Currently, the journal has suffered from low citation count, which may jeopardise its sustainability. Past studies in library science suggested a positive correlation between keywords and citations. Therefore, keyword and topic analyses could be a solution to address the issue of journal citation. This article described a scientometric analysis of emerging topics in general computer science, the Scopus subject area for which JICT is indexed. This study extracted bibliometric data of the top 10% journals in the subject area to create a dataset of 5,546 articles. The results of the study suggested ten emerging topics in computer science that can be considered by the journal editorial team in selecting articles and a list of highly used keywords in articles published in 2019 and 2020 (as of 15 April 2020). The outcome of this study might be considered by the JICT editorial team and other journals in general computer science that suffer from a similar issue

Laparoscopy in management of appendicitis in high-, middle-, and low-income countries: a multicenter, prospective, cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Appendicitis is the most common abdominal surgical emergency worldwide. Differences between high- and low-income settings in the availability of laparoscopic appendectomy, alternative management choices, and outcomes are poorly described. The aim was to identify variation in surgical management and outcomes of appendicitis within low-, middle-, and high-Human Development Index (HDI) countries worldwide. METHODS: This is a multicenter, international prospective cohort study. Consecutive sampling of patients undergoing emergency appendectomy over 6 months was conducted. Follow-up lasted 30 days. RESULTS: 4546 patients from 52 countries underwent appendectomy (2499 high-, 1540 middle-, and 507 low-HDI groups). Surgical site infection (SSI) rates were higher in low-HDI (OR 2.57, 95% CI 1.33-4.99, p = 0.005) but not middle-HDI countries (OR 1.38, 95% CI 0.76-2.52, p = 0.291), compared with high-HDI countries after adjustment. A laparoscopic approach was common in high-HDI countries (1693/2499, 67.7%), but infrequent in low-HDI (41/507, 8.1%) and middle-HDI (132/1540, 8.6%) groups. After accounting for case-mix, laparoscopy was still associated with fewer overall complications (OR 0.55, 95% CI 0.42-0.71, p < 0.001) and SSIs (OR 0.22, 95% CI 0.14-0.33, p < 0.001). In propensity-score matched groups within low-/middle-HDI countries, laparoscopy was still associated with fewer overall complications (OR 0.23 95% CI 0.11-0.44) and SSI (OR 0.21 95% CI 0.09-0.45). CONCLUSION: A laparoscopic approach is associated with better outcomes and availability appears to differ by country HDI. Despite the profound clinical, operational, and financial barriers to its widespread introduction, laparoscopy could significantly improve outcomes for patients in low-resource environments. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT02179112

Global economic burden of unmet surgical need for appendicitis

Background: There is a substantial gap in provision of adequate surgical care in many low-and middle-income countries. This study aimed to identify the economic burden of unmet surgical need for the common condition of appendicitis. Methods: Data on the incidence of appendicitis from 170 countries and two different approaches were used to estimate numbers of patients who do not receive surgery: as a fixed proportion of the total unmet surgical need per country (approach 1); and based on country income status (approach 2). Indirect costs with current levels of access and local quality, and those if quality were at the standards of high-income countries, were estimated. A human capital approach was applied, focusing on the economic burden resulting from premature death and absenteeism. Results: Excess mortality was 4185 per 100 000 cases of appendicitis using approach 1 and 3448 per 100 000 using approach 2. The economic burden of continuing current levels of access and local quality was US $92 492 million using approach 1 and$73 141 million using approach 2. The economic burden of not providing surgical care to the standards of high-income countries was $95 004 million using approach 1 and$75 666 million using approach 2. The largest share of these costs resulted from premature death (97.7 per cent) and lack of access (97.0 per cent) in contrast to lack of quality. Conclusion: For a comparatively non-complex emergency condition such as appendicitis, increasing access to care should be prioritized. Although improving quality of care should not be neglected, increasing provision of care at current standards could reduce societal costs substantially

Pooled analysis of WHO Surgical Safety Checklist use and mortality after emergency laparotomy

Background The World Health Organization (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist has fostered safe practice for 10 years, yet its place in emergency surgery has not been assessed on a global scale. The aim of this study was to evaluate reported checklist use in emergency settings and examine the relationship with perioperative mortality in patients who had emergency laparotomy. Methods In two multinational cohort studies, adults undergoing emergency laparotomy were compared with those having elective gastrointestinal surgery. Relationships between reported checklist use and mortality were determined using multivariable logistic regression and bootstrapped simulation. Results Of 12 296 patients included from 76 countries, 4843 underwent emergency laparotomy. After adjusting for patient and disease factors, checklist use before emergency laparotomy was more common in countries with a high Human Development Index (HDI) (2455 of 2741, 89.6 per cent) compared with that in countries with a middle (753 of 1242, 60.6 per cent; odds ratio (OR) 0.17, 95 per cent c.i. 0.14 to 0.21, P <0001) or low (363 of 860, 422 per cent; OR 008, 007 to 010, P <0.001) HDI. Checklist use was less common in elective surgery than for emergency laparotomy in high-HDI countries (risk difference -94 (95 per cent c.i. -11.9 to -6.9) per cent; P <0001), but the relationship was reversed in low-HDI countries (+121 (+7.0 to +173) per cent; P <0001). In multivariable models, checklist use was associated with a lower 30-day perioperative mortality (OR 0.60, 0.50 to 073; P <0.001). The greatest absolute benefit was seen for emergency surgery in low- and middle-HDI countries. Conclusion Checklist use in emergency laparotomy was associated with a significantly lower perioperative mortality rate. Checklist use in low-HDI countries was half that in high-HDI countries.Peer reviewe