Hyper‐Heuristics and Metaheuristics for Selected Bio‐Inspired Combinatorial Optimization Problems

Many decision and optimization problems arising in bioinformatics field are time demanding, and several algorithms are designed to solve these problems or to improve their current best solution approach. Modeling and implementing a new heuristic algorithm may be time‐consuming but has strong motivations: on the one hand, even a small improvement of the new solution may be worth the long time spent on the construction of a new method; on the other hand, there are problems for which good‐enough solutions are acceptable which could be achieved at a much lower computational cost. In the first case, specially designed heuristics or metaheuristics are needed, while the latter hyper‐heuristics can be proposed. The paper will describe both approaches in different domain problems

Remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in the opinion of academic teachers. Survey research

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the academic community had to drop out of the full-time on-site education and switch to distance learning. After two years of this state of affairs and the current return to the traditional form, we would like to explore the opinions of academic teachers on this form of teaching.  The study was a questionnaire-based survey, including 86 teaching staff members of the Jan Kochanowski University of Kielce, working at four faculties. The teachers assessed the level of distance learning as average, no different from the traditional approach.  However, they pointed out that the involvement, activity of students, regularity of work, quality of the assignments completed, and the adequacy of the grades received is greater in the traditional approach. In the case of remote learning, in the group's assessment, the timeliness of performing the assignments had not deteriorated. The most frequently indicated advantage of remote learning was time saving, while the most common disadvantage was reduced contact with students. In the teachers' opinion, the traditional mode of learning still has an advantage over distance learning. Studies assessing effectiveness in achieving educational goals are needed in order to objectify the results. &nbsp

Comparison of the assessment of teaching components during distance and traditional learning – perspective of academic teachers and students. Questionnaire survey

The Covid-19 pandemic forced students and academic teachers to start distance learning. Although both sides participated in the same process, its assessment from both sides may differ. In our study, using a structured survey, academic teachers and students assessed on a 5-point Likert's scale (where 1 = greater in traditional education, 5 =definitely greater in remote education) the effectiveness of 6 key elements of learning such as: student's involvement (1), student's activity (2), contact with the lecturer (3), consistent manner of work (4), timeliness of tasks performed (5), quality of tasks performed (6) and adequacy of grades awarded (7) . Most of the elements in both groups were assessed as more effective in traditional learning. The average score in the group of teachers in each of the elements was shifted towards greater effectiveness of traditional teaching. The greatest difference in grades between the two groups occurred in the scope of a student's involvement and activity. Students and teachers did not differ in the assessment of contact with the lecturer, although both groups indicated that it was greater in the case of traditional learning. Lecturers and students differed in assessing the effectiveness of key features of learning during distance and traditional education. It is necessary to continuously adapt curricula in order to improve the overall assessment of the examined elements and to ensure that there are no differences between the two groups

Students of the Medical College against the background of three other faculties of the Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce

The need to limit people-to-people contacts during the COVID-19 pandemic introduced the need for distance learning at universities. After two years of pandemic restrictions, we decided to check the opinion of medical students and three other faculties on the conducted classes and compare groups with each other. We conducted a survey research based on standardized questionnaire which included 306 students from four faculties of the Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce – Faculty of Law and Social Sciences (1), Medical College (2), Faculty of Exact and Life Sciences (3), Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology (4). Students did not differ in the assessment of most types of classes conducted in a virtual form. The exceptions were virtual meetings in a group of students, which were better assessed at the faculty no. 1 compared to 2 and 4. Students of Medical College faculty differed in terms of assessing level of distance learning and their own involvement. Their ratings on these two issues were the lowest among the four groups. The students of individual faculties did not differ in terms of assessing the effectiveness of the elements of education in the traditional and remote modes of operation.   The subjective assessment of distance learning by students from various faculties shows subtle differences. The transition to distance education resulted in a decline in the involvement of medical students in their education and a subjective decrease in quality of teaching comparing to other faculties. This opinion may be taken into account when adapting curricula and selecting the type of classes to be conducted in the course of distance or hybrid learning

Students of the Medical College against the background of three other faculties of the Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce

The need to limit people-to-people contacts during the COVID-19 pandemic introduced the need for distance learning at universities. After two years of pandemic restrictions, we decided to check the opinion of medical students and three other faculties on the conducted classes and compare groups with each other. We conducted a survey research based on standardized questionnaire which included 306 students from four faculties of the Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce – Faculty of Law and Social Sciences (1), Medical College (2), Faculty of Exact and Life Sciences (3), Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology (4). Students did not differ in the assessment of most types of classes conducted in a virtual form. The exceptions were virtual meetings in a group of students, which were better assessed at the faculty no. 1 compared to 2 and 4. Students of Medical College faculty differed in terms of assessing level of distance learning and their own involvement. Their ratings on these two issues were the lowest among the four groups. The students of individual faculties did not differ in terms of assessing the effectiveness of the elements of education in the traditional and remote modes of operation.   The subjective assessment of distance learning by students from various faculties shows subtle differences. The transition to distance education resulted in a decline in the involvement of medical students in their education and a subjective decrease in quality of teaching comparing to other faculties. This opinion may be taken into account when adapting curricula and selecting the type of classes to be conducted in the course of distance or hybrid learning

A hyper-heuristic approach to sequencing by hybridization of DNA sequences

In this paper we investigate the use of hyper-heuristic methodologies for predicting DNA sequences. In particular, we utilize Sequencing by Hybridization. We believe that this is the first time that hyper-heuristics have been investigated in this domain. A hyper-heuristic is provided with a set of low-level heuristics and the aim is to decide which heuristic to call at each decision point. We investigate three types of hyper-heuristics. Two of these (simulated annealing and tabu search) draw their inspiration from meta-heuristics. The choice function hyper-heuristic draws its inspiration from reinforcement learning. We utilize two independent sets of low-level heuristics. The first set is based on a previous tabu search method, with the second set being a significant extension to this basic set, including utilizing a different representation and introducing the definition of clusters. The datasets we use comprises two randomly generated datasets and also a publicly available biological dataset. In total, we carried out experiments using 70 different combinations of heuristics, using the three datasets mentioned above and investigating six different hyper-heuristic algorithms. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of a hyper-heuristic approach to this problem domain. It is necessary to provide a good set of low-level heuristics, which are able to both intensify and diversify the search but this approach has demonstrated very encouraging results on this extremely difficult and important problem domain

MOESM1 of A gene expression microarray for Nicotiana benthamiana based on de novo transcriptome sequence assembly

Additional File 1: Figure S1. Proportions of array-based (blue) and high throughput sequencing-based (orange) RNA profiling experiments deposited in GEO Database in 2012-2015 for Arabidopsis and rice. Figure S2. Gene expression data for v.3 unigenes mapping v.5 primary transcript Nbv5tr6241943. Figure S3. Gene expression data for v.3 unigenes mapping v.5 primary transcript Nbv5tr6230285