Sample records for neighborhood search algorithm

  1. An evaluation of methods for estimating the number of local optima in combinatorial optimization problems.

    PubMed

    Hernando, Leticia; Mendiburu, Alexander; Lozano, Jose A

    2013-01-01

    The solution of many combinatorial optimization problems is carried out by metaheuristics, which generally make use of local search algorithms. These algorithms use some kind of neighborhood structure over the search space. The performance of the algorithms strongly depends on the properties that the neighborhood imposes on the search space. One of these properties is the number of local optima. Given an instance of a combinatorial optimization problem and a neighborhood, the estimation of the number of local optima can help not only to measure the complexity of the instance, but also to choose the most convenient neighborhood to solve it. In this paper we review and evaluate several methods to estimate the number of local optima in combinatorial optimization problems. The methods reviewed not only come from the combinatorial optimization literature, but also from the statistical literature. A thorough evaluation in synthetic as well as real problems is given. We conclude by providing recommendations of methods for several scenarios.

  2. Three hybridization models based on local search scheme for job shop scheduling problem

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Balbi Fraga, Tatiana

    2015-05-01

    This work presents three different hybridization models based on the general schema of Local Search Heuristics, named Hybrid Successive Application, Hybrid Neighborhood, and Hybrid Improved Neighborhood. Despite similar approaches might have already been presented in the literature in other contexts, in this work these models are applied to analyzes the solution of the job shop scheduling problem, with the heuristics Taboo Search and Particle Swarm Optimization. Besides, we investigate some aspects that must be considered in order to achieve better solutions than those obtained by the original heuristics. The results demonstrate that the algorithms derived from these three hybrid models are more robust than the original algorithms and able to get better results than those found by the single Taboo Search.

  3. Variable neighborhood search for reverse engineering of gene regulatory networks.

    PubMed

    Nicholson, Charles; Goodwin, Leslie; Clark, Corey

    2017-01-01

    A new search heuristic, Divided Neighborhood Exploration Search, designed to be used with inference algorithms such as Bayesian networks to improve on the reverse engineering of gene regulatory networks is presented. The approach systematically moves through the search space to find topologies representative of gene regulatory networks that are more likely to explain microarray data. In empirical testing it is demonstrated that the novel method is superior to the widely employed greedy search techniques in both the quality of the inferred networks and computational time. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. A Hybrid Symbiotic Organisms Search Algorithm with Variable Neighbourhood Search for Solving Symmetric and Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Umam, M. I. H.; Santosa, B.

    2018-04-01

    Combinatorial optimization has been frequently used to solve both problems in science, engineering, and commercial applications. One combinatorial problems in the field of transportation is to find a shortest travel route that can be taken from the initial point of departure to point of destination, as well as minimizing travel costs and travel time. When the distance from one (initial) node to another (destination) node is the same with the distance to travel back from destination to initial, this problems known to the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), otherwise it call as an Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem (ATSP). The most recent optimization techniques is Symbiotic Organisms Search (SOS). This paper discuss how to hybrid the SOS algorithm with variable neighborhoods search (SOS-VNS) that can be applied to solve the ATSP problem. The proposed mechanism to add the variable neighborhoods search as a local search is to generate the better initial solution and then we modify the phase of parasites with adapting mechanism of mutation. After modification, the performance of the algorithm SOS-VNS is evaluated with several data sets and then the results is compared with the best known solution and some algorithm such PSO algorithm and SOS original algorithm. The SOS-VNS algorithm shows better results based on convergence, divergence and computing time.

  5. Efficient sequential and parallel algorithms for finding edit distance based motifs.

    PubMed

    Pal, Soumitra; Xiao, Peng; Rajasekaran, Sanguthevar

    2016-08-18

    Motif search is an important step in extracting meaningful patterns from biological data. The general problem of motif search is intractable and there is a pressing need to develop efficient, exact and approximation algorithms to solve this problem. In this paper, we present several novel, exact, sequential and parallel algorithms for solving the (l,d) Edit-distance-based Motif Search (EMS) problem: given two integers l,d and n biological strings, find all strings of length l that appear in each input string with atmost d errors of types substitution, insertion and deletion. One popular technique to solve the problem is to explore for each input string the set of all possible l-mers that belong to the d-neighborhood of any substring of the input string and output those which are common for all input strings. We introduce a novel and provably efficient neighborhood exploration technique. We show that it is enough to consider the candidates in neighborhood which are at a distance exactly d. We compactly represent these candidate motifs using wildcard characters and efficiently explore them with very few repetitions. Our sequential algorithm uses a trie based data structure to efficiently store and sort the candidate motifs. Our parallel algorithm in a multi-core shared memory setting uses arrays for storing and a novel modification of radix-sort for sorting the candidate motifs. The algorithms for EMS are customarily evaluated on several challenging instances such as (8,1), (12,2), (16,3), (20,4), and so on. The best previously known algorithm, EMS1, is sequential and in estimated 3 days solves up to instance (16,3). Our sequential algorithms are more than 20 times faster on (16,3). On other hard instances such as (9,2), (11,3), (13,4), our algorithms are much faster. Our parallel algorithm has more than 600 % scaling performance while using 16 threads. Our algorithms have pushed up the state-of-the-art of EMS solvers and we believe that the techniques introduced in this paper are also applicable to other motif search problems such as Planted Motif Search (PMS) and Simple Motif Search (SMS).

  6. Clustering PPI data by combining FA and SHC method.

    PubMed

    Lei, Xiujuan; Ying, Chao; Wu, Fang-Xiang; Xu, Jin

    2015-01-01

    Clustering is one of main methods to identify functional modules from protein-protein interaction (PPI) data. Nevertheless traditional clustering methods may not be effective for clustering PPI data. In this paper, we proposed a novel method for clustering PPI data by combining firefly algorithm (FA) and synchronization-based hierarchical clustering (SHC) algorithm. Firstly, the PPI data are preprocessed via spectral clustering (SC) which transforms the high-dimensional similarity matrix into a low dimension matrix. Then the SHC algorithm is used to perform clustering. In SHC algorithm, hierarchical clustering is achieved by enlarging the neighborhood radius of synchronized objects continuously, while the hierarchical search is very difficult to find the optimal neighborhood radius of synchronization and the efficiency is not high. So we adopt the firefly algorithm to determine the optimal threshold of the neighborhood radius of synchronization automatically. The proposed algorithm is tested on the MIPS PPI dataset. The results show that our proposed algorithm is better than the traditional algorithms in precision, recall and f-measure value.

  7. Clustering PPI data by combining FA and SHC method

    PubMed Central

    2015-01-01

    Clustering is one of main methods to identify functional modules from protein-protein interaction (PPI) data. Nevertheless traditional clustering methods may not be effective for clustering PPI data. In this paper, we proposed a novel method for clustering PPI data by combining firefly algorithm (FA) and synchronization-based hierarchical clustering (SHC) algorithm. Firstly, the PPI data are preprocessed via spectral clustering (SC) which transforms the high-dimensional similarity matrix into a low dimension matrix. Then the SHC algorithm is used to perform clustering. In SHC algorithm, hierarchical clustering is achieved by enlarging the neighborhood radius of synchronized objects continuously, while the hierarchical search is very difficult to find the optimal neighborhood radius of synchronization and the efficiency is not high. So we adopt the firefly algorithm to determine the optimal threshold of the neighborhood radius of synchronization automatically. The proposed algorithm is tested on the MIPS PPI dataset. The results show that our proposed algorithm is better than the traditional algorithms in precision, recall and f-measure value. PMID:25707632

  8. Bare-Bones Teaching-Learning-Based Optimization

    PubMed Central

    Zou, Feng; Wang, Lei; Hei, Xinhong; Chen, Debao; Jiang, Qiaoyong; Li, Hongye

    2014-01-01

    Teaching-learning-based optimization (TLBO) algorithm which simulates the teaching-learning process of the class room is one of the recently proposed swarm intelligent (SI) algorithms. In this paper, a new TLBO variant called bare-bones teaching-learning-based optimization (BBTLBO) is presented to solve the global optimization problems. In this method, each learner of teacher phase employs an interactive learning strategy, which is the hybridization of the learning strategy of teacher phase in the standard TLBO and Gaussian sampling learning based on neighborhood search, and each learner of learner phase employs the learning strategy of learner phase in the standard TLBO or the new neighborhood search strategy. To verify the performance of our approaches, 20 benchmark functions and two real-world problems are utilized. Conducted experiments can been observed that the BBTLBO performs significantly better than, or at least comparable to, TLBO and some existing bare-bones algorithms. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm is competitive to some other optimization algorithms. PMID:25013844

  9. Bare-bones teaching-learning-based optimization.

    PubMed

    Zou, Feng; Wang, Lei; Hei, Xinhong; Chen, Debao; Jiang, Qiaoyong; Li, Hongye

    2014-01-01

    Teaching-learning-based optimization (TLBO) algorithm which simulates the teaching-learning process of the class room is one of the recently proposed swarm intelligent (SI) algorithms. In this paper, a new TLBO variant called bare-bones teaching-learning-based optimization (BBTLBO) is presented to solve the global optimization problems. In this method, each learner of teacher phase employs an interactive learning strategy, which is the hybridization of the learning strategy of teacher phase in the standard TLBO and Gaussian sampling learning based on neighborhood search, and each learner of learner phase employs the learning strategy of learner phase in the standard TLBO or the new neighborhood search strategy. To verify the performance of our approaches, 20 benchmark functions and two real-world problems are utilized. Conducted experiments can been observed that the BBTLBO performs significantly better than, or at least comparable to, TLBO and some existing bare-bones algorithms. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm is competitive to some other optimization algorithms.

  10. On the Local Convergence of Pattern Search

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Dolan, Elizabeth D.; Lewis, Robert Michael; Torczon, Virginia; Bushnell, Dennis M. (Technical Monitor)

    2000-01-01

    We examine the local convergence properties of pattern search methods, complementing the previously established global convergence properties for this class of algorithms. We show that the step-length control parameter which appears in the definition of pattern search algorithms provides a reliable asymptotic measure of first-order stationarity. This gives an analytical justification for a traditional stopping criterion for pattern search methods. Using this measure of first-order stationarity, we analyze the behavior of pattern search in the neighborhood of an isolated local minimizer. We show that a recognizable subsequence converges r-linearly to the minimizer.

  11. Multi-objective flexible job-shop scheduling problem using modified discrete particle swarm optimization.

    PubMed

    Huang, Song; Tian, Na; Wang, Yan; Ji, Zhicheng

    2016-01-01

    Taking resource allocation into account, flexible job shop problem (FJSP) is a class of complex scheduling problem in manufacturing system. In order to utilize the machine resources rationally, multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) integrating with variable neighborhood search is introduced to address FJSP efficiently. Firstly, the assignment rules (AL) and dispatching rules (DR) are provided to initialize the population. And then special discrete operators are designed to produce new individuals and earliest completion machine (ECM) is adopted in the disturbance operator to escape the optima. Secondly, personal-best archives (cognitive memories) and global-best archive (social memory), which are updated by the predefined non-dominated archive update strategy, are simultaneously designed to preserve non-dominated individuals and select personal-best positions and the global-best position. Finally, three neighborhoods are provided to search the neighborhoods of global-best archive for enhancing local search ability. The proposed algorithm is evaluated by using Kacem instances and Brdata instances, and a comparison with other approaches shows the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for FJSP.

  12. Multi-objective flexible job shop scheduling problem using variable neighborhood evolutionary algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, Chun; Ji, Zhicheng; Wang, Yan

    2017-07-01

    In this paper, multi-objective flexible job shop scheduling problem (MOFJSP) was studied with the objects to minimize makespan, total workload and critical workload. A variable neighborhood evolutionary algorithm (VNEA) was proposed to obtain a set of Pareto optimal solutions. First, two novel crowded operators in terms of the decision space and object space were proposed, and they were respectively used in mating selection and environmental selection. Then, two well-designed neighborhood structures were used in local search, which consider the problem characteristics and can hold fast convergence. Finally, extensive comparison was carried out with the state-of-the-art methods specially presented for solving MOFJSP on well-known benchmark instances. The results show that the proposed VNEA is more effective than other algorithms in solving MOFJSP.

  13. Tabu search algorithm for the distance-constrained vehicle routing problem with split deliveries by order.

    PubMed

    Xia, Yangkun; Fu, Zhuo; Pan, Lijun; Duan, Fenghua

    2018-01-01

    The vehicle routing problem (VRP) has a wide range of applications in the field of logistics distribution. In order to reduce the cost of logistics distribution, the distance-constrained and capacitated VRP with split deliveries by order (DCVRPSDO) was studied. We show that the customer demand, which can't be split in the classical VRP model, can only be discrete split deliveries by order. A model of double objective programming is constructed by taking the minimum number of vehicles used and minimum vehicle traveling cost as the first and the second objective, respectively. This approach contains a series of constraints, such as single depot, single vehicle type, distance-constrained and load capacity limit, split delivery by order, etc. DCVRPSDO is a new type of VRP. A new tabu search algorithm is designed to solve the problem and the examples testing show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. This paper focuses on constructing a double objective mathematical programming model for DCVRPSDO and designing an adaptive tabu search algorithm (ATSA) with good performance to solving the problem. The performance of the ATSA is improved by adding some strategies into the search process, including: (a) a strategy of discrete split deliveries by order is used to split the customer demand; (b) a multi-neighborhood structure is designed to enhance the ability of global optimization; (c) two levels of evaluation objectives are set to select the current solution and the best solution; (d) a discriminating strategy of that the best solution must be feasible and the current solution can accept some infeasible solution, helps to balance the performance of the solution and the diversity of the neighborhood solution; (e) an adaptive penalty mechanism will help the candidate solution be closer to the neighborhood of feasible solution; (f) a strategy of tabu releasing is used to transfer the current solution into a new neighborhood of the better solution.

  14. Tabu search algorithm for the distance-constrained vehicle routing problem with split deliveries by order

    PubMed Central

    Xia, Yangkun; Pan, Lijun; Duan, Fenghua

    2018-01-01

    The vehicle routing problem (VRP) has a wide range of applications in the field of logistics distribution. In order to reduce the cost of logistics distribution, the distance-constrained and capacitated VRP with split deliveries by order (DCVRPSDO) was studied. We show that the customer demand, which can’t be split in the classical VRP model, can only be discrete split deliveries by order. A model of double objective programming is constructed by taking the minimum number of vehicles used and minimum vehicle traveling cost as the first and the second objective, respectively. This approach contains a series of constraints, such as single depot, single vehicle type, distance-constrained and load capacity limit, split delivery by order, etc. DCVRPSDO is a new type of VRP. A new tabu search algorithm is designed to solve the problem and the examples testing show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. This paper focuses on constructing a double objective mathematical programming model for DCVRPSDO and designing an adaptive tabu search algorithm (ATSA) with good performance to solving the problem. The performance of the ATSA is improved by adding some strategies into the search process, including: (a) a strategy of discrete split deliveries by order is used to split the customer demand; (b) a multi-neighborhood structure is designed to enhance the ability of global optimization; (c) two levels of evaluation objectives are set to select the current solution and the best solution; (d) a discriminating strategy of that the best solution must be feasible and the current solution can accept some infeasible solution, helps to balance the performance of the solution and the diversity of the neighborhood solution; (e) an adaptive penalty mechanism will help the candidate solution be closer to the neighborhood of feasible solution; (f) a strategy of tabu releasing is used to transfer the current solution into a new neighborhood of the better solution. PMID:29763419

  15. Global Sensor Management: Military Asset Allocation

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2009-10-06

    solution (referred to as moves). A similar approach has been suggested by Zweben et al. (1993), who use a local search base metaheuristic , specifically...trapped in a local optimum. Hansen and Mladenovic (1998) describe the concept of variable neighborhood local search algorithms , and describe an...Mataric and G.S. Sukhatme (2002). “An incremental deployment algorithm for mobile robot teams,” Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conference on

  16. Hybrid Self-Adaptive Evolution Strategies Guided by Neighborhood Structures for Combinatorial Optimization Problems.

    PubMed

    Coelho, V N; Coelho, I M; Souza, M J F; Oliveira, T A; Cota, L P; Haddad, M N; Mladenovic, N; Silva, R C P; Guimarães, F G

    2016-01-01

    This article presents an Evolution Strategy (ES)--based algorithm, designed to self-adapt its mutation operators, guiding the search into the solution space using a Self-Adaptive Reduced Variable Neighborhood Search procedure. In view of the specific local search operators for each individual, the proposed population-based approach also fits into the context of the Memetic Algorithms. The proposed variant uses the Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure with different greedy parameters for generating its initial population, providing an interesting exploration-exploitation balance. To validate the proposal, this framework is applied to solve three different [Formula: see text]-Hard combinatorial optimization problems: an Open-Pit-Mining Operational Planning Problem with dynamic allocation of trucks, an Unrelated Parallel Machine Scheduling Problem with Setup Times, and the calibration of a hybrid fuzzy model for Short-Term Load Forecasting. Computational results point out the convergence of the proposed model and highlight its ability in combining the application of move operations from distinct neighborhood structures along the optimization. The results gathered and reported in this article represent a collective evidence of the performance of the method in challenging combinatorial optimization problems from different application domains. The proposed evolution strategy demonstrates an ability of adapting the strength of the mutation disturbance during the generations of its evolution process. The effectiveness of the proposal motivates the application of this novel evolutionary framework for solving other combinatorial optimization problems.

  17. The use of a genetic algorithm-based search strategy in geostatistics: application to a set of anisotropic piezometric head data

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Abedini, M. J.; Nasseri, M.; Burn, D. H.

    2012-04-01

    In any geostatistical study, an important consideration is the choice of an appropriate, repeatable, and objective search strategy that controls the nearby samples to be included in the location-specific estimation procedure. Almost all geostatistical software available in the market puts the onus on the user to supply search strategy parameters in a heuristic manner. These parameters are solely controlled by geographical coordinates that are defined for the entire area under study, and the user has no guidance as to how to choose these parameters. The main thesis of the current study is that the selection of search strategy parameters has to be driven by data—both the spatial coordinates and the sample values—and cannot be chosen beforehand. For this purpose, a genetic-algorithm-based ordinary kriging with moving neighborhood technique is proposed. The search capability of a genetic algorithm is exploited to search the feature space for appropriate, either local or global, search strategy parameters. Radius of circle/sphere and/or radii of standard or rotated ellipse/ellipsoid are considered as the decision variables to be optimized by GA. The superiority of GA-based ordinary kriging is demonstrated through application to the Wolfcamp Aquifer piezometric head data. Assessment of numerical results showed that definition of search strategy parameters based on both geographical coordinates and sample values improves cross-validation statistics when compared with that based on geographical coordinates alone. In the case of a variable search neighborhood for each estimation point, optimization of local search strategy parameters for an elliptical support domain—the orientation of which is dictated by anisotropic axes—via GA was able to capture the dynamics of piezometric head in west Texas/New Mexico in an efficient way.

  18. An adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic for Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problems arising in city logistics

    PubMed Central

    Hemmelmayr, Vera C.; Cordeau, Jean-François; Crainic, Teodor Gabriel

    2012-01-01

    In this paper, we propose an adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic for the Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problem (2E-VRP) and the Location Routing Problem (LRP). The 2E-VRP arises in two-level transportation systems such as those encountered in the context of city logistics. In such systems, freight arrives at a major terminal and is shipped through intermediate satellite facilities to the final customers. The LRP can be seen as a special case of the 2E-VRP in which vehicle routing is performed only at the second level. We have developed new neighborhood search operators by exploiting the structure of the two problem classes considered and have also adapted existing operators from the literature. The operators are used in a hierarchical scheme reflecting the multi-level nature of the problem. Computational experiments conducted on several sets of instances from the literature show that our algorithm outperforms existing solution methods for the 2E-VRP and achieves excellent results on the LRP. PMID:23483764

  19. An adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic for Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problems arising in city logistics.

    PubMed

    Hemmelmayr, Vera C; Cordeau, Jean-François; Crainic, Teodor Gabriel

    2012-12-01

    In this paper, we propose an adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic for the Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problem (2E-VRP) and the Location Routing Problem (LRP). The 2E-VRP arises in two-level transportation systems such as those encountered in the context of city logistics. In such systems, freight arrives at a major terminal and is shipped through intermediate satellite facilities to the final customers. The LRP can be seen as a special case of the 2E-VRP in which vehicle routing is performed only at the second level. We have developed new neighborhood search operators by exploiting the structure of the two problem classes considered and have also adapted existing operators from the literature. The operators are used in a hierarchical scheme reflecting the multi-level nature of the problem. Computational experiments conducted on several sets of instances from the literature show that our algorithm outperforms existing solution methods for the 2E-VRP and achieves excellent results on the LRP.

  20. Variable neighborhood search to solve the vehicle routing problem for hazardous materials transportation.

    PubMed

    Bula, Gustavo Alfredo; Prodhon, Caroline; Gonzalez, Fabio Augusto; Afsar, H Murat; Velasco, Nubia

    2017-02-15

    This work focuses on the Heterogeneous Fleet Vehicle Routing problem (HFVRP) in the context of hazardous materials (HazMat) transportation. The objective is to determine a set of routes that minimizes the total expected routing risk. This is a nonlinear function, and it depends on the vehicle load and the population exposed when an incident occurs. Thus, a piecewise linear approximation is used to estimate it. For solving the problem, a variant of the Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS) algorithm is employed. To improve its performance, a post-optimization procedure is implemented via a Set Partitioning (SP) problem. The SP is solved on a pool of routes obtained from executions of the local search procedure embedded on the VNS. The algorithm is tested on two sets of HFVRP instances based on literature with up to 100 nodes, these instances are modified to include vehicle and arc risk parameters. The results are competitive in terms of computational efficiency and quality attested by a comparison with Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) previously proposed. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  1. Improved Seam-Line Searching Algorithm for UAV Image Mosaic with Optical Flow.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Weilong; Guo, Bingxuan; Li, Ming; Liao, Xuan; Li, Wenzhuo

    2018-04-16

    Ghosting and seams are two major challenges in creating unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) image mosaic. In response to these problems, this paper proposes an improved method for UAV image seam-line searching. First, an image matching algorithm is used to extract and match the features of adjacent images, so that they can be transformed into the same coordinate system. Then, the gray scale difference, the gradient minimum, and the optical flow value of pixels in adjacent image overlapped area in a neighborhood are calculated, which can be applied to creating an energy function for seam-line searching. Based on that, an improved dynamic programming algorithm is proposed to search the optimal seam-lines to complete the UAV image mosaic. This algorithm adopts a more adaptive energy aggregation and traversal strategy, which can find a more ideal splicing path for adjacent UAV images and avoid the ground objects better. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively solve the problems of ghosting and seams in the panoramic UAV images.

  2. Approximation algorithms for the min-power symmetric connectivity problem

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Plotnikov, Roman; Erzin, Adil; Mladenovic, Nenad

    2016-10-01

    We consider the NP-hard problem of synthesis of optimal spanning communication subgraph in a given arbitrary simple edge-weighted graph. This problem occurs in the wireless networks while minimizing the total transmission power consumptions. We propose several new heuristics based on the variable neighborhood search metaheuristic for the approximation solution of the problem. We have performed a numerical experiment where all proposed algorithms have been executed on the randomly generated test samples. For these instances, on average, our algorithms outperform the previously known heuristics.

  3. Large neighborhood search for the double traveling salesman problem with multiple stacks

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Bent, Russell W; Van Hentenryck, Pascal

    This paper considers a complex real-life short-haul/long haul pickup and delivery application. The problem can be modeled as double traveling salesman problem (TSP) in which the pickups and the deliveries happen in the first and second TSPs respectively. Moreover, the application features multiple stacks in which the items must be stored and the pickups and deliveries must take place in reserve (LIFO) order for each stack. The goal is to minimize the total travel time satisfying these constraints. This paper presents a large neighborhood search (LNS) algorithm which improves the best-known results on 65% of the available instances and ismore » always within 2% of the best-known solutions.« less

  4. An Analytical Framework for Runtime of a Class of Continuous Evolutionary Algorithms.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Yushan; Hu, Guiwu

    2015-01-01

    Although there have been many studies on the runtime of evolutionary algorithms in discrete optimization, relatively few theoretical results have been proposed on continuous optimization, such as evolutionary programming (EP). This paper proposes an analysis of the runtime of two EP algorithms based on Gaussian and Cauchy mutations, using an absorbing Markov chain. Given a constant variation, we calculate the runtime upper bound of special Gaussian mutation EP and Cauchy mutation EP. Our analysis reveals that the upper bounds are impacted by individual number, problem dimension number n, searching range, and the Lebesgue measure of the optimal neighborhood. Furthermore, we provide conditions whereby the average runtime of the considered EP can be no more than a polynomial of n. The condition is that the Lebesgue measure of the optimal neighborhood is larger than a combinatorial calculation of an exponential and the given polynomial of n.

  5. Discrete Bat Algorithm for Optimal Problem of Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling

    PubMed Central

    Luo, Qifang; Zhou, Yongquan; Xie, Jian; Ma, Mingzhi; Li, Liangliang

    2014-01-01

    A discrete bat algorithm (DBA) is proposed for optimal permutation flow shop scheduling problem (PFSP). Firstly, the discrete bat algorithm is constructed based on the idea of basic bat algorithm, which divide whole scheduling problem into many subscheduling problems and then NEH heuristic be introduced to solve subscheduling problem. Secondly, some subsequences are operated with certain probability in the pulse emission and loudness phases. An intensive virtual population neighborhood search is integrated into the discrete bat algorithm to further improve the performance. Finally, the experimental results show the suitability and efficiency of the present discrete bat algorithm for optimal permutation flow shop scheduling problem. PMID:25243220

  6. Discrete bat algorithm for optimal problem of permutation flow shop scheduling.

    PubMed

    Luo, Qifang; Zhou, Yongquan; Xie, Jian; Ma, Mingzhi; Li, Liangliang

    2014-01-01

    A discrete bat algorithm (DBA) is proposed for optimal permutation flow shop scheduling problem (PFSP). Firstly, the discrete bat algorithm is constructed based on the idea of basic bat algorithm, which divide whole scheduling problem into many subscheduling problems and then NEH heuristic be introduced to solve subscheduling problem. Secondly, some subsequences are operated with certain probability in the pulse emission and loudness phases. An intensive virtual population neighborhood search is integrated into the discrete bat algorithm to further improve the performance. Finally, the experimental results show the suitability and efficiency of the present discrete bat algorithm for optimal permutation flow shop scheduling problem.

  7. An effective PSO-based memetic algorithm for flow shop scheduling.

    PubMed

    Liu, Bo; Wang, Ling; Jin, Yi-Hui

    2007-02-01

    This paper proposes an effective particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based memetic algorithm (MA) for the permutation flow shop scheduling problem (PFSSP) with the objective to minimize the maximum completion time, which is a typical non-deterministic polynomial-time (NP) hard combinatorial optimization problem. In the proposed PSO-based MA (PSOMA), both PSO-based searching operators and some special local searching operators are designed to balance the exploration and exploitation abilities. In particular, the PSOMA applies the evolutionary searching mechanism of PSO, which is characterized by individual improvement, population cooperation, and competition to effectively perform exploration. On the other hand, the PSOMA utilizes several adaptive local searches to perform exploitation. First, to make PSO suitable for solving PFSSP, a ranked-order value rule based on random key representation is presented to convert the continuous position values of particles to job permutations. Second, to generate an initial swarm with certain quality and diversity, the famous Nawaz-Enscore-Ham (NEH) heuristic is incorporated into the initialization of population. Third, to balance the exploration and exploitation abilities, after the standard PSO-based searching operation, a new local search technique named NEH_1 insertion is probabilistically applied to some good particles selected by using a roulette wheel mechanism with a specified probability. Fourth, to enrich the searching behaviors and to avoid premature convergence, a simulated annealing (SA)-based local search with multiple different neighborhoods is designed and incorporated into the PSOMA. Meanwhile, an effective adaptive meta-Lamarckian learning strategy is employed to decide which neighborhood to be used in SA-based local search. Finally, to further enhance the exploitation ability, a pairwise-based local search is applied after the SA-based search. Simulation results based on benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness of the PSOMA. Additionally, the effects of some parameters on optimization performances are also discussed.

  8. Development and Demonstration of a Networked Telepathology 3-D Imaging, Databasing, and Communication System

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1996-10-01

    aligned using an octree search algorithm combined with cross correlation analysis . Successive 4x downsampling with optional and specifiable neighborhood...desired and the search engine embedded in the OODBMS will find the requested imagery and que it to the user for further analysis . This application was...obtained during Hoftmann-LaRoche production pathology imaging performed at UMICH. Versant works well and is easy to use; 3) Pathology Image Analysis

  9. A novel heuristic algorithm for capacitated vehicle routing problem

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kır, Sena; Yazgan, Harun Reşit; Tüncel, Emre

    2017-09-01

    The vehicle routing problem with the capacity constraints was considered in this paper. It is quite difficult to achieve an optimal solution with traditional optimization methods by reason of the high computational complexity for large-scale problems. Consequently, new heuristic or metaheuristic approaches have been developed to solve this problem. In this paper, we constructed a new heuristic algorithm based on the tabu search and adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) with several specifically designed operators and features to solve the capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP). The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm was illustrated on the benchmark problems. The algorithm provides a better performance on large-scaled instances and gained advantage in terms of CPU time. In addition, we solved a real-life CVRP using the proposed algorithm and found the encouraging results by comparison with the current situation that the company is in.

  10. A novel discrete PSO algorithm for solving job shop scheduling problem to minimize makespan

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Rameshkumar, K.; Rajendran, C.

    2018-02-01

    In this work, a discrete version of PSO algorithm is proposed to minimize the makespan of a job-shop. A novel schedule builder has been utilized to generate active schedules. The discrete PSO is tested using well known benchmark problems available in the literature. The solution produced by the proposed algorithms is compared with best known solution published in the literature and also compared with hybrid particle swarm algorithm and variable neighborhood search PSO algorithm. The solution construction methodology adopted in this study is found to be effective in producing good quality solutions for the various benchmark job-shop scheduling problems.

  11. Improved Seam-Line Searching Algorithm for UAV Image Mosaic with Optical Flow

    PubMed Central

    Zhang, Weilong; Guo, Bingxuan; Liao, Xuan; Li, Wenzhuo

    2018-01-01

    Ghosting and seams are two major challenges in creating unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) image mosaic. In response to these problems, this paper proposes an improved method for UAV image seam-line searching. First, an image matching algorithm is used to extract and match the features of adjacent images, so that they can be transformed into the same coordinate system. Then, the gray scale difference, the gradient minimum, and the optical flow value of pixels in adjacent image overlapped area in a neighborhood are calculated, which can be applied to creating an energy function for seam-line searching. Based on that, an improved dynamic programming algorithm is proposed to search the optimal seam-lines to complete the UAV image mosaic. This algorithm adopts a more adaptive energy aggregation and traversal strategy, which can find a more ideal splicing path for adjacent UAV images and avoid the ground objects better. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively solve the problems of ghosting and seams in the panoramic UAV images. PMID:29659526

  12. A multiobjective optimization model and an orthogonal design-based hybrid heuristic algorithm for regional urban mining management problems.

    PubMed

    Wu, Hao; Wan, Zhong

    2018-02-01

    In this paper, a multiobjective mixed-integer piecewise nonlinear programming model (MOMIPNLP) is built to formulate the management problem of urban mining system, where the decision variables are associated with buy-back pricing, choices of sites, transportation planning, and adjustment of production capacity. Different from the existing approaches, the social negative effect, generated from structural optimization of the recycling system, is minimized in our model, as well as the total recycling profit and utility from environmental improvement are jointly maximized. For solving the problem, the MOMIPNLP model is first transformed into an ordinary mixed-integer nonlinear programming model by variable substitution such that the piecewise feature of the model is removed. Then, based on technique of orthogonal design, a hybrid heuristic algorithm is developed to find an approximate Pareto-optimal solution, where genetic algorithm is used to optimize the structure of search neighborhood, and both local branching algorithm and relaxation-induced neighborhood search algorithm are employed to cut the searching branches and reduce the number of variables in each branch. Numerical experiments indicate that this algorithm spends less CPU (central processing unit) time in solving large-scale regional urban mining management problems, especially in comparison with the similar ones available in literature. By case study and sensitivity analysis, a number of practical managerial implications are revealed from the model. Since the metal stocks in society are reliable overground mineral sources, urban mining has been paid great attention as emerging strategic resources in an era of resource shortage. By mathematical modeling and development of efficient algorithms, this paper provides decision makers with useful suggestions on the optimal design of recycling system in urban mining. For example, this paper can answer how to encourage enterprises to join the recycling activities by government's support and subsidies, whether the existing recycling system can meet the developmental requirements or not, and what is a reasonable adjustment of production capacity.

  13. Hybridization of decomposition and local search for multiobjective optimization.

    PubMed

    Ke, Liangjun; Zhang, Qingfu; Battiti, Roberto

    2014-10-01

    Combining ideas from evolutionary algorithms, decomposition approaches, and Pareto local search, this paper suggests a simple yet efficient memetic algorithm for combinatorial multiobjective optimization problems: memetic algorithm based on decomposition (MOMAD). It decomposes a combinatorial multiobjective problem into a number of single objective optimization problems using an aggregation method. MOMAD evolves three populations: 1) population P(L) for recording the current solution to each subproblem; 2) population P(P) for storing starting solutions for Pareto local search; and 3) an external population P(E) for maintaining all the nondominated solutions found so far during the search. A problem-specific single objective heuristic can be applied to these subproblems to initialize the three populations. At each generation, a Pareto local search method is first applied to search a neighborhood of each solution in P(P) to update P(L) and P(E). Then a single objective local search is applied to each perturbed solution in P(L) for improving P(L) and P(E), and reinitializing P(P). The procedure is repeated until a stopping condition is met. MOMAD provides a generic hybrid multiobjective algorithmic framework in which problem specific knowledge, well developed single objective local search and heuristics and Pareto local search methods can be hybridized. It is a population based iterative method and thus an anytime algorithm. Extensive experiments have been conducted in this paper to study MOMAD and compare it with some other state-of-the-art algorithms on the multiobjective traveling salesman problem and the multiobjective knapsack problem. The experimental results show that our proposed algorithm outperforms or performs similarly to the best so far heuristics on these two problems.

  14. Honey Bees Inspired Optimization Method: The Bees Algorithm.

    PubMed

    Yuce, Baris; Packianather, Michael S; Mastrocinque, Ernesto; Pham, Duc Truong; Lambiase, Alfredo

    2013-11-06

    Optimization algorithms are search methods where the goal is to find an optimal solution to a problem, in order to satisfy one or more objective functions, possibly subject to a set of constraints. Studies of social animals and social insects have resulted in a number of computational models of swarm intelligence. Within these swarms their collective behavior is usually very complex. The collective behavior of a swarm of social organisms emerges from the behaviors of the individuals of that swarm. Researchers have developed computational optimization methods based on biology such as Genetic Algorithms, Particle Swarm Optimization, and Ant Colony. The aim of this paper is to describe an optimization algorithm called the Bees Algorithm, inspired from the natural foraging behavior of honey bees, to find the optimal solution. The algorithm performs both an exploitative neighborhood search combined with random explorative search. In this paper, after an explanation of the natural foraging behavior of honey bees, the basic Bees Algorithm and its improved versions are described and are implemented in order to optimize several benchmark functions, and the results are compared with those obtained with different optimization algorithms. The results show that the Bees Algorithm offering some advantage over other optimization methods according to the nature of the problem.

  15. Dynamic Inertia Weight Binary Bat Algorithm with Neighborhood Search

    PubMed Central

    2017-01-01

    Binary bat algorithm (BBA) is a binary version of the bat algorithm (BA). It has been proven that BBA is competitive compared to other binary heuristic algorithms. Since the update processes of velocity in the algorithm are consistent with BA, in some cases, this algorithm also faces the premature convergence problem. This paper proposes an improved binary bat algorithm (IBBA) to solve this problem. To evaluate the performance of IBBA, standard benchmark functions and zero-one knapsack problems have been employed. The numeric results obtained by benchmark functions experiment prove that the proposed approach greatly outperforms the original BBA and binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO). Compared with several other heuristic algorithms on zero-one knapsack problems, it also verifies that the proposed algorithm is more able to avoid local minima. PMID:28634487

  16. Dynamic Inertia Weight Binary Bat Algorithm with Neighborhood Search.

    PubMed

    Huang, Xingwang; Zeng, Xuewen; Han, Rui

    2017-01-01

    Binary bat algorithm (BBA) is a binary version of the bat algorithm (BA). It has been proven that BBA is competitive compared to other binary heuristic algorithms. Since the update processes of velocity in the algorithm are consistent with BA, in some cases, this algorithm also faces the premature convergence problem. This paper proposes an improved binary bat algorithm (IBBA) to solve this problem. To evaluate the performance of IBBA, standard benchmark functions and zero-one knapsack problems have been employed. The numeric results obtained by benchmark functions experiment prove that the proposed approach greatly outperforms the original BBA and binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO). Compared with several other heuristic algorithms on zero-one knapsack problems, it also verifies that the proposed algorithm is more able to avoid local minima.

  17. Routing design and fleet allocation optimization of freeway service patrol: Improved results using genetic algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sun, Xiuqiao; Wang, Jian

    2018-07-01

    Freeway service patrol (FSP), is considered to be an effective method for incident management and can help transportation agency decision-makers alter existing route coverage and fleet allocation. This paper investigates the FSP problem of patrol routing design and fleet allocation, with the objective of minimizing the overall average incident response time. While the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm and its improvements have been applied to solve this problem, they often become trapped in local optimal solution. Moreover, the issue of searching efficiency remains to be further addressed. In this paper, we employ the genetic algorithm (GA) and SA to solve the FSP problem. To maintain population diversity and avoid premature convergence, niche strategy is incorporated into the traditional genetic algorithm. We also employ elitist strategy to speed up the convergence. Numerical experiments have been conducted with the help of the Sioux Falls network. Results show that the GA slightly outperforms the dual-based greedy (DBG) algorithm, the very large-scale neighborhood searching (VLNS) algorithm, the SA algorithm and the scenario algorithm.

  18. A multipopulation PSO based memetic algorithm for permutation flow shop scheduling.

    PubMed

    Liu, Ruochen; Ma, Chenlin; Ma, Wenping; Li, Yangyang

    2013-01-01

    The permutation flow shop scheduling problem (PFSSP) is part of production scheduling, which belongs to the hardest combinatorial optimization problem. In this paper, a multipopulation particle swarm optimization (PSO) based memetic algorithm (MPSOMA) is proposed in this paper. In the proposed algorithm, the whole particle swarm population is divided into three subpopulations in which each particle evolves itself by the standard PSO and then updates each subpopulation by using different local search schemes such as variable neighborhood search (VNS) and individual improvement scheme (IIS). Then, the best particle of each subpopulation is selected to construct a probabilistic model by using estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) and three particles are sampled from the probabilistic model to update the worst individual in each subpopulation. The best particle in the entire particle swarm is used to update the global optimal solution. The proposed MPSOMA is compared with two recently proposed algorithms, namely, PSO based memetic algorithm (PSOMA) and hybrid particle swarm optimization with estimation of distribution algorithm (PSOEDA), on 29 well-known PFFSPs taken from OR-library, and the experimental results show that it is an effective approach for the PFFSP.

  19. Cooperative Scheduling of Imaging Observation Tasks for High-Altitude Airships Based on Propagation Algorithm

    PubMed Central

    Chuan, He; Dishan, Qiu; Jin, Liu

    2012-01-01

    The cooperative scheduling problem on high-altitude airships for imaging observation tasks is discussed. A constraint programming model is established by analyzing the main constraints, which takes the maximum task benefit and the minimum cruising distance as two optimization objectives. The cooperative scheduling problem of high-altitude airships is converted into a main problem and a subproblem by adopting hierarchy architecture. The solution to the main problem can construct the preliminary matching between tasks and observation resource in order to reduce the search space of the original problem. Furthermore, the solution to the sub-problem can detect the key nodes that each airship needs to fly through in sequence, so as to get the cruising path. Firstly, the task set is divided by using k-core neighborhood growth cluster algorithm (K-NGCA). Then, a novel swarm intelligence algorithm named propagation algorithm (PA) is combined with the key node search algorithm (KNSA) to optimize the cruising path of each airship and determine the execution time interval of each task. Meanwhile, this paper also provides the realization approach of the above algorithm and especially makes a detailed introduction on the encoding rules, search models, and propagation mechanism of the PA. Finally, the application results and comparison analysis show the proposed models and algorithms are effective and feasible. PMID:23365522

  20. LiveWire interactive boundary extraction algorithm based on Haar wavelet transform and control point set direction search

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Cheng, Jun; Zhang, Jun; Tian, Jinwen

    2015-12-01

    Based on deep analysis of the LiveWire interactive boundary extraction algorithm, a new algorithm focusing on improving the speed of LiveWire algorithm is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the Haar wavelet transform is carried on the input image, and the boundary is extracted on the low resolution image obtained by the wavelet transform of the input image. Secondly, calculating LiveWire shortest path is based on the control point set direction search by utilizing the spatial relationship between the two control points users provide in real time. Thirdly, the search order of the adjacent points of the starting node is set in advance. An ordinary queue instead of a priority queue is taken as the storage pool of the points when optimizing their shortest path value, thus reducing the complexity of the algorithm from O[n2] to O[n]. Finally, A region iterative backward projection method based on neighborhood pixel polling has been used to convert dual-pixel boundary of the reconstructed image to single-pixel boundary after Haar wavelet inverse transform. The algorithm proposed in this paper combines the advantage of the Haar wavelet transform and the advantage of the optimal path searching method based on control point set direction search. The former has fast speed of image decomposition and reconstruction and is more consistent with the texture features of the image and the latter can reduce the time complexity of the original algorithm. So that the algorithm can improve the speed in interactive boundary extraction as well as reflect the boundary information of the image more comprehensively. All methods mentioned above have a big role in improving the execution efficiency and the robustness of the algorithm.

  1. An Elitist Multiobjective Tabu Search for Optimal Design of Groundwater Remediation Systems.

    PubMed

    Yang, Yun; Wu, Jianfeng; Wang, Jinguo; Zhou, Zhifang

    2017-11-01

    This study presents a new multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA), the elitist multiobjective tabu search (EMOTS), and incorporates it with MODFLOW/MT3DMS to develop a groundwater simulation-optimization (SO) framework based on modular design for optimal design of groundwater remediation systems using pump-and-treat (PAT) technique. The most notable improvement of EMOTS over the original multiple objective tabu search (MOTS) lies in the elitist strategy, selection strategy, and neighborhood move rule. The elitist strategy is to maintain all nondominated solutions within later search process for better converging to the true Pareto front. The elitism-based selection operator is modified to choose two most remote solutions from current candidate list as seed solutions to increase the diversity of searching space. Moreover, neighborhood solutions are uniformly generated using the Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) in the bounded neighborhood space around each seed solution. To demonstrate the performance of the EMOTS, we consider a synthetic groundwater remediation example. Problem formulations consist of two objective functions with continuous decision variables of pumping rates while meeting water quality requirements. Especially, sensitivity analysis is evaluated through the synthetic case for determination of optimal combination of the heuristic parameters. Furthermore, the EMOTS is successfully applied to evaluate remediation options at the field site of the Massachusetts Military Reservation (MMR) in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. With both the hypothetical and the large-scale field remediation sites, the EMOTS-based SO framework is demonstrated to outperform the original MOTS in achieving the performance metrics of optimality and diversity of nondominated frontiers with desirable stability and robustness. © 2017, National Ground Water Association.

  2. Generation algorithm of craniofacial structure contour in cephalometric images

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mondal, Tanmoy; Jain, Ashish; Sardana, H. K.

    2010-02-01

    Anatomical structure tracing on cephalograms is a significant way to obtain cephalometric analysis. Computerized cephalometric analysis involves both manual and automatic approaches. The manual approach is limited in accuracy and repeatability. In this paper we have attempted to develop and test a novel method for automatic localization of craniofacial structure based on the detected edges on the region of interest. According to the grey scale feature at the different region of the cephalometric images, an algorithm for obtaining tissue contour is put forward. Using edge detection with specific threshold an improved bidirectional contour tracing approach is proposed by an interactive selection of the starting edge pixels, the tracking process searches repetitively for an edge pixel at the neighborhood of previously searched edge pixel to segment images, and then craniofacial structures are obtained. The effectiveness of the algorithm is demonstrated by the preliminary experimental results obtained with the proposed method.

  3. Anatomy of the Attraction Basins: Breaking with the Intuition.

    PubMed

    Hernando, Leticia; Mendiburu, Alexander; Lozano, Jose A

    2018-05-22

    Solving combinatorial optimization problems efficiently requires the development of algorithms that consider the specific properties of the problems. In this sense, local search algorithms are designed over a neighborhood structure that partially accounts for these properties. Considering a neighborhood, the space is usually interpreted as a natural landscape, with valleys and mountains. Under this perception, it is commonly believed that, if maximizing, the solutions located in the slopes of the same mountain belong to the same attraction basin, with the peaks of the mountains being the local optima. Unfortunately, this is a widespread erroneous visualization of a combinatorial landscape. Thus, our aim is to clarify this aspect, providing a detailed analysis of, first, the existence of plateaus where the local optima are involved, and second, the properties that define the topology of the attraction basins, picturing a reliable visualization of the landscapes. Some of the features explored in this paper have never been examined before. Hence, new findings about the structure of the attraction basins are shown. The study is focused on instances of permutation-based combinatorial optimization problems considering the 2-exchange and the insert neighborhoods. As a consequence of this work, we break away from the extended belief about the anatomy of attraction basins.

  4. A Multipopulation PSO Based Memetic Algorithm for Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling

    PubMed Central

    Liu, Ruochen; Ma, Chenlin; Ma, Wenping; Li, Yangyang

    2013-01-01

    The permutation flow shop scheduling problem (PFSSP) is part of production scheduling, which belongs to the hardest combinatorial optimization problem. In this paper, a multipopulation particle swarm optimization (PSO) based memetic algorithm (MPSOMA) is proposed in this paper. In the proposed algorithm, the whole particle swarm population is divided into three subpopulations in which each particle evolves itself by the standard PSO and then updates each subpopulation by using different local search schemes such as variable neighborhood search (VNS) and individual improvement scheme (IIS). Then, the best particle of each subpopulation is selected to construct a probabilistic model by using estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) and three particles are sampled from the probabilistic model to update the worst individual in each subpopulation. The best particle in the entire particle swarm is used to update the global optimal solution. The proposed MPSOMA is compared with two recently proposed algorithms, namely, PSO based memetic algorithm (PSOMA) and hybrid particle swarm optimization with estimation of distribution algorithm (PSOEDA), on 29 well-known PFFSPs taken from OR-library, and the experimental results show that it is an effective approach for the PFFSP. PMID:24453841

  5. Realizing Racial and Ethnic Neighborhood Preferences? Exploring the Mismatches Between What People Want, Where They Search, and Where They Live.

    PubMed

    Havekes, Esther; Bader, Michael; Krysan, Maria

    The housing search process is an overlooked mechanism in the scholarly research that seeks to understand the causes of persistent racial residential segregation in the United States. Past research has explored in detail the preferences people hold in terms of the racial and ethnic composition of their neighborhoods, and more recently some have also examined the correspondence between racial and ethnic neighborhood preferences and current neighborhood racial/ethnic composition. But an intermediate stage-the racial/ethnic composition of where people search-has not been investigated. We analyze a subsample ( n  = 382) from the 2004-2005 Chicago Area Study to demonstrate the value of systematically studying the matches-or mismatches-between preferences, search locations, and neighborhood outcomes. We find that for whites, not only their current neighborhoods but also the neighborhoods in which they search for housing have larger percentages of whites than they say they prefer. In contrast, blacks-and to a lesser extent Latinos-search in neighborhoods that correspond to their preferences, but reside in neighborhoods with a larger percentage own group. Logistic regression analyses reveal that mismatches are associated with both a lack of information and inadequate finances, but also may be due to socially desirable responding for whites in particular. Our results provide suggestive evidence of the importance of unpacking the search process more generally and draw attention to what are likely to be productive new future data collection efforts as well as an area potentially ripe for policy interventions.

  6. Real-time image dehazing using local adaptive neighborhoods and dark-channel-prior

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Valderrama, Jesus A.; Díaz-Ramírez, Víctor H.; Kober, Vitaly; Hernandez, Enrique

    2015-09-01

    A real-time algorithm for single image dehazing is presented. The algorithm is based on calculation of local neighborhoods of a hazed image inside a moving window. The local neighborhoods are constructed by computing rank-order statistics. Next the dark-channel-prior approach is applied to the local neighborhoods to estimate the transmission function of the scene. By using the suggested approach there is no need for applying a refining algorithm to the estimated transmission such as the soft matting algorithm. To achieve high-rate signal processing the proposed algorithm is implemented exploiting massive parallelism on a graphics processing unit (GPU). Computer simulation results are carried out to test the performance of the proposed algorithm in terms of dehazing efficiency and speed of processing. These tests are performed using several synthetic and real images. The obtained results are analyzed and compared with those obtained with existing dehazing algorithms.

  7. Enhanced Approximate Nearest Neighbor via Local Area Focused Search.

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Gonzales, Antonio; Blazier, Nicholas Paul

    Approximate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) algorithms are increasingly important in machine learning, data mining, and image processing applications. There is a large family of space- partitioning ANN algorithms, such as randomized KD-Trees, that work well in practice but are limited by an exponential increase in similarity comparisons required to optimize recall. Additionally, they only support a small set of similarity metrics. We present Local Area Fo- cused Search (LAFS), a method that enhances the way queries are performed using an existing ANN index. Instead of a single query, LAFS performs a number of smaller (fewer similarity comparisons) queries and focuses onmore » a local neighborhood which is refined as candidates are identified. We show that our technique improves performance on several well known datasets and is easily extended to general similarity metrics using kernel projection techniques.« less

  8. Functional grouping of similar genes using eigenanalysis on minimum spanning tree based neighborhood graph.

    PubMed

    Jothi, R; Mohanty, Sraban Kumar; Ojha, Aparajita

    2016-04-01

    Gene expression data clustering is an important biological process in DNA microarray analysis. Although there have been many clustering algorithms for gene expression analysis, finding a suitable and effective clustering algorithm is always a challenging problem due to the heterogeneous nature of gene profiles. Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) based clustering algorithms have been successfully employed to detect clusters of varying shapes and sizes. This paper proposes a novel clustering algorithm using Eigenanalysis on Minimum Spanning Tree based neighborhood graph (E-MST). As MST of a set of points reflects the similarity of the points with their neighborhood, the proposed algorithm employs a similarity graph obtained from k(') rounds of MST (k(')-MST neighborhood graph). By studying the spectral properties of the similarity matrix obtained from k(')-MST graph, the proposed algorithm achieves improved clustering results. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm on 12 gene expression datasets. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than the standard clustering algorithms. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. Solving the flexible job shop problem by hybrid metaheuristics-based multiagent model

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nouri, Houssem Eddine; Belkahla Driss, Olfa; Ghédira, Khaled

    2018-03-01

    The flexible job shop scheduling problem (FJSP) is a generalization of the classical job shop scheduling problem that allows to process operations on one machine out of a set of alternative machines. The FJSP is an NP-hard problem consisting of two sub-problems, which are the assignment and the scheduling problems. In this paper, we propose how to solve the FJSP by hybrid metaheuristics-based clustered holonic multiagent model. First, a neighborhood-based genetic algorithm (NGA) is applied by a scheduler agent for a global exploration of the search space. Second, a local search technique is used by a set of cluster agents to guide the research in promising regions of the search space and to improve the quality of the NGA final population. The efficiency of our approach is explained by the flexible selection of the promising parts of the search space by the clustering operator after the genetic algorithm process, and by applying the intensification technique of the tabu search allowing to restart the search from a set of elite solutions to attain new dominant scheduling solutions. Computational results are presented using four sets of well-known benchmark literature instances. New upper bounds are found, showing the effectiveness of the presented approach.

  10. An Orthogonal Evolutionary Algorithm With Learning Automata for Multiobjective Optimization.

    PubMed

    Dai, Cai; Wang, Yuping; Ye, Miao; Xue, Xingsi; Liu, Hailin

    2016-12-01

    Research on multiobjective optimization problems becomes one of the hottest topics of intelligent computation. In order to improve the search efficiency of an evolutionary algorithm and maintain the diversity of solutions, in this paper, the learning automata (LA) is first used for quantization orthogonal crossover (QOX), and a new fitness function based on decomposition is proposed to achieve these two purposes. Based on these, an orthogonal evolutionary algorithm with LA for complex multiobjective optimization problems with continuous variables is proposed. The experimental results show that in continuous states, the proposed algorithm is able to achieve accurate Pareto-optimal sets and wide Pareto-optimal fronts efficiently. Moreover, the comparison with the several existing well-known algorithms: nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II, decomposition-based multiobjective evolutionary algorithm, decomposition-based multiobjective evolutionary algorithm with an ensemble of neighborhood sizes, multiobjective optimization by LA, and multiobjective immune algorithm with nondominated neighbor-based selection, on 15 multiobjective benchmark problems, shows that the proposed algorithm is able to find more accurate and evenly distributed Pareto-optimal fronts than the compared ones.

  11. A New TS Algorithm for Solving Low-Carbon Logistics Vehicle Routing Problem with Split Deliveries by Backpack-From a Green Operation Perspective.

    PubMed

    Xia, Yangkun; Fu, Zhuo; Tsai, Sang-Bing; Wang, Jiangtao

    2018-05-10

    In order to promote the development of low-carbon logistics and economize logistics distribution costs, the vehicle routing problem with split deliveries by backpack is studied. With the help of the model of classical capacitated vehicle routing problem, in this study, a form of discrete split deliveries was designed in which the customer demand can be split only by backpack. A double-objective mathematical model and the corresponding adaptive tabu search (TS) algorithm were constructed for solving this problem. By embedding the adaptive penalty mechanism, and adopting the random neighborhood selection strategy and reinitialization principle, the global optimization ability of the new algorithm was enhanced. Comparisons with the results in the literature show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The proposed method can save the costs of low-carbon logistics and reduce carbon emissions, which is conducive to the sustainable development of low-carbon logistics.

  12. Asymmetric neighborhood functions accelerate ordering process of self-organizing maps

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Ota, Kaiichiro; Aoki, Takaaki; Kurata, Koji

    2011-02-15

    A self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm can generate a topographic map from a high-dimensional stimulus space to a low-dimensional array of units. Because a topographic map preserves neighborhood relationships between the stimuli, the SOM can be applied to certain types of information processing such as data visualization. During the learning process, however, topological defects frequently emerge in the map. The presence of defects tends to drastically slow down the formation of a globally ordered topographic map. To remove such topological defects, it has been reported that an asymmetric neighborhood function is effective, but only in the simple case of mapping one-dimensionalmore » stimuli to a chain of units. In this paper, we demonstrate that even when high-dimensional stimuli are used, the asymmetric neighborhood function is effective for both artificial and real-world data. Our results suggest that applying the asymmetric neighborhood function to the SOM algorithm improves the reliability of the algorithm. In addition, it enables processing of complicated, high-dimensional data by using this algorithm.« less

  13. Local Geographic Variation of Public Services Inequality: Does the Neighborhood Scale Matter?

    PubMed Central

    Wei, Chunzhu; Cabrera-Barona, Pablo; Blaschke, Thomas

    2016-01-01

    This study aims to explore the effect of the neighborhood scale when estimating public services inequality based on the aggregation of social, environmental, and health-related indicators. Inequality analyses were carried out at three neighborhood scales: the original census blocks and two aggregated neighborhood units generated by the spatial “k”luster analysis by the tree edge removal (SKATER) algorithm and the self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm. Then, we combined a set of health-related public services indicators with the geographically weighted principal components analyses (GWPCA) and the principal components analyses (PCA) to measure the public services inequality across all multi-scale neighborhood units. Finally, a statistical test was applied to evaluate the scale effects in inequality measurements by combining all available field survey data. We chose Quito as the case study area. All of the aggregated neighborhood units performed better than the original census blocks in terms of the social indicators extracted from a field survey. The SKATER and SOM algorithms can help to define the neighborhoods in inequality analyses. Moreover, GWPCA performs better than PCA in multivariate spatial inequality estimation. Understanding the scale effects is essential to sustain a social neighborhood organization, which, in turn, positively affects social determinants of public health and public quality of life. PMID:27706072

  14. Two-Swim Operators in the Modified Bacterial Foraging Algorithm for the Optimal Synthesis of Four-Bar Mechanisms

    PubMed Central

    Hernández-Ocaña, Betania; Pozos-Parra, Ma. Del Pilar; Mezura-Montes, Efrén; Portilla-Flores, Edgar Alfredo; Vega-Alvarado, Eduardo; Calva-Yáñez, Maria Bárbara

    2016-01-01

    This paper presents two-swim operators to be added to the chemotaxis process of the modified bacterial foraging optimization algorithm to solve three instances of the synthesis of four-bar planar mechanisms. One swim favors exploration while the second one promotes fine movements in the neighborhood of each bacterium. The combined effect of the new operators looks to increase the production of better solutions during the search. As a consequence, the ability of the algorithm to escape from local optimum solutions is enhanced. The algorithm is tested through four experiments and its results are compared against two BFOA-based algorithms and also against a differential evolution algorithm designed for mechanical design problems. The overall results indicate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other BFOA-based approaches and finds highly competitive mechanisms, with a single set of parameter values and with less evaluations in the first synthesis problem, with respect to those mechanisms obtained by the differential evolution algorithm, which needed a parameter fine-tuning process for each optimization problem. PMID:27057156

  15. Two-Swim Operators in the Modified Bacterial Foraging Algorithm for the Optimal Synthesis of Four-Bar Mechanisms.

    PubMed

    Hernández-Ocaña, Betania; Pozos-Parra, Ma Del Pilar; Mezura-Montes, Efrén; Portilla-Flores, Edgar Alfredo; Vega-Alvarado, Eduardo; Calva-Yáñez, Maria Bárbara

    2016-01-01

    This paper presents two-swim operators to be added to the chemotaxis process of the modified bacterial foraging optimization algorithm to solve three instances of the synthesis of four-bar planar mechanisms. One swim favors exploration while the second one promotes fine movements in the neighborhood of each bacterium. The combined effect of the new operators looks to increase the production of better solutions during the search. As a consequence, the ability of the algorithm to escape from local optimum solutions is enhanced. The algorithm is tested through four experiments and its results are compared against two BFOA-based algorithms and also against a differential evolution algorithm designed for mechanical design problems. The overall results indicate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other BFOA-based approaches and finds highly competitive mechanisms, with a single set of parameter values and with less evaluations in the first synthesis problem, with respect to those mechanisms obtained by the differential evolution algorithm, which needed a parameter fine-tuning process for each optimization problem.

  16. Strategic planning for disaster recovery with stochastic last mile distribution

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Bent, Russell Whitford; Van Hentenryck, Pascal; Coffrin, Carleton

    2010-01-01

    This paper considers the single commodity allocation problem (SCAP) for disaster recovery, a fundamental problem faced by all populated areas. SCAPs are complex stochastic optimization problems that combine resource allocation, warehouse routing, and parallel fleet routing. Moreover, these problems must be solved under tight runtime constraints to be practical in real-world disaster situations. This paper formalizes the specification of SCAPs and introduces a novel multi-stage hybrid-optimization algorithm that utilizes the strengths of mixed integer programming, constraint programming, and large neighborhood search. The algorithm was validated on hurricane disaster scenarios generated by Los Alamos National Laboratory using state-of-the-art disaster simulation toolsmore » and is deployed to aid federal organizations in the US.« less

  17. Neighborhood-Level Stress and Circadian Cortisol: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

    PubMed

    Hosseini, Fatemeh; Adha, Nikmatul; Zainol, Rosilawati; Isahak, Marzuki; Nemati, Nahid

    2014-10-01

    The main objective was to find association between basal cortisol and neighborhood-level stress. Systematic searches, including electronic and hand searches, were conducted. The most recent date of the search was July 26, 2013. Primary observational studies included if they considered stress related outcomes in the neighborhood context. Using the EndNote X7 advanced search option; the authors examined the abstracts and titles of the 18,092 articles to exclude obviously irrelevant studies, gray literature, discussion papers, reviews and, studies with no complete data. Two authors independently extracted data from the original reports into pre-designed data extraction forms based on the Data Extraction Template of the Cochrane Consumer and Communication Review Group (CCCRG). Ten studies with a total of 2,134 participants were synthesized and analyzed. Two studies out of ten received expanded meta-analysis. The overall effect size (95% CI) for cortisol level for residents in neighborhoods with lower stress compared to inhabitants from higher was 0.12 (0.01, 0.23). This review is demonstrating a link between psychosocial or physical stress and cortisol obtained from saliva. However, living in high disorder neighborhoods results in higher level of cortisol. This represents a biological indicator of psychosocial/physical stress exposure (i.e., neighborhood disorder) that reflects variances in stress exposure levels.

  18. An improved exploratory search technique for pure integer linear programming problems

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Fogle, F. R.

    1990-01-01

    The development is documented of a heuristic method for the solution of pure integer linear programming problems. The procedure draws its methodology from the ideas of Hooke and Jeeves type 1 and 2 exploratory searches, greedy procedures, and neighborhood searches. It uses an efficient rounding method to obtain its first feasible integer point from the optimal continuous solution obtained via the simplex method. Since this method is based entirely on simple addition or subtraction of one to each variable of a point in n-space and the subsequent comparison of candidate solutions to a given set of constraints, it facilitates significant complexity improvements over existing techniques. It also obtains the same optimal solution found by the branch-and-bound technique in 44 of 45 small to moderate size test problems. Two example problems are worked in detail to show the inner workings of the method. Furthermore, using an established weighted scheme for comparing computational effort involved in an algorithm, a comparison of this algorithm is made to the more established and rigorous branch-and-bound method. A computer implementation of the procedure, in PC compatible Pascal, is also presented and discussed.

  19. A New TS Algorithm for Solving Low-Carbon Logistics Vehicle Routing Problem with Split Deliveries by Backpack—From a Green Operation Perspective

    PubMed Central

    Fu, Zhuo; Wang, Jiangtao

    2018-01-01

    In order to promote the development of low-carbon logistics and economize logistics distribution costs, the vehicle routing problem with split deliveries by backpack is studied. With the help of the model of classical capacitated vehicle routing problem, in this study, a form of discrete split deliveries was designed in which the customer demand can be split only by backpack. A double-objective mathematical model and the corresponding adaptive tabu search (TS) algorithm were constructed for solving this problem. By embedding the adaptive penalty mechanism, and adopting the random neighborhood selection strategy and reinitialization principle, the global optimization ability of the new algorithm was enhanced. Comparisons with the results in the literature show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The proposed method can save the costs of low-carbon logistics and reduce carbon emissions, which is conducive to the sustainable development of low-carbon logistics. PMID:29747469

  20. Protein structure prediction with local adjust tabu search algorithm

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    Background Protein folding structure prediction is one of the most challenging problems in the bioinformatics domain. Because of the complexity of the realistic protein structure, the simplified structure model and the computational method should be adopted in the research. The AB off-lattice model is one of the simplification models, which only considers two classes of amino acids, hydrophobic (A) residues and hydrophilic (B) residues. Results The main work of this paper is to discuss how to optimize the lowest energy configurations in 2D off-lattice model and 3D off-lattice model by using Fibonacci sequences and real protein sequences. In order to avoid falling into local minimum and faster convergence to the global minimum, we introduce a novel method (SATS) to the protein structure problem, which combines simulated annealing algorithm and tabu search algorithm. Various strategies, such as the new encoding strategy, the adaptive neighborhood generation strategy and the local adjustment strategy, are adopted successfully for high-speed searching the optimal conformation corresponds to the lowest energy of the protein sequences. Experimental results show that some of the results obtained by the improved SATS are better than those reported in previous literatures, and we can sure that the lowest energy folding state for short Fibonacci sequences have been found. Conclusions Although the off-lattice models is not very realistic, they can reflect some important characteristics of the realistic protein. It can be found that 3D off-lattice model is more like native folding structure of the realistic protein than 2D off-lattice model. In addition, compared with some previous researches, the proposed hybrid algorithm can more effectively and more quickly search the spatial folding structure of a protein chain. PMID:25474708

  1. Constraint-Based Local Search for Constrained Optimum Paths Problems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Pham, Quang Dung; Deville, Yves; van Hentenryck, Pascal

    Constrained Optimum Path (COP) problems arise in many real-life applications and are ubiquitous in communication networks. They have been traditionally approached by dedicated algorithms, which are often hard to extend with side constraints and to apply widely. This paper proposes a constraint-based local search (CBLS) framework for COP applications, bringing the compositionality, reuse, and extensibility at the core of CBLS and CP systems. The modeling contribution is the ability to express compositional models for various COP applications at a high level of abstraction, while cleanly separating the model and the search procedure. The main technical contribution is a connected neighborhood based on rooted spanning trees to find high-quality solutions to COP problems. The framework, implemented in COMET, is applied to Resource Constrained Shortest Path (RCSP) problems (with and without side constraints) and to the edge-disjoint paths problem (EDP). Computational results show the potential significance of the approach.

  2. Effective hybrid teaching-learning-based optimization algorithm for balancing two-sided assembly lines with multiple constraints

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tang, Qiuhua; Li, Zixiang; Zhang, Liping; Floudas, C. A.; Cao, Xiaojun

    2015-09-01

    Due to the NP-hardness of the two-sided assembly line balancing (TALB) problem, multiple constraints existing in real applications are less studied, especially when one task is involved with several constraints. In this paper, an effective hybrid algorithm is proposed to address the TALB problem with multiple constraints (TALB-MC). Considering the discrete attribute of TALB-MC and the continuous attribute of the standard teaching-learning-based optimization (TLBO) algorithm, the random-keys method is hired in task permutation representation, for the purpose of bridging the gap between them. Subsequently, a special mechanism for handling multiple constraints is developed. In the mechanism, the directions constraint of each task is ensured by the direction check and adjustment. The zoning constraints and the synchronism constraints are satisfied by teasing out the hidden correlations among constraints. The positional constraint is allowed to be violated to some extent in decoding and punished in cost function. Finally, with the TLBO seeking for the global optimum, the variable neighborhood search (VNS) is further hybridized to extend the local search space. The experimental results show that the proposed hybrid algorithm outperforms the late acceptance hill-climbing algorithm (LAHC) for TALB-MC in most cases, especially for large-size problems with multiple constraints, and demonstrates well balance between the exploration and the exploitation. This research proposes an effective and efficient algorithm for solving TALB-MC problem by hybridizing the TLBO and VNS.

  3. A New Soft Computing Method for K-Harmonic Means Clustering.

    PubMed

    Yeh, Wei-Chang; Jiang, Yunzhi; Chen, Yee-Fen; Chen, Zhe

    2016-01-01

    The K-harmonic means clustering algorithm (KHM) is a new clustering method used to group data such that the sum of the harmonic averages of the distances between each entity and all cluster centroids is minimized. Because it is less sensitive to initialization than K-means (KM), many researchers have recently been attracted to studying KHM. In this study, the proposed iSSO-KHM is based on an improved simplified swarm optimization (iSSO) and integrates a variable neighborhood search (VNS) for KHM clustering. As evidence of the utility of the proposed iSSO-KHM, we present extensive computational results on eight benchmark problems. From the computational results, the comparison appears to support the superiority of the proposed iSSO-KHM over previously developed algorithms for all experiments in the literature.

  4. Hybrid Metaheuristics for Solving a Fuzzy Single Batch-Processing Machine Scheduling Problem

    PubMed Central

    Molla-Alizadeh-Zavardehi, S.; Tavakkoli-Moghaddam, R.; Lotfi, F. Hosseinzadeh

    2014-01-01

    This paper deals with a problem of minimizing total weighted tardiness of jobs in a real-world single batch-processing machine (SBPM) scheduling in the presence of fuzzy due date. In this paper, first a fuzzy mixed integer linear programming model is developed. Then, due to the complexity of the problem, which is NP-hard, we design two hybrid metaheuristics called GA-VNS and VNS-SA applying the advantages of genetic algorithm (GA), variable neighborhood search (VNS), and simulated annealing (SA) frameworks. Besides, we propose three fuzzy earliest due date heuristics to solve the given problem. Through computational experiments with several random test problems, a robust calibration is applied on the parameters. Finally, computational results on different-scale test problems are presented to compare the proposed algorithms. PMID:24883359

  5. An analysis of iterated local search for job-shop scheduling.

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Whitley, L. Darrell; Howe, Adele E.; Watson, Jean-Paul

    2003-08-01

    Iterated local search, or ILS, is among the most straightforward meta-heuristics for local search. ILS employs both small-step and large-step move operators. Search proceeds via iterative modifications to a single solution, in distinct alternating phases. In the first phase, local neighborhood search (typically greedy descent) is used in conjunction with the small-step operator to transform solutions into local optima. In the second phase, the large-step operator is applied to generate perturbations to the local optima obtained in the first phase. Ideally, when local neighborhood search is applied to the resulting solution, search will terminate at a different local optimum, i.e.,more » the large-step perturbations should be sufficiently large to enable escape from the attractor basins of local optima. ILS has proven capable of delivering excellent performance on numerous N P-Hard optimization problems. [LMS03]. However, despite its implicity, very little is known about why ILS can be so effective, and under what conditions. The goal of this paper is to advance the state-of-the-art in the analysis of meta-heuristics, by providing answers to this research question. They focus on characterizing both the relationship between the structure of the underlying search space and ILS performance, and the dynamic behavior of ILS. The analysis proceeds in the context of the job-shop scheduling problem (JSP) [Tai94]. They begin by demonstrating that the attractor basins of local optima in the JSP are surprisingly weak, and can be escaped with high probaiblity by accepting a short random sequence of less-fit neighbors. this result is used to develop a new ILS algorithms for the JSP, I-JAR, whose performance is competitive with tabu search on difficult benchmark instances. They conclude by developing a very accurate behavioral model of I-JAR, which yields significant insights into the dynamics of search. The analysis is based on a set of 100 random 10 x 10 problem instances, in addition to some widely used benchmark instances. Both I-JAR and the tabu search algorithm they consider are based on the N1 move operator introduced by van Laarhoven et al. [vLAL92]. The N1 operator induces a connected search space, such that it is always possible to move from an arbitrary solution to an optimal solution; this property is integral to the development of a behavioral model of I-JAR. However, much of the analysis generalizes to other move operators, including that of Nowicki and Smutnick [NS96]. Finally the models are based on the distance between two solutions, which they take as the well-known disjunctive graph distance [MBK99].« less

  6. Predicting overlapping protein complexes from weighted protein interaction graphs by gradually expanding dense neighborhoods.

    PubMed

    Dimitrakopoulos, Christos; Theofilatos, Konstantinos; Pegkas, Andreas; Likothanassis, Spiros; Mavroudi, Seferina

    2016-07-01

    Proteins are vital biological molecules driving many fundamental cellular processes. They rarely act alone, but form interacting groups called protein complexes. The study of protein complexes is a key goal in systems biology. Recently, large protein-protein interaction (PPI) datasets have been published and a plethora of computational methods that provide new ideas for the prediction of protein complexes have been implemented. However, most of the methods suffer from two major limitations: First, they do not account for proteins participating in multiple functions and second, they are unable to handle weighted PPI graphs. Moreover, the problem remains open as existing algorithms and tools are insufficient in terms of predictive metrics. In the present paper, we propose gradually expanding neighborhoods with adjustment (GENA), a new algorithm that gradually expands neighborhoods in a graph starting from highly informative "seed" nodes. GENA considers proteins as multifunctional molecules allowing them to participate in more than one protein complex. In addition, GENA accepts weighted PPI graphs by using a weighted evaluation function for each cluster. In experiments with datasets from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and human, GENA outperformed Markov clustering, restricted neighborhood search and clustering with overlapping neighborhood expansion, three state-of-the-art methods for computationally predicting protein complexes. Seven PPI networks and seven evaluation datasets were used in total. GENA outperformed existing methods in 16 out of 18 experiments achieving an average improvement of 5.5% when the maximum matching ratio metric was used. Our method was able to discover functionally homogeneous protein clusters and uncover important network modules in a Parkinson expression dataset. When used on the human networks, around 47% of the detected clusters were enriched in gene ontology (GO) terms with depth higher than five in the GO hierarchy. In the present manuscript, we introduce a new method for the computational prediction of protein complexes by making the realistic assumption that proteins participate in multiple protein complexes and cellular functions. Our method can detect accurate and functionally homogeneous clusters. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  7. Probabilistic Neighborhood-Based Data Collection Algorithms for 3D Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks.

    PubMed

    Han, Guangjie; Li, Shanshan; Zhu, Chunsheng; Jiang, Jinfang; Zhang, Wenbo

    2017-02-08

    Marine environmental monitoring provides crucial information and support for the exploitation, utilization, and protection of marine resources. With the rapid development of information technology, the development of three-dimensional underwater acoustic sensor networks (3D UASNs) provides a novel strategy to acquire marine environment information conveniently, efficiently and accurately. However, the specific propagation effects of acoustic communication channel lead to decreased successful information delivery probability with increased distance. Therefore, we investigate two probabilistic neighborhood-based data collection algorithms for 3D UASNs which are based on a probabilistic acoustic communication model instead of the traditional deterministic acoustic communication model. An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is employed to traverse along the designed path to collect data from neighborhoods. For 3D UASNs without prior deployment knowledge, partitioning the network into grids can allow the AUV to visit the central location of each grid for data collection. For 3D UASNs in which the deployment knowledge is known in advance, the AUV only needs to visit several selected locations by constructing a minimum probabilistic neighborhood covering set to reduce data latency. Otherwise, by increasing the transmission rounds, our proposed algorithms can provide a tradeoff between data collection latency and information gain. These algorithms are compared with basic Nearest-neighbor Heuristic algorithm via simulations. Simulation analyses show that our proposed algorithms can efficiently reduce the average data collection completion time, corresponding to a decrease of data latency.

  8. A Parallel Ghosting Algorithm for The Flexible Distributed Mesh Database

    DOE PAGES

    Mubarak, Misbah; Seol, Seegyoung; Lu, Qiukai; ...

    2013-01-01

    Critical to the scalability of parallel adaptive simulations are parallel control functions including load balancing, reduced inter-process communication and optimal data decomposition. In distributed meshes, many mesh-based applications frequently access neighborhood information for computational purposes which must be transmitted efficiently to avoid parallel performance degradation when the neighbors are on different processors. This article presents a parallel algorithm of creating and deleting data copies, referred to as ghost copies, which localize neighborhood data for computation purposes while minimizing inter-process communication. The key characteristics of the algorithm are: (1) It can create ghost copies of any permissible topological order in amore » 1D, 2D or 3D mesh based on selected adjacencies. (2) It exploits neighborhood communication patterns during the ghost creation process thus eliminating all-to-all communication. (3) For applications that need neighbors of neighbors, the algorithm can create n number of ghost layers up to a point where the whole partitioned mesh can be ghosted. Strong and weak scaling results are presented for the IBM BG/P and Cray XE6 architectures up to a core count of 32,768 processors. The algorithm also leads to scalable results when used in a parallel super-convergent patch recovery error estimator, an application that frequently accesses neighborhood data to carry out computation.« less

  9. A synergetic combination of small and large neighborhood schemes in developing an effective procedure for solving the job shop scheduling problem.

    PubMed

    Amirghasemi, Mehrdad; Zamani, Reza

    2014-01-01

    This paper presents an effective procedure for solving the job shop problem. Synergistically combining small and large neighborhood schemes, the procedure consists of four components, namely (i) a construction method for generating semi-active schedules by a forward-backward mechanism, (ii) a local search for manipulating a small neighborhood structure guided by a tabu list, (iii) a feedback-based mechanism for perturbing the solutions generated, and (iv) a very large-neighborhood local search guided by a forward-backward shifting bottleneck method. The combination of shifting bottleneck mechanism and tabu list is used as a means of the manipulation of neighborhood structures, and the perturbation mechanism employed diversifies the search. A feedback mechanism, called repeat-check, detects consequent repeats and ignites a perturbation when the total number of consecutive repeats for two identical makespan values reaches a given threshold. The results of extensive computational experiments on the benchmark instances indicate that the combination of these four components is synergetic, in the sense that they collectively make the procedure fast and robust.

  10. Incremental isometric embedding of high-dimensional data using connected neighborhood graphs.

    PubMed

    Zhao, Dongfang; Yang, Li

    2009-01-01

    Most nonlinear data embedding methods use bottom-up approaches for capturing the underlying structure of data distributed on a manifold in high dimensional space. These methods often share the first step which defines neighbor points of every data point by building a connected neighborhood graph so that all data points can be embedded to a single coordinate system. These methods are required to work incrementally for dimensionality reduction in many applications. Because input data stream may be under-sampled or skewed from time to time, building connected neighborhood graph is crucial to the success of incremental data embedding using these methods. This paper presents algorithms for updating $k$-edge-connected and $k$-connected neighborhood graphs after a new data point is added or an old data point is deleted. It further utilizes a simple algorithm for updating all-pair shortest distances on the neighborhood graph. Together with incremental classical multidimensional scaling using iterative subspace approximation, this paper devises an incremental version of Isomap with enhancements to deal with under-sampled or unevenly distributed data. Experiments on both synthetic and real-world data sets show that the algorithm is efficient and maintains low dimensional configurations of high dimensional data under various data distributions.

  11. Active surface model improvement by energy function optimization for 3D segmentation.

    PubMed

    Azimifar, Zohreh; Mohaddesi, Mahsa

    2015-04-01

    This paper proposes an optimized and efficient active surface model by improving the energy functions, searching method, neighborhood definition and resampling criterion. Extracting an accurate surface of the desired object from a number of 3D images using active surface and deformable models plays an important role in computer vision especially medical image processing. Different powerful segmentation algorithms have been suggested to address the limitations associated with the model initialization, poor convergence to surface concavities and slow convergence rate. This paper proposes a method to improve one of the strongest and recent segmentation algorithms, namely the Decoupled Active Surface (DAS) method. We consider a gradient of wavelet edge extracted image and local phase coherence as external energy to extract more information from images and we use curvature integral as internal energy to focus on high curvature region extraction. Similarly, we use resampling of points and a line search for point selection to improve the accuracy of the algorithm. We further employ an estimation of the desired object as an initialization for the active surface model. A number of tests and experiments have been done and the results show the improvements with regards to the extracted surface accuracy and computational time of the presented algorithm compared with the best and recent active surface models. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. An incremental anomaly detection model for virtual machines.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Hancui; Chen, Shuyu; Liu, Jun; Zhou, Zhen; Wu, Tianshu

    2017-01-01

    Self-Organizing Map (SOM) algorithm as an unsupervised learning method has been applied in anomaly detection due to its capabilities of self-organizing and automatic anomaly prediction. However, because of the algorithm is initialized in random, it takes a long time to train a detection model. Besides, the Cloud platforms with large scale virtual machines are prone to performance anomalies due to their high dynamic and resource sharing characters, which makes the algorithm present a low accuracy and a low scalability. To address these problems, an Improved Incremental Self-Organizing Map (IISOM) model is proposed for anomaly detection of virtual machines. In this model, a heuristic-based initialization algorithm and a Weighted Euclidean Distance (WED) algorithm are introduced into SOM to speed up the training process and improve model quality. Meanwhile, a neighborhood-based searching algorithm is presented to accelerate the detection time by taking into account the large scale and high dynamic features of virtual machines on cloud platform. To demonstrate the effectiveness, experiments on a common benchmark KDD Cup dataset and a real dataset have been performed. Results suggest that IISOM has advantages in accuracy and convergence velocity of anomaly detection for virtual machines on cloud platform.

  13. An incremental anomaly detection model for virtual machines

    PubMed Central

    Zhang, Hancui; Chen, Shuyu; Liu, Jun; Zhou, Zhen; Wu, Tianshu

    2017-01-01

    Self-Organizing Map (SOM) algorithm as an unsupervised learning method has been applied in anomaly detection due to its capabilities of self-organizing and automatic anomaly prediction. However, because of the algorithm is initialized in random, it takes a long time to train a detection model. Besides, the Cloud platforms with large scale virtual machines are prone to performance anomalies due to their high dynamic and resource sharing characters, which makes the algorithm present a low accuracy and a low scalability. To address these problems, an Improved Incremental Self-Organizing Map (IISOM) model is proposed for anomaly detection of virtual machines. In this model, a heuristic-based initialization algorithm and a Weighted Euclidean Distance (WED) algorithm are introduced into SOM to speed up the training process and improve model quality. Meanwhile, a neighborhood-based searching algorithm is presented to accelerate the detection time by taking into account the large scale and high dynamic features of virtual machines on cloud platform. To demonstrate the effectiveness, experiments on a common benchmark KDD Cup dataset and a real dataset have been performed. Results suggest that IISOM has advantages in accuracy and convergence velocity of anomaly detection for virtual machines on cloud platform. PMID:29117245

  14. Probabilistic Neighborhood-Based Data Collection Algorithms for 3D Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

    PubMed Central

    Han, Guangjie; Li, Shanshan; Zhu, Chunsheng; Jiang, Jinfang; Zhang, Wenbo

    2017-01-01

    Marine environmental monitoring provides crucial information and support for the exploitation, utilization, and protection of marine resources. With the rapid development of information technology, the development of three-dimensional underwater acoustic sensor networks (3D UASNs) provides a novel strategy to acquire marine environment information conveniently, efficiently and accurately. However, the specific propagation effects of acoustic communication channel lead to decreased successful information delivery probability with increased distance. Therefore, we investigate two probabilistic neighborhood-based data collection algorithms for 3D UASNs which are based on a probabilistic acoustic communication model instead of the traditional deterministic acoustic communication model. An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is employed to traverse along the designed path to collect data from neighborhoods. For 3D UASNs without prior deployment knowledge, partitioning the network into grids can allow the AUV to visit the central location of each grid for data collection. For 3D UASNs in which the deployment knowledge is known in advance, the AUV only needs to visit several selected locations by constructing a minimum probabilistic neighborhood covering set to reduce data latency. Otherwise, by increasing the transmission rounds, our proposed algorithms can provide a tradeoff between data collection latency and information gain. These algorithms are compared with basic Nearest-neighbor Heuristic algorithm via simulations. Simulation analyses show that our proposed algorithms can efficiently reduce the average data collection completion time, corresponding to a decrease of data latency. PMID:28208735

  15. node2vec: Scalable Feature Learning for Networks

    PubMed Central

    Grover, Aditya; Leskovec, Jure

    2016-01-01

    Prediction tasks over nodes and edges in networks require careful effort in engineering features used by learning algorithms. Recent research in the broader field of representation learning has led to significant progress in automating prediction by learning the features themselves. However, present feature learning approaches are not expressive enough to capture the diversity of connectivity patterns observed in networks. Here we propose node2vec, an algorithmic framework for learning continuous feature representations for nodes in networks. In node2vec, we learn a mapping of nodes to a low-dimensional space of features that maximizes the likelihood of preserving network neighborhoods of nodes. We define a flexible notion of a node’s network neighborhood and design a biased random walk procedure, which efficiently explores diverse neighborhoods. Our algorithm generalizes prior work which is based on rigid notions of network neighborhoods, and we argue that the added flexibility in exploring neighborhoods is the key to learning richer representations. We demonstrate the efficacy of node2vec over existing state-of-the-art techniques on multi-label classification and link prediction in several real-world networks from diverse domains. Taken together, our work represents a new way for efficiently learning state-of-the-art task-independent representations in complex networks. PMID:27853626

  16. A Telescopic Binary Learning Machine for Training Neural Networks.

    PubMed

    Brunato, Mauro; Battiti, Roberto

    2017-03-01

    This paper proposes a new algorithm based on multiscale stochastic local search with binary representation for training neural networks [binary learning machine (BLM)]. We study the effects of neighborhood evaluation strategies, the effect of the number of bits per weight and that of the maximum weight range used for mapping binary strings to real values. Following this preliminary investigation, we propose a telescopic multiscale version of local search, where the number of bits is increased in an adaptive manner, leading to a faster search and to local minima of better quality. An analysis related to adapting the number of bits in a dynamic way is presented. The control on the number of bits, which happens in a natural manner in the proposed method, is effective to increase the generalization performance. The learning dynamics are discussed and validated on a highly nonlinear artificial problem and on real-world tasks in many application domains; BLM is finally applied to a problem requiring either feedforward or recurrent architectures for feedback control.

  17. Growing a hypercubical output space in a self-organizing feature map.

    PubMed

    Bauer, H U; Villmann, T

    1997-01-01

    Neural maps project data from an input space onto a neuron position in a (often lower dimensional) output space grid in a neighborhood preserving way, with neighboring neurons in the output space responding to neighboring data points in the input space. A map-learning algorithm can achieve an optimal neighborhood preservation only, if the output space topology roughly matches the effective structure of the data in the input space. We here present a growth algorithm, called the GSOM or growing self-organizing map, which enhances a widespread map self-organization process, Kohonen's self-organizing feature map (SOFM), by an adaptation of the output space grid during learning. The GSOM restricts the output space structure to the shape of a general hypercubical shape, with the overall dimensionality of the grid and its extensions along the different directions being subject of the adaptation. This constraint meets the demands of many larger information processing systems, of which the neural map can be a part. We apply our GSOM-algorithm to three examples, two of which involve real world data. Using recently developed methods for measuring the degree of neighborhood preservation in neural maps, we find the GSOM-algorithm to produce maps which preserve neighborhoods in a nearly optimal fashion.

  18. A Local Fast Marching-Based Diffusion Tensor Image Registration Algorithm by Simultaneously Considering Spatial Deformation and Tensor Orientation

    PubMed Central

    Xue, Zhong; Li, Hai; Guo, Lei; Wong, Stephen T.C.

    2010-01-01

    It is a key step to spatially align diffusion tensor images (DTI) to quantitatively compare neural images obtained from different subjects or the same subject at different timepoints. Different from traditional scalar or multi-channel image registration methods, tensor orientation should be considered in DTI registration. Recently, several DTI registration methods have been proposed in the literature, but deformation fields are purely dependent on the tensor features not the whole tensor information. Other methods, such as the piece-wise affine transformation and the diffeomorphic non-linear registration algorithms, use analytical gradients of the registration objective functions by simultaneously considering the reorientation and deformation of tensors during the registration. However, only relatively local tensor information such as voxel-wise tensor-similarity, is utilized. This paper proposes a new DTI image registration algorithm, called local fast marching (FM)-based simultaneous registration. The algorithm not only considers the orientation of tensors during registration but also utilizes the neighborhood tensor information of each voxel to drive the deformation, and such neighborhood tensor information is extracted from a local fast marching algorithm around the voxels of interest. These local fast marching-based tensor features efficiently reflect the diffusion patterns around each voxel within a spherical neighborhood and can capture relatively distinctive features of the anatomical structures. Using simulated and real DTI human brain data the experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is more accurate compared with the FA-based registration and is more efficient than its counterpart, the neighborhood tensor similarity-based registration. PMID:20382233

  19. How Neighborhoods Influence Child Maltreatment: A Review of the Literature and Alternative Pathways

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Coulton, Claudia J.; Crampton, David S.; Irwin, Molly; Spilsbury, James C.; Korbin, Jill E.

    2007-01-01

    Objective: To review the literature on the relationships between neighborhoods and child maltreatment and identify future directions for research in this area. Method: A search of electronic databases and a survey of experts yielded a list of 25 studies on the influence of geographically defined neighborhoods on child maltreatment. These studies…

  20. Feature Selection Method Based on Neighborhood Relationships: Applications in EEG Signal Identification and Chinese Character Recognition

    PubMed Central

    Zhao, Yu-Xiang; Chou, Chien-Hsing

    2016-01-01

    In this study, a new feature selection algorithm, the neighborhood-relationship feature selection (NRFS) algorithm, is proposed for identifying rat electroencephalogram signals and recognizing Chinese characters. In these two applications, dependent relationships exist among the feature vectors and their neighboring feature vectors. Therefore, the proposed NRFS algorithm was designed for solving this problem. By applying the NRFS algorithm, unselected feature vectors have a high priority of being added into the feature subset if the neighboring feature vectors have been selected. In addition, selected feature vectors have a high priority of being eliminated if the neighboring feature vectors are not selected. In the experiments conducted in this study, the NRFS algorithm was compared with two feature algorithms. The experimental results indicated that the NRFS algorithm can extract the crucial frequency bands for identifying rat vigilance states and identifying crucial character regions for recognizing Chinese characters. PMID:27314346

  1. Sorting points into neighborhoods (SPIN): data analysis and visualization by ordering distance matrices.

    PubMed

    Tsafrir, D; Tsafrir, I; Ein-Dor, L; Zuk, O; Notterman, D A; Domany, E

    2005-05-15

    We introduce a novel unsupervised approach for the organization and visualization of multidimensional data. At the heart of the method is a presentation of the full pairwise distance matrix of the data points, viewed in pseudocolor. The ordering of points is iteratively permuted in search of a linear ordering, which can be used to study embedded shapes. Several examples indicate how the shapes of certain structures in the data (elongated, circular and compact) manifest themselves visually in our permuted distance matrix. It is important to identify the elongated objects since they are often associated with a set of hidden variables, underlying continuous variation in the data. The problem of determining an optimal linear ordering is shown to be NP-Complete, and therefore an iterative search algorithm with O(n3) step-complexity is suggested. By using sorting points into neighborhoods, i.e. SPIN to analyze colon cancer expression data we were able to address the serious problem of sample heterogeneity, which hinders identification of metastasis related genes in our data. Our methodology brings to light the continuous variation of heterogeneity--starting with homogeneous tumor samples and gradually increasing the amount of another tissue. Ordering the samples according to their degree of contamination by unrelated tissue allows the separation of genes associated with irrelevant contamination from those related to cancer progression. Software package will be available for academic users upon request.

  2. An exact solution for orbit view-periods from a station on a tri-axial ellipsoidal planet

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Tang, C. C. H.

    1986-01-01

    This paper presents the concise exact solution for predicting view-periods to be observed from a masked or unmasked tracking station on a tri-axial ellipsoidal surface. The new exact approach expresses the azimuth and elevation angles of a spacecraft in terms of the station-centered geodetic topocentric coordinates in an elegantly concise manner. A simple and efficient algorithm is developed to avoid costly repetitive computations in searching for neighborhoods near the rise and set times of each satellite orbit for each station. Only one search for each orbit is necessary for each station. Sample results indicate that the use of an assumed spherical earth instead of an 'actual' tri-axial ellipsoidal earth could introduce an error up to a few minutes in a view-period prediction for circular orbits of low or medium altitude. For an elliptical orbit of high eccentricity and long period, the maximum error could be even larger. The analytic treatment and the efficient algorithm are designed for geocentric orbits, but they should be applicable to interplanetary trajectories by an appropriate coordinates transformation at each view-period calculation. This analysis can be accomplished only by not using the classical orbital elements.

  3. An exact solution for orbit view-periods from a station on a tri-axial ellipsoidal planet

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tang, C. C. H.

    1986-08-01

    This paper presents the concise exact solution for predicting view-periods to be observed from a masked or unmasked tracking station on a tri-axial ellipsoidal surface. The new exact approach expresses the azimuth and elevation angles of a spacecraft in terms of the station-centered geodetic topocentric coordinates in an elegantly concise manner. A simple and efficient algorithm is developed to avoid costly repetitive computations in searching for neighborhoods near the rise and set times of each satellite orbit for each station. Only one search for each orbit is necessary for each station. Sample results indicate that the use of an assumed spherical earth instead of an 'actual' tri-axial ellipsoidal earth could introduce an error up to a few minutes in a view-period prediction for circular orbits of low or medium altitude. For an elliptical orbit of high eccentricity and long period, the maximum error could be even larger. The analytic treatment and the efficient algorithm are designed for geocentric orbits, but they should be applicable to interplanetary trajectories by an appropriate coordinates transformation at each view-period calculation. This analysis can be accomplished only by not using the classical orbital elements.

  4. A new approach to applying feedforward neural networks to the prediction of musculoskeletal disorder risk.

    PubMed

    Chen, C L; Kaber, D B; Dempsey, P G

    2000-06-01

    A new and improved method to feedforward neural network (FNN) development for application to data classification problems, such as the prediction of levels of low-back disorder (LBD) risk associated with industrial jobs, is presented. Background on FNN development for data classification is provided along with discussions of previous research and neighborhood (local) solution search methods for hard combinatorial problems. An analytical study is presented which compared prediction accuracy of a FNN based on an error-back propagation (EBP) algorithm with the accuracy of a FNN developed by considering results of local solution search (simulated annealing) for classifying industrial jobs as posing low or high risk for LBDs. The comparison demonstrated superior performance of the FNN generated using the new method. The architecture of this FNN included fewer input (predictor) variables and hidden neurons than the FNN developed based on the EBP algorithm. Independent variable selection methods and the phenomenon of 'overfitting' in FNN (and statistical model) generation for data classification are discussed. The results are supportive of the use of the new approach to FNN development for applications to musculoskeletal disorders and risk forecasting in other domains.

  5. Simulated parallel annealing within a neighborhood for optimization of biomechanical systems.

    PubMed

    Higginson, J S; Neptune, R R; Anderson, F C

    2005-09-01

    Optimization problems for biomechanical systems have become extremely complex. Simulated annealing (SA) algorithms have performed well in a variety of test problems and biomechanical applications; however, despite advances in computer speed, convergence to optimal solutions for systems of even moderate complexity has remained prohibitive. The objective of this study was to develop a portable parallel version of a SA algorithm for solving optimization problems in biomechanics. The algorithm for simulated parallel annealing within a neighborhood (SPAN) was designed to minimize interprocessor communication time and closely retain the heuristics of the serial SA algorithm. The computational speed of the SPAN algorithm scaled linearly with the number of processors on different computer platforms for a simple quadratic test problem and for a more complex forward dynamic simulation of human pedaling.

  6. A Systematic Review of Neighborhood Disparities in Point-of-Sale Tobacco Marketing

    PubMed Central

    Henriksen, Lisa; Rose, Shyanika W.; Moreland-Russell, Sarah; Ribisl, Kurt M.

    2015-01-01

    We systematically reviewed evidence of disparities in tobacco marketing at tobacco retailers by sociodemographic neighborhood characteristics. We identified 43 relevant articles from 893 results of a systematic search in 10 databases updated May 28, 2014. We found 148 associations of marketing (price, placement, promotion, or product availability) with a neighborhood demographic of interest (socioeconomic disadvantage, race, ethnicity, and urbanicity). Neighborhoods with lower income have more tobacco marketing. There is more menthol marketing targeting urban neighborhoods and neighborhoods with more Black residents. Smokeless tobacco products are targeted more toward rural neighborhoods and neighborhoods with more White residents. Differences in store type partially explain these disparities. There are more inducements to start and continue smoking in lower-income neighborhoods and in neighborhoods with more Black residents. Retailer marketing may contribute to disparities in tobacco use. Clinicians should be aware of the pervasiveness of these environmental cues. PMID:26180986

  7. A Systematic Review of Neighborhood Disparities in Point-of-Sale Tobacco Marketing.

    PubMed

    Lee, Joseph G L; Henriksen, Lisa; Rose, Shyanika W; Moreland-Russell, Sarah; Ribisl, Kurt M

    2015-09-01

    We systematically reviewed evidence of disparities in tobacco marketing at tobacco retailers by sociodemographic neighborhood characteristics. We identified 43 relevant articles from 893 results of a systematic search in 10 databases updated May 28, 2014. We found 148 associations of marketing (price, placement, promotion, or product availability) with a neighborhood demographic of interest (socioeconomic disadvantage, race, ethnicity, and urbanicity). Neighborhoods with lower income have more tobacco marketing. There is more menthol marketing targeting urban neighborhoods and neighborhoods with more Black residents. Smokeless tobacco products are targeted more toward rural neighborhoods and neighborhoods with more White residents. Differences in store type partially explain these disparities. There are more inducements to start and continue smoking in lower-income neighborhoods and in neighborhoods with more Black residents. Retailer marketing may contribute to disparities in tobacco use. Clinicians should be aware of the pervasiveness of these environmental cues.

  8. Short-term change detection for UAV video

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Saur, Günter; Krüger, Wolfgang

    2012-11-01

    In the last years, there has been an increased use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for video reconnaissance and surveillance. An important application in this context is change detection in UAV video data. Here we address short-term change detection, in which the time between observations ranges from several minutes to a few hours. We distinguish this task from video motion detection (shorter time scale) and from long-term change detection, based on time series of still images taken between several days, weeks, or even years. Examples for relevant changes we are looking for are recently parked or moved vehicles. As a pre-requisite, a precise image-to-image registration is needed. Images are selected on the basis of the geo-coordinates of the sensor's footprint and with respect to a certain minimal overlap. The automatic imagebased fine-registration adjusts the image pair to a common geometry by using a robust matching approach to handle outliers. The change detection algorithm has to distinguish between relevant and non-relevant changes. Examples for non-relevant changes are stereo disparity at 3D structures of the scene, changed length of shadows, and compression or transmission artifacts. To detect changes in image pairs we analyzed image differencing, local image correlation, and a transformation-based approach (multivariate alteration detection). As input we used color and gradient magnitude images. To cope with local misalignment of image structures we extended the approaches by a local neighborhood search. The algorithms are applied to several examples covering both urban and rural scenes. The local neighborhood search in combination with intensity and gradient magnitude differencing clearly improved the results. Extended image differencing performed better than both the correlation based approach and the multivariate alternation detection. The algorithms are adapted to be used in semi-automatic workflows for the ABUL video exploitation system of Fraunhofer IOSB, see Heinze et. al. 2010.1 In a further step we plan to incorporate more information from the video sequences to the change detection input images, e.g., by image enhancement or by along-track stereo which are available in the ABUL system.

  9. Searching Remote Homology with Spectral Clustering with Symmetry in Neighborhood Cluster Kernels

    PubMed Central

    Maulik, Ujjwal; Sarkar, Anasua

    2013-01-01

    Remote homology detection among proteins utilizing only the unlabelled sequences is a central problem in comparative genomics. The existing cluster kernel methods based on neighborhoods and profiles and the Markov clustering algorithms are currently the most popular methods for protein family recognition. The deviation from random walks with inflation or dependency on hard threshold in similarity measure in those methods requires an enhancement for homology detection among multi-domain proteins. We propose to combine spectral clustering with neighborhood kernels in Markov similarity for enhancing sensitivity in detecting homology independent of “recent” paralogs. The spectral clustering approach with new combined local alignment kernels more effectively exploits the unsupervised protein sequences globally reducing inter-cluster walks. When combined with the corrections based on modified symmetry based proximity norm deemphasizing outliers, the technique proposed in this article outperforms other state-of-the-art cluster kernels among all twelve implemented kernels. The comparison with the state-of-the-art string and mismatch kernels also show the superior performance scores provided by the proposed kernels. Similar performance improvement also is found over an existing large dataset. Therefore the proposed spectral clustering framework over combined local alignment kernels with modified symmetry based correction achieves superior performance for unsupervised remote homolog detection even in multi-domain and promiscuous domain proteins from Genolevures database families with better biological relevance. Source code available upon request. Contact: sarkar@labri.fr. PMID:23457439

  10. Searching remote homology with spectral clustering with symmetry in neighborhood cluster kernels.

    PubMed

    Maulik, Ujjwal; Sarkar, Anasua

    2013-01-01

    Remote homology detection among proteins utilizing only the unlabelled sequences is a central problem in comparative genomics. The existing cluster kernel methods based on neighborhoods and profiles and the Markov clustering algorithms are currently the most popular methods for protein family recognition. The deviation from random walks with inflation or dependency on hard threshold in similarity measure in those methods requires an enhancement for homology detection among multi-domain proteins. We propose to combine spectral clustering with neighborhood kernels in Markov similarity for enhancing sensitivity in detecting homology independent of "recent" paralogs. The spectral clustering approach with new combined local alignment kernels more effectively exploits the unsupervised protein sequences globally reducing inter-cluster walks. When combined with the corrections based on modified symmetry based proximity norm deemphasizing outliers, the technique proposed in this article outperforms other state-of-the-art cluster kernels among all twelve implemented kernels. The comparison with the state-of-the-art string and mismatch kernels also show the superior performance scores provided by the proposed kernels. Similar performance improvement also is found over an existing large dataset. Therefore the proposed spectral clustering framework over combined local alignment kernels with modified symmetry based correction achieves superior performance for unsupervised remote homolog detection even in multi-domain and promiscuous domain proteins from Genolevures database families with better biological relevance. Source code available upon request. sarkar@labri.fr.

  11. Joint optimization of green vehicle scheduling and routing problem with time-varying speeds

    PubMed Central

    Zhang, Dezhi; Wang, Xin; Ni, Nan; Zhang, Zhuo

    2018-01-01

    Based on an analysis of the congestion effect and changes in the speed of vehicle flow during morning and evening peaks in a large- or medium-sized city, the piecewise function is used to capture the rules of the time-varying speed of vehicles, which are very important in modelling their fuel consumption and CO2 emission. A joint optimization model of the green vehicle scheduling and routing problem with time-varying speeds is presented in this study. Extra wages during nonworking periods and soft time-window constraints are considered. A heuristic algorithm based on the adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm is also presented. Finally, a numerical simulation example is provided to illustrate the optimization model and its algorithm. Results show that, (1) the shortest route is not necessarily the route that consumes the least energy, (2) the departure time influences the vehicle fuel consumption and CO2 emissions and the optimal departure time saves on fuel consumption and reduces CO2 emissions by up to 5.4%, and (3) extra driver wages have significant effects on routing and departure time slot decisions. PMID:29466370

  12. Joint optimization of green vehicle scheduling and routing problem with time-varying speeds.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Dezhi; Wang, Xin; Li, Shuangyan; Ni, Nan; Zhang, Zhuo

    2018-01-01

    Based on an analysis of the congestion effect and changes in the speed of vehicle flow during morning and evening peaks in a large- or medium-sized city, the piecewise function is used to capture the rules of the time-varying speed of vehicles, which are very important in modelling their fuel consumption and CO2 emission. A joint optimization model of the green vehicle scheduling and routing problem with time-varying speeds is presented in this study. Extra wages during nonworking periods and soft time-window constraints are considered. A heuristic algorithm based on the adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm is also presented. Finally, a numerical simulation example is provided to illustrate the optimization model and its algorithm. Results show that, (1) the shortest route is not necessarily the route that consumes the least energy, (2) the departure time influences the vehicle fuel consumption and CO2 emissions and the optimal departure time saves on fuel consumption and reduces CO2 emissions by up to 5.4%, and (3) extra driver wages have significant effects on routing and departure time slot decisions.

  13. Improved liver R2* mapping by pixel-wise curve fitting with adaptive neighborhood regularization.

    PubMed

    Wang, Changqing; Zhang, Xinyuan; Liu, Xiaoyun; He, Taigang; Chen, Wufan; Feng, Qianjin; Feng, Yanqiu

    2018-08-01

    To improve liver R2* mapping by incorporating adaptive neighborhood regularization into pixel-wise curve fitting. Magnetic resonance imaging R2* mapping remains challenging because of the serial images with low signal-to-noise ratio. In this study, we proposed to exploit the neighboring pixels as regularization terms and adaptively determine the regularization parameters according to the interpixel signal similarity. The proposed algorithm, called the pixel-wise curve fitting with adaptive neighborhood regularization (PCANR), was compared with the conventional nonlinear least squares (NLS) and nonlocal means filter-based NLS algorithms on simulated, phantom, and in vivo data. Visually, the PCANR algorithm generates R2* maps with significantly reduced noise and well-preserved tiny structures. Quantitatively, the PCANR algorithm produces R2* maps with lower root mean square errors at varying R2* values and signal-to-noise-ratio levels compared with the NLS and nonlocal means filter-based NLS algorithms. For the high R2* values under low signal-to-noise-ratio levels, the PCANR algorithm outperforms the NLS and nonlocal means filter-based NLS algorithms in the accuracy and precision, in terms of mean and standard deviation of R2* measurements in selected region of interests, respectively. The PCANR algorithm can reduce the effect of noise on liver R2* mapping, and the improved measurement precision will benefit the assessment of hepatic iron in clinical practice. Magn Reson Med 80:792-801, 2018. © 2018 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. © 2018 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

  14. Real-time implementation of optimized maximum noise fraction transform for feature extraction of hyperspectral images

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wu, Yuanfeng; Gao, Lianru; Zhang, Bing; Zhao, Haina; Li, Jun

    2014-01-01

    We present a parallel implementation of the optimized maximum noise fraction (G-OMNF) transform algorithm for feature extraction of hyperspectral images on commodity graphics processing units (GPUs). The proposed approach explored the algorithm data-level concurrency and optimized the computing flow. We first defined a three-dimensional grid, in which each thread calculates a sub-block data to easily facilitate the spatial and spectral neighborhood data searches in noise estimation, which is one of the most important steps involved in OMNF. Then, we optimized the processing flow and computed the noise covariance matrix before computing the image covariance matrix to reduce the original hyperspectral image data transmission. These optimization strategies can greatly improve the computing efficiency and can be applied to other feature extraction algorithms. The proposed parallel feature extraction algorithm was implemented on an Nvidia Tesla GPU using the compute unified device architecture and basic linear algebra subroutines library. Through the experiments on several real hyperspectral images, our GPU parallel implementation provides a significant speedup of the algorithm compared with the CPU implementation, especially for highly data parallelizable and arithmetically intensive algorithm parts, such as noise estimation. In order to further evaluate the effectiveness of G-OMNF, we used two different applications: spectral unmixing and classification for evaluation. Considering the sensor scanning rate and the data acquisition time, the proposed parallel implementation met the on-board real-time feature extraction.

  15. Hyper-heuristic Evolution of Dispatching Rules: A Comparison of Rule Representations.

    PubMed

    Branke, Jürgen; Hildebrandt, Torsten; Scholz-Reiter, Bernd

    2015-01-01

    Dispatching rules are frequently used for real-time, online scheduling in complex manufacturing systems. Design of such rules is usually done by experts in a time consuming trial-and-error process. Recently, evolutionary algorithms have been proposed to automate the design process. There are several possibilities to represent rules for this hyper-heuristic search. Because the representation determines the search neighborhood and the complexity of the rules that can be evolved, a suitable choice of representation is key for a successful evolutionary algorithm. In this paper we empirically compare three different representations, both numeric and symbolic, for automated rule design: A linear combination of attributes, a representation based on artificial neural networks, and a tree representation. Using appropriate evolutionary algorithms (CMA-ES for the neural network and linear representations, genetic programming for the tree representation), we empirically investigate the suitability of each representation in a dynamic stochastic job shop scenario. We also examine the robustness of the evolved dispatching rules against variations in the underlying job shop scenario, and visualize what the rules do, in order to get an intuitive understanding of their inner workings. Results indicate that the tree representation using an improved version of genetic programming gives the best results if many candidate rules can be evaluated, closely followed by the neural network representation that already leads to good results for small to moderate computational budgets. The linear representation is found to be competitive only for extremely small computational budgets.

  16. Robust head pose estimation via supervised manifold learning.

    PubMed

    Wang, Chao; Song, Xubo

    2014-05-01

    Head poses can be automatically estimated using manifold learning algorithms, with the assumption that with the pose being the only variable, the face images should lie in a smooth and low-dimensional manifold. However, this estimation approach is challenging due to other appearance variations related to identity, head location in image, background clutter, facial expression, and illumination. To address the problem, we propose to incorporate supervised information (pose angles of training samples) into the process of manifold learning. The process has three stages: neighborhood construction, graph weight computation and projection learning. For the first two stages, we redefine inter-point distance for neighborhood construction as well as graph weight by constraining them with the pose angle information. For Stage 3, we present a supervised neighborhood-based linear feature transformation algorithm to keep the data points with similar pose angles close together but the data points with dissimilar pose angles far apart. The experimental results show that our method has higher estimation accuracy than the other state-of-art algorithms and is robust to identity and illumination variations. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Conduct Disorder and Neighborhood Effects.

    PubMed

    Jennings, Wesley G; Perez, Nicholas M; Reingle Gonzalez, Jennifer M

    2018-05-07

    There has been a considerable amount of scholarly attention to the relationship between neighborhood effects and conduct disorder, particularly in recent years. Having said this, it has been nearly two decades since a comprehensive synthesis of this literature has been conducted. Relying on a detailed and comprehensive search strategy and inclusion criteria, this article offers a systematic and interdisciplinary review of 47 empirical studies that have examined neighborhood effects and conduct disorder. Described results suggest that there are generally robust linkages between adverse neighborhood factors and conduct disorder and externalizing behavior problems, as 67 of the 93 (72.04%) effect sizes derived from these studies yielded statistically significant neighborhood effects. The review also identifies salient mediating and moderating influences. It discusses study limitations and directions for future research as well.

  18. A Fusion Algorithm for GFP Image and Phase Contrast Image of Arabidopsis Cell Based on SFL-Contourlet Transform

    PubMed Central

    Feng, Peng; Wang, Jing; Wei, Biao; Mi, Deling

    2013-01-01

    A hybrid multiscale and multilevel image fusion algorithm for green fluorescent protein (GFP) image and phase contrast image of Arabidopsis cell is proposed in this paper. Combining intensity-hue-saturation (IHS) transform and sharp frequency localization Contourlet transform (SFL-CT), this algorithm uses different fusion strategies for different detailed subbands, which include neighborhood consistency measurement (NCM) that can adaptively find balance between color background and gray structure. Also two kinds of neighborhood classes based on empirical model are taken into consideration. Visual information fidelity (VIF) as an objective criterion is introduced to evaluate the fusion image. The experimental results of 117 groups of Arabidopsis cell image from John Innes Center show that the new algorithm cannot only make the details of original images well preserved but also improve the visibility of the fusion image, which shows the superiority of the novel method to traditional ones. PMID:23476716

  19. Interactive outlining: an improved approach using active contours

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Daneels, Dirk; van Campenhout, David; Niblack, Carlton W.; Equitz, Will; Barber, Ron; Fierens, Freddy

    1993-04-01

    The purpose of our work is to outline objects on images in an interactive environment. We use an improved method based on energy minimizing active contours or `snakes.' Kass et al., proposed a variational technique; Amini used dynamic programming; and Williams and Shah introduced a fast, greedy algorithm. We combine the advantages of the latter two methods in a two-stage algorithm. The first stage is a greedy procedure that provides fast initial convergence. It is enhanced with a cost term that extends over a large number of points to avoid oscillations. The second stage, when accuracy becomes important, uses dynamic programming. This step is accelerated by the use of alternating search neighborhoods and by dropping stable points from the iterations. We have also added several features for user interaction. First, the user can define points of high confidence. Mathematically, this results in an extra cost term and, in that way, the robustness in difficult areas (e.g., noisy edges, sharp corners) is improved. We also give the user the possibility of incremental contour tracking, thus providing feedback on the refinement process. The algorithm has been tested on numerous photographic clip art images and extensive tests on medical images are in progress.

  20. An efficient grid layout algorithm for biological networks utilizing various biological attributes

    PubMed Central

    Kojima, Kaname; Nagasaki, Masao; Jeong, Euna; Kato, Mitsuru; Miyano, Satoru

    2007-01-01

    Background Clearly visualized biopathways provide a great help in understanding biological systems. However, manual drawing of large-scale biopathways is time consuming. We proposed a grid layout algorithm that can handle gene-regulatory networks and signal transduction pathways by considering edge-edge crossing, node-edge crossing, distance measure between nodes, and subcellular localization information from Gene Ontology. Consequently, the layout algorithm succeeded in drastically reducing these crossings in the apoptosis model. However, for larger-scale networks, we encountered three problems: (i) the initial layout is often very far from any local optimum because nodes are initially placed at random, (ii) from a biological viewpoint, human layouts still exceed automatic layouts in understanding because except subcellular localization, it does not fully utilize biological information of pathways, and (iii) it employs a local search strategy in which the neighborhood is obtained by moving one node at each step, and automatic layouts suggest that simultaneous movements of multiple nodes are necessary for better layouts, while such extension may face worsening the time complexity. Results We propose a new grid layout algorithm. To address problem (i), we devised a new force-directed algorithm whose output is suitable as the initial layout. For (ii), we considered that an appropriate alignment of nodes having the same biological attribute is one of the most important factors of the comprehension, and we defined a new score function that gives an advantage to such configurations. For solving problem (iii), we developed a search strategy that considers swapping nodes as well as moving a node, while keeping the order of the time complexity. Though a naïve implementation increases by one order, the time complexity, we solved this difficulty by devising a method that caches differences between scores of a layout and its possible updates. Conclusion Layouts of the new grid layout algorithm are compared with that of the previous algorithm and human layout in an endothelial cell model, three times as large as the apoptosis model. The total cost of the result from the new grid layout algorithm is similar to that of the human layout. In addition, its convergence time is drastically reduced (40% reduction). PMID:17338825

  1. Neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation characteristics in child (0-18 years) health studies: a review.

    PubMed

    van Vuuren, C Leontine; Reijneveld, Sijmen A; van der Wal, Marcel F; Verhoeff, Arnoud P

    2014-09-01

    Growing up in socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods has been shown to have negative health effects on children. However, the most recent review on which measures are used to investigate the association between neighborhood characteristics and child (0-18 year) health included studies only until 2004. Insight into more recent research is needed for the further development of these measures. To review neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation characteristics used in recent studies investigating the relationship between neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation and child health. Sensitive search in MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, Sociological Abstracts databases (2004-2013). Ultimately, 19 studies were included. We found ten neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation constructs, of which income/wealth, employment, and education were most frequently used. The choice for neighborhood characteristics seemed independent of the health outcome and in most cases was not based on a specific theoretical background or earlier work. Studies vary regarding study designs, measures and outcomes. Researchers should clearly specify their choice of neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation characteristics; preferably, these should be theory-based and used consistently. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. Hyperspace geography: visualizing fitness landscapes beyond 4D.

    PubMed

    Wiles, Janet; Tonkes, Bradley

    2006-01-01

    Human perception is finely tuned to extract structure about the 4D world of time and space as well as properties such as color and texture. Developing intuitions about spatial structure beyond 4D requires exploiting other perceptual and cognitive abilities. One of the most natural ways to explore complex spaces is for a user to actively navigate through them, using local explorations and global summaries to develop intuitions about structure, and then testing the developing ideas by further exploration. This article provides a brief overview of a technique for visualizing surfaces defined over moderate-dimensional binary spaces, by recursively unfolding them onto a 2D hypergraph. We briefly summarize the uses of a freely available Web-based visualization tool, Hyperspace Graph Paper (HSGP), for exploring fitness landscapes and search algorithms in evolutionary computation. HSGP provides a way for a user to actively explore a landscape, from simple tasks such as mapping the neighborhood structure of different points, to seeing global properties such as the size and distribution of basins of attraction or how different search algorithms interact with landscape structure. It has been most useful for exploring recursive and repetitive landscapes, and its strength is that it allows intuitions to be developed through active navigation by the user, and exploits the visual system's ability to detect pattern and texture. The technique is most effective when applied to continuous functions over Boolean variables using 4 to 16 dimensions.

  3. Contact-free palm-vein recognition based on local invariant features.

    PubMed

    Kang, Wenxiong; Liu, Yang; Wu, Qiuxia; Yue, Xishun

    2014-01-01

    Contact-free palm-vein recognition is one of the most challenging and promising areas in hand biometrics. In view of the existing problems in contact-free palm-vein imaging, including projection transformation, uneven illumination and difficulty in extracting exact ROIs, this paper presents a novel recognition approach for contact-free palm-vein recognition that performs feature extraction and matching on all vein textures distributed over the palm surface, including finger veins and palm veins, to minimize the loss of feature information. First, a hierarchical enhancement algorithm, which combines a DOG filter and histogram equalization, is adopted to alleviate uneven illumination and to highlight vein textures. Second, RootSIFT, a more stable local invariant feature extraction method in comparison to SIFT, is adopted to overcome the projection transformation in contact-free mode. Subsequently, a novel hierarchical mismatching removal algorithm based on neighborhood searching and LBP histograms is adopted to improve the accuracy of feature matching. Finally, we rigorously evaluated the proposed approach using two different databases and obtained 0.996% and 3.112% Equal Error Rates (EERs), respectively, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

  4. Contact-Free Palm-Vein Recognition Based on Local Invariant Features

    PubMed Central

    Kang, Wenxiong; Liu, Yang; Wu, Qiuxia; Yue, Xishun

    2014-01-01

    Contact-free palm-vein recognition is one of the most challenging and promising areas in hand biometrics. In view of the existing problems in contact-free palm-vein imaging, including projection transformation, uneven illumination and difficulty in extracting exact ROIs, this paper presents a novel recognition approach for contact-free palm-vein recognition that performs feature extraction and matching on all vein textures distributed over the palm surface, including finger veins and palm veins, to minimize the loss of feature information. First, a hierarchical enhancement algorithm, which combines a DOG filter and histogram equalization, is adopted to alleviate uneven illumination and to highlight vein textures. Second, RootSIFT, a more stable local invariant feature extraction method in comparison to SIFT, is adopted to overcome the projection transformation in contact-free mode. Subsequently, a novel hierarchical mismatching removal algorithm based on neighborhood searching and LBP histograms is adopted to improve the accuracy of feature matching. Finally, we rigorously evaluated the proposed approach using two different databases and obtained 0.996% and 3.112% Equal Error Rates (EERs), respectively, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. PMID:24866176

  5. Energy Efficient and Stable Weight Based Clustering for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bouk, Safdar H.; Sasase, Iwao

    Recently several weighted clustering algorithms have been proposed, however, to the best of our knowledge; there is none that propagates weights to other nodes without weight message for leader election, normalizes node parameters and considers neighboring node parameters to calculate node weights. In this paper, we propose an Energy Efficient and Stable Weight Based Clustering (EE-SWBC) algorithm that elects cluster heads without sending any additional weight message. It propagates node parameters to its neighbors through neighbor discovery message (HELLO Message) and stores these parameters in neighborhood list. Each node normalizes parameters and efficiently calculates its own weight and the weights of neighboring nodes from that neighborhood table using Grey Decision Method (GDM). GDM finds the ideal solution (best node parameters in neighborhood list) and calculates node weights in comparison to the ideal solution. The node(s) with maximum weight (parameters closer to the ideal solution) are elected as cluster heads. In result, EE-SWBC fairly selects potential nodes with parameters closer to ideal solution with less overhead. Different performance metrics of EE-SWBC and Distributed Weighted Clustering Algorithm (DWCA) are compared through simulations. The simulation results show that EE-SWBC maintains fewer average numbers of stable clusters with minimum overhead, less energy consumption and fewer changes in cluster structure within network compared to DWCA.

  6. Research and application of multi-agent genetic algorithm in tower defense game

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Jin, Shaohua

    2018-04-01

    In this paper, a new multi-agent genetic algorithm based on orthogonal experiment is proposed, which is based on multi-agent system, genetic algorithm and orthogonal experimental design. The design of neighborhood competition operator, orthogonal crossover operator, Son and self-learning operator. The new algorithm is applied to mobile tower defense game, according to the characteristics of the game, the establishment of mathematical models, and finally increases the value of the game's monster.

  7. Optimizing Scoring and Sampling Methods for Assessing Built Neighborhood Environment Quality in Residential Areas

    PubMed Central

    Adu-Brimpong, Joel; Coffey, Nathan; Ayers, Colby; Berrigan, David; Yingling, Leah R.; Thomas, Samantha; Mitchell, Valerie; Ahuja, Chaarushi; Rivers, Joshua; Hartz, Jacob; Powell-Wiley, Tiffany M.

    2017-01-01

    Optimization of existing measurement tools is necessary to explore links between aspects of the neighborhood built environment and health behaviors or outcomes. We evaluate a scoring method for virtual neighborhood audits utilizing the Active Neighborhood Checklist (the Checklist), a neighborhood audit measure, and assess street segment representativeness in low-income neighborhoods. Eighty-two home neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. Cardiovascular Health/Needs Assessment (NCT01927783) participants were audited using Google Street View imagery and the Checklist (five sections with 89 total questions). Twelve street segments per home address were assessed for (1) Land-Use Type; (2) Public Transportation Availability; (3) Street Characteristics; (4) Environment Quality and (5) Sidewalks/Walking/Biking features. Checklist items were scored 0–2 points/question. A combinations algorithm was developed to assess street segments’ representativeness. Spearman correlations were calculated between built environment quality scores and Walk Score®, a validated neighborhood walkability measure. Street segment quality scores ranged 10–47 (Mean = 29.4 ± 6.9) and overall neighborhood quality scores, 172–475 (Mean = 352.3 ± 63.6). Walk scores® ranged 0–91 (Mean = 46.7 ± 26.3). Street segment combinations’ correlation coefficients ranged 0.75–1.0. Significant positive correlations were found between overall neighborhood quality scores, four of the five Checklist subsection scores, and Walk Scores® (r = 0.62, p < 0.001). This scoring method adequately captures neighborhood features in low-income, residential areas and may aid in delineating impact of specific built environment features on health behaviors and outcomes. PMID:28282878

  8. Optimizing Scoring and Sampling Methods for Assessing Built Neighborhood Environment Quality in Residential Areas.

    PubMed

    Adu-Brimpong, Joel; Coffey, Nathan; Ayers, Colby; Berrigan, David; Yingling, Leah R; Thomas, Samantha; Mitchell, Valerie; Ahuja, Chaarushi; Rivers, Joshua; Hartz, Jacob; Powell-Wiley, Tiffany M

    2017-03-08

    Optimization of existing measurement tools is necessary to explore links between aspects of the neighborhood built environment and health behaviors or outcomes. We evaluate a scoring method for virtual neighborhood audits utilizing the Active Neighborhood Checklist (the Checklist), a neighborhood audit measure, and assess street segment representativeness in low-income neighborhoods. Eighty-two home neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. Cardiovascular Health/Needs Assessment (NCT01927783) participants were audited using Google Street View imagery and the Checklist (five sections with 89 total questions). Twelve street segments per home address were assessed for (1) Land-Use Type; (2) Public Transportation Availability; (3) Street Characteristics; (4) Environment Quality and (5) Sidewalks/Walking/Biking features. Checklist items were scored 0-2 points/question. A combinations algorithm was developed to assess street segments' representativeness. Spearman correlations were calculated between built environment quality scores and Walk Score ® , a validated neighborhood walkability measure. Street segment quality scores ranged 10-47 (Mean = 29.4 ± 6.9) and overall neighborhood quality scores, 172-475 (Mean = 352.3 ± 63.6). Walk scores ® ranged 0-91 (Mean = 46.7 ± 26.3). Street segment combinations' correlation coefficients ranged 0.75-1.0. Significant positive correlations were found between overall neighborhood quality scores, four of the five Checklist subsection scores, and Walk Scores ® ( r = 0.62, p < 0.001). This scoring method adequately captures neighborhood features in low-income, residential areas and may aid in delineating impact of specific built environment features on health behaviors and outcomes.

  9. Optimal neighborhood indexing for protein similarity search.

    PubMed

    Peterlongo, Pierre; Noé, Laurent; Lavenier, Dominique; Nguyen, Van Hoa; Kucherov, Gregory; Giraud, Mathieu

    2008-12-16

    Similarity inference, one of the main bioinformatics tasks, has to face an exponential growth of the biological data. A classical approach used to cope with this data flow involves heuristics with large seed indexes. In order to speed up this technique, the index can be enhanced by storing additional information to limit the number of random memory accesses. However, this improvement leads to a larger index that may become a bottleneck. In the case of protein similarity search, we propose to decrease the index size by reducing the amino acid alphabet. The paper presents two main contributions. First, we show that an optimal neighborhood indexing combining an alphabet reduction and a longer neighborhood leads to a reduction of 35% of memory involved into the process, without sacrificing the quality of results nor the computational time. Second, our approach led us to develop a new kind of substitution score matrices and their associated e-value parameters. In contrast to usual matrices, these matrices are rectangular since they compare amino acid groups from different alphabets. We describe the method used for computing those matrices and we provide some typical examples that can be used in such comparisons. Supplementary data can be found on the website http://bioinfo.lifl.fr/reblosum. We propose a practical index size reduction of the neighborhood data, that does not negatively affect the performance of large-scale search in protein sequences. Such an index can be used in any study involving large protein data. Moreover, rectangular substitution score matrices and their associated statistical parameters can have applications in any study involving an alphabet reduction.

  10. Optimal neighborhood indexing for protein similarity search

    PubMed Central

    Peterlongo, Pierre; Noé, Laurent; Lavenier, Dominique; Nguyen, Van Hoa; Kucherov, Gregory; Giraud, Mathieu

    2008-01-01

    Background Similarity inference, one of the main bioinformatics tasks, has to face an exponential growth of the biological data. A classical approach used to cope with this data flow involves heuristics with large seed indexes. In order to speed up this technique, the index can be enhanced by storing additional information to limit the number of random memory accesses. However, this improvement leads to a larger index that may become a bottleneck. In the case of protein similarity search, we propose to decrease the index size by reducing the amino acid alphabet. Results The paper presents two main contributions. First, we show that an optimal neighborhood indexing combining an alphabet reduction and a longer neighborhood leads to a reduction of 35% of memory involved into the process, without sacrificing the quality of results nor the computational time. Second, our approach led us to develop a new kind of substitution score matrices and their associated e-value parameters. In contrast to usual matrices, these matrices are rectangular since they compare amino acid groups from different alphabets. We describe the method used for computing those matrices and we provide some typical examples that can be used in such comparisons. Supplementary data can be found on the website . Conclusion We propose a practical index size reduction of the neighborhood data, that does not negatively affect the performance of large-scale search in protein sequences. Such an index can be used in any study involving large protein data. Moreover, rectangular substitution score matrices and their associated statistical parameters can have applications in any study involving an alphabet reduction. PMID:19087280

  11. Restoring Low Sidelobe Antenna Patterns with Failed Elements in a Phased Array Antenna

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2016-02-01

    optimum low sidelobes are demonstrated in several examples. Index Terms — Array signal processing, beams, linear algebra , phased arrays, shaped...represented by a linear combination of low sidelobe beamformers with no failed elements, ’s, in a neighborhood around under the constraint that the linear ...would expect that linear combinations of them in a neighborhood around would also have low sidelobes. The algorithms in this paper exploit this

  12. Association between neighborhood walkability and GPS-measured walking, bicycling and vehicle time in adolescents.

    PubMed

    Carlson, Jordan A; Saelens, Brian E; Kerr, Jacqueline; Schipperijn, Jasper; Conway, Terry L; Frank, Lawrence D; Chapman, Jim E; Glanz, Karen; Cain, Kelli L; Sallis, James F

    2015-03-01

    To investigate relations of walking, bicycling and vehicle time to neighborhood walkability and total physical activity in youth. Participants (N=690) were from 380 census block groups of high/low walkability and income in two US regions. Home neighborhood residential density, intersection density, retail density, entertainment density and walkability were derived using GIS. Minutes/day of walking, bicycling and vehicle time were derived from processing algorithms applied to GPS. Accelerometers estimated total daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Models were adjusted for nesting of days (N=2987) within participants within block groups. Walking occurred on 33%, active travel on 43%, and vehicle time on 91% of the days observed. Intersection density and neighborhood walkability were positively related to walking and bicycling and negatively related to vehicle time. Residential density was positively related to walking. Increasing walking in youth could be effective in increasing total physical activity. Built environment findings suggest potential for increasing walking in youth through improving neighborhood walkability. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  13. Contextual classification on a CDC Flexible Processor system. [for photomapped remote sensing data

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Smith, B. W.; Siegel, H. J.; Swain, P. H.

    1981-01-01

    A potential hardware organization for the Flexible Processor Array is presented. An algorithm that implements a contextual classifier for remote sensing data analysis is given, along with uniprocessor classification algorithms. The Flexible Processor algorithm is provided, as are simulated timings for contextual classifiers run on the Flexible Processor Array and another system. The timings are analyzed for context neighborhoods of sizes three and nine.

  14. CLEARPOND: Cross-Linguistic Easy-Access Resource for Phonological and Orthographic Neighborhood Densities

    PubMed Central

    Marian, Viorica; Bartolotti, James; Chabal, Sarah; Shook, Anthony

    2012-01-01

    Past research has demonstrated cross-linguistic, cross-modal, and task-dependent differences in neighborhood density effects, indicating a need to control for neighborhood variables when developing and interpreting research on language processing. The goals of the present paper are two-fold: (1) to introduce CLEARPOND (Cross-Linguistic Easy-Access Resource for Phonological and Orthographic Neighborhood Densities), a centralized database of phonological and orthographic neighborhood information, both within and between languages, for five commonly-studied languages: Dutch, English, French, German, and Spanish; and (2) to show how CLEARPOND can be used to compare general properties of phonological and orthographic neighborhoods across languages. CLEARPOND allows researchers to input a word or list of words and obtain phonological and orthographic neighbors, neighborhood densities, mean neighborhood frequencies, word lengths by number of phonemes and graphemes, and spoken-word frequencies. Neighbors can be defined by substitution, deletion, and/or addition, and the database can be queried separately along each metric or summed across all three. Neighborhood values can be obtained both within and across languages, and outputs can optionally be restricted to neighbors of higher frequency. To enable researchers to more quickly and easily develop stimuli, CLEARPOND can also be searched by features, generating lists of words that meet precise criteria, such as a specific range of neighborhood sizes, lexical frequencies, and/or word lengths. CLEARPOND is freely-available to researchers and the public as a searchable, online database and for download at http://clearpond.northwestern.edu. PMID:22916227

  15. Youth physical activity opportunities in lower and higher income neighborhoods.

    PubMed

    Suminski, Richard Robert; Ding, Ding; Lee, Rebecca; May, Linda; Tota, Tonya; Dinius, David

    2011-08-01

    The presence of youth physical activity opportunities is one of the strongest environmental correlates of youth physical activity. More detailed information about such opportunities is needed to maximize their contributions to physical activity promotion especially in under resourced, lower income areas. The objectives of this study were to construct a comprehensive profile of youth physical activity opportunities and contrast profile characteristics between lower and higher income neighborhoods. Youth physical activity opportunities in eight lower (median household income <$36,000) and eight higher (>$36,000) income neighborhoods were identified and described using interviews, neighborhood tours, site visits, and systematic searches of various sources (e.g., Internet). Lower income neighborhoods had a greater number of locations offering youth physical activity opportunities but similar quantities of amenities. Lower income neighborhoods had more faith-based locations and court, trail/path, event, and water-type amenities. Higher income neighborhoods had significantly more for-profit businesses offering youth physical activity opportunities. Funding for youth physical activity opportunities in lower income neighborhoods was more likely to come from donations and government revenue (e.g., taxes), whereas the majority of youth physical activity opportunities in the higher income neighborhoods were supported by for-profit business revenue. Differences between lower and higher income neighborhoods in the type and amenities of youth physical activity opportunities may be driven by funding sources. Attention to these differences could help create more effective and efficient strategies for promoting physical activity among youth.

  16. Parameter estimation for chaotic systems using a hybrid adaptive cuckoo search with simulated annealing algorithm

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Sheng, Zheng, E-mail: 19994035@sina.com; Wang, Jun; Zhou, Bihua

    2014-03-15

    This paper introduces a novel hybrid optimization algorithm to establish the parameters of chaotic systems. In order to deal with the weaknesses of the traditional cuckoo search algorithm, the proposed adaptive cuckoo search with simulated annealing algorithm is presented, which incorporates the adaptive parameters adjusting operation and the simulated annealing operation in the cuckoo search algorithm. Normally, the parameters of the cuckoo search algorithm are kept constant that may result in decreasing the efficiency of the algorithm. For the purpose of balancing and enhancing the accuracy and convergence rate of the cuckoo search algorithm, the adaptive operation is presented tomore » tune the parameters properly. Besides, the local search capability of cuckoo search algorithm is relatively weak that may decrease the quality of optimization. So the simulated annealing operation is merged into the cuckoo search algorithm to enhance the local search ability and improve the accuracy and reliability of the results. The functionality of the proposed hybrid algorithm is investigated through the Lorenz chaotic system under the noiseless and noise condition, respectively. The numerical results demonstrate that the method can estimate parameters efficiently and accurately in the noiseless and noise condition. Finally, the results are compared with the traditional cuckoo search algorithm, genetic algorithm, and particle swarm optimization algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and superior performance of the proposed algorithm.« less

  17. Building a National Neighborhood Dataset From Geotagged Twitter Data for Indicators of Happiness, Diet, and Physical Activity.

    PubMed

    Nguyen, Quynh C; Li, Dapeng; Meng, Hsien-Wen; Kath, Suraj; Nsoesie, Elaine; Li, Feifei; Wen, Ming

    2016-10-17

    Studies suggest that where people live, play, and work can influence health and well-being. However, the dearth of neighborhood data, especially data that is timely and consistent across geographies, hinders understanding of the effects of neighborhoods on health. Social media data represents a possible new data resource for neighborhood research. The aim of this study was to build, from geotagged Twitter data, a national neighborhood database with area-level indicators of well-being and health behaviors. We utilized Twitter's streaming application programming interface to continuously collect a random 1% subset of publicly available geolocated tweets for 1 year (April 2015 to March 2016). We collected 80 million geotagged tweets from 603,363 unique Twitter users across the contiguous United States. We validated our machine learning algorithms for constructing indicators of happiness, food, and physical activity by comparing predicted values to those generated by human labelers. Geotagged tweets were spatially mapped to the 2010 census tract and zip code areas they fall within, which enabled further assessment of the associations between Twitter-derived neighborhood variables and neighborhood demographic, economic, business, and health characteristics. Machine labeled and manually labeled tweets had a high level of accuracy: 78% for happiness, 83% for food, and 85% for physical activity for dichotomized labels with the F scores 0.54, 0.86, and 0.90, respectively. About 20% of tweets were classified as happy. Relatively few terms (less than 25) were necessary to characterize the majority of tweets on food and physical activity. Data from over 70,000 census tracts from the United States suggest that census tract factors like percentage African American and economic disadvantage were associated with lower census tract happiness. Urbanicity was related to higher frequency of fast food tweets. Greater numbers of fast food restaurants predicted higher frequency of fast food mentions. Surprisingly, fitness centers and nature parks were only modestly associated with higher frequency of physical activity tweets. Greater state-level happiness, positivity toward physical activity, and positivity toward healthy foods, assessed via tweets, were associated with lower all-cause mortality and prevalence of chronic conditions such as obesity and diabetes and lower physical inactivity and smoking, controlling for state median income, median age, and percentage white non-Hispanic. Machine learning algorithms can be built with relatively high accuracy to characterize sentiment, food, and physical activity mentions on social media. Such data can be utilized to construct neighborhood indicators consistently and cost effectively. Access to neighborhood data, in turn, can be leveraged to better understand neighborhood effects and address social determinants of health. We found that neighborhoods with social and economic disadvantage, high urbanicity, and more fast food restaurants may exhibit lower happiness and fewer healthy behaviors.

  18. Generalized Jaynes-Cummings model as a quantum search algorithm

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Romanelli, A.

    2009-07-15

    We propose a continuous time quantum search algorithm using a generalization of the Jaynes-Cummings model. In this model the states of the atom are the elements among which the algorithm realizes the search, exciting resonances between the initial and the searched states. This algorithm behaves like Grover's algorithm; the optimal search time is proportional to the square root of the size of the search set and the probability to find the searched state oscillates periodically in time. In this frame, it is possible to reinterpret the usual Jaynes-Cummings model as a trivial case of the quantum search algorithm.

  19. How activation, entanglement, and searching a semantic network contribute to event memory.

    PubMed

    Nelson, Douglas L; Kitto, Kirsty; Galea, David; McEvoy, Cathy L; Bruza, Peter D

    2013-08-01

    Free-association norms indicate that words are organized into semantic/associative neighborhoods within a larger network of words and links that bind the net together. We present evidence indicating that memory for a recent word event can depend on implicitly and simultaneously activating related words in its neighborhood. Processing a word during encoding primes its network representation as a function of the density of the links in its neighborhood. Such priming increases recall and recognition and can have long-lasting effects when the word is processed in working memory. Evidence for this phenomenon is reviewed in extralist-cuing, primed free-association, intralist-cuing, and single-item recognition tasks. The findings also show that when a related word is presented in order to cue the recall of a studied word, the cue activates the target in an array of related words that distract and reduce the probability of the target's selection. The activation of the semantic network produces priming benefits during encoding, and search costs during retrieval. In extralist cuing, recall is a negative function of cue-to-distractor strength, and a positive function of neighborhood density, cue-to-target strength, and target-to-cue strength. We show how these four measures derived from the network can be combined and used to predict memory performance. These measures play different roles in different tasks, indicating that the contribution of the semantic network varies with the context provided by the task. Finally, we evaluate spreading-activation and quantum-like entanglement explanations for the priming effects produced by neighborhood density.

  20. Scene text detection via extremal region based double threshold convolutional network classification

    PubMed Central

    Zhu, Wei; Lou, Jing; Chen, Longtao; Xia, Qingyuan

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, we present a robust text detection approach in natural images which is based on region proposal mechanism. A powerful low-level detector named saliency enhanced-MSER extended from the widely-used MSER is proposed by incorporating saliency detection methods, which ensures a high recall rate. Given a natural image, character candidates are extracted from three channels in a perception-based illumination invariant color space by saliency-enhanced MSER algorithm. A discriminative convolutional neural network (CNN) is jointly trained with multi-level information including pixel-level and character-level information as character candidate classifier. Each image patch is classified as strong text, weak text and non-text by double threshold filtering instead of conventional one-step classification, leveraging confident scores obtained via CNN. To further prune non-text regions, we develop a recursive neighborhood search algorithm to track credible texts from weak text set. Finally, characters are grouped into text lines using heuristic features such as spatial location, size, color, and stroke width. We compare our approach with several state-of-the-art methods, and experiments show that our method achieves competitive performance on public datasets ICDAR 2011 and ICDAR 2013. PMID:28820891

  1. Neighborhood Factors and Dating Violence Among Youth: A Systematic Review.

    PubMed

    Johnson, Renee M; Parker, Elizabeth M; Rinehart, Jenny; Nail, Jennifer; Rothman, Emily F

    2015-09-01

    The purpose of this review is to summarize the empirical research on neighborhood-level factors and dating violence among adolescents and emerging adults to guide future research and practice. In 2015, a total of 20 articles were identified through a search of the literature using PubMed. Eligible articles included those that (1) had been published in a peer-reviewed journal since 2005; (2) reported a measure of association between at least one neighborhood-level factor and dating violence; and (3) had a study population of youth aged <26 years. We abstracted information about the studies, including measurement of dating violence and neighborhood factors, and measures of effect. Results were summarized into three categories based on the aspect of neighborhood that was the focus of the work: demographic and structural characteristics (n=11); neighborhood disorder (n=12); and social disorganization (n=8). There was some evidence to suggest that neighborhood disadvantage is associated with dating violence, but very little evidence to suggest that residence characteristics (e.g., racial heterogeneity) are associated with dating violence. Results do suggest that perceived neighborhood disorder is associated with physical dating violence perpetration, but do not suggest that it is associated with physical dating violence victimization. Social control and community connectedness are both associated with dating violence, but findings on collective efficacy are mixed. Existing research suggests that neighborhood factors may be associated with dating violence. However, there is a limited body of research on the neighborhood context of dating violence, and more rigorous research is needed. Copyright © 2015 American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  2. Neighborhood Factors and Dating Violence Among Youth

    PubMed Central

    Johnson, Renee M.; Parker, Elizabeth M.; Rinehart, Jenny; Nail, Jennifer; Rothman, Emily F.

    2015-01-01

    Context The purpose of this review is to summarize the empirical research on neighborhood-level factors and dating violence among adolescents and emerging adults to guide future research and practice. Evidence acquisition In 2015, 20 articles were identified through a search of the literature using PubMed. Eligible articles included those that: (1) had been published in a peer-reviewed journal since 2005; (2) reported a measure of association between at least one neighborhood-level factor and dating violence; and (3) had a study population of youth aged <26 years. We abstracted information about the studies, including measurement of dating violence and neighborhood factors, and measures of effect. Evidence synthesis Results were summarized into three categories based on the aspect of neighborhood which was the focus of the work: demographic and structural characteristics (n=11), neighborhood disorder (n=12), and social disorganization (n=8). There was some evidence to suggest that neighborhood disadvantage is associated with dating violence, but very little evidence to suggest that residence characteristics (e.g., racial heterogeneity) are associated with dating violence. Results do suggest that perceived neighborhood disorder is associated with physical dating violence perpetration, but do not suggest that it is associated with physical dating violence victimization. Social control and community connectedness are both associated with dating violence, but findings on collective efficacy are mixed. Conclusions Existing research suggests that neighborhood factors may be associated with dating violence. However, there is a limited body of research on the neighborhood context of dating violence and more rigorous research is needed. PMID:26296444

  3. Mining chemical reactions using neighborhood behavior and condensed graphs of reactions approaches.

    PubMed

    de Luca, Aurélie; Horvath, Dragos; Marcou, Gilles; Solov'ev, Vitaly; Varnek, Alexandre

    2012-09-24

    This work addresses the problem of similarity search and classification of chemical reactions using Neighborhood Behavior (NB) and Condensed Graphs of Reaction (CGR) approaches. The CGR formalism represents chemical reactions as a classical molecular graph with dynamic bonds, enabling descriptor calculations on this graph. Different types of the ISIDA fragment descriptors generated for CGRs in combination with two metrics--Tanimoto and Euclidean--were considered as chemical spaces, to serve for reaction dissimilarity scoring. The NB method has been used to select an optimal combination of descriptors which distinguish different types of chemical reactions in a database containing 8544 reactions of 9 classes. Relevance of NB analysis has been validated in generic (multiclass) similarity search and in clustering with Self-Organizing Maps (SOM). NB-compliant sets of descriptors were shown to display enhanced mapping propensities, allowing the construction of better Self-Organizing Maps and similarity searches (NB and classical similarity search criteria--AUC ROC--correlate at a level of 0.7). The analysis of the SOM clusters proved chemically meaningful CGR substructures representing specific reaction signatures.

  4. Seismic Structure of India from Regional Waveform Matching

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gaur, V.; Maggi, A.; Priestley, K.; Rai, S.

    2003-12-01

    We use a neighborhood adaptive grid search procedure and reflectivity synthetics to model regional distance range (500-2000~km) seismograms recorded in India and to determine the variation in the crust and uppermost mantle structure across the subcontinent. The portions of the regional waveform which are most influenced by the crust and uppermost mantle structure are the 10-100~s period Pnl and fundamental mode surface waves. We use the adaptive grid search algorithm to match both portions of the seismogram simultaneously. This procedure results in a family of 1-D path average crust and upper mantle velocity and attenuation models whose propagation characteristics closely match those of the real Earth. Our data set currently consist of ˜20 seismograms whose propagation paths are primarily confined to the Ganges Basin in north India and the East Dharwar Craton of south India. The East Dharwar Craton has a simple and uniform structure consisting of a 36+/-2 km thick two layer crust, and an uppermost mantle with a sub-Moho velocity of 4.5~km/s. The structure of northern India is more complicated, with pronounced low velocities in the upper crustal layer due to the large sediment thicknesses in the Ganges basin.

  5. A simple and fast heuristic for protein structure comparison.

    PubMed

    Pelta, David A; González, Juan R; Moreno Vega, Marcos

    2008-03-25

    Protein structure comparison is a key problem in bioinformatics. There exist several methods for doing protein comparison, being the solution of the Maximum Contact Map Overlap problem (MAX-CMO) one of the alternatives available. Although this problem may be solved using exact algorithms, researchers require approximate algorithms that obtain good quality solutions using less computational resources than the formers. We propose a variable neighborhood search metaheuristic for solving MAX-CMO. We analyze this strategy in two aspects: 1) from an optimization point of view the strategy is tested on two different datasets, obtaining an error of 3.5%(over 2702 pairs) and 1.7% (over 161 pairs) with respect to optimal values; thus leading to high accurate solutions in a simpler and less expensive way than exact algorithms; 2) in terms of protein structure classification, we conduct experiments on three datasets and show that is feasible to detect structural similarities at SCOP's family and CATH's architecture levels using normalized overlap values. Some limitations and the role of normalization are outlined for doing classification at SCOP's fold level. We designed, implemented and tested.a new tool for solving MAX-CMO, based on a well-known metaheuristic technique. The good balance between solution's quality and computational effort makes it a valuable tool. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the MAX-CMO measure is tested at SCOP's fold and CATH's architecture levels with encouraging results.

  6. Analysis of Multivariate Experimental Data Using A Simplified Regression Model Search Algorithm

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Ulbrich, Norbert Manfred

    2013-01-01

    A new regression model search algorithm was developed in 2011 that may be used to analyze both general multivariate experimental data sets and wind tunnel strain-gage balance calibration data. The new algorithm is a simplified version of a more complex search algorithm that was originally developed at the NASA Ames Balance Calibration Laboratory. The new algorithm has the advantage that it needs only about one tenth of the original algorithm's CPU time for the completion of a search. In addition, extensive testing showed that the prediction accuracy of math models obtained from the simplified algorithm is similar to the prediction accuracy of math models obtained from the original algorithm. The simplified algorithm, however, cannot guarantee that search constraints related to a set of statistical quality requirements are always satisfied in the optimized regression models. Therefore, the simplified search algorithm is not intended to replace the original search algorithm. Instead, it may be used to generate an alternate optimized regression model of experimental data whenever the application of the original search algorithm either fails or requires too much CPU time. Data from a machine calibration of NASA's MK40 force balance is used to illustrate the application of the new regression model search algorithm.

  7. Stride search: A general algorithm for storm detection in high resolution climate data

    DOE PAGES

    Bosler, Peter Andrew; Roesler, Erika Louise; Taylor, Mark A.; ...

    2015-09-08

    This article discusses the problem of identifying extreme climate events such as intense storms within large climate data sets. The basic storm detection algorithm is reviewed, which splits the problem into two parts: a spatial search followed by a temporal correlation problem. Two specific implementations of the spatial search algorithm are compared. The commonly used grid point search algorithm is reviewed, and a new algorithm called Stride Search is introduced. Stride Search is designed to work at all latitudes, while grid point searches may fail in polar regions. Results from the two algorithms are compared for the application of tropicalmore » cyclone detection, and shown to produce similar results for the same set of storm identification criteria. The time required for both algorithms to search the same data set is compared. Furthermore, Stride Search's ability to search extreme latitudes is demonstrated for the case of polar low detection.« less

  8. Two-pass imputation algorithm for missing value estimation in gene expression time series.

    PubMed

    Tsiporkova, Elena; Boeva, Veselka

    2007-10-01

    Gene expression microarray experiments frequently generate datasets with multiple values missing. However, most of the analysis, mining, and classification methods for gene expression data require a complete matrix of gene array values. Therefore, the accurate estimation of missing values in such datasets has been recognized as an important issue, and several imputation algorithms have already been proposed to the biological community. Most of these approaches, however, are not particularly suitable for time series expression profiles. In view of this, we propose a novel imputation algorithm, which is specially suited for the estimation of missing values in gene expression time series data. The algorithm utilizes Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) distance in order to measure the similarity between time expression profiles, and subsequently selects for each gene expression profile with missing values a dedicated set of candidate profiles for estimation. Three different DTW-based imputation (DTWimpute) algorithms have been considered: position-wise, neighborhood-wise, and two-pass imputation. These have initially been prototyped in Perl, and their accuracy has been evaluated on yeast expression time series data using several different parameter settings. The experiments have shown that the two-pass algorithm consistently outperforms, in particular for datasets with a higher level of missing entries, the neighborhood-wise and the position-wise algorithms. The performance of the two-pass DTWimpute algorithm has further been benchmarked against the weighted K-Nearest Neighbors algorithm, which is widely used in the biological community; the former algorithm has appeared superior to the latter one. Motivated by these findings, indicating clearly the added value of the DTW techniques for missing value estimation in time series data, we have built an optimized C++ implementation of the two-pass DTWimpute algorithm. The software also provides for a choice between three different initial rough imputation methods.

  9. Nearest neighbors by neighborhood counting.

    PubMed

    Wang, Hui

    2006-06-01

    Finding nearest neighbors is a general idea that underlies many artificial intelligence tasks, including machine learning, data mining, natural language understanding, and information retrieval. This idea is explicitly used in the k-nearest neighbors algorithm (kNN), a popular classification method. In this paper, this idea is adopted in the development of a general methodology, neighborhood counting, for devising similarity functions. We turn our focus from neighbors to neighborhoods, a region in the data space covering the data point in question. To measure the similarity between two data points, we consider all neighborhoods that cover both data points. We propose to use the number of such neighborhoods as a measure of similarity. Neighborhood can be defined for different types of data in different ways. Here, we consider one definition of neighborhood for multivariate data and derive a formula for such similarity, called neighborhood counting measure or NCM. NCM was tested experimentally in the framework of kNN. Experiments show that NCM is generally comparable to VDM and its variants, the state-of-the-art distance functions for multivariate data, and, at the same time, is consistently better for relatively large k values. Additionally, NCM consistently outperforms HEOM (a mixture of Euclidean and Hamming distances), the "standard" and most widely used distance function for multivariate data. NCM has a computational complexity in the same order as the standard Euclidean distance function and NCM is task independent and works for numerical and categorical data in a conceptually uniform way. The neighborhood counting methodology is proven sound for multivariate data experimentally. We hope it will work for other types of data.

  10. In search of causality: a systematic review of the relationship between the built environment and physical activity among adults

    PubMed Central

    2011-01-01

    Background Empirical evidence suggests that an association between the built environment and physical activity exists. This evidence is mostly derived from cross-sectional studies that do not account for other causal explanations such as neighborhood self-selection. Experimental and quasi-experimental designs can be used to isolate the effect of the built environment on physical activity, but in their absence, statistical techniques that adjust for neighborhood self-selection can be used with cross-sectional data. Previous reviews examining the built environment-physical activity relationship have not differentiated among findings based on study design. To deal with self-selection, we synthesized evidence regarding the relationship between objective measures of the built environment and physical activity by including in our review: 1) cross-sectional studies that adjust for neighborhood self-selection and 2) quasi-experiments. Method In September 2010, we searched for English-language studies on built environments and physical activity from all available years in health, leisure, transportation, social sciences, and geographical databases. Twenty cross-sectional and 13 quasi-experimental studies published between 1996 and 2010 were included in the review. Results Most associations between the built environment and physical activity were in the expected direction or null. Land use mix, connectivity and population density and overall neighborhood design were however, important determinants of physical activity. The built environment was more likely to be associated with transportation walking compared with other types of physical activity including recreational walking. Three studies found an attenuation in associations between built environment characteristics and physical activity after accounting for neighborhood self-selection. Conclusion More quasi-experiments that examine a broader range of environmental attributes in relation to context-specific physical activity and that measure changes in the built environment, neighborhood preferences and their effect on physical activity are needed. PMID:22077952

  11. Stride search: A general algorithm for storm detection in high-resolution climate data

    DOE PAGES

    Bosler, Peter A.; Roesler, Erika L.; Taylor, Mark A.; ...

    2016-04-13

    This study discusses the problem of identifying extreme climate events such as intense storms within large climate data sets. The basic storm detection algorithm is reviewed, which splits the problem into two parts: a spatial search followed by a temporal correlation problem. Two specific implementations of the spatial search algorithm are compared: the commonly used grid point search algorithm is reviewed, and a new algorithm called Stride Search is introduced. The Stride Search algorithm is defined independently of the spatial discretization associated with a particular data set. Results from the two algorithms are compared for the application of tropical cyclonemore » detection, and shown to produce similar results for the same set of storm identification criteria. Differences between the two algorithms arise for some storms due to their different definition of search regions in physical space. The physical space associated with each Stride Search region is constant, regardless of data resolution or latitude, and Stride Search is therefore capable of searching all regions of the globe in the same manner. Stride Search's ability to search high latitudes is demonstrated for the case of polar low detection. Wall clock time required for Stride Search is shown to be smaller than a grid point search of the same data, and the relative speed up associated with Stride Search increases as resolution increases.« less

  12. Building a National Neighborhood Dataset From Geotagged Twitter Data for Indicators of Happiness, Diet, and Physical Activity

    PubMed Central

    Li, Dapeng; Meng, Hsien-Wen; Kath, Suraj; Nsoesie, Elaine; Li, Feifei; Wen, Ming

    2016-01-01

    Background Studies suggest that where people live, play, and work can influence health and well-being. However, the dearth of neighborhood data, especially data that is timely and consistent across geographies, hinders understanding of the effects of neighborhoods on health. Social media data represents a possible new data resource for neighborhood research. Objective The aim of this study was to build, from geotagged Twitter data, a national neighborhood database with area-level indicators of well-being and health behaviors. Methods We utilized Twitter’s streaming application programming interface to continuously collect a random 1% subset of publicly available geolocated tweets for 1 year (April 2015 to March 2016). We collected 80 million geotagged tweets from 603,363 unique Twitter users across the contiguous United States. We validated our machine learning algorithms for constructing indicators of happiness, food, and physical activity by comparing predicted values to those generated by human labelers. Geotagged tweets were spatially mapped to the 2010 census tract and zip code areas they fall within, which enabled further assessment of the associations between Twitter-derived neighborhood variables and neighborhood demographic, economic, business, and health characteristics. Results Machine labeled and manually labeled tweets had a high level of accuracy: 78% for happiness, 83% for food, and 85% for physical activity for dichotomized labels with the F scores 0.54, 0.86, and 0.90, respectively. About 20% of tweets were classified as happy. Relatively few terms (less than 25) were necessary to characterize the majority of tweets on food and physical activity. Data from over 70,000 census tracts from the United States suggest that census tract factors like percentage African American and economic disadvantage were associated with lower census tract happiness. Urbanicity was related to higher frequency of fast food tweets. Greater numbers of fast food restaurants predicted higher frequency of fast food mentions. Surprisingly, fitness centers and nature parks were only modestly associated with higher frequency of physical activity tweets. Greater state-level happiness, positivity toward physical activity, and positivity toward healthy foods, assessed via tweets, were associated with lower all-cause mortality and prevalence of chronic conditions such as obesity and diabetes and lower physical inactivity and smoking, controlling for state median income, median age, and percentage white non-Hispanic. Conclusions Machine learning algorithms can be built with relatively high accuracy to characterize sentiment, food, and physical activity mentions on social media. Such data can be utilized to construct neighborhood indicators consistently and cost effectively. Access to neighborhood data, in turn, can be leveraged to better understand neighborhood effects and address social determinants of health. We found that neighborhoods with social and economic disadvantage, high urbanicity, and more fast food restaurants may exhibit lower happiness and fewer healthy behaviors. PMID:27751984

  13. A review on quantum search algorithms

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Giri, Pulak Ranjan; Korepin, Vladimir E.

    2017-12-01

    The use of superposition of states in quantum computation, known as quantum parallelism, has significant advantage in terms of speed over the classical computation. It is evident from the early invented quantum algorithms such as Deutsch's algorithm, Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm and its variation as Bernstein-Vazirani algorithm, Simon algorithm, Shor's algorithms, etc. Quantum parallelism also significantly speeds up the database search algorithm, which is important in computer science because it comes as a subroutine in many important algorithms. Quantum database search of Grover achieves the task of finding the target element in an unsorted database in a time quadratically faster than the classical computer. We review Grover's quantum search algorithms for a singe and multiple target elements in a database. The partial search algorithm of Grover and Radhakrishnan and its optimization by Korepin called GRK algorithm are also discussed.

  14. Multiscale registration algorithm for alignment of meshes

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Vadde, Srikanth; Kamarthi, Sagar V.; Gupta, Surendra M.

    2004-03-01

    Taking a multi-resolution approach, this research work proposes an effective algorithm for aligning a pair of scans obtained by scanning an object's surface from two adjacent views. This algorithm first encases each scan in the pair with an array of cubes of equal and fixed size. For each scan in the pair a surrogate scan is created by the centroids of the cubes that encase the scan. The Gaussian curvatures of points across the surrogate scan pair are compared to find the surrogate corresponding points. If the difference between the Gaussian curvatures of any two points on the surrogate scan pair is less than a predetermined threshold, then those two points are accepted as a pair of surrogate corresponding points. The rotation and translation values between the surrogate scan pair are determined by using a set of surrogate corresponding points. Using the same rotation and translation values the original scan pairs are aligned. The resulting registration (or alignment) error is computed to check the accuracy of the scan alignment. When the registration error becomes acceptably small, the algorithm is terminated. Otherwise the above process is continued with cubes of smaller and smaller sizes until the algorithm is terminated. However at each finer resolution the search space for finding the surrogate corresponding points is restricted to the regions in the neighborhood of the surrogate points that were at found at the preceding coarser level. The surrogate corresponding points, as the resolution becomes finer and finer, converge to the true corresponding points on the original scans. This approach offers three main benefits: it improves the chances of finding the true corresponding points on the scans, minimize the adverse effects of noise in the scans, and reduce the computational load for finding the corresponding points.

  15. Computational intelligence-based optimization of maximally stable extremal region segmentation for object detection

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Davis, Jeremy E.; Bednar, Amy E.; Goodin, Christopher T.; Durst, Phillip J.; Anderson, Derek T.; Bethel, Cindy L.

    2017-05-01

    Particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithms (GAs) are two optimization techniques from the field of computational intelligence (CI) for search problems where a direct solution can not easily be obtained. One such problem is finding an optimal set of parameters for the maximally stable extremal region (MSER) algorithm to detect areas of interest in imagery. Specifically, this paper describes the design of a GA and PSO for optimizing MSER parameters to detect stop signs in imagery produced via simulation for use in an autonomous vehicle navigation system. Several additions to the GA and PSO are required to successfully detect stop signs in simulated images. These additions are a primary focus of this paper and include: the identification of an appropriate fitness function, the creation of a variable mutation operator for the GA, an anytime algorithm modification to allow the GA to compute a solution quickly, the addition of an exponential velocity decay function to the PSO, the addition of an "execution best" omnipresent particle to the PSO, and the addition of an attractive force component to the PSO velocity update equation. Experimentation was performed with the GA using various combinations of selection, crossover, and mutation operators and experimentation was also performed with the PSO using various combinations of neighborhood topologies, swarm sizes, cognitive influence scalars, and social influence scalars. The results of both the GA and PSO optimized parameter sets are presented. This paper details the benefits and drawbacks of each algorithm in terms of detection accuracy, execution speed, and additions required to generate successful problem specific parameter sets.

  16. Optimal Fungal Space Searching Algorithms.

    PubMed

    Asenova, Elitsa; Lin, Hsin-Yu; Fu, Eileen; Nicolau, Dan V; Nicolau, Dan V

    2016-10-01

    Previous experiments have shown that fungi use an efficient natural algorithm for searching the space available for their growth in micro-confined networks, e.g., mazes. This natural "master" algorithm, which comprises two "slave" sub-algorithms, i.e., collision-induced branching and directional memory, has been shown to be more efficient than alternatives, with one, or the other, or both sub-algorithms turned off. In contrast, the present contribution compares the performance of the fungal natural algorithm against several standard artificial homologues. It was found that the space-searching fungal algorithm consistently outperforms uninformed algorithms, such as Depth-First-Search (DFS). Furthermore, while the natural algorithm is inferior to informed ones, such as A*, this under-performance does not importantly increase with the increase of the size of the maze. These findings suggest that a systematic effort of harvesting the natural space searching algorithms used by microorganisms is warranted and possibly overdue. These natural algorithms, if efficient, can be reverse-engineered for graph and tree search strategies.

  17. About neighborhood counting measure metric and minimum risk metric.

    PubMed

    Argentini, Andrea; Blanzieri, Enrico

    2010-04-01

    In a 2006 TPAMI paper, Wang proposed the Neighborhood Counting Measure, a similarity measure for the k-NN algorithm. In his paper, Wang mentioned the Minimum Risk Metric (MRM), an early distance measure based on the minimization of the risk of misclassification. Wang did not compare NCM to MRM because of its allegedly excessive computational load. In this comment paper, we complete the comparison that was missing in Wang's paper and, from our empirical evaluation, we show that MRM outperforms NCM and that its running time is not prohibitive as Wang suggested.

  18. The simultaneous integration of many trajectories using nilpotent normal forms

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Grayson, Matthew A.; Grossman, Robert

    1990-01-01

    Taylor's formula shows how to approximate a certain class of functions by polynomials. The approximations are arbitrarily good in some neighborhood whenever the function is analytic and they are easy to compute. The main goal is to give an efficient algorithm to approximate a neighborhood of the configuration space of a dynamical system by a nilpotent, explicitly integrable dynamical system. The major areas covered include: an approximating map; the generalized Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula; the Picard-Taylor method; the main theorem; simultaneous integration of trajectories; and examples.

  19. DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Bosler, Peter A.; Roesler, Erika L.; Taylor, Mark A.

    This study discusses the problem of identifying extreme climate events such as intense storms within large climate data sets. The basic storm detection algorithm is reviewed, which splits the problem into two parts: a spatial search followed by a temporal correlation problem. Two specific implementations of the spatial search algorithm are compared: the commonly used grid point search algorithm is reviewed, and a new algorithm called Stride Search is introduced. The Stride Search algorithm is defined independently of the spatial discretization associated with a particular data set. Results from the two algorithms are compared for the application of tropical cyclonemore » detection, and shown to produce similar results for the same set of storm identification criteria. Differences between the two algorithms arise for some storms due to their different definition of search regions in physical space. The physical space associated with each Stride Search region is constant, regardless of data resolution or latitude, and Stride Search is therefore capable of searching all regions of the globe in the same manner. Stride Search's ability to search high latitudes is demonstrated for the case of polar low detection. Wall clock time required for Stride Search is shown to be smaller than a grid point search of the same data, and the relative speed up associated with Stride Search increases as resolution increases.« less

  20. SymDex: increasing the efficiency of chemical fingerprint similarity searches for comparing large chemical libraries by using query set indexing.

    PubMed

    Tai, David; Fang, Jianwen

    2012-08-27

    The large sizes of today's chemical databases require efficient algorithms to perform similarity searches. It can be very time consuming to compare two large chemical databases. This paper seeks to build upon existing research efforts by describing a novel strategy for accelerating existing search algorithms for comparing large chemical collections. The quest for efficiency has focused on developing better indexing algorithms by creating heuristics for searching individual chemical against a chemical library by detecting and eliminating needless similarity calculations. For comparing two chemical collections, these algorithms simply execute searches for each chemical in the query set sequentially. The strategy presented in this paper achieves a speedup upon these algorithms by indexing the set of all query chemicals so redundant calculations that arise in the case of sequential searches are eliminated. We implement this novel algorithm by developing a similarity search program called Symmetric inDexing or SymDex. SymDex shows over a 232% maximum speedup compared to the state-of-the-art single query search algorithm over real data for various fingerprint lengths. Considerable speedup is even seen for batch searches where query set sizes are relatively small compared to typical database sizes. To the best of our knowledge, SymDex is the first search algorithm designed specifically for comparing chemical libraries. It can be adapted to most, if not all, existing indexing algorithms and shows potential for accelerating future similarity search algorithms for comparing chemical databases.

  1. The design and performance characteristics of a cellular logic 3-D image classification processor

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ankeney, L. A.

    1981-04-01

    The introduction of high resolution scanning laser radar systems which are capable of collecting range and reflectivity images, is predicted to significantly influence the development of processors capable of performing autonomous target classification tasks. Actively sensed range images are shown to be superior to passively collected infrared images in both image stability and information content. An illustrated tutorial introduces cellular logic (neighborhood) transformations and two and three dimensional erosion and dilation operations which are used for noise filters and geometric shape measurement. A unique 'cookbook' approach to selecting a sequence of neighborhood transformations suitable for object measurement is developed and related to false alarm rate and algorithm effectiveness measures. The cookbook design approach is used to develop an algorithm to classify objects based upon their 3-D geometrical features. A Monte Carlo performance analysis is used to demonstrate the utility of the design approach by characterizing the ability of the algorithm to classify randomly positioned three dimensional objects in the presence of additive noise, scale variations, and other forms of image distortion.

  2. An improved parent-centric mutation with normalized neighborhoods for inducing niching behavior in differential evolution.

    PubMed

    Biswas, Subhodip; Kundu, Souvik; Das, Swagatam

    2014-10-01

    In real life, we often need to find multiple optimally sustainable solutions of an optimization problem. Evolutionary multimodal optimization algorithms can be very helpful in such cases. They detect and maintain multiple optimal solutions during the run by incorporating specialized niching operations in their actual framework. Differential evolution (DE) is a powerful evolutionary algorithm (EA) well-known for its ability and efficiency as a single peak global optimizer for continuous spaces. This article suggests a niching scheme integrated with DE for achieving a stable and efficient niching behavior by combining the newly proposed parent-centric mutation operator with synchronous crowding replacement rule. The proposed approach is designed by considering the difficulties associated with the problem dependent niching parameters (like niche radius) and does not make use of such control parameter. The mutation operator helps to maintain the population diversity at an optimum level by using well-defined local neighborhoods. Based on a comparative study involving 13 well-known state-of-the-art niching EAs tested on an extensive collection of benchmarks, we observe a consistent statistical superiority enjoyed by our proposed niching algorithm.

  3. DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Bosler, Peter Andrew; Roesler, Erika Louise; Taylor, Mark A.

    This article discusses the problem of identifying extreme climate events such as intense storms within large climate data sets. The basic storm detection algorithm is reviewed, which splits the problem into two parts: a spatial search followed by a temporal correlation problem. Two specific implementations of the spatial search algorithm are compared. The commonly used grid point search algorithm is reviewed, and a new algorithm called Stride Search is introduced. Stride Search is designed to work at all latitudes, while grid point searches may fail in polar regions. Results from the two algorithms are compared for the application of tropicalmore » cyclone detection, and shown to produce similar results for the same set of storm identification criteria. The time required for both algorithms to search the same data set is compared. Furthermore, Stride Search's ability to search extreme latitudes is demonstrated for the case of polar low detection.« less

  4. LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Optimization of partial search

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Korepin, Vladimir E.

    2005-11-01

    A quantum Grover search algorithm can find a target item in a database faster than any classical algorithm. One can trade accuracy for speed and find a part of the database (a block) containing the target item even faster; this is partial search. A partial search algorithm was recently suggested by Grover and Radhakrishnan. Here we optimize it. Efficiency of the search algorithm is measured by the number of queries to the oracle. The author suggests a new version of the Grover-Radhakrishnan algorithm which uses a minimal number of such queries. The algorithm can run on the same hardware that is used for the usual Grover algorithm.

  5. Graph-based normalization and whitening for non-linear data analysis.

    PubMed

    Aaron, Catherine

    2006-01-01

    In this paper we construct a graph-based normalization algorithm for non-linear data analysis. The principle of this algorithm is to get a spherical average neighborhood with unit radius. First we present a class of global dispersion measures used for "global normalization"; we then adapt these measures using a weighted graph to build a local normalization called "graph-based" normalization. Then we give details of the graph-based normalization algorithm and illustrate some results. In the second part we present a graph-based whitening algorithm built by analogy between the "global" and the "local" problem.

  6. A Hybrid Search Algorithm for Swarm Robots Searching in an Unknown Environment

    PubMed Central

    Li, Shoutao; Li, Lina; Lee, Gordon; Zhang, Hao

    2014-01-01

    This paper proposes a novel method to improve the efficiency of a swarm of robots searching in an unknown environment. The approach focuses on the process of feeding and individual coordination characteristics inspired by the foraging behavior in nature. A predatory strategy was used for searching; hence, this hybrid approach integrated a random search technique with a dynamic particle swarm optimization (DPSO) search algorithm. If a search robot could not find any target information, it used a random search algorithm for a global search. If the robot found any target information in a region, the DPSO search algorithm was used for a local search. This particle swarm optimization search algorithm is dynamic as all the parameters in the algorithm are refreshed synchronously through a communication mechanism until the robots find the target position, after which, the robots fall back to a random searching mode. Thus, in this searching strategy, the robots alternated between two searching algorithms until the whole area was covered. During the searching process, the robots used a local communication mechanism to share map information and DPSO parameters to reduce the communication burden and overcome hardware limitations. If the search area is very large, search efficiency may be greatly reduced if only one robot searches an entire region given the limited resources available and time constraints. In this research we divided the entire search area into several subregions, selected a target utility function to determine which subregion should be initially searched and thereby reduced the residence time of the target to improve search efficiency. PMID:25386855

  7. A hybrid search algorithm for swarm robots searching in an unknown environment.

    PubMed

    Li, Shoutao; Li, Lina; Lee, Gordon; Zhang, Hao

    2014-01-01

    This paper proposes a novel method to improve the efficiency of a swarm of robots searching in an unknown environment. The approach focuses on the process of feeding and individual coordination characteristics inspired by the foraging behavior in nature. A predatory strategy was used for searching; hence, this hybrid approach integrated a random search technique with a dynamic particle swarm optimization (DPSO) search algorithm. If a search robot could not find any target information, it used a random search algorithm for a global search. If the robot found any target information in a region, the DPSO search algorithm was used for a local search. This particle swarm optimization search algorithm is dynamic as all the parameters in the algorithm are refreshed synchronously through a communication mechanism until the robots find the target position, after which, the robots fall back to a random searching mode. Thus, in this searching strategy, the robots alternated between two searching algorithms until the whole area was covered. During the searching process, the robots used a local communication mechanism to share map information and DPSO parameters to reduce the communication burden and overcome hardware limitations. If the search area is very large, search efficiency may be greatly reduced if only one robot searches an entire region given the limited resources available and time constraints. In this research we divided the entire search area into several subregions, selected a target utility function to determine which subregion should be initially searched and thereby reduced the residence time of the target to improve search efficiency.

  8. A hardware-oriented concurrent TZ search algorithm for High-Efficiency Video Coding

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Doan, Nghia; Kim, Tae Sung; Rhee, Chae Eun; Lee, Hyuk-Jae

    2017-12-01

    High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is the latest video coding standard, in which the compression performance is double that of its predecessor, the H.264/AVC standard, while the video quality remains unchanged. In HEVC, the test zone (TZ) search algorithm is widely used for integer motion estimation because it effectively searches the good-quality motion vector with a relatively small amount of computation. However, the complex computation structure of the TZ search algorithm makes it difficult to implement it in the hardware. This paper proposes a new integer motion estimation algorithm which is designed for hardware execution by modifying the conventional TZ search to allow parallel motion estimations of all prediction unit (PU) partitions. The algorithm consists of the three phases of zonal, raster, and refinement searches. At the beginning of each phase, the algorithm obtains the search points required by the original TZ search for all PU partitions in a coding unit (CU). Then, all redundant search points are removed prior to the estimation of the motion costs, and the best search points are then selected for all PUs. Compared to the conventional TZ search algorithm, experimental results show that the proposed algorithm significantly decreases the Bjøntegaard Delta bitrate (BD-BR) by 0.84%, and it also reduces the computational complexity by 54.54%.

  9. ACHP | News | ACHP Spring Business Meeting May 5

    Science.gov Websites

    Search skip specific nav links Home arrow News arrow ACHP Chairman Wayne Donaldson Celebrates with LA Preserve America Neighborhoods ACHP Chairman Wayne Donaldson Celebrates with LA Preserve America

  10. Hierarchical heuristic search using a Gaussian mixture model for UAV coverage planning.

    PubMed

    Lin, Lanny; Goodrich, Michael A

    2014-12-01

    During unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) search missions, efficient use of UAV flight time requires flight paths that maximize the probability of finding the desired subject. The probability of detecting the desired subject based on UAV sensor information can vary in different search areas due to environment elements like varying vegetation density or lighting conditions, making it likely that the UAV can only partially detect the subject. This adds another dimension of complexity to the already difficult (NP-Hard) problem of finding an optimal search path. We present a new class of algorithms that account for partial detection in the form of a task difficulty map and produce paths that approximate the payoff of optimal solutions. The algorithms use the mode goodness ratio heuristic that uses a Gaussian mixture model to prioritize search subregions. The algorithms search for effective paths through the parameter space at different levels of resolution. We compare the performance of the new algorithms against two published algorithms (Bourgault's algorithm and LHC-GW-CONV algorithm) in simulated searches with three real search and rescue scenarios, and show that the new algorithms outperform existing algorithms significantly and can yield efficient paths that yield payoffs near the optimal.

  11. Heuristics for multiobjective multiple sequence alignment.

    PubMed

    Abbasi, Maryam; Paquete, Luís; Pereira, Francisco B

    2016-07-15

    Aligning multiple sequences arises in many tasks in Bioinformatics. However, the alignments produced by the current software packages are highly dependent on the parameters setting, such as the relative importance of opening gaps with respect to the increase of similarity. Choosing only one parameter setting may provide an undesirable bias in further steps of the analysis and give too simplistic interpretations. In this work, we reformulate multiple sequence alignment from a multiobjective point of view. The goal is to generate several sequence alignments that represent a trade-off between maximizing the substitution score and minimizing the number of indels/gaps in the sum-of-pairs score function. This trade-off gives to the practitioner further information about the similarity of the sequences, from which she could analyse and choose the most plausible alignment. We introduce several heuristic approaches, based on local search procedures, that compute a set of sequence alignments, which are representative of the trade-off between the two objectives (substitution score and indels). Several algorithm design options are discussed and analysed, with particular emphasis on the influence of the starting alignment and neighborhood search definitions on the overall performance. A perturbation technique is proposed to improve the local search, which provides a wide range of high-quality alignments. The proposed approach is tested experimentally on a wide range of instances. We performed several experiments with sequences obtained from the benchmark database BAliBASE 3.0. To evaluate the quality of the results, we calculate the hypervolume indicator of the set of score vectors returned by the algorithms. The results obtained allow us to identify reasonably good choices of parameters for our approach. Further, we compared our method in terms of correctly aligned pairs ratio and columns correctly aligned ratio with respect to reference alignments. Experimental results show that our approaches can obtain better results than TCoffee and Clustal Omega in terms of the first ratio.

  12. Beam angle optimization for intensity-modulated radiation therapy using a guided pattern search method

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Rocha, Humberto; Dias, Joana M.; Ferreira, Brígida C.; Lopes, Maria C.

    2013-05-01

    Generally, the inverse planning of radiation therapy consists mainly of the fluence optimization. The beam angle optimization (BAO) in intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) consists of selecting appropriate radiation incidence directions and may influence the quality of the IMRT plans, both to enhance better organ sparing and to improve tumor coverage. However, in clinical practice, most of the time, beam directions continue to be manually selected by the treatment planner without objective and rigorous criteria. The goal of this paper is to introduce a novel approach that uses beam’s-eye-view dose ray tracing metrics within a pattern search method framework in the optimization of the highly non-convex BAO problem. Pattern search methods are derivative-free optimization methods that require a few function evaluations to progress and converge and have the ability to better avoid local entrapment. The pattern search method framework is composed of a search step and a poll step at each iteration. The poll step performs a local search in a mesh neighborhood and ensures the convergence to a local minimizer or stationary point. The search step provides the flexibility for a global search since it allows searches away from the neighborhood of the current iterate. Beam’s-eye-view dose metrics assign a score to each radiation beam direction and can be used within the pattern search framework furnishing a priori knowledge of the problem so that directions with larger dosimetric scores are tested first. A set of clinical cases of head-and-neck tumors treated at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology of Coimbra is used to discuss the potential of this approach in the optimization of the BAO problem.

  13. Search Parameter Optimization for Discrete, Bayesian, and Continuous Search Algorithms

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2017-09-01

    NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA THESIS SEARCH PARAMETER OPTIMIZATION FOR DISCRETE , BAYESIAN, AND CONTINUOUS SEARCH ALGORITHMS by...to 09-22-2017 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE SEARCH PARAMETER OPTIMIZATION FOR DISCRETE , BAYESIAN, AND CON- TINUOUS SEARCH ALGORITHMS 5. FUNDING NUMBERS 6...simple search and rescue acts to prosecuting aerial/surface/submersible targets on mission. This research looks at varying the known discrete and

  14. A simple and fast heuristic for protein structure comparison

    PubMed Central

    Pelta, David A; González, Juan R; Moreno Vega, Marcos

    2008-01-01

    Background Protein structure comparison is a key problem in bioinformatics. There exist several methods for doing protein comparison, being the solution of the Maximum Contact Map Overlap problem (MAX-CMO) one of the alternatives available. Although this problem may be solved using exact algorithms, researchers require approximate algorithms that obtain good quality solutions using less computational resources than the formers. Results We propose a variable neighborhood search metaheuristic for solving MAX-CMO. We analyze this strategy in two aspects: 1) from an optimization point of view the strategy is tested on two different datasets, obtaining an error of 3.5%(over 2702 pairs) and 1.7% (over 161 pairs) with respect to optimal values; thus leading to high accurate solutions in a simpler and less expensive way than exact algorithms; 2) in terms of protein structure classification, we conduct experiments on three datasets and show that is feasible to detect structural similarities at SCOP's family and CATH's architecture levels using normalized overlap values. Some limitations and the role of normalization are outlined for doing classification at SCOP's fold level. Conclusion We designed, implemented and tested.a new tool for solving MAX-CMO, based on a well-known metaheuristic technique. The good balance between solution's quality and computational effort makes it a valuable tool. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the MAX-CMO measure is tested at SCOP's fold and CATH's architecture levels with encouraging results. Software is available for download at . PMID:18366735

  15. Quantum partial search for uneven distribution of multiple target items

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhang, Kun; Korepin, Vladimir

    2018-06-01

    Quantum partial search algorithm is an approximate search. It aims to find a target block (which has the target items). It runs a little faster than full Grover search. In this paper, we consider quantum partial search algorithm for multiple target items unevenly distributed in a database (target blocks have different number of target items). The algorithm we describe can locate one of the target blocks. Efficiency of the algorithm is measured by number of queries to the oracle. We optimize the algorithm in order to improve efficiency. By perturbation method, we find that the algorithm runs the fastest when target items are evenly distributed in database.

  16. Exploring the evolution of node neighborhoods in Dynamic Networks

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Orman, Günce Keziban; Labatut, Vincent; Naskali, Ahmet Teoman

    2017-09-01

    Dynamic Networks are a popular way of modeling and studying the behavior of evolving systems. However, their analysis constitutes a relatively recent subfield of Network Science, and the number of available tools is consequently much smaller than for static networks. In this work, we propose a method specifically designed to take advantage of the longitudinal nature of dynamic networks. It characterizes each individual node by studying the evolution of its direct neighborhood, based on the assumption that the way this neighborhood changes reflects the role and position of the node in the whole network. For this purpose, we define the concept of neighborhood event, which corresponds to the various transformations such groups of nodes can undergo, and describe an algorithm for detecting such events. We demonstrate the interest of our method on three real-world networks: DBLP, LastFM and Enron. We apply frequent pattern mining to extract meaningful information from temporal sequences of neighborhood events. This results in the identification of behavioral trends emerging in the whole network, as well as the individual characterization of specific nodes. We also perform a cluster analysis, which reveals that, in all three networks, one can distinguish two types of nodes exhibiting different behaviors: a very small group of active nodes, whose neighborhood undergo diverse and frequent events, and a very large group of stable nodes.

  17. Evaluation of peak picking quality in LC-MS metabolomics data.

    PubMed

    Brodsky, Leonid; Moussaieff, Arieh; Shahaf, Nir; Aharoni, Asaph; Rogachev, Ilana

    2010-11-15

    The output of LC-MS metabolomics experiments consists of mass-peak intensities identified through a peak-picking/alignment procedure. Besides imperfections in biological samples and instrumentation, data accuracy is highly dependent on the applied algorithms and their parameters. Consequently, quality control (QC) is essential for further data analysis. Here, we present a QC approach that is based on discrepancies between replicate samples. First, the quantile normalization of per-sample log-signal distributions is applied to each group of biologically homogeneous samples. Next, the overall quality of each replicate group is characterized by the Z-transformed correlation coefficients between samples. This general QC allows a tuning of the procedure's parameters which minimizes the inter-replicate discrepancies in the generated output. Subsequently, an in-depth QC measure detects local neighborhoods on a template of aligned chromatograms that are enriched by divergences between intensity profiles of replicate samples. These neighborhoods are determined through a segmentation algorithm. The retention time (RT)-m/z positions of the neighborhoods with local divergences are indicative of either: incorrect alignment of chromatographic features, technical problems in the chromatograms, or to a true biological discrepancy between replicates for particular metabolites. We expect this method to aid in the accurate analysis of metabolomics data and in the development of new peak-picking/alignment procedures.

  18. Energy-landscape paving for prediction of face-centered-cubic hydrophobic-hydrophilic lattice model proteins

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Jingfa; Song, Beibei; Liu, Zhaoxia; Huang, Weibo; Sun, Yuanyuan; Liu, Wenjie

    2013-11-01

    Protein structure prediction (PSP) is a classical NP-hard problem in computational biology. The energy-landscape paving (ELP) method is a class of heuristic global optimization algorithm, and has been successfully applied to solving many optimization problems with complex energy landscapes in the continuous space. By putting forward a new update mechanism of the histogram function in ELP and incorporating the generation of initial conformation based on the greedy strategy and the neighborhood search strategy based on pull moves into ELP, an improved energy-landscape paving (ELP+) method is put forward. Twelve general benchmark instances are first tested on both two-dimensional and three-dimensional (3D) face-centered-cubic (fcc) hydrophobic-hydrophilic (HP) lattice models. The lowest energies by ELP+ are as good as or better than those of other methods in the literature for all instances. Then, five sets of larger-scale instances, denoted by S, R, F90, F180, and CASP target instances on the 3D FCC HP lattice model are tested. The proposed algorithm finds lower energies than those by the five other methods in literature. Not unexpectedly, this is particularly pronounced for the longer sequences considered. Computational results show that ELP+ is an effective method for PSP on the fcc HP lattice model.

  19. Neighborhood, Socioeconomic, and Racial Influence on Chronic Pain.

    PubMed

    Maly, Angelika; Vallerand, April Hazard

    2018-02-01

    The purpose of this review is to highlight the neighborhood, socioeconomic, and racial influences on chronic pain. Negative influences on the experience of chronic pain are explored and defined as any adverse stressor common in low socioeconomic, urban neighborhoods that potentially contributes to health disparity in African Americans experiencing chronic pain. The multifactorial influences on chronic pain disparity in African Americans are explored and expounded upon in this review of existing evidence. Databases used for the search included CINAHL, PubMed, and PsycArticles. The experience of chronic pain is multifaceted, existing with multiple comorbidities and lasting consequences. To improve the burden of chronic pain requires a multifactorial assessment that considers neighborhood risk factors, emphasis on environmental stressors, limitations to support networks, barriers to physical activity, and access to primary care providers with whom communication is open and without bias. A comprehensive assessment of barriers will aid in the development of interventions that reach beyond the physical factors of chronic pain, also considering the psychosocial barriers to improving the burden of chronic pain in African Americans living in impoverished urban neighborhoods. Copyright © 2017 American Society for Pain Management Nursing. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  20. General Quantum Meet-in-the-Middle Search Algorithm Based on Target Solution of Fixed Weight

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fu, Xiang-Qun; Bao, Wan-Su; Wang, Xiang; Shi, Jian-Hong

    2016-10-01

    Similar to the classical meet-in-the-middle algorithm, the storage and computation complexity are the key factors that decide the efficiency of the quantum meet-in-the-middle algorithm. Aiming at the target vector of fixed weight, based on the quantum meet-in-the-middle algorithm, the algorithm for searching all n-product vectors with the same weight is presented, whose complexity is better than the exhaustive search algorithm. And the algorithm can reduce the storage complexity of the quantum meet-in-the-middle search algorithm. Then based on the algorithm and the knapsack vector of the Chor-Rivest public-key crypto of fixed weight d, we present a general quantum meet-in-the-middle search algorithm based on the target solution of fixed weight, whose computational complexity is \\sumj = 0d {(O(\\sqrt {Cn - k + 1d - j }) + O(C_kj log C_k^j))} with Σd i =0 Ck i memory cost. And the optimal value of k is given. Compared to the quantum meet-in-the-middle search algorithm for knapsack problem and the quantum algorithm for searching a target solution of fixed weight, the computational complexity of the algorithm is lower. And its storage complexity is smaller than the quantum meet-in-the-middle-algorithm. Supported by the National Basic Research Program of China under Grant No. 2013CB338002 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 61502526

  1. Cuckoo Search Algorithm Based on Repeat-Cycle Asymptotic Self-Learning and Self-Evolving Disturbance for Function Optimization

    PubMed Central

    Wang, Jie-sheng; Li, Shu-xia; Song, Jiang-di

    2015-01-01

    In order to improve convergence velocity and optimization accuracy of the cuckoo search (CS) algorithm for solving the function optimization problems, a new improved cuckoo search algorithm based on the repeat-cycle asymptotic self-learning and self-evolving disturbance (RC-SSCS) is proposed. A disturbance operation is added into the algorithm by constructing a disturbance factor to make a more careful and thorough search near the bird's nests location. In order to select a reasonable repeat-cycled disturbance number, a further study on the choice of disturbance times is made. Finally, six typical test functions are adopted to carry out simulation experiments, meanwhile, compare algorithms of this paper with two typical swarm intelligence algorithms particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm. The results show that the improved cuckoo search algorithm has better convergence velocity and optimization accuracy. PMID:26366164

  2. Q-Learning-Based Adjustable Fixed-Phase Quantum Grover Search Algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Guo, Ying; Shi, Wensha; Wang, Yijun; Hu, Jiankun

    2017-02-01

    We demonstrate that the rotation phase can be suitably chosen to increase the efficiency of the phase-based quantum search algorithm, leading to a dynamic balance between iterations and success probabilities of the fixed-phase quantum Grover search algorithm with Q-learning for a given number of solutions. In this search algorithm, the proposed Q-learning algorithm, which is a model-free reinforcement learning strategy in essence, is used for performing a matching algorithm based on the fraction of marked items λ and the rotation phase α. After establishing the policy function α = π(λ), we complete the fixed-phase Grover algorithm, where the phase parameter is selected via the learned policy. Simulation results show that the Q-learning-based Grover search algorithm (QLGA) enables fewer iterations and gives birth to higher success probabilities. Compared with the conventional Grover algorithms, it avoids the optimal local situations, thereby enabling success probabilities to approach one.

  3. SLIDER: a generic metaheuristic for the discovery of correlated motifs in protein-protein interaction networks.

    PubMed

    Boyen, Peter; Van Dyck, Dries; Neven, Frank; van Ham, Roeland C H J; van Dijk, Aalt D J

    2011-01-01

    Correlated motif mining (cmm) is the problem of finding overrepresented pairs of patterns, called motifs, in sequences of interacting proteins. Algorithmic solutions for cmm thereby provide a computational method for predicting binding sites for protein interaction. In this paper, we adopt a motif-driven approach where the support of candidate motif pairs is evaluated in the network. We experimentally establish the superiority of the Chi-square-based support measure over other support measures. Furthermore, we obtain that cmm is an np-hard problem for a large class of support measures (including Chi-square) and reformulate the search for correlated motifs as a combinatorial optimization problem. We then present the generic metaheuristic slider which uses steepest ascent with a neighborhood function based on sliding motifs and employs the Chi-square-based support measure. We show that slider outperforms existing motif-driven cmm methods and scales to large protein-protein interaction networks. The slider-implementation and the data used in the experiments are available on http://bioinformatics.uhasselt.be.

  4. A Selectivity based approach to Continuous Pattern Detection in Streaming Graphs

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Choudhury, Sutanay; Holder, Larry; Chin, George

    2015-02-02

    Cyber security is one of the most significant technical challenges in current times. Detecting adversarial activities, prevention of theft of intellectual properties and customer data is a high priority for corporations and government agencies around the world. Cyber defenders need to analyze massive-scale, high-resolution network flows to identify, categorize, and mitigate attacks involving net- works spanning institutional and national boundaries. Many of the cyber attacks can be described as subgraph patterns, with promi- nent examples being insider infiltrations (path queries), denial of service (parallel paths) and malicious spreads (tree queries). This motivates us to explore subgraph matching on streaming graphsmore » in a continuous setting. The novelty of our work lies in using the subgraph distributional statistics collected from the streaming graph to determine the query processing strategy. We introduce a “Lazy Search" algorithm where the search strategy is decided on a vertex-to-vertex basis depending on the likelihood of a match in the vertex neighborhood. We also propose a metric named “Relative Selectivity" that is used to se- lect between different query processing strategies. Our experiments performed on real online news, network traffic stream and a syn- thetic social network benchmark demonstrate 10-100x speedups over selectivity agnostic approaches.« less

  5. A Selectivity based approach to Continuous Pattern Detection in Streaming Graphs

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Choudhury, Sutanay; Holder, Larry; Chin, George

    2015-05-27

    Cyber security is one of the most significant technical challenges in current times. Detecting adversarial activities, prevention of theft of intellectual properties and customer data is a high priority for corporations and government agencies around the world. Cyber defenders need to analyze massive-scale, high-resolution network flows to identify, categorize, and mitigate attacks involving networks spanning institutional and national boundaries. Many of the cyber attacks can be described as subgraph patterns, with prominent examples being insider infiltrations (path queries), denial of service (parallel paths) and malicious spreads (tree queries). This motivates us to explore subgraph matching on streaming graphs in amore » continuous setting. The novelty of our work lies in using the subgraph distributional statistics collected from the streaming graph to determine the query processing strategy. We introduce a ``Lazy Search" algorithm where the search strategy is decided on a vertex-to-vertex basis depending on the likelihood of a match in the vertex neighborhood. We also propose a metric named ``Relative Selectivity" that is used to select between different query processing strategies. Our experiments performed on real online news, network traffic stream and a synthetic social network benchmark demonstrate 10-100x speedups over non-incremental, selectivity agnostic approaches.« less

  6. Analysis of Multivariate Experimental Data Using A Simplified Regression Model Search Algorithm

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Ulbrich, Norbert M.

    2013-01-01

    A new regression model search algorithm was developed that may be applied to both general multivariate experimental data sets and wind tunnel strain-gage balance calibration data. The algorithm is a simplified version of a more complex algorithm that was originally developed for the NASA Ames Balance Calibration Laboratory. The new algorithm performs regression model term reduction to prevent overfitting of data. It has the advantage that it needs only about one tenth of the original algorithm's CPU time for the completion of a regression model search. In addition, extensive testing showed that the prediction accuracy of math models obtained from the simplified algorithm is similar to the prediction accuracy of math models obtained from the original algorithm. The simplified algorithm, however, cannot guarantee that search constraints related to a set of statistical quality requirements are always satisfied in the optimized regression model. Therefore, the simplified algorithm is not intended to replace the original algorithm. Instead, it may be used to generate an alternate optimized regression model of experimental data whenever the application of the original search algorithm fails or requires too much CPU time. Data from a machine calibration of NASA's MK40 force balance is used to illustrate the application of the new search algorithm.

  7. Multicentric genesis of material structure: Development of the percolation model and some applications

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Herega, Alexander; Sukhanov, Volodymyr; Vyrovoy, Valery

    2016-11-01

    The multiplicative measure and estimation method of ordering of the nearest neighborhood at the multiscale "site" percolation problem are considered. In the report also is shown the possibility of quantifying a relative degree of order of two nearest neighborhoods, which is based on the algorithm proposed by one of the authors. Moreover, the model of the oscillatory component of interaction of inner boundaries of different scales is proposed. In the context of our report, the concept of lacunarity and effective dimension (introduced by B. Mandelbrot) is discussed as effective tools of mathematical modeling.

  8. An Improved Cuckoo Search Optimization Algorithm for the Problem of Chaotic Systems Parameter Estimation

    PubMed Central

    Wang, Jun; Zhou, Bihua; Zhou, Shudao

    2016-01-01

    This paper proposes an improved cuckoo search (ICS) algorithm to establish the parameters of chaotic systems. In order to improve the optimization capability of the basic cuckoo search (CS) algorithm, the orthogonal design and simulated annealing operation are incorporated in the CS algorithm to enhance the exploitation search ability. Then the proposed algorithm is used to establish parameters of the Lorenz chaotic system and Chen chaotic system under the noiseless and noise condition, respectively. The numerical results demonstrate that the algorithm can estimate parameters with high accuracy and reliability. Finally, the results are compared with the CS algorithm, genetic algorithm, and particle swarm optimization algorithm, and the compared results demonstrate the method is energy-efficient and superior. PMID:26880874

  9. Searching Process with Raita Algorithm and its Application

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Rahim, Robbi; Saleh Ahmar, Ansari; Abdullah, Dahlan; Hartama, Dedy; Napitupulu, Darmawan; Putera Utama Siahaan, Andysah; Hasan Siregar, Muhammad Noor; Nasution, Nurliana; Sundari, Siti; Sriadhi, S.

    2018-04-01

    Searching is a common process performed by many computer users, Raita algorithm is one algorithm that can be used to match and find information in accordance with the patterns entered. Raita algorithm applied to the file search application using java programming language and the results obtained from the testing process of the file search quickly and with accurate results and support many data types.

  10. Time-optimal trajectory planning for underactuated spacecraft using a hybrid particle swarm optimization algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhuang, Yufei; Huang, Haibin

    2014-02-01

    A hybrid algorithm combining particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm with the Legendre pseudospectral method (LPM) is proposed for solving time-optimal trajectory planning problem of underactuated spacecrafts. At the beginning phase of the searching process, an initialization generator is constructed by the PSO algorithm due to its strong global searching ability and robustness to random initial values, however, PSO algorithm has a disadvantage that its convergence rate around the global optimum is slow. Then, when the change in fitness function is smaller than a predefined value, the searching algorithm is switched to the LPM to accelerate the searching process. Thus, with the obtained solutions by the PSO algorithm as a set of proper initial guesses, the hybrid algorithm can find a global optimum more quickly and accurately. 200 Monte Carlo simulations results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid PSO-LPM algorithm has greater advantages in terms of global searching capability and convergence rate than both single PSO algorithm and LPM algorithm. Moreover, the PSO-LPM algorithm is also robust to random initial values.

  11. A hybrid artificial bee colony algorithm for numerical function optimization

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Alqattan, Zakaria N.; Abdullah, Rosni

    2015-02-01

    Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is one of the swarm intelligence algorithms; it has been introduced by Karaboga in 2005. It is a meta-heuristic optimization search algorithm inspired from the intelligent foraging behavior of the honey bees in nature. Its unique search process made it as one of the most competitive algorithm with some other search algorithms in the area of optimization, such as Genetic algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). However, the ABC performance of the local search process and the bee movement or the solution improvement equation still has some weaknesses. The ABC is good in avoiding trapping at the local optimum but it spends its time searching around unpromising random selected solutions. Inspired by the PSO, we propose a Hybrid Particle-movement ABC algorithm called HPABC, which adapts the particle movement process to improve the exploration of the original ABC algorithm. Numerical benchmark functions were used in order to experimentally test the HPABC algorithm. The results illustrate that the HPABC algorithm can outperform the ABC algorithm in most of the experiments (75% better in accuracy and over 3 times faster).

  12. Markov prior-based block-matching algorithm for superdimension reconstruction of porous media

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Li, Yang; He, Xiaohai; Teng, Qizhi; Feng, Junxi; Wu, Xiaohong

    2018-04-01

    A superdimension reconstruction algorithm is used for the reconstruction of three-dimensional (3D) structures of a porous medium based on a single two-dimensional image. The algorithm borrows the concepts of "blocks," "learning," and "dictionary" from learning-based superresolution reconstruction and applies them to the 3D reconstruction of a porous medium. In the neighborhood-matching process of the conventional superdimension reconstruction algorithm, the Euclidean distance is used as a criterion, although it may not really reflect the structural correlation between adjacent blocks in an actual situation. Hence, in this study, regular items are adopted as prior knowledge in the reconstruction process, and a Markov prior-based block-matching algorithm for superdimension reconstruction is developed for more accurate reconstruction. The algorithm simultaneously takes into consideration the probabilistic relationship between the already reconstructed blocks in three different perpendicular directions (x , y , and z ) and the block to be reconstructed, and the maximum value of the probability product of the blocks to be reconstructed (as found in the dictionary for the three directions) is adopted as the basis for the final block selection. Using this approach, the problem of an imprecise spatial structure caused by a point simulation can be overcome. The problem of artifacts in the reconstructed structure is also addressed through the addition of hard data and by neighborhood matching. To verify the improved reconstruction accuracy of the proposed method, the statistical and morphological features of the results from the proposed method and traditional superdimension reconstruction method are compared with those of the target system. The proposed superdimension reconstruction algorithm is confirmed to enable a more accurate reconstruction of the target system while also eliminating artifacts.

  13. Computing Maximum Cardinality Matchings in Parallel on Bipartite Graphs via Tree-Grafting

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Azad, Ariful; Buluc, Aydn; Pothen, Alex

    It is difficult to obtain high performance when computing matchings on parallel processors because matching algorithms explicitly or implicitly search for paths in the graph, and when these paths become long, there is little concurrency. In spite of this limitation, we present a new algorithm and its shared-memory parallelization that achieves good performance and scalability in computing maximum cardinality matchings in bipartite graphs. This algorithm searches for augmenting paths via specialized breadth-first searches (BFS) from multiple source vertices, hence creating more parallelism than single source algorithms. Algorithms that employ multiple-source searches cannot discard a search tree once no augmenting pathmore » is discovered from the tree, unlike algorithms that rely on single-source searches. We describe a novel tree-grafting method that eliminates most of the redundant edge traversals resulting from this property of multiple-source searches. We also employ the recent direction-optimizing BFS algorithm as a subroutine to discover augmenting paths faster. Our algorithm compares favorably with the current best algorithms in terms of the number of edges traversed, the average augmenting path length, and the number of iterations. Here, we provide a proof of correctness for our algorithm. Our NUMA-aware implementation is scalable to 80 threads of an Intel multiprocessor and to 240 threads on an Intel Knights Corner coprocessor. On average, our parallel algorithm runs an order of magnitude faster than the fastest algorithms available. The performance improvement is more significant on graphs with small matching number.« less

  14. Computing Maximum Cardinality Matchings in Parallel on Bipartite Graphs via Tree-Grafting

    DOE PAGES

    Azad, Ariful; Buluc, Aydn; Pothen, Alex

    2016-03-24

    It is difficult to obtain high performance when computing matchings on parallel processors because matching algorithms explicitly or implicitly search for paths in the graph, and when these paths become long, there is little concurrency. In spite of this limitation, we present a new algorithm and its shared-memory parallelization that achieves good performance and scalability in computing maximum cardinality matchings in bipartite graphs. This algorithm searches for augmenting paths via specialized breadth-first searches (BFS) from multiple source vertices, hence creating more parallelism than single source algorithms. Algorithms that employ multiple-source searches cannot discard a search tree once no augmenting pathmore » is discovered from the tree, unlike algorithms that rely on single-source searches. We describe a novel tree-grafting method that eliminates most of the redundant edge traversals resulting from this property of multiple-source searches. We also employ the recent direction-optimizing BFS algorithm as a subroutine to discover augmenting paths faster. Our algorithm compares favorably with the current best algorithms in terms of the number of edges traversed, the average augmenting path length, and the number of iterations. Here, we provide a proof of correctness for our algorithm. Our NUMA-aware implementation is scalable to 80 threads of an Intel multiprocessor and to 240 threads on an Intel Knights Corner coprocessor. On average, our parallel algorithm runs an order of magnitude faster than the fastest algorithms available. The performance improvement is more significant on graphs with small matching number.« less

  15. Contextual Correlates of Physical Activity among Older Adults: A Neighborhood Environment-Wide Association Study (NE-WAS).

    PubMed

    Mooney, Stephen J; Joshi, Spruha; Cerdá, Magdalena; Kennedy, Gary J; Beard, John R; Rundle, Andrew G

    2017-04-01

    Background: Few older adults achieve recommended physical activity levels. We conducted a "neighborhood environment-wide association study (NE-WAS)" of neighborhood influences on physical activity among older adults, analogous, in a genetic context, to a genome-wide association study. Methods: Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly (PASE) and sociodemographic data were collected via telephone survey of 3,497 residents of New York City aged 65 to 75 years. Using Geographic Information Systems, we created 337 variables describing each participant's residential neighborhood's built, social, and economic context. We used survey-weighted regression models adjusting for individual-level covariates to test for associations between each neighborhood variable and (i) total PASE score, (ii) gardening activity, (iii) walking, and (iv) housework (as a negative control). We also applied two "Big Data" analytic techniques, LASSO regression, and Random Forests, to algorithmically select neighborhood variables predictive of these four physical activity measures. Results: Of all 337 measures, proportion of residents living in extreme poverty was most strongly associated with total physical activity [-0.85; (95% confidence interval, -1.14 to -0.56) PASE units per 1% increase in proportion of residents living with household incomes less than half the federal poverty line]. Only neighborhood socioeconomic status and disorder measures were associated with total activity and gardening, whereas a broader range of measures was associated with walking. As expected, no neighborhood meaZsures were associated with housework after accounting for multiple comparisons. Conclusions: This systematic approach revealed patterns in the domains of neighborhood measures associated with physical activity. Impact: The NE-WAS approach appears to be a promising exploratory technique. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 26(4); 495-504. ©2017 AACR See all the articles in this CEBP Focus section, "Geospatial Approaches to Cancer Control and Population Sciences." ©2017 American Association for Cancer Research.

  16. Evaluation of dynamically dimensioned search algorithm for optimizing SWAT by altering sampling distributions and searching range

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    The primary advantage of Dynamically Dimensioned Search algorithm (DDS) is that it outperforms many other optimization techniques in both convergence speed and the ability in searching for parameter sets that satisfy statistical guidelines while requiring only one algorithm parameter (perturbation f...

  17. A Memetic Algorithm for Global Optimization of Multimodal Nonseparable Problems.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Geng; Li, Yangmin

    2016-06-01

    It is a big challenging issue of avoiding falling into local optimum especially when facing high-dimensional nonseparable problems where the interdependencies among vector elements are unknown. In order to improve the performance of optimization algorithm, a novel memetic algorithm (MA) called cooperative particle swarm optimizer-modified harmony search (CPSO-MHS) is proposed in this paper, where the CPSO is used for local search and the MHS for global search. The CPSO, as a local search method, uses 1-D swarm to search each dimension separately and thus converges fast. Besides, it can obtain global optimum elements according to our experimental results and analyses. MHS implements the global search by recombining different vector elements and extracting global optimum elements. The interaction between local search and global search creates a set of local search zones, where global optimum elements reside within the search space. The CPSO-MHS algorithm is tested and compared with seven other optimization algorithms on a set of 28 standard benchmarks. Meanwhile, some MAs are also compared according to the results derived directly from their corresponding references. The experimental results demonstrate a good performance of the proposed CPSO-MHS algorithm in solving multimodal nonseparable problems.

  18. Novel search algorithms for a mid-infrared spectral library of cotton contaminants.

    PubMed

    Loudermilk, J Brian; Himmelsbach, David S; Barton, Franklin E; de Haseth, James A

    2008-06-01

    During harvest, a variety of plant based contaminants are collected along with cotton lint. The USDA previously created a mid-infrared, attenuated total reflection (ATR), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectral library of cotton contaminants for contaminant identification as the contaminants have negative impacts on yarn quality. This library has shown impressive identification rates for extremely similar cellulose based contaminants in cases where the library was representative of the samples searched. When spectra of contaminant samples from crops grown in different geographic locations, seasons, and conditions and measured with a different spectrometer and accessories were searched, identification rates for standard search algorithms decreased significantly. Six standard algorithms were examined: dot product, correlation, sum of absolute values of differences, sum of the square root of the absolute values of differences, sum of absolute values of differences of derivatives, and sum of squared differences of derivatives. Four categories of contaminants derived from cotton plants were considered: leaf, stem, seed coat, and hull. Experiments revealed that the performance of the standard search algorithms depended upon the category of sample being searched and that different algorithms provided complementary information about sample identity. These results indicated that choosing a single standard algorithm to search the library was not possible. Three voting scheme algorithms based on result frequency, result rank, category frequency, or a combination of these factors for the results returned by the standard algorithms were developed and tested for their capability to overcome the unpredictability of the standard algorithms' performances. The group voting scheme search was based on the number of spectra from each category of samples represented in the library returned in the top ten results of the standard algorithms. This group algorithm was able to identify correctly as many test spectra as the best standard algorithm without relying on human choice to select a standard algorithm to perform the searches.

  19. Genetic Algorithms and Local Search

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Whitley, Darrell

    1996-01-01

    The first part of this presentation is a tutorial level introduction to the principles of genetic search and models of simple genetic algorithms. The second half covers the combination of genetic algorithms with local search methods to produce hybrid genetic algorithms. Hybrid algorithms can be modeled within the existing theoretical framework developed for simple genetic algorithms. An application of a hybrid to geometric model matching is given. The hybrid algorithm yields results that improve on the current state-of-the-art for this problem.

  20. Flight plan optimization

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Dharmaseelan, Anoop; Adistambha, Keyne D.

    2015-05-01

    Fuel cost accounts for 40 percent of the operating cost of an airline. Fuel cost can be minimized by planning a flight on optimized routes. The routes can be optimized by searching best connections based on the cost function defined by the airline. The most common algorithm that used to optimize route search is Dijkstra's. Dijkstra's algorithm produces a static result and the time taken for the search is relatively long. This paper experiments a new algorithm to optimize route search which combines the principle of simulated annealing and genetic algorithm. The experimental results of route search, presented are shown to be computationally fast and accurate compared with timings from generic algorithm. The new algorithm is optimal for random routing feature that is highly sought by many regional operators.

  1. WS-BP: An efficient wolf search based back-propagation algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nawi, Nazri Mohd; Rehman, M. Z.; Khan, Abdullah

    2015-05-01

    Wolf Search (WS) is a heuristic based optimization algorithm. Inspired by the preying and survival capabilities of the wolves, this algorithm is highly capable to search large spaces in the candidate solutions. This paper investigates the use of WS algorithm in combination with back-propagation neural network (BPNN) algorithm to overcome the local minima problem and to improve convergence in gradient descent. The performance of the proposed Wolf Search based Back-Propagation (WS-BP) algorithm is compared with Artificial Bee Colony Back-Propagation (ABC-BP), Bat Based Back-Propagation (Bat-BP), and conventional BPNN algorithms. Specifically, OR and XOR datasets are used for training the network. The simulation results show that the WS-BP algorithm effectively avoids the local minima and converge to global minima.

  2. A Particle Swarm Optimization-Based Approach with Local Search for Predicting Protein Folding.

    PubMed

    Yang, Cheng-Hong; Lin, Yu-Shiun; Chuang, Li-Yeh; Chang, Hsueh-Wei

    2017-10-01

    The hydrophobic-polar (HP) model is commonly used for predicting protein folding structures and hydrophobic interactions. This study developed a particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based algorithm combined with local search algorithms; specifically, the high exploration PSO (HEPSO) algorithm (which can execute global search processes) was combined with three local search algorithms (hill-climbing algorithm, greedy algorithm, and Tabu table), yielding the proposed HE-L-PSO algorithm. By using 20 known protein structures, we evaluated the performance of the HE-L-PSO algorithm in predicting protein folding in the HP model. The proposed HE-L-PSO algorithm exhibited favorable performance in predicting both short and long amino acid sequences with high reproducibility and stability, compared with seven reported algorithms. The HE-L-PSO algorithm yielded optimal solutions for all predicted protein folding structures. All HE-L-PSO-predicted protein folding structures possessed a hydrophobic core that is similar to normal protein folding.

  3. Dynamic Grover search: applications in recommendation systems and optimization problems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Chakrabarty, Indranil; Khan, Shahzor; Singh, Vanshdeep

    2017-06-01

    In the recent years, we have seen that Grover search algorithm (Proceedings, 28th annual ACM symposium on the theory of computing, pp. 212-219, 1996) by using quantum parallelism has revolutionized the field of solving huge class of NP problems in comparisons to classical systems. In this work, we explore the idea of extending Grover search algorithm to approximate algorithms. Here we try to analyze the applicability of Grover search to process an unstructured database with a dynamic selection function in contrast to the static selection function used in the original work (Grover in Proceedings, 28th annual ACM symposium on the theory of computing, pp. 212-219, 1996). We show that this alteration facilitates us to extend the application of Grover search to the field of randomized search algorithms. Further, we use the dynamic Grover search algorithm to define the goals for a recommendation system based on which we propose a recommendation algorithm which uses binomial similarity distribution space giving us a quadratic speedup over traditional classical unstructured recommendation systems. Finally, we see how dynamic Grover search can be used to tackle a wide range of optimization problems where we improve complexity over existing optimization algorithms.

  4. An improved harmony search algorithm for emergency inspection scheduling

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kallioras, Nikos A.; Lagaros, Nikos D.; Karlaftis, Matthew G.

    2014-11-01

    The ability of nature-inspired search algorithms to efficiently handle combinatorial problems, and their successful implementation in many fields of engineering and applied sciences, have led to the development of new, improved algorithms. In this work, an improved harmony search (IHS) algorithm is presented, while a holistic approach for solving the problem of post-disaster infrastructure management is also proposed. The efficiency of IHS is compared with that of the algorithms of particle swarm optimization, differential evolution, basic harmony search and the pure random search procedure, when solving the districting problem that is the first part of post-disaster infrastructure management. The ant colony optimization algorithm is employed for solving the associated routing problem that constitutes the second part. The comparison is based on the quality of the results obtained, the computational demands and the sensitivity on the algorithmic parameters.

  5. Escalated convergent artificial bee colony

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Jadon, Shimpi Singh; Bansal, Jagdish Chand; Tiwari, Ritu

    2016-03-01

    Artificial bee colony (ABC) optimisation algorithm is a recent, fast and easy-to-implement population-based meta heuristic for optimisation. ABC has been proved a rival algorithm with some popular swarm intelligence-based algorithms such as particle swarm optimisation, firefly algorithm and ant colony optimisation. The solution search equation of ABC is influenced by a random quantity which helps its search process in exploration at the cost of exploitation. In order to find a fast convergent behaviour of ABC while exploitation capability is maintained, in this paper basic ABC is modified in two ways. First, to improve exploitation capability, two local search strategies, namely classical unidimensional local search and levy flight random walk-based local search are incorporated with ABC. Furthermore, a new solution search strategy, namely stochastic diffusion scout search is proposed and incorporated into the scout bee phase to provide more chance to abandon solution to improve itself. Efficiency of the proposed algorithm is tested on 20 benchmark test functions of different complexities and characteristics. Results are very promising and they prove it to be a competitive algorithm in the field of swarm intelligence-based algorithms.

  6. Improving GPU-accelerated adaptive IDW interpolation algorithm using fast kNN search.

    PubMed

    Mei, Gang; Xu, Nengxiong; Xu, Liangliang

    2016-01-01

    This paper presents an efficient parallel Adaptive Inverse Distance Weighting (AIDW) interpolation algorithm on modern Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The presented algorithm is an improvement of our previous GPU-accelerated AIDW algorithm by adopting fast k-nearest neighbors (kNN) search. In AIDW, it needs to find several nearest neighboring data points for each interpolated point to adaptively determine the power parameter; and then the desired prediction value of the interpolated point is obtained by weighted interpolating using the power parameter. In this work, we develop a fast kNN search approach based on the space-partitioning data structure, even grid, to improve the previous GPU-accelerated AIDW algorithm. The improved algorithm is composed of the stages of kNN search and weighted interpolating. To evaluate the performance of the improved algorithm, we perform five groups of experimental tests. The experimental results indicate: (1) the improved algorithm can achieve a speedup of up to 1017 over the corresponding serial algorithm; (2) the improved algorithm is at least two times faster than our previous GPU-accelerated AIDW algorithm; and (3) the utilization of fast kNN search can significantly improve the computational efficiency of the entire GPU-accelerated AIDW algorithm.

  7. Seismic search for strange quark nuggets

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Herrin, Eugene T.; Rosenbaum, Doris C.; Teplitz, Vigdor L.

    2006-02-15

    Bounds on masses and abundances of Strange Quark Nuggets (SQNs) are inferred from a seismic search on Earth. Potential SQN bounds from a possible seismic search on the Moon are reviewed and compared with Earth capabilities. Bounds are derived from the data taken by seismometers implanted on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts. We show that the Apollo data implies that the abundance of SQNs in the region of 10 kg to 1 ton must be at least an order of magnitude less than would saturate the dark matter in the solar neighborhood.

  8. Road detection in SAR images using a tensor voting algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Shen, Dajiang; Hu, Chun; Yang, Bing; Tian, Jinwen; Liu, Jian

    2007-11-01

    In this paper, the problem of the detection of road networks in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images is addressed. Most of the previous methods extract the road by detecting lines and network reconstruction. Traditional algorithms such as MRFs, GA, Level Set, used in the progress of reconstruction are iterative. The tensor voting methodology we proposed is non-iterative, and non-sensitive to initialization. Furthermore, the only free parameter is the size of the neighborhood, related to the scale. The algorithm we present is verified to be effective when it's applied to the road extraction using the real Radarsat Image.

  9. Multiple-variable neighbourhood search for the single-machine total weighted tardiness problem

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Chung, Tsui-Ping; Fu, Qunjie; Liao, Ching-Jong; Liu, Yi-Ting

    2017-07-01

    The single-machine total weighted tardiness (SMTWT) problem is a typical discrete combinatorial optimization problem in the scheduling literature. This problem has been proved to be NP hard and thus provides a challenging area for metaheuristics, especially the variable neighbourhood search algorithm. In this article, a multiple variable neighbourhood search (m-VNS) algorithm with multiple neighbourhood structures is proposed to solve the problem. Special mechanisms named matching and strengthening operations are employed in the algorithm, which has an auto-revising local search procedure to explore the solution space beyond local optimality. Two aspects, searching direction and searching depth, are considered, and neighbourhood structures are systematically exchanged. Experimental results show that the proposed m-VNS algorithm outperforms all the compared algorithms in solving the SMTWT problem.

  10. The Research and Test of Fast Radio Burst Real-time Search Algorithm Based on GPU Acceleration

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, J.; Chen, M. Z.; Pei, X.; Wang, Z. Q.

    2017-03-01

    In order to satisfy the research needs of Nanshan 25 m radio telescope of Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory (XAO) and study the key technology of the planned QiTai radio Telescope (QTT), the receiver group of XAO studied the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) based real-time FRB searching algorithm which developed from the original FRB searching algorithm based on CPU (Central Processing Unit), and built the FRB real-time searching system. The comparison of the GPU system and the CPU system shows that: on the basis of ensuring the accuracy of the search, the speed of the GPU accelerated algorithm is improved by 35-45 times compared with the CPU algorithm.

  11. Landscape Analysis and Algorithm Development for Plateau Plagued Search Spaces

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2011-02-28

    Final Report for AFOSR #FA9550-08-1-0422 Landscape Analysis and Algorithm Development for Plateau Plagued Search Spaces August 1, 2008 to November 30...focused on developing high level general purpose algorithms , such as Tabu Search and Genetic Algorithms . However, understanding of when and why these... algorithms perform well still lags. Our project extended the theory of certain combi- natorial optimization problems to develop analytical

  12. A modified approach combining FNEA and watershed algorithms for segmenting remotely-sensed optical images

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Likun

    2018-01-01

    In the field of remote sensing image processing, remote sensing image segmentation is a preliminary step for later analysis of remote sensing image processing and semi-auto human interpretation, fully-automatic machine recognition and learning. Since 2000, a technique of object-oriented remote sensing image processing method and its basic thought prevails. The core of the approach is Fractal Net Evolution Approach (FNEA) multi-scale segmentation algorithm. The paper is intent on the research and improvement of the algorithm, which analyzes present segmentation algorithms and selects optimum watershed algorithm as an initialization. Meanwhile, the algorithm is modified by modifying an area parameter, and then combining area parameter with a heterogeneous parameter further. After that, several experiments is carried on to prove the modified FNEA algorithm, compared with traditional pixel-based method (FCM algorithm based on neighborhood information) and combination of FNEA and watershed, has a better segmentation result.

  13. Tox Town

    MedlinePlus

    ... to view this content. Skip to main content ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH CONCERNS AND TOXIC CHEMICALS WHERE YOU LIVE, WORK, AND PLAY Search:  Home Text Version Neighborhoods Locations Chemicals For Educators Español City View Farm View Port View US Southwest View Town View What's New ...

  14. 3D Protein structure prediction with genetic tabu search algorithm

    PubMed Central

    2010-01-01

    Background Protein structure prediction (PSP) has important applications in different fields, such as drug design, disease prediction, and so on. In protein structure prediction, there are two important issues. The first one is the design of the structure model and the second one is the design of the optimization technology. Because of the complexity of the realistic protein structure, the structure model adopted in this paper is a simplified model, which is called off-lattice AB model. After the structure model is assumed, optimization technology is needed for searching the best conformation of a protein sequence based on the assumed structure model. However, PSP is an NP-hard problem even if the simplest model is assumed. Thus, many algorithms have been developed to solve the global optimization problem. In this paper, a hybrid algorithm, which combines genetic algorithm (GA) and tabu search (TS) algorithm, is developed to complete this task. Results In order to develop an efficient optimization algorithm, several improved strategies are developed for the proposed genetic tabu search algorithm. The combined use of these strategies can improve the efficiency of the algorithm. In these strategies, tabu search introduced into the crossover and mutation operators can improve the local search capability, the adoption of variable population size strategy can maintain the diversity of the population, and the ranking selection strategy can improve the possibility of an individual with low energy value entering into next generation. Experiments are performed with Fibonacci sequences and real protein sequences. Experimental results show that the lowest energy obtained by the proposed GATS algorithm is lower than that obtained by previous methods. Conclusions The hybrid algorithm has the advantages from both genetic algorithm and tabu search algorithm. It makes use of the advantage of multiple search points in genetic algorithm, and can overcome poor hill-climbing capability in the conventional genetic algorithm by using the flexible memory functions of TS. Compared with some previous algorithms, GATS algorithm has better performance in global optimization and can predict 3D protein structure more effectively. PMID:20522256

  15. A novel directional asymmetric sampling search algorithm for fast block-matching motion estimation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Li, Yue-e.; Wang, Qiang

    2011-11-01

    This paper proposes a novel directional asymmetric sampling search (DASS) algorithm for video compression. Making full use of the error information (block distortions) of the search patterns, eight different direction search patterns are designed for various situations. The strategy of local sampling search is employed for the search of big-motion vector. In order to further speed up the search, early termination strategy is adopted in procedure of DASS. Compared to conventional fast algorithms, the proposed method has the most satisfactory PSNR values for all test sequences.

  16. Convergence Time towards Periodic Orbits in Discrete Dynamical Systems

    PubMed Central

    San Martín, Jesús; Porter, Mason A.

    2014-01-01

    We investigate the convergence towards periodic orbits in discrete dynamical systems. We examine the probability that a randomly chosen point converges to a particular neighborhood of a periodic orbit in a fixed number of iterations, and we use linearized equations to examine the evolution near that neighborhood. The underlying idea is that points of stable periodic orbit are associated with intervals. We state and prove a theorem that details what regions of phase space are mapped into these intervals (once they are known) and how many iterations are required to get there. We also construct algorithms that allow our theoretical results to be implemented successfully in practice. PMID:24736594

  17. Search for faint nearby stars

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ruiz, M. T.; Maza, J.; Mendez, R.; Wischnjewsky, M.

    1988-09-01

    The possibility that the 'missing mass' in the solar neighborhood may be accounted for by the existence in sufficiently great numbers of such very low mass stars as brown dwarfs, as well as very old dead stars now observable as cold, low-luminosity degenerates, is presently addressed observationally with a search through ESO R Survey plates using a stereocomparator. Attention is given to ESO area 439, where four low-luminosity degenerates have been discovered by the present study.

  18. The Paragon Algorithm, a next generation search engine that uses sequence temperature values and feature probabilities to identify peptides from tandem mass spectra.

    PubMed

    Shilov, Ignat V; Seymour, Sean L; Patel, Alpesh A; Loboda, Alex; Tang, Wilfred H; Keating, Sean P; Hunter, Christie L; Nuwaysir, Lydia M; Schaeffer, Daniel A

    2007-09-01

    The Paragon Algorithm, a novel database search engine for the identification of peptides from tandem mass spectrometry data, is presented. Sequence Temperature Values are computed using a sequence tag algorithm, allowing the degree of implication by an MS/MS spectrum of each region of a database to be determined on a continuum. Counter to conventional approaches, features such as modifications, substitutions, and cleavage events are modeled with probabilities rather than by discrete user-controlled settings to consider or not consider a feature. The use of feature probabilities in conjunction with Sequence Temperature Values allows for a very large increase in the effective search space with only a very small increase in the actual number of hypotheses that must be scored. The algorithm has a new kind of user interface that removes the user expertise requirement, presenting control settings in the language of the laboratory that are translated to optimal algorithmic settings. To validate this new algorithm, a comparison with Mascot is presented for a series of analogous searches to explore the relative impact of increasing search space probed with Mascot by relaxing the tryptic digestion conformance requirements from trypsin to semitrypsin to no enzyme and with the Paragon Algorithm using its Rapid mode and Thorough mode with and without tryptic specificity. Although they performed similarly for small search space, dramatic differences were observed in large search space. With the Paragon Algorithm, hundreds of biological and artifact modifications, all possible substitutions, and all levels of conformance to the expected digestion pattern can be searched in a single search step, yet the typical cost in search time is only 2-5 times that of conventional small search space. Despite this large increase in effective search space, there is no drastic loss of discrimination that typically accompanies the exploration of large search space.

  19. Double hashing technique in closed hashing search process

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Rahim, Robbi; Zulkarnain, Iskandar; Jaya, Hendra

    2017-09-01

    The search process is used in various activities performed both online and offline, many algorithms that can be used to perform the search process one of which is a hash search algorithm, search process with hash search algorithm used in this study using double hashing technique where the data will be formed into the table with same length and then search, the results of this study indicate that the search process with double hashing technique allows faster searching than the usual search techniques, this research allows to search the solution by dividing the value into the main table and overflow table so that the search process is expected faster than the data stacked in the form of one table and collision data could avoided.

  20. A rate-constrained fast full-search algorithm based on block sum pyramid.

    PubMed

    Song, Byung Cheol; Chun, Kang-Wook; Ra, Jong Beom

    2005-03-01

    This paper presents a fast full-search algorithm (FSA) for rate-constrained motion estimation. The proposed algorithm, which is based on the block sum pyramid frame structure, successively eliminates unnecessary search positions according to rate-constrained criterion. This algorithm provides the identical estimation performance to a conventional FSA having rate constraint, while achieving considerable reduction in computation.

  1. Fast adaptive diamond search algorithm for block-matching motion estimation using spatial correlation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Park, Sang-Gon; Jeong, Dong-Seok

    2000-12-01

    In this paper, we propose a fast adaptive diamond search algorithm (FADS) for block matching motion estimation. Many fast motion estimation algorithms reduce the computational complexity by the UESA (Unimodal Error Surface Assumption) where the matching error monotonically increases as the search moves away from the global minimum point. Recently, many fast BMAs (Block Matching Algorithms) make use of the fact that global minimum points in real world video sequences are centered at the position of zero motion. But these BMAs, especially in large motion, are easily trapped into the local minima and result in poor matching accuracy. So, we propose a new motion estimation algorithm using the spatial correlation among the neighboring blocks. We move the search origin according to the motion vectors of the spatially neighboring blocks and their MAEs (Mean Absolute Errors). The computer simulation shows that the proposed algorithm has almost the same computational complexity with DS (Diamond Search), but enhances PSNR. Moreover, the proposed algorithm gives almost the same PSNR as that of FS (Full Search), even for the large motion with half the computational load.

  2. An analytical study of composite laminate lay-up using search algorithms for maximization of flexural stiffness and minimization of springback angle

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Singh, Ranjan Kumar; Rinawa, Moti Lal

    2018-04-01

    The residual stresses arising in fiber-reinforced laminates during their curing in closed molds lead to changes in the composites after their removal from the molds and cooling. One of these dimensional changes of angle sections is called springback. The parameters such as lay-up, stacking sequence, material system, cure temperature, thickness etc play important role in it. In present work, it is attempted to optimize lay-up and stacking sequence for maximization of flexural stiffness and minimization of springback angle. The search algorithms are employed to obtain best sequence through repair strategy such as swap. A new search algorithm, termed as lay-up search algorithm (LSA) is also proposed, which is an extension of permutation search algorithm (PSA). The efficacy of PSA and LSA is tested on the laminates with a range of lay-ups. A computer code is developed on MATLAB implementing the above schemes. Also, the strategies for multi objective optimization using search algorithms are suggested and tested.

  3. A new effective operator for the hybrid algorithm for solving global optimisation problems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Duc, Le Anh; Li, Kenli; Nguyen, Tien Trong; Yen, Vu Minh; Truong, Tung Khac

    2018-04-01

    Hybrid algorithms have been recently used to solve complex single-objective optimisation problems. The ultimate goal is to find an optimised global solution by using these algorithms. Based on the existing algorithms (HP_CRO, PSO, RCCRO), this study proposes a new hybrid algorithm called MPC (Mean-PSO-CRO), which utilises a new Mean-Search Operator. By employing this new operator, the proposed algorithm improves the search ability on areas of the solution space that the other operators of previous algorithms do not explore. Specifically, the Mean-Search Operator helps find the better solutions in comparison with other algorithms. Moreover, the authors have proposed two parameters for balancing local and global search and between various types of local search, as well. In addition, three versions of this operator, which use different constraints, are introduced. The experimental results on 23 benchmark functions, which are used in previous works, show that our framework can find better optimal or close-to-optimal solutions with faster convergence speed for most of the benchmark functions, especially the high-dimensional functions. Thus, the proposed algorithm is more effective in solving single-objective optimisation problems than the other existing algorithms.

  4. Initialization and Restart in Stochastic Local Search: Computing a Most Probable Explanation in Bayesian Networks

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mengshoel, Ole J.; Wilkins, David C.; Roth, Dan

    2010-01-01

    For hard computational problems, stochastic local search has proven to be a competitive approach to finding optimal or approximately optimal problem solutions. Two key research questions for stochastic local search algorithms are: Which algorithms are effective for initialization? When should the search process be restarted? In the present work we investigate these research questions in the context of approximate computation of most probable explanations (MPEs) in Bayesian networks (BNs). We introduce a novel approach, based on the Viterbi algorithm, to explanation initialization in BNs. While the Viterbi algorithm works on sequences and trees, our approach works on BNs with arbitrary topologies. We also give a novel formalization of stochastic local search, with focus on initialization and restart, using probability theory and mixture models. Experimentally, we apply our methods to the problem of MPE computation, using a stochastic local search algorithm known as Stochastic Greedy Search. By carefully optimizing both initialization and restart, we reduce the MPE search time for application BNs by several orders of magnitude compared to using uniform at random initialization without restart. On several BNs from applications, the performance of Stochastic Greedy Search is competitive with clique tree clustering, a state-of-the-art exact algorithm used for MPE computation in BNs.

  5. Discrete-Time Stable Generalized Self-Learning Optimal Control With Approximation Errors.

    PubMed

    Wei, Qinglai; Li, Benkai; Song, Ruizhuo

    2018-04-01

    In this paper, a generalized policy iteration (GPI) algorithm with approximation errors is developed for solving infinite horizon optimal control problems for nonlinear systems. The developed stable GPI algorithm provides a general structure of discrete-time iterative adaptive dynamic programming algorithms, by which most of the discrete-time reinforcement learning algorithms can be described using the GPI structure. It is for the first time that approximation errors are explicitly considered in the GPI algorithm. The properties of the stable GPI algorithm with approximation errors are analyzed. The admissibility of the approximate iterative control law can be guaranteed if the approximation errors satisfy the admissibility criteria. The convergence of the developed algorithm is established, which shows that the iterative value function is convergent to a finite neighborhood of the optimal performance index function, if the approximate errors satisfy the convergence criterion. Finally, numerical examples and comparisons are presented.

  6. Multiple contexts and adolescent body mass index: Schools, neighborhoods, and social networks.

    PubMed

    Evans, Clare R; Onnela, Jukka-Pekka; Williams, David R; Subramanian, S V

    2016-08-01

    Adolescent health and behaviors are influenced by multiple contexts, including schools, neighborhoods, and social networks, yet these contexts are rarely considered simultaneously. In this study we combine social network community detection analysis and cross-classified multilevel modeling in order to compare the contributions of each of these three contexts to the total variation in adolescent body mass index (BMI). Wave 1 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health is used, and for robustness we conduct the analysis in both the core sample (122 schools; N = 14,144) and a sub-set of the sample (16 schools; N = 3335), known as the saturated sample due to its completeness of neighborhood data. After adjusting for relevant covariates, we find that the school-level and neighborhood-level contributions to the variance are modest compared with the network community-level (σ(2)school = 0.069, σ(2)neighborhood = 0.144, σ(2)network = 0.463). These results are robust to two alternative algorithms for specifying network communities, and to analysis in the saturated sample. While this study does not determine whether network effects are attributable to social influence or selection, it does highlight the salience of adolescent social networks and indicates that they may be a promising context to address in the design of health promotion programs. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. Estimation of full moment tensors, including uncertainties, for earthquakes, volcanic events, and nuclear explosions

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Alvizuri, Celso; Silwal, Vipul; Krischer, Lion; Tape, Carl

    2017-04-01

    A seismic moment tensor is a 3 × 3 symmetric matrix that provides a compact representation of seismic events within Earth's crust. We develop an algorithm to estimate moment tensors and their uncertainties from observed seismic data. For a given event, the algorithm performs a grid search over the six-dimensional space of moment tensors by generating synthetic waveforms at each grid point and then evaluating a misfit function between the observed and synthetic waveforms. 'The' moment tensor M for the event is then the moment tensor with minimum misfit. To describe the uncertainty associated with M, we first convert the misfit function to a probability function. The uncertainty, or rather the confidence, is then given by the 'confidence curve' P(V ), where P(V ) is the probability that the true moment tensor for the event lies within the neighborhood of M that has fractional volume V . The area under the confidence curve provides a single, abbreviated 'confidence parameter' for M. We apply the method to data from events in different regions and tectonic settings: small (Mw < 2.5) events at Uturuncu volcano in Bolivia, moderate (Mw > 4) earthquakes in the southern Alaska subduction zone, and natural and man-made events at the Nevada Test Site. Moment tensor uncertainties allow us to better discriminate among moment tensor source types and to assign physical processes to the events.

  8. SAIL: Summation-bAsed Incremental Learning for Information-Theoretic Text Clustering.

    PubMed

    Cao, Jie; Wu, Zhiang; Wu, Junjie; Xiong, Hui

    2013-04-01

    Information-theoretic clustering aims to exploit information-theoretic measures as the clustering criteria. A common practice on this topic is the so-called Info-Kmeans, which performs K-means clustering with KL-divergence as the proximity function. While expert efforts on Info-Kmeans have shown promising results, a remaining challenge is to deal with high-dimensional sparse data such as text corpora. Indeed, it is possible that the centroids contain many zero-value features for high-dimensional text vectors, which leads to infinite KL-divergence values and creates a dilemma in assigning objects to centroids during the iteration process of Info-Kmeans. To meet this challenge, in this paper, we propose a Summation-bAsed Incremental Learning (SAIL) algorithm for Info-Kmeans clustering. Specifically, by using an equivalent objective function, SAIL replaces the computation of KL-divergence by the incremental computation of Shannon entropy. This can avoid the zero-feature dilemma caused by the use of KL-divergence. To improve the clustering quality, we further introduce the variable neighborhood search scheme and propose the V-SAIL algorithm, which is then accelerated by a multithreaded scheme in PV-SAIL. Our experimental results on various real-world text collections have shown that, with SAIL as a booster, the clustering performance of Info-Kmeans can be significantly improved. Also, V-SAIL and PV-SAIL indeed help improve the clustering quality at a lower cost of computation.

  9. Application of the Firefly and Luus-Jaakola algorithms in the calculation of a double reactive azeotrope

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mendes Platt, Gustavo; Pinheiro Domingos, Roberto; Oliveira de Andrade, Matheus

    2014-01-01

    The calculation of reactive azeotropes is an important task in the preliminary design and simulation of reactive distillation columns. Classically, homogeneous nonreactive azeotropes are vapor-liquid coexistence conditions where phase compositions are equal. For homogeneous reactive azeotropes, simultaneous phase and chemical equilibria occur concomitantly with equality of compositions (in the Ung-Doherty transformed space). The modeling of reactive azeotrope calculation is represented by a nonlinear algebraic system with phase equilibrium, chemical equilibrium and azeotropy equations. This nonlinear system can exhibit more than one solution, corresponding to a double reactive azeotrope. In a previous paper (Platt et al 2013 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 410 012020), we investigated some numerical aspects of the calculation of reactive azeotropes in the isobutene + methanol + methyl-tert-butyl-ether (with two reactive azeotropes) system using two metaheuristics: the Luus-Jaakola adaptive random search and the Firefly algorithm. Here, we use a hybrid structure (stochastic + deterministic) in order to produce accurate results for both azeotropes. After identifying the neighborhood of the reactive azeotrope, the nonlinear algebraic system is solved using Newton's method. The results indicate that using metaheuristics and some techniques devoted to the calculation of multiple minima allows both azeotropic coordinates in this reactive system to be obtains. In this sense, we provide a comprehensive analysis of a useful framework devoted to solving nonlinear systems, particularly in phase equilibrium problems.

  10. Rapid code acquisition algorithms employing PN matched filters

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Su, Yu T.

    1988-01-01

    The performance of four algorithms using pseudonoise matched filters (PNMFs), for direct-sequence spread-spectrum systems, is analyzed. They are: parallel search with fix dwell detector (PL-FDD), parallel search with sequential detector (PL-SD), parallel-serial search with fix dwell detector (PS-FDD), and parallel-serial search with sequential detector (PS-SD). The operation characteristic for each detector and the mean acquisition time for each algorithm are derived. All the algorithms are studied in conjunction with the noncoherent integration technique, which enables the system to operate in the presence of data modulation. Several previous proposals using PNMF are seen as special cases of the present algorithms.

  11. Efficient Fingercode Classification

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sun, Hong-Wei; Law, Kwok-Yan; Gollmann, Dieter; Chung, Siu-Leung; Li, Jian-Bin; Sun, Jia-Guang

    In this paper, we present an efficient fingerprint classification algorithm which is an essential component in many critical security application systems e. g. systems in the e-government and e-finance domains. Fingerprint identification is one of the most important security requirements in homeland security systems such as personnel screening and anti-money laundering. The problem of fingerprint identification involves searching (matching) the fingerprint of a person against each of the fingerprints of all registered persons. To enhance performance and reliability, a common approach is to reduce the search space by firstly classifying the fingerprints and then performing the search in the respective class. Jain et al. proposed a fingerprint classification algorithm based on a two-stage classifier, which uses a K-nearest neighbor classifier in its first stage. The fingerprint classification algorithm is based on the fingercode representation which is an encoding of fingerprints that has been demonstrated to be an effective fingerprint biometric scheme because of its ability to capture both local and global details in a fingerprint image. We enhance this approach by improving the efficiency of the K-nearest neighbor classifier for fingercode-based fingerprint classification. Our research firstly investigates the various fast search algorithms in vector quantization (VQ) and the potential application in fingerprint classification, and then proposes two efficient algorithms based on the pyramid-based search algorithms in VQ. Experimental results on DB1 of FVC 2004 demonstrate that our algorithms can outperform the full search algorithm and the original pyramid-based search algorithms in terms of computational efficiency without sacrificing accuracy.

  12. A Search Algorithm for Generating Alternative Process Plans in Flexible Manufacturing System

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tehrani, Hossein; Sugimura, Nobuhiro; Tanimizu, Yoshitaka; Iwamura, Koji

    Capabilities and complexity of manufacturing systems are increasing and striving for an integrated manufacturing environment. Availability of alternative process plans is a key factor for integration of design, process planning and scheduling. This paper describes an algorithm for generation of alternative process plans by extending the existing framework of the process plan networks. A class diagram is introduced for generating process plans and process plan networks from the viewpoint of the integrated process planning and scheduling systems. An incomplete search algorithm is developed for generating and searching the process plan networks. The benefit of this algorithm is that the whole process plan network does not have to be generated before the search algorithm starts. This algorithm is applicable to large and enormous process plan networks and also to search wide areas of the network based on the user requirement. The algorithm can generate alternative process plans and to select a suitable one based on the objective functions.

  13. Two New PRP Conjugate Gradient Algorithms for Minimization Optimization Models.

    PubMed

    Yuan, Gonglin; Duan, Xiabin; Liu, Wenjie; Wang, Xiaoliang; Cui, Zengru; Sheng, Zhou

    2015-01-01

    Two new PRP conjugate Algorithms are proposed in this paper based on two modified PRP conjugate gradient methods: the first algorithm is proposed for solving unconstrained optimization problems, and the second algorithm is proposed for solving nonlinear equations. The first method contains two aspects of information: function value and gradient value. The two methods both possess some good properties, as follows: 1) βk ≥ 0 2) the search direction has the trust region property without the use of any line search method 3) the search direction has sufficient descent property without the use of any line search method. Under some suitable conditions, we establish the global convergence of the two algorithms. We conduct numerical experiments to evaluate our algorithms. The numerical results indicate that the first algorithm is effective and competitive for solving unconstrained optimization problems and that the second algorithm is effective for solving large-scale nonlinear equations.

  14. Two New PRP Conjugate Gradient Algorithms for Minimization Optimization Models

    PubMed Central

    Yuan, Gonglin; Duan, Xiabin; Liu, Wenjie; Wang, Xiaoliang; Cui, Zengru; Sheng, Zhou

    2015-01-01

    Two new PRP conjugate Algorithms are proposed in this paper based on two modified PRP conjugate gradient methods: the first algorithm is proposed for solving unconstrained optimization problems, and the second algorithm is proposed for solving nonlinear equations. The first method contains two aspects of information: function value and gradient value. The two methods both possess some good properties, as follows: 1)β k ≥ 0 2) the search direction has the trust region property without the use of any line search method 3) the search direction has sufficient descent property without the use of any line search method. Under some suitable conditions, we establish the global convergence of the two algorithms. We conduct numerical experiments to evaluate our algorithms. The numerical results indicate that the first algorithm is effective and competitive for solving unconstrained optimization problems and that the second algorithm is effective for solving large-scale nonlinear equations. PMID:26502409

  15. A Multistrategy Optimization Improved Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

    PubMed Central

    Liu, Wen

    2014-01-01

    Being prone to the shortcomings of premature and slow convergence rate of artificial bee colony algorithm, an improved algorithm was proposed. Chaotic reverse learning strategies were used to initialize swarm in order to improve the global search ability of the algorithm and keep the diversity of the algorithm; the similarity degree of individuals of the population was used to characterize the diversity of population; population diversity measure was set as an indicator to dynamically and adaptively adjust the nectar position; the premature and local convergence were avoided effectively; dual population search mechanism was introduced to the search stage of algorithm; the parallel search of dual population considerably improved the convergence rate. Through simulation experiments of 10 standard testing functions and compared with other algorithms, the results showed that the improved algorithm had faster convergence rate and the capacity of jumping out of local optimum faster. PMID:24982924

  16. Block Architecture Problem with Depth First Search Solution and Its Application

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Rahim, Robbi; Abdullah, Dahlan; Simarmata, Janner; Pranolo, Andri; Saleh Ahmar, Ansari; Hidayat, Rahmat; Napitupulu, Darmawan; Nurdiyanto, Heri; Febriadi, Bayu; Zamzami, Z.

    2018-01-01

    Searching is a common process performed by many computer users, Raita algorithm is one algorithm that can be used to match and find information in accordance with the patterns entered. Raita algorithm applied to the file search application using java programming language and the results obtained from the testing process of the file search quickly and with accurate results and support many data types.

  17. Fast and efficient search for MPEG-4 video using adjacent pixel intensity difference quantization histogram feature

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Feifei; Kotani, Koji; Chen, Qiu; Ohmi, Tadahiro

    2010-02-01

    In this paper, a fast search algorithm for MPEG-4 video clips from video database is proposed. An adjacent pixel intensity difference quantization (APIDQ) histogram is utilized as the feature vector of VOP (video object plane), which had been reliably applied to human face recognition previously. Instead of fully decompressed video sequence, partially decoded data, namely DC sequence of the video object are extracted from the video sequence. Combined with active search, a temporal pruning algorithm, fast and robust video search can be realized. The proposed search algorithm has been evaluated by total 15 hours of video contained of TV programs such as drama, talk, news, etc. to search for given 200 MPEG-4 video clips which each length is 15 seconds. Experimental results show the proposed algorithm can detect the similar video clip in merely 80ms, and Equal Error Rate (ERR) of 2 % in drama and news categories are achieved, which are more accurately and robust than conventional fast video search algorithm.

  18. Adversarial search by evolutionary computation.

    PubMed

    Hong, T P; Huang, K Y; Lin, W Y

    2001-01-01

    In this paper, we consider the problem of finding good next moves in two-player games. Traditional search algorithms, such as minimax and alpha-beta pruning, suffer great temporal and spatial expansion when exploring deeply into search trees to find better next moves. The evolution of genetic algorithms with the ability to find global or near global optima in limited time seems promising, but they are inept at finding compound optima, such as the minimax in a game-search tree. We thus propose a new genetic algorithm-based approach that can find a good next move by reserving the board evaluation values of new offspring in a partial game-search tree. Experiments show that solution accuracy and search speed are greatly improved by our algorithm.

  19. LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Constant-time solution to the global optimization problem using Brüschweiler's ensemble search algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Protopopescu, V.; D'Helon, C.; Barhen, J.

    2003-06-01

    A constant-time solution of the continuous global optimization problem (GOP) is obtained by using an ensemble algorithm. We show that under certain assumptions, the solution can be guaranteed by mapping the GOP onto a discrete unsorted search problem, whereupon Brüschweiler's ensemble search algorithm is applied. For adequate sensitivities of the measurement technique, the query complexity of the ensemble search algorithm depends linearly on the size of the function's domain. Advantages and limitations of an eventual NMR implementation are discussed.

  20. Teaching Kids about Social Justice

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Curriculum Review, 2007

    2007-01-01

    The Search Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Minneapolis, Minnesota, defines developmental assets as good things everyone needs to be happy in life, such as a supportive family, a caring neighborhood, integrity, self-esteem, resistance skills, conflict resolution skills, constructive activities and a sense of purpose. "A…

  1. A methodology to find the elementary landscape decomposition of combinatorial optimization problems.

    PubMed

    Chicano, Francisco; Whitley, L Darrell; Alba, Enrique

    2011-01-01

    A small number of combinatorial optimization problems have search spaces that correspond to elementary landscapes, where the objective function f is an eigenfunction of the Laplacian that describes the neighborhood structure of the search space. Many problems are not elementary; however, the objective function of a combinatorial optimization problem can always be expressed as a superposition of multiple elementary landscapes if the underlying neighborhood used is symmetric. This paper presents theoretical results that provide the foundation for algebraic methods that can be used to decompose the objective function of an arbitrary combinatorial optimization problem into a sum of subfunctions, where each subfunction is an elementary landscape. Many steps of this process can be automated, and indeed a software tool could be developed that assists the researcher in finding a landscape decomposition. This methodology is then used to show that the subset sum problem is a superposition of two elementary landscapes, and to show that the quadratic assignment problem is a superposition of three elementary landscapes.

  2. Cost- and reliability-oriented aggregation point association in long-term evolution and passive optical network hybrid access infrastructure for smart grid neighborhood area network

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Cheng, Xiao; Feng, Lei; Zhou, Fanqin; Wei, Lei; Yu, Peng; Li, Wenjing

    2018-02-01

    With the rapid development of the smart grid, the data aggregation point (AP) in the neighborhood area network (NAN) is becoming increasingly important for forwarding the information between the home area network and wide area network. Due to limited budget, it is unable to use one-single access technology to meet the ongoing requirements on AP coverage. This paper first introduces the wired and wireless hybrid access network with the integration of long-term evolution (LTE) and passive optical network (PON) system for NAN, which allows a good trade-off among cost, flexibility, and reliability. Then, based on the already existing wireless LTE network, an AP association optimization model is proposed to make the PON serve as many APs as possible, considering both the economic efficiency and network reliability. Moreover, since the features of the constraints and variables of this NP-hard problem, a hybrid intelligent optimization algorithm is proposed, which is achieved by the mixture of the genetic, ant colony and dynamic greedy algorithm. By comparing with other published methods, simulation results verify the performance of the proposed method in improving the AP coverage and the performance of the proposed algorithm in terms of convergence.

  3. Effects of the Sagittarius dwarf tidal stream on dark matter detectors.

    PubMed

    Freese, Katherine; Gondolo, Paolo; Newberg, Heidi Jo; Lewis, Matthew

    2004-03-19

    The Sagittarius dwarf tidal stream may be showering dark matter onto the solar neighborhood, which can change the results and interpretation of direct detection searches for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Stars in the stream may already have been detected in the solar neighborhood, and the dark matter in the stream is (0.3-25)% of the local density. Experiments should see an annually modulated steplike feature in the energy recoil spectrum that would be a smoking gun for WIMP detection. The total count rate in detectors is not a cosine curve in time and peaks at a different time of year than the standard case.

  4. Moving to a Highly Walkable Neighborhood and Incidence of Hypertension: A Propensity-Score Matched Cohort Study.

    PubMed

    Chiu, Maria; Rezai, Mohammad-Reza; Maclagan, Laura C; Austin, Peter C; Shah, Baiju R; Redelmeier, Donald A; Tu, Jack V

    2016-06-01

    The impact of moving to a neighborhood more conducive to utilitarian walking on the risk of incident hypertension is uncertain. Our study aimed to examine the effect of moving to a highly walkable neighborhood on the risk of incident hypertension. A population-based propensity-score matched cohort study design was used based on the Ontario population from the Canadian Community Health Survey (2001-2010). Participants were adults ≥ 20 years of age who moved from a low-walkability neighborhood (defined as any neighborhood with a Walk Score < 90) to either a high- (Walk Score ≥ 90) or another low-walkability neighborhood. The incidence of hypertension was assessed by linking the cohort to administrative health databases using a validated algorithm. Propensity-score matched Cox proportional hazard models were used. Annual health examination was used as a control event. Among the 1,057 propensity-score matched pairs there was a significantly lower risk of incident hypertension in the low to high vs. the low to low-walkability groups [hazard ratio = 0.46; 95% CI, 0.26, 0.81, p < 0.01]. The crude hypertension incidence rates were 18.0 per 1,000 person-years (95% CI: 11.6, 24.8) among the low- to low-walkability movers compared with 8.6 per 1,000 person-years (95% CI: 5.3, 12.7) among the low- to high-walkability movers (p < 0.001). There were no significant differences in the hazard of annual health examination between the two mover groups. Moving to a highly walkable neighborhood was associated with a significantly lower risk of incident hypertension. Future research should assess whether specific attributes of walkable neighborhoods (e.g., amenities, density, land-use mix) may be driving this relationship. Chiu M, Rezai MR, Maclagan LC, Austin PC, Shah BR, Redelmeier DA, Tu JV. 2016. Moving to a highly walkable neighborhood and incidence of hypertension: a propensity-score matched cohort study. Environ Health Perspect 124:754-760; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1510425.

  5. Improved hybrid optimization algorithm for 3D protein structure prediction.

    PubMed

    Zhou, Changjun; Hou, Caixia; Wei, Xiaopeng; Zhang, Qiang

    2014-07-01

    A new improved hybrid optimization algorithm - PGATS algorithm, which is based on toy off-lattice model, is presented for dealing with three-dimensional protein structure prediction problems. The algorithm combines the particle swarm optimization (PSO), genetic algorithm (GA), and tabu search (TS) algorithms. Otherwise, we also take some different improved strategies. The factor of stochastic disturbance is joined in the particle swarm optimization to improve the search ability; the operations of crossover and mutation that are in the genetic algorithm are changed to a kind of random liner method; at last tabu search algorithm is improved by appending a mutation operator. Through the combination of a variety of strategies and algorithms, the protein structure prediction (PSP) in a 3D off-lattice model is achieved. The PSP problem is an NP-hard problem, but the problem can be attributed to a global optimization problem of multi-extremum and multi-parameters. This is the theoretical principle of the hybrid optimization algorithm that is proposed in this paper. The algorithm combines local search and global search, which overcomes the shortcoming of a single algorithm, giving full play to the advantage of each algorithm. In the current universal standard sequences, Fibonacci sequences and real protein sequences are certified. Experiments show that the proposed new method outperforms single algorithms on the accuracy of calculating the protein sequence energy value, which is proved to be an effective way to predict the structure of proteins.

  6. Block-Based Connected-Component Labeling Algorithm Using Binary Decision Trees

    PubMed Central

    Chang, Wan-Yu; Chiu, Chung-Cheng; Yang, Jia-Horng

    2015-01-01

    In this paper, we propose a fast labeling algorithm based on block-based concepts. Because the number of memory access points directly affects the time consumption of the labeling algorithms, the aim of the proposed algorithm is to minimize neighborhood operations. Our algorithm utilizes a block-based view and correlates a raster scan to select the necessary pixels generated by a block-based scan mask. We analyze the advantages of a sequential raster scan for the block-based scan mask, and integrate the block-connected relationships using two different procedures with binary decision trees to reduce unnecessary memory access. This greatly simplifies the pixel locations of the block-based scan mask. Furthermore, our algorithm significantly reduces the number of leaf nodes and depth levels required in the binary decision tree. We analyze the labeling performance of the proposed algorithm alongside that of other labeling algorithms using high-resolution images and foreground images. The experimental results from synthetic and real image datasets demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is faster than other methods. PMID:26393597

  7. A capacitated vehicle routing problem with order available time in e-commerce industry

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Ling; Li, Kunpeng; Liu, Zhixue

    2017-03-01

    In this article, a variant of the well-known capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) called the capacitated vehicle routing problem with order available time (CVRPOAT) is considered, which is observed in the operations of the current e-commerce industry. In this problem, the orders are not available for delivery at the beginning of the planning period. CVRPOAT takes all the assumptions of CVRP, except the order available time, which is determined by the precedent order picking and packing stage in the warehouse of the online grocer. The objective is to minimize the sum of vehicle completion times. An efficient tabu search algorithm is presented to tackle the problem. Moreover, a Lagrangian relaxation algorithm is developed to obtain the lower bounds of reasonably sized problems. Based on the test instances derived from benchmark data, the proposed tabu search algorithm is compared with a published related genetic algorithm, as well as the derived lower bounds. Also, the tabu search algorithm is compared with the current operation strategy of the online grocer. Computational results indicate that the gap between the lower bounds and the results of the tabu search algorithm is small and the tabu search algorithm is superior to the genetic algorithm. Moreover, the CVRPOAT formulation together with the tabu search algorithm performs much better than the current operation strategy of the online grocer.

  8. Ringed Seal Search for Global Optimization via a Sensitive Search Model.

    PubMed

    Saadi, Younes; Yanto, Iwan Tri Riyadi; Herawan, Tutut; Balakrishnan, Vimala; Chiroma, Haruna; Risnumawan, Anhar

    2016-01-01

    The efficiency of a metaheuristic algorithm for global optimization is based on its ability to search and find the global optimum. However, a good search often requires to be balanced between exploration and exploitation of the search space. In this paper, a new metaheuristic algorithm called Ringed Seal Search (RSS) is introduced. It is inspired by the natural behavior of the seal pup. This algorithm mimics the seal pup movement behavior and its ability to search and choose the best lair to escape predators. The scenario starts once the seal mother gives birth to a new pup in a birthing lair that is constructed for this purpose. The seal pup strategy consists of searching and selecting the best lair by performing a random walk to find a new lair. Affected by the sensitive nature of seals against external noise emitted by predators, the random walk of the seal pup takes two different search states, normal state and urgent state. In the normal state, the pup performs an intensive search between closely adjacent lairs; this movement is modeled via a Brownian walk. In an urgent state, the pup leaves the proximity area and performs an extensive search to find a new lair from sparse targets; this movement is modeled via a Levy walk. The switch between these two states is realized by the random noise emitted by predators. The algorithm keeps switching between normal and urgent states until the global optimum is reached. Tests and validations were performed using fifteen benchmark test functions to compare the performance of RSS with other baseline algorithms. The results show that RSS is more efficient than Genetic Algorithm, Particles Swarm Optimization and Cuckoo Search in terms of convergence rate to the global optimum. The RSS shows an improvement in terms of balance between exploration (extensive) and exploitation (intensive) of the search space. The RSS can efficiently mimic seal pups behavior to find best lair and provide a new algorithm to be used in global optimization problems.

  9. Adaptive Self Tuning

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Peterson, Matthew; Draelos, Timothy; Knox, Hunter

    2017-05-02

    The AST software includes numeric methods to 1) adjust STA/LTA signal detector trigger level (TL) values and 2) filter detections for a network of sensors. AST adapts TL values to the current state of the environment by leveraging cooperation within a neighborhood of sensors. The key metric that guides the dynamic tuning is consistency of each sensor with its nearest neighbors: TL values are automatically adjusted on a per station basis to be more or less sensitive to produce consistent agreement of detections in its neighborhood. The AST algorithm adapts in near real-time to changing conditions in an attempt tomore » automatically self-tune a signal detector to identify (detect) only signals from events of interest.« less

  10. Beam-steering efficiency optimization method based on a rapid-search algorithm for liquid crystal optical phased array.

    PubMed

    Xiao, Feng; Kong, Lingjiang; Chen, Jian

    2017-06-01

    A rapid-search algorithm to improve the beam-steering efficiency for a liquid crystal optical phased array was proposed and experimentally demonstrated in this paper. This proposed algorithm, in which the value of steering efficiency is taken as the objective function and the controlling voltage codes are considered as the optimization variables, consisted of a detection stage and a construction stage. It optimized the steering efficiency in the detection stage and adjusted its search direction adaptively in the construction stage to avoid getting caught in a wrong search space. Simulations had been conducted to compare the proposed algorithm with the widely used pattern-search algorithm using criteria of convergence rate and optimized efficiency. Beam-steering optimization experiments had been performed to verify the validity of the proposed method.

  11. G/SPLINES: A hybrid of Friedman's Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) algorithm with Holland's genetic algorithm

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Rogers, David

    1991-01-01

    G/SPLINES are a hybrid of Friedman's Multivariable Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) algorithm with Holland's Genetic Algorithm. In this hybrid, the incremental search is replaced by a genetic search. The G/SPLINE algorithm exhibits performance comparable to that of the MARS algorithm, requires fewer least squares computations, and allows significantly larger problems to be considered.

  12. Growing and navigating the small world Web by local content

    PubMed Central

    Menczer, Filippo

    2002-01-01

    Can we model the scale-free distribution of Web hypertext degree under realistic assumptions about the behavior of page authors? Can a Web crawler efficiently locate an unknown relevant page? These questions are receiving much attention due to their potential impact for understanding the structure of the Web and for building better search engines. Here I investigate the connection between the linkage and content topology of Web pages. The relationship between a text-induced distance metric and a link-based neighborhood probability distribution displays a phase transition between a region where linkage is not determined by content and one where linkage decays according to a power law. This relationship is used to propose a Web growth model that is shown to accurately predict the distribution of Web page degree, based on textual content and assuming only local knowledge of degree for existing pages. A qualitatively similar phase transition is found between linkage and semantic distance, with an exponential decay tail. Both relationships suggest that efficient paths can be discovered by decentralized Web navigation algorithms based on textual and/or categorical cues. PMID:12381792

  13. Growing and navigating the small world Web by local content

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Menczer, Filippo

    2002-10-01

    Can we model the scale-free distribution of Web hypertext degree under realistic assumptions about the behavior of page authors? Can a Web crawler efficiently locate an unknown relevant page? These questions are receiving much attention due to their potential impact for understanding the structure of the Web and for building better search engines. Here I investigate the connection between the linkage and content topology of Web pages. The relationship between a text-induced distance metric and a link-based neighborhood probability distribution displays a phase transition between a region where linkage is not determined by content and one where linkage decays according to a power law. This relationship is used to propose a Web growth model that is shown to accurately predict the distribution of Web page degree, based on textual content and assuming only local knowledge of degree for existing pages. A qualitatively similar phase transition is found between linkage and semantic distance, with an exponential decay tail. Both relationships suggest that efficient paths can be discovered by decentralized Web navigation algorithms based on textual and/or categorical cues.

  14. Growing and navigating the small world Web by local content.

    PubMed

    Menczer, Filippo

    2002-10-29

    Can we model the scale-free distribution of Web hypertext degree under realistic assumptions about the behavior of page authors? Can a Web crawler efficiently locate an unknown relevant page? These questions are receiving much attention due to their potential impact for understanding the structure of the Web and for building better search engines. Here I investigate the connection between the linkage and content topology of Web pages. The relationship between a text-induced distance metric and a link-based neighborhood probability distribution displays a phase transition between a region where linkage is not determined by content and one where linkage decays according to a power law. This relationship is used to propose a Web growth model that is shown to accurately predict the distribution of Web page degree, based on textual content and assuming only local knowledge of degree for existing pages. A qualitatively similar phase transition is found between linkage and semantic distance, with an exponential decay tail. Both relationships suggest that efficient paths can be discovered by decentralized Web navigation algorithms based on textual and/or categorical cues.

  15. Branching Search

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Eliazar, Iddo

    2017-12-01

    Search processes play key roles in various scientific fields. A widespread and effective search-process scheme, which we term Restart Search, is based on the following restart algorithm: i) set a timer and initiate a search task; ii) if the task was completed before the timer expired, then stop; iii) if the timer expired before the task was completed, then go back to the first step and restart the search process anew. In this paper a branching feature is added to the restart algorithm: at every transition from the algorithm's third step to its first step branching takes place, thus multiplying the search effort. This branching feature yields a search-process scheme which we term Branching Search. The running time of Branching Search is analyzed, closed-form results are established, and these results are compared to the coresponding running-time results of Restart Search.

  16. Doubling down on phosphorylation as a variable peptide modification.

    PubMed

    Cooper, Bret

    2016-09-01

    Some mass spectrometrists believe that searching for variable PTMs like phosphorylation of serine or threonine when using database-search algorithms to interpret peptide tandem mass spectra will increase false-positive matching. The basis for this is the premise that the algorithm compares a spectrum to both a nonphosphorylated peptide candidate and a phosphorylated candidate, which is double the number of candidates compared to a search with no possible phosphorylation. Hence, if the search space doubles, false-positive matching could increase accordingly as the algorithm considers more candidates to which false matches could be made. In this study, it is shown that the search for variable phosphoserine and phosphothreonine modifications does not always double the search space or unduly impinge upon the FDR. A breakdown of how one popular database-search algorithm deals with variable phosphorylation is presented. Published 2016. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

  17. FIVQ algorithm for interference hyper-spectral image compression

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wen, Jia; Ma, Caiwen; Zhao, Junsuo

    2014-07-01

    Based on the improved vector quantization (IVQ) algorithm [1] which was proposed in 2012, this paper proposes a further improved vector quantization (FIVQ) algorithm for LASIS (Large Aperture Static Imaging Spectrometer) interference hyper-spectral image compression. To get better image quality, IVQ algorithm takes both the mean values and the VQ indices as the encoding rules. Although IVQ algorithm can improve both the bit rate and the image quality, it still can be further improved in order to get much lower bit rate for the LASIS interference pattern with the special optical characteristics based on the pushing and sweeping in LASIS imaging principle. In the proposed algorithm FIVQ, the neighborhood of the encoding blocks of the interference pattern image, which are using the mean value rules, will be checked whether they have the same mean value as the current processing block. Experiments show the proposed algorithm FIVQ can get lower bit rate compared to that of the IVQ algorithm for the LASIS interference hyper-spectral sequences.

  18. Self-adaptive multi-objective harmony search for optimal design of water distribution networks

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Choi, Young Hwan; Lee, Ho Min; Yoo, Do Guen; Kim, Joong Hoon

    2017-11-01

    In multi-objective optimization computing, it is important to assign suitable parameters to each optimization problem to obtain better solutions. In this study, a self-adaptive multi-objective harmony search (SaMOHS) algorithm is developed to apply the parameter-setting-free technique, which is an example of a self-adaptive methodology. The SaMOHS algorithm attempts to remove some of the inconvenience from parameter setting and selects the most adaptive parameters during the iterative solution search process. To verify the proposed algorithm, an optimal least cost water distribution network design problem is applied to three different target networks. The results are compared with other well-known algorithms such as multi-objective harmony search and the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is quantified by suitable performance indices. The results indicate that SaMOHS can be efficiently applied to the search for Pareto-optimal solutions in a multi-objective solution space.

  19. Exploratory power of the harmony search algorithm: analysis and improvements for global numerical optimization.

    PubMed

    Das, Swagatam; Mukhopadhyay, Arpan; Roy, Anwit; Abraham, Ajith; Panigrahi, Bijaya K

    2011-02-01

    The theoretical analysis of evolutionary algorithms is believed to be very important for understanding their internal search mechanism and thus to develop more efficient algorithms. This paper presents a simple mathematical analysis of the explorative search behavior of a recently developed metaheuristic algorithm called harmony search (HS). HS is a derivative-free real parameter optimization algorithm, and it draws inspiration from the musical improvisation process of searching for a perfect state of harmony. This paper analyzes the evolution of the population-variance over successive generations in HS and thereby draws some important conclusions regarding the explorative power of HS. A simple but very useful modification to the classical HS has been proposed in light of the mathematical analysis undertaken here. A comparison with the most recently published variants of HS and four other state-of-the-art optimization algorithms over 15 unconstrained and five constrained benchmark functions reflects the efficiency of the modified HS in terms of final accuracy, convergence speed, and robustness.

  20. A proposed search on the solar neighborhood for substellar objects

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Reynolds, R. T.; Walker, R. G.; Tarter, J. C.

    1980-01-01

    The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) program will produce an extremely sensitive all-sky survey over the wavelength region 8 to 120 microns when the mission is flown in 1982. These data will provide a novel opportunity to detect planetary-sized objects having masses smaller than 0.08 solar masses in or near the solar system. The improved detection limit of the IRAS will greatly increase the volume of space searched for such objects, as compared with previous optical and infrared studies.

  1. Dynamic Harmony Search with Polynomial Mutation Algorithm for Valve-Point Economic Load Dispatch

    PubMed Central

    Karthikeyan, M.; Sree Ranga Raja, T.

    2015-01-01

    Economic load dispatch (ELD) problem is an important issue in the operation and control of modern control system. The ELD problem is complex and nonlinear with equality and inequality constraints which makes it hard to be efficiently solved. This paper presents a new modification of harmony search (HS) algorithm named as dynamic harmony search with polynomial mutation (DHSPM) algorithm to solve ORPD problem. In DHSPM algorithm the key parameters of HS algorithm like harmony memory considering rate (HMCR) and pitch adjusting rate (PAR) are changed dynamically and there is no need to predefine these parameters. Additionally polynomial mutation is inserted in the updating step of HS algorithm to favor exploration and exploitation of the search space. The DHSPM algorithm is tested with three power system cases consisting of 3, 13, and 40 thermal units. The computational results show that the DHSPM algorithm is more effective in finding better solutions than other computational intelligence based methods. PMID:26491710

  2. Dynamic Harmony Search with Polynomial Mutation Algorithm for Valve-Point Economic Load Dispatch.

    PubMed

    Karthikeyan, M; Raja, T Sree Ranga

    2015-01-01

    Economic load dispatch (ELD) problem is an important issue in the operation and control of modern control system. The ELD problem is complex and nonlinear with equality and inequality constraints which makes it hard to be efficiently solved. This paper presents a new modification of harmony search (HS) algorithm named as dynamic harmony search with polynomial mutation (DHSPM) algorithm to solve ORPD problem. In DHSPM algorithm the key parameters of HS algorithm like harmony memory considering rate (HMCR) and pitch adjusting rate (PAR) are changed dynamically and there is no need to predefine these parameters. Additionally polynomial mutation is inserted in the updating step of HS algorithm to favor exploration and exploitation of the search space. The DHSPM algorithm is tested with three power system cases consisting of 3, 13, and 40 thermal units. The computational results show that the DHSPM algorithm is more effective in finding better solutions than other computational intelligence based methods.

  3. Algorithms for database-dependent search of MS/MS data.

    PubMed

    Matthiesen, Rune

    2013-01-01

    The frequent used bottom-up strategy for identification of proteins and their associated modifications generate nowadays typically thousands of MS/MS spectra that normally are matched automatically against a protein sequence database. Search engines that take as input MS/MS spectra and a protein sequence database are referred as database-dependent search engines. Many programs both commercial and freely available exist for database-dependent search of MS/MS spectra and most of the programs have excellent user documentation. The aim here is therefore to outline the algorithm strategy behind different search engines rather than providing software user manuals. The process of database-dependent search can be divided into search strategy, peptide scoring, protein scoring, and finally protein inference. Most efforts in the literature have been put in to comparing results from different software rather than discussing the underlining algorithms. Such practical comparisons can be cluttered by suboptimal implementation and the observed differences are frequently caused by software parameters settings which have not been set proper to allow even comparison. In other words an algorithmic idea can still be worth considering even if the software implementation has been demonstrated to be suboptimal. The aim in this chapter is therefore to split the algorithms for database-dependent searching of MS/MS data into the above steps so that the different algorithmic ideas become more transparent and comparable. Most search engines provide good implementations of the first three data analysis steps mentioned above, whereas the final step of protein inference are much less developed for most search engines and is in many cases performed by an external software. The final part of this chapter illustrates how protein inference is built into the VEMS search engine and discusses a stand-alone program SIR for protein inference that can import a Mascot search result.

  4. Teaching AI Search Algorithms in a Web-Based Educational System

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Grivokostopoulou, Foteini; Hatzilygeroudis, Ioannis

    2013-01-01

    In this paper, we present a way of teaching AI search algorithms in a web-based adaptive educational system. Teaching is based on interactive examples and exercises. Interactive examples, which use visualized animations to present AI search algorithms in a step-by-step way with explanations, are used to make learning more attractive. Practice…

  5. On the use of harmony search algorithm in the training of wavelet neural networks

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lai, Kee Huong; Zainuddin, Zarita; Ong, Pauline

    2015-10-01

    Wavelet neural networks (WNNs) are a class of feedforward neural networks that have been used in a wide range of industrial and engineering applications to model the complex relationships between the given inputs and outputs. The training of WNNs involves the configuration of the weight values between neurons. The backpropagation training algorithm, which is a gradient-descent method, can be used for this training purpose. Nonetheless, the solutions found by this algorithm often get trapped at local minima. In this paper, a harmony search-based algorithm is proposed for the training of WNNs. The training of WNNs, thus can be formulated as a continuous optimization problem, where the objective is to maximize the overall classification accuracy. Each candidate solution proposed by the harmony search algorithm represents a specific WNN architecture. In order to speed up the training process, the solution space is divided into disjoint partitions during the random initialization step of harmony search algorithm. The proposed training algorithm is tested onthree benchmark problems from the UCI machine learning repository, as well as one real life application, namely, the classification of electroencephalography signals in the task of epileptic seizure detection. The results obtained show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the traditional harmony search algorithm in terms of overall classification accuracy.

  6. An improved harmony search algorithm with dynamically varying bandwidth

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kalivarapu, J.; Jain, S.; Bag, S.

    2016-07-01

    The present work demonstrates a new variant of the harmony search (HS) algorithm where bandwidth (BW) is one of the deciding factors for the time complexity and the performance of the algorithm. The BW needs to have both explorative and exploitative characteristics. The ideology is to use a large BW to search in the full domain and to adjust the BW dynamically closer to the optimal solution. After trying a series of approaches, a methodology inspired by the functioning of a low-pass filter showed satisfactory results. This approach was implemented in the self-adaptive improved harmony search (SIHS) algorithm and tested on several benchmark functions. Compared to the existing HS algorithm and its variants, SIHS showed better performance on most of the test functions. Thereafter, the algorithm was applied to geometric parameter optimization of a friction stir welding tool.

  7. Genetic algorithms as global random search methods

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Peck, Charles C.; Dhawan, Atam P.

    1995-01-01

    Genetic algorithm behavior is described in terms of the construction and evolution of the sampling distributions over the space of candidate solutions. This novel perspective is motivated by analysis indicating that the schema theory is inadequate for completely and properly explaining genetic algorithm behavior. Based on the proposed theory, it is argued that the similarities of candidate solutions should be exploited directly, rather than encoding candidate solutions and then exploiting their similarities. Proportional selection is characterized as a global search operator, and recombination is characterized as the search process that exploits similarities. Sequential algorithms and many deletion methods are also analyzed. It is shown that by properly constraining the search breadth of recombination operators, convergence of genetic algorithms to a global optimum can be ensured.

  8. Genetic algorithms as global random search methods

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Peck, Charles C.; Dhawan, Atam P.

    1995-01-01

    Genetic algorithm behavior is described in terms of the construction and evolution of the sampling distributions over the space of candidate solutions. This novel perspective is motivated by analysis indicating that that schema theory is inadequate for completely and properly explaining genetic algorithm behavior. Based on the proposed theory, it is argued that the similarities of candidate solutions should be exploited directly, rather than encoding candidate solution and then exploiting their similarities. Proportional selection is characterized as a global search operator, and recombination is characterized as the search process that exploits similarities. Sequential algorithms and many deletion methods are also analyzed. It is shown that by properly constraining the search breadth of recombination operators, convergence of genetic algorithms to a global optimum can be ensured.

  9. Competitive Swarm Optimizer Based Gateway Deployment Algorithm in Cyber-Physical Systems.

    PubMed

    Huang, Shuqiang; Tao, Ming

    2017-01-22

    Wireless sensor network topology optimization is a highly important issue, and topology control through node selection can improve the efficiency of data forwarding, while saving energy and prolonging lifetime of the network. To address the problem of connecting a wireless sensor network to the Internet in cyber-physical systems, here we propose a geometric gateway deployment based on a competitive swarm optimizer algorithm. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm has a continuous search feature in the solution space, which makes it suitable for finding the geometric center of gateway deployment; however, its search mechanism is limited to the individual optimum (pbest) and the population optimum (gbest); thus, it easily falls into local optima. In order to improve the particle search mechanism and enhance the search efficiency of the algorithm, we introduce a new competitive swarm optimizer (CSO) algorithm. The CSO search algorithm is based on an inter-particle competition mechanism and can effectively avoid trapping of the population falling into a local optimum. With the improvement of an adaptive opposition-based search and its ability to dynamically parameter adjustments, this algorithm can maintain the diversity of the entire swarm to solve geometric K -center gateway deployment problems. The simulation results show that this CSO algorithm has a good global explorative ability as well as convergence speed and can improve the network quality of service (QoS) level of cyber-physical systems by obtaining a minimum network coverage radius. We also find that the CSO algorithm is more stable, robust and effective in solving the problem of geometric gateway deployment as compared to the PSO or Kmedoids algorithms.

  10. Fundamental resource-allocating model in colleges and universities based on Immune Clone Algorithms

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ye, Mengdie

    2017-05-01

    In this thesis we will seek the combination of antibodies and antigens converted from the optimal course arrangement and make an analogy with Immune Clone Algorithms. According to the character of the Algorithms, we apply clone, clone gene and clone selection to arrange courses. Clone operator can combine evolutionary search and random search, global search and local search. By cloning and clone mutating candidate solutions, we can find the global optimal solution quickly.

  11. Search Algorithms as a Framework for the Optimization of Drug Combinations

    PubMed Central

    Coquin, Laurence; Schofield, Jennifer; Feala, Jacob D.; Reed, John C.; McCulloch, Andrew D.; Paternostro, Giovanni

    2008-01-01

    Combination therapies are often needed for effective clinical outcomes in the management of complex diseases, but presently they are generally based on empirical clinical experience. Here we suggest a novel application of search algorithms—originally developed for digital communication—modified to optimize combinations of therapeutic interventions. In biological experiments measuring the restoration of the decline with age in heart function and exercise capacity in Drosophila melanogaster, we found that search algorithms correctly identified optimal combinations of four drugs using only one-third of the tests performed in a fully factorial search. In experiments identifying combinations of three doses of up to six drugs for selective killing of human cancer cells, search algorithms resulted in a highly significant enrichment of selective combinations compared with random searches. In simulations using a network model of cell death, we found that the search algorithms identified the optimal combinations of 6–9 interventions in 80–90% of tests, compared with 15–30% for an equivalent random search. These findings suggest that modified search algorithms from information theory have the potential to enhance the discovery of novel therapeutic drug combinations. This report also helps to frame a biomedical problem that will benefit from an interdisciplinary effort and suggests a general strategy for its solution. PMID:19112483

  12. Gradient gravitational search: An efficient metaheuristic algorithm for global optimization.

    PubMed

    Dash, Tirtharaj; Sahu, Prabhat K

    2015-05-30

    The adaptation of novel techniques developed in the field of computational chemistry to solve the concerned problems for large and flexible molecules is taking the center stage with regard to efficient algorithm, computational cost and accuracy. In this article, the gradient-based gravitational search (GGS) algorithm, using analytical gradients for a fast minimization to the next local minimum has been reported. Its efficiency as metaheuristic approach has also been compared with Gradient Tabu Search and others like: Gravitational Search, Cuckoo Search, and Back Tracking Search algorithms for global optimization. Moreover, the GGS approach has also been applied to computational chemistry problems for finding the minimal value potential energy of two-dimensional and three-dimensional off-lattice protein models. The simulation results reveal the relative stability and physical accuracy of protein models with efficient computational cost. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  13. Conditions of Life and Parental Values.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Burns, Ailsa; And Others

    Kohn's work on the relationship between social class and parental values was expanded by searching for value dimensions other than Kohn's self-direction/conformity construct and by investigating three aspects of social structure: immigrant status, quality of neighborhood, and housing type. Data were collected from parents of 305 9- to 11-year-old…

  14. Simulation of land use change in the three gorges reservoir area based on CART-CA

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yuan, Min

    2018-05-01

    This study proposes a new method to simulate spatiotemporal complex multiple land uses by using classification and regression tree algorithm (CART) based CA model. In this model, we use classification and regression tree algorithm to calculate land class conversion probability, and combine neighborhood factor, random factor to extract cellular transformation rules. The overall Kappa coefficient is 0.8014 and the overall accuracy is 0.8821 in the land dynamic simulation results of the three gorges reservoir area from 2000 to 2010, and the simulation results are satisfactory.

  15. Are Remotely Sensed Trends in the Built Environment and Urban Vegetation Predictive of Changes in Metropolitan Housing Markets?

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Endsley, K. A.

    2017-12-01

    In the midst of a global urbanization trend, residential neighborhoods are undergoing a variety of changes, including neighborhood turnover, the re-location of employment centers, and, recently, the increasing social and economic isolation of the suburbs. In the U.S., where residential lawns account for more area than any other irrigated crop (Polsky et al. 2014, in PNAS), coeval changes in residential populations, the built environment, and vegetation have serious implications for urban sustainability. To date, detailed studies of dynamic neighborhood changes have been hampered by the lack of fine time-series data on neighborhood composition. Most notably, the U.S. Census is conducted only once every decade leading to the likely inaccurate assumption of linear change between Census years. To the extent that human activities alter the built environment and urban ecology, can remotely sensed biophysical changes serve as a good proxy for neighborhood socio-economic changes? In this study, I apply time series data on spectral reflectance, spectral indices, and land-cover abundances from 15-to-25 years of Landsat data to fine-scale data on residential property transactions in two metropolitan areas with different regional economic and environmental contexts: Detroit and Los Angeles. The real estate record provides parcel-level, monthly data on sale prices and tax foreclosures; taken together, these provide a good description of the housing market and an acceptable proxy for neighborhood stability. By comparing lagged features from the remote sensing (RS) archive at different time scales in a non-parametric statistical learning algorithm, I identify which RS features best predict changes in the housing market and compare these associations between the two metropolitan areas and across multiple spatial and temporal scales along an urban to peri-urban gradient.

  16. Unwalkable Neighborhoods, Poverty, and the Risk of Diabetes Among Recent Immigrants to Canada Compared With Long-Term Residents

    PubMed Central

    Booth, Gillian L.; Creatore, Maria I.; Moineddin, Rahim; Gozdyra, Peter; Weyman, Jonathan T.; Matheson, Flora I.; Glazier, Richard H.

    2013-01-01

    OBJECTIVE This study was designed to examine whether residents living in neighborhoods that are less conducive to walking or other physical activities are more likely to develop diabetes and, if so, whether recent immigrants are particularly susceptible to such effects. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We conducted a population-based, retrospective cohort study to assess the impact of neighborhood walkability on diabetes incidence among recent immigrants (n = 214,882) relative to long-term residents (n = 1,024,380). Adults aged 30–64 years who were free of diabetes and living in Toronto, Canada, on 31 March 2005 were identified from administrative health databases and followed until 31 March 2010 for the development of diabetes, using a validated algorithm. Neighborhood characteristics, including walkability and income, were derived from the Canadian Census and other sources. RESULTS Neighborhood walkability was a strong predictor of diabetes incidence independent of age and area income, particularly among recent immigrants (lowest [quintile 1 {Q1}] vs. highest [quintile 5 {Q5}] walkability quintile: relative risk [RR] 1.58 [95% CI 1.42–1.75] for men; 1.67 [1.48–1.88] for women) compared with long-term residents (Q1 to Q5) 1.32 [1.26–1.38] for men; 1.24 [1.18–1.31] for women). Coexisting poverty accentuated these effects; diabetes incidence varied threefold between recent immigrants living in low-income/low walkability areas (16.2 per 1,000) and those living in high-income/high walkability areas (5.1 per 1,000). CONCLUSIONS Neighborhood walkability was inversely associated with the development of diabetes in our setting, particularly among recent immigrants living in low-income areas. PMID:22988302

  17. Importance of proximity to resources, social support, transportation and neighborhood security for mobility and social participation in older adults: results from a scoping study.

    PubMed

    Levasseur, Mélanie; Généreux, Mélissa; Bruneau, Jean-François; Vanasse, Alain; Chabot, Éric; Beaulac, Claude; Bédard, Marie-Michèle

    2015-05-23

    Since mobility and social participation are key determinants of health and quality of life, it is important to identify factors associated with them. Although several investigations have been conducted on the neighborhood environment, mobility and social participation, there is no clear integration of the results. This study aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding regarding how the neighborhood environment is associated with mobility and social participation in older adults. A rigorous methodological scoping study framework was used to search nine databases from different fields with fifty-one keywords. Data were exhaustively analyzed, organized and synthesized according to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) by two research assistants following PRISMA guidelines, and results were validated with knowledge users. The majority of the 50 selected articles report results of cross-sectional studies (29; 58%), mainly conducted in the US (24; 48%) or Canada (15; 30%). Studies mostly focused on neighborhood environment associations with mobility (39; 78%), social participation (19; 38%), and occasionally both (11; 22%). Neighborhood attributes considered were mainly 'Pro ducts and technology' (43; 86) and 'Services, systems and policies' (37; 74%), but also 'Natural and human-made changes' (27; 54%) and 'Support and relationships' (21; 42%). Mobility and social participation were both positively associated with Proximity to resources and recreational facilities, Social support, Having a car or driver's license, Public transportation and Neighborhood security, and negatively associated with Poor user-friendliness of the walking environment and Neighborhood insecurity. Attributes of the neighborhood environment not covered by previous research on mobility and social participation mainly concerned 'Attitudes', and 'Services, systems and policies'. Results from this comprehensive synthesis of empirical studies on associations of the neighborhood environment with mobility and social participation will ultimately support best practices, decisions and the development of innovative inclusive public health interventions including clear guidelines for the creation of age-supportive environments. To foster mobility and social participation, these interventions must consider Proximity to resources and to recreational facilities, Social support, Transportation, Neighborhood security and User-friendliness of the walking environment. Future studies should include both mobility and social participation, and investigate how they are associated with 'Attitudes', and 'Services, systems and policies' in older adults, including disadvantaged older adults.

  18. Segmentation of MRI Brain Images with an Improved Harmony Searching Algorithm.

    PubMed

    Yang, Zhang; Shufan, Ye; Li, Guo; Weifeng, Ding

    2016-01-01

    The harmony searching (HS) algorithm is a kind of optimization search algorithm currently applied in many practical problems. The HS algorithm constantly revises variables in the harmony database and the probability of different values that can be used to complete iteration convergence to achieve the optimal effect. Accordingly, this study proposed a modified algorithm to improve the efficiency of the algorithm. First, a rough set algorithm was employed to improve the convergence and accuracy of the HS algorithm. Then, the optimal value was obtained using the improved HS algorithm. The optimal value of convergence was employed as the initial value of the fuzzy clustering algorithm for segmenting magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain images. Experimental results showed that the improved HS algorithm attained better convergence and more accurate results than those of the original HS algorithm. In our study, the MRI image segmentation effect of the improved algorithm was superior to that of the original fuzzy clustering method.

  19. Segmentation of MRI Brain Images with an Improved Harmony Searching Algorithm

    PubMed Central

    Yang, Zhang; Li, Guo; Weifeng, Ding

    2016-01-01

    The harmony searching (HS) algorithm is a kind of optimization search algorithm currently applied in many practical problems. The HS algorithm constantly revises variables in the harmony database and the probability of different values that can be used to complete iteration convergence to achieve the optimal effect. Accordingly, this study proposed a modified algorithm to improve the efficiency of the algorithm. First, a rough set algorithm was employed to improve the convergence and accuracy of the HS algorithm. Then, the optimal value was obtained using the improved HS algorithm. The optimal value of convergence was employed as the initial value of the fuzzy clustering algorithm for segmenting magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain images. Experimental results showed that the improved HS algorithm attained better convergence and more accurate results than those of the original HS algorithm. In our study, the MRI image segmentation effect of the improved algorithm was superior to that of the original fuzzy clustering method. PMID:27403428

  20. Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization for Hybrid Flowshop Scheduling Problem with Maintenance Activities

    PubMed Central

    Li, Jun-qing; Pan, Quan-ke; Mao, Kun

    2014-01-01

    A hybrid algorithm which combines particle swarm optimization (PSO) and iterated local search (ILS) is proposed for solving the hybrid flowshop scheduling (HFS) problem with preventive maintenance (PM) activities. In the proposed algorithm, different crossover operators and mutation operators are investigated. In addition, an efficient multiple insert mutation operator is developed for enhancing the searching ability of the algorithm. Furthermore, an ILS-based local search procedure is embedded in the algorithm to improve the exploitation ability of the proposed algorithm. The detailed experimental parameter for the canonical PSO is tuning. The proposed algorithm is tested on the variation of 77 Carlier and Néron's benchmark problems. Detailed comparisons with the present efficient algorithms, including hGA, ILS, PSO, and IG, verify the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. PMID:24883414

  1. Adaptive infinite impulse response system identification using modified-interior search algorithm with Lèvy flight.

    PubMed

    Kumar, Manjeet; Rawat, Tarun Kumar; Aggarwal, Apoorva

    2017-03-01

    In this paper, a new meta-heuristic optimization technique, called interior search algorithm (ISA) with Lèvy flight is proposed and applied to determine the optimal parameters of an unknown infinite impulse response (IIR) system for the system identification problem. ISA is based on aesthetics, which is commonly used in interior design and decoration processes. In ISA, composition phase and mirror phase are applied for addressing the nonlinear and multimodal system identification problems. System identification using modified-ISA (M-ISA) based method involves faster convergence, single parameter tuning and does not require derivative information because it uses a stochastic random search using the concepts of Lèvy flight. A proper tuning of control parameter has been performed in order to achieve a balance between intensification and diversification phases. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, mean square error (MSE), computation time and percentage improvement are considered as the performance measure. To validate the performance of M-ISA based method, simulations has been carried out for three benchmarked IIR systems using same order and reduced order system. Genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), cat swarm optimization (CSO), cuckoo search algorithm (CSA), differential evolution using wavelet mutation (DEWM), firefly algorithm (FFA), craziness based particle swarm optimization (CRPSO), harmony search (HS) algorithm, opposition based harmony search (OHS) algorithm, hybrid particle swarm optimization-gravitational search algorithm (HPSO-GSA) and ISA are also used to model the same examples and simulation results are compared. Obtained results confirm the efficiency of the proposed method. Copyright © 2017 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. GBS 1.0

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    2010-09-30

    The Umbra gbs (Graph-Based Search) library provides implementations of graph-based search/planning algorithms that can be applied to legacy graph data structures. Unlike some other graph algorithm libraries, this one does not require your graph class to inherit from a specific base class. Implementations of Dijkstra's Algorithm and A-Star search are included and can be used with graphs that are lazily-constructed.

  3. On local search for bi-objective knapsack problems.

    PubMed

    Liefooghe, Arnaud; Paquete, Luís; Figueira, José Rui

    2013-01-01

    In this article, a local search approach is proposed for three variants of the bi-objective binary knapsack problem, with the aim of maximizing the total profit and minimizing the total weight. First, an experimental study on a given structural property of connectedness of the efficient set is conducted. Based on this property, a local search algorithm is proposed and its performance is compared to exact algorithms in terms of runtime and quality metrics. The experimental results indicate that this simple local search algorithm is able to find a representative set of optimal solutions in most of the cases, and in much less time than exact algorithms.

  4. An almost-parameter-free harmony search algorithm for groundwater pollution source identification.

    PubMed

    Jiang, Simin; Zhang, Yali; Wang, Pei; Zheng, Maohui

    2013-01-01

    The spatiotemporal characterization of unknown sources of groundwater pollution is frequently encountered in environmental problems. This study adopts a simulation-optimization approach that combines a contaminant transport simulation model with a heuristic harmony search algorithm to identify unknown pollution sources. In the proposed methodology, an almost-parameter-free harmony search algorithm is developed. The performance of this methodology is evaluated on an illustrative groundwater pollution source identification problem, and the identified results indicate that the proposed almost-parameter-free harmony search algorithm-based optimization model can give satisfactory estimations, even when the irregular geometry, erroneous monitoring data, and prior information shortage of potential locations are considered.

  5. Modified harmony search

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mohamed, Najihah; Lutfi Amri Ramli, Ahmad; Majid, Ahmad Abd; Piah, Abd Rahni Mt

    2017-09-01

    A metaheuristic algorithm, called Harmony Search is quite highly applied in optimizing parameters in many areas. HS is a derivative-free real parameter optimization algorithm, and draws an inspiration from the musical improvisation process of searching for a perfect state of harmony. Propose in this paper Modified Harmony Search for solving optimization problems, which employs a concept from genetic algorithm method and particle swarm optimization for generating new solution vectors that enhances the performance of HS algorithm. The performances of MHS and HS are investigated on ten benchmark optimization problems in order to make a comparison to reflect the efficiency of the MHS in terms of final accuracy, convergence speed and robustness.

  6. Directional kriging implementation for gridded data interpolation and comparative study with common methods

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mahmoudabadi, H.; Briggs, G.

    2016-12-01

    Gridded data sets, such as geoid models or datum shift grids, are commonly used in coordinate transformation algorithms. Grid files typically contain known or measured values at regular fixed intervals. The process of computing a value at an unknown location from the values in the grid data set is called "interpolation". Generally, interpolation methods predict a value at a given point by computing a weighted average of the known values in the neighborhood of the point. Geostatistical Kriging is a widely used interpolation method for irregular networks. Kriging interpolation first analyzes the spatial structure of the input data, then generates a general model to describe spatial dependencies. This model is used to calculate values at unsampled locations by finding direction, shape, size, and weight of neighborhood points. Because it is based on a linear formulation for the best estimation, Kriging it the optimal interpolation method in statistical terms. The Kriging interpolation algorithm produces an unbiased prediction, as well as the ability to calculate the spatial distribution of uncertainty, allowing you to estimate the errors in an interpolation for any particular point. Kriging is not widely used in geospatial applications today, especially applications that run on low power devices or deal with large data files. This is due to the computational power and memory requirements of standard Kriging techniques. In this paper, improvements are introduced in directional kriging implementation by taking advantage of the structure of the grid files. The regular spacing of points simplifies finding the neighborhood points and computing their pairwise distances, reducing the the complexity and improving the execution time of the Kriging algorithm. Also, the proposed method iteratively loads small portion of interest areas in different directions to reduce the amount of required memory. This makes the technique feasible on almost any computer processor. Comparison between kriging and other standard interpolation methods demonstrated more accurate estimations in less denser data files.

  7. A New Approximate Chimera Donor Cell Search Algorithm

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Holst, Terry L.; Nixon, David (Technical Monitor)

    1998-01-01

    The objectives of this study were to develop chimera-based full potential methodology which is compatible with overflow (Euler/Navier-Stokes) chimera flow solver and to develop a fast donor cell search algorithm that is compatible with the chimera full potential approach. Results of this work included presenting a new donor cell search algorithm suitable for use with a chimera-based full potential solver. This algorithm was found to be extremely fast and simple producing donor cells as fast as 60,000 per second.

  8. Trying to make things right: adherence work in high-poverty, African American neighborhoods.

    PubMed

    Senteio, Charles; Veinot, Tiffany

    2014-12-01

    Adherence to treatment recommendations for chronic diseases is notoriously low across all patient populations. But African American patients, who are more likely to live in low-income neighborhoods and to have multiple chronic conditions, are even less likely to follow medical recommendations. Yet we know little about their contextually embedded, adherence-related experiences. We interviewed individuals (n = 37) with at least two of the following conditions: hypertension, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease. Using an "invisible work" theoretical framework, we outline the adherence work that arose in patients' common life circumstances. We found five types: constantly searching for better care, stretching medications, eating what I know, keeping myself alive, and trying to make it right. Adherence work was effortful, challenging, and addressed external contingencies present in high-poverty African American neighborhoods. This work was invisible within the health care system because participants lacked ongoing, trusting relationships with providers and rarely discussed challenges with them. © The Author(s) 2014.

  9. Ringed Seal Search for Global Optimization via a Sensitive Search Model

    PubMed Central

    Saadi, Younes; Yanto, Iwan Tri Riyadi; Herawan, Tutut; Balakrishnan, Vimala; Chiroma, Haruna; Risnumawan, Anhar

    2016-01-01

    The efficiency of a metaheuristic algorithm for global optimization is based on its ability to search and find the global optimum. However, a good search often requires to be balanced between exploration and exploitation of the search space. In this paper, a new metaheuristic algorithm called Ringed Seal Search (RSS) is introduced. It is inspired by the natural behavior of the seal pup. This algorithm mimics the seal pup movement behavior and its ability to search and choose the best lair to escape predators. The scenario starts once the seal mother gives birth to a new pup in a birthing lair that is constructed for this purpose. The seal pup strategy consists of searching and selecting the best lair by performing a random walk to find a new lair. Affected by the sensitive nature of seals against external noise emitted by predators, the random walk of the seal pup takes two different search states, normal state and urgent state. In the normal state, the pup performs an intensive search between closely adjacent lairs; this movement is modeled via a Brownian walk. In an urgent state, the pup leaves the proximity area and performs an extensive search to find a new lair from sparse targets; this movement is modeled via a Levy walk. The switch between these two states is realized by the random noise emitted by predators. The algorithm keeps switching between normal and urgent states until the global optimum is reached. Tests and validations were performed using fifteen benchmark test functions to compare the performance of RSS with other baseline algorithms. The results show that RSS is more efficient than Genetic Algorithm, Particles Swarm Optimization and Cuckoo Search in terms of convergence rate to the global optimum. The RSS shows an improvement in terms of balance between exploration (extensive) and exploitation (intensive) of the search space. The RSS can efficiently mimic seal pups behavior to find best lair and provide a new algorithm to be used in global optimization problems. PMID:26790131

  10. Generalized Grover's Algorithm for Multiple Phase Inversion States

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Byrnes, Tim; Forster, Gary; Tessler, Louis

    2018-02-01

    Grover's algorithm is a quantum search algorithm that proceeds by repeated applications of the Grover operator and the Oracle until the state evolves to one of the target states. In the standard version of the algorithm, the Grover operator inverts the sign on only one state. Here we provide an exact solution to the problem of performing Grover's search where the Grover operator inverts the sign on N states. We show the underlying structure in terms of the eigenspectrum of the generalized Hamiltonian, and derive an appropriate initial state to perform the Grover evolution. This allows us to use the quantum phase estimation algorithm to solve the search problem in this generalized case, completely bypassing the Grover algorithm altogether. We obtain a time complexity of this case of √{D /Mα }, where D is the search space dimension, M is the number of target states, and α ≈1 , which is close to the optimal scaling.

  11. A systematic review of relations between neighborhoods and mental health.

    PubMed

    Truong, Khoa D; Ma, Sai

    2006-09-01

    The relationship between neighborhood characteristics and resident mental health has been widely investigated in individual studies in recent years, but this literature is not adequately reviewed. To systematically review relevant individual research of the relation between neighborhoods and adult mental health by identifying and synthesizing all relevant studies in this literature. We conducted an electronic search with PubMed and PsycINFO, and manual reference-checking, resulting in 8,562 screened studies of which 29 were selected. Studies were included in the main synthesis if they (i) were published in English in peer reviewed journals; (ii) had relevant definitions and measures of neighborhood characteristics; (iii) utilized standardized measures of adult mental health; (iv) controlled for individual characteristics; (v) reported quantitative results; and, (vi) studied a population in a developed country. We focused on two key areas within this literature: the methodologies utilized to study neighborhood effects and quantitative results. With regard to the former, we examined five major issues: (i) definitions and measures of neighborhoods; (ii) definitions and measures of mental health; (iii) controls for individual level characteristics; (iv) conceptual models; and (v) analytical models. As for quantitative results, the relation was reviewed by types of neighborhood characteristics. We summarized general quantitative findings and drew common conclusions across groups of studies. 27/29 studies found statistically significant association between mental health and at least one measure of neighborhood characteristics, after adjusting for individual factors. This association was evident for all types of neighborhood features, varying from sociodemographic characteristics to physical environment, and from objective to subjective measures. Neighborhood effects were weakened when adding individual-level characteristics into the regression models, and were generally modest relative to individual effects. Although the evidence is highly consistent across studies, detailed evaluation of each individual study reveals a complex reality. The included studies used various study designs and measures of mental health and neighborhoods, making generalization of their relationships less meaningful. It is not possible to conclude that studies with weaker controls for individual characteristics found stronger association between neighborhoods and mental health and vice versa. As only two studies used randomized and controlled trials, causal effects must be interpreted with caution. Formal meta-analysis techniques cannot be used due to large heterogeneity across the included studies. Efficient methods for quantitative analysis remain a great challenge. The current evidence suggests that efforts to improve mental health may be limited if only individual-level interventions are implemented. The calculation of the costs and benefits of neighborhood-level interventions deserves more attention. Moreover, policy makers may want to incorporate mental health as a measure for evaluating neighborhood improvement programs. There are not enough replicated or comparable studies in this literature to make more precise quantitative conclusions of this relation. Key aspects of study design and analyses could be improved to better understand the true nature of causal relationships. The data resolution of neighborhood characteristics needs to better match with the scale of neighborhood definition that is hypothesized to affect the residents' mental health. As experimental designs are rare in this area, thoughtful use of panel data, instrumental variable (IV) techniques, and other non-experimental approaches deserves further exploration.

  12. A Swarm Optimization Genetic Algorithm Based on Quantum-Behaved Particle Swarm Optimization.

    PubMed

    Sun, Tao; Xu, Ming-Hai

    2017-01-01

    Quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization (QPSO) algorithm is a variant of the traditional particle swarm optimization (PSO). The QPSO that was originally developed for continuous search spaces outperforms the traditional PSO in search ability. This paper analyzes the main factors that impact the search ability of QPSO and converts the particle movement formula to the mutation condition by introducing the rejection region, thus proposing a new binary algorithm, named swarm optimization genetic algorithm (SOGA), because it is more like genetic algorithm (GA) than PSO in form. SOGA has crossover and mutation operator as GA but does not need to set the crossover and mutation probability, so it has fewer parameters to control. The proposed algorithm was tested with several nonlinear high-dimension functions in the binary search space, and the results were compared with those from BPSO, BQPSO, and GA. The experimental results show that SOGA is distinctly superior to the other three algorithms in terms of solution accuracy and convergence.

  13. Faster search by lackadaisical quantum walk

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wong, Thomas G.

    2018-03-01

    In the typical model, a discrete-time coined quantum walk searching the 2D grid for a marked vertex achieves a success probability of O(1/log N) in O(√{N log N}) steps, which with amplitude amplification yields an overall runtime of O(√{N} log N). We show that making the quantum walk lackadaisical or lazy by adding a self-loop of weight 4 / N to each vertex speeds up the search, causing the success probability to reach a constant near 1 in O(√{N log N}) steps, thus yielding an O(√{log N}) improvement over the typical, loopless algorithm. This improved runtime matches the best known quantum algorithms for this search problem. Our results are based on numerical simulations since the algorithm is not an instance of the abstract search algorithm.

  14. Quantum search algorithms on a regular lattice

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hein, Birgit; Tanner, Gregor

    2010-07-01

    Quantum algorithms for searching for one or more marked items on a d-dimensional lattice provide an extension of Grover’s search algorithm including a spatial component. We demonstrate that these lattice search algorithms can be viewed in terms of the level dynamics near an avoided crossing of a one-parameter family of quantum random walks. We give approximations for both the level splitting at the avoided crossing and the effectively two-dimensional subspace of the full Hilbert space spanning the level crossing. This makes it possible to give the leading order behavior for the search time and the localization probability in the limit of large lattice size including the leading order coefficients. For d=2 and d=3, these coefficients are calculated explicitly. Closed form expressions are given for higher dimensions.

  15. A hierarchical transition state search algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    del Campo, Jorge M.; Köster, Andreas M.

    2008-07-01

    A hierarchical transition state search algorithm is developed and its implementation in the density functional theory program deMon2k is described. This search algorithm combines the double ended saddle interpolation method with local uphill trust region optimization. A new formalism for the incorporation of the distance constrain in the saddle interpolation method is derived. The similarities between the constrained optimizations in the local trust region method and the saddle interpolation are highlighted. The saddle interpolation and local uphill trust region optimizations are validated on a test set of 28 representative reactions. The hierarchical transition state search algorithm is applied to an intramolecular Diels-Alder reaction with several internal rotors, which makes automatic transition state search rather challenging. The obtained reaction mechanism is discussed in the context of the experimentally observed product distribution.

  16. Competitive Swarm Optimizer Based Gateway Deployment Algorithm in Cyber-Physical Systems

    PubMed Central

    Huang, Shuqiang; Tao, Ming

    2017-01-01

    Wireless sensor network topology optimization is a highly important issue, and topology control through node selection can improve the efficiency of data forwarding, while saving energy and prolonging lifetime of the network. To address the problem of connecting a wireless sensor network to the Internet in cyber-physical systems, here we propose a geometric gateway deployment based on a competitive swarm optimizer algorithm. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm has a continuous search feature in the solution space, which makes it suitable for finding the geometric center of gateway deployment; however, its search mechanism is limited to the individual optimum (pbest) and the population optimum (gbest); thus, it easily falls into local optima. In order to improve the particle search mechanism and enhance the search efficiency of the algorithm, we introduce a new competitive swarm optimizer (CSO) algorithm. The CSO search algorithm is based on an inter-particle competition mechanism and can effectively avoid trapping of the population falling into a local optimum. With the improvement of an adaptive opposition-based search and its ability to dynamically parameter adjustments, this algorithm can maintain the diversity of the entire swarm to solve geometric K-center gateway deployment problems. The simulation results show that this CSO algorithm has a good global explorative ability as well as convergence speed and can improve the network quality of service (QoS) level of cyber-physical systems by obtaining a minimum network coverage radius. We also find that the CSO algorithm is more stable, robust and effective in solving the problem of geometric gateway deployment as compared to the PSO or Kmedoids algorithms. PMID:28117735

  17. Parametric Quantum Search Algorithm as Quantum Walk: A Quantum Simulation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ellinas, Demosthenes; Konstandakis, Christos

    2016-02-01

    Parametric quantum search algorithm (PQSA) is a form of quantum search that results by relaxing the unitarity of the original algorithm. PQSA can naturally be cast in the form of quantum walk, by means of the formalism of oracle algebra. This is due to the fact that the completely positive trace preserving search map used by PQSA, admits a unitarization (unitary dilation) a la quantum walk, at the expense of introducing auxiliary quantum coin-qubit space. The ensuing QW describes a process of spiral motion, chosen to be driven by two unitary Kraus generators, generating planar rotations of Bloch vector around an axis. The quadratic acceleration of quantum search translates into an equivalent quadratic saving of the number of coin qubits in the QW analogue. The associated to QW model Hamiltonian operator is obtained and is shown to represent a multi-particle long-range interacting quantum system that simulates parametric search. Finally, the relation of PQSA-QW simulator to the QW search algorithm is elucidated.

  18. Test-state approach to the quantum search problem

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Sehrawat, Arun; Nguyen, Le Huy; Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597

    2011-05-15

    The search for 'a quantum needle in a quantum haystack' is a metaphor for the problem of finding out which one of a permissible set of unitary mappings - the oracles - is implemented by a given black box. Grover's algorithm solves this problem with quadratic speedup as compared with the analogous search for 'a classical needle in a classical haystack'. Since the outcome of Grover's algorithm is probabilistic - it gives the correct answer with high probability, not with certainty - the answer requires verification. For this purpose we introduce specific test states, one for each oracle. These testmore » states can also be used to realize 'a classical search for the quantum needle' which is deterministic - it always gives a definite answer after a finite number of steps - and 3.41 times as fast as the purely classical search. Since the test-state search and Grover's algorithm look for the same quantum needle, the average number of oracle queries of the test-state search is the classical benchmark for Grover's algorithm.« less

  19. Software for Project-Based Learning of Robot Motion Planning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Moll, Mark; Bordeaux, Janice; Kavraki, Lydia E.

    2013-01-01

    Motion planning is a core problem in robotics concerned with finding feasible paths for a given robot. Motion planning algorithms perform a search in the high-dimensional continuous space of robot configurations and exemplify many of the core algorithmic concepts of search algorithms and associated data structures. Motion planning algorithms can…

  20. An Educational System for Learning Search Algorithms and Automatically Assessing Student Performance

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Grivokostopoulou, Foteini; Perikos, Isidoros; Hatzilygeroudis, Ioannis

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, first we present an educational system that assists students in learning and tutors in teaching search algorithms, an artificial intelligence topic. Learning is achieved through a wide range of learning activities. Algorithm visualizations demonstrate the operational functionality of algorithms according to the principles of active…

  1. Neighborhood Deprivation and Risk of Congenital Heart Defects, Neural Tube Defects and Orofacial Clefts: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

    PubMed Central

    Deguen, Séverine; Kihal, Wahida; Jeanjean, Maxime; Padilla, Cindy; Zmirou-Navier, Denis

    2016-01-01

    Background We conducted this systematic review and meta-analysis to address the open question of a possible association between the socioeconomic level of the neighborhoods in which pregnant women live and the risk of Congenital Heart Defects (CHDs), Neural Tube Defects (NTDs) and OroFacial Clefts (OFCs). Methods We searched MEDLINE from its inception to December 20th, 2015 for case-control, cohort and ecological studies assessing the association between neighborhood socioeconomic level and the risk of CHDs, NTDs and the specific phenotypes Cleft Lip with or without Cleft Palate (CLP) and Cleft Palate (CP). Study-specific risk estimates were pooled according to random-effect and fixed-effect models. Results Out of 245 references, a total of seven case-control studies, two cohort studies and two ecological studies were assessed in the systematic review; all studies were enrolled in the meta-analysis with the exception of the two cohort studies. No significant association has been revealed between CHDs or NTDs and neighborhood deprivation index. For CLP phenotype subgroups, we found a significantly higher rate in deprived neighborhoods (Odds Ratios (OR) = 1.22, 95% CI: 1.10, 1.36) whereas this was not significant for CP phenotype subgroups (OR = 1.20, 95%CI: 0.89, 1.61). Conclusion In spite of the small number of epidemiological studies included in the present literature review, our findings suggest that neighborhood socioeconomic level where mothers live is associated only with an increased risk of CLP phenotype subgroups. This finding has methodological limitations that impede the formulation of firm conclusions, and further investigations should confirm this association. PMID:27783616

  2. An Evolutionary Algorithm for Fast Intensity Based Image Matching Between Optical and SAR Satellite Imagery

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fischer, Peter; Schuegraf, Philipp; Merkle, Nina; Storch, Tobias

    2018-04-01

    This paper presents a hybrid evolutionary algorithm for fast intensity based matching between satellite imagery from SAR and very high-resolution (VHR) optical sensor systems. The precise and accurate co-registration of image time series and images of different sensors is a key task in multi-sensor image processing scenarios. The necessary preprocessing step of image matching and tie-point detection is divided into a search problem and a similarity measurement. Within this paper we evaluate the use of an evolutionary search strategy for establishing the spatial correspondence between satellite imagery of optical and radar sensors. The aim of the proposed algorithm is to decrease the computational costs during the search process by formulating the search as an optimization problem. Based upon the canonical evolutionary algorithm, the proposed algorithm is adapted for SAR/optical imagery intensity based matching. Extensions are drawn using techniques like hybridization (e.g. local search) and others to lower the number of objective function calls and refine the result. The algorithm significantely decreases the computational costs whilst finding the optimal solution in a reliable way.

  3. Topology for efficient information dissemination in ad-hoc networking

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Jennings, E.; Okino, C. M.

    2002-01-01

    In this paper, we explore the information dissemination problem in ad-hoc wirless networks. First, we analyze the probability of successful broadcast, assuming: the nodes are uniformly distributed, the available area has a lower bould relative to the total number of nodes, and there is zero knowledge of the overall topology of the network. By showing that the probability of such events is small, we are motivated to extract good graph topologies to minimize the overall transmissions. Three algorithms are used to generate topologies of the network with guaranteed connectivity. These are the minimum radius graph, the relative neighborhood graph and the minimum spanning tree. Our simulation shows that the relative neighborhood graph has certain good graph properties, which makes it suitable for efficient information dissemination.

  4. High Density or Urban Sprawl: What Works Best in Biology?

    PubMed

    Oreopoulos, John; Gray-Owen, Scott D; Yip, Christopher M

    2017-02-28

    With new approaches in imaging-from new tools or reagents to processing algorithms-come unique opportunities and challenges to our understanding of biological processes, structures, and dynamics. Although innovations in super-resolution imaging are affording novel perspectives into how molecules structurally associate and localize in response to, or in order to initiate, specific signaling events in the cell, questions arise as to how to interpret these observations in the context of biological function. Just as each neighborhood in a city has its own unique vibe, culture, and indeed density, recent work has shown that membrane receptor behavior and action is governed by their localization and association state. There is tremendous potential in developing strategies for tracking how the populations of these molecular neighborhoods change dynamically.

  5. A modified three-term PRP conjugate gradient algorithm for optimization models.

    PubMed

    Wu, Yanlin

    2017-01-01

    The nonlinear conjugate gradient (CG) algorithm is a very effective method for optimization, especially for large-scale problems, because of its low memory requirement and simplicity. Zhang et al. (IMA J. Numer. Anal. 26:629-649, 2006) firstly propose a three-term CG algorithm based on the well known Polak-Ribière-Polyak (PRP) formula for unconstrained optimization, where their method has the sufficient descent property without any line search technique. They proved the global convergence of the Armijo line search but this fails for the Wolfe line search technique. Inspired by their method, we will make a further study and give a modified three-term PRP CG algorithm. The presented method possesses the following features: (1) The sufficient descent property also holds without any line search technique; (2) the trust region property of the search direction is automatically satisfied; (3) the steplengh is bounded from below; (4) the global convergence will be established under the Wolfe line search. Numerical results show that the new algorithm is more effective than that of the normal method.

  6. Efficient, Decentralized Detection of Qualitative Spatial Events in a Dynamic Scalar Field

    PubMed Central

    Jeong, Myeong-Hun; Duckham, Matt

    2015-01-01

    This paper describes an efficient, decentralized algorithm to monitor qualitative spatial events in a dynamic scalar field. The events of interest involve changes to the critical points (i.e., peak, pits and passes) and edges of the surface network derived from the field. Four fundamental types of event (appearance, disappearance, movement and switch) are defined. Our algorithm is designed to rely purely on qualitative information about the neighborhoods of nodes in the sensor network and does not require information about nodes’ coordinate positions. Experimental investigations confirm that our algorithm is efficient, with O(n) overall communication complexity (where n is the number of nodes in the sensor network), an even load balance and low operational latency. The accuracy of event detection is comparable to established centralized algorithms for the identification of critical points of a surface network. Our algorithm is relevant to a broad range of environmental monitoring applications of sensor networks. PMID:26343672

  7. Efficient, Decentralized Detection of Qualitative Spatial Events in a Dynamic Scalar Field.

    PubMed

    Jeong, Myeong-Hun; Duckham, Matt

    2015-08-28

    This paper describes an efficient, decentralized algorithm to monitor qualitative spatial events in a dynamic scalar field. The events of interest involve changes to the critical points (i.e., peak, pits and passes) and edges of the surface network derived from the field. Four fundamental types of event (appearance, disappearance, movement and switch) are defined. Our algorithm is designed to rely purely on qualitative information about the neighborhoods of nodes in the sensor network and does not require information about nodes' coordinate positions. Experimental investigations confirm that our algorithm is efficient, with O(n) overall communication complexity (where n is the number of nodes in the sensor network), an even load balance and low operational latency. The accuracy of event detection is comparable to established centralized algorithms for the identification of critical points of a surface network. Our algorithm is relevant to a broad range of environmental monitoring applications of sensor networks.

  8. Active contour based segmentation of resected livers in CT images

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Oelmann, Simon; Oyarzun Laura, Cristina; Drechsler, Klaus; Wesarg, Stefan

    2015-03-01

    The majority of state of the art segmentation algorithms are able to give proper results in healthy organs but not in pathological ones. However, many clinical applications require an accurate segmentation of pathological organs. The determination of the target boundaries for radiotherapy or liver volumetry calculations are examples of this. Volumetry measurements are of special interest after tumor resection for follow up of liver regrow. The segmentation of resected livers presents additional challenges that were not addressed by state of the art algorithms. This paper presents a snakes based algorithm specially developed for the segmentation of resected livers. The algorithm is enhanced with a novel dynamic smoothing technique that allows the active contour to propagate with different speeds depending on the intensities visible in its neighborhood. The algorithm is evaluated in 6 clinical CT images as well as 18 artificial datasets generated from additional clinical CT images.

  9. Error bounds of adaptive dynamic programming algorithms for solving undiscounted optimal control problems.

    PubMed

    Liu, Derong; Li, Hongliang; Wang, Ding

    2015-06-01

    In this paper, we establish error bounds of adaptive dynamic programming algorithms for solving undiscounted infinite-horizon optimal control problems of discrete-time deterministic nonlinear systems. We consider approximation errors in the update equations of both value function and control policy. We utilize a new assumption instead of the contraction assumption in discounted optimal control problems. We establish the error bounds for approximate value iteration based on a new error condition. Furthermore, we also establish the error bounds for approximate policy iteration and approximate optimistic policy iteration algorithms. It is shown that the iterative approximate value function can converge to a finite neighborhood of the optimal value function under some conditions. To implement the developed algorithms, critic and action neural networks are used to approximate the value function and control policy, respectively. Finally, a simulation example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed algorithms.

  10. Adaptive cockroach swarm algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Obagbuwa, Ibidun C.; Abidoye, Ademola P.

    2017-07-01

    An adaptive cockroach swarm optimization (ACSO) algorithm is proposed in this paper to strengthen the existing cockroach swarm optimization (CSO) algorithm. The ruthless component of CSO algorithm is modified by the employment of blend crossover predator-prey evolution method which helps algorithm prevent any possible population collapse, maintain population diversity and create adaptive search in each iteration. The performance of the proposed algorithm on 16 global optimization benchmark function problems was evaluated and compared with the existing CSO, cuckoo search, differential evolution, particle swarm optimization and artificial bee colony algorithms.

  11. RNAiFold2T: Constraint Programming design of thermo-IRES switches.

    PubMed

    Garcia-Martin, Juan Antonio; Dotu, Ivan; Fernandez-Chamorro, Javier; Lozano, Gloria; Ramajo, Jorge; Martinez-Salas, Encarnacion; Clote, Peter

    2016-06-15

    RNA thermometers (RNATs) are cis-regulatory elements that change secondary structure upon temperature shift. Often involved in the regulation of heat shock, cold shock and virulence genes, RNATs constitute an interesting potential resource in synthetic biology, where engineered RNATs could prove to be useful tools in biosensors and conditional gene regulation. Solving the 2-temperature inverse folding problem is critical for RNAT engineering. Here we introduce RNAiFold2T, the first Constraint Programming (CP) and Large Neighborhood Search (LNS) algorithms to solve this problem. Benchmarking tests of RNAiFold2T against existent programs (adaptive walk and genetic algorithm) inverse folding show that our software generates two orders of magnitude more solutions, thus allowing ample exploration of the space of solutions. Subsequently, solutions can be prioritized by computing various measures, including probability of target structure in the ensemble, melting temperature, etc. Using this strategy, we rationally designed two thermosensor internal ribosome entry site (thermo-IRES) elements, whose normalized cap-independent translation efficiency is approximately 50% greater at 42 °C than 30 °C, when tested in reticulocyte lysates. Translation efficiency is lower than that of the wild-type IRES element, which on the other hand is fully resistant to temperature shift-up. This appears to be the first purely computational design of functional RNA thermoswitches, and certainly the first purely computational design of functional thermo-IRES elements. RNAiFold2T is publicly available as part of the new release RNAiFold3.0 at https://github.com/clotelab/RNAiFold and http://bioinformatics.bc.edu/clotelab/RNAiFold, which latter has a web server as well. The software is written in C ++ and uses OR-Tools CP search engine. clote@bc.edu Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.

  12. GeoSearcher: Location-Based Ranking of Search Engine Results.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Watters, Carolyn; Amoudi, Ghada

    2003-01-01

    Discussion of Web queries with geospatial dimensions focuses on an algorithm that assigns location coordinates dynamically to Web sites based on the URL. Describes a prototype search system that uses the algorithm to re-rank search engine results for queries with a geospatial dimension, thus providing an alternative ranking order for search engine…

  13. Three-dimensional high-precision indoor positioning strategy using Tabu search based on visible light communication

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Peng, Qi; Guan, Weipeng; Wu, Yuxiang; Cai, Ye; Xie, Canyu; Wang, Pengfei

    2018-01-01

    This paper proposes a three-dimensional (3-D) high-precision indoor positioning strategy using Tabu search based on visible light communication. Tabu search is a powerful global optimization algorithm, and the 3-D indoor positioning can be transformed into an optimal solution problem. Therefore, in the 3-D indoor positioning, the optimal receiver coordinate can be obtained by the Tabu search algorithm. For all we know, this is the first time the Tabu search algorithm is applied to visible light positioning. Each light-emitting diode (LED) in the system broadcasts a unique identity (ID) and transmits the ID information. When the receiver detects optical signals with ID information from different LEDs, using the global optimization of the Tabu search algorithm, the 3-D high-precision indoor positioning can be realized when the fitness value meets certain conditions. Simulation results show that the average positioning error is 0.79 cm, and the maximum error is 5.88 cm. The extended experiment of trajectory tracking also shows that 95.05% positioning errors are below 1.428 cm. It can be concluded from the data that the 3-D indoor positioning based on the Tabu search algorithm achieves the requirements of centimeter level indoor positioning. The algorithm used in indoor positioning is very effective and practical and is superior to other existing methods for visible light indoor positioning.

  14. How to Find Lessons from the Public Health Literature: Example of a Scoping Study Protocol on the Neighborhood Environment

    PubMed Central

    Levasseur, Mélanie; Généreux, Mélissa; Desroches, Josiane; Carrier, Annie; Lacasse, Francis; Chabot, Éric; Abecia, Ana; Gosselin, Louise; Vanasse, Alain

    2016-01-01

    Background: As key determinants of many favorable health and quality of life outcomes, it is important to identify factors associated with mobility and social participation. Although several investigations have been carried out on mobility, social participation and neighborhood environment, there is no clear integration of these results. This paper presents a scoping study protocol that aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how the physical and social neighborhood environment is associated with or influences mobility and social participation in older adults. Methods: The rigorous methodological framework for scoping studies is used to synthesize and disseminate current knowledge on the associations or influence of the neighborhood environment on mobility and social participation in aging. Nine databases from public health and other fields are searched with 51 predetermined keywords. Using content analysis, all data are exhaustively analyzed, organized, and synthesized independently by two research assistants. Discussion: A comprehensive synthesis of empirical studies provides decision-makers, clinicians and researchers with current knowledge and best practices regarding neighborhood environments with a view to enhancing mobility and social participation. Such a synthesis represents an original contribution and can ultimately support decisions and development of innovative interventions and clear guidelines for the creation of age-supportive environments. Improvements in public health and clinical interventions might be the new innovation needed to foster health and quality of life for aging population. Finally, the aspects of the associations or influence of the neighborhood environment on mobility and social participation not covered by previous research are identified. Conclusions: Among factors that impact mobility and social participation, the neighborhood environment is important since interventions targeting it may have a greater impact on an individual's mobility and social participation than those targeting individual factors. Although investigations from various domains have been carried out on this topic, no clear integration of these results is available yet. PMID:27413514

  15. A Differential Analysis of Effectiveness in Middle and Low Socioeconomic Status Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Teddlie, Charles; Stringfield, Samuel

    2017-01-01

    A major focus of the Louisiana School Effectiveness Study has been the search for characteristics of exemplary schooling in varied economic contexts. In this paper differential results of analyses of effective, typical, and ineffective schools in middle and low socioeconomic neighborhoods are presented. Implications for practitioners and for…

  16. Neighborhood Discriminant Hashing for Large-Scale Image Retrieval.

    PubMed

    Tang, Jinhui; Li, Zechao; Wang, Meng; Zhao, Ruizhen

    2015-09-01

    With the proliferation of large-scale community-contributed images, hashing-based approximate nearest neighbor search in huge databases has aroused considerable interest from the fields of computer vision and multimedia in recent years because of its computational and memory efficiency. In this paper, we propose a novel hashing method named neighborhood discriminant hashing (NDH) (for short) to implement approximate similarity search. Different from the previous work, we propose to learn a discriminant hashing function by exploiting local discriminative information, i.e., the labels of a sample can be inherited from the neighbor samples it selects. The hashing function is expected to be orthogonal to avoid redundancy in the learned hashing bits as much as possible, while an information theoretic regularization is jointly exploited using maximum entropy principle. As a consequence, the learned hashing function is compact and nonredundant among bits, while each bit is highly informative. Extensive experiments are carried out on four publicly available data sets and the comparison results demonstrate the outperforming performance of the proposed NDH method over state-of-the-art hashing techniques.

  17. Investigating the enhanced Best Performance Algorithm for Annual Crop Planning problem based on economic factors.

    PubMed

    Adewumi, Aderemi Oluyinka; Chetty, Sivashan

    2017-01-01

    The Annual Crop Planning (ACP) problem was a recently introduced problem in the literature. This study further expounds on this problem by presenting a new mathematical formulation, which is based on market economic factors. To determine solutions, a new local search metaheuristic algorithm is investigated which is called the enhanced Best Performance Algorithm (eBPA). eBPA's results are compared against two well-known local search metaheuristic algorithms; these include Tabu Search and Simulated Annealing. The results show the potential of the eBPA for continuous optimization problems.

  18. GENIE: a hybrid genetic algorithm for feature classification in multispectral images

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Perkins, Simon J.; Theiler, James P.; Brumby, Steven P.; Harvey, Neal R.; Porter, Reid B.; Szymanski, John J.; Bloch, Jeffrey J.

    2000-10-01

    We consider the problem of pixel-by-pixel classification of a multi- spectral image using supervised learning. Conventional spuervised classification techniques such as maximum likelihood classification and less conventional ones s uch as neural networks, typically base such classifications solely on the spectral components of each pixel. It is easy to see why: the color of a pixel provides a nice, bounded, fixed dimensional space in which these classifiers work well. It is often the case however, that spectral information alone is not sufficient to correctly classify a pixel. Maybe spatial neighborhood information is required as well. Or maybe the raw spectral components do not themselves make for easy classification, but some arithmetic combination of them would. In either of these cases we have the problem of selecting suitable spatial, spectral or spatio-spectral features that allow the classifier to do its job well. The number of all possible such features is extremely large. How can we select a suitable subset? We have developed GENIE, a hybrid learning system that combines a genetic algorithm that searches a space of image processing operations for a set that can produce suitable feature planes, and a more conventional classifier which uses those feature planes to output a final classification. In this paper we show that the use of a hybrid GA provides significant advantages over using either a GA alone or more conventional classification methods alone. We present results using high-resolution IKONOS data, looking for regions of burned forest and for roads.

  19. Dynamical analysis of Grover's search algorithm in arbitrarily high-dimensional search spaces

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Jin, Wenliang

    2016-01-01

    We discuss at length the dynamical behavior of Grover's search algorithm for which all the Walsh-Hadamard transformations contained in this algorithm are exposed to their respective random perturbations inducing the augmentation of the dimension of the search space. We give the concise and general mathematical formulations for approximately characterizing the maximum success probabilities of finding a unique desired state in a large unsorted database and their corresponding numbers of Grover iterations, which are applicable to the search spaces of arbitrary dimension and are used to answer a salient open problem posed by Grover (Phys Rev Lett 80:4329-4332, 1998).

  20. Parameter identification using a creeping-random-search algorithm

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Parrish, R. V.

    1971-01-01

    A creeping-random-search algorithm is applied to different types of problems in the field of parameter identification. The studies are intended to demonstrate that a random-search algorithm can be applied successfully to these various problems, which often cannot be handled by conventional deterministic methods, and, also, to introduce methods that speed convergence to an extremal of the problem under investigation. Six two-parameter identification problems with analytic solutions are solved, and two application problems are discussed in some detail. Results of the study show that a modified version of the basic creeping-random-search algorithm chosen does speed convergence in comparison with the unmodified version. The results also show that the algorithm can successfully solve problems that contain limits on state or control variables, inequality constraints (both independent and dependent, and linear and nonlinear), or stochastic models.

  1. A Composite Algorithm for Mixed Integer Constrained Nonlinear Optimization.

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1980-01-01

    de Silva [141, and Weisman and Wood [76). A particular direct search algorithm, the simplex method, has been cited for having the potential for...spaced discrete points on a line which makes the direction suitable for an efficient integer search technique based on Fibonacci numbers. Two...defined by a subset of variables. The complex algorithm is particularly well suited for this subspace search for two reasons. First, the complex method

  2. Theoretical Analysis of Local Search and Simple Evolutionary Algorithms for the Generalized Travelling Salesperson Problem.

    PubMed

    Pourhassan, Mojgan; Neumann, Frank

    2018-06-22

    The generalized travelling salesperson problem is an important NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem for which meta-heuristics, such as local search and evolutionary algorithms, have been used very successfully. Two hierarchical approaches with different neighbourhood structures, namely a Cluster-Based approach and a Node-Based approach, have been proposed by Hu and Raidl (2008) for solving this problem. In this paper, local search algorithms and simple evolutionary algorithms based on these approaches are investigated from a theoretical perspective. For local search algorithms, we point out the complementary abilities of the two approaches by presenting instances where they mutually outperform each other. Afterwards, we introduce an instance which is hard for both approaches when initialized on a particular point of the search space, but where a variable neighbourhood search combining them finds the optimal solution in polynomial time. Then we turn our attention to analysing the behaviour of simple evolutionary algorithms that use these approaches. We show that the Node-Based approach solves the hard instance of the Cluster-Based approach presented in Corus et al. (2016) in polynomial time. Furthermore, we prove an exponential lower bound on the optimization time of the Node-Based approach for a class of Euclidean instances.

  3. When Gravity Fails: Local Search Topology

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Frank, Jeremy; Cheeseman, Peter; Stutz, John; Lau, Sonie (Technical Monitor)

    1997-01-01

    Local search algorithms for combinatorial search problems frequently encounter a sequence of states in which it is impossible to improve the value of the objective function; moves through these regions, called {\\em plateau moves), dominate the time spent in local search. We analyze and characterize {\\em plateaus) for three different classes of randomly generated Boolean Satisfiability problems. We identify several interesting features of plateaus that impact the performance of local search algorithms. We show that local minima tend to be small but occasionally may be very large. We also show that local minima can be escaped without unsatisfying a large number of clauses, but that systematically searching for an escape route may be computationally expensive if the local minimum is large. We show that plateaus with exits, called benches, tend to be much larger than minima, and that some benches have very few exit states which local search can use to escape. We show that the solutions (i.e. global minima) of randomly generated problem instances form clusters, which behave similarly to local minima. We revisit several enhancements of local search algorithms and explain their performance in light of our results. Finally we discuss strategies for creating the next generation of local search algorithms.

  4. Phylogenetic search through partial tree mixing

    PubMed Central

    2012-01-01

    Background Recent advances in sequencing technology have created large data sets upon which phylogenetic inference can be performed. Current research is limited by the prohibitive time necessary to perform tree search on a reasonable number of individuals. This research develops new phylogenetic algorithms that can operate on tens of thousands of species in a reasonable amount of time through several innovative search techniques. Results When compared to popular phylogenetic search algorithms, better trees are found much more quickly for large data sets. These algorithms are incorporated in the PSODA application available at http://dna.cs.byu.edu/psoda Conclusions The use of Partial Tree Mixing in a partition based tree space allows the algorithm to quickly converge on near optimal tree regions. These regions can then be searched in a methodical way to determine the overall optimal phylogenetic solution. PMID:23320449

  5. Improved understanding of the searching behavior of ant colony optimization algorithms applied to the water distribution design problem

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zecchin, A. C.; Simpson, A. R.; Maier, H. R.; Marchi, A.; Nixon, J. B.

    2012-09-01

    Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) have been applied successfully to many water resource problems, such as system design, management decision formulation, and model calibration. The performance of an EA with respect to a particular problem type is dependent on how effectively its internal operators balance the exploitation/exploration trade-off to iteratively find solutions of an increasing quality. For a given problem, different algorithms are observed to produce a variety of different final performances, but there have been surprisingly few investigations into characterizing how the different internal mechanisms alter the algorithm's searching behavior, in both the objective and decision space, to arrive at this final performance. This paper presents metrics for analyzing the searching behavior of ant colony optimization algorithms, a particular type of EA, for the optimal water distribution system design problem, which is a classical NP-hard problem in civil engineering. Using the proposed metrics, behavior is characterized in terms of three different attributes: (1) the effectiveness of the search in improving its solution quality and entering into optimal or near-optimal regions of the search space, (2) the extent to which the algorithm explores as it converges to solutions, and (3) the searching behavior with respect to the feasible and infeasible regions. A range of case studies is considered, where a number of ant colony optimization variants are applied to a selection of water distribution system optimization problems. The results demonstrate the utility of the proposed metrics to give greater insight into how the internal operators affect each algorithm's searching behavior.

  6. A new improved artificial bee colony algorithm for ship hull form optimization

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Huang, Fuxin; Wang, Lijue; Yang, Chi

    2016-04-01

    The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a relatively new swarm intelligence-based optimization algorithm. Its simplicity of implementation, relatively few parameter settings and promising optimization capability make it widely used in different fields. However, it has problems of slow convergence due to its solution search equation. Here, a new solution search equation based on a combination of the elite solution pool and the block perturbation scheme is proposed to improve the performance of the algorithm. In addition, two different solution search equations are used by employed bees and onlooker bees to balance the exploration and exploitation of the algorithm. The developed algorithm is validated by a set of well-known numerical benchmark functions. It is then applied to optimize two ship hull forms with minimum resistance. The tested results show that the proposed new improved ABC algorithm can outperform the ABC algorithm in most of the tested problems.

  7. Particle swarm optimization-based automatic parameter selection for deep neural networks and its applications in large-scale and high-dimensional data

    PubMed Central

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, we propose a new automatic hyperparameter selection approach for determining the optimal network configuration (network structure and hyperparameters) for deep neural networks using particle swarm optimization (PSO) in combination with a steepest gradient descent algorithm. In the proposed approach, network configurations were coded as a set of real-number m-dimensional vectors as the individuals of the PSO algorithm in the search procedure. During the search procedure, the PSO algorithm is employed to search for optimal network configurations via the particles moving in a finite search space, and the steepest gradient descent algorithm is used to train the DNN classifier with a few training epochs (to find a local optimal solution) during the population evaluation of PSO. After the optimization scheme, the steepest gradient descent algorithm is performed with more epochs and the final solutions (pbest and gbest) of the PSO algorithm to train a final ensemble model and individual DNN classifiers, respectively. The local search ability of the steepest gradient descent algorithm and the global search capabilities of the PSO algorithm are exploited to determine an optimal solution that is close to the global optimum. We constructed several experiments on hand-written characters and biological activity prediction datasets to show that the DNN classifiers trained by the network configurations expressed by the final solutions of the PSO algorithm, employed to construct an ensemble model and individual classifier, outperform the random approach in terms of the generalization performance. Therefore, the proposed approach can be regarded an alternative tool for automatic network structure and parameter selection for deep neural networks. PMID:29236718

  8. Research on particle swarm optimization algorithm based on optimal movement probability

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ma, Jianhong; Zhang, Han; He, Baofeng

    2017-01-01

    The particle swarm optimization algorithm to improve the control precision, and has great application value training neural network and fuzzy system control fields etc.The traditional particle swarm algorithm is used for the training of feed forward neural networks,the search efficiency is low, and easy to fall into local convergence.An improved particle swarm optimization algorithm is proposed based on error back propagation gradient descent. Particle swarm optimization for Solving Least Squares Problems to meme group, the particles in the fitness ranking, optimization problem of the overall consideration, the error back propagation gradient descent training BP neural network, particle to update the velocity and position according to their individual optimal and global optimization, make the particles more to the social optimal learning and less to its optimal learning, it can avoid the particles fall into local optimum, by using gradient information can accelerate the PSO local search ability, improve the multi beam particle swarm depth zero less trajectory information search efficiency, the realization of improved particle swarm optimization algorithm. Simulation results show that the algorithm in the initial stage of rapid convergence to the global optimal solution can be near to the global optimal solution and keep close to the trend, the algorithm has faster convergence speed and search performance in the same running time, it can improve the convergence speed of the algorithm, especially the later search efficiency.

  9. Faster quantum searching with almost any diffusion operator

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tulsi, Avatar

    2015-05-01

    Grover's search algorithm drives a quantum system from an initial state |s > to a desired final state |t > by using selective phase inversions of these two states. Earlier, we studied a generalization of Grover's algorithm that relaxes the assumption of the efficient implementation of Is, the selective phase inversion of the initial state, also known as a diffusion operator. This assumption is known to become a serious handicap in cases of physical interest. Our general search algorithm works with almost any diffusion operator Ds with the only restriction of having |s > as one of its eigenstates. The price that we pay for using any operator is an increase in the number of oracle queries by a factor of O (B ) , where B is a characteristic of the eigenspectrum of Ds and can be large in some situations. Here we show that by using a quantum Fourier transform, we can regain the optimal query complexity of Grover's algorithm without losing the freedom of using any diffusion operator for quantum searching. However, the total number of operators required by the algorithm is still O (B ) times more than that of Grover's algorithm. So our algorithm offers an advantage only if the oracle operator is computationally more expensive than the diffusion operator, which is true in most search problems.

  10. The Effect of Shadow Area on Sgm Algorithm and Disparity Map Refinement from High Resolution Satellite Stereo Images

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tatar, N.; Saadatseresht, M.; Arefi, H.

    2017-09-01

    Semi Global Matching (SGM) algorithm is known as a high performance and reliable stereo matching algorithm in photogrammetry community. However, there are some challenges using this algorithm especially for high resolution satellite stereo images over urban areas and images with shadow areas. As it can be seen, unfortunately the SGM algorithm computes highly noisy disparity values for shadow areas around the tall neighborhood buildings due to mismatching in these lower entropy areas. In this paper, a new method is developed to refine the disparity map in shadow areas. The method is based on the integration of potential of panchromatic and multispectral image data to detect shadow areas in object level. In addition, a RANSAC plane fitting and morphological filtering are employed to refine the disparity map. The results on a stereo pair of GeoEye-1 captured over Qom city in Iran, shows a significant increase in the rate of matched pixels compared to standard SGM algorithm.

  11. Learning-based traffic signal control algorithms with neighborhood information sharing: An application for sustainable mobility

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Aziz, H. M. Abdul; Zhu, Feng; Ukkusuri, Satish V.

    Here, this research applies R-Markov Average Reward Technique based reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm, namely RMART, for vehicular signal control problem leveraging information sharing among signal controllers in connected vehicle environment. We implemented the algorithm in a network of 18 signalized intersections and compare the performance of RMART with fixed, adaptive, and variants of the RL schemes. Results show significant improvement in system performance for RMART algorithm with information sharing over both traditional fixed signal timing plans and real time adaptive control schemes. Additionally, the comparison with reinforcement learning algorithms including Q learning and SARSA indicate that RMART performs better atmore » higher congestion levels. Further, a multi-reward structure is proposed that dynamically adjusts the reward function with varying congestion states at the intersection. Finally, the results from test networks show significant reduction in emissions (CO, CO 2, NO x, VOC, PM 10) when RL algorithms are implemented compared to fixed signal timings and adaptive schemes.« less

  12. CCOMP: An efficient algorithm for complex roots computation of determinantal equations

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zouros, Grigorios P.

    2018-01-01

    In this paper a free Python algorithm, entitled CCOMP (Complex roots COMPutation), is developed for the efficient computation of complex roots of determinantal equations inside a prescribed complex domain. The key to the method presented is the efficient determination of the candidate points inside the domain which, in their close neighborhood, a complex root may lie. Once these points are detected, the algorithm proceeds to a two-dimensional minimization problem with respect to the minimum modulus eigenvalue of the system matrix. In the core of CCOMP exist three sub-algorithms whose tasks are the efficient estimation of the minimum modulus eigenvalues of the system matrix inside the prescribed domain, the efficient computation of candidate points which guarantee the existence of minima, and finally, the computation of minima via bound constrained minimization algorithms. Theoretical results and heuristics support the development and the performance of the algorithm, which is discussed in detail. CCOMP supports general complex matrices, and its efficiency, applicability and validity is demonstrated to a variety of microwave applications.

  13. Improved fuzzy clustering algorithms in segmentation of DC-enhanced breast MRI.

    PubMed

    Kannan, S R; Ramathilagam, S; Devi, Pandiyarajan; Sathya, A

    2012-02-01

    Segmentation of medical images is a difficult and challenging problem due to poor image contrast and artifacts that result in missing or diffuse organ/tissue boundaries. Many researchers have applied various techniques however fuzzy c-means (FCM) based algorithms is more effective compared to other methods. The objective of this work is to develop some robust fuzzy clustering segmentation systems for effective segmentation of DCE - breast MRI. This paper obtains the robust fuzzy clustering algorithms by incorporating kernel methods, penalty terms, tolerance of the neighborhood attraction, additional entropy term and fuzzy parameters. The initial centers are obtained using initialization algorithm to reduce the computation complexity and running time of proposed algorithms. Experimental works on breast images show that the proposed algorithms are effective to improve the similarity measurement, to handle large amount of noise, to have better results in dealing the data corrupted by noise, and other artifacts. The clustering results of proposed methods are validated using Silhouette Method.

  14. Leveraging geotagged Twitter data to examine neighborhood happiness, diet, and physical activity

    PubMed Central

    Nguyen, Quynh C; Kath, Suraj; Meng, Hsien-Wen; Li, Dapeng; Smith, Ken Robert; VanDerslice, James A.; Wen, Ming; Li, Feifei

    2016-01-01

    Objectives Using publicly available, geotagged Twitter data, we created neighborhood indicators for happiness, food and physical activity for three large counties: Salt Lake, San Francisco and New York. Methods We utilize 2.8 million tweets collected between February-August 2015 in our analysis. Geo-coordinates of where tweets were sent allow us to spatially join them to 2010 census tract locations. We implemented quality control checks and tested associations between Twitter-derived variables and sociodemographic characteristics. Results For a random subset of tweets, manually labeled tweets and algorithm labeled tweets had excellent levels of agreement: 73% for happiness; 83% for food, and 85% for physical activity. Happy tweets, healthy food references, and physical activity references were less frequent in census tracts with greater economic disadvantage and higher proportions of racial/ethnic minorities and youths. Conclusions Social media can be leveraged to provide greater understanding of the well-being and health behaviors of communities—information that has been previously difficult and expensive to obtain consistently across geographies. More open access neighborhood data can enable better design of programs and policies addressing social determinants of health. PMID:28533568

  15. Multi-Objective Community Detection Based on Memetic Algorithm

    PubMed Central

    2015-01-01

    Community detection has drawn a lot of attention as it can provide invaluable help in understanding the function and visualizing the structure of networks. Since single objective optimization methods have intrinsic drawbacks to identifying multiple significant community structures, some methods formulate the community detection as multi-objective problems and adopt population-based evolutionary algorithms to obtain multiple community structures. Evolutionary algorithms have strong global search ability, but have difficulty in locating local optima efficiently. In this study, in order to identify multiple significant community structures more effectively, a multi-objective memetic algorithm for community detection is proposed by combining multi-objective evolutionary algorithm with a local search procedure. The local search procedure is designed by addressing three issues. Firstly, nondominated solutions generated by evolutionary operations and solutions in dominant population are set as initial individuals for local search procedure. Then, a new direction vector named as pseudonormal vector is proposed to integrate two objective functions together to form a fitness function. Finally, a network specific local search strategy based on label propagation rule is expanded to search the local optimal solutions efficiently. The extensive experiments on both artificial and real-world networks evaluate the proposed method from three aspects. Firstly, experiments on influence of local search procedure demonstrate that the local search procedure can speed up the convergence to better partitions and make the algorithm more stable. Secondly, comparisons with a set of classic community detection methods illustrate the proposed method can find single partitions effectively. Finally, the method is applied to identify hierarchical structures of networks which are beneficial for analyzing networks in multi-resolution levels. PMID:25932646

  16. Multi-objective community detection based on memetic algorithm.

    PubMed

    Wu, Peng; Pan, Li

    2015-01-01

    Community detection has drawn a lot of attention as it can provide invaluable help in understanding the function and visualizing the structure of networks. Since single objective optimization methods have intrinsic drawbacks to identifying multiple significant community structures, some methods formulate the community detection as multi-objective problems and adopt population-based evolutionary algorithms to obtain multiple community structures. Evolutionary algorithms have strong global search ability, but have difficulty in locating local optima efficiently. In this study, in order to identify multiple significant community structures more effectively, a multi-objective memetic algorithm for community detection is proposed by combining multi-objective evolutionary algorithm with a local search procedure. The local search procedure is designed by addressing three issues. Firstly, nondominated solutions generated by evolutionary operations and solutions in dominant population are set as initial individuals for local search procedure. Then, a new direction vector named as pseudonormal vector is proposed to integrate two objective functions together to form a fitness function. Finally, a network specific local search strategy based on label propagation rule is expanded to search the local optimal solutions efficiently. The extensive experiments on both artificial and real-world networks evaluate the proposed method from three aspects. Firstly, experiments on influence of local search procedure demonstrate that the local search procedure can speed up the convergence to better partitions and make the algorithm more stable. Secondly, comparisons with a set of classic community detection methods illustrate the proposed method can find single partitions effectively. Finally, the method is applied to identify hierarchical structures of networks which are beneficial for analyzing networks in multi-resolution levels.

  17. Evolutionary pattern search algorithms

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Hart, W.E.

    1995-09-19

    This paper defines a class of evolutionary algorithms called evolutionary pattern search algorithms (EPSAs) and analyzes their convergence properties. This class of algorithms is closely related to evolutionary programming, evolutionary strategie and real-coded genetic algorithms. EPSAs are self-adapting systems that modify the step size of the mutation operator in response to the success of previous optimization steps. The rule used to adapt the step size can be used to provide a stationary point convergence theory for EPSAs on any continuous function. This convergence theory is based on an extension of the convergence theory for generalized pattern search methods. An experimentalmore » analysis of the performance of EPSAs demonstrates that these algorithms can perform a level of global search that is comparable to that of canonical EAs. We also describe a stopping rule for EPSAs, which reliably terminated near stationary points in our experiments. This is the first stopping rule for any class of EAs that can terminate at a given distance from stationary points.« less

  18. Training radial basis function networks for wind speed prediction using PSO enhanced differential search optimizer

    PubMed Central

    2018-01-01

    This paper presents an integrated hybrid optimization algorithm for training the radial basis function neural network (RBF NN). Training of neural networks is still a challenging exercise in machine learning domain. Traditional training algorithms in general suffer and trap in local optima and lead to premature convergence, which makes them ineffective when applied for datasets with diverse features. Training algorithms based on evolutionary computations are becoming popular due to their robust nature in overcoming the drawbacks of the traditional algorithms. Accordingly, this paper proposes a hybrid training procedure with differential search (DS) algorithm functionally integrated with the particle swarm optimization (PSO). To surmount the local trapping of the search procedure, a new population initialization scheme is proposed using Logistic chaotic sequence, which enhances the population diversity and aid the search capability. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed RBF hybrid training algorithm, experimental analysis on publicly available 7 benchmark datasets are performed. Subsequently, experiments were conducted on a practical application case for wind speed prediction to expound the superiority of the proposed RBF training algorithm in terms of prediction accuracy. PMID:29768463

  19. Efficient RNA structure comparison algorithms.

    PubMed

    Arslan, Abdullah N; Anandan, Jithendar; Fry, Eric; Monschke, Keith; Ganneboina, Nitin; Bowerman, Jason

    2017-12-01

    Recently proposed relative addressing-based ([Formula: see text]) RNA secondary structure representation has important features by which an RNA structure database can be stored into a suffix array. A fast substructure search algorithm has been proposed based on binary search on this suffix array. Using this substructure search algorithm, we present a fast algorithm that finds the largest common substructure of given multiple RNA structures in [Formula: see text] format. The multiple RNA structure comparison problem is NP-hard in its general formulation. We introduced a new problem for comparing multiple RNA structures. This problem has more strict similarity definition and objective, and we propose an algorithm that solves this problem efficiently. We also develop another comparison algorithm that iteratively calls this algorithm to locate nonoverlapping large common substructures in compared RNAs. With the new resulting tools, we improved the RNASSAC website (linked from http://faculty.tamuc.edu/aarslan ). This website now also includes two drawing tools: one specialized for preparing RNA substructures that can be used as input by the search tool, and another one for automatically drawing the entire RNA structure from a given structure sequence.

  20. Training radial basis function networks for wind speed prediction using PSO enhanced differential search optimizer.

    PubMed

    Rani R, Hannah Jessie; Victoire T, Aruldoss Albert

    2018-01-01

    This paper presents an integrated hybrid optimization algorithm for training the radial basis function neural network (RBF NN). Training of neural networks is still a challenging exercise in machine learning domain. Traditional training algorithms in general suffer and trap in local optima and lead to premature convergence, which makes them ineffective when applied for datasets with diverse features. Training algorithms based on evolutionary computations are becoming popular due to their robust nature in overcoming the drawbacks of the traditional algorithms. Accordingly, this paper proposes a hybrid training procedure with differential search (DS) algorithm functionally integrated with the particle swarm optimization (PSO). To surmount the local trapping of the search procedure, a new population initialization scheme is proposed using Logistic chaotic sequence, which enhances the population diversity and aid the search capability. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed RBF hybrid training algorithm, experimental analysis on publicly available 7 benchmark datasets are performed. Subsequently, experiments were conducted on a practical application case for wind speed prediction to expound the superiority of the proposed RBF training algorithm in terms of prediction accuracy.

  1. Reprint of "pFind-Alioth: A novel unrestricted database search algorithm to improve the interpretation of high-resolution MS/MS data".

    PubMed

    Chi, Hao; He, Kun; Yang, Bing; Chen, Zhen; Sun, Rui-Xiang; Fan, Sheng-Bo; Zhang, Kun; Liu, Chao; Yuan, Zuo-Fei; Wang, Quan-Hui; Liu, Si-Qi; Dong, Meng-Qiu; He, Si-Min

    2015-11-03

    Database search is the dominant approach in high-throughput proteomic analysis. However, the interpretation rate of MS/MS spectra is very low in such a restricted mode, which is mainly due to unexpected modifications and irregular digestion types. In this study, we developed a new algorithm called Alioth, to be integrated into the search engine of pFind, for fast and accurate unrestricted database search on high-resolution MS/MS data. An ion index is constructed for both peptide precursors and fragment ions, by which arbitrary digestions and a single site of any modifications and mutations can be searched efficiently. A new re-ranking algorithm is used to distinguish the correct peptide-spectrum matches from random ones. The algorithm is tested on several HCD datasets and the interpretation rate of MS/MS spectra using Alioth is as high as 60%-80%. Peptides from semi- and non-specific digestions, as well as those with unexpected modifications or mutations, can be effectively identified using Alioth and confidently validated using other search engines. The average processing speed of Alioth is 5-10 times faster than some other unrestricted search engines and is comparable to or even faster than the restricted search algorithms tested.This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Computational Proteomics. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  2. Entropy-Based Search Algorithm for Experimental Design

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Malakar, N. K.; Knuth, K. H.

    2011-03-01

    The scientific method relies on the iterated processes of inference and inquiry. The inference phase consists of selecting the most probable models based on the available data; whereas the inquiry phase consists of using what is known about the models to select the most relevant experiment. Optimizing inquiry involves searching the parameterized space of experiments to select the experiment that promises, on average, to be maximally informative. In the case where it is important to learn about each of the model parameters, the relevance of an experiment is quantified by Shannon entropy of the distribution of experimental outcomes predicted by a probable set of models. If the set of potential experiments is described by many parameters, we must search this high-dimensional entropy space. Brute force search methods will be slow and computationally expensive. We present an entropy-based search algorithm, called nested entropy sampling, to select the most informative experiment for efficient experimental design. This algorithm is inspired by Skilling's nested sampling algorithm used in inference and borrows the concept of a rising threshold while a set of experiment samples are maintained. We demonstrate that this algorithm not only selects highly relevant experiments, but also is more efficient than brute force search. Such entropic search techniques promise to greatly benefit autonomous experimental design.

  3. Mesh Denoising based on Normal Voting Tensor and Binary Optimization.

    PubMed

    Yadav, Sunil Kumar; Reitebuch, Ulrich; Polthier, Konrad

    2017-08-17

    This paper presents a two-stage mesh denoising algorithm. Unlike other traditional averaging approaches, our approach uses an element-based normal voting tensor to compute smooth surfaces. By introducing a binary optimization on the proposed tensor together with a local binary neighborhood concept, our algorithm better retains sharp features and produces smoother umbilical regions than previous approaches. On top of that, we provide a stochastic analysis on the different kinds of noise based on the average edge length. The quantitative results demonstrate that the performance of our method is better compared to state-of-the-art smoothing approaches.

  4. Multiple Signal Classification for Gravitational Wave Burst Search

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Cao, Junwei; He, Zhengqi

    2013-01-01

    This work is mainly focused on the application of the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm for gravitational wave burst search. This algorithm extracts important gravitational wave characteristics from signals coming from detectors with arbitrary position, orientation and noise covariance. In this paper, the MUSIC algorithm is described in detail along with the necessary adjustments required for gravitational wave burst search. The algorithm's performance is measured using simulated signals and noise. MUSIC is compared with the Q-transform for signal triggering and with Bayesian analysis for direction of arrival (DOA) estimation, using the Ω-pipeline. Experimental results show that MUSIC has a lower resolution but is faster. MUSIC is a promising tool for real-time gravitational wave search for multi-messenger astronomy.

  5. Multigrid techniques for nonlinear eigenvalue probems: Solutions of a nonlinear Schroedinger eigenvalue problem in 2D and 3D

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Costiner, Sorin; Taasan, Shlomo

    1994-01-01

    This paper presents multigrid (MG) techniques for nonlinear eigenvalue problems (EP) and emphasizes an MG algorithm for a nonlinear Schrodinger EP. The algorithm overcomes the mentioned difficulties combining the following techniques: an MG projection coupled with backrotations for separation of solutions and treatment of difficulties related to clusters of close and equal eigenvalues; MG subspace continuation techniques for treatment of the nonlinearity; an MG simultaneous treatment of the eigenvectors at the same time with the nonlinearity and with the global constraints. The simultaneous MG techniques reduce the large number of self consistent iterations to only a few or one MG simultaneous iteration and keep the solutions in a right neighborhood where the algorithm converges fast.

  6. Neighborhood graph and learning discriminative distance functions for clinical decision support.

    PubMed

    Tsymbal, Alexey; Zhou, Shaohua Kevin; Huber, Martin

    2009-01-01

    There are two essential reasons for the slow progress in the acceptance of clinical case retrieval and similarity search-based decision support systems; the especial complexity of clinical data making it difficult to define a meaningful and effective distance function on them and the lack of transparency and explanation ability in many existing clinical case retrieval decision support systems. In this paper, we try to address these two problems by introducing a novel technique for visualizing inter-patient similarity based on a node-link representation with neighborhood graphs and by considering two techniques for learning discriminative distance function that help to combine the power of strong "black box" learners with the transparency of case retrieval and nearest neighbor classification.

  7. MIP models and hybrid algorithms for simultaneous job splitting and scheduling on unrelated parallel machines.

    PubMed

    Eroglu, Duygu Yilmaz; Ozmutlu, H Cenk

    2014-01-01

    We developed mixed integer programming (MIP) models and hybrid genetic-local search algorithms for the scheduling problem of unrelated parallel machines with job sequence and machine-dependent setup times and with job splitting property. The first contribution of this paper is to introduce novel algorithms which make splitting and scheduling simultaneously with variable number of subjobs. We proposed simple chromosome structure which is constituted by random key numbers in hybrid genetic-local search algorithm (GAspLA). Random key numbers are used frequently in genetic algorithms, but it creates additional difficulty when hybrid factors in local search are implemented. We developed algorithms that satisfy the adaptation of results of local search into the genetic algorithms with minimum relocation operation of genes' random key numbers. This is the second contribution of the paper. The third contribution of this paper is three developed new MIP models which are making splitting and scheduling simultaneously. The fourth contribution of this paper is implementation of the GAspLAMIP. This implementation let us verify the optimality of GAspLA for the studied combinations. The proposed methods are tested on a set of problems taken from the literature and the results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.

  8. An improved stochastic fractal search algorithm for 3D protein structure prediction.

    PubMed

    Zhou, Changjun; Sun, Chuan; Wang, Bin; Wang, Xiaojun

    2018-05-03

    Protein structure prediction (PSP) is a significant area for biological information research, disease treatment, and drug development and so on. In this paper, three-dimensional structures of proteins are predicted based on the known amino acid sequences, and the structure prediction problem is transformed into a typical NP problem by an AB off-lattice model. This work applies a novel improved Stochastic Fractal Search algorithm (ISFS) to solve the problem. The Stochastic Fractal Search algorithm (SFS) is an effective evolutionary algorithm that performs well in exploring the search space but falls into local minimums sometimes. In order to avoid the weakness, Lvy flight and internal feedback information are introduced in ISFS. In the experimental process, simulations are conducted by ISFS algorithm on Fibonacci sequences and real peptide sequences. Experimental results prove that the ISFS performs more efficiently and robust in terms of finding the global minimum and avoiding getting stuck in local minimums.

  9. Multiparty Quantum Key Agreement Based on Quantum Search Algorithm

    PubMed Central

    Cao, Hao; Ma, Wenping

    2017-01-01

    Quantum key agreement is an important topic that the shared key must be negotiated equally by all participants, and any nontrivial subset of participants cannot fully determine the shared key. To date, the embed modes of subkey in all the previously proposed quantum key agreement protocols are based on either BB84 or entangled states. The research of the quantum key agreement protocol based on quantum search algorithms is still blank. In this paper, on the basis of investigating the properties of quantum search algorithms, we propose the first quantum key agreement protocol whose embed mode of subkey is based on a quantum search algorithm known as Grover’s algorithm. A novel example of protocols with 5 – party is presented. The efficiency analysis shows that our protocol is prior to existing MQKA protocols. Furthermore it is secure against both external attack and internal attacks. PMID:28332610

  10. Ant Colony Optimization With Local Search for Dynamic Traveling Salesman Problems.

    PubMed

    Mavrovouniotis, Michalis; Muller, Felipe M; Yang, Shengxiang

    2016-06-13

    For a dynamic traveling salesman problem (DTSP), the weights (or traveling times) between two cities (or nodes) may be subject to changes. Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms have proved to be powerful methods to tackle such problems due to their adaptation capabilities. It has been shown that the integration of local search operators can significantly improve the performance of ACO. In this paper, a memetic ACO algorithm, where a local search operator (called unstring and string) is integrated into ACO, is proposed to address DTSPs. The best solution from ACO is passed to the local search operator, which removes and inserts cities in such a way that improves the solution quality. The proposed memetic ACO algorithm is designed to address both symmetric and asymmetric DTSPs. The experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed memetic algorithm for addressing DTSPs in comparison with other state-of-the-art algorithms.

  11. Security Analysis of Image Encryption Based on Gyrator Transform by Searching the Rotation Angle with Improved PSO Algorithm.

    PubMed

    Sang, Jun; Zhao, Jun; Xiang, Zhili; Cai, Bin; Xiang, Hong

    2015-08-05

    Gyrator transform has been widely used for image encryption recently. For gyrator transform-based image encryption, the rotation angle used in the gyrator transform is one of the secret keys. In this paper, by analyzing the properties of the gyrator transform, an improved particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm was proposed to search the rotation angle in a single gyrator transform. Since the gyrator transform is continuous, it is time-consuming to exhaustedly search the rotation angle, even considering the data precision in a computer. Therefore, a computational intelligence-based search may be an alternative choice. Considering the properties of severe local convergence and obvious global fluctuations of the gyrator transform, an improved PSO algorithm was proposed to be suitable for such situations. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed improved PSO algorithm can significantly improve the efficiency of searching the rotation angle in a single gyrator transform. Since gyrator transform is the foundation of image encryption in gyrator transform domains, the research on the method of searching the rotation angle in a single gyrator transform is useful for further study on the security of such image encryption algorithms.

  12. Seeking out SARI: an automated search of electronic health records.

    PubMed

    O'Horo, John C; Dziadzko, Mikhail; Sakusic, Amra; Ali, Rashid; Sohail, M Rizwan; Kor, Daryl J; Gajic, Ognjen

    2018-06-01

    The definition of severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) - a respiratory illness with fever and cough, occurring within the past 10 days and requiring hospital admission - has not been evaluated for critically ill patients. Using integrated electronic health records data, we developed an automated search algorithm to identify SARI cases in a large cohort of critical care patients and evaluate patient outcomes. We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all admissions to a medical intensive care unit from August 2009 through March 2016. Subsets were randomly selected for deriving and validating a search algorithm, which was compared with temporal trends in laboratory-confirmed influenza to ensure that SARI was correlated with influenza. The algorithm was applied to the cohort to identify clinical differences for patients with and without SARI. For identifying SARI, the algorithm (sensitivity, 86.9%; specificity, 95.6%) outperformed billing-based searching (sensitivity, 73.8%; specificity, 78.8%). Automated searching correlated with peaks in laboratory-confirmed influenza. Adjusted for severity of illness, SARI was associated with more hospital, intensive care unit and ventilator days but not with death or dismissal to home. The search algorithm accurately identified SARI for epidemiologic study and surveillance.

  13. New development of the image matching algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhang, Xiaoqiang; Feng, Zhao

    2018-04-01

    To study the image matching algorithm, algorithm four elements are described, i.e., similarity measurement, feature space, search space and search strategy. Four common indexes for evaluating the image matching algorithm are described, i.e., matching accuracy, matching efficiency, robustness and universality. Meanwhile, this paper describes the principle of image matching algorithm based on the gray value, image matching algorithm based on the feature, image matching algorithm based on the frequency domain analysis, image matching algorithm based on the neural network and image matching algorithm based on the semantic recognition, and analyzes their characteristics and latest research achievements. Finally, the development trend of image matching algorithm is discussed. This study is significant for the algorithm improvement, new algorithm design and algorithm selection in practice.

  14. Computer algorithms in the search for unrelated stem cell donors.

    PubMed

    Steiner, David

    2012-01-01

    Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is a medical procedure in the field of hematology and oncology, most often performed for patients with certain cancers of the blood or bone marrow. A lot of patients have no suitable HLA-matched donor within their family, so physicians must activate a "donor search process" by interacting with national and international donor registries who will search their databases for adult unrelated donors or cord blood units (CBU). Information and communication technologies play a key role in the donor search process in donor registries both nationally and internationaly. One of the major challenges for donor registry computer systems is the development of a reliable search algorithm. This work discusses the top-down design of such algorithms and current practice. Based on our experience with systems used by several stem cell donor registries, we highlight typical pitfalls in the implementation of an algorithm and underlying data structure.

  15. A k-Vector Approach to Sampling, Interpolation, and Approximation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mortari, Daniele; Rogers, Jonathan

    2013-12-01

    The k-vector search technique is a method designed to perform extremely fast range searching of large databases at computational cost independent of the size of the database. k-vector search algorithms have historically found application in satellite star-tracker navigation systems which index very large star catalogues repeatedly in the process of attitude estimation. Recently, the k-vector search algorithm has been applied to numerous other problem areas including non-uniform random variate sampling, interpolation of 1-D or 2-D tables, nonlinear function inversion, and solution of systems of nonlinear equations. This paper presents algorithms in which the k-vector search technique is used to solve each of these problems in a computationally-efficient manner. In instances where these tasks must be performed repeatedly on a static (or nearly-static) data set, the proposed k-vector-based algorithms offer an extremely fast solution technique that outperforms standard methods.

  16. Survey of Quantification and Distance Functions Used for Internet-based Weak-link Sociological Phenomena

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2016-03-01

    well as the Yahoo search engine and a classic SearchKing HIST algorithm. The co-PI immersed herself in the sociology literature for the relevant...Google matrix, PageRank as well as the Yahoo search engine and a classic SearchKing HIST algorithm. The co-PI immersed herself in the sociology...The PI studied all mathematical literature he can find related to the Google search engine, Google matrix, PageRank as well as the Yahoo search

  17. Investigating the enhanced Best Performance Algorithm for Annual Crop Planning problem based on economic factors

    PubMed Central

    2017-01-01

    The Annual Crop Planning (ACP) problem was a recently introduced problem in the literature. This study further expounds on this problem by presenting a new mathematical formulation, which is based on market economic factors. To determine solutions, a new local search metaheuristic algorithm is investigated which is called the enhanced Best Performance Algorithm (eBPA). eBPA’s results are compared against two well-known local search metaheuristic algorithms; these include Tabu Search and Simulated Annealing. The results show the potential of the eBPA for continuous optimization problems. PMID:28792495

  18. Investigation into the efficiency of different bionic algorithm combinations for a COBRA meta-heuristic

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Akhmedova, Sh; Semenkin, E.

    2017-02-01

    Previously, a meta-heuristic approach, called Co-Operation of Biology-Related Algorithms or COBRA, for solving real-parameter optimization problems was introduced and described. COBRA’s basic idea consists of a cooperative work of five well-known bionic algorithms such as Particle Swarm Optimization, the Wolf Pack Search, the Firefly Algorithm, the Cuckoo Search Algorithm and the Bat Algorithm, which were chosen due to the similarity of their schemes. The performance of this meta-heuristic was evaluated on a set of test functions and its workability was demonstrated. Thus it was established that the idea of the algorithms’ cooperative work is useful. However, it is unclear which bionic algorithms should be included in this cooperation and how many of them. Therefore, the five above-listed algorithms and additionally the Fish School Search algorithm were used for the development of five different modifications of COBRA by varying the number of component-algorithms. These modifications were tested on the same set of functions and the best of them was found. Ways of further improving the COBRA algorithm are then discussed.

  19. An Experience Oriented-Convergence Improved Gravitational Search Algorithm for Minimum Variance Distortionless Response Beamforming Optimum.

    PubMed

    Darzi, Soodabeh; Tiong, Sieh Kiong; Tariqul Islam, Mohammad; Rezai Soleymanpour, Hassan; Kibria, Salehin

    2016-01-01

    An experience oriented-convergence improved gravitational search algorithm (ECGSA) based on two new modifications, searching through the best experiments and using of a dynamic gravitational damping coefficient (α), is introduced in this paper. ECGSA saves its best fitness function evaluations and uses those as the agents' positions in searching process. In this way, the optimal found trajectories are retained and the search starts from these trajectories, which allow the algorithm to avoid the local optimums. Also, the agents can move faster in search space to obtain better exploration during the first stage of the searching process and they can converge rapidly to the optimal solution at the final stage of the search process by means of the proposed dynamic gravitational damping coefficient. The performance of ECGSA has been evaluated by applying it to eight standard benchmark functions along with six complicated composite test functions. It is also applied to adaptive beamforming problem as a practical issue to improve the weight vectors computed by minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamforming technique. The results of implementation of the proposed algorithm are compared with some well-known heuristic methods and verified the proposed method in both reaching to optimal solutions and robustness.

  20. A novel harmony search-K means hybrid algorithm for clustering gene expression data

    PubMed Central

    Nazeer, KA Abdul; Sebastian, MP; Kumar, SD Madhu

    2013-01-01

    Recent progress in bioinformatics research has led to the accumulation of huge quantities of biological data at various data sources. The DNA microarray technology makes it possible to simultaneously analyze large number of genes across different samples. Clustering of microarray data can reveal the hidden gene expression patterns from large quantities of expression data that in turn offers tremendous possibilities in functional genomics, comparative genomics, disease diagnosis and drug development. The k- ¬means clustering algorithm is widely used for many practical applications. But the original k-¬means algorithm has several drawbacks. It is computationally expensive and generates locally optimal solutions based on the random choice of the initial centroids. Several methods have been proposed in the literature for improving the performance of the k-¬means algorithm. A meta-heuristic optimization algorithm named harmony search helps find out near-global optimal solutions by searching the entire solution space. Low clustering accuracy of the existing algorithms limits their use in many crucial applications of life sciences. In this paper we propose a novel Harmony Search-K means Hybrid (HSKH) algorithm for clustering the gene expression data. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm produces clusters with better accuracy in comparison with the existing algorithms. PMID:23390351

  1. A novel harmony search-K means hybrid algorithm for clustering gene expression data.

    PubMed

    Nazeer, Ka Abdul; Sebastian, Mp; Kumar, Sd Madhu

    2013-01-01

    Recent progress in bioinformatics research has led to the accumulation of huge quantities of biological data at various data sources. The DNA microarray technology makes it possible to simultaneously analyze large number of genes across different samples. Clustering of microarray data can reveal the hidden gene expression patterns from large quantities of expression data that in turn offers tremendous possibilities in functional genomics, comparative genomics, disease diagnosis and drug development. The k- ¬means clustering algorithm is widely used for many practical applications. But the original k-¬means algorithm has several drawbacks. It is computationally expensive and generates locally optimal solutions based on the random choice of the initial centroids. Several methods have been proposed in the literature for improving the performance of the k-¬means algorithm. A meta-heuristic optimization algorithm named harmony search helps find out near-global optimal solutions by searching the entire solution space. Low clustering accuracy of the existing algorithms limits their use in many crucial applications of life sciences. In this paper we propose a novel Harmony Search-K means Hybrid (HSKH) algorithm for clustering the gene expression data. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm produces clusters with better accuracy in comparison with the existing algorithms.

  2. Large-scale database searching using tandem mass spectra: looking up the answer in the back of the book.

    PubMed

    Sadygov, Rovshan G; Cociorva, Daniel; Yates, John R

    2004-12-01

    Database searching is an essential element of large-scale proteomics. Because these methods are widely used, it is important to understand the rationale of the algorithms. Most algorithms are based on concepts first developed in SEQUEST and PeptideSearch. Four basic approaches are used to determine a match between a spectrum and sequence: descriptive, interpretative, stochastic and probability-based matching. We review the basic concepts used by most search algorithms, the computational modeling of peptide identification and current challenges and limitations of this approach for protein identification.

  3. Model Specification Searches Using Ant Colony Optimization Algorithms

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Marcoulides, George A.; Drezner, Zvi

    2003-01-01

    Ant colony optimization is a recently proposed heuristic procedure inspired by the behavior of real ants. This article applies the procedure to model specification searches in structural equation modeling and reports the results. The results demonstrate the capabilities of ant colony optimization algorithms for conducting automated searches.

  4. Distributed topology control algorithm for multihop wireless netoworks

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Borbash, S. A.; Jennings, E. H.

    2002-01-01

    We present a network initialization algorithmfor wireless networks with distributed intelligence. Each node (agent) has only local, incomplete knowledge and it must make local decisions to meet a predefined global objective. Our objective is to use power control to establish a topology based onthe relative neighborhood graph which has good overall performance in terms of power usage, low interference, and reliability.

  5. Hyperspectral Image Classification via Kernel Sparse Representation

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2013-01-01

    classification algorithms. Moreover, the spatial coherency across neighboring pixels is also incorporated through a kernelized joint sparsity model , where...joint sparsity model , where all of the pixels within a small neighborhood are jointly represented in the feature space by selecting a few common training...hyperspectral imagery, joint spar- sity model , kernel methods, sparse representation. I. INTRODUCTION HYPERSPECTRAL imaging sensors capture images

  6. Tree-based approach for exploring marine spatial patterns with raster datasets.

    PubMed

    Liao, Xiaohan; Xue, Cunjin; Su, Fenzhen

    2017-01-01

    From multiple raster datasets to spatial association patterns, the data-mining technique is divided into three subtasks, i.e., raster dataset pretreatment, mining algorithm design, and spatial pattern exploration from the mining results. Comparison with the former two subtasks reveals that the latter remains unresolved. Confronted with the interrelated marine environmental parameters, we propose a Tree-based Approach for eXploring Marine Spatial Patterns with multiple raster datasets called TAXMarSP, which includes two models. One is the Tree-based Cascading Organization Model (TCOM), and the other is the Spatial Neighborhood-based CAlculation Model (SNCAM). TCOM designs the "Spatial node→Pattern node" from top to bottom layers to store the table-formatted frequent patterns. Together with TCOM, SNCAM considers the spatial neighborhood contributions to calculate the pattern-matching degree between the specified marine parameters and the table-formatted frequent patterns and then explores the marine spatial patterns. Using the prevalent quantification Apriori algorithm and a real remote sensing dataset from January 1998 to December 2014, a successful application of TAXMarSP to marine spatial patterns in the Pacific Ocean is described, and the obtained marine spatial patterns present not only the well-known but also new patterns to Earth scientists.

  7. Online Hierarchical Sparse Representation of Multifeature for Robust Object Tracking

    PubMed Central

    Qu, Shiru

    2016-01-01

    Object tracking based on sparse representation has given promising tracking results in recent years. However, the trackers under the framework of sparse representation always overemphasize the sparse representation and ignore the correlation of visual information. In addition, the sparse coding methods only encode the local region independently and ignore the spatial neighborhood information of the image. In this paper, we propose a robust tracking algorithm. Firstly, multiple complementary features are used to describe the object appearance; the appearance model of the tracked target is modeled by instantaneous and stable appearance features simultaneously. A two-stage sparse-coded method which takes the spatial neighborhood information of the image patch and the computation burden into consideration is used to compute the reconstructed object appearance. Then, the reliability of each tracker is measured by the tracking likelihood function of transient and reconstructed appearance models. Finally, the most reliable tracker is obtained by a well established particle filter framework; the training set and the template library are incrementally updated based on the current tracking results. Experiment results on different challenging video sequences show that the proposed algorithm performs well with superior tracking accuracy and robustness. PMID:27630710

  8. An atomistic fingerprint algorithm for learning ab initio molecular force fields

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tang, Yu-Hang; Zhang, Dongkun; Karniadakis, George Em

    2018-01-01

    Molecular fingerprints, i.e., feature vectors describing atomistic neighborhood configurations, is an important abstraction and a key ingredient for data-driven modeling of potential energy surface and interatomic force. In this paper, we present the density-encoded canonically aligned fingerprint algorithm, which is robust and efficient, for fitting per-atom scalar and vector quantities. The fingerprint is essentially a continuous density field formed through the superimposition of smoothing kernels centered on the atoms. Rotational invariance of the fingerprint is achieved by aligning, for each fingerprint instance, the neighboring atoms onto a local canonical coordinate frame computed from a kernel minisum optimization procedure. We show that this approach is superior over principal components analysis-based methods especially when the atomistic neighborhood is sparse and/or contains symmetry. We propose that the "distance" between the density fields be measured using a volume integral of their pointwise difference. This can be efficiently computed using optimal quadrature rules, which only require discrete sampling at a small number of grid points. We also experiment on the choice of weight functions for constructing the density fields and characterize their performance for fitting interatomic potentials. The applicability of the fingerprint is demonstrated through a set of benchmark problems.

  9. Gene selection for tumor classification using neighborhood rough sets and entropy measures.

    PubMed

    Chen, Yumin; Zhang, Zunjun; Zheng, Jianzhong; Ma, Ying; Xue, Yu

    2017-03-01

    With the development of bioinformatics, tumor classification from gene expression data becomes an important useful technology for cancer diagnosis. Since a gene expression data often contains thousands of genes and a small number of samples, gene selection from gene expression data becomes a key step for tumor classification. Attribute reduction of rough sets has been successfully applied to gene selection field, as it has the characters of data driving and requiring no additional information. However, traditional rough set method deals with discrete data only. As for the gene expression data containing real-value or noisy data, they are usually employed by a discrete preprocessing, which may result in poor classification accuracy. In this paper, we propose a novel gene selection method based on the neighborhood rough set model, which has the ability of dealing with real-value data whilst maintaining the original gene classification information. Moreover, this paper addresses an entropy measure under the frame of neighborhood rough sets for tackling the uncertainty and noisy of gene expression data. The utilization of this measure can bring about a discovery of compact gene subsets. Finally, a gene selection algorithm is designed based on neighborhood granules and the entropy measure. Some experiments on two gene expression data show that the proposed gene selection is an effective method for improving the accuracy of tumor classification. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  10. Harmony Search as a Powerful Tool for Feature Selection in QSPR Study of the Drugs Lipophilicity.

    PubMed

    Bahadori, Behnoosh; Atabati, Morteza

    2017-01-01

    Aims & Scope: Lipophilicity represents one of the most studied and most frequently used fundamental physicochemical properties. In the present work, harmony search (HS) algorithm is suggested to feature selection in quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) modeling to predict lipophilicity of neutral, acidic, basic and amphotheric drugs that were determined by UHPLC. Harmony search is a music-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm. It was affected by the observation that the aim of music is to search for a perfect state of harmony. Semi-empirical quantum-chemical calculations at AM1 level were used to find the optimum 3D geometry of the studied molecules and variant descriptors (1497 descriptors) were calculated by the Dragon software. The selected descriptors by harmony search algorithm (9 descriptors) were applied for model development using multiple linear regression (MLR). In comparison with other feature selection methods such as genetic algorithm and simulated annealing, harmony search algorithm has better results. The root mean square error (RMSE) with and without leave-one out cross validation (LOOCV) were obtained 0.417 and 0.302, respectively. The results were compared with those obtained from the genetic algorithm and simulated annealing methods and it showed that the HS is a helpful tool for feature selection with fine performance. Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.org.

  11. Variable Neighborhood Search Heuristics for Selecting a Subset of Variables in Principal Component Analysis

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brusco, Michael J.; Singh, Renu; Steinley, Douglas

    2009-01-01

    The selection of a subset of variables from a pool of candidates is an important problem in several areas of multivariate statistics. Within the context of principal component analysis (PCA), a number of authors have argued that subset selection is crucial for identifying those variables that are required for correct interpretation of the…

  12. A novel method for identifying disease associated protein complexes based on functional similarity protein complex networks.

    PubMed

    Le, Duc-Hau

    2015-01-01

    Protein complexes formed by non-covalent interaction among proteins play important roles in cellular functions. Computational and purification methods have been used to identify many protein complexes and their cellular functions. However, their roles in terms of causing disease have not been well discovered yet. There exist only a few studies for the identification of disease-associated protein complexes. However, they mostly utilize complicated heterogeneous networks which are constructed based on an out-of-date database of phenotype similarity network collected from literature. In addition, they only apply for diseases for which tissue-specific data exist. In this study, we propose a method to identify novel disease-protein complex associations. First, we introduce a framework to construct functional similarity protein complex networks where two protein complexes are functionally connected by either shared protein elements, shared annotating GO terms or based on protein interactions between elements in each protein complex. Second, we propose a simple but effective neighborhood-based algorithm, which yields a local similarity measure, to rank disease candidate protein complexes. Comparing the predictive performance of our proposed algorithm with that of two state-of-the-art network propagation algorithms including one we used in our previous study, we found that it performed statistically significantly better than that of these two algorithms for all the constructed functional similarity protein complex networks. In addition, it ran about 32 times faster than these two algorithms. Moreover, our proposed method always achieved high performance in terms of AUC values irrespective of the ways to construct the functional similarity protein complex networks and the used algorithms. The performance of our method was also higher than that reported in some existing methods which were based on complicated heterogeneous networks. Finally, we also tested our method with prostate cancer and selected the top 100 highly ranked candidate protein complexes. Interestingly, 69 of them were evidenced since at least one of their protein elements are known to be associated with prostate cancer. Our proposed method, including the framework to construct functional similarity protein complex networks and the neighborhood-based algorithm on these networks, could be used for identification of novel disease-protein complex associations.

  13. Regression Model Optimization for the Analysis of Experimental Data

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Ulbrich, N.

    2009-01-01

    A candidate math model search algorithm was developed at Ames Research Center that determines a recommended math model for the multivariate regression analysis of experimental data. The search algorithm is applicable to classical regression analysis problems as well as wind tunnel strain gage balance calibration analysis applications. The algorithm compares the predictive capability of different regression models using the standard deviation of the PRESS residuals of the responses as a search metric. This search metric is minimized during the search. Singular value decomposition is used during the search to reject math models that lead to a singular solution of the regression analysis problem. Two threshold dependent constraints are also applied. The first constraint rejects math models with insignificant terms. The second constraint rejects math models with near-linear dependencies between terms. The math term hierarchy rule may also be applied as an optional constraint during or after the candidate math model search. The final term selection of the recommended math model depends on the regressor and response values of the data set, the user s function class combination choice, the user s constraint selections, and the result of the search metric minimization. A frequently used regression analysis example from the literature is used to illustrate the application of the search algorithm to experimental data.

  14. Data classification using metaheuristic Cuckoo Search technique for Levenberg Marquardt back propagation (CSLM) algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nawi, Nazri Mohd.; Khan, Abdullah; Rehman, M. Z.

    2015-05-01

    A nature inspired behavior metaheuristic techniques which provide derivative-free solutions to solve complex problems. One of the latest additions to the group of nature inspired optimization procedure is Cuckoo Search (CS) algorithm. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) training is an optimization task since it is desired to find optimal weight set of a neural network in training process. Traditional training algorithms have some limitation such as getting trapped in local minima and slow convergence rate. This study proposed a new technique CSLM by combining the best features of two known algorithms back-propagation (BP) and Levenberg Marquardt algorithm (LM) for improving the convergence speed of ANN training and avoiding local minima problem by training this network. Some selected benchmark classification datasets are used for simulation. The experiment result show that the proposed cuckoo search with Levenberg Marquardt algorithm has better performance than other algorithm used in this study.

  15. Improved artificial bee colony algorithm based gravity matching navigation method.

    PubMed

    Gao, Wei; Zhao, Bo; Zhou, Guang Tao; Wang, Qiu Ying; Yu, Chun Yang

    2014-07-18

    Gravity matching navigation algorithm is one of the key technologies for gravity aided inertial navigation systems. With the development of intelligent algorithms, the powerful search ability of the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm makes it possible to be applied to the gravity matching navigation field. However, existing search mechanisms of basic ABC algorithms cannot meet the need for high accuracy in gravity aided navigation. Firstly, proper modifications are proposed to improve the performance of the basic ABC algorithm. Secondly, a new search mechanism is presented in this paper which is based on an improved ABC algorithm using external speed information. At last, modified Hausdorff distance is introduced to screen the possible matching results. Both simulations and ocean experiments verify the feasibility of the method, and results show that the matching rate of the method is high enough to obtain a precise matching position.

  16. Weighted Global Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm Makes Gas Sensor Deployment Efficient

    PubMed Central

    Jiang, Ye; He, Ziqing; Li, Yanhai; Xu, Zhengyi; Wei, Jianming

    2016-01-01

    This paper proposes an improved artificial bee colony algorithm named Weighted Global ABC (WGABC) algorithm, which is designed to improve the convergence speed in the search stage of solution search equation. The new method not only considers the effect of global factors on the convergence speed in the search phase, but also provides the expression of global factor weights. Experiment on benchmark functions proved that the algorithm can improve the convergence speed greatly. We arrive at the gas diffusion concentration based on the theory of CFD and then simulate the gas diffusion model with the influence of buildings based on the algorithm. Simulation verified the effectiveness of the WGABC algorithm in improving the convergence speed in optimal deployment scheme of gas sensors. Finally, it is verified that the optimal deployment method based on WGABC algorithm can improve the monitoring efficiency of sensors greatly as compared with the conventional deployment methods. PMID:27322262

  17. Improved Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm Based Gravity Matching Navigation Method

    PubMed Central

    Gao, Wei; Zhao, Bo; Zhou, Guang Tao; Wang, Qiu Ying; Yu, Chun Yang

    2014-01-01

    Gravity matching navigation algorithm is one of the key technologies for gravity aided inertial navigation systems. With the development of intelligent algorithms, the powerful search ability of the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm makes it possible to be applied to the gravity matching navigation field. However, existing search mechanisms of basic ABC algorithms cannot meet the need for high accuracy in gravity aided navigation. Firstly, proper modifications are proposed to improve the performance of the basic ABC algorithm. Secondly, a new search mechanism is presented in this paper which is based on an improved ABC algorithm using external speed information. At last, modified Hausdorff distance is introduced to screen the possible matching results. Both simulations and ocean experiments verify the feasibility of the method, and results show that the matching rate of the method is high enough to obtain a precise matching position. PMID:25046019

  18. Inversion for Refractivity Parameters Using a Dynamic Adaptive Cuckoo Search with Crossover Operator Algorithm

    PubMed Central

    Zhang, Zhihua; Sheng, Zheng; Shi, Hanqing; Fan, Zhiqiang

    2016-01-01

    Using the RFC technique to estimate refractivity parameters is a complex nonlinear optimization problem. In this paper, an improved cuckoo search (CS) algorithm is proposed to deal with this problem. To enhance the performance of the CS algorithm, a parameter dynamic adaptive operation and crossover operation were integrated into the standard CS (DACS-CO). Rechenberg's 1/5 criteria combined with learning factor were used to control the parameter dynamic adaptive adjusting process. The crossover operation of genetic algorithm was utilized to guarantee the population diversity. The new hybrid algorithm has better local search ability and contributes to superior performance. To verify the ability of the DACS-CO algorithm to estimate atmospheric refractivity parameters, the simulation data and real radar clutter data are both implemented. The numerical experiments demonstrate that the DACS-CO algorithm can provide an effective method for near-real-time estimation of the atmospheric refractivity profile from radar clutter. PMID:27212938

  19. Detecting Outliers in Factor Analysis Using the Forward Search Algorithm

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mavridis, Dimitris; Moustaki, Irini

    2008-01-01

    In this article we extend and implement the forward search algorithm for identifying atypical subjects/observations in factor analysis models. The forward search has been mainly developed for detecting aberrant observations in regression models (Atkinson, 1994) and in multivariate methods such as cluster and discriminant analysis (Atkinson, Riani,…

  20. Retrospective Derivation and Validation of an Automated Electronic Search Algorithm to Identify Post Operative Cardiovascular and Thromboembolic Complications

    PubMed Central

    Tien, M.; Kashyap, R.; Wilson, G. A.; Hernandez-Torres, V.; Jacob, A. K.; Schroeder, D. R.

    2015-01-01

    Summary Background With increasing numbers of hospitals adopting electronic medical records, electronic search algorithms for identifying postoperative complications can be invaluable tools to expedite data abstraction and clinical research to improve patient outcomes. Objectives To derive and validate an electronic search algorithm to identify postoperative thromboembolic and cardiovascular complications such as deep venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, or myocardial infarction within 30 days of total hip or knee arthroplasty. Methods A total of 34 517 patients undergoing total hip or knee arthroplasty between January 1, 1996 and December 31, 2013 were identified. Using a derivation cohort of 418 patients, several iterations of a free-text electronic search were developed and refined for each complication. Subsequently, the automated search algorithm was validated on an independent cohort of 2 857 patients, and the sensitivity and specificities were compared to the results of manual chart review. Results In the final derivation subset, the automated search algorithm achieved a sensitivity of 91% and specificity of 85% for deep vein thrombosis, a sensitivity of 96% and specificity of 100% for pulmonary embolism, and a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 95% for myocardial infarction. When applied to the validation cohort, the search algorithm achieved a sensitivity of 97% and specificity of 99% for deep vein thrombosis, a sensitivity of 97% and specificity of 100% for pulmonary embolism, and a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 99% for myocardial infarction. Conclusions The derivation and validation of an electronic search strategy can accelerate the data abstraction process for research, quality improvement, and enhancement of patient care, while maintaining superb reliability compared to manual review. PMID:26448798

  1. Solving SAT Problem Based on Hybrid Differential Evolution Algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Kunqi; Zhang, Jingmin; Liu, Gang; Kang, Lishan

    Satisfiability (SAT) problem is an NP-complete problem. Based on the analysis about it, SAT problem is translated equally into an optimization problem on the minimum of objective function. A hybrid differential evolution algorithm is proposed to solve the Satisfiability problem. It makes full use of strong local search capacity of hill-climbing algorithm and strong global search capability of differential evolution algorithm, which makes up their disadvantages, improves the efficiency of algorithm and avoids the stagnation phenomenon. The experiment results show that the hybrid algorithm is efficient in solving SAT problem.

  2. A novel Gravity-FREAK feature extraction and Gravity-KLT tracking registration algorithm based on iPhone MEMS mobile sensor in mobile environment

    PubMed Central

    Lin, Fan; Xiao, Bin

    2017-01-01

    Based on the traditional Fast Retina Keypoint (FREAK) feature description algorithm, this paper proposed a Gravity-FREAK feature description algorithm based on Micro-electromechanical Systems (MEMS) sensor to overcome the limited computing performance and memory resources of mobile devices and further improve the reality interaction experience of clients through digital information added to the real world by augmented reality technology. The algorithm takes the gravity projection vector corresponding to the feature point as its feature orientation, which saved the time of calculating the neighborhood gray gradient of each feature point, reduced the cost of calculation and improved the accuracy of feature extraction. In the case of registration method of matching and tracking natural features, the adaptive and generic corner detection based on the Gravity-FREAK matching purification algorithm was used to eliminate abnormal matches, and Gravity Kaneda-Lucas Tracking (KLT) algorithm based on MEMS sensor can be used for the tracking registration of the targets and robustness improvement of tracking registration algorithm under mobile environment. PMID:29088228

  3. A novel Gravity-FREAK feature extraction and Gravity-KLT tracking registration algorithm based on iPhone MEMS mobile sensor in mobile environment.

    PubMed

    Hong, Zhiling; Lin, Fan; Xiao, Bin

    2017-01-01

    Based on the traditional Fast Retina Keypoint (FREAK) feature description algorithm, this paper proposed a Gravity-FREAK feature description algorithm based on Micro-electromechanical Systems (MEMS) sensor to overcome the limited computing performance and memory resources of mobile devices and further improve the reality interaction experience of clients through digital information added to the real world by augmented reality technology. The algorithm takes the gravity projection vector corresponding to the feature point as its feature orientation, which saved the time of calculating the neighborhood gray gradient of each feature point, reduced the cost of calculation and improved the accuracy of feature extraction. In the case of registration method of matching and tracking natural features, the adaptive and generic corner detection based on the Gravity-FREAK matching purification algorithm was used to eliminate abnormal matches, and Gravity Kaneda-Lucas Tracking (KLT) algorithm based on MEMS sensor can be used for the tracking registration of the targets and robustness improvement of tracking registration algorithm under mobile environment.

  4. Algebraic Algorithm Design and Local Search

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1996-12-01

    method for performing algorithm design that is more purely algebraic than that of KIDS. This method is then applied to local search. Local search is a...synthesis. Our approach was to follow KIDS in spirit, but to adopt a pure algebraic formalism, supported by Kestrel’s SPECWARE environment (79), that...design was developed that is more purely algebraic than that of KIDS. This method was then applied to local search. A general theory of local search was

  5. A Novel Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm Based on Internal-Feedback Strategy for Image Template Matching

    PubMed Central

    Gong, Li-Gang

    2014-01-01

    Image template matching refers to the technique of locating a given reference image over a source image such that they are the most similar. It is a fundamental mission in the field of visual target recognition. In general, there are two critical aspects of a template matching scheme. One is similarity measurement and the other is best-match location search. In this work, we choose the well-known normalized cross correlation model as a similarity criterion. The searching procedure for the best-match location is carried out through an internal-feedback artificial bee colony (IF-ABC) algorithm. IF-ABC algorithm is highlighted by its effort to fight against premature convergence. This purpose is achieved through discarding the conventional roulette selection procedure in the ABC algorithm so as to provide each employed bee an equal chance to be followed by the onlooker bees in the local search phase. Besides that, we also suggest efficiently utilizing the internal convergence states as feedback guidance for searching intensity in the subsequent cycles of iteration. We have investigated four ideal template matching cases as well as four actual cases using different searching algorithms. Our simulation results show that the IF-ABC algorithm is more effective and robust for this template matching mission than the conventional ABC and two state-of-the-art modified ABC algorithms do. PMID:24892107

  6. GlobiPack v. 1.0

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Bartlett, Roscoe

    2010-03-31

    GlobiPack contains a small collection of optimization globalization algorithms. These algorithms are used by optimization and various nonlinear equation solver algorithms.Used as the line-search procedure with Newton and Quasi-Newton optimization and nonlinear equation solver methods. These are standard published 1-D line search algorithms such as are described in the book Nocedal and Wright Numerical Optimization: 2nd edition, 2006. One set of algorithms were copied and refactored from the existing open-source Trilinos package MOOCHO where the linear search code is used to globalize SQP methods. This software is generic to any mathematical optimization problem where smooth derivatives exist. There is nomore » specific connection or mention whatsoever to any specific application, period. You cannot find more general mathematical software.« less

  7. Database searching and accounting of multiplexed precursor and product ion spectra from the data independent analysis of simple and complex peptide mixtures.

    PubMed

    Li, Guo-Zhong; Vissers, Johannes P C; Silva, Jeffrey C; Golick, Dan; Gorenstein, Marc V; Geromanos, Scott J

    2009-03-01

    A novel database search algorithm is presented for the qualitative identification of proteins over a wide dynamic range, both in simple and complex biological samples. The algorithm has been designed for the analysis of data originating from data independent acquisitions, whereby multiple precursor ions are fragmented simultaneously. Measurements used by the algorithm include retention time, ion intensities, charge state, and accurate masses on both precursor and product ions from LC-MS data. The search algorithm uses an iterative process whereby each iteration incrementally increases the selectivity, specificity, and sensitivity of the overall strategy. Increased specificity is obtained by utilizing a subset database search approach, whereby for each subsequent stage of the search, only those peptides from securely identified proteins are queried. Tentative peptide and protein identifications are ranked and scored by their relative correlation to a number of models of known and empirically derived physicochemical attributes of proteins and peptides. In addition, the algorithm utilizes decoy database techniques for automatically determining the false positive identification rates. The search algorithm has been tested by comparing the search results from a four-protein mixture, the same four-protein mixture spiked into a complex biological background, and a variety of other "system" type protein digest mixtures. The method was validated independently by data dependent methods, while concurrently relying on replication and selectivity. Comparisons were also performed with other commercially and publicly available peptide fragmentation search algorithms. The presented results demonstrate the ability to correctly identify peptides and proteins from data independent acquisition strategies with high sensitivity and specificity. They also illustrate a more comprehensive analysis of the samples studied; providing approximately 20% more protein identifications, compared to a more conventional data directed approach using the same identification criteria, with a concurrent increase in both sequence coverage and the number of modified peptides.

  8. Optimization of High-Dimensional Functions through Hypercube Evaluation

    PubMed Central

    Abiyev, Rahib H.; Tunay, Mustafa

    2015-01-01

    A novel learning algorithm for solving global numerical optimization problems is proposed. The proposed learning algorithm is intense stochastic search method which is based on evaluation and optimization of a hypercube and is called the hypercube optimization (HO) algorithm. The HO algorithm comprises the initialization and evaluation process, displacement-shrink process, and searching space process. The initialization and evaluation process initializes initial solution and evaluates the solutions in given hypercube. The displacement-shrink process determines displacement and evaluates objective functions using new points, and the search area process determines next hypercube using certain rules and evaluates the new solutions. The algorithms for these processes have been designed and presented in the paper. The designed HO algorithm is tested on specific benchmark functions. The simulations of HO algorithm have been performed for optimization of functions of 1000-, 5000-, or even 10000 dimensions. The comparative simulation results with other approaches demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is a potential candidate for optimization of both low and high dimensional functions. PMID:26339237

  9. Underwater Sensor Network Redeployment Algorithm Based on Wolf Search

    PubMed Central

    Jiang, Peng; Feng, Yang; Wu, Feng

    2016-01-01

    This study addresses the optimization of node redeployment coverage in underwater wireless sensor networks. Given that nodes could easily become invalid under a poor environment and the large scale of underwater wireless sensor networks, an underwater sensor network redeployment algorithm was developed based on wolf search. This study is to apply the wolf search algorithm combined with crowded degree control in the deployment of underwater wireless sensor networks. The proposed algorithm uses nodes to ensure coverage of the events, and it avoids the prematurity of the nodes. The algorithm has good coverage effects. In addition, considering that obstacles exist in the underwater environment, nodes are prevented from being invalid by imitating the mechanism of avoiding predators. Thus, the energy consumption of the network is reduced. Comparative analysis shows that the algorithm is simple and effective in wireless sensor network deployment. Compared with the optimized artificial fish swarm algorithm, the proposed algorithm exhibits advantages in network coverage, energy conservation, and obstacle avoidance. PMID:27775659

  10. A chaos wolf optimization algorithm with self-adaptive variable step-size

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhu, Yong; Jiang, Wanlu; Kong, Xiangdong; Quan, Lingxiao; Zhang, Yongshun

    2017-10-01

    To explore the problem of parameter optimization for complex nonlinear function, a chaos wolf optimization algorithm (CWOA) with self-adaptive variable step-size was proposed. The algorithm was based on the swarm intelligence of wolf pack, which fully simulated the predation behavior and prey distribution way of wolves. It possessed three intelligent behaviors such as migration, summons and siege. And the competition rule as "winner-take-all" and the update mechanism as "survival of the fittest" were also the characteristics of the algorithm. Moreover, it combined the strategies of self-adaptive variable step-size search and chaos optimization. The CWOA was utilized in parameter optimization of twelve typical and complex nonlinear functions. And the obtained results were compared with many existing algorithms, including the classical genetic algorithm, the particle swarm optimization algorithm and the leader wolf pack search algorithm. The investigation results indicate that CWOA possess preferable optimization ability. There are advantages in optimization accuracy and convergence rate. Furthermore, it demonstrates high robustness and global searching ability.

  11. Intermediate view reconstruction using adaptive disparity search algorithm for real-time 3D processing

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bae, Kyung-hoon; Park, Changhan; Kim, Eun-soo

    2008-03-01

    In this paper, intermediate view reconstruction (IVR) using adaptive disparity search algorithm (ASDA) is for realtime 3-dimensional (3D) processing proposed. The proposed algorithm can reduce processing time of disparity estimation by selecting adaptive disparity search range. Also, the proposed algorithm can increase the quality of the 3D imaging. That is, by adaptively predicting the mutual correlation between stereo images pair using the proposed algorithm, the bandwidth of stereo input images pair can be compressed to the level of a conventional 2D image and a predicted image also can be effectively reconstructed using a reference image and disparity vectors. From some experiments, stereo sequences of 'Pot Plant' and 'IVO', it is shown that the proposed algorithm improves the PSNRs of a reconstructed image to about 4.8 dB by comparing with that of conventional algorithms, and reduces the Synthesizing time of a reconstructed image to about 7.02 sec by comparing with that of conventional algorithms.

  12. Reinforcement Learning in Distributed Domains: Beyond Team Games

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Wolpert, David H.; Sill, Joseph; Turner, Kagan

    2000-01-01

    Distributed search algorithms are crucial in dealing with large optimization problems, particularly when a centralized approach is not only impractical but infeasible. Many machine learning concepts have been applied to search algorithms in order to improve their effectiveness. In this article we present an algorithm that blends Reinforcement Learning (RL) and hill climbing directly, by using the RL signal to guide the exploration step of a hill climbing algorithm. We apply this algorithm to the domain of a constellations of communication satellites where the goal is to minimize the loss of importance weighted data. We introduce the concept of 'ghost' traffic, where correctly setting this traffic induces the satellites to act to optimize the world utility. Our results indicated that the bi-utility search introduced in this paper outperforms both traditional hill climbing algorithms and distributed RL approaches such as team games.

  13. A review of estimation of distribution algorithms in bioinformatics

    PubMed Central

    Armañanzas, Rubén; Inza, Iñaki; Santana, Roberto; Saeys, Yvan; Flores, Jose Luis; Lozano, Jose Antonio; Peer, Yves Van de; Blanco, Rosa; Robles, Víctor; Bielza, Concha; Larrañaga, Pedro

    2008-01-01

    Evolutionary search algorithms have become an essential asset in the algorithmic toolbox for solving high-dimensional optimization problems in across a broad range of bioinformatics problems. Genetic algorithms, the most well-known and representative evolutionary search technique, have been the subject of the major part of such applications. Estimation of distribution algorithms (EDAs) offer a novel evolutionary paradigm that constitutes a natural and attractive alternative to genetic algorithms. They make use of a probabilistic model, learnt from the promising solutions, to guide the search process. In this paper, we set out a basic taxonomy of EDA techniques, underlining the nature and complexity of the probabilistic model of each EDA variant. We review a set of innovative works that make use of EDA techniques to solve challenging bioinformatics problems, emphasizing the EDA paradigm's potential for further research in this domain. PMID:18822112

  14. A Novel Harmony Search Algorithm Based on Teaching-Learning Strategies for 0-1 Knapsack Problems

    PubMed Central

    Tuo, Shouheng; Yong, Longquan; Deng, Fang'an

    2014-01-01

    To enhance the performance of harmony search (HS) algorithm on solving the discrete optimization problems, this paper proposes a novel harmony search algorithm based on teaching-learning (HSTL) strategies to solve 0-1 knapsack problems. In the HSTL algorithm, firstly, a method is presented to adjust dimension dynamically for selected harmony vector in optimization procedure. In addition, four strategies (harmony memory consideration, teaching-learning strategy, local pitch adjusting, and random mutation) are employed to improve the performance of HS algorithm. Another improvement in HSTL method is that the dynamic strategies are adopted to change the parameters, which maintains the proper balance effectively between global exploration power and local exploitation power. Finally, simulation experiments with 13 knapsack problems show that the HSTL algorithm can be an efficient alternative for solving 0-1 knapsack problems. PMID:24574905

  15. A novel harmony search algorithm based on teaching-learning strategies for 0-1 knapsack problems.

    PubMed

    Tuo, Shouheng; Yong, Longquan; Deng, Fang'an

    2014-01-01

    To enhance the performance of harmony search (HS) algorithm on solving the discrete optimization problems, this paper proposes a novel harmony search algorithm based on teaching-learning (HSTL) strategies to solve 0-1 knapsack problems. In the HSTL algorithm, firstly, a method is presented to adjust dimension dynamically for selected harmony vector in optimization procedure. In addition, four strategies (harmony memory consideration, teaching-learning strategy, local pitch adjusting, and random mutation) are employed to improve the performance of HS algorithm. Another improvement in HSTL method is that the dynamic strategies are adopted to change the parameters, which maintains the proper balance effectively between global exploration power and local exploitation power. Finally, simulation experiments with 13 knapsack problems show that the HSTL algorithm can be an efficient alternative for solving 0-1 knapsack problems.

  16. Over 20 years of reaction access systems from MDL: a novel reaction substructure search algorithm.

    PubMed

    Chen, Lingran; Nourse, James G; Christie, Bradley D; Leland, Burton A; Grier, David L

    2002-01-01

    From REACCS, to MDL ISIS/Host Reaction Gateway, and most recently to MDL Relational Chemistry Server, a new product based on Oracle data cartridge technology, MDL's reaction database management and retrieval systems have undergone great changes. The evolution of the system architecture is briefly discussed. The evolution of MDL reaction substructure search (RSS) algorithms is detailed. This article mainly describes a novel RSS algorithm. This algorithm is based on a depth-first search approach and is able to fully and prospectively use reaction specific information, such as reacting center and atom-atom mapping (AAM) information. The new algorithm has been used in the recently released MDL Relational Chemistry Server and allows the user to precisely find reaction instances in databases while minimizing unrelated hits. Finally, the existing and new RSS algorithms are compared with several examples.

  17. Improved classification accuracy by feature extraction using genetic algorithms

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Patriarche, Julia; Manduca, Armando; Erickson, Bradley J.

    2003-05-01

    A feature extraction algorithm has been developed for the purposes of improving classification accuracy. The algorithm uses a genetic algorithm / hill-climber hybrid to generate a set of linearly recombined features, which may be of reduced dimensionality compared with the original set. The genetic algorithm performs the global exploration, and a hill climber explores local neighborhoods. Hybridizing the genetic algorithm with a hill climber improves both the rate of convergence, and the final overall cost function value; it also reduces the sensitivity of the genetic algorithm to parameter selection. The genetic algorithm includes the operators: crossover, mutation, and deletion / reactivation - the last of these effects dimensionality reduction. The feature extractor is supervised, and is capable of deriving a separate feature space for each tissue (which are reintegrated during classification). A non-anatomical digital phantom was developed as a gold standard for testing purposes. In tests with the phantom, and with images of multiple sclerosis patients, classification with feature extractor derived features yielded lower error rates than using standard pulse sequences, and with features derived using principal components analysis. Using the multiple sclerosis patient data, the algorithm resulted in a mean 31% reduction in classification error of pure tissues.

  18. Thermodynamic free-energy minimization for unsupervised fusion of dual-color infrared breast images

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Szu, Harold; Miao, Lidan; Qi, Hairong

    2006-04-01

    This paper presents algorithmic details of an unsupervised neural network and unbiased diagnostic methodology, that is, no lookup table is needed that labels the input training data with desired outputs. We deploy the smart algorithm on two satellite-grade infrared (IR) cameras. Although an early malignant tumor must be small in size and cannot be resolved by a single pixel that images about hundreds cells, these cells reveal themselves physiologically by emitting spontaneously thermal radiation due to the rapid cell growth angiogenesis effect (In Greek: vessels generation for increasing tumor blood supply), shifting toward, according to physics, a shorter IR wavelengths emission band. If we use those exceedingly sensitive IR spectral band cameras, we can in principle detect whether or not the breast tumor is perhaps malignant through a thin blouse in a close-up dark room. If this protocol turns out to be reliable in a large scale follow-on Vatican experiment in 2006, which might generate business investment interests of nano-engineering manufacture of nano-camera made of 1-D Carbon Nano-Tubes without traditional liquid Nitrogen coolant for Mid IR camera, then one can accumulate the probability of any type of malignant tumor at every pixel over time in the comfort of privacy without religious or other concerns. Such a non-intrusive protocol alone may not have enough information to make the decision, but the changes tracked over time will be surely becoming significant. Such an ill-posed inverse heat source transfer problem can be solved because of the universal constraint of equilibrium physics governing the blackbody Planck radiation distribution, to be spatio-temporally sampled. Thus, we must gather two snapshots with two IR cameras to form a vector data X(t) per pixel to invert the matrix-vector equation X=[A]S pixel-by-pixel independently, known as a single-pixel blind sources separation (BSS). Because the unknown heat transfer matrix or the impulse response function [A] may vary from the point tumor to its neighborhood, we could not rely on neighborhood statistics as did in a popular unsupervised independent component analysis (ICA) mathematical statistical method, we instead impose the physics equilibrium condition of the minimum of Helmholtz free-energy, H = E - T °S. In case of the point breast cancer, we can assume the constant ground state energy E ° to be normalized by those benign neighborhood tissue, and then the excited state can be computed by means of Taylor series expansion in terms of the pixel I/O data. We can augment the X-ray mammogram technique with passive IR imaging to reduce the unwanted X-rays during the chemotherapy recovery. When the sequence is animated into a movie, and the recovery dynamics is played backward in time, the movie simulates the cameras' potential for early detection without suffering the PD=0.1 search uncertainty. In summary, we applied two satellite-grade dual-color IR imaging cameras and advanced military (automatic target recognition) ATR spectrum fusion algorithm at the middle wavelength IR (3 - 5μm) and long wavelength IR (8 - 12μm), which are capable to screen malignant tumors proved by the time-reverse fashion of the animated movie experiments. On the contrary, the traditional thermal breast scanning/imaging, known as thermograms over decades, was IR spectrum-blind, and limited to a single night-vision camera and the necessary waiting for the cool down period for taking a second look for change detection suffers too many environmental and personnel variabilities.

  19. Linking search space structure, run-time dynamics, and problem difficulty : a step toward demystifying tabu search.

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Whitley, L. Darrell; Howe, Adele E.; Watson, Jean-Paul

    2004-09-01

    Tabu search is one of the most effective heuristics for locating high-quality solutions to a diverse array of NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems. Despite the widespread success of tabu search, researchers have a poor understanding of many key theoretical aspects of this algorithm, including models of the high-level run-time dynamics and identification of those search space features that influence problem difficulty. We consider these questions in the context of the job-shop scheduling problem (JSP), a domain where tabu search algorithms have been shown to be remarkably effective. Previously, we demonstrated that the mean distance between random local optima and the nearestmore » optimal solution is highly correlated with problem difficulty for a well-known tabu search algorithm for the JSP introduced by Taillard. In this paper, we discuss various shortcomings of this measure and develop a new model of problem difficulty that corrects these deficiencies. We show that Taillard's algorithm can be modeled with high fidelity as a simple variant of a straightforward random walk. The random walk model accounts for nearly all of the variability in the cost required to locate both optimal and sub-optimal solutions to random JSPs, and provides an explanation for differences in the difficulty of random versus structured JSPs. Finally, we discuss and empirically substantiate two novel predictions regarding tabu search algorithm behavior. First, the method for constructing the initial solution is highly unlikely to impact the performance of tabu search. Second, tabu tenure should be selected to be as small as possible while simultaneously avoiding search stagnation; values larger than necessary lead to significant degradations in performance.« less

  20. Exhaustive Versus Randomized Searchers for Nonlinear Optimization in 21st Century Computing: Solar Application

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Sen, Syamal K.; AliShaykhian, Gholam

    2010-01-01

    We present a simple multi-dimensional exhaustive search method to obtain, in a reasonable time, the optimal solution of a nonlinear programming problem. It is more relevant in the present day non-mainframe computing scenario where an estimated 95% computing resources remains unutilized and computing speed touches petaflops. While the processor speed is doubling every 18 months, the band width is doubling every 12 months, and the hard disk space is doubling every 9 months. A randomized search algorithm or, equivalently, an evolutionary search method is often used instead of an exhaustive search algorithm. The reason is that a randomized approach is usually polynomial-time, i.e., fast while an exhaustive search method is exponential-time i.e., slow. We discuss the increasing importance of exhaustive search in optimization with the steady increase of computing power for solving many real-world problems of reasonable size. We also discuss the computational error and complexity of the search algorithm focusing on the fact that no measuring device can usually measure a quantity with an accuracy greater than 0.005%. We stress the fact that the quality of solution of the exhaustive search - a deterministic method - is better than that of randomized search. In 21 st century computing environment, exhaustive search cannot be left aside as an untouchable and it is not always exponential. We also describe a possible application of these algorithms in improving the efficiency of solar cells - a real hot topic - in the current energy crisis. These algorithms could be excellent tools in the hands of experimentalists and could save not only large amount of time needed for experiments but also could validate the theory against experimental results fast.

  1. Optimizing event selection with the random grid search

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bhat, Pushpalatha C.; Prosper, Harrison B.; Sekmen, Sezen; Stewart, Chip

    2018-07-01

    The random grid search (RGS) is a simple, but efficient, stochastic algorithm to find optimal cuts that was developed in the context of the search for the top quark at Fermilab in the mid-1990s. The algorithm, and associated code, have been enhanced recently with the introduction of two new cut types, one of which has been successfully used in searches for supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider. The RGS optimization algorithm is described along with the recent developments, which are illustrated with two examples from particle physics. One explores the optimization of the selection of vector boson fusion events in the four-lepton decay mode of the Higgs boson and the other optimizes SUSY searches using boosted objects and the razor variables.

  2. Velocity and Attenuation Structure of the Earth's Inner Core Boundary From Semi-Automatic Waveform Modeling

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Jin, J.; Song, X.; Sun, D.; Helmberger, D. V.

    2013-12-01

    The structure of the Earth's inner core boundary (ICB) is complex. Hemispherical differences and local variations of velocity and attenuation structures, as well as the ICB topography have been reported in previous studies. We are using an automatic waveform modeling method to improve the resolution of the ICB structures. The full waveforms of triplicated PKP phases at distance ranges from 120 to 165 degrees are used to model the lowermost 200 km of the outer core and the uppermost 600km of the inner core. Given a 1D velocity and attenuation model, synthetic seismograms are generated by Generalized Ray Theory. We are also experimenting 2D synthetic methods (WKM, AXISEM, and 2D FD) for 2D models (in the mantle and the inner core). The source time function is determined by observed seismic data. We use neighborhood algorithm to search for a group of models that minimize the misfit between predictions and observations. Tests on synthetic data show the efficiency of this method in resolving detailed velocity and attenuation structures of the ICB simultaneously. We are analyzing seismic record sections at dense arrays along different paths and will report our modeling and inversion results in the meeting.

  3. MIP Models and Hybrid Algorithms for Simultaneous Job Splitting and Scheduling on Unrelated Parallel Machines

    PubMed Central

    Ozmutlu, H. Cenk

    2014-01-01

    We developed mixed integer programming (MIP) models and hybrid genetic-local search algorithms for the scheduling problem of unrelated parallel machines with job sequence and machine-dependent setup times and with job splitting property. The first contribution of this paper is to introduce novel algorithms which make splitting and scheduling simultaneously with variable number of subjobs. We proposed simple chromosome structure which is constituted by random key numbers in hybrid genetic-local search algorithm (GAspLA). Random key numbers are used frequently in genetic algorithms, but it creates additional difficulty when hybrid factors in local search are implemented. We developed algorithms that satisfy the adaptation of results of local search into the genetic algorithms with minimum relocation operation of genes' random key numbers. This is the second contribution of the paper. The third contribution of this paper is three developed new MIP models which are making splitting and scheduling simultaneously. The fourth contribution of this paper is implementation of the GAspLAMIP. This implementation let us verify the optimality of GAspLA for the studied combinations. The proposed methods are tested on a set of problems taken from the literature and the results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. PMID:24977204

  4. DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Mitchell, Dean J.; Harding, Lee T.

    Isotope identification algorithms that are contained in the Gamma Detector Response and Analysis Software (GADRAS) can be used for real-time stationary measurement and search applications on platforms operating under Linux or Android operating sys-tems. Since the background radiation can vary considerably due to variations in natu-rally-occurring radioactive materials (NORM), spectral algorithms can be substantial-ly more sensitive to threat materials than search algorithms based strictly on count rate. Specific isotopes or interest can be designated for the search algorithm, which permits suppression of alarms for non-threatening sources, such as such as medical radionuclides. The same isotope identification algorithms that are usedmore » for search ap-plications can also be used to process static measurements. The isotope identification algorithms follow the same protocols as those used by the Windows version of GADRAS, so files that are created under the Windows interface can be copied direct-ly to processors on fielded sensors. The analysis algorithms contain provisions for gain adjustment and energy lineariza-tion, which enables direct processing of spectra as they are recorded by multichannel analyzers. Gain compensation is performed by utilizing photopeaks in background spectra. Incorporation of this energy calibration tasks into the analysis algorithm also eliminates one of the more difficult challenges associated with development of radia-tion detection equipment.« less

  5. A Teaching Approach from the Exhaustive Search Method to the Needleman-Wunsch Algorithm

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Xu, Zhongneng; Yang, Yayun; Huang, Beibei

    2017-01-01

    The Needleman-Wunsch algorithm has become one of the core algorithms in bioinformatics; however, this programming requires more suitable explanations for students with different major backgrounds. In supposing sample sequences and using a simple store system, the connection between the exhaustive search method and the Needleman-Wunsch algorithm…

  6. The ranking algorithm of the Coach browser for the UMLS metathesaurus.

    PubMed Central

    Harbourt, A. M.; Syed, E. J.; Hole, W. T.; Kingsland, L. C.

    1993-01-01

    This paper presents the novel ranking algorithm of the Coach Metathesaurus browser which is a major module of the Coach expert search refinement program. An example shows how the ranking algorithm can assist in creating a list of candidate terms useful in augmenting a suboptimal Grateful Med search of MEDLINE. PMID:8130570

  7. A Functional Programming Approach to AI Search Algorithms

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Panovics, Janos

    2012-01-01

    The theory and practice of search algorithms related to state-space represented problems form the major part of the introductory course of Artificial Intelligence at most of the universities and colleges offering a degree in the area of computer science. Students usually meet these algorithms only in some imperative or object-oriented language…

  8. GPU Based N-Gram String Matching Algorithm with Score Table Approach for String Searching in Many Documents

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Srinivasa, K. G.; Shree Devi, B. N.

    2017-10-01

    String searching in documents has become a tedious task with the evolution of Big Data. Generation of large data sets demand for a high performance search algorithm in areas such as text mining, information retrieval and many others. The popularity of GPU's for general purpose computing has been increasing for various applications. Therefore it is of great interest to exploit the thread feature of a GPU to provide a high performance search algorithm. This paper proposes an optimized new approach to N-gram model for string search in a number of lengthy documents and its GPU implementation. The algorithm exploits GPGPUs for searching strings in many documents employing character level N-gram matching with parallel Score Table approach and search using CUDA API. The new approach of Score table used for frequency storage of N-grams in a document, makes the search independent of the document's length and allows faster access to the frequency values, thus decreasing the search complexity. The extensive thread feature in a GPU has been exploited to enable parallel pre-processing of trigrams in a document for Score Table creation and parallel search in huge number of documents, thus speeding up the whole search process even for a large pattern size. Experiments were carried out for many documents of varied length and search strings from the standard Lorem Ipsum text on NVIDIA's GeForce GT 540M GPU with 96 cores. Results prove that the parallel approach for Score Table creation and searching gives a good speed up than the same approach executed serially.

  9. Incremental social learning in particle swarms.

    PubMed

    de Oca, Marco A Montes; Stutzle, Thomas; Van den Enden, Ken; Dorigo, Marco

    2011-04-01

    Incremental social learning (ISL) was proposed as a way to improve the scalability of systems composed of multiple learning agents. In this paper, we show that ISL can be very useful to improve the performance of population-based optimization algorithms. Our study focuses on two particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithms: a) the incremental particle swarm optimizer (IPSO), which is a PSO algorithm with a growing population size in which the initial position of new particles is biased toward the best-so-far solution, and b) the incremental particle swarm optimizer with local search (IPSOLS), in which solutions are further improved through a local search procedure. We first derive analytically the probability density function induced by the proposed initialization rule applied to new particles. Then, we compare the performance of IPSO and IPSOLS on a set of benchmark functions with that of other PSO algorithms (with and without local search) and a random restart local search algorithm. Finally, we measure the benefits of using incremental social learning on PSO algorithms by running IPSO and IPSOLS on problems with different fitness distance correlations.

  10. Ursgal, Universal Python Module Combining Common Bottom-Up Proteomics Tools for Large-Scale Analysis.

    PubMed

    Kremer, Lukas P M; Leufken, Johannes; Oyunchimeg, Purevdulam; Schulze, Stefan; Fufezan, Christian

    2016-03-04

    Proteomics data integration has become a broad field with a variety of programs offering innovative algorithms to analyze increasing amounts of data. Unfortunately, this software diversity leads to many problems as soon as the data is analyzed using more than one algorithm for the same task. Although it was shown that the combination of multiple peptide identification algorithms yields more robust results, it is only recently that unified approaches are emerging; however, workflows that, for example, aim to optimize search parameters or that employ cascaded style searches can only be made accessible if data analysis becomes not only unified but also and most importantly scriptable. Here we introduce Ursgal, a Python interface to many commonly used bottom-up proteomics tools and to additional auxiliary programs. Complex workflows can thus be composed using the Python scripting language using a few lines of code. Ursgal is easily extensible, and we have made several database search engines (X!Tandem, OMSSA, MS-GF+, Myrimatch, MS Amanda), statistical postprocessing algorithms (qvality, Percolator), and one algorithm that combines statistically postprocessed outputs from multiple search engines ("combined FDR") accessible as an interface in Python. Furthermore, we have implemented a new algorithm ("combined PEP") that combines multiple search engines employing elements of "combined FDR", PeptideShaker, and Bayes' theorem.

  11. Robust local search for spacecraft operations using adaptive noise

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Fukunaga, Alex S.; Rabideau, Gregg; Chien, Steve

    2004-01-01

    Randomization is a standard technique for improving the performance of local search algorithms for constraint satisfaction. However, it is well-known that local search algorithms are constraints satisfaction. However, it is well-known that local search algorithms are to the noise values selected. We investigate the use of an adaptive noise mechanism in an iterative repair-based planner/scheduler for spacecraft operations. Preliminary results indicate that adaptive noise makes the use of randomized repair moves safe and robust; that is, using adaptive noise makes it possible to consistently achieve, performance comparable with the best tuned noise setting without the need for manually tuning the noise parameter.

  12. Vehicle-triggered video compression/decompression for fast and efficient searching in large video databases

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bulan, Orhan; Bernal, Edgar A.; Loce, Robert P.; Wu, Wencheng

    2013-03-01

    Video cameras are widely deployed along city streets, interstate highways, traffic lights, stop signs and toll booths by entities that perform traffic monitoring and law enforcement. The videos captured by these cameras are typically compressed and stored in large databases. Performing a rapid search for a specific vehicle within a large database of compressed videos is often required and can be a time-critical life or death situation. In this paper, we propose video compression and decompression algorithms that enable fast and efficient vehicle or, more generally, event searches in large video databases. The proposed algorithm selects reference frames (i.e., I-frames) based on a vehicle having been detected at a specified position within the scene being monitored while compressing a video sequence. A search for a specific vehicle in the compressed video stream is performed across the reference frames only, which does not require decompression of the full video sequence as in traditional search algorithms. Our experimental results on videos captured in a local road show that the proposed algorithm significantly reduces the search space (thus reducing time and computational resources) in vehicle search tasks within compressed video streams, particularly those captured in light traffic volume conditions.

  13. New knowledge-based genetic algorithm for excavator boom structural optimization

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hua, Haiyan; Lin, Shuwen

    2014-03-01

    Due to the insufficiency of utilizing knowledge to guide the complex optimal searching, existing genetic algorithms fail to effectively solve excavator boom structural optimization problem. To improve the optimization efficiency and quality, a new knowledge-based real-coded genetic algorithm is proposed. A dual evolution mechanism combining knowledge evolution with genetic algorithm is established to extract, handle and utilize the shallow and deep implicit constraint knowledge to guide the optimal searching of genetic algorithm circularly. Based on this dual evolution mechanism, knowledge evolution and population evolution can be connected by knowledge influence operators to improve the configurability of knowledge and genetic operators. Then, the new knowledge-based selection operator, crossover operator and mutation operator are proposed to integrate the optimal process knowledge and domain culture to guide the excavator boom structural optimization. Eight kinds of testing algorithms, which include different genetic operators, are taken as examples to solve the structural optimization of a medium-sized excavator boom. By comparing the results of optimization, it is shown that the algorithm including all the new knowledge-based genetic operators can more remarkably improve the evolutionary rate and searching ability than other testing algorithms, which demonstrates the effectiveness of knowledge for guiding optimal searching. The proposed knowledge-based genetic algorithm by combining multi-level knowledge evolution with numerical optimization provides a new effective method for solving the complex engineering optimization problem.

  14. An Experience Oriented-Convergence Improved Gravitational Search Algorithm for Minimum Variance Distortionless Response Beamforming Optimum

    PubMed Central

    Darzi, Soodabeh; Tiong, Sieh Kiong; Tariqul Islam, Mohammad; Rezai Soleymanpour, Hassan; Kibria, Salehin

    2016-01-01

    An experience oriented-convergence improved gravitational search algorithm (ECGSA) based on two new modifications, searching through the best experiments and using of a dynamic gravitational damping coefficient (α), is introduced in this paper. ECGSA saves its best fitness function evaluations and uses those as the agents’ positions in searching process. In this way, the optimal found trajectories are retained and the search starts from these trajectories, which allow the algorithm to avoid the local optimums. Also, the agents can move faster in search space to obtain better exploration during the first stage of the searching process and they can converge rapidly to the optimal solution at the final stage of the search process by means of the proposed dynamic gravitational damping coefficient. The performance of ECGSA has been evaluated by applying it to eight standard benchmark functions along with six complicated composite test functions. It is also applied to adaptive beamforming problem as a practical issue to improve the weight vectors computed by minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamforming technique. The results of implementation of the proposed algorithm are compared with some well-known heuristic methods and verified the proposed method in both reaching to optimal solutions and robustness. PMID:27399904

  15. Experimental implementation of local adiabatic evolution algorithms by an NMR quantum information processor.

    PubMed

    Mitra, Avik; Ghosh, Arindam; Das, Ranabir; Patel, Apoorva; Kumar, Anil

    2005-12-01

    Quantum adiabatic algorithm is a method of solving computational problems by evolving the ground state of a slowly varying Hamiltonian. The technique uses evolution of the ground state of a slowly varying Hamiltonian to reach the required output state. In some cases, such as the adiabatic versions of Grover's search algorithm and Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm, applying the global adiabatic evolution yields a complexity similar to their classical algorithms. However, using the local adiabatic evolution, the algorithms given by J. Roland and N.J. Cerf for Grover's search [J. Roland, N.J. Cerf, Quantum search by local adiabatic evolution, Phys. Rev. A 65 (2002) 042308] and by Saurya Das, Randy Kobes, and Gabor Kunstatter for the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm [S. Das, R. Kobes, G. Kunstatter, Adiabatic quantum computation and Deutsh's algorithm, Phys. Rev. A 65 (2002) 062301], yield a complexity of order N (where N=2(n) and n is the number of qubits). In this paper, we report the experimental implementation of these local adiabatic evolution algorithms on a 2-qubit quantum information processor, by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.

  16. Hybrid-optimization strategy for the communication of large-scale Kinetic Monte Carlo simulation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wu, Baodong; Li, Shigang; Zhang, Yunquan; Nie, Ningming

    2017-02-01

    The parallel Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) algorithm based on domain decomposition has been widely used in large-scale physical simulations. However, the communication overhead of the parallel KMC algorithm is critical, and severely degrades the overall performance and scalability. In this paper, we present a hybrid optimization strategy to reduce the communication overhead for the parallel KMC simulations. We first propose a communication aggregation algorithm to reduce the total number of messages and eliminate the communication redundancy. Then, we utilize the shared memory to reduce the memory copy overhead of the intra-node communication. Finally, we optimize the communication scheduling using the neighborhood collective operations. We demonstrate the scalability and high performance of our hybrid optimization strategy by both theoretical and experimental analysis. Results show that the optimized KMC algorithm exhibits better performance and scalability than the well-known open-source library-SPPARKS. On 32-node Xeon E5-2680 cluster (total 640 cores), the optimized algorithm reduces the communication time by 24.8% compared with SPPARKS.

  17. The study on the control strategy of micro grid considering the economy of energy storage operation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ma, Zhiwei; Liu, Yiqun; Wang, Xin; Li, Bei; Zeng, Ming

    2017-08-01

    To optimize the running of micro grid to guarantee the supply and demand balance of electricity, and to promote the utilization of renewable energy. The control strategy of micro grid energy storage system is studied. Firstly, the mixed integer linear programming model is established based on the receding horizon control. Secondly, the modified cuckoo search algorithm is proposed to calculate the model. Finally, a case study is carried out to study the signal characteristic of micro grid and batteries under the optimal control strategy, and the convergence of the modified cuckoo search algorithm is compared with others to verify the validity of the proposed model and method. The results show that, different micro grid running targets can affect the control strategy of energy storage system, which further affect the signal characteristics of the micro grid. Meanwhile, the convergent speed, computing time and the economy of the modified cuckoo search algorithm are improved compared with the traditional cuckoo search algorithm and differential evolution algorithm.

  18. Feature selection method based on multi-fractal dimension and harmony search algorithm and its application

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhang, Chen; Ni, Zhiwei; Ni, Liping; Tang, Na

    2016-10-01

    Feature selection is an important method of data preprocessing in data mining. In this paper, a novel feature selection method based on multi-fractal dimension and harmony search algorithm is proposed. Multi-fractal dimension is adopted as the evaluation criterion of feature subset, which can determine the number of selected features. An improved harmony search algorithm is used as the search strategy to improve the efficiency of feature selection. The performance of the proposed method is compared with that of other feature selection algorithms on UCI data-sets. Besides, the proposed method is also used to predict the daily average concentration of PM2.5 in China. Experimental results show that the proposed method can obtain competitive results in terms of both prediction accuracy and the number of selected features.

  19. Power law-based local search in spider monkey optimisation for lower order system modelling

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sharma, Ajay; Sharma, Harish; Bhargava, Annapurna; Sharma, Nirmala

    2017-01-01

    The nature-inspired algorithms (NIAs) have shown efficiency to solve many complex real-world optimisation problems. The efficiency of NIAs is measured by their ability to find adequate results within a reasonable amount of time, rather than an ability to guarantee the optimal solution. This paper presents a solution for lower order system modelling using spider monkey optimisation (SMO) algorithm to obtain a better approximation for lower order systems and reflects almost original higher order system's characteristics. Further, a local search strategy, namely, power law-based local search is incorporated with SMO. The proposed strategy is named as power law-based local search in SMO (PLSMO). The efficiency, accuracy and reliability of the proposed algorithm is tested over 20 well-known benchmark functions. Then, the PLSMO algorithm is applied to solve the lower order system modelling problem.

  20. Fast, Inclusive Searches for Geographic Names Using Digraphs

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Donato, David I.

    2008-01-01

    An algorithm specifies how to quickly identify names that approximately match any specified name when searching a list or database of geographic names. Based on comparisons of the digraphs (ordered letter pairs) contained in geographic names, this algorithmic technique identifies approximately matching names by applying an artificial but useful measure of name similarity. A digraph index enables computer name searches that are carried out using this technique to be fast enough for deployment in a Web application. This technique, which is a member of the class of n-gram algorithms, is related to, but distinct from, the soundex, PHONIX, and metaphone phonetic algorithms. Despite this technique's tendency to return some counterintuitive approximate matches, it is an effective aid for fast, inclusive searches for geographic names when the exact name sought, or its correct spelling, is unknown.

  1. A fuzzy discrete harmony search algorithm applied to annual cost reduction in radial distribution systems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ameli, Kazem; Alfi, Alireza; Aghaebrahimi, Mohammadreza

    2016-09-01

    Similarly to other optimization algorithms, harmony search (HS) is quite sensitive to the tuning parameters. Several variants of the HS algorithm have been developed to decrease the parameter-dependency character of HS. This article proposes a novel version of the discrete harmony search (DHS) algorithm, namely fuzzy discrete harmony search (FDHS), for optimizing capacitor placement in distribution systems. In the FDHS, a fuzzy system is employed to dynamically adjust two parameter values, i.e. harmony memory considering rate and pitch adjusting rate, with respect to normalized mean fitness of the harmony memory. The key aspect of FDHS is that it needs substantially fewer iterations to reach convergence in comparison with classical discrete harmony search (CDHS). To the authors' knowledge, this is the first application of DHS to specify appropriate capacitor locations and their best amounts in the distribution systems. Simulations are provided for 10-, 34-, 85- and 141-bus distribution systems using CDHS and FDHS. The results show the effectiveness of FDHS over previous related studies.

  2. An Asymptotically-Optimal Sampling-Based Algorithm for Bi-directional Motion Planning

    PubMed Central

    Starek, Joseph A.; Gomez, Javier V.; Schmerling, Edward; Janson, Lucas; Moreno, Luis; Pavone, Marco

    2015-01-01

    Bi-directional search is a widely used strategy to increase the success and convergence rates of sampling-based motion planning algorithms. Yet, few results are available that merge both bi-directional search and asymptotic optimality into existing optimal planners, such as PRM*, RRT*, and FMT*. The objective of this paper is to fill this gap. Specifically, this paper presents a bi-directional, sampling-based, asymptotically-optimal algorithm named Bi-directional FMT* (BFMT*) that extends the Fast Marching Tree (FMT*) algorithm to bidirectional search while preserving its key properties, chiefly lazy search and asymptotic optimality through convergence in probability. BFMT* performs a two-source, lazy dynamic programming recursion over a set of randomly-drawn samples, correspondingly generating two search trees: one in cost-to-come space from the initial configuration and another in cost-to-go space from the goal configuration. Numerical experiments illustrate the advantages of BFMT* over its unidirectional counterpart, as well as a number of other state-of-the-art planners. PMID:27004130

  3. Clustering Qualitative Data Based on Binary Equivalence Relations: Neighborhood Search Heuristics for the Clique Partitioning Problem

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brusco, Michael J.; Kohn, Hans-Friedrich

    2009-01-01

    The clique partitioning problem (CPP) requires the establishment of an equivalence relation for the vertices of a graph such that the sum of the edge costs associated with the relation is minimized. The CPP has important applications for the social sciences because it provides a framework for clustering objects measured on a collection of nominal…

  4. The Workshop on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (2nd) Held in Orcas Island, Washington on 2-4 May 1994

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1994-05-04

    gen- word pussies . In Proceedings of the Eighth Na- erate fewer than c clauses so the boundary of the grid tional Conference on Artificial Intelligence...checking. (2) (FC - NI), forward-checking search branches are bundled and visited once. with the advantage of neighborhood inter- If a dead -end occurs

  5. Inclusion of Disaster Resiliency in City/Neighborhood Comprehensive Plans

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2017-09-01

    collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instruction, searching existing data sources...gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information . Send comments regarding this burden estimate or...any other aspect of this collection of information , including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington headquarters Services, Directorate

  6. "I Do but I Don't": The Search for Identity in Urban African American Adolescents

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gullan, Rebecca Lakin; Hoffman, Beth Necowitz; Leff, Stephen S.

    2011-01-01

    Achievement of a coherent and strong sense of self is critical to positive academic outcomes for urban minority youth. The present study utilized a mixed-methods approach to explore key aspects of identity development for African American adolescents living in a high-poverty, urban neighborhood. Results suggest that efforts to develop a sense of…

  7. On the Effectiveness of Nature-Inspired Metaheuristic Algorithms for Performing Phase Equilibrium Thermodynamic Calculations

    PubMed Central

    Fateen, Seif-Eddeen K.; Bonilla-Petriciolet, Adrian

    2014-01-01

    The search for reliable and efficient global optimization algorithms for solving phase stability and phase equilibrium problems in applied thermodynamics is an ongoing area of research. In this study, we evaluated and compared the reliability and efficiency of eight selected nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms for solving difficult phase stability and phase equilibrium problems. These algorithms are the cuckoo search (CS), intelligent firefly (IFA), bat (BA), artificial bee colony (ABC), MAKHA, a hybrid between monkey algorithm and krill herd algorithm, covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMAES), magnetic charged system search (MCSS), and bare bones particle swarm optimization (BBPSO). The results clearly showed that CS is the most reliable of all methods as it successfully solved all thermodynamic problems tested in this study. CS proved to be a promising nature-inspired optimization method to perform applied thermodynamic calculations for process design. PMID:24967430

  8. On the effectiveness of nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms for performing phase equilibrium thermodynamic calculations.

    PubMed

    Fateen, Seif-Eddeen K; Bonilla-Petriciolet, Adrian

    2014-01-01

    The search for reliable and efficient global optimization algorithms for solving phase stability and phase equilibrium problems in applied thermodynamics is an ongoing area of research. In this study, we evaluated and compared the reliability and efficiency of eight selected nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms for solving difficult phase stability and phase equilibrium problems. These algorithms are the cuckoo search (CS), intelligent firefly (IFA), bat (BA), artificial bee colony (ABC), MAKHA, a hybrid between monkey algorithm and krill herd algorithm, covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMAES), magnetic charged system search (MCSS), and bare bones particle swarm optimization (BBPSO). The results clearly showed that CS is the most reliable of all methods as it successfully solved all thermodynamic problems tested in this study. CS proved to be a promising nature-inspired optimization method to perform applied thermodynamic calculations for process design.

  9. A systematic review of validated methods to capture myopericarditis using administrative or claims data.

    PubMed

    Idowu, Rachel T; Carnahan, Ryan; Sathe, Nila A; McPheeters, Melissa L

    2013-12-30

    To identify algorithms that can capture incident cases of myocarditis and pericarditis in administrative and claims databases; these algorithms can eventually be used to identify cardiac inflammatory adverse events following vaccine administration. We searched MEDLINE from 1991 to September 2012 using controlled vocabulary and key terms related to myocarditis. We also searched the reference lists of included studies. Two investigators independently assessed the full text of studies against pre-determined inclusion criteria. Two reviewers independently extracted data regarding participant and algorithm characteristics as well as study conduct. Nine publications (including one study reported in two publications) met criteria for inclusion. Two studies performed medical record review in order to confirm that these coding algorithms actually captured patients with the disease of interest. One of these studies identified five potential cases, none of which were confirmed as acute myocarditis upon review. The other study, which employed a search algorithm based on diagnostic surveillance (using ICD-9 codes 420.90, 420.99, 422.90, 422.91 and 429.0) and sentinel reporting, identified 59 clinically confirmed cases of myopericarditis among 492,671 United States military service personnel who received smallpox vaccine between 2002 and 2003. Neither study provided algorithm validation statistics (positive predictive value, sensitivity, or specificity). A validated search algorithm is currently unavailable for identifying incident cases of pericarditis or myocarditis. Several authors have published unvalidated ICD-9-based search algorithms that appear to capture myocarditis events occurring in the context of other underlying cardiac or autoimmune conditions. Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  10. An Improved Heuristic Method for Subgraph Isomorphism Problem

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Xiang, Yingzhuo; Han, Jiesi; Xu, Haijiang; Guo, Xin

    2017-09-01

    This paper focus on the subgraph isomorphism (SI) problem. We present an improved genetic algorithm, a heuristic method to search the optimal solution. The contribution of this paper is that we design a dedicated crossover algorithm and a new fitness function to measure the evolution process. Experiments show our improved genetic algorithm performs better than other heuristic methods. For a large graph, such as a subgraph of 40 nodes, our algorithm outperforms the traditional tree search algorithms. We find that the performance of our improved genetic algorithm does not decrease as the number of nodes in prototype graphs.

  11. A hybrid monkey search algorithm for clustering analysis.

    PubMed

    Chen, Xin; Zhou, Yongquan; Luo, Qifang

    2014-01-01

    Clustering is a popular data analysis and data mining technique. The k-means clustering algorithm is one of the most commonly used methods. However, it highly depends on the initial solution and is easy to fall into local optimum solution. In view of the disadvantages of the k-means method, this paper proposed a hybrid monkey algorithm based on search operator of artificial bee colony algorithm for clustering analysis and experiment on synthetic and real life datasets to show that the algorithm has a good performance than that of the basic monkey algorithm for clustering analysis.

  12. Optimizing event selection with the random grid search

    DOE PAGES

    Bhat, Pushpalatha C.; Prosper, Harrison B.; Sekmen, Sezen; ...

    2018-02-27

    In this paper, the random grid search (RGS) is a simple, but efficient, stochastic algorithm to find optimal cuts that was developed in the context of the search for the top quark at Fermilab in the mid-1990s. The algorithm, and associated code, have been enhanced recently with the introduction of two new cut types, one of which has been successfully used in searches for supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider. The RGS optimization algorithm is described along with the recent developments, which are illustrated with two examples from particle physics. One explores the optimization of the selection of vector bosonmore » fusion events in the four-lepton decay mode of the Higgs boson and the other optimizes SUSY searches using boosted objects and the razor variables.« less

  13. Optimizing Event Selection with the Random Grid Search

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Bhat, Pushpalatha C.; Prosper, Harrison B.; Sekmen, Sezen

    2017-06-29

    The random grid search (RGS) is a simple, but efficient, stochastic algorithm to find optimal cuts that was developed in the context of the search for the top quark at Fermilab in the mid-1990s. The algorithm, and associated code, have been enhanced recently with the introduction of two new cut types, one of which has been successfully used in searches for supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider. The RGS optimization algorithm is described along with the recent developments, which are illustrated with two examples from particle physics. One explores the optimization of the selection of vector boson fusion events inmore » the four-lepton decay mode of the Higgs boson and the other optimizes SUSY searches using boosted objects and the razor variables.« less

  14. Optimizing event selection with the random grid search

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Bhat, Pushpalatha C.; Prosper, Harrison B.; Sekmen, Sezen

    In this paper, the random grid search (RGS) is a simple, but efficient, stochastic algorithm to find optimal cuts that was developed in the context of the search for the top quark at Fermilab in the mid-1990s. The algorithm, and associated code, have been enhanced recently with the introduction of two new cut types, one of which has been successfully used in searches for supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider. The RGS optimization algorithm is described along with the recent developments, which are illustrated with two examples from particle physics. One explores the optimization of the selection of vector bosonmore » fusion events in the four-lepton decay mode of the Higgs boson and the other optimizes SUSY searches using boosted objects and the razor variables.« less

  15. Multipass Target Search in Natural Environments

    PubMed Central

    Otte, Michael W.; Sofge, Donald; Gupta, Satyandra K.

    2017-01-01

    Consider a disaster scenario where search and rescue workers must search difficult to access buildings during an earthquake or flood. Often, finding survivors a few hours sooner results in a dramatic increase in saved lives, suggesting the use of drones for expedient rescue operations. Entropy can be used to quantify the generation and resolution of uncertainty. When searching for targets, maximizing mutual information of future sensor observations will minimize expected target location uncertainty by minimizing the entropy of the future estimate. Motion planning for multi-target autonomous search requires planning over an area with an imperfect sensor and may require multiple passes, which is hindered by the submodularity property of mutual information. Further, mission duration constraints must be handled accordingly, requiring consideration of the vehicle’s dynamics to generate feasible trajectories and must plan trajectories spanning the entire mission duration, something which most information gathering algorithms are incapable of doing. If unanticipated changes occur in an uncertain environment, new plans must be generated quickly. In addition, planning multipass trajectories requires evaluating path dependent rewards, requiring planning in the space of all previously selected actions, compounding the problem. We present an anytime algorithm for autonomous multipass target search in natural environments. The algorithm is capable of generating long duration dynamically feasible multipass coverage plans that maximize mutual information using a variety of techniques such as ϵ-admissible heuristics to speed up the search. To the authors’ knowledge this is the first attempt at efficiently solving multipass target search problems of such long duration. The proposed algorithm is based on best first branch and bound and is benchmarked against state of the art algorithms adapted to the problem in natural Simplex environments, gathering the most information in the given search time. PMID:29099087

  16. GSNFS: Gene subnetwork biomarker identification of lung cancer expression data.

    PubMed

    Doungpan, Narumol; Engchuan, Worrawat; Chan, Jonathan H; Meechai, Asawin

    2016-12-05

    Gene expression has been used to identify disease gene biomarkers, but there are ongoing challenges. Single gene or gene-set biomarkers are inadequate to provide sufficient understanding of complex disease mechanisms and the relationship among those genes. Network-based methods have thus been considered for inferring the interaction within a group of genes to further study the disease mechanism. Recently, the Gene-Network-based Feature Set (GNFS), which is capable of handling case-control and multiclass expression for gene biomarker identification, has been proposed, partly taking into account of network topology. However, its performance relies on a greedy search for building subnetworks and thus requires further improvement. In this work, we establish a new approach named Gene Sub-Network-based Feature Selection (GSNFS) by implementing the GNFS framework with two proposed searching and scoring algorithms, namely gene-set-based (GS) search and parent-node-based (PN) search, to identify subnetworks. An additional dataset is used to validate the results. The two proposed searching algorithms of the GSNFS method for subnetwork expansion are concerned with the degree of connectivity and the scoring scheme for building subnetworks and their topology. For each iteration of expansion, the neighbour genes of a current subnetwork, whose expression data improved the overall subnetwork score, is recruited. While the GS search calculated the subnetwork score using an activity score of a current subnetwork and the gene expression values of its neighbours, the PN search uses the expression value of the corresponding parent of each neighbour gene. Four lung cancer expression datasets were used for subnetwork identification. In addition, using pathway data and protein-protein interaction as network data in order to consider the interaction among significant genes were discussed. Classification was performed to compare the performance of the identified gene subnetworks with three subnetwork identification algorithms. The two searching algorithms resulted in better classification and gene/gene-set agreement compared to the original greedy search of the GNFS method. The identified lung cancer subnetwork using the proposed searching algorithm resulted in an improvement of the cross-dataset validation and an increase in the consistency of findings between two independent datasets. The homogeneity measurement of the datasets was conducted to assess dataset compatibility in cross-dataset validation. The lung cancer dataset with higher homogeneity showed a better result when using the GS search while the dataset with low homogeneity showed a better result when using the PN search. The 10-fold cross-dataset validation on the independent lung cancer datasets showed higher classification performance of the proposed algorithms when compared with the greedy search in the original GNFS method. The proposed searching algorithms provide a higher number of genes in the subnetwork expansion step than the greedy algorithm. As a result, the performance of the subnetworks identified from the GSNFS method was improved in terms of classification performance and gene/gene-set level agreement depending on the homogeneity of the datasets used in the analysis. Some common genes obtained from the four datasets using different searching algorithms are genes known to play a role in lung cancer. The improvement of classification performance and the gene/gene-set level agreement, and the biological relevance indicated the effectiveness of the GSNFS method for gene subnetwork identification using expression data.

  17. Nonuniformity correction for an infrared focal plane array based on diamond search block matching.

    PubMed

    Sheng-Hui, Rong; Hui-Xin, Zhou; Han-Lin, Qin; Rui, Lai; Kun, Qian

    2016-05-01

    In scene-based nonuniformity correction algorithms, artificial ghosting and image blurring degrade the correction quality severely. In this paper, an improved algorithm based on the diamond search block matching algorithm and the adaptive learning rate is proposed. First, accurate transform pairs between two adjacent frames are estimated by the diamond search block matching algorithm. Then, based on the error between the corresponding transform pairs, the gradient descent algorithm is applied to update correction parameters. During the process of gradient descent, the local standard deviation and a threshold are utilized to control the learning rate to avoid the accumulation of matching error. Finally, the nonuniformity correction would be realized by a linear model with updated correction parameters. The performance of the proposed algorithm is thoroughly studied with four real infrared image sequences. Experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm can reduce the nonuniformity with less ghosting artifacts in moving areas and can also overcome the problem of image blurring in static areas.

  18. Grover's unstructured search by using a transverse field

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Jiang, Zhang; Rieffel, Eleanor; Wang, Zhihui

    2017-04-01

    We design a circuit-based quantum algorithm to search for a needle in a haystack, giving the same quadratic speedup achieved by Grover's original algorithm. In our circuit-based algorithm, the problem Hamiltonian (oracle) and a transverse field (instead of Grover's diffusion operator) are applied to the system alternatively. We construct a periodic time sequence such that the resultant unitary drives a closed transition between two states, which have high degrees of overlap with the initial state (even superposition of all states) and the target state, respectively. Let N =2n be the size of the search space. The transition rate in our algorithm is of order Θ(1 /√{ N}) , and the overlaps are of order Θ(1) , yielding a nearly optimal query complexity of T =√{ N}(π / 2√{ 2}) . Our algorithm is inspired by a class of algorithms proposed by Farhi et al., namely the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA); our method offers a route to optimizing the parameters in QAOA by restricting them to be periodic in time.

  19. DFT Performance Prediction in FFTW

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gu, Liang; Li, Xiaoming

    Fastest Fourier Transform in the West (FFTW) is an adaptive FFT library that generates highly efficient Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) implementations. It is one of the fastest FFT libraries available and it outperforms many adaptive or hand-tuned DFT libraries. Its success largely relies on the huge search space spanned by several FFT algorithms and a set of compiler generated C code (called codelets) for small size DFTs. FFTW empirically finds the best algorithm by measuring the performance of different algorithm combinations. Although the empirical search works very well for FFTW, the search process does not explain why the best plan found performs best, and the search overhead grows polynomially as the DFT size increases. The opposite of empirical search is model-driven optimization. However, it is widely believed that model-driven optimization is inferior to empirical search and is particularly powerless to solve problems as complex as the optimization of DFT.

  20. A Globally Convergent Augmented Lagrangian Pattern Search Algorithm for Optimization with General Constraints and Simple Bounds

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Lewis, Robert Michael; Torczon, Virginia

    1998-01-01

    We give a pattern search adaptation of an augmented Lagrangian method due to Conn, Gould, and Toint. The algorithm proceeds by successive bound constrained minimization of an augmented Lagrangian. In the pattern search adaptation we solve this subproblem approximately using a bound constrained pattern search method. The stopping criterion proposed by Conn, Gould, and Toint for the solution of this subproblem requires explicit knowledge of derivatives. Such information is presumed absent in pattern search methods; however, we show how we can replace this with a stopping criterion based on the pattern size in a way that preserves the convergence properties of the original algorithm. In this way we proceed by successive, inexact, bound constrained minimization without knowing exactly how inexact the minimization is. So far as we know, this is the first provably convergent direct search method for general nonlinear programming.

  1. A novel line segment detection algorithm based on graph search

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhao, Hong-dan; Liu, Guo-ying; Song, Xu

    2018-02-01

    To overcome the problem of extracting line segment from an image, a method of line segment detection was proposed based on the graph search algorithm. After obtaining the edge detection result of the image, the candidate straight line segments are obtained in four directions. For the candidate straight line segments, their adjacency relationships are depicted by a graph model, based on which the depth-first search algorithm is employed to determine how many adjacent line segments need to be merged. Finally we use the least squares method to fit the detected straight lines. The comparative experimental results verify that the proposed algorithm has achieved better results than the line segment detector (LSD).

  2. Fast Nonparametric Machine Learning Algorithms for High-Dimensional Massive Data and Applications

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2006-03-01

    know the probability of that from Lemma 2. Using the union bound, we know that for any query q, the probability that i-am-feeling-lucky search algorithm...and each point in a d-dimensional space, a naive k-NN search needs to do a linear scan of T for every single query q, and thus the computational time...algorithm based on partition trees with priority search , and give an expected query time O((1/)d log n). But the constant in the O((1/)d log n

  3. A quasi-Newton algorithm for large-scale nonlinear equations.

    PubMed

    Huang, Linghua

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, the algorithm for large-scale nonlinear equations is designed by the following steps: (i) a conjugate gradient (CG) algorithm is designed as a sub-algorithm to obtain the initial points of the main algorithm, where the sub-algorithm's initial point does not have any restrictions; (ii) a quasi-Newton algorithm with the initial points given by sub-algorithm is defined as main algorithm, where a new nonmonotone line search technique is presented to get the step length [Formula: see text]. The given nonmonotone line search technique can avoid computing the Jacobian matrix. The global convergence and the [Formula: see text]-order convergent rate of the main algorithm are established under suitable conditions. Numerical results show that the proposed method is competitive with a similar method for large-scale problems.

  4. MDTS: automatic complex materials design using Monte Carlo tree search.

    PubMed

    M Dieb, Thaer; Ju, Shenghong; Yoshizoe, Kazuki; Hou, Zhufeng; Shiomi, Junichiro; Tsuda, Koji

    2017-01-01

    Complex materials design is often represented as a black-box combinatorial optimization problem. In this paper, we present a novel python library called MDTS (Materials Design using Tree Search). Our algorithm employs a Monte Carlo tree search approach, which has shown exceptional performance in computer Go game. Unlike evolutionary algorithms that require user intervention to set parameters appropriately, MDTS has no tuning parameters and works autonomously in various problems. In comparison to a Bayesian optimization package, our algorithm showed competitive search efficiency and superior scalability. We succeeded in designing large Silicon-Germanium (Si-Ge) alloy structures that Bayesian optimization could not deal with due to excessive computational cost. MDTS is available at https://github.com/tsudalab/MDTS.

  5. MDTS: automatic complex materials design using Monte Carlo tree search

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Dieb, Thaer M.; Ju, Shenghong; Yoshizoe, Kazuki; Hou, Zhufeng; Shiomi, Junichiro; Tsuda, Koji

    2017-12-01

    Complex materials design is often represented as a black-box combinatorial optimization problem. In this paper, we present a novel python library called MDTS (Materials Design using Tree Search). Our algorithm employs a Monte Carlo tree search approach, which has shown exceptional performance in computer Go game. Unlike evolutionary algorithms that require user intervention to set parameters appropriately, MDTS has no tuning parameters and works autonomously in various problems. In comparison to a Bayesian optimization package, our algorithm showed competitive search efficiency and superior scalability. We succeeded in designing large Silicon-Germanium (Si-Ge) alloy structures that Bayesian optimization could not deal with due to excessive computational cost. MDTS is available at https://github.com/tsudalab/MDTS.

  6. A Cooperative Search and Coverage Algorithm with Controllable Revisit and Connectivity Maintenance for Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

    PubMed

    Liu, Zhong; Gao, Xiaoguang; Fu, Xiaowei

    2018-05-08

    In this paper, we mainly study a cooperative search and coverage algorithm for a given bounded rectangle region, which contains several unknown stationary targets, by a team of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with non-ideal sensors and limited communication ranges. Our goal is to minimize the search time, while gathering more information about the environment and finding more targets. For this purpose, a novel cooperative search and coverage algorithm with controllable revisit mechanism is presented. Firstly, as the representation of the environment, the cognitive maps that included the target probability map (TPM), the uncertain map (UM), and the digital pheromone map (DPM) are constituted. We also design a distributed update and fusion scheme for the cognitive map. This update and fusion scheme can guarantee that each one of the cognitive maps converges to the same one, which reflects the targets’ true existence or absence in each cell of the search region. Secondly, we develop a controllable revisit mechanism based on the DPM. This mechanism can concentrate the UAVs to revisit sub-areas that have a large target probability or high uncertainty. Thirdly, in the frame of distributed receding horizon optimizing, a path planning algorithm for the multi-UAVs cooperative search and coverage is designed. In the path planning algorithm, the movement of the UAVs is restricted by the potential fields to meet the requirements of avoiding collision and maintaining connectivity constraints. Moreover, using the minimum spanning tree (MST) topology optimization strategy, we can obtain a tradeoff between the search coverage enhancement and the connectivity maintenance. The feasibility of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by comparison simulations by way of analyzing the effects of the controllable revisit mechanism and the connectivity maintenance scheme. The Monte Carlo method is employed to validate the influence of the number of UAVs, the sensing radius, the detection and false alarm probabilities, and the communication range on the proposed algorithm.

  7. Comparison of genetic algorithm methods for fuel management optimization

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    DeChaine, M.D.; Feltus, M.A.

    1995-12-31

    The CIGARO system was developed for genetic algorithm fuel management optimization. Tests are performed to find the best fuel location swap mutation operator probability and to compare genetic algorithm to a truly random search method. Tests showed the fuel swap probability should be between 0% and 10%, and a 50% definitely hampered the optimization. The genetic algorithm performed significantly better than the random search method, which did not even satisfy the peak normalized power constraint.

  8. A fast hybrid algorithm combining regularized motion tracking and predictive search for reducing the occurrence of large displacement errors.

    PubMed

    Jiang, Jingfeng; Hall, Timothy J

    2011-04-01

    A hybrid approach that inherits both the robustness of the regularized motion tracking approach and the efficiency of the predictive search approach is reported. The basic idea is to use regularized speckle tracking to obtain high-quality seeds in an explorative search that can be used in the subsequent intelligent predictive search. The performance of the hybrid speckle-tracking algorithm was compared with three published speckle-tracking methods using in vivo breast lesion data. We found that the hybrid algorithm provided higher displacement quality metric values, lower root mean squared errors compared with a locally smoothed displacement field, and higher improvement ratios compared with the classic block-matching algorithm. On the basis of these comparisons, we concluded that the hybrid method can further enhance the accuracy of speckle tracking compared with its real-time counterparts, at the expense of slightly higher computational demands. © 2011 IEEE

  9. Modified reactive tabu search for the symmetric traveling salesman problems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lim, Yai-Fung; Hong, Pei-Yee; Ramli, Razamin; Khalid, Ruzelan

    2013-09-01

    Reactive tabu search (RTS) is an improved method of tabu search (TS) and it dynamically adjusts tabu list size based on how the search is performed. RTS can avoid disadvantage of TS which is in the parameter tuning in tabu list size. In this paper, we proposed a modified RTS approach for solving symmetric traveling salesman problems (TSP). The tabu list size of the proposed algorithm depends on the number of iterations when the solutions do not override the aspiration level to achieve a good balance between diversification and intensification. The proposed algorithm was tested on seven chosen benchmarked problems of symmetric TSP. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with that of the TS by using empirical testing, benchmark solution and simple probabilistic analysis in order to validate the quality of solution. The computational results and comparisons show that the proposed algorithm provides a better quality solution than that of the TS.

  10. Annealing Ant Colony Optimization with Mutation Operator for Solving TSP.

    PubMed

    Mohsen, Abdulqader M

    2016-01-01

    Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) has been successfully applied to solve a wide range of combinatorial optimization problems such as minimum spanning tree, traveling salesman problem, and quadratic assignment problem. Basic ACO has drawbacks of trapping into local minimum and low convergence rate. Simulated annealing (SA) and mutation operator have the jumping ability and global convergence; and local search has the ability to speed up the convergence. Therefore, this paper proposed a hybrid ACO algorithm integrating the advantages of ACO, SA, mutation operator, and local search procedure to solve the traveling salesman problem. The core of algorithm is based on the ACO. SA and mutation operator were used to increase the ants population diversity from time to time and the local search was used to exploit the current search area efficiently. The comparative experiments, using 24 TSP instances from TSPLIB, show that the proposed algorithm outperformed some well-known algorithms in the literature in terms of solution quality.

  11. Derivation and validation of the automated search algorithms to identify cognitive impairment and dementia in electronic health records.

    PubMed

    Amra, Sakusic; O'Horo, John C; Singh, Tarun D; Wilson, Gregory A; Kashyap, Rahul; Petersen, Ronald; Roberts, Rosebud O; Fryer, John D; Rabinstein, Alejandro A; Gajic, Ognjen

    2017-02-01

    Long-term cognitive impairment is a common and important problem in survivors of critical illness. We developed electronic search algorithms to identify cognitive impairment and dementia from the electronic medical records (EMRs) that provide opportunity for big data analysis. Eligible patients met 2 criteria. First, they had a formal cognitive evaluation by The Mayo Clinic Study of Aging. Second, they were hospitalized in intensive care unit at our institution between 2006 and 2014. The "criterion standard" for diagnosis was formal cognitive evaluation supplemented by input from an expert neurologist. Using all available EMR data, we developed and improved our algorithms in the derivation cohort and validated them in the independent validation cohort. Of 993 participants who underwent formal cognitive testing and were hospitalized in intensive care unit, we selected 151 participants at random to form the derivation and validation cohorts. The automated electronic search algorithm for cognitive impairment was 94.3% sensitive and 93.0% specific. The search algorithms for dementia achieved respective sensitivity and specificity of 97% and 99%. EMR search algorithms significantly outperformed International Classification of Diseases codes. Automated EMR data extractions for cognitive impairment and dementia are reliable and accurate and can serve as acceptable and efficient alternatives to time-consuming manual data review. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  12. Network module detection: Affinity search technique with the multi-node topological overlap measure

    PubMed Central

    Li, Ai; Horvath, Steve

    2009-01-01

    Background Many clustering procedures only allow the user to input a pairwise dissimilarity or distance measure between objects. We propose a clustering method that can input a multi-point dissimilarity measure d(i1, i2, ..., iP) where the number of points P can be larger than 2. The work is motivated by gene network analysis where clusters correspond to modules of highly interconnected nodes. Here, we define modules as clusters of network nodes with high multi-node topological overlap. The topological overlap measure is a robust measure of interconnectedness which is based on shared network neighbors. In previous work, we have shown that the multi-node topological overlap measure yields biologically meaningful results when used as input of network neighborhood analysis. Findings We adapt network neighborhood analysis for the use of module detection. We propose the Module Affinity Search Technique (MAST), which is a generalized version of the Cluster Affinity Search Technique (CAST). MAST can accommodate a multi-node dissimilarity measure. Clusters grow around user-defined or automatically chosen seeds (e.g. hub nodes). We propose both local and global cluster growth stopping rules. We use several simulations and a gene co-expression network application to argue that the MAST approach leads to biologically meaningful results. We compare MAST with hierarchical clustering and partitioning around medoid clustering. Conclusion Our flexible module detection method is implemented in the MTOM software which can be downloaded from the following webpage: PMID:19619323

  13. Network module detection: Affinity search technique with the multi-node topological overlap measure.

    PubMed

    Li, Ai; Horvath, Steve

    2009-07-20

    Many clustering procedures only allow the user to input a pairwise dissimilarity or distance measure between objects. We propose a clustering method that can input a multi-point dissimilarity measure d(i1, i2, ..., iP) where the number of points P can be larger than 2. The work is motivated by gene network analysis where clusters correspond to modules of highly interconnected nodes. Here, we define modules as clusters of network nodes with high multi-node topological overlap. The topological overlap measure is a robust measure of interconnectedness which is based on shared network neighbors. In previous work, we have shown that the multi-node topological overlap measure yields biologically meaningful results when used as input of network neighborhood analysis. We adapt network neighborhood analysis for the use of module detection. We propose the Module Affinity Search Technique (MAST), which is a generalized version of the Cluster Affinity Search Technique (CAST). MAST can accommodate a multi-node dissimilarity measure. Clusters grow around user-defined or automatically chosen seeds (e.g. hub nodes). We propose both local and global cluster growth stopping rules. We use several simulations and a gene co-expression network application to argue that the MAST approach leads to biologically meaningful results. We compare MAST with hierarchical clustering and partitioning around medoid clustering. Our flexible module detection method is implemented in the MTOM software which can be downloaded from the following webpage: http://www.genetics.ucla.edu/labs/horvath/MTOM/

  14. Abyss or Shelter? On the Relevance of Web Search Engines' Search Results When People Google for Suicide.

    PubMed

    Haim, Mario; Arendt, Florian; Scherr, Sebastian

    2017-02-01

    Despite evidence that suicide rates can increase after suicides are widely reported in the media, appropriate depictions of suicide in the media can help people to overcome suicidal crises and can thus elicit preventive effects. We argue on the level of individual media users that a similar ambivalence can be postulated for search results on online suicide-related search queries. Importantly, the filter bubble hypothesis (Pariser, 2011) states that search results are biased by algorithms based on a person's previous search behavior. In this study, we investigated whether suicide-related search queries, including either potentially suicide-preventive or -facilitative terms, influence subsequent search results. This might thus protect or harm suicidal Internet users. We utilized a 3 (search history: suicide-related harmful, suicide-related helpful, and suicide-unrelated) × 2 (reactive: clicking the top-most result link and no clicking) experimental design applying agent-based testing. While findings show no influences either of search histories or of reactivity on search results in a subsequent situation, the presentation of a helpline offer raises concerns about possible detrimental algorithmic decision-making: Algorithms "decided" whether or not to present a helpline, and this automated decision, then, followed the agent throughout the rest of the observation period. Implications for policy-making and search providers are discussed.

  15. mTM-align: a server for fast protein structure database search and multiple protein structure alignment.

    PubMed

    Dong, Runze; Pan, Shuo; Peng, Zhenling; Zhang, Yang; Yang, Jianyi

    2018-05-21

    With the rapid increase of the number of protein structures in the Protein Data Bank, it becomes urgent to develop algorithms for efficient protein structure comparisons. In this article, we present the mTM-align server, which consists of two closely related modules: one for structure database search and the other for multiple structure alignment. The database search is speeded up based on a heuristic algorithm and a hierarchical organization of the structures in the database. The multiple structure alignment is performed using the recently developed algorithm mTM-align. Benchmark tests demonstrate that our algorithms outperform other peering methods for both modules, in terms of speed and accuracy. One of the unique features for the server is the interplay between database search and multiple structure alignment. The server provides service not only for performing fast database search, but also for making accurate multiple structure alignment with the structures found by the search. For the database search, it takes about 2-5 min for a structure of a medium size (∼300 residues). For the multiple structure alignment, it takes a few seconds for ∼10 structures of medium sizes. The server is freely available at: http://yanglab.nankai.edu.cn/mTM-align/.

  16. Adaptive Grouping Cloud Model Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm for Solving Continuous Optimization Problems

    PubMed Central

    Liu, Haorui; Yi, Fengyan; Yang, Heli

    2016-01-01

    The shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA) easily falls into local optimum when it solves multioptimum function optimization problem, which impacts the accuracy and convergence speed. Therefore this paper presents grouped SFLA for solving continuous optimization problems combined with the excellent characteristics of cloud model transformation between qualitative and quantitative research. The algorithm divides the definition domain into several groups and gives each group a set of frogs. Frogs of each region search in their memeplex, and in the search process the algorithm uses the “elite strategy” to update the location information of existing elite frogs through cloud model algorithm. This method narrows the searching space and it can effectively improve the situation of a local optimum; thus convergence speed and accuracy can be significantly improved. The results of computer simulation confirm this conclusion. PMID:26819584

  17. Emergence of an optimal search strategy from a simple random walk

    PubMed Central

    Sakiyama, Tomoko; Gunji, Yukio-Pegio

    2013-01-01

    In reports addressing animal foraging strategies, it has been stated that Lévy-like algorithms represent an optimal search strategy in an unknown environment, because of their super-diffusion properties and power-law-distributed step lengths. Here, starting with a simple random walk algorithm, which offers the agent a randomly determined direction at each time step with a fixed move length, we investigated how flexible exploration is achieved if an agent alters its randomly determined next step forward and the rule that controls its random movement based on its own directional moving experiences. We showed that our algorithm led to an effective food-searching performance compared with a simple random walk algorithm and exhibited super-diffusion properties, despite the uniform step lengths. Moreover, our algorithm exhibited a power-law distribution independent of uniform step lengths. PMID:23804445

  18. Emergence of an optimal search strategy from a simple random walk.

    PubMed

    Sakiyama, Tomoko; Gunji, Yukio-Pegio

    2013-09-06

    In reports addressing animal foraging strategies, it has been stated that Lévy-like algorithms represent an optimal search strategy in an unknown environment, because of their super-diffusion properties and power-law-distributed step lengths. Here, starting with a simple random walk algorithm, which offers the agent a randomly determined direction at each time step with a fixed move length, we investigated how flexible exploration is achieved if an agent alters its randomly determined next step forward and the rule that controls its random movement based on its own directional moving experiences. We showed that our algorithm led to an effective food-searching performance compared with a simple random walk algorithm and exhibited super-diffusion properties, despite the uniform step lengths. Moreover, our algorithm exhibited a power-law distribution independent of uniform step lengths.

  19. Interior search algorithm (ISA): a novel approach for global optimization.

    PubMed

    Gandomi, Amir H

    2014-07-01

    This paper presents the interior search algorithm (ISA) as a novel method for solving optimization tasks. The proposed ISA is inspired by interior design and decoration. The algorithm is different from other metaheuristic algorithms and provides new insight for global optimization. The proposed method is verified using some benchmark mathematical and engineering problems commonly used in the area of optimization. ISA results are further compared with well-known optimization algorithms. The results show that the ISA is efficiently capable of solving optimization problems. The proposed algorithm can outperform the other well-known algorithms. Further, the proposed algorithm is very simple and it only has one parameter to tune. Copyright © 2014 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  20. Applying an efficient K-nearest neighbor search to forest attribute imputation

    Treesearch

    Andrew O. Finley; Ronald E. McRoberts; Alan R. Ek

    2006-01-01

    This paper explores the utility of an efficient nearest neighbor (NN) search algorithm for applications in multi-source kNN forest attribute imputation. The search algorithm reduces the number of distance calculations between a given target vector and each reference vector, thereby, decreasing the time needed to discover the NN subset. Results of five trials show gains...

  1. Fast Multivariate Search on Large Aviation Datasets

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Bhaduri, Kanishka; Zhu, Qiang; Oza, Nikunj C.; Srivastava, Ashok N.

    2010-01-01

    Multivariate Time-Series (MTS) are ubiquitous, and are generated in areas as disparate as sensor recordings in aerospace systems, music and video streams, medical monitoring, and financial systems. Domain experts are often interested in searching for interesting multivariate patterns from these MTS databases which can contain up to several gigabytes of data. Surprisingly, research on MTS search is very limited. Most existing work only supports queries with the same length of data, or queries on a fixed set of variables. In this paper, we propose an efficient and flexible subsequence search framework for massive MTS databases, that, for the first time, enables querying on any subset of variables with arbitrary time delays between them. We propose two provably correct algorithms to solve this problem (1) an R-tree Based Search (RBS) which uses Minimum Bounding Rectangles (MBR) to organize the subsequences, and (2) a List Based Search (LBS) algorithm which uses sorted lists for indexing. We demonstrate the performance of these algorithms using two large MTS databases from the aviation domain, each containing several millions of observations Both these tests show that our algorithms have very high prune rates (>95%) thus needing actual

  2. Context-Aware Online Commercial Intention Detection

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hu, Derek Hao; Shen, Dou; Sun, Jian-Tao; Yang, Qiang; Chen, Zheng

    With more and more commercial activities moving onto the Internet, people tend to purchase what they need through Internet or conduct some online research before the actual transactions happen. For many Web users, their online commercial activities start from submitting a search query to search engines. Just like the common Web search queries, the queries with commercial intention are usually very short. Recognizing the queries with commercial intention against the common queries will help search engines provide proper search results and advertisements, help Web users obtain the right information they desire and help the advertisers benefit from the potential transactions. However, the intentions behind a query vary a lot for users with different background and interest. The intentions can even be different for the same user, when the query is issued in different contexts. In this paper, we present a new algorithm framework based on skip-chain conditional random field (SCCRF) for automatically classifying Web queries according to context-based online commercial intention. We analyze our algorithm performance both theoretically and empirically. Extensive experiments on several real search engine log datasets show that our algorithm can improve more than 10% on F1 score than previous algorithms on commercial intention detection.

  3. Information retrieval algorithms: A survey

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Raghavan, P.

    We give an overview of some algorithmic problems arising in the representation of text/image/multimedia objects in a form amenable to automated searching, and in conducting these searches efficiently. These operations are central to information retrieval and digital library systems.

  4. The Cluster AgeS Experiment (CASE). Detecting Aperiodic Photometric Variability with the Friends of Friends Algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Rozyczka, M.; Narloch, W.; Pietrukowicz, P.; Thompson, I. B.; Pych, W.; Poleski, R.

    2018-03-01

    We adapt the friends of friends algorithm to the analysis of light curves, and show that it can be succesfully applied to searches for transient phenomena in large photometric databases. As a test case we search OGLE-III light curves for known dwarf novae. A single combination of control parameters allows us to narrow the search to 1% of the data while reaching a ≍90% detection efficiency. A search involving ≍2% of the data and three combinations of control parameters can be significantly more effective - in our case a 100% efficiency is reached. The method can also quite efficiently detect semi-regular variability. In particular, 28 new semi-regular variables have been found in the field of the globular cluster M22, which was examined earlier with the help of periodicity-searching algorithms.

  5. Basis for a neuronal version of Grover's quantum algorithm

    PubMed Central

    Clark, Kevin B.

    2014-01-01

    Grover's quantum (search) algorithm exploits principles of quantum information theory and computation to surpass the strong Church–Turing limit governing classical computers. The algorithm initializes a search field into superposed N (eigen)states to later execute nonclassical “subroutines” involving unitary phase shifts of measured states and to produce root-rate or quadratic gain in the algorithmic time (O(N1/2)) needed to find some “target” solution m. Akin to this fast technological search algorithm, single eukaryotic cells, such as differentiated neurons, perform natural quadratic speed-up in the search for appropriate store-operated Ca2+ response regulation of, among other processes, protein and lipid biosynthesis, cell energetics, stress responses, cell fate and death, synaptic plasticity, and immunoprotection. Such speed-up in cellular decision making results from spatiotemporal dynamics of networked intracellular Ca2+-induced Ca2+ release and the search (or signaling) velocity of Ca2+ wave propagation. As chemical processes, such as the duration of Ca2+ mobilization, become rate-limiting over interstore distances, Ca2+ waves quadratically decrease interstore-travel time from slow saltatory to fast continuous gradients proportional to the square-root of the classical Ca2+ diffusion coefficient, D1/2, matching the computing efficiency of Grover's quantum algorithm. In this Hypothesis and Theory article, I elaborate on these traits using a fire-diffuse-fire model of store-operated cytosolic Ca2+ signaling valid for glutamatergic neurons. Salient model features corresponding to Grover's quantum algorithm are parameterized to meet requirements for the Oracle Hadamard transform and Grover's iteration. A neuronal version of Grover's quantum algorithm figures to benefit signal coincidence detection and integration, bidirectional synaptic plasticity, and other vital cell functions by rapidly selecting, ordering, and/or counting optional response regulation choices. PMID:24860419

  6. Restoration of MRI Data for Field Nonuniformities using High Order Neighborhood Statistics

    PubMed Central

    Hadjidemetriou, Stathis; Studholme, Colin; Mueller, Susanne; Weiner, Michael; Schuff, Norbert

    2007-01-01

    MRI at high magnetic fields (> 3.0 T ) is complicated by strong inhomogeneous radio-frequency fields, sometimes termed the “bias field”. These lead to nonuniformity of image intensity, greatly complicating further analysis such as registration and segmentation. Existing methods for bias field correction are effective for 1.5 T or 3.0 T MRI, but are not completely satisfactory for higher field data. This paper develops an effective bias field correction for high field MRI based on the assumption that the nonuniformity is smoothly varying in space. Also, nonuniformity is quantified and unmixed using high order neighborhood statistics of intensity cooccurrences. They are computed within spherical windows of limited size over the entire image. The restoration is iterative and makes use of a novel stable stopping criterion that depends on the scaled entropy of the cooccurrence statistics, which is a non monotonic function of the iterations; the Shannon entropy of the cooccurrence statistics normalized to the effective dynamic range of the image. The algorithm restores whole head data, is robust to intense nonuniformities present in high field acquisitions, and is robust to variations in anatomy. This algorithm significantly improves bias field correction in comparison to N3 on phantom 1.5 T head data and high field 4 T human head data. PMID:18193095

  7. Scale-based fuzzy connectivity: a novel image segmentation methodology and its validation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Saha, Punam K.; Udupa, Jayaram K.

    1999-05-01

    This paper extends a previously reported theory and algorithms for fuzzy connected object definition. It introduces `object scale' for determining the neighborhood size for defining affinity, the degree of local hanging togetherness between image elements. Object scale allows us to use a varying neighborhood size in different parts of the image. This paper argues that scale-based fuzzy connectivity is natural in object definition and demonstrates that this leads to a more effective object segmentation than without using scale in fuzzy concentrations. Affinity is described as consisting of a homogeneity-based and an object-feature- based component. Families of non scale-based and scale-based affinity relations are constructed. An effective method for giving a rough estimate of scale at different locations in the image is presented. The original theoretical and algorithmic framework remains more-or-less the same but considerably improved segmentations result. A quantitative statistical comparison between the non scale-based and the scale-based methods was made based on phantom images generated from patient MR brain studies by first segmenting the objects, and then by adding noise and blurring, and background component. Both the statistical and the subjective tests clearly indicate the superiority of scale- based method in capturing details and in robustness to noise.

  8. Detection of illicit substances in fingerprints by infrared spectral imaging.

    PubMed

    Ng, Ping Hei Ronnie; Walker, Sarah; Tahtouh, Mark; Reedy, Brian

    2009-08-01

    FTIR and Raman spectral imaging can be used to simultaneously image a latent fingerprint and detect exogenous substances deposited within it. These substances might include drugs of abuse or traces of explosives or gunshot residue. In this work, spectral searching algorithms were tested for their efficacy in finding targeted substances deposited within fingerprints. "Reverse" library searching, where a large number of possibly poor-quality spectra from a spectral image are searched against a small number of high-quality reference spectra, poses problems for common search algorithms as they are usually implemented. Out of a range of algorithms which included conventional Euclidean distance searching, the spectral angle mapper (SAM) and correlation algorithms gave the best results when used with second-derivative image and reference spectra. All methods tested gave poorer performances with first derivative and undifferentiated spectra. In a search against a caffeine reference, the SAM and correlation methods were able to correctly rank a set of 40 confirmed but poor-quality caffeine spectra at the top of a dataset which also contained 4,096 spectra from an image of an uncontaminated latent fingerprint. These methods also successfully and individually detected aspirin, diazepam and caffeine that had been deposited together in another fingerprint, and they did not indicate any of these substances as a match in a search for another substance which was known not to be present. The SAM was used to successfully locate explosive components in fingerprints deposited on silicon windows. The potential of other spectral searching algorithms used in the field of remote sensing is considered, and the applicability of the methods tested in this work to other modes of spectral imaging is discussed.

  9. Fast and Flexible Multivariate Time Series Subsequence Search

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Bhaduri, Kanishka; Oza, Nikunj C.; Zhu, Qiang; Srivastava, Ashok N.

    2010-01-01

    Multivariate Time-Series (MTS) are ubiquitous, and are generated in areas as disparate as sensor recordings in aerospace systems, music and video streams, medical monitoring, and financial systems. Domain experts are often interested in searching for interesting multivariate patterns from these MTS databases which often contain several gigabytes of data. Surprisingly, research on MTS search is very limited. Most of the existing work only supports queries with the same length of data, or queries on a fixed set of variables. In this paper, we propose an efficient and flexible subsequence search framework for massive MTS databases, that, for the first time, enables querying on any subset of variables with arbitrary time delays between them. We propose two algorithms to solve this problem (1) a List Based Search (LBS) algorithm which uses sorted lists for indexing, and (2) a R*-tree Based Search (RBS) which uses Minimum Bounding Rectangles (MBR) to organize the subsequences. Both algorithms guarantee that all matching patterns within the specified thresholds will be returned (no false dismissals). The very few false alarms can be removed by a post-processing step. Since our framework is also capable of Univariate Time-Series (UTS) subsequence search, we first demonstrate the efficiency of our algorithms on several UTS datasets previously used in the literature. We follow this up with experiments using two large MTS databases from the aviation domain, each containing several millions of observations. Both these tests show that our algorithms have very high prune rates (>99%) thus needing actual disk access for only less than 1% of the observations. To the best of our knowledge, MTS subsequence search has never been attempted on datasets of the size we have used in this paper.

  10. GPU-powered Shotgun Stochastic Search for Dirichlet process mixtures of Gaussian Graphical Models

    PubMed Central

    Mukherjee, Chiranjit; Rodriguez, Abel

    2016-01-01

    Gaussian graphical models are popular for modeling high-dimensional multivariate data with sparse conditional dependencies. A mixture of Gaussian graphical models extends this model to the more realistic scenario where observations come from a heterogenous population composed of a small number of homogeneous sub-groups. In this paper we present a novel stochastic search algorithm for finding the posterior mode of high-dimensional Dirichlet process mixtures of decomposable Gaussian graphical models. Further, we investigate how to harness the massive thread-parallelization capabilities of graphical processing units to accelerate computation. The computational advantages of our algorithms are demonstrated with various simulated data examples in which we compare our stochastic search with a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm in moderate dimensional data examples. These experiments show that our stochastic search largely outperforms the Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm in terms of computing-times and in terms of the quality of the posterior mode discovered. Finally, we analyze a gene expression dataset in which Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms are too slow to be practically useful. PMID:28626348

  11. GPU-powered Shotgun Stochastic Search for Dirichlet process mixtures of Gaussian Graphical Models.

    PubMed

    Mukherjee, Chiranjit; Rodriguez, Abel

    2016-01-01

    Gaussian graphical models are popular for modeling high-dimensional multivariate data with sparse conditional dependencies. A mixture of Gaussian graphical models extends this model to the more realistic scenario where observations come from a heterogenous population composed of a small number of homogeneous sub-groups. In this paper we present a novel stochastic search algorithm for finding the posterior mode of high-dimensional Dirichlet process mixtures of decomposable Gaussian graphical models. Further, we investigate how to harness the massive thread-parallelization capabilities of graphical processing units to accelerate computation. The computational advantages of our algorithms are demonstrated with various simulated data examples in which we compare our stochastic search with a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm in moderate dimensional data examples. These experiments show that our stochastic search largely outperforms the Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm in terms of computing-times and in terms of the quality of the posterior mode discovered. Finally, we analyze a gene expression dataset in which Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms are too slow to be practically useful.

  12. A new memetic algorithm for mitigating tandem automated guided vehicle system partitioning problem

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Pourrahimian, Parinaz

    2017-11-01

    Automated Guided Vehicle System (AGVS) provides the flexibility and automation demanded by Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS). However, with the growing concern on responsible management of resource use, it is crucial to manage these vehicles in an efficient way in order reduces travel time and controls conflicts and congestions. This paper presents the development process of a new Memetic Algorithm (MA) for optimizing partitioning problem of tandem AGVS. MAs employ a Genetic Algorithm (GA), as a global search, and apply a local search to bring the solutions to a local optimum point. A new Tabu Search (TS) has been developed and combined with a GA to refine the newly generated individuals by GA. The aim of the proposed algorithm is to minimize the maximum workload of the system. After all, the performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated using Matlab. This study also compared the objective function of the proposed MA with GA. The results showed that the TS, as a local search, significantly improves the objective function of the GA for different system sizes with large and small numbers of zone by 1.26 in average.

  13. Is searching full text more effective than searching abstracts?

    PubMed Central

    Lin, Jimmy

    2009-01-01

    Background With the growing availability of full-text articles online, scientists and other consumers of the life sciences literature now have the ability to go beyond searching bibliographic records (title, abstract, metadata) to directly access full-text content. Motivated by this emerging trend, I posed the following question: is searching full text more effective than searching abstracts? This question is answered by comparing text retrieval algorithms on MEDLINE® abstracts, full-text articles, and spans (paragraphs) within full-text articles using data from the TREC 2007 genomics track evaluation. Two retrieval models are examined: bm25 and the ranking algorithm implemented in the open-source Lucene search engine. Results Experiments show that treating an entire article as an indexing unit does not consistently yield higher effectiveness compared to abstract-only search. However, retrieval based on spans, or paragraphs-sized segments of full-text articles, consistently outperforms abstract-only search. Results suggest that highest overall effectiveness may be achieved by combining evidence from spans and full articles. Conclusion Users searching full text are more likely to find relevant articles than searching only abstracts. This finding affirms the value of full text collections for text retrieval and provides a starting point for future work in exploring algorithms that take advantage of rapidly-growing digital archives. Experimental results also highlight the need to develop distributed text retrieval algorithms, since full-text articles are significantly longer than abstracts and may require the computational resources of multiple machines in a cluster. The MapReduce programming model provides a convenient framework for organizing such computations. PMID:19192280

  14. A Novel Handwritten Letter Recognizer Using Enhanced Evolutionary Neural Network

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mahmoudi, Fariborz; Mirzashaeri, Mohsen; Shahamatnia, Ehsan; Faridnia, Saed

    This paper introduces a novel design for handwritten letter recognition by employing a hybrid back-propagation neural network with an enhanced evolutionary algorithm. Feeding the neural network consists of a new approach which is invariant to translation, rotation, and scaling of input letters. Evolutionary algorithm is used for the global search of the search space and the back-propagation algorithm is used for the local search. The results have been computed by implementing this approach for recognizing 26 English capital letters in the handwritings of different people. The computational results show that the neural network reaches very satisfying results with relatively scarce input data and a promising performance improvement in convergence of the hybrid evolutionary back-propagation algorithms is exhibited.

  15. Development of program package for investigation and modeling of carbon nanostructures in diamond like carbon films with the help of Raman scattering and infrared absorption spectra line resolving

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hayrapetyan, David B.; Hovhannisyan, Levon; Mantashyan, Paytsar A.

    2013-04-01

    The analysis of complex spectra is an actual problem for modern science. The work is devoted to the creation of a software package, which analyzes spectrum in the different formats, possesses by dynamic knowledge database and self-study mechanism, performs automated analysis of the spectra compound based on knowledge database by application of certain algorithms. In the software package as searching systems, hyper-spherical random search algorithms, gradient algorithms and genetic searching algorithms were used. The analysis of Raman and IR spectrum of diamond-like carbon (DLC) samples were performed by elaborated program. After processing the data, the program immediately displays all the calculated parameters of DLC.

  16. Optimisation in radiotherapy. III: Stochastic optimisation algorithms and conclusions.

    PubMed

    Ebert, M

    1997-12-01

    This is the final article in a three part examination of optimisation in radiotherapy. Previous articles have established the bases and form of the radiotherapy optimisation problem, and examined certain types of optimisation algorithm, namely, those which perform some form of ordered search of the solution space (mathematical programming), and those which attempt to find the closest feasible solution to the inverse planning problem (deterministic inversion). The current paper examines algorithms which search the space of possible irradiation strategies by stochastic methods. The resulting iterative search methods move about the solution space by sampling random variates, which gradually become more constricted as the algorithm converges upon the optimal solution. This paper also discusses the implementation of optimisation in radiotherapy practice.

  17. Improved adaptive genetic algorithm with sparsity constraint applied to thermal neutron CT reconstruction of two-phase flow

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yan, Mingfei; Hu, Huasi; Otake, Yoshie; Taketani, Atsushi; Wakabayashi, Yasuo; Yanagimachi, Shinzo; Wang, Sheng; Pan, Ziheng; Hu, Guang

    2018-05-01

    Thermal neutron computer tomography (CT) is a useful tool for visualizing two-phase flow due to its high imaging contrast and strong penetrability of neutrons for tube walls constructed with metallic material. A novel approach for two-phase flow CT reconstruction based on an improved adaptive genetic algorithm with sparsity constraint (IAGA-SC) is proposed in this paper. In the algorithm, the neighborhood mutation operator is used to ensure the continuity of the reconstructed object. The adaptive crossover probability P c and mutation probability P m are improved to help the adaptive genetic algorithm (AGA) achieve the global optimum. The reconstructed results for projection data, obtained from Monte Carlo simulation, indicate that the comprehensive performance of the IAGA-SC algorithm exceeds the adaptive steepest descent-projection onto convex sets (ASD-POCS) algorithm in restoring typical and complex flow regimes. It especially shows great advantages in restoring the simply connected flow regimes and the shape of object. In addition, the CT experiment for two-phase flow phantoms was conducted on the accelerator-driven neutron source to verify the performance of the developed IAGA-SC algorithm.

  18. The algorithm of fast image stitching based on multi-feature extraction

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yang, Chunde; Wu, Ge; Shi, Jing

    2018-05-01

    This paper proposed an improved image registration method combining Hu-based invariant moment contour information and feature points detection, aiming to solve the problems in traditional image stitching algorithm, such as time-consuming feature points extraction process, redundant invalid information overload and inefficiency. First, use the neighborhood of pixels to extract the contour information, employing the Hu invariant moment as similarity measure to extract SIFT feature points in those similar regions. Then replace the Euclidean distance with Hellinger kernel function to improve the initial matching efficiency and get less mismatching points, further, estimate affine transformation matrix between the images. Finally, local color mapping method is adopted to solve uneven exposure, using the improved multiresolution fusion algorithm to fuse the mosaic images and realize seamless stitching. Experimental results confirm high accuracy and efficiency of method proposed in this paper.

  19. Continuous-time quantum search on balanced trees

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Philipp, Pascal; Tarrataca, Luís; Boettcher, Stefan

    2016-03-01

    We examine the effect of network heterogeneity on the performance of quantum search algorithms. To this end, we study quantum search on a tree for the oracle Hamiltonian formulation employed by continuous-time quantum walks. We use analytical and numerical arguments to show that the exponent of the asymptotic running time ˜Nβ changes uniformly from β =0.5 to β =1 as the searched-for site is moved from the root of the tree towards the leaves. These results imply that the time complexity of the quantum search algorithm on a balanced tree is closely correlated with certain path-based centrality measures of the searched-for site.

  20. Adaptive Sensor Tuning for Seismic Event Detection in Environment with Electromagnetic Noise

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ziegler, Abra E.

    The goal of this research is to detect possible microseismic events at a carbon sequestration site. Data recorded on a continuous downhole microseismic array in the Farnsworth Field, an oil field in Northern Texas that hosts an ongoing carbon capture, utilization, and storage project, were evaluated using machine learning and reinforcement learning techniques to determine their effectiveness at seismic event detection on a dataset with electromagnetic noise. The data were recorded from a passive vertical monitoring array consisting of 16 levels of 3-component 15 Hz geophones installed in the field and continuously recording since January 2014. Electromagnetic and other noise recorded on the array has significantly impacted the utility of the data and it was necessary to characterize and filter the noise in order to attempt event detection. Traditional detection methods using short-term average/long-term average (STA/LTA) algorithms were evaluated and determined to be ineffective because of changing noise levels. To improve the performance of event detection and automatically and dynamically detect seismic events using effective data processing parameters, an adaptive sensor tuning (AST) algorithm developed by Sandia National Laboratories was utilized. AST exploits neuro-dynamic programming (reinforcement learning) trained with historic event data to automatically self-tune and determine optimal detection parameter settings. The key metric that guides the AST algorithm is consistency of each sensor with its nearest neighbors: parameters are automatically adjusted on a per station basis to be more or less sensitive to produce consistent agreement of detections in its neighborhood. The effects that changes in neighborhood configuration have on signal detection were explored, as it was determined that neighborhood-based detections significantly reduce the number of both missed and false detections in ground-truthed data. The performance of the AST algorithm was quantitatively evaluated during a variety of noise conditions and seismic detections were identified using AST and compared to ancillary injection data. During a period of CO2 injection in a nearby well to the monitoring array, 82% of seismic events were accurately detected, 13% of events were missed, and 5% of detections were determined to be false. Additionally, seismic risk was evaluated from the stress field and faulting regime at FWU to determine the likelihood of pressure perturbations to trigger slip on previously mapped faults. Faults oriented NW-SE were identified as requiring the smallest pore pressure changes to trigger slip and faults oriented N-S will also potentially be reactivated although this is less likely.

  1. One-dimensional swarm algorithm packaging

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lebedev, Boris K.; Lebedev, Oleg B.; Lebedeva, Ekaterina O.

    2018-05-01

    The paper considers an algorithm for solving the problem of onedimensional packaging based on the adaptive behavior model of an ant colony. The key role in the development of the ant algorithm is the choice of representation (interpretation) of the solution. The structure of the solution search graph, the procedure for finding solutions on the graph, the methods of deposition and evaporation of pheromone are described. Unlike the canonical paradigm of an ant algorithm, an ant on the solution search graph generates sets of elements distributed across blocks. Experimental studies were conducted on IBM PC. Compared with the existing algorithms, the results are improved.

  2. Network-based ranking methods for prediction of novel disease associated microRNAs.

    PubMed

    Le, Duc-Hau

    2015-10-01

    Many studies have shown roles of microRNAs on human disease and a number of computational methods have been proposed to predict such associations by ranking candidate microRNAs according to their relevance to a disease. Among them, machine learning-based methods usually have a limitation in specifying non-disease microRNAs as negative training samples. Meanwhile, network-based methods are becoming dominant since they well exploit a "disease module" principle in microRNA functional similarity networks. Of which, random walk with restart (RWR) algorithm-based method is currently state-of-the-art. The use of this algorithm was inspired from its success in predicting disease gene because the "disease module" principle also exists in protein interaction networks. Besides, many algorithms designed for webpage ranking have been successfully applied in ranking disease candidate genes because web networks share topological properties with protein interaction networks. However, these algorithms have not yet been utilized for disease microRNA prediction. We constructed microRNA functional similarity networks based on shared targets of microRNAs, and then we integrated them with a microRNA functional synergistic network, which was recently identified. After analyzing topological properties of these networks, in addition to RWR, we assessed the performance of (i) PRINCE (PRIoritizatioN and Complex Elucidation), which was proposed for disease gene prediction; (ii) PageRank with Priors (PRP) and K-Step Markov (KSM), which were used for studying web networks; and (iii) a neighborhood-based algorithm. Analyses on topological properties showed that all microRNA functional similarity networks are small-worldness and scale-free. The performance of each algorithm was assessed based on average AUC values on 35 disease phenotypes and average rankings of newly discovered disease microRNAs. As a result, the performance on the integrated network was better than that on individual ones. In addition, the performance of PRINCE, PRP and KSM was comparable with that of RWR, whereas it was worst for the neighborhood-based algorithm. Moreover, all the algorithms were stable with the change of parameters. Final, using the integrated network, we predicted six novel miRNAs (i.e., hsa-miR-101, hsa-miR-181d, hsa-miR-192, hsa-miR-423-3p, hsa-miR-484 and hsa-miR-98) associated with breast cancer. Network-based ranking algorithms, which were successfully applied for either disease gene prediction or for studying social/web networks, can be also used effectively for disease microRNA prediction. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Towards enhancement of performance of K-means clustering using nature-inspired optimization algorithms.

    PubMed

    Fong, Simon; Deb, Suash; Yang, Xin-She; Zhuang, Yan

    2014-01-01

    Traditional K-means clustering algorithms have the drawback of getting stuck at local optima that depend on the random values of initial centroids. Optimization algorithms have their advantages in guiding iterative computation to search for global optima while avoiding local optima. The algorithms help speed up the clustering process by converging into a global optimum early with multiple search agents in action. Inspired by nature, some contemporary optimization algorithms which include Ant, Bat, Cuckoo, Firefly, and Wolf search algorithms mimic the swarming behavior allowing them to cooperatively steer towards an optimal objective within a reasonable time. It is known that these so-called nature-inspired optimization algorithms have their own characteristics as well as pros and cons in different applications. When these algorithms are combined with K-means clustering mechanism for the sake of enhancing its clustering quality by avoiding local optima and finding global optima, the new hybrids are anticipated to produce unprecedented performance. In this paper, we report the results of our evaluation experiments on the integration of nature-inspired optimization methods into K-means algorithms. In addition to the standard evaluation metrics in evaluating clustering quality, the extended K-means algorithms that are empowered by nature-inspired optimization methods are applied on image segmentation as a case study of application scenario.

  4. Towards Enhancement of Performance of K-Means Clustering Using Nature-Inspired Optimization Algorithms

    PubMed Central

    Deb, Suash; Yang, Xin-She

    2014-01-01

    Traditional K-means clustering algorithms have the drawback of getting stuck at local optima that depend on the random values of initial centroids. Optimization algorithms have their advantages in guiding iterative computation to search for global optima while avoiding local optima. The algorithms help speed up the clustering process by converging into a global optimum early with multiple search agents in action. Inspired by nature, some contemporary optimization algorithms which include Ant, Bat, Cuckoo, Firefly, and Wolf search algorithms mimic the swarming behavior allowing them to cooperatively steer towards an optimal objective within a reasonable time. It is known that these so-called nature-inspired optimization algorithms have their own characteristics as well as pros and cons in different applications. When these algorithms are combined with K-means clustering mechanism for the sake of enhancing its clustering quality by avoiding local optima and finding global optima, the new hybrids are anticipated to produce unprecedented performance. In this paper, we report the results of our evaluation experiments on the integration of nature-inspired optimization methods into K-means algorithms. In addition to the standard evaluation metrics in evaluating clustering quality, the extended K-means algorithms that are empowered by nature-inspired optimization methods are applied on image segmentation as a case study of application scenario. PMID:25202730

  5. An Effective Hybrid Cuckoo Search Algorithm with Improved Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm for 0-1 Knapsack Problems

    PubMed Central

    Wang, Gai-Ge; Feng, Qingjiang; Zhao, Xiang-Jun

    2014-01-01

    An effective hybrid cuckoo search algorithm (CS) with improved shuffled frog-leaping algorithm (ISFLA) is put forward for solving 0-1 knapsack problem. First of all, with the framework of SFLA, an improved frog-leap operator is designed with the effect of the global optimal information on the frog leaping and information exchange between frog individuals combined with genetic mutation with a small probability. Subsequently, in order to improve the convergence speed and enhance the exploitation ability, a novel CS model is proposed with considering the specific advantages of Lévy flights and frog-leap operator. Furthermore, the greedy transform method is used to repair the infeasible solution and optimize the feasible solution. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out on six different types of 0-1 knapsack instances, and the comparative results have shown the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and its ability to achieve good quality solutions, which outperforms the binary cuckoo search, the binary differential evolution, and the genetic algorithm. PMID:25404940

  6. Parameter optimization of differential evolution algorithm for automatic playlist generation problem

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Alamag, Kaye Melina Natividad B.; Addawe, Joel M.

    2017-11-01

    With the digitalization of music, the number of collection of music increased largely and there is a need to create lists of music that filter the collection according to user preferences, thus giving rise to the Automatic Playlist Generation Problem (APGP). Previous attempts to solve this problem include the use of search and optimization algorithms. If a music database is very large, the algorithm to be used must be able to search the lists thoroughly taking into account the quality of the playlist given a set of user constraints. In this paper we perform an evolutionary meta-heuristic optimization algorithm, Differential Evolution (DE) using different combination of parameter values and select the best performing set when used to solve four standard test functions. Performance of the proposed algorithm is then compared with normal Genetic Algorithm (GA) and a hybrid GA with Tabu Search. Numerical simulations are carried out to show better results from Differential Evolution approach with the optimized parameter values.

  7. Constraint Optimization Literature Review

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2015-11-01

    COPs. 15. SUBJECT TERMS high-performance computing, mobile ad hoc network, optimization, constraint, satisfaction 16. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF: 17...Optimization Problems 1 2.1 Constraint Satisfaction Problems 1 2.2 Constraint Optimization Problems 3 3. Constraint Optimization Algorithms 9 3.1...Constraint Satisfaction Algorithms 9 3.1.1 Brute-Force search 9 3.1.2 Constraint Propagation 10 3.1.3 Depth-First Search 13 3.1.4 Local Search 18

  8. FBC: a flat binary code scheme for fast Manhattan hash retrieval

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kong, Yan; Wu, Fuzhang; Gao, Lifa; Wu, Yanjun

    2018-04-01

    Hash coding is a widely used technique in approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search, especially in document search and multimedia (such as image and video) retrieval. Based on the difference of distance measurement, hash methods are generally classified into two categories: Hamming hashing and Manhattan hashing. Benefitting from better neighborhood structure preservation, Manhattan hashing methods outperform earlier methods in search effectiveness. However, due to using decimal arithmetic operations instead of bit operations, Manhattan hashing becomes a more time-consuming process, which significantly decreases the whole search efficiency. To solve this problem, we present an intuitive hash scheme which uses Flat Binary Code (FBC) to encode the data points. As a result, the decimal arithmetic used in previous Manhattan hashing can be replaced by more efficient XOR operator. The final experiments show that with a reasonable memory space growth, our FBC speeds up more than 80% averagely without any search accuracy loss when comparing to the state-of-art Manhattan hashing methods.

  9. A PSO-Based Hybrid Metaheuristic for Permutation Flowshop Scheduling Problems

    PubMed Central

    Zhang, Le; Wu, Jinnan

    2014-01-01

    This paper investigates the permutation flowshop scheduling problem (PFSP) with the objectives of minimizing the makespan and the total flowtime and proposes a hybrid metaheuristic based on the particle swarm optimization (PSO). To enhance the exploration ability of the hybrid metaheuristic, a simulated annealing hybrid with a stochastic variable neighborhood search is incorporated. To improve the search diversification of the hybrid metaheuristic, a solution replacement strategy based on the pathrelinking is presented to replace the particles that have been trapped in local optimum. Computational results on benchmark instances show that the proposed PSO-based hybrid metaheuristic is competitive with other powerful metaheuristics in the literature. PMID:24672389

  10. A PSO-based hybrid metaheuristic for permutation flowshop scheduling problems.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Le; Wu, Jinnan

    2014-01-01

    This paper investigates the permutation flowshop scheduling problem (PFSP) with the objectives of minimizing the makespan and the total flowtime and proposes a hybrid metaheuristic based on the particle swarm optimization (PSO). To enhance the exploration ability of the hybrid metaheuristic, a simulated annealing hybrid with a stochastic variable neighborhood search is incorporated. To improve the search diversification of the hybrid metaheuristic, a solution replacement strategy based on the pathrelinking is presented to replace the particles that have been trapped in local optimum. Computational results on benchmark instances show that the proposed PSO-based hybrid metaheuristic is competitive with other powerful metaheuristics in the literature.

  11. Operating Quantum States in Single Magnetic Molecules: Implementation of Grover's Quantum Algorithm.

    PubMed

    Godfrin, C; Ferhat, A; Ballou, R; Klyatskaya, S; Ruben, M; Wernsdorfer, W; Balestro, F

    2017-11-03

    Quantum algorithms use the principles of quantum mechanics, such as, for example, quantum superposition, in order to solve particular problems outperforming standard computation. They are developed for cryptography, searching, optimization, simulation, and solving large systems of linear equations. Here, we implement Grover's quantum algorithm, proposed to find an element in an unsorted list, using a single nuclear 3/2 spin carried by a Tb ion sitting in a single molecular magnet transistor. The coherent manipulation of this multilevel quantum system (qudit) is achieved by means of electric fields only. Grover's search algorithm is implemented by constructing a quantum database via a multilevel Hadamard gate. The Grover sequence then allows us to select each state. The presented method is of universal character and can be implemented in any multilevel quantum system with nonequal spaced energy levels, opening the way to novel quantum search algorithms.

  12. An improved CS-LSSVM algorithm-based fault pattern recognition of ship power equipments.

    PubMed

    Yang, Yifei; Tan, Minjia; Dai, Yuewei

    2017-01-01

    A ship power equipments' fault monitoring signal usually provides few samples and the data's feature is non-linear in practical situation. This paper adopts the method of the least squares support vector machine (LSSVM) to deal with the problem of fault pattern identification in the case of small sample data. Meanwhile, in order to avoid involving a local extremum and poor convergence precision which are induced by optimizing the kernel function parameter and penalty factor of LSSVM, an improved Cuckoo Search (CS) algorithm is proposed for the purpose of parameter optimization. Based on the dynamic adaptive strategy, the newly proposed algorithm improves the recognition probability and the searching step length, which can effectively solve the problems of slow searching speed and low calculation accuracy of the CS algorithm. A benchmark example demonstrates that the CS-LSSVM algorithm can accurately and effectively identify the fault pattern types of ship power equipments.

  13. Operating Quantum States in Single Magnetic Molecules: Implementation of Grover's Quantum Algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Godfrin, C.; Ferhat, A.; Ballou, R.; Klyatskaya, S.; Ruben, M.; Wernsdorfer, W.; Balestro, F.

    2017-11-01

    Quantum algorithms use the principles of quantum mechanics, such as, for example, quantum superposition, in order to solve particular problems outperforming standard computation. They are developed for cryptography, searching, optimization, simulation, and solving large systems of linear equations. Here, we implement Grover's quantum algorithm, proposed to find an element in an unsorted list, using a single nuclear 3 /2 spin carried by a Tb ion sitting in a single molecular magnet transistor. The coherent manipulation of this multilevel quantum system (qudit) is achieved by means of electric fields only. Grover's search algorithm is implemented by constructing a quantum database via a multilevel Hadamard gate. The Grover sequence then allows us to select each state. The presented method is of universal character and can be implemented in any multilevel quantum system with nonequal spaced energy levels, opening the way to novel quantum search algorithms.

  14. Workflow of the Grover algorithm simulation incorporating CUDA and GPGPU

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lu, Xiangwen; Yuan, Jiabin; Zhang, Weiwei

    2013-09-01

    The Grover quantum search algorithm, one of only a few representative quantum algorithms, can speed up many classical algorithms that use search heuristics. No true quantum computer has yet been developed. For the present, simulation is one effective means of verifying the search algorithm. In this work, we focus on the simulation workflow using a compute unified device architecture (CUDA). Two simulation workflow schemes are proposed. These schemes combine the characteristics of the Grover algorithm and the parallelism of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU). We also analyzed the optimization of memory space and memory access from this perspective. We implemented four programs on CUDA to evaluate the performance of schemes and optimization. Through experimentation, we analyzed the organization of threads suited to Grover algorithm simulations, compared the storage costs of the four programs, and validated the effectiveness of optimization. Experimental results also showed that the distinguished program on CUDA outperformed the serial program of libquantum on a CPU with a speedup of up to 23 times (12 times on average), depending on the scale of the simulation.

  15. On finding bicliques in bipartite graphs: a novel algorithm and its application to the integration of diverse biological data types

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    Background Integrating and analyzing heterogeneous genome-scale data is a huge algorithmic challenge for modern systems biology. Bipartite graphs can be useful for representing relationships across pairs of disparate data types, with the interpretation of these relationships accomplished through an enumeration of maximal bicliques. Most previously-known techniques are generally ill-suited to this foundational task, because they are relatively inefficient and without effective scaling. In this paper, a powerful new algorithm is described that produces all maximal bicliques in a bipartite graph. Unlike most previous approaches, the new method neither places undue restrictions on its input nor inflates the problem size. Efficiency is achieved through an innovative exploitation of bipartite graph structure, and through computational reductions that rapidly eliminate non-maximal candidates from the search space. An iterative selection of vertices for consideration based on non-decreasing common neighborhood sizes boosts efficiency and leads to more balanced recursion trees. Results The new technique is implemented and compared to previously published approaches from graph theory and data mining. Formal time and space bounds are derived. Experiments are performed on both random graphs and graphs constructed from functional genomics data. It is shown that the new method substantially outperforms the best previous alternatives. Conclusions The new method is streamlined, efficient, and particularly well-suited to the study of huge and diverse biological data. A robust implementation has been incorporated into GeneWeaver, an online tool for integrating and analyzing functional genomics experiments, available at http://geneweaver.org. The enormous increase in scalability it provides empowers users to study complex and previously unassailable gene-set associations between genes and their biological functions in a hierarchical fashion and on a genome-wide scale. This practical computational resource is adaptable to almost any applications environment in which bipartite graphs can be used to model relationships between pairs of heterogeneous entities. PMID:24731198

  16. A new catalog of H i supershell candidates in the outer part of the Galaxy

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Suad, L. A.; Caiafa, C. F.; Arnal, E. M.; Cichowolski, S.

    2014-04-01

    Aims: The main goal of this work is to a have a new neutral hydrogen (H i) supershell candidate catalog to analyze their spatial distribution in the Galaxy and to carry out a statistical study of their main properties. Methods: This catalog was carried out making use of the Leiden-Argentine-Bonn (LAB) survey. The supershell candidates were identified using a combination of two techniques: a visual inspection plus an automatic searching algorithm. Our automatic algorithm is able to detect both closed and open structures. Results: A total of 566 supershell candidates were identified. Most of them (347) are located in the second Galactic quadrant, while 219 were found in the third one. About 98% of a subset of 190 structures (used to derive the statistical properties of the supershell candidates) are elliptical with a mean weighted eccentricity of 0.8 ± 0.1, and ~70% have their major axes parallel to the Galactic plane. The weighted mean value of the effective radius of the structures is ~160 pc. Owing to the ability of our automatic algorithm to detect open structures, we have also identified some "galactic chimney" candidates. We find an asymmetry between the second and third Galactic quadrants in the sense that in the second one we detect structures as far as 32 kpc, while for the 3rd one the farthest structure is detected at 17 kpc. The supershell surface density in the solar neighborhood is ~8 kpc-2, and decreases as we move farther away form the Galactic center. We have also compared our catalog with those by other authors. Full table is only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (ftp://130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/564/A116

  17. Automated discovery of local search heuristics for satisfiability testing.

    PubMed

    Fukunaga, Alex S

    2008-01-01

    The development of successful metaheuristic algorithms such as local search for a difficult problem such as satisfiability testing (SAT) is a challenging task. We investigate an evolutionary approach to automating the discovery of new local search heuristics for SAT. We show that several well-known SAT local search algorithms such as Walksat and Novelty are composite heuristics that are derived from novel combinations of a set of building blocks. Based on this observation, we developed CLASS, a genetic programming system that uses a simple composition operator to automatically discover SAT local search heuristics. New heuristics discovered by CLASS are shown to be competitive with the best Walksat variants, including Novelty+. Evolutionary algorithms have previously been applied to directly evolve a solution for a particular SAT instance. We show that the heuristics discovered by CLASS are also competitive with these previous, direct evolutionary approaches for SAT. We also analyze the local search behavior of the learned heuristics using the depth, mobility, and coverage metrics proposed by Schuurmans and Southey.

  18. A general system for automatic biomedical image segmentation using intensity neighborhoods.

    PubMed

    Chen, Cheng; Ozolek, John A; Wang, Wei; Rohde, Gustavo K

    2011-01-01

    Image segmentation is important with applications to several problems in biology and medicine. While extensively researched, generally, current segmentation methods perform adequately in the applications for which they were designed, but often require extensive modifications or calibrations before being used in a different application. We describe an approach that, with few modifications, can be used in a variety of image segmentation problems. The approach is based on a supervised learning strategy that utilizes intensity neighborhoods to assign each pixel in a test image its correct class based on training data. We describe methods for modeling rotations and variations in scales as well as a subset selection for training the classifiers. We show that the performance of our approach in tissue segmentation tasks in magnetic resonance and histopathology microscopy images, as well as nuclei segmentation from fluorescence microscopy images, is similar to or better than several algorithms specifically designed for each of these applications.

  19. A novel artificial bee colony algorithm based on modified search equation and orthogonal learning.

    PubMed

    Gao, Wei-feng; Liu, San-yang; Huang, Ling-ling

    2013-06-01

    The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a relatively new optimization technique which has been shown to be competitive to other population-based algorithms. However, ABC has an insufficiency regarding its solution search equation, which is good at exploration but poor at exploitation. To address this concerning issue, we first propose an improved ABC method called as CABC where a modified search equation is applied to generate a candidate solution to improve the search ability of ABC. Furthermore, we use the orthogonal experimental design (OED) to form an orthogonal learning (OL) strategy for variant ABCs to discover more useful information from the search experiences. Owing to OED's good character of sampling a small number of well representative combinations for testing, the OL strategy can construct a more promising and efficient candidate solution. In this paper, the OL strategy is applied to three versions of ABC, i.e., the standard ABC, global-best-guided ABC (GABC), and CABC, which yields OABC, OGABC, and OCABC, respectively. The experimental results on a set of 22 benchmark functions demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the modified search equation and the OL strategy. The comparisons with some other ABCs and several state-of-the-art algorithms show that the proposed algorithms significantly improve the performance of ABC. Moreover, OCABC offers the highest solution quality, fastest global convergence, and strongest robustness among all the contenders on almost all the test functions.

  20. Visual Tracking via Sparse and Local Linear Coding.

    PubMed

    Wang, Guofeng; Qin, Xueying; Zhong, Fan; Liu, Yue; Li, Hongbo; Peng, Qunsheng; Yang, Ming-Hsuan

    2015-11-01

    The state search is an important component of any object tracking algorithm. Numerous algorithms have been proposed, but stochastic sampling methods (e.g., particle filters) are arguably one of the most effective approaches. However, the discretization of the state space complicates the search for the precise object location. In this paper, we propose a novel tracking algorithm that extends the state space of particle observations from discrete to continuous. The solution is determined accurately via iterative linear coding between two convex hulls. The algorithm is modeled by an optimal function, which can be efficiently solved by either convex sparse coding or locality constrained linear coding. The algorithm is also very flexible and can be combined with many generic object representations. Thus, we first use sparse representation to achieve an efficient searching mechanism of the algorithm and demonstrate its accuracy. Next, two other object representation models, i.e., least soft-threshold squares and adaptive structural local sparse appearance, are implemented with improved accuracy to demonstrate the flexibility of our algorithm. Qualitative and quantitative experimental results demonstrate that the proposed tracking algorithm performs favorably against the state-of-the-art methods in dynamic scenes.

  1. RNA motif search with data-driven element ordering.

    PubMed

    Rampášek, Ladislav; Jimenez, Randi M; Lupták, Andrej; Vinař, Tomáš; Brejová, Broňa

    2016-05-18

    In this paper, we study the problem of RNA motif search in long genomic sequences. This approach uses a combination of sequence and structure constraints to uncover new distant homologs of known functional RNAs. The problem is NP-hard and is traditionally solved by backtracking algorithms. We have designed a new algorithm for RNA motif search and implemented a new motif search tool RNArobo. The tool enhances the RNAbob descriptor language, allowing insertions in helices, which enables better characterization of ribozymes and aptamers. A typical RNA motif consists of multiple elements and the running time of the algorithm is highly dependent on their ordering. By approaching the element ordering problem in a principled way, we demonstrate more than 100-fold speedup of the search for complex motifs compared to previously published tools. We have developed a new method for RNA motif search that allows for a significant speedup of the search of complex motifs that include pseudoknots. Such speed improvements are crucial at a time when the rate of DNA sequencing outpaces growth in computing. RNArobo is available at http://compbio.fmph.uniba.sk/rnarobo .

  2. Min-Cut Based Segmentation of Airborne LIDAR Point Clouds

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ural, S.; Shan, J.

    2012-07-01

    Introducing an organization to the unstructured point cloud before extracting information from airborne lidar data is common in many applications. Aggregating the points with similar features into segments in 3-D which comply with the nature of actual objects is affected by the neighborhood, scale, features and noise among other aspects. In this study, we present a min-cut based method for segmenting the point cloud. We first assess the neighborhood of each point in 3-D by investigating the local geometric and statistical properties of the candidates. Neighborhood selection is essential since point features are calculated within their local neighborhood. Following neighborhood determination, we calculate point features and determine the clusters in the feature space. We adapt a graph representation from image processing which is especially used in pixel labeling problems and establish it for the unstructured 3-D point clouds. The edges of the graph that are connecting the points with each other and nodes representing feature clusters hold the smoothness costs in the spatial domain and data costs in the feature domain. Smoothness costs ensure spatial coherence, while data costs control the consistency with the representative feature clusters. This graph representation formalizes the segmentation task as an energy minimization problem. It allows the implementation of an approximate solution by min-cuts for a global minimum of this NP hard minimization problem in low order polynomial time. We test our method with airborne lidar point cloud acquired with maximum planned post spacing of 1.4 m and a vertical accuracy 10.5 cm as RMSE. We present the effects of neighborhood and feature determination in the segmentation results and assess the accuracy and efficiency of the implemented min-cut algorithm as well as its sensitivity to the parameters of the smoothness and data cost functions. We find that smoothness cost that only considers simple distance parameter does not strongly conform to the natural structure of the points. Including shape information within the energy function by assigning costs based on the local properties may help to achieve a better representation for segmentation.

  3. Algorithms for searching Fast radio bursts and pulsars in tight binary systems.

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zackay, Barak

    2017-01-01

    Fast radio bursts (FRB's) are an exciting, recently discovered, astrophysical transients which their origins are unknown.Currently, these bursts are believed to be coming from cosmological distances, allowing us to probe the electron content on cosmological length scales. Even though their precise localization is crucial for the determination of their origin, radio interferometers were not extensively employed in searching for them due to computational limitations.I will briefly present the Fast Dispersion Measure Transform (FDMT) algorithm,that allows to reduce the operation count in blind incoherent dedispersion by 2-3 orders of magnitude.In addition, FDMT enables to probe the unexplored domain of sub-microsecond astrophysical pulses.Pulsars in tight binary systems are among the most important astrophysical objects as they provide us our best tests of general relativity in the strong field regime.I will provide a preview to a novel algorithm that enables the detection of pulsars in short binary systems using observation times longer than an orbital period.Current pulsar search programs limit their searches for integration times shorter than a few percents of the orbital period.Until now, searching for pulsars in binary systems using observation times longer than an orbital period was considered impossible as one has to blindly enumerate all options for the Keplerian parameters, the pulsar rotation period, and the unknown DM.Using the current state of the art pulsar search techniques and all computers on the earth, such an enumeration would take longer than a Hubble time. I will demonstrate that using the new algorithm, it is possible to conduct such an enumeration on a laptop using real data of the double pulsar PSR J0737-3039.Among the other applications of this algorithm are:1) Searching for all pulsars on all sky positions in gamma ray observations of the Fermi LAT satellite.2) Blind searching for continuous gravitational wave sources emitted by pulsars with non-axis-symmetric matter distribution.Previous attempts to conduct all of the above searches contained substantial sensitivity compromises.

  4. Reducing noise component on medical images

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Semenishchev, Evgeny; Voronin, Viacheslav; Dub, Vladimir; Balabaeva, Oksana

    2018-04-01

    Medical visualization and analysis of medical data is an actual direction. Medical images are used in microbiology, genetics, roentgenology, oncology, surgery, ophthalmology, etc. Initial data processing is a major step towards obtaining a good diagnostic result. The paper considers the approach allows an image filtering with preservation of objects borders. The algorithm proposed in this paper is based on sequential data processing. At the first stage, local areas are determined, for this purpose the method of threshold processing, as well as the classical ICI algorithm, is applied. The second stage uses a method based on based on two criteria, namely, L2 norm and the first order square difference. To preserve the boundaries of objects, we will process the transition boundary and local neighborhood the filtering algorithm with a fixed-coefficient. For example, reconstructed images of CT, x-ray, and microbiological studies are shown. The test images show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. This shows the applicability of analysis many medical imaging applications.

  5. Distributed weighted least-squares estimation with fast convergence for large-scale systems.

    PubMed

    Marelli, Damián Edgardo; Fu, Minyue

    2015-01-01

    In this paper we study a distributed weighted least-squares estimation problem for a large-scale system consisting of a network of interconnected sub-systems. Each sub-system is concerned with a subset of the unknown parameters and has a measurement linear in the unknown parameters with additive noise. The distributed estimation task is for each sub-system to compute the globally optimal estimate of its own parameters using its own measurement and information shared with the network through neighborhood communication. We first provide a fully distributed iterative algorithm to asymptotically compute the global optimal estimate. The convergence rate of the algorithm will be maximized using a scaling parameter and a preconditioning method. This algorithm works for a general network. For a network without loops, we also provide a different iterative algorithm to compute the global optimal estimate which converges in a finite number of steps. We include numerical experiments to illustrate the performances of the proposed methods.

  6. Distributed weighted least-squares estimation with fast convergence for large-scale systems☆

    PubMed Central

    Marelli, Damián Edgardo; Fu, Minyue

    2015-01-01

    In this paper we study a distributed weighted least-squares estimation problem for a large-scale system consisting of a network of interconnected sub-systems. Each sub-system is concerned with a subset of the unknown parameters and has a measurement linear in the unknown parameters with additive noise. The distributed estimation task is for each sub-system to compute the globally optimal estimate of its own parameters using its own measurement and information shared with the network through neighborhood communication. We first provide a fully distributed iterative algorithm to asymptotically compute the global optimal estimate. The convergence rate of the algorithm will be maximized using a scaling parameter and a preconditioning method. This algorithm works for a general network. For a network without loops, we also provide a different iterative algorithm to compute the global optimal estimate which converges in a finite number of steps. We include numerical experiments to illustrate the performances of the proposed methods. PMID:25641976

  7. A fuzzy reinforcement learning approach to power control in wireless transmitters.

    PubMed

    Vengerov, David; Bambos, Nicholas; Berenji, Hamid R

    2005-08-01

    We address the issue of power-controlled shared channel access in wireless networks supporting packetized data traffic. We formulate this problem using the dynamic programming framework and present a new distributed fuzzy reinforcement learning algorithm (ACFRL-2) capable of adequately solving a class of problems to which the power control problem belongs. Our experimental results show that the algorithm converges almost deterministically to a neighborhood of optimal parameter values, as opposed to a very noisy stochastic convergence of earlier algorithms. The main tradeoff facing a transmitter is to balance its current power level with future backlog in the presence of stochastically changing interference. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the ACFRL-2 algorithm achieves significant performance gains over the standard power control approach used in CDMA2000. Such a large improvement is explained by the fact that ACFRL-2 allows transmitters to learn implicit coordination policies, which back off under stressful channel conditions as opposed to engaging in escalating "power wars."

  8. Study of genetic direct search algorithms for function optimization

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Zeigler, B. P.

    1974-01-01

    The results are presented of a study to determine the performance of genetic direct search algorithms in solving function optimization problems arising in the optimal and adaptive control areas. The findings indicate that: (1) genetic algorithms can outperform standard algorithms in multimodal and/or noisy optimization situations, but suffer from lack of gradient exploitation facilities when gradient information can be utilized to guide the search. (2) For large populations, or low dimensional function spaces, mutation is a sufficient operator. However for small populations or high dimensional functions, crossover applied in about equal frequency with mutation is an optimum combination. (3) Complexity, in terms of storage space and running time, is significantly increased when population size is increased or the inversion operator, or the second level adaptation routine is added to the basic structure.

  9. Parameter identification of piezoelectric hysteresis model based on improved artificial bee colony algorithm

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, Geng; Zhou, Kexin; Zhang, Yeming

    2018-04-01

    The widely used Bouc-Wen hysteresis model can be utilized to accurately simulate the voltage-displacement curves of piezoelectric actuators. In order to identify the unknown parameters of the Bouc-Wen model, an improved artificial bee colony (IABC) algorithm is proposed in this paper. A guiding strategy for searching the current optimal position of the food source is proposed in the method, which can help balance the local search ability and global exploitation capability. And the formula for the scout bees to search for the food source is modified to increase the convergence speed. Some experiments were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the IABC algorithm. The results show that the identified hysteresis model agreed well with the actual actuator response. Moreover, the identification results were compared with the standard particle swarm optimization (PSO) method, and it can be seen that the search performance in convergence rate of the IABC algorithm is better than that of the standard PSO method.

  10. Advances in feature selection methods for hyperspectral image processing in food industry applications: a review.

    PubMed

    Dai, Qiong; Cheng, Jun-Hu; Sun, Da-Wen; Zeng, Xin-An

    2015-01-01

    There is an increased interest in the applications of hyperspectral imaging (HSI) for assessing food quality, safety, and authenticity. HSI provides abundance of spatial and spectral information from foods by combining both spectroscopy and imaging, resulting in hundreds of contiguous wavebands for each spatial position of food samples, also known as the curse of dimensionality. It is desirable to employ feature selection algorithms for decreasing computation burden and increasing predicting accuracy, which are especially relevant in the development of online applications. Recently, a variety of feature selection algorithms have been proposed that can be categorized into three groups based on the searching strategy namely complete search, heuristic search and random search. This review mainly introduced the fundamental of each algorithm, illustrated its applications in hyperspectral data analysis in the food field, and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of these algorithms. It is hoped that this review should provide a guideline for feature selections and data processing in the future development of hyperspectral imaging technique in foods.

  11. Application of artificial intelligence to search ground-state geometry of clusters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lemes, Maurício Ruv; Marim, L. R.; dal Pino, A.

    2002-08-01

    We introduce a global optimization procedure, the neural-assisted genetic algorithm (NAGA). It combines the power of an artificial neural network (ANN) with the versatility of the genetic algorithm. This method is suitable to solve optimization problems that depend on some kind of heuristics to limit the search space. If a reasonable amount of data is available, the ANN can ``understand'' the problem and provide the genetic algorithm with a selected population of elements that will speed up the search for the optimum solution. We tested the method in a search for the ground-state geometry of silicon clusters. We trained the ANN with information about the geometry and energetics of small silicon clusters. Next, the ANN learned how to restrict the configurational space for larger silicon clusters. For Si10 and Si20, we noticed that the NAGA is at least three times faster than the ``pure'' genetic algorithm. As the size of the cluster increases, it is expected that the gain in terms of time will increase as well.

  12. Annealing Ant Colony Optimization with Mutation Operator for Solving TSP

    PubMed Central

    2016-01-01

    Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) has been successfully applied to solve a wide range of combinatorial optimization problems such as minimum spanning tree, traveling salesman problem, and quadratic assignment problem. Basic ACO has drawbacks of trapping into local minimum and low convergence rate. Simulated annealing (SA) and mutation operator have the jumping ability and global convergence; and local search has the ability to speed up the convergence. Therefore, this paper proposed a hybrid ACO algorithm integrating the advantages of ACO, SA, mutation operator, and local search procedure to solve the traveling salesman problem. The core of algorithm is based on the ACO. SA and mutation operator were used to increase the ants population diversity from time to time and the local search was used to exploit the current search area efficiently. The comparative experiments, using 24 TSP instances from TSPLIB, show that the proposed algorithm outperformed some well-known algorithms in the literature in terms of solution quality. PMID:27999590

  13. B* Probability Based Search

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1994-06-27

    success . The key ideas behind the algorithm are: 1. Stopping when one alternative is clearly better than all the others, and 2. Focusing the search on...search algorithm has been implemented on the chess machine Hitech . En route we have developed effective techniques for: "* Dealing with independence of...report describes the implementation, and the results of tests including games played against brute- force programs. The data indicate that B* Hitech is a

  14. Identification of expression quantitative trait loci by the interaction analysis using genetic algorithm.

    PubMed

    Namkung, Junghyun; Nam, Jin-Wu; Park, Taesung

    2007-01-01

    Many genes with major effects on quantitative traits have been reported to interact with other genes. However, finding a group of interacting genes from thousands of SNPs is challenging. Hence, an efficient and robust algorithm is needed. The genetic algorithm (GA) is useful in searching for the optimal solution from a very large searchable space. In this study, we show that genome-wide interaction analysis using GA and a statistical interaction model can provide a practical method to detect biologically interacting loci. We focus our search on transcriptional regulators by analyzing gene x gene interactions for cancer-related genes. The expression values of three cancer-related genes were selected from the expression data of the Genetic Analysis Workshop 15 Problem 1 data set. We implemented a GA to identify the expression quantitative trait loci that are significantly associated with expression levels of the cancer-related genes. The time complexity of the GA was compared with that of an exhaustive search algorithm. As a result, our GA, which included heuristic methods, such as archive, elitism, and local search, has greatly reduced computational time in a genome-wide search for gene x gene interactions. In general, the GA took one-fifth the computation time of an exhaustive search for the most significant pair of single-nucleotide polymorphisms.

  15. Identification of expression quantitative trait loci by the interaction analysis using genetic algorithm

    PubMed Central

    Namkung, Junghyun; Nam, Jin-Wu; Park, Taesung

    2007-01-01

    Many genes with major effects on quantitative traits have been reported to interact with other genes. However, finding a group of interacting genes from thousands of SNPs is challenging. Hence, an efficient and robust algorithm is needed. The genetic algorithm (GA) is useful in searching for the optimal solution from a very large searchable space. In this study, we show that genome-wide interaction analysis using GA and a statistical interaction model can provide a practical method to detect biologically interacting loci. We focus our search on transcriptional regulators by analyzing gene × gene interactions for cancer-related genes. The expression values of three cancer-related genes were selected from the expression data of the Genetic Analysis Workshop 15 Problem 1 data set. We implemented a GA to identify the expression quantitative trait loci that are significantly associated with expression levels of the cancer-related genes. The time complexity of the GA was compared with that of an exhaustive search algorithm. As a result, our GA, which included heuristic methods, such as archive, elitism, and local search, has greatly reduced computational time in a genome-wide search for gene × gene interactions. In general, the GA took one-fifth the computation time of an exhaustive search for the most significant pair of single-nucleotide polymorphisms. PMID:18466570

  16. Neighbor Discovery Algorithm in Wireless Local Area Networks Using Multi-beam Directional Antennas

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, Jin; Peng, Wei; Liu, Song

    2017-10-01

    Neighbor discovery is an important step for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) and the use of multi-beam directional antennas can greatly improve the network performance. However, most neighbor discovery algorithms in WLAN, based on multi-beam directional antennas, can only work effectively in synchronous system but not in asynchro-nous system. And collisions at AP remain a bottleneck for neighbor discovery. In this paper, we propose two asynchrono-us neighbor discovery algorithms: asynchronous hierarchical scanning (AHS) and asynchronous directional scanning (ADS) algorithm. Both of them are based on three-way handshaking mechanism. AHS and ADS reduce collisions at AP to have a good performance in a hierarchical way and directional way respectively. In the end, the performance of the AHS and ADS are tested on OMNeT++. Moreover, it is analyzed that different application scenarios and the factors how to affect the performance of these algorithms. The simulation results show that AHS is suitable for the densely populated scenes around AP while ADS is suitable for that most of the neighborhood nodes are far from AP.

  17. Infrared small target detection technology based on OpenCV

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Lei; Huang, Zhijian

    2013-05-01

    Accurate and fast detection of infrared (IR) dim target has very important meaning for infrared precise guidance, early warning, video surveillance, etc. In this paper, some basic principles and the implementing flow charts of a series of algorithms for target detection are described. These algorithms are traditional two-frame difference method, improved three-frame difference method, background estimate and frame difference fusion method, and building background with neighborhood mean method. On the foundation of above works, an infrared target detection software platform which is developed by OpenCV and MFC is introduced. Three kinds of tracking algorithms are integrated in this software. In order to explain the software clearly, the framework and the function are described in this paper. At last, the experiments are performed for some real-life IR images. The whole algorithm implementing processes and results are analyzed, and those algorithms for detection targets are evaluated from the two aspects of subjective and objective. The results prove that the proposed method has satisfying detection effectiveness and robustness. Meanwhile, it has high detection efficiency and can be used for real-time detection.

  18. Infrared small target detection technology based on OpenCV

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Lei; Huang, Zhijian

    2013-09-01

    Accurate and fast detection of infrared (IR) dim target has very important meaning for infrared precise guidance, early warning, video surveillance, etc. In this paper, some basic principles and the implementing flow charts of a series of algorithms for target detection are described. These algorithms are traditional two-frame difference method, improved three-frame difference method, background estimate and frame difference fusion method, and building background with neighborhood mean method. On the foundation of above works, an infrared target detection software platform which is developed by OpenCV and MFC is introduced. Three kinds of tracking algorithms are integrated in this software. In order to explain the software clearly, the framework and the function are described in this paper. At last, the experiments are performed for some real-life IR images. The whole algorithm implementing processes and results are analyzed, and those algorithms for detection targets are evaluated from the two aspects of subjective and objective. The results prove that the proposed method has satisfying detection effectiveness and robustness. Meanwhile, it has high detection efficiency and can be used for real-time detection.

  19. Recursive Branching Simulated Annealing Algorithm

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Bolcar, Matthew; Smith, J. Scott; Aronstein, David

    2012-01-01

    This innovation is a variation of a simulated-annealing optimization algorithm that uses a recursive-branching structure to parallelize the search of a parameter space for the globally optimal solution to an objective. The algorithm has been demonstrated to be more effective at searching a parameter space than traditional simulated-annealing methods for a particular problem of interest, and it can readily be applied to a wide variety of optimization problems, including those with a parameter space having both discrete-value parameters (combinatorial) and continuous-variable parameters. It can take the place of a conventional simulated- annealing, Monte-Carlo, or random- walk algorithm. In a conventional simulated-annealing (SA) algorithm, a starting configuration is randomly selected within the parameter space. The algorithm randomly selects another configuration from the parameter space and evaluates the objective function for that configuration. If the objective function value is better than the previous value, the new configuration is adopted as the new point of interest in the parameter space. If the objective function value is worse than the previous value, the new configuration may be adopted, with a probability determined by a temperature parameter, used in analogy to annealing in metals. As the optimization continues, the region of the parameter space from which new configurations can be selected shrinks, and in conjunction with lowering the annealing temperature (and thus lowering the probability for adopting configurations in parameter space with worse objective functions), the algorithm can converge on the globally optimal configuration. The Recursive Branching Simulated Annealing (RBSA) algorithm shares some features with the SA algorithm, notably including the basic principles that a starting configuration is randomly selected from within the parameter space, the algorithm tests other configurations with the goal of finding the globally optimal solution, and the region from which new configurations can be selected shrinks as the search continues. The key difference between these algorithms is that in the SA algorithm, a single path, or trajectory, is taken in parameter space, from the starting point to the globally optimal solution, while in the RBSA algorithm, many trajectories are taken; by exploring multiple regions of the parameter space simultaneously, the algorithm has been shown to converge on the globally optimal solution about an order of magnitude faster than when using conventional algorithms. Novel features of the RBSA algorithm include: 1. More efficient searching of the parameter space due to the branching structure, in which multiple random configurations are generated and multiple promising regions of the parameter space are explored; 2. The implementation of a trust region for each parameter in the parameter space, which provides a natural way of enforcing upper- and lower-bound constraints on the parameters; and 3. The optional use of a constrained gradient- search optimization, performed on the continuous variables around each branch s configuration in parameter space to improve search efficiency by allowing for fast fine-tuning of the continuous variables within the trust region at that configuration point.

  20. Radial basis function neural networks applied to NASA SSME data

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Wheeler, Kevin R.; Dhawan, Atam P.

    1993-01-01

    This paper presents a brief report on the application of Radial Basis Function Neural Networks (RBFNN) to the prediction of sensor values for fault detection and diagnosis of the Space Shuttle's Main Engines (SSME). The location of the Radial Basis Function (RBF) node centers was determined with a K-means clustering algorithm. A neighborhood operation about these center points was used to determine the variances of the individual processing notes.

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