ALBERT

Description: We examine a distributed detection problem in a wireless sensor network, where sensor nodes collaborate to detect a Gaussian signal with an unknown change of power, i.e., a scale parameter. Due to power/bandwidth constraints, we consider the case where each sensor quantizes its observation into a binary digit. The binary data are then transmitted through error-prone wireless links to a fusion center, where a generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) detector is employed to perform a global decision. We study the design of a binary quantizer based on an asymptotic analysis of the GLRT. Interestingly, the quantization threshold of the quantizer is independent of the unknown scale parameter. Numerical results are included to illustrate the performance of the proposed quantizer and GLRT in binary symmetric channels (BSCs).

Description: More and more hybrid electric vehicles are driven since they offer such advantages as energy savings and better active safety performance. Hybrid vehicles have two or more power driving systems and frequently switch working condition, so controlling stability is very important. In this work, a two-stage Kalman algorithm method is used to fuse data in hybrid vehicle stability testing. First, the RT3102 navigation system and Dewetron system are introduced. Second, a modeling of data fusion is proposed based on the Kalman filter. Then, this modeling is simulated and tested on a sample vehicle, using Carsim and Simulink software to test the results. The results showed the merits of this modeling.

Description: Currently deep learning has made great breakthroughs in visual and speech processing, mainly because it draws lessons from the hierarchical mode that brain deals with images and speech. In the field of NLP, a topic model is one of the important ways for modeling documents. Topic models are built on a generative model that clearly does not match the way humans write. In this paper, we propose Event Model, which is unsupervised and based on the language processing mechanism of neurolinguistics, to model documents. In Event Model, documents are descriptions of concrete or abstract events seen, heard, or sensed by people and words are objects in the events. Event Model has two stages: word learning and dimensionality reduction. Word learning is to learn semantics of words based on deep learning. Dimensionality reduction is the process that representing a document as a low dimensional vector by a linear mode that is completely different from topic models. Event Model achieves state-of-the-art results on document retrieval tasks.

Description: Community detection in a complex network is an important problem of much interest in recent years. In general, a community detection algorithm chooses an objective function and captures the communities of the network by optimizing the objective function, and then, one uses various heuristics to solve the optimization problem to extract the interesting communities for the user. In this article, we demonstrate the procedure to transform a graph into points of a metric space and develop the methods of community detection with the help of a metric defined for a pair of points. We have also studied and analyzed the community structure of the network therein. The results obtained with our approach are very competitive with most of the well-known algorithms in the literature, and this is justified over the large collection of datasets. On the other hand, it can be observed that time taken by our algorithm is quite less compared to other methods and justifies the theoretical findings.

Description: A three-step iterative method with fifth-order convergence as a new modification of Newton’s method was presented. This method is for finding multiple roots of nonlinear equation with unknown multiplicity m whose multiplicity m is the highest multiplicity. Its order of convergence is analyzed and proved. Results for some numerical examples show the efficiency of the new method.

Description: In this paper, we present three improvements to a three-point third order variant of Newton’s method derived from the Simpson rule. The first one is a fifth order method using the same number of functional evaluations as the third order method, the second one is a four-point 10th order method and the last one is a five-point 20th order method. In terms of computational point of view, our methods require four evaluations (one function and three first derivatives) to get fifth order, five evaluations (two functions and three derivatives) to get 10th order and six evaluations (three functions and three derivatives) to get 20th order. Hence, these methods have efficiency indexes of 1.495, 1.585 and 1.648, respectively which are better than the efficiency index of 1.316 of the third order method. We test the methods through some numerical experiments which show that the 20th order method is very efficient.

Description: Robust small target detection of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is very important in infrared search and track applications for self-defense or attacks. Due to the complex background, current algorithms have some unsolved issues with false alarm rate. In order to reduce the false alarm rate, an infrared small target detection algorithm based on saliency detection and support vector machine was proposed. Firstly, we detect salient regions that may contain targets with phase spectrum Fourier transform (PFT) approach. Then, target recognition was performed in the salient regions. Experimental results show the proposed algorithm has ideal robustness and efficiency for real infrared small target detection applications.

Description: In dynamic propagation environments, beamforming algorithms may suffer from strong interference, steering vector mismatches, a low convergence speed and a high computational complexity. Reduced-rank signal processing techniques provide a way to address the problems mentioned above. This paper presents a low-complexity robust data-dependent dimensionality reduction based on an iterative optimization with steering vector perturbation (IOVP) algorithm for reduced-rank beamforming and steering vector estimation. The proposed robust optimization procedure jointly adjusts the parameters of a rank reduction matrix and an adaptive beamformer. The optimized rank reduction matrix projects the received signal vector onto a subspace with lower dimension. The beamformer/steering vector optimization is then performed in a reduced dimension subspace. We devise efficient stochastic gradient and recursive least-squares algorithms for implementing the proposed robust IOVP design. The proposed robust IOVP beamforming algorithms result in a faster convergence speed and an improved performance. Simulation results show that the proposed IOVP algorithms outperform some existing full-rank and reduced-rank algorithms with a comparable complexity.

Description: Recently, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have drawn great interest due to their outstanding monitoring and management potential in medical, environmental and industrial applications. Most of the applications that employ WSNs demand all of the sensor nodes to run on a common time scale, a requirement that highlights the importance of clock synchronization. The clock synchronization problem in WSNs is inherently related to parameter estimation. The accuracy of clock synchronization algorithms depends essentially on the statistical properties of the parameter estimation algorithms. Recently, studies dedicated to the estimation of synchronization parameters, such as clock offset and skew, have begun to emerge in the literature. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art clock synchronization algorithms for WSNs from a statistical signal processing point of view. This article focuses on describing the key features of the class of clock synchronization algorithms that exploit the traditional two-way message (signal) exchange mechanism. Upon introducing the two-way message exchange mechanism, the main clock offset estimation algorithms for pairwise synchronization of sensor nodes are first reviewed, and their performance is compared. The class of fully-distributed clock offset estimation algorithms for network-wide synchronization is then surveyed. The paper concludes with a list of open research problems pertaining to clock synchronization of WSNs.

Description: In this paper we investigate some parallel variants of Broyden’s method and, for the basic variant, we present its convergence properties. The main result is that the behavior of the considered parallel Broyden’s variants is comparable with the classical parallel Newton method, and significantly better than the parallel Cimmino method, both for linear and nonlinear cases. The considered variants are also compared with two more recently proposed parallel Broyden’s method. Some numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the advantages and limits of the proposed algorithms.

Description: The sign least mean square with reweighted L1-norm constraint (SLMS-RL1) algorithm is an attractive sparse channel estimation method among Gaussian mixture model (GMM) based algorithms for use in impulsive noise environments. The channel sparsity can be exploited by SLMS-RL1 algorithm based on appropriate reweighted factor, which is one of key parameters to adjust the sparse constraint for SLMS-RL1 algorithm. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, a reweighted factor selection scheme has not been developed. This paper proposes a Monte-Carlo (MC) based reweighted factor selection method to further strengthen the performance of SLMS-RL1 algorithm. To validate the performance of SLMS-RL1 using the proposed reweighted factor, simulations results are provided to demonstrate that convergence speed can be reduced by increasing the channel sparsity, while the steady-state MSE performance only slightly changes with different GMM impulsive-noise strengths.

Description: We present a local convergence analysis of an eighth order three step methodin order to approximate a locally unique solution of nonlinear equation in a Banach spacesetting. In an earlier study by Sharma and Arora (2015), the order of convergence wasshown using Taylor series expansions and hypotheses up to the fourth order derivative oreven higher of the function involved which restrict the applicability of the proposed scheme.However, only first order derivative appears in the proposed scheme. In order to overcomethis problem, we proposed the hypotheses up to only the first order derivative. In this way,we not only expand the applicability of the methods but also propose convergence domain.Finally, where earlier studies cannot be applied, a variety of concrete numerical examplesare proposed to obtain the solutions of nonlinear equations. Our study does not exhibit thistype of problem/restriction.

Description: Lung cancer continues to rank as the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. One of the most promising techniques for early detection of cancerous cells relies on sputum cell analysis. This was the motivation behind the design and the development of a new computer aided diagnosis (CAD) system for early detection of lung cancer based on the analysis of sputum color images. The proposed CAD system encompasses four main processing steps. First is the preprocessing step which utilizes a Bayesian classification method using histogram analysis. Then, in the second step, mean shift segmentation is applied to segment the nuclei from the cytoplasm. The third step is the feature analysis. In this step, geometric and chromatic features are extracted from the nucleus region. These features are used in the diagnostic process of the sputum images. Finally, the diagnosis is completed using an artificial neural network and support vector machine (SVM) for classifying the cells into benign or malignant. The performance of the system was analyzed based on different criteria such as sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. The evaluation was carried out using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve. The experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the SVM classifier over other classifiers, with 97% sensitivity and accuracy as well as a significant reduction in the number of false positive and false negative rates.

Description: Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) enables the non-invasive measurement of changes in hemodynamics and oxygenation in tissue. Changes in light-coupling due to movement of the subject can cause movement artifacts (MAs) in the recorded signals. Several methods have been developed so far that facilitate the detection and reduction of MAs in the data. However, due to fixed parameter values (e.g., global threshold) none of these methods are perfectly suitable for long-term (i.e., hours) recordings or were not time-effective when applied to large datasets. We aimed to overcome these limitations by automation, i.e., data adaptive thresholding specifically designed for long-term measurements, and by introducing a stable long-term signal reconstruction. Our new technique (“acceleration-based movement artifact reduction algorithm”, AMARA) is based on combining two methods: the “movement artifact reduction algorithm” (MARA, Scholkmann et al. Phys. Meas. 2010, 31, 649–662), and the “accelerometer-based motion artifact removal” (ABAMAR, Virtanen et al. J. Biomed. Opt. 2011, 16, 087005). We describe AMARA in detail and report about successful validation of the algorithm using empirical NIRS data, measured over the prefrontal cortex in adolescents during sleep. In addition, we compared the performance of AMARA to that of MARA and ABAMAR based on validation data.

Description: This paper focuses on the parameter identification problem for Wiener nonlinear dynamic systems with moving average noises. In order to improve the convergence rate, the gradient-based iterative algorithm is presented by replacing the unmeasurable variables with their corresponding iterative estimates, and to compute iteratively the noise estimates based on the obtained parameter estimates. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively estimate the parameters of Wiener systems with moving average noises.

Description: In this paper, the dynamical behavior of different optimal iterative schemes for solving nonlinear equations with increasing order, is studied. The tendency of the complexity of the Julia set is analyzed and referred to the fractal dimension. In fact, this fractal dimension can be shown to be a powerful tool to compare iterative schemes that estimate the solution of a nonlinear equation. Based on the box-counting algorithm, several iterative derivative-free methods of different convergence orders are compared.

Description: Clustering is a fundamental task in data mining. Affinity propagation clustering (APC) is an effective and efficient clustering technique that has been applied in various domains. APC iteratively propagates information between affinity samples, updates the responsibility matrix and availability matrix, and employs these matrices to choose cluster centers (or exemplars) of respective clusters. However, since it mainly uses negative Euclidean distance between exemplars and samples as the similarity between them, it is difficult to identify clusters with complex structure. Therefore, the performance of APC deteriorates on samples distributed with complex structure. To mitigate this problem, we propose an improved APC based on a path-based similarity (APC-PS). APC-PS firstly utilizes negative Euclidean distance to find exemplars of clusters. Then, it employs the path-based similarity to measure the similarity between exemplars and samples, and to explore the underlying structure of clusters. Next, it assigns non-exemplar samples to their respective clusters via that similarity. Our empirical study on synthetic and UCI datasets shows that the proposed APC-PS significantly outperforms original APC and other related approaches.

Description: Graph-based semi-supervised classification uses a graph to capture the relationship between samples and exploits label propagation techniques on the graph to predict the labels of unlabeled samples. However, it is difficult to construct a graph that faithfully describes the relationship between high-dimensional samples. Recently, low-rank representation has been introduced to construct a graph, which can preserve the global structure of high-dimensional samples and help to train accurate transductive classifiers. In this paper, we take advantage of low-rank representation for graph construction and propose an inductive semi-supervised classifier called Semi-Supervised Classification based on Low-Rank Representation (SSC-LRR). SSC-LRR first utilizes a linearized alternating direction method with adaptive penalty to compute the coefficient matrix of low-rank representation of samples. Then, the coefficient matrix is adopted to define a graph. Finally, SSC-LRR incorporates this graph into a graph-based semi-supervised linear classifier to classify unlabeled samples. Experiments are conducted on four widely used facial datasets to validate the effectiveness of the proposed SSC-LRR and the results demonstrate that SSC-LRR achieves higher accuracy than other related methods.

Description: This research proposes a two-stage user-based collaborative filtering process using an artificial immune system for the prediction of student grades, along with a filter for professor ratings in the course recommendation for college students. We test for cosine similarity and Karl Pearson (KP) correlation in affinity calculations for clustering and prediction. This research uses student information and professor information datasets of Yuan Ze University from the years 2005–2009 for the purpose of testing and training. The mean average error and confusion matrix analysis form the testing parameters. A minimum professor rating was tested to check the results, and observed that the recommendation systems herein provide highly accurate results for students with higher mean grades.

Description: This paper is concerned with the application of computational intelligence techniques to the conceptual design and development of a large-scale floating settlement. The settlement in question is a design for the area of Urla, which is a rural touristic region located on the west coast of Turkey, near the metropolis of Izmir. The problem at hand includes both engineering and architectural aspects that need to be addressed in a comprehensive manner. We thus adapt the view as a multi-objective constrained real-parameter optimization problem. Specifically, we consider three objectives, which are conflicting. The first one aims at maximizing accessibility of urban functions such as housing and public spaces, as well as special functions, such as a marina for yachts and a yacht club. The second one aims at ensuring the wind protection of the general areas of the settlement, by adequately placing them in between neighboring land masses. The third one aims at maximizing visibility of the settlement from external observation points, so as to maximize the exposure of the settlement. To address this complex multi-objective optimization problem and identify lucrative alternative design solutions, a multi-objective harmony search algorithm (MOHS) is developed and applied in this paper. When compared to the Differential Evolution algorithm developed for the problem in the literature, we demonstrate that MOHS achieves competitive or slightly better performance in terms of hyper volume calculation, and gives promising results when the Pareto front approximation is examined.

Description: During a construction project life cycle, project costs and time estimations contribute greatly to baseline scheduling. Besides, schedule risk analysis and project control are also influenced by the above factors. Although many papers have offered estimation techniques, little attempt has been made to generate project time series data as daily progressive estimations in different project environments that could help researchers in generating general and customized formulae in further studies. This paper, however, is an attempt to introduce a new simulation approach to reflect the data regarding time series progress of the project, considering the specifications and the complexity of the project and the environment where the project is performed. Moreover, this simulator can equip project managers with estimated information, which reassures them of the execution stages of the project although they lack historical data. A case study is presented to show the usefulness of the model and its applicability in practice. In this study, singular spectrum analysis has been employed to analyze the simulated outputs, and the results are separated based on their signal and noise trends. The signal trend is used as a point-of-reference to compare the outputs of a simulation employing S-curve technique results and the formulae corresponding to earned value management, as well as the life of a given project.

Description: This paper discusses the parameter estimation problems of multi-input output-error autoregressive (OEAR) systems. By combining the auxiliary model identification idea and the data filtering technique, a data filtering based recursive generalized least squares (F-RGLS) identification algorithm and a data filtering based iterative least squares (F-LSI) identification algorithm are derived. Compared with the F-RGLS algorithm, the proposed F-LSI algorithm is more effective and can generate more accurate parameter estimates. The simulation results confirm this conclusion.

Description: The force-directed paradigm is one of the few generic approaches to drawing graphs. Since force-directed algorithms can be extended easily, they are used frequently. Most of these algorithms are, however, quite slow on large graphs, as they compute a quadratic number of forces in each iteration. We give a new algorithm that takes only O ( m + n log n ) time per iteration when laying out a graph with n vertices and m edges. Our algorithm approximates the true forces using the so-called well-separated pair decomposition. We perform experiments on a large number of graphs and show that we can strongly reduce the runtime, even on graphs with less than a hundred vertices, without a significant influence on the quality of the drawings (in terms of the number of crossings and deviation in edge lengths).

Description: Sentiment analysis of online social media has attracted significant interest recently. Many studies have been performed, but most existing methods focus on either only textual content or only visual content. In this paper, we utilize deep learning models in a convolutional neural network (CNN) to analyze the sentiment in Chinese microblogs from both textual and visual content. We first train a CNN on top of pre-trained word vectors for textual sentiment analysis and employ a deep convolutional neural network (DNN) with generalized dropout for visual sentiment analysis. We then evaluate our sentiment prediction framework on a dataset collected from a famous Chinese social media network (Sina Weibo) that includes text and related images and demonstrate state-of-the-art results on this Chinese sentiment analysis benchmark.

Description: We investigate the problem of minimizing the total power consumption under the constraint of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) requirement for the physical layer multicasting system with large-scale antenna arrays. In contrast with existing work, we explicitly consider both the transmit power and the circuit power scaling with the number of antennas. The joint antenna selection and beamforming technique is proposed to minimize the total power consumption. The problem is a challenging one, which aims to minimize the linear combination of ℓ 0 -norm and ℓ 2 -norm. To our best knowledge, this minimization problem has not yet been well solved. A random decremental antenna selection algorithm is designed, which is further modified by an approximation of the minimal transmit power based on the asymptotic orthogonality of the channels. Then, a more efficient decremental antenna selection algorithm is proposed based on minimizing the ℓ 0 norm. Performance results show that the ℓ 0 norm minimization algorithm greatly outperforms the random selection algorithm in terms of the total power consumption and the average run time.

Description: Recently manifold learning has received extensive interest in the community of pattern recognition. Despite their appealing properties, most manifold learning algorithms are not robust in practical applications. In this paper, we address this problem in the context of the Hessian locally linear embedding (HLLE) algorithm and propose a more robust method, called RHLLE, which aims to be robust against both outliers and noise in the data. Specifically, we first propose a fast outlier detection method for high-dimensional datasets. Then, we employ a local smoothing method to reduce noise. Furthermore, we reformulate the original HLLE algorithm by using the truncation function from differentiable manifolds. In the reformulated framework, we explicitly introduce a weighted global functional to further reduce the undesirable effect of outliers and noise on the embedding result. Experiments on synthetic as well as real datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm.

Description: A new orthogonal projection method for computing the minimum distance between a point and a spatial parametric curve is presented. It consists of a geometric iteration which converges faster than the existing Newton’s method, and it is insensitive to the choice of initial values. We prove that projecting a point onto a spatial parametric curve under the method is globally second-order convergence.

Description: We consider the problem of estimating the measure of subsets in very large networks. A prime tool for this purpose is the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm. This algorithm, while extremely useful in many cases, still often suffers from the drawback of very slow convergence. We show that in a special, but important case, it is possible to obtain significantly better bounds on the convergence rate. This special case is when the huge state space can be aggregated into a smaller number of clusters, in which the states behave approximately the same way (but their behavior still may not be identical). A Markov chain with this structure is called quasi-lumpable. This property allows the aggregation of states (nodes) into clusters. Our main contribution is a rigorously proved bound on the rate at which the aggregated state distribution approaches its limit in quasi-lumpable Markov chains. We also demonstrate numerically that in certain cases this can indeed lead to a significantly accelerated way of estimating the measure of subsets. The result can be a useful tool in the analysis of complex networks, whenever they have a clustering that aggregates nodes with similar (but not necessarily identical) behavior.

Description: We present a threaded parallel adaptation of a state-of-the-art maximum clique algorithm for dense, computationally challenging graphs. We show that near-linear speedups are achievable in practice and that superlinear speedups are common. We include results for several previously unsolved benchmark problems.

Description: The stable marriage (SM) problem has a wide variety of practical applications, ranging from matching resident doctors to hospitals, to matching students to schools or, more generally, to any two-sided market. In the classical formulation, n men and n women express their preferences (via a strict total order) over the members of the other sex. Solving an SM problem means finding a stable marriage where stability is an envy-free notion: no man and woman who are not married to each other would both prefer each other to their partners or to being single. We consider both the classical stable marriage problem and one of its useful variations (denoted SMTI (Stable Marriage with Ties and Incomplete lists)) where the men and women express their preferences in the form of an incomplete preference list with ties over a subset of the members of the other sex. Matchings are permitted only with people who appear in these preference lists, and we try to find a stable matching that marries as many people as possible. Whilst the SM problem is polynomial to solve, the SMTI problem is NP-hard. We propose to tackle both problems via a local search approach, which exploits properties of the problems to reduce the size of the neighborhood and to make local moves efficiently. We empirically evaluate our algorithm for SM problems by measuring its runtime behavior and its ability to sample the lattice of all possible stable marriages. We evaluate our algorithm for SMTI problems in terms of both its runtime behavior and its ability to find a maximum cardinality stable marriage. Experimental results suggest that for SM problems, the number of steps of our algorithm grows only as O(n log(n)), and that it samples very well the set of all stable marriages. It is thus a fair and efficient approach to generate stable marriages. Furthermore, our approach for SMTI problems is able to solve large problems, quickly returning stable matchings of large and often optimal size, despite the NP-hardness of this problem.

Description: The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the Internet-like structure of billions of interconnected constrained devices, denoted as “smart objects”. Smart objects have limited capabilities, in terms of computational power and memory, and might be battery-powered devices, thus raising the need to adopt particularly energy efficient technologies. Among the most notable challenges that building interconnected smart objects brings about, there are standardization and interoperability. The use of IP has been foreseen as the standard for interoperability for smart objects. As billions of smart objects are expected to come to life and IPv4 addresses have eventually reached depletion, IPv6 has been identified as a candidate for smart-object communication. The deployment of the IoT raises many security issues coming from (i) the very nature of smart objects, e.g., the adoption of lightweight cryptographic algorithms, in terms of processing and memory requirements; and (ii) the use of standard protocols, e.g., the need to minimize the amount of data exchanged between nodes. This paper provides a detailed overview of the security challenges related to the deployment of smart objects. Security protocols at network, transport, and application layers are discussed, together with lightweight cryptographic algorithms proposed to be used instead of conventional and demanding ones, in terms of computational resources. Security aspects, such as key distribution and security bootstrapping, and application scenarios, such as secure data aggregation and service authorization, are also discussed.

Description: In this paper, we present a method to provide proactive assistance in text checking, based on usage relationships between words structuralized on the Web. For a given sentence, the method builds a connectionist structure of relationships between word n-grams. Such structure is then parameterized by means of an unsupervised and language agnostic optimization process. Finally, the method provides a representation of the sentence that allows emerging the least prominent usage-based relational patterns, helping to easily find badly-written and unpopular text. The study includes the problem statement and its characterization in the literature, as well as the proposed solving approach and some experimental use.

Description: The construction of a similarity matrix is one significant step for the spectral clustering algorithm; while the Gaussian kernel function is one of the most common measures for constructing the similarity matrix. However, with a fixed scaling parameter, the similarity between two data points is not adaptive and appropriate for multi-scale datasets. In this paper, through quantitating the value of the importance for each vertex of the similarity graph, the Gaussian kernel function is scaled, and an adaptive Gaussian kernel similarity measure is proposed. Then, an adaptive spectral clustering algorithm is gotten based on the importance of shared nearest neighbors. The idea is that the greater the importance of the shared neighbors between two vertexes, the more possible it is that these two vertexes belong to the same cluster; and the importance value of the shared neighbors is obtained with an iterative method, which considers both the local structural information and the distance similarity information, so as to improve the algorithm’s performance. Experimental results on different datasets show that our spectral clustering algorithm outperforms the other spectral clustering algorithms, such as the self-tuning spectral clustering and the adaptive spectral clustering based on shared nearest neighbors in clustering accuracy on most datasets.

Description: In this paper, we propose a detection method of pulmonary nodules in X-ray computed tomography (CT) scans by use of three image filters and appearance-based k-means clustering. First, voxel values are suppressed in radial directions so as to eliminate extra regions in the volumes of interest (VOIs). Globular regions are enhanced by moment-of-inertia tensors where the voxel values in the VOIs are regarded as mass. Excessively enhanced voxels are reduced based on displacement between the VOI centers and the gravity points of the voxel values in the VOIs. Initial nodule candidates are determined by these filtering processings. False positives are reduced by, first, normalizing the directions of intensity distributions in the VOIs by rotating the VOIs based on the eigenvectors of the moment-of-inertia tensors, and then applying an appearance-based two-step k-means clustering technique to the rotated VOIs. The proposed method is applied to actual CT scans and experimental results are shown.

Description: We propose a linear time algorithm, called G2DLP, for generating 2D lattice L(n1, n2) paths, equivalent to two-item  multiset permutations, with a given number of turns. The usage of turn has three meanings: in the context of multiset permutations, it means that two consecutive elements of a permutation belong to two different items; in lattice path enumerations, it means that the path changes its direction, either from eastward to northward or from northward to eastward; in open shop scheduling, it means that we transfer a job from one type of machine to another. The strategy of G2DLP is divide-and-combine; the division is based on the enumeration results of a previous study and is achieved by aid of an integer partition algorithm and a multiset permutation algorithm; the combination is accomplished by a concatenation algorithm that constructs the paths we require. The advantage of G2DLP is twofold. First, it is optimal in the sense that it directly generates all feasible paths without visiting an infeasible one. Second, it can generate all paths in any specified order of turns, for example, a decreasing order or an increasing order. In practice, two applications, scheduling and cryptography, are discussed.

Description: In this work we generate the numerical solutions of Burgers’ equation by applying the Crank-Nicholson method and different schemes for solving nonlinear systems, instead of using Hopf-Cole transformation to reduce Burgers’ equation into the linear heat equation. The method is analyzed on two test problems in order to check its efficiency on different kinds of initial conditions. Numerical solutions as well as exact solutions for different values of viscosity are calculated, concluding that the numerical results are very close to the exact solution.

Description: An image analysis procedure based on a two dimensional Gaussian fitting is presented and applied to satellite maps describing the surface urban heat island (SUHI). The application of this fitting technique allows us to parameterize the SUHI pattern in order to better understand its intensity trend and also to perform quantitative comparisons among different images in time and space. The proposed procedure is computationally rapid and stable, executing an initial guess parameter estimation by a multiple regression before the iterative nonlinear fitting. The Gaussian fit was applied to both low and high resolution images (1 km and 30 m pixel size) and the results of the SUHI parameterization shown. As expected, a reduction of the correlation coefficient between the map values and the Gaussian surface was observed for the image with the higher spatial resolution due to the greater variability of the SUHI values. Since the fitting procedure provides a smoothed Gaussian surface, it has better performance when applied to low resolution images, even if the reliability of the SUHI pattern representation can be preserved also for high resolution images.

Description: The auxiliary problem principle is a powerful tool for solving multi-area economic dispatch problem. One of the main drawbacks of the auxiliary problem principle method is that the convergence performance depends on the selection of penalty parameter. In this paper, we propose a self-adaptive strategy to adjust penalty parameter based on the iterative information, the proposed approach is verified by two given test systems. The corresponding simulation results demonstrate that the proposed self-adaptive auxiliary problem principle iterative scheme is robust in terms of the selection of penalty parameter and has better convergence rate compared with the traditional auxiliary problem principle method.

Description: Aiming at improving the well-known fuzzy compactness and separation algorithm (FCS), this paper proposes a new clustering algorithm based on feature weighting fuzzy compactness and separation (WFCS). In view of the contribution of features to clustering, the proposed algorithm introduces the feature weighting into the objective function. We first formulate the membership and feature weighting, and analyze the membership of data points falling on the crisp boundary, then give the adjustment strategy. The proposed WFCS is validated both on simulated dataset and real dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed WFCS has the characteristics of hard clustering and fuzzy clustering, and outperforms many existing clustering algorithms with respect to three metrics: Rand Index, Xie-Beni Index and Within-Between(WB) Index.

Description: The fireworks algorithm (FA) is a new parallel diffuse optimization algorithm to simulate the fireworks explosion phenomenon, which realizes the balance between global exploration and local searching by means of adjusting the explosion mode of fireworks bombs. By introducing the grouping strategy of the shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA), an improved FA-SFLA hybrid algorithm is put forward, which can effectively make the FA jump out of the local optimum and accelerate the global search ability. The simulation results show that the hybrid algorithm greatly improves the accuracy and convergence velocity for solving the function optimization problems.

Description: The gravitational search algorithm (GSA) is a kind of swarm intelligence optimization algorithm based on the law of gravitation. The parameter initialization of all swarm intelligence optimization algorithms has an important influence on the global optimization ability. Seen from the basic principle of GSA, the convergence rate of GSA is determined by the gravitational constant and the acceleration of the particles. The optimization performances on six typical test functions are verified by the simulation experiments. The simulation results show that the convergence speed of the GSA algorithm is relatively sensitive to the setting of the algorithm parameters, and the GSA parameter can be used flexibly to improve the algorithm’s convergence velocity and improve the accuracy of the solutions.

Description: Kung-Traub’s conjecture states that an optimal iterative method based on d function evaluations for finding a simple zero of a nonlinear function could achieve a maximum convergence order of 2 d − 1 . During the last years, many attempts have been made to prove this conjecture or develop optimal methods which satisfy the conjecture. We understand from the conjecture that the maximum order reached by a method with three function evaluations is four, even for quadratic functions. In this paper, we show that the conjecture fails for quadratic functions. In fact, we can find a 2-point method with three function evaluations reaching fifth order convergence. We also develop 2-point 3rd to 8th order methods with one function and two first derivative evaluations using weight functions. Furthermore, we show that with the same number of function evaluations we can develop higher order 2-point methods of order r + 2 , where r is a positive integer, ≥ 1 . We also show that we can develop a higher order method with the same number of function evaluations if we know the asymptotic error constant of the previous method. We prove the local convergence of these methods which we term as Babajee’s Quadratic Iterative Methods and we extend these methods to systems involving quadratic equations. We test our methods with some numerical experiments including an application to Chandrasekhar’s integral equation arising in radiative heat transfer theory.

Description: Big data are everywhere as high volumes of varieties of valuable precise and uncertain data can be easily collected or generated at high velocity in various real-life applications. Embedded in these big data are rich sets of useful information and knowledge. To mine these big data and to discover useful information and knowledge, we present a data analytic algorithm in this article. Our algorithm manages, queries, and processes uncertain big data in cloud environments. More specifically, it manages transactions of uncertain big data, allows users to query these big data by specifying constraints expressing their interests, and processes the user-specified constraints to discover useful information and knowledge from the uncertain big data. As each item in every transaction in these uncertain big data is associated with an existential probability value expressing the likelihood of that item to be present in a particular transaction, computation could be intensive. Our algorithm uses the MapReduce model on a cloud environment for effective data analytics on these uncertain big data. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our data analytic algorithm for managing, querying, and processing uncertain big data in cloud environments.

Description: Given a graph whose nodes and edges are associated with a profit, a visiting (or traversing) time and an admittance time window, the Mixed Team Orienteering Problem with Time Windows (MTOPTW) seeks for a specific number of walks spanning a subset of nodes and edges of the graph so as to maximize the overall collected profit. The visit of the included nodes and edges should take place within their respective time window and the overall duration of each walk should be below a certain threshold. In this paper we introduce the MTOPTW, which can be used for modeling a realistic variant of the Tourist Trip Design Problem where the objective is the derivation of near-optimal multiple-day itineraries for tourists visiting a destination which features several points of interest (POIs) and scenic routes. Since the MTOPTW is a NP-hard problem, we propose the first metaheuristic approaches to tackle it. The effectiveness of our algorithms is validated through a number of experiments on POI and scenic route sets compiled from the city of Athens (Greece).

Description: Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), as a Lagrangian, meshfree method, is supposed to be useful in solving acoustic problems, such as combustion noise, bubble acoustics, etc., and has been gradually used in sound wave computation. However, unphysical oscillations in the sound wave simulation cannot be ignored. In this paper, an artificial viscosity term is added into the standard SPH algorithm used for solving linearized acoustic wave equations. SPH algorithms with or without artificial viscosity are both built to compute sound propagation and interference in the time domain. Then, the effects of the smoothing kernel function, particle spacing and Courant number on the SPH algorithms of sound waves are discussed. After comparing SPH simulation results with theoretical solutions, it is shown that the result of the SPH algorithm with the artificial viscosity term added attains good agreement with the theoretical solution by effectively reducing unphysical oscillations. In addition, suitable computational parameters of SPH algorithms are proposed through analyzing the sound pressure errors for simulating sound waves.

Description: DNA fragment assembly represents an important challenge to the development of efficient and practical algorithms due to the large number of elements to be assembled. In this study, we present some graph theoretical linear time algorithms to solve the problem. To achieve linear time complexity, a heap with constant time operations was developed, for the special case where the edge weights are integers and do not depend on the problem size. The experiments presented show that modified classical graph theoretical algorithms can solve the DNA fragment assembly problem efficiently.

Description: This paper considers identifying the multiple input single output finite impulse response (MISO-FIR) systems with unknown time delays and orders. Generally, parameters, orders and time delays of an MISO system are separately identified from different algorithms. In this paper, we aim to perform the model identification and time delay estimation simultaneously from a limited number of observations. For an MISO-FIR system with many inputs and unknown input time delays, the corresponding identification model contains a large number of parameters, requiring a great number of observations for identification and leading to a heavy computational burden. Inspired by the compressed sensing (CS) recovery theory, a threshold orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm (TH-OMP) is presented to simultaneously identify the parameters, the orders and the time delays of the MISO-FIR systems. The proposed algorithm requires only a small number of sampled data compared to the conventional identification methods, such as the least squares method. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified by simulation results.

Description: In designing wireless sensor networks (WSNs), it is important to reduce energy dissipation and prolong network lifetime. Clustering of nodes is one of the most effective approaches for conserving energy in WSNs. Cluster formation protocols generally consider the heterogeneity of sensor nodes in terms of energy difference of nodes but ignore the different transmission ranges of them. In this paper, we propose an effective data acquisition clustered protocol using compressive sensing (EDACP-CS) for heterogeneous WSNs that aims to conserve the energy of sensor nodes in the presence of energy and transmission range heterogeneity. In EDACP-CS, cluster heads are selected based on the distance from the base station and sensor residual energy. Simulation results show that our protocol offers a much better performance than the existing protocols in terms of energy consumption, stability, network lifetime, and throughput.

Description: As one of the most popular and well-recognized clustering methods, fuzzy C-means (FCM) clustering algorithm is the basis of other fuzzy clustering analysis methods in theory and application respects. However, FCM algorithm is essentially a local search optimization algorithm. Therefore, sometimes, it may fail to find the global optimum. For the purpose of getting over the disadvantages of FCM algorithm, a new version of the krill herd (KH) algorithm with elitism strategy, called KHE, is proposed to solve the clustering problem. Elitism tragedy has a strong ability of preventing the krill population from degrading. In addition, the well-selected parameters are used in the KHE method instead of originating from nature. Through an array of simulation experiments, the results show that the KHE is indeed a good choice for solving general benchmark problems and fuzzy clustering analyses.

Description: Aggregation delay is the minimum number of time slots required to aggregate data along the edges of a data gathering tree (DG tree) spanning all the nodes in a wireless sensor network (WSN). We propose a benchmarking algorithm to determine the minimum possible aggregation delay for DG trees in a WSN. We assume the availability of a sufficient number of unique CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) codes for the intermediate nodes to simultaneously aggregate data from their child nodes if the latter are ready with the data. An intermediate node has to still schedule non-overlapping time slots to sequentially aggregate data from its own child nodes (one time slot per child node). We show that the minimum aggregation delay for a DG tree depends on the underlying design choices (bottleneck node-weight based or bottleneck link-weight based) behind its construction. We observe the bottleneck node-weight based DG trees incur a smaller diameter and a larger number of child nodes per intermediate node; whereas, the bottleneck link-weight based DG trees incur a larger diameter and a much lower number of child nodes per intermediate node. As a result, we observe a complex diameter-aggregation delay tradeoff for data gathering trees in WSNs.

Description: It is shown that the greedy algorithm for the \((n^2-1)\)-puzzle makes \(\tfrac{8}{3}n^3 +O(n^2)\) expected moves. This analysis is verified experimentally on 10,000 random instances each of the \((n^2-1)\)-puzzle for \(4 \leq n \leq 200\).

Description: For equation-error autoregressive (EEAR) systems, this paper proposes an identification algorithm by means of the model equivalence transformation. The basic idea is to eliminate the autoregressive term in the model using the model transformation, to estimate the parameters of the converted system and further to compute the parameter estimates of the original system using the comparative coefficient way and the model equivalence principle. For comparison, the recursive generalized least squares algorithm is given simply. The simulation results verify that the proposed algorithm is effective and can produce more accurate parameter estimates.

Description: Robust channel estimation is required for coherent demodulation in multipath fading wireless communication systems which are often deteriorated by non-Gaussian noises. Our research is motivated by the fact that classical sparse least mean square error (LMS) algorithms are very sensitive to impulsive noise while standard SLMS algorithm does not take into account the inherent sparsity information of wireless channels. This paper proposes a sign function based sparse adaptive filtering algorithm for developing robust channel estimation techniques. Specifically, sign function based least mean square error (SLMS) algorithms to remove the non-Gaussian noise that is described by a symmetric α-stable noise model. By exploiting channel sparsity, sparse SLMS algorithms are proposed by introducing several effective sparse-promoting functions into the standard SLMS algorithm. The convergence analysis of the proposed sparse SLMS algorithms indicates that they outperform the standard SLMS algorithm for robust sparse channel estimation, which can be also verified by simulation results.

Description: The page migration problem in Euclidean space is revisited. In this problem, online requests occur at any location to access a single page located at a server. Every request must be served, and the server has the choice to migrate from its current location to a new location in space. Each service costs the Euclidean distance between the server and request. A migration costs the distance between the former and the new server location, multiplied by the page size. We study the problem in the uniform model, in which the page has size D = 1 . All request locations are not known in advance; however, they are sequentially presented in an online fashion. We design a 2.75 -competitive online algorithm that improves the current best upper bound for the problem with the unit page size. We also provide a lower bound of 2.732 for our algorithm. It was already known that 2.5 is a lower bound for this problem.

Description: LR parsing is a popular parsing strategy for variants of Context-Free Grammar (CFG). It has also been used for mildly context-sensitive formalisms, such as Tree-Adjoining Grammar. In this paper, we present the first LR-style parsing algorithm for Linear Context-Free Rewriting Systems (LCFRS), a mildly context-sensitive extension of CFG which has received considerable attention in the last years in the context of natural language processing.

Description: Support vector machines (SVM) are proposed in order to obtain a robust controller for ship course-keeping. A cascaded system is constructed by combining the dynamics of the rudder actuator with the dynamics of ship motion. Modeling errors and disturbances are taken into account in the plant. A controller with a simple structure is produced by applying an SVM and L2-gain design. The SVM is used to identify the complicated nonlinear functions and the modeling errors in the plant. The Lagrangian factors in the SVM are obtained using on-line tuning algorithms. L2-gain design is applied to suppress the disturbances. To obtain the optimal parameters in the SVM, then particle swarm optimization (PSO) method is incorporated. The stability and robustness of the close-loop system are confirmed by Lyapunov stability analysis. Numerical simulation is performed to demonstrate the validity of the proposed hybrid controller and its superior performance over a conventional PD controller.

Description: This paper presents a multiple artificial neural networks (MANN) method with interaction noise for estimating the occurrence probabilities of different classes at any site in space. The MANN consists of several independent artificial neural networks, the number of which is determined by the neighbors around the target location. In the proposed algorithm, the conditional or pre-posterior (multi-point) probabilities are viewed as output nodes, which can be estimated by weighted combinations of input nodes: two-point transition probabilities. The occurrence probability of a certain class at a certain location can be easily computed by the product of output probabilities using Bayes’ theorem. Spatial interaction or redundancy information can be measured in the form of interaction noises. Prediction results show that the method of MANN with interaction noise has a higher classification accuracy than the traditional Markov chain random fields (MCRF) model and can successfully preserve small-scale features.

Description: Arc fault is one of the most critical reasons for electrical fires. Due to the diversity, randomness and concealment of arc faults in low-voltage circuits, it is difficult for general methods to protect all loads from series arc faults. From the analysis of many series arc faults, a large number of high frequency signals generated in circuits are found. These signals are easily affected by Gaussian noise which is difficult to be eliminated as a result of frequency aliasing. Thus, a novel detection algorithm is developed to accurately detect series arc faults in this paper. Initially, an autoregressive model of the mixed high frequency signals is modelled. Then, autoregressive bispectrum analysis is introduced to analyze common series arc fault features. The phase information of arc fault signal is preserved using this method. The influence of Gaussian noise is restrained effectively. Afterwards, several features including characteristic frequency, fluctuation of phase angles, diffused distribution and incremental numbers of bispectrum peaks are extracted for recognizing arc faults. Finally, least squares support vector machine is used to accurately identify series arc faults from the load states based on these frequency features of bispectrum. The validity of the algorithm is experimentally verified obtaining arc fault detection rate above 97%.

Description: In this paper, by using the smoothing Fischer-Burmeister function, we present a new smoothing conjugate gradient method for solving the nonlinear nonsmooth complementarity problems. The line search which we used guarantees the descent of the method. Under suitable conditions, the new smoothing conjugate gradient method is proved globally convergent. Finally, preliminary numerical experiments show that the new method is efficient.

Description: This paper is dedicated to the study of continuous Newton’s method, which is a generic differential equation whose associated flow tends to the zeros of a given polynomial. Firstly, we analyze some numerical features related to the root-finding methods obtained after applying different numerical methods for solving initial value problems. The relationship between the step size and the order of convergence is particularly considered. We have analyzed both the cases of a constant and non-constant step size in the procedure of integration. We show that working with a non-constant step, the well-known Chebyshev-Halley family of iterative methods for solving nonlinear scalar equations is obtained.

Description: This paper presents an improvement to the recently-introduced factored method for the solution of nonlinear equations. The basic idea consists of transforming the original system by adding an offset to all unknowns. When searching for real solutions, a real offset prevents the intermediate values of unknowns from becoming complex. Reciprocally, when searching for complex solutions, a complex offset is advisable to allow the iterative process to quickly abandon the real domain. Several examples are used to illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithm, when compared to Newton’s method.

Description: In the pursuit of finding subclasses of the makespan minimization problem on unrelated parallel machines that have approximation algorithms with approximation ratio better than 2, the graph balancing problem has been of current interest. In the graph balancing problem each job can be non-preemptively scheduled on one of at most two machines with the same processing time on either machine. Recently, Ebenlendr, Krčál, and Sgall (Algorithmica 2014, 68, 62–80.) presented a 7 / 4 -approximation algorithm for the graph balancing problem. Let r , s ∈ Z + . In this paper we consider the graph balancing problem with two weights, where a job either takes r time units or s time units. We present a 3 / 2 -approximation algorithm for this problem. This is an improvement over the previously best-known approximation algorithm for the problem with approximation ratio 1.652 and it matches the best known inapproximability bound for it.

Description: Type-2 fuzzy logic controllers (T2 FLC) can be viewed as an emerging class of intelligent controllers because of their abilities in handling uncertainties; in many cases, they have been shown to outperform their Type-1 counterparts. This paper presents a literature review on recent applications of T2 FLCs. To follow the developments in this field, we first review general T2 FLCs and the most well-known interval T2 FLS algorithms that have been used for control design. Certain applications of these controllers include robotic control, bandwidth control, industrial systems control, electrical control and aircraft control. The most promising applications are found in the robotics and automotive areas, where T2 FLCs have been demonstrated and proven to perform better than traditional controllers. With the development of enhanced algorithms, along with the advancement in both hardware and software, we shall witness increasing applications of these frontier controllers.

Description: In this article, we introduce a new multi-step iteration for approximating a common fixed point of a finite class of multi-valued Bregman relatively nonexpansive mappings in the setting of reflexive Banach spaces. We prove a strong convergence theorem for the proposed iterative algorithm under certain hypotheses. Additionally, we also use our results for the solution of variational inequality problems and to find the zero points of maximal monotone operators. The theorems furnished in this work are new and well-established and generalize many well-known recent research works in this field.

Description: A direct search algorithm is proposed for minimizing an arbitrary real valued function. The algorithm uses a new function transformation and three simplex-based operations. The function transformation provides global exploration features, while the simplex-based operations guarantees the termination of the algorithm and provides global convergence to a stationary point if the cost function is differentiable and its gradient is Lipschitz continuous. The algorithm’s performance has been extensively tested using benchmark functions and compared to some well-known global optimization algorithms. The results of the computational study show that the algorithm combines both simplicity and efficiency and is competitive with the heuristics-based strategies presently used for global optimization.

Description: Algorithmic metatheorems state that if a problem can be described in a certain logic and the inputs are structured in a certain way, then the problem can be solved with a certain amount of resources. As an example, by Courcelle’s Theorem, all monadic second-order (“in a certain logic”) properties of graphs of bounded tree width (“structured in a certain way”) can be solved in linear time (“with a certain amount of resources”). Such theorems have become valuable tools in algorithmics: if a problem happens to have the right structure and can be described in the right logic, they immediately yield a (typically tight) upper bound on the time complexity of the problem. Perhaps even more importantly, several complex algorithms rely on algorithmic metatheorems internally to solve subproblems, which considerably broadens the range of applications of these theorems. This paper is intended as a gentle introduction to the ideas behind algorithmic metatheorems, especially behind some recent results concerning space and circuit classes, and tries to give a flavor of the range of their applications.

Description: A fireworks algorithm (FWA) is a recent swarm intelligence algorithm that is inspired by observing fireworks explosions. An adaptive fireworks algorithm (AFWA) proposes additional adaptive amplitudes to improve the performance of the enhanced fireworks algorithm (EFWA). The purpose of this paper is to add opposition-based learning (OBL) to AFWA with the goal of further boosting performance and achieving global optimization. Twelve benchmark functions are tested in use of an opposition-based adaptive fireworks algorithm (OAFWA). The final results conclude that OAFWA significantly outperformed EFWA and AFWA in terms of solution accuracy. Additionally, OAFWA was compared with a bat algorithm (BA), differential evolution (DE), self-adapting control parameters in differential evolution (jDE), a firefly algorithm (FA), and a standard particle swarm optimization 2011 (SPSO2011) algorithm. The research results indicate that OAFWA ranks the highest of the six algorithms for both solution accuracy and runtime cost.

Description: Peelle’s Pertinent Puzzle (PPP) was described in 1987 in the context of estimating fundamental parameters that arise in nuclear interaction experiments. In PPP, generalized least squares (GLS) parameter estimates fell outside the range of the data, which has raised concerns that GLS is somehow flawed and has led to suggested alternatives to GLS estimators. However, there have been no corresponding performance comparisons among methods, and one suggested approach involving simulated data realizations is statistically incomplete. Here we provide performance comparisons among estimators, introduce approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) using density estimation applied to simulated data realizations to produce an alternative to the incomplete approach, complete the incompletely specified approach, and show that estimation error in the assumed covariance matrix cannot always be ignored.

Description: Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is one of the key functions of the solar power management system in solar energy deployment. This paper investigates the design of fuzzy-logic-based solar power MPPT algorithms using different fuzzy input variables. Six fuzzy MPPT algorithms, based on different input variables, were considered in this study, namely (i) slope (of solar power-versus-solar voltage) and changes of the slope; (ii) slope and variation of the power; (iii) variation of power and variation of voltage; (iv) variation of power and variation of current; (v) sum of conductance and increment of the conductance; and (vi) sum of angles of arctangent of the conductance and arctangent of increment of the conductance. Algorithms (i)–(iv) have two input variables each while algorithms (v) and (vi) use a single input variable. The fuzzy logic MPPT function is deployed using a buck-boost power converter. This paper presents the details of the determinations, considerations of the fuzzy rules, as well as advantages and disadvantages of each MPPT algorithm based upon photovoltaic (PV) cell properties. The range of the input variable of Algorithm (vi) is finite and the maximum power point condition is well defined in steady condition and, therefore, it can be used for multipurpose controller design. Computer simulations are conducted to verify the design.

Description: We introduce a multi-feature optimization clustering algorithm for color image segmentation. The local binary pattern, the mean of the min-max difference, and the color components are combined as feature vectors to describe the magnitude change of grey value and the contrastive information of neighbor pixels. In clustering stage, it gets the initial clustering center and avoids getting into local optimization by adding mutation operator of genetic algorithm to particle swarm optimization. Compared with well-known methods, the proposed method has an overall better segmentation performance and can segment image more accurately by evaluating the ratio of misclassification.

Description: In this paper, we consider several variants of the pattern matching with mismatches problem. In particular, given a text \(T=t_1 t_2\cdots t_n\) and a pattern \scalebox{.95}[1.0]{\(P=p_1p_2\cdots p_m\),} we investigate the following problems: \modif{ {(1) pattern matching with mismatches:} for every \(i, 1\leq i \leq n-m+1\) output, the distance between \(P\) and \(t_i t_{i+1}\cdots t_{i+m-1}\); and {(2) pattern matching with \(k\) mismatches:} output those positions \(i\) where the distance between \(P\) and \(t_i t_{i+1}\cdots t_{i+m-1}\) is less than a given threshold \(k\). The distance metric used is the Hamming distance. We present some novel algorithms and techniques for solving these problems. We offer deterministic, randomized and approximation algorithms. We consider variants of these problems where there could be wild cards in either the text or the pattern or both. We also present an experimental evaluation of these algorithms. The source code is available at} http://www.engr.uconn.edu/\(\sim\)man09004/kmis.zip.

Description: The identification difficulties for a dual-rate Hammerstein system lie in two aspects. First, the identification model of the system contains the products of the parameters of the nonlinear block and the linear block, and a standard least squares method cannot be directly applied to the model; second, the traditional single-rate discrete-time Hammerstein model cannot be used as the identification model for the dual-rate sampled system. In order to solve these problems, by combining the polynomial transformation technique with the key variable separation technique, this paper converts the Hammerstein system into a dual-rate linear regression model about all parameters (linear-in-parameter model) and proposes a recursive least squares algorithm to estimate the parameters of the dual-rate system. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Description: CLOPE (Clustering with sLOPE) is a simple and fast histogram-based clustering algorithm for categorical data. However, given the same data set with the same input parameter, the clustering results by this algorithm would possibly be different if the transactions are input in a different sequence. In this paper, a hierarchical clustering framework is proposed as an extension of CLOPE to generate stable and satisfactory clustering results based on an optimized agglomerative merge process. The new clustering profit is defined as the merge criteria and the cluster graph structure is proposed to optimize the merge iteration process. The experiments conducted on two datasets both demonstrate that the agglomerative approach achieves stable clustering results with a better profit value, but costs much more time due to the worse complexity.

Description: In this paper, we present a new three-step derivative-free family based on Potra-Pták’s method for solving nonlinear equations numerically. In terms of computational cost, each member of the proposed family requires only four functional evaluations per full iteration to achieve optimal eighth-order convergence. Further, computational results demonstrate that the proposed methods are highly efficient as compared with many well-known methods.

Description: The search for efficient and reliable bio-inspired optimization methods continues to be an active topic of research due to the wide application of the developed methods. In this study, we developed a reliable and efficient optimization method via the hybridization of two bio-inspired swarm intelligence optimization algorithms, namely, the Monkey Algorithm (MA) and the Krill Herd Algorithm (KHA). The hybridization made use of the efficient steps in each of the two original algorithms and provided a better balance between the exploration/diversification steps and the exploitation/intensification steps. The new hybrid algorithm, MAKHA, was rigorously tested with 27 benchmark problems and its results were compared with the results of the two original algorithms. MAKHA proved to be considerably more reliable and more efficient in tested problems.

Description: Presenting a satisfactory and efficient training algorithm for artificial neural networks (ANN) has been a challenging task in the supervised learning area. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is one of the most widely used algorithms due to its simplicity of implementation and fast convergence speed. On the other hand, Cuckoo Search (CS) algorithm has been proven to have a good ability for finding the global optimum; however, it has a slow convergence rate. In this study, a hybrid algorithm based on PSO and CS is proposed to make use of the advantages of both PSO and CS algorithms. The proposed hybrid algorithm is employed as a new training method for feedforward neural networks (FNNs). To investigate the performance of the proposed algorithm, two benchmark problems are used and the results are compared with those obtained from FNNs trained by original PSO and CS algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed hybrid algorithm outperforms both PSO and CS in training FNNs.

Description: Due to instability and poor identification ability of single pyroelectric infrared (PIR) detector for human target identification, this paper proposes a new approach to fuse the information collected from multiple PIR sensors for human identification. Firstly, Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT), Wavelet Transform (WT) and Wavelet Packet Transform (WPT) are adopted to extract features of the human body, which can be achieved by single PIR sensor. Then, we apply Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) to reduce the characteristic dimensions and to classify the human targets, respectively. Finally, Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation (FCE) is utilized to fuse recognition results from multiple PIR sensors to finalize human identification. The pyroelectric characteristics under scenarios with different people and/or different paths are analyzed by various experiments, and the recognition results with/without fusion procedure are also shown and compared. The experimental results demonstrate our scheme has improved efficiency for human identification.

Description: Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image segmentation usually involves two crucial issues: suitable speckle noise removing technique and effective image segmentation methodology. Here, an efficient SAR image segmentation method considering both of the two aspects is presented. As for the first issue, the famous nonlocal mean (NLM) filter is introduced in this study to suppress the multiplicative speckle noise in SAR image. Furthermore, to achieve a higher denoising accuracy, the local neighboring pixels in the searching window are projected into a lower dimensional subspace by principal component analysis (PCA). Thus, the nonlocal mean filter is implemented in the subspace. Afterwards, a multi-objective clustering algorithm is proposed using the principals of artificial immune system (AIS) and kernel-induced distance measures. The multi-objective clustering has been shown to discover the data distribution with different characteristics and the kernel methods can improve its robustness to noise and outliers. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method is able to partition the SAR image robustly and accurately than the conventional approaches.

Description: The flexible job shop scheduling problem is a well-known combinatorial optimization problem. This paper proposes an improved shuffled frog-leaping algorithm to solve the flexible job shop scheduling problem. The algorithm possesses an adjustment sequence to design the strategy of local searching and an extremal optimization in information exchange. The computational result shows that the proposed algorithm has a powerful search capability in solving the flexible job shop scheduling problem compared with other heuristic algorithms, such as the genetic algorithm, tabu search and ant colony optimization. Moreover, the results also show that the improved strategies could improve the performance of the algorithm effectively.

Description: A graph is unipolar if it can be partitioned into a clique and a disjoint union of cliques, and a graph is a generalised split graph if it or its complement is unipolar. A unipolar partition of a graph can be used to find efficiently the clique number, the stability number, the chromatic number, and to solve other problems that are hard for general graphs. We present an O(n2)-time algorithm for recognition of n-vertex generalised split graphs, improving on previous O(n3)-time algorithms.

Description: The random time delay in a networked control system can usually deteriorate the control performance and stability of the networked control system. In order to solve this problem, this paper puts forward a networked control system random time-delay compensation method based on time-delay prediction and improved implicit generalized predictive control (GPC). The least squares support vector machine is used to predict the future time delay of network. The parameters of the least squares support vector machine time-delay prediction model are difficult to determine, and the genetic algorithm is used for least squares support vector machine optimal prediction parameter optimization. Then, an improved implicit generalized predictive control method is adopted to compensate for the time delay. The simulation results show that the method in this paper has high prediction accuracy and a good compensation effect for the random time delay of the networked control system, has a small amount of on-line calculation and that the output response and control stability of the system are improved.

Description: In this work, we propose a new fourth-order Jarratt-type method for solving systems of nonlinear equations. The local convergence order of the method is proven analytically. Finally, we validate our results via some numerical experiments including an application to the Chandrashekar integral equations.

Description: Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems over rapidly time varying channels may suffer from significant inter-carrier interference (ICI), which destroys the orthogonality between subcarriers and degrades the detection performance. Without sufficient ICI suppression, OFDM systems usually experience an error floor. According to the approximate matched filter bound (AMFB), the error floor in a coded OFDM system is not irreducible. In this work, we introduce novel multiple feedback matched filter (MBMF)-based ICI cancellation receivers. Based on the output of a novel MBMF scheme, the approach employs a multiple ICI cancellation strategy with or without signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) ordering. The developed schemes can significantly improve the performance and remove the error floor with a negligible complexity increase. Given the multiple cancellation approach, we compare the SINR performance of the MBMF outputs with that employing single feedback and show that the SINR performance with multiple cancellation candidates is improved over that with a single one at practical SNR values. Additionally, for time-varying channels, we exploit partial fast Fourier transform (PFFT) by splitting one OFDM symbol into multiple segments; the channel state is separately estimated by least-squares (LS) methods without inserting more pilots. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methods over serial and block equalizers and the robustness to the Doppler effects compared to conventional single-segment method.

Description: Pattern recognition uses measurements from an input domain, X, to predict their labels from an output domain, Y. Image analysis is one setting where one might want to infer whether a pixel patch contains an object that is “manmade” (such as a building) or “natural” (such as a tree). Suppose the label for a pixel patch is “manmade”; if the label for a nearby pixel patch is then more likely to be “manmade” there is structure in the output domain that can be exploited to improve pattern recognition performance. Modeling P(X) is difficult because features between parts of the model are often correlated. Therefore, conditional random fields (CRFs) model structured data using the conditional distribution P(Y|X = x), without specifying a model for P(X), and are well suited for applications with dependent features. This paper has two parts. First, we overview CRFs and their application to pattern recognition in structured problems. Our primary examples are image analysis applications in which there is dependence among samples (pixel patches) in the output domain. Second, we identify research topics and present numerical examples.

Description: Parallel algorithms, such as the ant colony algorithm, take a long time when solving large-scale problems. In this paper, the MAX-MIN Ant System algorithm (MMAS) is parallelized to solve Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) based on a Spark cloud computing platform. We combine MMAS with Spark MapReduce to execute the path building and the pheromone operation in a distributed computer cluster. To improve the precision of the solution, local optimization strategy 2-opt is adapted in MMAS. The experimental results show that Spark has a very great accelerating effect on the ant colony algorithm when the city scale of TSP or the number of ants is relatively large.

Description: The optimizing design for enhancement of the micro performance of manipulator based on analytical models is investigated in this paper. By utilizing the established uncanonical linear homogeneous equations, the quasi-static analytical model of the micro-manipulator is built, and the theoretical calculation results are tested by FEA simulations. To provide a theoretical basis for a micro-manipulator being used in high-precision engineering applications, this paper investigates the modal property based on the analytical model. Based on the finite element method, with multipoint constraint equations, the model is built and the results have a good match with the simulation. The following parametric influences studied show that the influences of other objectives on one objective are complicated.  Consequently, the multi-objective optimization by the derived analytical models is carried out to find out the optimal solutions of the manipulator. Besides the inner relationships among these design objectives during the optimization process are discussed.

Description: The multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D) has received attention from researchers in recent years. This paper presents a new multiobjective algorithm based on decomposition and the cloud model called multiobjective decomposition evolutionary algorithm based on Cloud Particle Differential Evolution (MOEA/D-CPDE). In the proposed method, the best solution found so far acts as a seed in each generation and evolves two individuals by cloud generator. A new individual is produced by updating the current individual with the position vector difference of these two individuals. The performance of the proposed algorithm is carried on 16 well-known multi-objective problems. The experimental results indicate that MOEA/D-CPDE is competitive.

Description: In this paper, we integrate a grid system and a wireless network to present a convenient computational service system, called the Semi-Preemptive Computational Service system (SePCS for short), which provides users with a wireless access environment and through which a user can share his/her resources with others. In the SePCS, each node is dynamically given a score based on its CPU level, available memory size, current length of waiting queue, CPU utilization and bandwidth. With the scores, resource nodes are classified into three levels. User requests based on their time constraints are also classified into three types. Resources of higher levels are allocated to more tightly constrained requests so as to increase the total performance of the system. To achieve this, a resource broker with the Semi-Preemptive Algorithm (SPA) is also proposed. When the resource broker cannot find suitable resources for the requests of higher type, it preempts the resource that is now executing a lower type request so that the request of higher type can be executed immediately. The SePCS can be applied to a Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET), users of which can then exploit the convenient mobile network services and the wireless distributed computing. As a result, the performance of the system is higher than that of the tested schemes.

Description: Forecasting the unit cost of every product type in a factory is an important task. However, it is not easy to deal with the uncertainty of the unit cost. Fuzzy collaborative forecasting is a very effective treatment of the uncertainty in the distributed environment. This paper presents some linear fuzzy collaborative forecasting models to predict the unit cost of a product. In these models, the experts’ forecasts differ and therefore need to be aggregated through collaboration. According to the experimental results, the effectiveness of forecasting the unit cost was considerably improved through collaboration.

Description: Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA) is a new population-based evolutionary algorithm. It divides its population of solutions into several sub-populations, and then searches for the optimal solution through two operations: assimilation and competition. The assimilation operation moves each non-best solution (called colony) in a sub-population toward the best solution (called imperialist) in the same sub-population. The competition operation removes a colony from the weakest sub-population and adds it to another sub-population. Previous work on ICA focuses mostly on improving the assimilation operation or replacing the assimilation operation with more powerful meta-heuristics, but none focuses on the improvement of the competition operation. Since the competition operation simply moves a colony (i.e., an inferior solution) from one sub-population to another sub-population, it incurs weak interaction among these sub-populations. This work proposes Interaction Enhanced ICA that strengthens the interaction among the imperialists of all sub-populations. The performance of Interaction Enhanced ICA is validated on a set of benchmark functions for global optimization. The results indicate that the performance of Interaction Enhanced ICA is superior to that of ICA and its existing variants.

Description: In this paper we demonstrate a family of metrics for estimating the quality of a text summary relative to one or more human-generated summaries. The improved metrics are based on features automatically computed from the summaries to measure content and linguistic quality. The features are combined using one of three methods—robust regression, non-negative least squares, or canonical correlation, an eigenvalue method. The new metrics significantly outperform the previous standard for automatic text summarization evaluation, ROUGE.

Description: We propose using side information to further inform anomaly detection algorithms of the semantic context of the text data they are analyzing, thereby considering both divergence from the statistical pattern seen in particular datasets and divergence seen from more general semantic expectations. Computational experiments show that our algorithm performs as expected on data that reflect real-world events with contextual ambiguity, while replicating conventional clustering on data that are either too specialized or generic to result in contextual information being actionable. These results suggest that our algorithm could potentially reduce false positive rates in existing anomaly detection systems.

Description: Data can be represented in many different ways within a particular document or set of documents. Hence, attempts to automatically process the relationships between documents or determine the relevance of certain document objects can be problematic. In this study, we have developed software to automatically catalog objects contained in HTML files for patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Once these objects are recognized, the software creates metadata that assigns a data type to each document object. Such metadata can be easily processed and analyzed for subsequent text mining tasks. Specifically, document similarity and clustering techniques were applied to a subset of the USPTO document collection. Although our preliminary results demonstrate that tables and numerical data do not provide quantifiable value to a document’s content, the stage for future work in measuring the importance of document objects within a large corpus has been set.

Description: Link puzzles involve finding paths or a cycle in a grid that satisfy given local and global properties. This paper proposes algorithms that enumerate solutions and instances of two link puzzles, Slitherlink and Numberlink, by zero-suppressed binary decision diagrams (ZDDs). A ZDD is a compact data structure for a family of sets provided with a rich family of set operations, by which, for example, one can easily extract a subfamily satisfying a desired property. Thanks to the nature of ZDDs, our algorithms offer a tool to assist users to design instances of those link puzzles.

Description: Deduplication in storage systems has gained momentum recently for its capability in reducing data footprint. However, deduplication introduces challenges to storage management as storage objects (e.g., files) are no longer independent from each other due to content sharing between these storage objects. In this paper, we present a graph-based framework to address the challenges of storage management due to deduplication. Specifically, we model content sharing among storage objects by content sharing graphs (CSG), and apply graph-based algorithms to two real-world storage management use cases for deduplication-enabled storage systems. First, a quasi-linear algorithm was developed to partition deduplication domains with a minimal amount of deduplication loss (i.e., data replicated across partitioned domains) in commercial deduplication-enabled storage systems, whereas in general the partitioning problem is NP-complete. For a real-world trace of 3 TB data with 978 GB of removable duplicates, the proposed algorithm can partition the data into 15 balanced partitions with only 54 GB of deduplication loss, that is, a 5% deduplication loss. Second, a quick and accurate method to query the deduplicated size for a subset of objects in deduplicated storage systems was developed. For the same trace of 3 TB data, the optimized graph-based algorithm can complete the query in 2.6 s, which is less than 1% of that of the traditional algorithm based on the deduplication metadata.

Description: Grammar-based compression is a well-studied technique to construct a context-free grammar (CFG) deriving a given text uniquely. In this work, we propose an online algorithm for grammar-based compression. Our algorithm guarantees O(log2 n)- approximation ratio for the minimum grammar size, where n is an input size, and it runs in input linear time and output linear space. In addition, we propose a practical encoding, which transforms a restricted CFG into a more compact representation. Experimental results by comparison with standard compressors demonstrate that our algorithm is especially effective for highly repetitive text.

Description: A disentanglement puzzle consists of mechanically interlinked pieces, and the puzzle is solved by disentangling one piece from another set of pieces. A string puzzle consists of strings entangled with one or more wooden pieces. We consider the generalized string puzzle problem whose input is the layout of strings and a wooden board with holes embedded in the 3-dimensional Euclidean space. We present a polynomial-time transformation from an arbitrary instance ƒ of the 3SAT problem to a string puzzle s such that ƒ is satisfiable if and only if s is solvable. Therefore, the generalized string puzzle problem is NP-hard.

Description: In this paper, a general family of n-point Newton type iterative methods for solving nonlinear equations is constructed by using direct Hermite interpolation. The order of convergence of the new n-point iterative methods without memory is 2n requiring the evaluations of n functions and one first-order derivative in per full iteration, which implies that this family is optimal according to Kung and Traub’s conjecture (1974). Its error equations and asymptotic convergence constants are obtained. The n-point iterative methods with memory are obtained by using a self-accelerating parameter, which achieve much faster convergence than the corresponding n-point methods without memory. The increase of convergence order is attained without any additional calculations so that the n-point Newton type iterative methods with memory possess a very high computational efficiency. Numerical examples are demonstrated to confirm theoretical results.

Description: In this work, we have developed a fourth order Newton-like method based on harmonic mean and its multi-step version for solving system of nonlinear equations. The new fourth order method requires evaluation of one function and two first order Fréchet derivatives for each iteration. The multi-step version requires one more function evaluation for each iteration. The proposed new scheme does not require the evaluation of second or higher order Fréchet derivatives and still reaches fourth order convergence. The multi-step version converges with order 2r+4, where r is a positive integer and r ≥ 1. We have proved that the root α is a point of attraction for a general iterative function, whereas the proposed new schemes also satisfy this result. Numerical experiments including an application to 1-D Bratu problem are given to illustrate the efficiency of the new methods. Also, the new methods are compared with some existing methods.

Description: We present a semilocal convergence study of Newton-type methods on a generalized Banach space setting to approximate a locally unique zero of an operator. Earlier studies require that the operator involved is Fréchet differentiable. In the present study we assume that the operator is only continuous. This way we extend the applicability of Newton-type methods to include fractional calculus and problems from other areas. Moreover, under the same or weaker conditions, we obtain weaker sufficient convergence criteria, tighter error bounds on the distances involved and an at least as precise information on the location of the solution. Special cases are provided where the old convergence criteria cannot apply but the new criteria can apply to locate zeros of operators. Some applications include fractional calculus involving the Riemann-Liouville fractional integral and the Caputo fractional derivative. Fractional calculus is very important for its applications in many applied sciences.