Genetic Algorithms Digest Thursday, May 29, 1997 Volume 11 : Issue 18 - Do NOT send email or reply to gadistr@aic.nrl.navy.mil (GA List Moderator) - Send submissions (articles) to GA-List@AIC.NRL.NAVY.MIL - Send administrative (subscribe, unsubscribe, change of address, etc.,) requests to GA-List-Request@AIC.NRL.NAVY.MIL ****************************************************************************** - You can access back issues, GA code, conference announcements, etc., either through the WWW at URL http://www.aic.nrl.navy.mil/galist/ or through anonymous ftp at ftp.aic.nrl.navy.mil [132.250.84.25] in /pub/galist. ****************************************************************************** Today's Topics: - research studentships - CFP: The Seventh Annual Conference on Evolutionary Programming - JAIR article: "Connectionist Theory Refinement: Genetically..." - ECAL97 registration - Optimal Control using GA - stop criterion - PDPTA & CISST'97 Conferences ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CALENDAR OF GA-RELATED ACTIVITIES: (with GA-List issue reference) EAs: Theory to Applications Wrkshp, Marseille, France (v11n12) Jun 19-20, 97 ISMB97 Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology,Greece(v10n42) Jun 21-25, 97 WSC2 Online World Conf on Soft Computing, on the Internet(v11n2)Jun 23-27, 97 MENDEL97 Intl Mendel Conference on GAs, etc, Brno, Czech (v11n3)Jun 25-27, 97 GP97 Genetic Programming Conference, Stanford, CA (v10n45) Jul 13-16, 97 ICGA97 Intl Conf on Genetic Algorithms, East Lansing MI(v10n35) Jul 19-23, 97 MIC97 Metaheuristic Intl Conf, Sophia-Antipolis France (v10n47) Jul 21-24, 97 ECAL97 4th European Conf on Artificial Life, England (v10n36) Jul 28-31, 97 3NWGA 3rd Nordic Workshop on GAs, Helsinki, Finland (v10n43) Aug 18-20, 97 PATAT97 Intl Conf on Automated Timetabling, Toronto (v11n6) Aug 20-22, 97 IJCAI97 Workshop on Evolvable Systems, Nagoya, Japan (v11n5,6) Aug 23, 97 IMACS97 Scientific Comp, Modelling & App Math, Germany (v10n42) Aug 24-29, 97 IMACS97 Evolutionary Computation, Berlin, Germany (v10n45) Aug 24-29, 97 SNAC97 School on Natural Computation, Turku, Finland (v11n12) Aug 25-29, 97 BCEC97 Bio-Computing and Emergent Computation, Sweden (v10n44) Sep 1-2, 97 GALESIA97 Conf on GAs in Engineering Systems, Glasgow UK (v10n36) Sep 2-4, 97 EUROMICRO97 Euromicro Wrkshp on Comp Intel, Hungary (v10n47) Sep 3-4, 97 EUFIT97 Intelligent Techniques & Soft Computing, Aachen (v10n41) Sep 8-12, 97 SOCO97 Intl ICSC Symposium on Soft Computing, France (v10n40) Sep 17-19, 97 EA97 Evolution Artificielle, EMA-EERIE, Nimes, France (v11n10), Oct 21-24, 97 Evol Computation for Industrial Applications,New Zealand (v11n3)Nov 24-28, 97 EuroGen97 Short course GAs & ESs / Comp Sci & Eng (v11n5) Nov 28 - Dec 5, 97 SAC98 GAs and Optimization Track, Atlanta, Georgia (v11n17) Feb 27- Mar 1, 98 EP98 7th Conf on Evolutionary Programming, San Diego (v11n18) Mar 25-27, 98 ACDM98 Adaptive Comp in Design & Manufacture, Plymouth (v11n3) Apr 21-23, 98 ISORA98 Learning Cyclic Control/Behavior in Robots,Alaska(v11n8)May 10-14, 98 HIC98 Intl Conf on Hydroinformatics, Copenhagen, Denmark(v11n13)Aug 24-26, 98 ICES98 Intl Conf on Evolvable Systems, Lausanne, Switz (v11n11) Sep 24-26, 98 PPSN98 Parallel Problem Solving from Nature,Amsterdam(v11n16)Sep 27-Oct 1, 98 http://www.aic.nrl.navy.mil/galist/info/conferences/CONFERENCES.html has more information on the above conference activities. Send announcements of other activities to GA-List@aic.nrl.navy.mil. ------------------------------ From: t.fogarty@dcs.napier.ac.uk (Terry Fogarty) Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 17:58:05 +0100 Subject: research studentships NAPIER UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER STUDIES RESEARCH STUDENTSHIPS 5,540 GBP p.a. (plus fees) Applications from graduates with a good degree in computing or related discipline are invitied for two student bursaries in the Evolutionary Computing Research Group. Successful candidates will register on the PhD programme and will receive funding for three years subject to satisfactory completion of the first year. There is also the opportunity to do some paid part-time demonstrating and tutoring. We are especially interested in students who would like to do research in evolvable hardware and evolving traffic controllers. The first proposal is to evolve processors on FPGAs. This will start by evolving simple components such as adders and, using such components, build up to evolving processor architectures dedicated to running particular programs. The second is to evolve traffic controllers on FPGAs. This will start by evolving traffic controllers for simulations of single junctions and, using algorithms based on speciation and symbiosis, build up to evolving traffic controllers for simulations of networks of junctions. People interested in pursuing other well defined areas within evolutionary computing are also welcome to apply. Please send for an application form and further information to Personnel Services, Napier University, 219 Colinton Road, Edinburgh EH14 1DJ. Tel: +44 (0)131-455-4658 (24 hour answering service). Closing Date: Friday 20 June 1997. ------------------------------ From: "Peter J. Angeline" Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 21:07:19 -0400 Subject: CFP: The Seventh Annual Conference on Evolutionary Programming EP98 The Seventh Annual Conference on Evolutionary Programming March 25 - 27, 1998 Mission Valley Marriott, San Diego, USA http://www.natural-selection.com/eps/ep98.html The Seventh Annual Conference on Evolutionary Programming will serve as a forum for researchers investigating applications and theory of evolutionary programming and other related areas in evolutionary and natural computation. Authors are invited to submit papers which describe original, unpublished research in evolutionary programming, evolution strategies, genetic algorithms, genetic programming, artificial life, cultural algorithms, and other models that rely on evolutionary principles. Specific topics include, but are not limited to, the use of evolutionary simulations in optimization, neural network and filter design, automatic control, image processing and computer graphics. Other topics of interest include mathematical theory or empirical analysis providing insight into the behavior of evolutionary algorithms. Of particular interest are applications of simulated evolution to problems in biology and operations research. Submission Date: October 1, 1997 Send six (6) copies of your manuscript to one of the co-technical chairs: N. Saravanan ETA ,Inc. 1100 East Mandoline Suite B Madison Heights, MI 48071 (313)322-9471 nsaravan@pobox.com Don Waagen Lockheed Martin 1300 South Litchfield Road Mail Stop 0511 Litchfield Park, AZ 85340 (602)925-7564 waagen@cyberhighway.net A. E. Eiben Dept. of Comp. Sci. Leiden University Neils Bohrweg 1 2333 CA Leiden The Netherlands +31-(0)71-5277060 gusz@wi.leidenuniv.nl Any questions concerning the conference can be directed to any of the technical chairs or me at the email address at the end of this message. See you in San Diego. -pete Peter J. Angeline, Ph.D.| Voice: (607)798-6250 Natural Selection, Inc. | Fax: (607)729-8715 509 Colgate Street | Email: angeline@natural-selection.com Vestal, NY 13850 | WWW: www.natural-selection.com ------------------------------ From: Steve Minton Date: Fri, 23 May 97 10:09:23 PDT Subject: JAIR article: "Connectionist Theory Refinement: Genetically..." Readers of this mailing list might be interested in the following article, which was just published by JAIR: Opitz, D.W. and Shavlik, J.W. (1997) "Connectionist Theory Refinement: Genetically Searching the Space of Network Topologies", Volume 6, pages 177-209. Available in HTML, Postscript (578K) and compressed Postscript (267K). For quick access via your WWW browser, use this URL: http://www.jair.org/abstracts/opitz97a.html More detailed instructions are below. Abstract: An algorithm that learns from a set of examples should ideally be able to exploit the available resources of (a) abundant computing power and (b) domain-specific knowledge to improve its ability to generalize. Connectionist theory-refinement systems, which use background knowledge to select a neural network's topology and initial weights, have proven to be effective at exploiting domain-specific knowledge; however, most do not exploit available computing power. This weakness occurs because they lack the ability to refine the topology of the neural networks they produce, thereby limiting generalization, especially when given impoverished domain theories. We present the REGENT algorithm which uses (a) domain-specific knowledge to help create an initial population of knowledge-based neural networks and (b) genetic operators of crossover and mutation (specifically designed for knowledge-based networks) to continually search for better network topologies. Experiments on three real-world domains indicate that our new algorithm is able to significantly increase generalization compared to a standard connectionist theory-refinement system, as well as our previous algorithm for growing knowledge-based networks. The article is available via: -- comp.ai.jair.papers (also see comp.ai.jair.announce) -- World Wide Web: The URL for our World Wide Web server is http://www.jair.org/ For direct access to this article and related files try: http://www.jair.org/abstracts/opitz97a.html -- Anonymous FTP from either of the two sites below. Carnegie-Mellon University (USA): ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/project/jair/volume6/opitz97a.ps The University of Genoa (Italy): ftp://ftp.mrg.dist.unige.it/pub/jair/pub/volume6/opitz97a.ps The compressed PostScript file is named opitz97a.ps.Z (267K) -- automated email. Send mail to jair@cs.cmu.edu or jair@ftp.mrg.dist.unige.it with the subject AUTORESPOND and our automailer will respond. To get the Postscript file, use the message body GET volume6/opitz97a.ps (Note: Your mailer might find this file too large to handle.) Only one can file be requested in each message. For more information about JAIR, visit our WWW or FTP sites, or send electronic mail to jair@cs.cmu.edu with the subject AUTORESPOND and the message body HELP, or contact jair-ed@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov. ------------------------------ From: inmanh@cogs.susx.ac.uk (Inman Harvey) Date: Fri, 23 May 97 20:01 BST Subject: ECAL97 registration ECAL97 The Fourth European Conference on Artificial Life Brighton UK July 28-31 1997 Check now the full details on our web-page: http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/ecal97 including the programme of talks, posters, demonstrations, associated "Real Life Lectures" and "Like Life" art exhibition. You can register via the web-page (reduced for registrations by 31 May). ECAL97 ecal97@cogs.susx.ac.uk ------------------------------ From: Bahram Kimiaghalam Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 15:24:57 -0400 Subject: Optimal Control using GA Dear Colleagues I am solving an optimal control problem using GA and it seems that the fitness is extremely sensitive to some unwanted changes in genes. 1- Does anybody have any experience in using GA for optimal control problem? 2- How do you come up with a reasonable range ( search zone ) for your gene if you have no idea about the range? I would appreciate any help and please send your feedbacks to bahram@ncat.edu. Thank you all Bahram Kimiaghalam ------------------------------ From: rasolon@cedrat-grenoble.fr Date: Thu, 29 May 97 9:37:34 WETDST Subject: stop criterion Hello every body I would like to know the best citerion (if it exists) to stop for a genetic algorithm. The function I try to optimize with it is with 4 variables. Thank in advance JL RASOLONJANAHARY CEDRAT RECHERCHE 38 246 Meylan France email :rasolon@cedrat-grenoble.fr voice : (+33) 4 76 90 50 45 fax : (+33) 4 76 90 16 09 ------------------------------ From: hra@pollux.cs.uga.edu (Hamid Arabnia) Date: Mon, 26 May 97 09:38:43 EDT Subject: PDPTA & CISST'97 Conferences REF: PDPTA'97 & CISST'97 - Exhibition & Participation Opportunities [ WMS: This message was about 3 GA-Lists in length and had little to do with EAs. However, there ARE are few EA papers in the conference, so I've included a short excerpt. See the Web page for more info. ] Dear Colleagues: Please find appended the following information (seperated with a row of stars "*"): 1. List of accepted papers (as of May 19) in the International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA'97); June 30 - July 3, 1997; Monte Carlo Resort & Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. 2. List of accepted papers (as of May 19) in the International Conference on Imaging Science, Systems, and Technology (CISST'97); June 30 - July 3, 1997; Monte Carlo Resort & Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Note that both conferences will be held during the same time (June 30 - July 3, 1997) and at the same location. All conference activities (breaks, exhibition, reception, poster sessions, ...) are joint activities. Conference participants (PDPTA or CISST participants) can attend any of the two sets of presentations (PDPTA or CISST). More information can be found at: http://www.cps.udayton.edu/~pan/pdpta. Thank you for your assistance. Kindest regards, Hamid R. Arabnia The University of Georgia Department of Computer Science 415 Graduate Studies Research Center Athens, Georgia 30602-7404, U.S.A. Tel: (706) 542-3480 Fax: (706) 542-2966 email: hra@cs.uga.edu ------------------------------ End of Genetic Algorithms Digest ******************************