Genetic Algorithms Digest Thursday, February 20, 1997 Volume 11 : Issue 6 - 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: - GA papers available - CI-Workshop: Extended Deadline: FEB 26, 1997 - ICGA-97 Call for Workshops - 2nd German Workshop on Artificial Life, CFP - Adapting mutation rates - Correction of CFP for IJCAI-97 Workshop on Evolvable Systems - PhD thesis on Hybrid GAs for Constrained Placement Problems - Extended deadlines for PATAT'97 - LaTeX Style for proceedings ``icga95.sty'' - CFP: AAAI Workshop on Multiagent Learning - GANNET 2.0 Released - Announcing release of multi-level GA system, DAGA2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CALENDAR OF GA-RELATED ACTIVITIES: (with GA-List issue reference) 3rd Symposium Softcomputing, University of Goettingen, (v11n3) Feb 27, 97 SAC97 Symp on Applied Comp (GAs track), San Jose,CA (v10n28) Feb 28-Mar 2, 97 ICCIN97 Comp Intelligence and Neuroscience, North Carolina (v10n16)Mar 2-5,97 FEA97 1st Intl Wrkshp on Frontiers in EAs, North Carolina (v10n21) Mar 2-5,97 ICANNGA97 Intl Conf on Artificial NNs and GAs, England (v10n16) Apr 1-4, 97 AISB97 Workshop on Evolutionary Computing, Manchester (v10n42) Apr 7-8, 97 EP97 Conf on Evolutionary Programming, Indianapolis (v10n19) Apr 13-16, 97 ICEC97 Intl Conf Evolutionary Computation, Indianapolis(v10n27) Apr 13-16, 97 KES97 Knowledge-Based Intel Electronic Systems,Australia(v10n48)May 21-23, 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 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 (v11n4), Oct 23-27, 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 ACDM98 Adaptive Comp in Design & Manufacture, Plymouth (v11n3) Apr 21-23, 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: j.beasley@ic.ac.uk Date: Tue, 4 Feb 97 Subject: GA papers available Two GA papers: A genetic algorithm for the multiconstraint knapsack problem Constraint handling in genetic algorithms: the set partitioning problem are available from http://mscmga.ms.ic.ac.uk/jeb/jeb.html ------------------------------ From: mam@kassandra.informatik.uni-dortmund.de Date: Tue, 04 Feb 1997 Subject: CI-Workshop: Extended Deadline: FEB 26, 1997 Euromicro-Workshop on Computational Intelligence Budapest, Hungary September 3-4, 1997 CONFERENCE SCOPE Artificial Neural Networks (NN), Fuzzy-Logic Systems (FL), and Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) have been investigated since three decades. Their broad application, however, had to wait until powerful computers became available within the last decade. Their potential is by no means exhausted today. On the contrary, more and more they are jointly applied to solve real-world hard problems. The term Computational Intelligence has been coined for such combinations, and the first CI World Congress in 1994 was witness of the boom in this challenging field, the next one being scheduled for 1998. This Workshop aims at bringing together developers and users of CI methods in order to enhance the synergetic potential. Besides pure subsymbolic knowledge processing, also combinations of symbolic and subsymbolic approaches shall be addressed. KEYNOTE SPEAKER Prof. Dr. Jim Bezdek, University of West Florida, Pensacola, USA MORE INFORMATION Information on the Workshop and Euromicro Conference is available through WWW: Workshop: http://LS11-www.informatik.uni-dortmund.de/EUROMICRO EXTENDED SUBMISSION OF PAPERS The closing date for submissions is EXTENDED from Feb. 1st to Feb 26, 1997. Notification of acceptance: April 1st, 1997 Camera-ready papers due: June 1st, 1997 ------------------------------ From: levine@redwood.rt.cs.boeing.com Date: Tue, 4 Feb 97 Subject: ICGA-97 Call for Workshops Call for Workshop Proposals Seventh International Conference on Genetic Algorithms -- ICGA-97 http://isl.msu.edu/GA/icga97 Workshop proposals are solicited for ICGA-97. The topic and format are to be defined by the organizer. By way of example, at ICGA-95 there were workshops on genetic programming, classifier systems, parallel genetic algorithms, genetic algorithm theory, and the No-Free-Lunch Theorem. Possible formats include, but are not limited to, talks, posters, or panel discussions. Each accepted workshop will be given a scheduled block of time (that will NOT overlap any of the paper sessions) and a room. Overhead projectors, posters, and VCRs will be available. If you are interested in organizing a workshop, please send me a title, short description, proposed format, and the name(s) of the organizer(s). --dave levine David Levine Boeing Information & Support Services PO Box 3707 206-865-6115 (Voice) -|- MS 7L-20 206-865-2966 (FAX) ---o-O-o--- Seattle, WA 98124-2207 david.levine@boeing.com " " ------------------------------ From: Peter Dittrich Date: Wed, 5 Feb 97 Subject: 2nd German Workshop on Artificial Life, CFP [ WMS: Our Calendar Items are already long, so since this is not directly related to EAs I will not be adding it to the above list. ] Call for papers and participation for the SECOND GERMAN WORKSHOP ON ARTIFICIAL LIFE (GWAL'97) Dortmund, April 17-18, 1997, (short version) The major goals of the workshop are: * To open up new pathways for investigating and understanding living systems. * To make complex features of living systems available for the design of artificial systems, such as computer programs and robots. * To contribute to the building of formal theories describing living systems. Topics: * Modelling biological processes and living systems. * Emergence of complexity. * Dynamics of information in living and life-like systems * Self-organization in living and life-like systems * Applications of principles and features of living systems * Philosiphical and ethical issues * Other issues relevant to Artificial Life The full CFP is available from: http://ls11-www.informatik.uni-dortmund.de/GWAL/ For any further information, please contact the GWAL organizers: German Workshop on Artificial Life Chair of Systems Analysis Informatik XI University of Dortmund D-44221 Dortmund Germany email: gwal@ls11.informatik.uni-dortmund.de Peter Dittrich dittrich@LS11.informatik.uni-dortmund.de University of Dortmund, Dept. of Computer Science, Chair of Systems Analysis http://ls11-www.informatik.uni-dortmund.de/people/dittrich/ ------------------------------ From: tuan.pham@unsw.edu.au Date: Fri, 07 Feb 97 Subject: Adapting mutation rates Hello In my implementation of GA/EP I use a variable mutation rate that depends on the distance between the parents. When the two parents approach each other, the probability of mutation increases exponentially (of course it must remain <=1). The idea is to facilitate escape from local minima. I wonder if anyone has used this scheme before, and if so could I have a specific reference? The reason for the question is that when I mentioned this idea in a manuscript, a referee commented that it is a well known idea since it was proposed at the PPSN conference in 1991. However he does not give the specific paper. Also, to my knowledge mutation rate tend to be made SMALLER not larger as time goes, which is the opposite to my implementation. Regards Tuan Pham [ WMS: A 'grep' for "mutation rate" in volumes 8, 9, and 10 of GA-List suggest that some of this has been discussed before. My grep had matches on v8n{14,15,20,23,25,26,38}, v9n{12,15,27,40,61,62}, and v10n{3,8}. Clearly not all of these are appropriate, but some are. In general I encourage readers to peruse back issues for answers to their questions, since we have had many informative issues during the 10 year history of GA-List! ] ------------------------------ From: miwata@etl.go.jp Date: Mon, 10 Feb 97 Subject: Correction of CFP for IJCAI-97 Workshop on Evolvable Systems IJCAI-97 Workshop on Evolvable Systems Nagoya, Japan, August 23, 1997 Call For Papers The first announcement of this workshop was sent from bernard@arti.vub.ac.be on GA-List v11n5. The schedule has been changed as follows: * Schedule [THESE DATES HAVE BEEN CHANGED] Deadline of submission: March 31st, 1997 Notification of acceptance: April 14th, 1997 Final camera-ready copies due: May 1st, 1997 * Further Information Please refer to the WWW site "http://www.etl.go.jp:8080/etl/kikou/ijcai-97-ws/" or contact Tetsuya Higuchi (e-mail: higuchi@etl.go.jp). Masaya Iwata Electrotechnical Laboratory, Japan ------------------------------ From: volker@haydn.informatik.Uni-Osnabrueck.DE Date: Tue, 11 Feb 97 Subject: PhD thesis on Hybrid GAs for Constrained Placement Problems The following PhD dissertation is available: Hybrid Genetic Algorithms for Solving Constrained Packing and Placement Problems by Volker Schnecke, University of Osnabrueck, Germany URL: http://brahms.informatik.uni-osnabrueck.de/prakt_eng/pub/abstracts/volker_diss.html For a hardcopy of this thesis please contact: Prof. Oliver Vornberger University of Osnabrueck Department of Mathematics/Computer Science D-49069 Osnabrueck Germany Abstract: In this thesis hybrid approaches and empirical results are presented for three constrained packing and placement problems: the two-dimensional bin-packing, the facility layout problem, and the generation of VLSI macro cell layouts. The basic problem of these three tasks is the packing of rectangular blocks on a planar site. In addition to finding a packing pattern with minimal waste, the objective in the latter two applications is also based on quantitative dependencies between the blocks, i. e. signal-nets in case of the layout generation and flow costs for each pair of blocks in case of the facility layout problem. Genetic algorithms have proven to be a well suited technique for solving hard combinatorial optimization problems. The main task when applying genetic algorithms to these problems is to find a proper representation for the candidate solutions. Strings of elementary data-types with standard genetic operators lack the fact that infeasible individuals are generated during the search because of the discrete and mostly constrained search space. In this thesis a generally applicable representation for combinatorial placement and packing problems is introduced. Due to a tree-structured genotype representation and hybrid, problem-specific operators the proposed approach is able to deal with different constraints in one optimization step. The parallel genetic algorithms which are proposed in this thesis include a multi-parent gene-pool recombination operator and a dynamic strategy adaptation scheme. For each application empirical data is presented for a set of benchmark problems, and the obtained results are compared to those reported for other approaches. ------------------------------ From: ekb@Cs.Nott.AC.UK Date: Mon, 17 Feb 97 Subject: Extended deadlines for PATAT'97 [ WMS: Also see v10n42 for more info. ] PATAT'97 The 2nd international conference on the Practice And Theory of Automated Timetabling Wednesday 20th August - Friday 22nd August 1997 University of Toronto, Canada A lot of people have been asking for extensions to the deadline given in the original call for papers for this conference. This has been granted in all cases and the Steering Committee have decided that the deadline extension should be made public. The original call for papers is included at the end of this e-mail. The deadline for abstract submissions (not paper submissions) has been extended to 7th March 1997. It should also be pointed out that although accepted abstracts will not be going through into the second round of refereeing for the Springer volume there will be an opportunity to expand accepted abstracts into a full paper which can be submitted for this second round. These submissions will take place shortly after the conference itself. Abstracts are welcomed from all areas of automated timetabling (including transport scheduling, nurse scheduling, sports scheduling etc). Abstracts that deal with practical issues are particularly welcomed. For more information about the series of conferences see http://tawny.cs.nott.ac.uk/ASAP/ttg/patat.html The themes of the conference include (but are not limited to): o Complexity issues o Distributed timetabling systems o Experiences o Implementations o Commercial packages o Interactive vs batch timetabling o Relationship with other scheduling problems o Techniques, including: Constraint Logic Programming Genetic Algorithms Graph Colouring Expert Systems Knowledge Based Systems Operational Research Simulated Annealing Tabu-search Deadlines: abstract submissions March 7th 1997 notification of acceptance April 14th (at the latest) For more information, contact: Dr E.K.Burke Department of Computer Science University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD UK e-mail: ekb@cs.nott.ac.uk ------------------------------ From: soliday@zeus.anet-dfw.co Date: Fri, 14 Feb 97 Subject: LaTeX Style for proceedings ``icga95.sty'' I had a paper in ICGA-95, I wrote it in LaTeX. Though I still have the source for my paper I have lost the icga95.sty file. I would like to be able to recompile my paper in the same format. Dr. Schultz recomended that I E-Mail you. Do you know where I could find a copy of this LaTeX file. Thanks, Stephen W. Soliday 972/575-0175 Defense Systems & Electronics soliday@ti.com Texas Instruments, Inc. soliday@anet-dfw.com Dallas, TX ------------------------------ From: sandip@kolkata.mcs.utulsa.edu Date: Sat, 15 Feb 97 Subject: CFP: AAAI Workshop on Multiagent Learning [ WMS: This is a 2nd announcement - see v10n47 for more information. ] AAAI-96 Workshop on Multiagent Learning Description: This workshop addresses the requirements for agents to learn and adapt in the presence of other agents. Of particular relevance for the workshop are the applicability and limitations of current machine learning techniques for multiagent problems, and new learning and adaptive mechanisms particularly suited to them. Topics of interest: Among others, papers discussing following topics are welcome: -- Evaluating effectiveness of individual learning strategies, or multistrategy combinations, in cooperative/competitive scenarios -- Characterizing learning methods in terms of modeling power, communication abilities, knowledge requirement, processing abilities of agents. -- Co-evolving multiple agents with similar/opposing interests. -- Teacher-student relationships among agents. -- Specific applications demonstrating how multiagent systems benefit from learning. ------------------------------ From: dduane@fame.gmu.edu Date: Mon, 17 Feb 97 Subject: GANNET 2.0 Released GANNET 2.0a has been released. It is available at http://fame.gmu.edu/~dduane/thesis. GANNET is software which evolves binary valued Neural Networks. The major enhancement of version 2.0 is the ability to recognize variable length binary strings, such as those that would be generated by a finite automaton. Included is code for calculating the Effective Measure Complexity (EMC) of finite automata as well as code for generating test data. Also, the masters thesis that utilized this program as well as a paper is available in this directory. Further, a mailing list has been established for discussing uses and problems with the GANNET software. To subscribe, send a message to: listproc@gmu.edu On the first line of the message (not the subject) type: SUB GANNET