Genetic Algorithms Digest Monday, July 31, 1995 Volume 9 : Issue 40 - 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 [192.26.18.68] in /pub/galist. ****************************************************************************** Today's Topics: - Delays, delays - EP96 Change in Tech Chairs - PhD Studentships - Announcement: GALESIA '95, Sheffield, UK. - NEURAL AND EVOLUTIONARY SYSTEMS ADVANCED MSC - Wright's F statistics? - NetQ Message 2 - special journal issue - Determination of global maxima - Introductory Papers on GA's - SUGAL v2.0 now available (free software for GAs) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ******************************************************************************* CALENDAR OF GA-RELATED ACTIVITIES: (with GA-List issue reference) PASE95 Wrkshp Parallel Appl in Stat and Econ, Trier (v8n39) Aug 29-Sep 2, 95 EA95 Evolution Artificielle, Telecom Bretagne, Brest, Fr (v9n1) Sep 4-8, 95 GALESIA'95 GAs in Eng Systems, Univ of Sheffield, UK (v8n45) Sep 12-14, 95 AIPetro95 AI in the Petroleum Ind, Lillehammer, Norway (v8n48) Sep 13-15, 95 CALMA95 Combinatorial Algs for Military Appl, Scheveningen (v9n38) Sep 15, 95 ASI-AA-95 Practice and Future of Autonomous Agents (v8n19) Sep 23-Oct 1, 95 SOCONF95 Self-Organization of Complex Structure, Berlin (v9n30) Sep 24-28, 95 MENDEL95 130th Anniversary of Mendels Laws, Brno, Czech (v9n28) Sep 26-28, 95 Towards Evolvable Hardware Intl Wrkshp, Lausanne, Switz (v9n29) Oct 2-3, 95 SOCO95 Soft Computing Fuzzy Logic, NNs and GAs, Rochester(v9n5) Oct 24-27, 95 Genetic Methods for Routing & Scheduling, New Orleans(v8n50) Oct 29-Nov 1, 95 AAAI GP Symposium (Fall Series), Cambridge, MA (v8n43) Nov 10-12, 95 IEEE Wrkshp on Natural Algorithms in Signal Proc, Essex (v9n7) Nov 12-14, 95 WWW95 on Fuzzy Logic and NNs/Evol Comp, Nagoya, Japan (v9n6) Nov 14-15, 95 ICEC95 IEEE Intl Conf on Evol. Computing, Perth (v8n36) Nov 29-Dec 1, 95 EUROGEN95 GAs and ESs in Computational Sci & Eng, Spain (v9n15) Dec 4-8, 95 SAC96 Symposium on Applied Computing GA & Opt Track, PA (v9n33) Feb 17-19, 96 EP96 5th Conf on Evol Programming, San Diego, CA (v9n18) Feb 29-Mar 3, 96 ACEDC96 Adaptive Computing in Eng. Design & Control, UK (v9n28) Mar 26-28, 96 SOCO96 Intl Symposia w/ Workshops/Tutorials, Reading, UK (v9n35)Mar 26-28, 96 ICEC96 IEEE Intl Conf on Evol Comp, Nagoya, Japan (v9n18) May 20-22, 96 IPMU96 Granada, Spain (v9n31) Jul 1-5, 96 GP96 Genetic Programming Conference, Stanford, CA (v9n9) Jul 28-31, 96 SAB96 From Animals to Animats, Cape Cod, Massachusetts (v9n31) Sep 9-13, 96 PPSN96 Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, Berlin (v9n17) Sep 22-27, 96 (Send announcements of other activities to GA-List@aic.nrl.navy.mil) ******************************************************************************* ------------------------------ From: William M. Spears (GA-List Moderator) Date: Wed, 26 July 1995 Subject: Delays, delays I apologize for the delays in getting GA-List out the door. I was away for the ICGA conference (many thanks to those who helped make it a success!). On returning I have found that the excessive heat, coupled with a failing A/C unit, is making our electronic life difficult. We will continue to have problems until either the weather improves or the A/C is fixed. Your patience is appreciated. Also, I think I lost a submission about haploid/diploid structures. I apologize to the poster and hope he/she will submit it again. Bill ------------------------------ From: "Peter J. Angeline" Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 13:45:04 -0400 Subject: EP96 Change in Tech Chairs [ WMS: The complete submission is available from ftp.aic.nrl.navy.mil under pub/galist/info/conferences/EP96.2 ] ECers Everywhere, EP96 had a minor reorgnization. Please note that the addresses for sending submissions to the conference are down to 2 now! Submissions are due to one of the technical chairs by September 26th. Pete Angeline Thomas Baeck Submission Information Authors are invited to submit papers which describe original unpublished research in evolutionary programming, evolution strategies, genetic algorithms and 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 training and design, automatic control, image processing, and other applications, as well as mathematical theory or empirical analysis providing insight into the behavior of such algorithms. Of particular interest are applications of simulated evolution to problems in biology. Hardcopies of manuscripts must be received by one of the technical program co-chairs by September 26, 1995. Electronic submissions cannot be accepted. Papers should be clear, concise, and written in English. Papers received after the deadline will be handled on a time- and space-available basis. The notification of the program committee's review decision will be mailed by November 30, 1995. Papers eligible for the student award must be marked appropriately for consideration (see below). Camera ready papers are due at the conference, and will be published shortly after its completion. Submissions should be single-spaced, 12 pt. font and should not exceed 15 pages including figures and references. Send five (5) copies of the complete paper to: In Europe: Thomas Baeck Informatik Centrum Dortmund Joseph-von-Fraunhofer-Str. 20 D-44227 Dortmund Germany Email: baeck@home.informatik.uni-dortmund.de In US: Peter J. Angeline Loral Federal Systems 1801 State Route 17C Mail Drop 0210 Owego, NY 13827 Email: pja@lfs.loral.com Authors outside Europe or the United States may send their paper to any of the above technical chairmen at their convenience. ------------------------------ From: R.Poli@cs.bham.ac.uk Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 18:28:44 BST Subject: PhD Studentships The University of Birmingham School of Computer Science Research Studentships in ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ EMERGENT AND EVOLUTIONARY BEHAVIOUR, INTELLIGENCE, AND COMPUTATION (EEBIC) Applications are invited for a number of Studentships for full-time PhD research in the School of Computer Science to carry out research within the recently founded EEBIC group. The group's research interests include: evolutionary computation (e.g. genetic algorithms and genetic programming), emergent behaviour, emergent intelligence (e.g. emergent communication), emergent computation and artificial life and their practical applications in hard engineering problems. The members of the group, at Birmingham and elsewhere, are active researchers in Artificial Intelligence, Engineering or Psychology with a variety of different backgrounds including Biology, Computer Science, Engineering, Psychology and Philosophy. In addition to EEBIC, the research experience of the members of the group includes computer vision, neural nets, signal processing, intelligent autonomous agents, hybrid inference systems, computer emotions, logic and many others. The group interacts very closely with the Cognition and Affect group led by Aaron Sloman who is a member of both groups. (For more information see URLs: ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/groups/cog_affect and http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs .) The successful applicants will join the group's effort to explore EEBIC in many interesting directions (from engineering to psychology, from new practical applications to new theoretical frameworks). They will have constant interaction and collaboration with the other members of the group. In addition to the usual requirements of possessing a good honours degree (equivalent to a first or upper second class degree in a UK university) and being EU residents, the successful candidates will need to be particularly open minded to the cross-fertilisation in the group deriving from the different backgrounds and experience of the members. Additional information about how to apply and about the School is available via WWW from URL: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk Informal enquiries about the EEBIC group can be directed to Riccardo Poli Phone: +44-121-414-3739 Fax: +44-121-414-4281 Email: R.Poli@cs.bham.ac.uk Enquiries concerning the Cognition and Affect group may be sent to Aaron Sloman Phone: +44-121-414-4775 Fax: +44-121-414-4281 Email: A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk For any other queries contact our research students' admission tutor: Dr Peter Hancox Email: P.J.Hancox@cs.bham.ac.uk ------------------------------ From: Jane Shaw Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 15:53:46 +0100 Subject: Announcement: GALESIA '95, Sheffield, UK. [ WMS: This submission was very large. The full submission is on ftp.aic.nrl.navy.mil under pub/galist/info/conferences/GALESIA95 ] GALESIA '95 First IEE/IEEE International Conference on "Genetic algorithms in engineering systems: innovations and applications" Halifax Hall, University of Sheffield, UK: 12-14 September 1995 Accompanying Event One-day Workshop on "Intelligent Systems:Theory and Applications" to be held at the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield on Monday, 11 September 1995 at 09.00 hrs Delegates may attend the Workshop separately from the Conference. ------------------------------ From: Dimitris Dracopoulos Date: Mon, 24 Jul 1995 13:34:30 -0600 Subject: NEURAL AND EVOLUTIONARY SYSTEMS ADVANCED MSC NEURAL AND EVOLUTIONARY SYSTEMS ADVANCED MSC ============================================ The Computer Science Department at Brunel University (United Kingdom) will be running a new advanced MSc course on Neural and Evolutionary Systems from September 1995. You may find further details at the following locations: WWW: http://http1.brunel.ac.uk:8080/depts/cs/ in the News section FTP: ftp.brunel.ac.uk CompSci/Announcements/NES-MSc.ps (PostScript version) CompSci/Announcements/NES-MSc.ascii (ASCII version) For further information including literature and an application form, please contact Pam Osborne at the address below, or for more detailed enquiries please contact Vlatka Hlupic (address given below) or me via email at: Dr Dimitris C. Dracopoulos Department of Computer Science Brunel University Telephone: +44 1895 274000 ext. 2120 London Fax: +44 1895 251686 Uxbridge E-mail: Dimitris.Dracopoulos@brunel.ac.uk Middlesex UB8 3PH United Kingdom Pam Osborne Dept of Computer Science Tel: +44 (0)1895 274000 Brunel University Ext: 2134 Uxbridge Fax: +44 (0)1895 251686 Middlesex UB8 3PH Pam.Osborne@brunel.ac.uk Dr. Vlatka Hlupic Dept of Computer Science Tel: +44 (0)895 274000 Brunel University Ext: 2231 Uxbridge Fax: +44 (0)895 251686 Middlesex UB8 3PH Vlatka.Hlupic@brunel.ac.uk ------------------------------ From: Ted.Belding@umich.edu (Theodore C. Belding) Date: Sat, 22 Jul 1995 18:54:01 -0400 Subject: Wright's F statistics? (A copy of this message has also been posted to the following newsgroups: comp.ai.genetic) After seeing Markus Schwehm's talks at the ICGA, I'm curious whether anyone else has used any of the following metrics from population genetics to study haploid GAs: Wright's F statistics (inbreeding coefficient, etc.) heterozygosity (H) Nei's D metric (or other measures of genetic distance) Any pointers would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance! -Ted Ted Belding Ted.Belding@umich.edu or streak@engin.umich.edu University of Michigan Division of Computer Science and Engineering ------------------------------ From: Stewart Wilson Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 10:53:15 -0400 Subject: NetQ Message 2 NetQ Message 2 ============== Especially with ICGA just over, the "New" NetQ could be very useful to people. I've expanded NetQ to permit questions on *any* paper in the "complex adaptive systems" area. So if you're wondering about something in a paper in the ICGA Proceedings, ask the author (anonymously) via NetQ! To use NetQ: Start with a paper and a question on that paper Connect to NetQ at http://netq.rowland.org Send your question in using one of the "Q!" buttons --you'll see how. The NetQ system will automatically forward your question to the author, and the answer will be available on NetQ in a few days. The author has no idea who is asking a question, which is an inducement to answer well. -Stewart Wilson ------------------------------ From: gordon@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil Date: Wed, 26 Jul 95 15:22:20 EDT Subject: special journal issue [ WMS: Bias is central to our study of evolutionary algorithms, so I thought the following would be of interest to many of us. ] The upcoming July/August issue of Machine Learning journal is a special issue on "Bias Evaluation and Selection." We believe the topic of bias is relevant to all forms of machine learning. The issue begins with an introductory article that formalizes the definitions of representational and procedural bias. It then presents a framework for bias shifting. Although the introductory article is expressed in terms of supervised concept learning, the definitions and framework should be easily extendible to any type of learning. The remainder of the issue consists of articles about biases in different types of learning (supervised concept learning, ILP, speedup learning). One lesson the ML and GA communities have learned from the NFL theorems is a reminder of the importance of delineating regions of expertise/weakness, i.e., regions of problem space for which our algorithm or bias is well/poorly suited. We believe the articles in this issue take an important step in addressing this task. We hope this issue will: 1) provide interesting and informative reading, 2) encourage people in other areas of machine learning not represented in this issue (e.g., reinforcement learning, cognitive learning, evolutionary computation) to apply the definitions and methodologies presented in this issue to their areas of expertise, and 3) encourage further research on bias and other unifying themes that are of central concern to all of machine learning (e.g., Tom Dietterich's ML95 paper on unifying EBL and RL is a similar step in this direction). Diana Gordon Marie desJardins Editors ------------------------------ From: larkin@dam.brown.edu (Michael J. Larkin) Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 22:32:02 EDT Subject: Determination of global maxima Is there anything in the GA literature that explores the ability of a GA to find the global maxima in terms of the geometry of the global maximum and the mutation rate? Michael J. Larkin Institute for Brain and Neural Systems Brown University larkin@dam.brown.edu [ WMS: I myself would like to see the responses to this post... ] ------------------------------ From: "Robert I. Stewart" Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 11:36:08 +0200 (GMT+0200) Subject: Introductory Papers on GA's Hi, I am currently teaching an Algorithmics course (covering computational complexity) to a class of 3rd year students. One of the chapters we will deal with covers NP-Complete problems. Some of the example problems given are Graph Coloring, Bin Packing, Travelling Salesman Problem etc. I am interested in Genetic Algorithnms and I have an understanding of the basic principles, so I thought it would be a nice idea to introduce my 3rd year students to GA's when we cover the NP-Complete chapter. As far as I know, GA's have been used quite successfully in solving (or at least approximating) these problems. What I would like to know is if there are any freeely available introductory papers that deal with GA's solving or approximating the problems I mentioned. If so, I would greatly appreciate any references. Thanks in advance, Robert Robert Stewart (email: csaris@upe.ac.za) Department of Computer Science University of Port Elizabeth, South Africa ------------------------------ From: cs0ahu@isis.sund.ac.uk (Andy.Hunter) Date: Mon, 24 Jul 1995 14:02:56 +0100 Subject: SUGAL v2.0 now available (free software for GAs) Sugal V2.0 is now available. Sugal aims to provide the most comprehensive package for Genetic Algorithm research and implementation in the world - and its free. Sugal V2.0 has the following features: Written in ANSI C. Tested on SUN SOLARIS 2 and PC BORLAND C++ 3.0. (and has been successfully run on OS/2 and SGI). Supports multiple datatypes seamlessly: bit strings, integers, real numbers, symbols (from arbitrarily sized alphabets). Also supports mixed datatypes. A powerful and general Genetic Algorithm (features listed below). Generates extensive statistics on population fitness and diversity. A platform-independent Graphical User Interface (running on PC Windows or X-Windows with MOTIF), including fitness and diversity graphing facilities. Interface can be extended and/or customised using simple registration routines and screen configuration files. Conducts multiple experiments and calculates aggregate statistics. Parameters can be set in configuration files, and overruled by command-line options, hard-coded program statements, and/or on-screen. Users can add their own configuration file parameters and/or add additional options to existing parameters. Virtually all major actions in the GA can be augmented/overridden by the user. Major Features of the Sugal v2.0 Genetic Algorithm Initialisation: Uniform, Gaussian, Loaded Bit and from File.

Selection: Roulette, Integral Roulette (i.e. Expected Value Model), Tournament and Uniform Fitness Normalisation: Biased, Inversion, Linear and Mean-Linear, Rank Linear and Rank Geometric fitness normalisation (all either for minimisation or maximisation of fitness function). Crossover: Uniform, One-Point, Two-Point and arbitrary N-Point crossover, variable crossover rates. Mutation: Bit Inversion, Gene Reinitialisation, Step-delta, Uniform-delta and Gaussian-delta Mutation, including time-decay mutation sizes; variable mutation rates. Replacement: Uniform, Rank-based, Tournament, Crowding and Parental replacement; replacement can be Unconditional, Simple Conditional (i.e. If Improved) or Simulated Annealing; variable replacement rate (i.e. generation gap); elitism. Sugal has been extensively improved since v1.0. Sugal is available primarily via the World-Wide-Web at: http://osiris.sund.ac.uk/ahu/sugal/home.html - this includes source files, user registration (if you wish to be informed of Sugal upgrades, etc) and bug-report facilities. You can also obtain Sugal by anonymous ftp from: osiris@sund.ac.uk in /pub/sugal The author welcomes comments and cries for help: cs0ahu@sund.ac.uk Dr. Andrew Hunter, University of Sunderland, England. ------------------------------ End of Genetic Algorithms Digest ******************************