Evolutionary Approach for Automated Discovery of Censored Production Rules

In the recent past, there has been an increasing interest in applying evolutionary methods to Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) and a number of successful applications of Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Genetic Programming (GP) to KDD have been demonstrated. The most predominant representation of the discovered knowledge is the standard Production Rules (PRs) in the form If P Then D. The PRs, however, are unable to handle exceptions and do not exhibit variable precision. The Censored Production Rules (CPRs), an extension of PRs, were proposed by Michalski & Winston that exhibit variable precision and supports an efficient mechanism for handling exceptions. A CPR is an augmented production rule of the form: If P Then D Unless C, where C (Censor) is an exception to the rule. Such rules are employed in situations, in which the conditional statement 'If P Then D' holds frequently and the assertion C holds rarely. By using a rule of this type we are free to ignore the exception conditions, when the resources needed to establish its presence are tight or there is simply no information available as to whether it holds or not. Thus, the 'If P Then D' part of the CPR expresses important information, while the Unless C part acts only as a switch and changes the polarity of D to ~D. This paper presents a classification algorithm based on evolutionary approach that discovers comprehensible rules with exceptions in the form of CPRs. The proposed approach has flexible chromosome encoding, where each chromosome corresponds to a CPR. Appropriate genetic operators are suggested and a fitness function is proposed that incorporates the basic constraints on CPRs. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm.

Blind Channel Estimation Based on URV Decomposition Technique for Uplink of MC-CDMA

In this paper, we investigate a blind channel estimation method for Multi-carrier CDMA systems that use a subspace decomposition technique. This technique exploits the orthogonality property between the noise subspace and the received user codes to obtain channel of each user. In the past we used Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) technique but SVD have most computational complexity so in this paper use a new algorithm called URV Decomposition, which serve as an intermediary between the QR decomposition and SVD, replaced in SVD technique to track the noise space of the received data. Because of the URV decomposition has almost the same estimation performance as the SVD, but has less computational complexity.

A Heuristic Algorithm Approach for Scheduling of Multi-criteria Unrelated Parallel Machines

In this paper we address a multi-objective scheduling problem for unrelated parallel machines. In unrelated parallel systems, the processing cost/time of a given job on different machines may vary. The objective of scheduling is to simultaneously determine the job-machine assignment and job sequencing on each machine. In such a way the total cost of the schedule is minimized. The cost function consists of three components, namely; machining cost, earliness/tardiness penalties and makespan related cost. Such scheduling problem is combinatorial in nature. Therefore, a Simulated Annealing approach is employed to provide good solutions within reasonable computational times. Computational results show that the proposed approach can efficiently solve such complicated problems.

Non-negative Principal Component Analysis for Face Recognition

Principle component analysis is often combined with the state-of-art classification algorithms to recognize human faces. However, principle component analysis can only capture these features contributing to the global characteristics of data because it is a global feature selection algorithm. It misses those features contributing to the local characteristics of data because each principal component only contains some levels of global characteristics of data. In this study, we present a novel face recognition approach using non-negative principal component analysis which is added with the constraint of non-negative to improve data locality and contribute to elucidating latent data structures. Experiments are performed on the Cambridge ORL face database. We demonstrate the strong performances of the algorithm in recognizing human faces in comparison with PCA and NREMF approaches.

Solving Part Type Selection and Loading Problem in Flexible Manufacturing System Using Real Coded Genetic Algorithms – Part I: Modeling

This paper and its companion (Part 2) deal with modeling and optimization of two NP-hard problems in production planning of flexible manufacturing system (FMS), part type selection problem and loading problem. The part type selection problem and the loading problem are strongly related and heavily influence the system-s efficiency and productivity. The complexity of the problems is harder when flexibilities of operations such as the possibility of operation processed on alternative machines with alternative tools are considered. These problems have been modeled and solved simultaneously by using real coded genetic algorithms (RCGA) which uses an array of real numbers as chromosome representation. These real numbers can be converted into part type sequence and machines that are used to process the part types. This first part of the papers focuses on the modeling of the problems and discussing how the novel chromosome representation can be applied to solve the problems. The second part will discuss the effectiveness of the RCGA to solve various test bed problems.

Investigating Simple Multipath Compensation for Frequency Modulated Signals at Lower Frequencies

Radio propagation from point-to-point is affected by the physical channel in many ways. A signal arriving at a destination travels through a number of different paths which are referred to as multi-paths. Research in this area of wireless communications has progressed well over the years with the research taking different angles of focus. By this is meant that some researchers focus on ways of reducing or eluding Multipath effects whilst others focus on ways of mitigating the effects of Multipath through compensation schemes. Baseband processing is seen as one field of signal processing that is cardinal to the advancement of software defined radio technology. This has led to wide research into the carrying out certain algorithms at baseband. This paper considers compensating for Multipath for Frequency Modulated signals. The compensation process is carried out at Radio frequency (RF) and at Quadrature baseband (QBB) and the results are compared. Simulations are carried out using MatLab so as to show the benefits of working at lower QBB frequencies than at RF.

Modeling of Dielectric Heating in Radio- Frequency Applicator Optimized for Uniform Temperature by Means of Genetic Algorithms

The paper presents an optimization study based on genetic algorithms (GA-s) for a radio-frequency applicator used in heating dielectric band products. The weakly coupled electro-thermal problem is analyzed using 2D-FEM. The design variables in the optimization process are: the voltage of a supplementary “guard" electrode and six geometric parameters of the applicator. Two objective functions are used: temperature uniformity and total active power absorbed by the dielectric. Both mono-objective and multiobjective formulations are implemented in GA optimization.

Intelligent Heart Disease Prediction System Using CANFIS and Genetic Algorithm

Heart disease (HD) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the modern society. Medical diagnosis is an important but complicated task that should be performed accurately and efficiently and its automation would be very useful. All doctors are unfortunately not equally skilled in every sub specialty and they are in many places a scarce resource. A system for automated medical diagnosis would enhance medical care and reduce costs. In this paper, a new approach based on coactive neuro-fuzzy inference system (CANFIS) was presented for prediction of heart disease. The proposed CANFIS model combined the neural network adaptive capabilities and the fuzzy logic qualitative approach which is then integrated with genetic algorithm to diagnose the presence of the disease. The performances of the CANFIS model were evaluated in terms of training performances and classification accuracies and the results showed that the proposed CANFIS model has great potential in predicting the heart disease.

An Adaptive Model for Blind Image Restoration using Bayesian Approach

Image restoration involves elimination of noise. Filtering techniques were adopted so far to restore images since last five decades. In this paper, we consider the problem of image restoration degraded by a blur function and corrupted by random noise. A method for reducing additive noise in images by explicit analysis of local image statistics is introduced and compared to other noise reduction methods. The proposed method, which makes use of an a priori noise model, has been evaluated on various types of images. Bayesian based algorithms and technique of image processing have been described and substantiated with experimentation using MATLAB.

Gradual Shot Boundary Detection and Classification Based on Fractal Analysis

Shot boundary detection is a fundamental step for the organization of large video data. In this paper, we propose a new method for video gradual shots detection and classification, using advantages of fractal analysis and AIS-based classifier. Proposed features are “vertical intercept" and “fractal dimension" of each frame of videos which are computed using Fourier transform coefficients. We also used a classifier based on Clonal Selection Algorithm. We have carried out our solution and assessed it according to the TRECVID2006 benchmark dataset.

Data Preprocessing for Supervised Leaning

Many factors affect the success of Machine Learning (ML) on a given task. The representation and quality of the instance data is first and foremost. If there is much irrelevant and redundant information present or noisy and unreliable data, then knowledge discovery during the training phase is more difficult. It is well known that data preparation and filtering steps take considerable amount of processing time in ML problems. Data pre-processing includes data cleaning, normalization, transformation, feature extraction and selection, etc. The product of data pre-processing is the final training set. It would be nice if a single sequence of data pre-processing algorithms had the best performance for each data set but this is not happened. Thus, we present the most well know algorithms for each step of data pre-processing so that one achieves the best performance for their data set.

A Codebook-based Redundancy Suppression Mechanism with Lifetime Prediction in Cluster-based WSN

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) comprises of sensor nodes which are designed to sense the environment, transmit sensed data back to the base station via multi-hop routing to reconstruct physical phenomena. Since physical phenomena exists significant overlaps between temporal redundancy and spatial redundancy, it is necessary to use Redundancy Suppression Algorithms (RSA) for sensor node to lower energy consumption by reducing the transmission of redundancy. A conventional algorithm of RSAs is threshold-based RSA, which sets threshold to suppress redundant data. Although many temporal and spatial RSAs are proposed, temporal-spatial RSA are seldom to be proposed because it is difficult to determine when to utilize temporal or spatial RSAs. In this paper, we proposed a novel temporal-spatial redundancy suppression algorithm, Codebookbase Redundancy Suppression Mechanism (CRSM). CRSM adopts vector quantization to generate a codebook, which is easily used to implement temporal-spatial RSA. CRSM not only achieves power saving and reliability for WSN, but also provides the predictability of network lifetime. Simulation result shows that the network lifetime of CRSM outperforms at least 23% of that of other RSAs.

A New Heuristic Approach for the Stock- Cutting Problems

This paper addresses a stock-cutting problem with rotation of items and without the guillotine cutting constraint. In order to solve the large-scale problem effectively and efficiently, we propose a simple but fast heuristic algorithm. It is shown that this heuristic outperforms the latest published algorithms for large-scale problem instances.

Design of Low Power and High Speed Digital IIR Filter in 45nm with Optimized CSA for Digital Signal Processing Applications

In this paper, a design methodology to implement low-power and high-speed 2nd order recursive digital Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter has been proposed. Since IIR filters suffer from a large number of constant multiplications, the proposed method replaces the constant multiplications by using addition/subtraction and shift operations. The proposed new 6T adder cell is used as the Carry-Save Adder (CSA) to implement addition/subtraction operations in the design of recursive section IIR filter to reduce the propagation delay. Furthermore, high-level algorithms designed for the optimization of the number of CSA blocks are used to reduce the complexity of the IIR filter. The DSCH3 tool is used to generate the schematic of the proposed 6T CSA based shift-adds architecture design and it is analyzed by using Microwind CAD tool to synthesize low-complexity and high-speed IIR filters. The proposed design outperforms in terms of power, propagation delay, area and throughput when compared with MUX-12T, MCIT-7T based CSA adder filter design. It is observed from the experimental results that the proposed 6T based design method can find better IIR filter designs in terms of power and delay than those obtained by using efficient general multipliers.

The Design of Axisymmetric Ducts for Incompressible Flow with a Parabolic Axial Velocity Inlet Profile

In this paper a numerical algorithm is described for solving the boundary value problem associated with axisymmetric, inviscid, incompressible, rotational (and irrotational) flow in order to obtain duct wall shapes from prescribed wall velocity distributions. The governing equations are formulated in terms of the stream function ψ (x,y)and the function φ (x,y)as independent variables where for irrotational flow φ (x,y)can be recognized as the velocity potential function, for rotational flow φ (x,y)ceases being the velocity potential function but does remain orthogonal to the stream lines. A numerical method based on the finite difference scheme on a uniform mesh is employed. The technique described is capable of tackling the so-called inverse problem where the velocity wall distributions are prescribed from which the duct wall shape is calculated, as well as the direct problem where the velocity distribution on the duct walls are calculated from prescribed duct geometries. The two different cases as outlined in this paper are in fact boundary value problems with Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions respectively. Even though both approaches are discussed, only numerical results for the case of the Dirichlet boundary conditions are given. A downstream condition is prescribed such that cylindrical flow, that is flow which is independent of the axial coordinate, exists.

A New Approach to Solve Blasius Equation using Parameter Identification of Nonlinear Functions based on the Bees Algorithm (BA)

In this paper, a new approach is introduced to solve Blasius equation using parameter identification of a nonlinear function which is used as approximation function. Bees Algorithm (BA) is applied in order to find the adjustable parameters of approximation function regarding minimizing a fitness function including these parameters (i.e. adjustable parameters). These parameters are determined how the approximation function has to satisfy the boundary conditions. In order to demonstrate the presented method, the obtained results are compared with another numerical method. Present method can be easily extended to solve a wide range of problems.

Variance Based Component Analysis for Texture Segmentation

This paper presents a comparative analysis of a new unsupervised PCA-based technique for steel plates texture segmentation towards defect detection. The proposed scheme called Variance Based Component Analysis or VBCA employs PCA for feature extraction, applies a feature reduction algorithm based on variance of eigenpictures and classifies the pixels as defective and normal. While the classic PCA uses a clusterer like Kmeans for pixel clustering, VBCA employs thresholding and some post processing operations to label pixels as defective and normal. The experimental results show that proposed algorithm called VBCA is 12.46% more accurate and 78.85% faster than the classic PCA.

Detecting and Measuring Fabric Pills Using Digital Image Analysis

In this paper a novel method was presented for evaluating the fabric pills using digital image processing techniques. This work provides a novel technique for detecting pills and also measuring their heights, surfaces and volumes. Surely, measuring the intensity of defects by human vision is an inaccurate method for quality control; as a result, this problem became a motivation for employing digital image processing techniques for detection of defects of fabric surface. In the former works, the systems were just limited to measuring of the surface of defects, but in the presented method the height and the volume of defects were also measured, which leads to a more accurate quality control. An algorithm was developed to first, find pills and then measure their average intensity by using three criteria of height, surface and volume. The results showed a meaningful relation between the number of rotations and the quality of pilled fabrics.

Feasibility Study on Designing a Flat Loop Heat Pipe (LHP) to Recover the Heat from Exhaust of a Gas Turbine

A theoretical study is conducted to design and explore the effect of different parameters such as heat loads, the tube size of piping system, wick thickness, porosity and hole size on the performance and capability of a Loop Heat Pipe(LHP). This paper presents a steady state model that describes the different phenomena inside a LHP. Loop Heat Pipes(LHPs) are two-phase heat transfer devices with capillary pumping of a working fluid. By their original design comparing with heat pipes and special properties of the capillary structure, they-re capable of transferring heat efficiency for distances up to several meters at any orientation in the gravity field, or to several meters in a horizontal position. This theoretical model is described by different relations to satisfy important limits such as capillary and nucleate boiling. An algorithm is developed to predict the size of the LHP satisfying the limitations mentioned above for a wide range of applied loads. Finally, to assess and evaluate the algorithm and all the relations considered, we have used to design a new kind of LHP to recover the heat from the exhaust of an actual Gas Turbine. By finding the results, it showed that we can use the LHP as a very high efficient device to recover the heat even in high amount of loads(exhaust of a gas turbine). The sizes of all parts of the LHP were obtained using the developed algorithm.

A New Method of Adaptation in Integrated Learning Environment

A new method of adaptation in a partially integrated learning environment that includes electronic textbook (ET) and integrated tutoring system (ITS) is described. The algorithm of adaptation is described in detail. It includes: establishment of Interconnections of operations and concepts; estimate of the concept mastering level (for all concepts); estimate of student-s non-mastering level on the current learning step of information on each page of ET; creation of a rank-order list of links to the e-manual pages containing information that require repeated work.