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Harris Hawks Optimization (HHO) is a novel meta-heuristic optimization algorithm. The algorithm is inspired by the behavior of Harris Hawks collaborating with each other to pursue prey in nature. The algorithm has the advantages of simple structure, fewer parameters, easy implementation, and excellent performance on high-dimensional problems. However, the algorithm also suffers from the inability to strike a good balance between exploration and exploitation, low convergence accuracy, and slow convergence speed in the early stage. In response to these defects, this paper will introduce three strategies to the HHO: a non-negative stochastic shrinkage exponential energy function, a Cauchy-Gaussian-based dynamic variance reduction selection strategy, and a greedy-difference-based selection strategy. The improved algorithm TSHHO is analyzed on the well-established 28 benchmark test functions, and four industrial engineering design problems. The experimental results show that the TSHHO algorithm proposed in this paper can achieve a better balance in the exploration and development stages,the strategies significantly improve the search efficiency, convergence accuracy, and robustness of the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a new network architecture, Software Defined Network (SDN) has been widely used in recent years. The continuous increase of network scale makes centralized SDN unable to meet network requirements, so distributed SDN comes into being. The application of the optimization algorithm to solve the Controller Placement Problem (CPP) can improve the performance of distributed SDN. The meta-heuristic algorithm has been widely concerned because it is not easy to fall into the local optimal solution. Based on the advantages of meta-heuristic algorithm, this paper uses the multi-point replacement method and the two-point replacement method which have low complexity to discretization African Vultures Optimization Algorithm (AVOA) in the search and development stages respectively to solve CPP in SDN. In addition, the performance of the improved optimization algorithm is compared with other algorithms on three real SDN topologies of different scales. The research results show that compared with other six latest meta-heuristic algorithms, the improved optimization algorithm in this paper can obtain the lowest average delay between the controller and switch in the shortest time. Compared with PHCPA with the best performance, IAVOA proposed in this paper improves the convergence speed of 38.16%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's world, agricultural production and operation activities generate a lot of data. As a result, computer-aided agriculture applications have become a hot topic in the study, with various machine learning (ML) algorithms being used to classify agricultural data. This paper presents a comparative study consisting of a combination of ML algorithms with meta-heuristic algorithms for feature selection to improve the classification capability of ML algorithms by finding the features that significantly impact accuracy. We have used six different meta-heuristic algorithms for feature selection. Experiments are conducted on four different agricultural datasets with five classification models. To understand the effect of proposed models, the selected features are fed into the ML algorithms. The results prove that combining ML and meta-heuristic algorithms achieves higher classification accuracy with fewer features on agricultural datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fog Computing paradigm that provisions low-latency computing services at the edge network, is a bonanza for supply chain computing resources in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In different scenarios such as smart homes/healthcare systems, multiple IoT applications are distributed simultaneously in cloud and fog nodes to provide different IoT-based services. In addition, each program requires resources and has its desired quality of service (QoS) which should be met. One of the key challenges in fog computing environment is how to efficiently allocate resources to IoT applications because inefficient resource allocation leads to burdening providers high costs and it lowers down the delivered QoS to users. Since the majority of IoT applications are time-sensitive, the low delay and near physically allocated resources improve the amount of delivered QoS. Therefore, the resource clustering algorithms with the lowest distance error rate and the lowest delay as a consequence are favorable. The aim is to reduce clustering errors and improve the overall performance of the system. This paper formulates resource allocation to IoT applications in heterogeneous 4-layered fog platforms to an optimization problem. To solve this problem, a fusion approach incorporating a genetic algorithm (GA) and the k-means clustering approach is presented. Firstly, it utilizes the k-means approach and Jaccard measurement to cluster fog nodes with a minimum clustering rate. Then, the resources of fog clusters are allocated to IoT devices with the minimum error rate by incorporating GA algorithm. This selection of processing nodes in a fog layer helps to minimize latency and allows applications to access resources simultaneously. The simulation results in extensive scenarios prove the superiority of the proposed algorithm against other successful meta-heuristic approaches in terms of the objective function and lowest error/delay rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cloud computing has experienced extraordinary development across a wide range of industries by giving customers the flexibility to employ computing resources as needed. The task scheduling problem is one of several major challenges in cloud computing, and it should be scheduled effectively to minimize makespan and maximize resource utilization. Therefore, this paper put forward an improved scheduling efficiency algorithm called Enhanced Marine Predator Algorithm (EMPA). Firstly, task scheduling model with makespan and resource utilization is constructed. Secondly, each individual represents a result of task scheduling, and the purpose of algorithms is to find the optimal scheduling result, therefore the operator of WOA, nonlinear inertia weight coefficient and golden sine strategy are introduced into Marine Predator Algorithm. In the simulation experiment, EMPA is compared with Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO), Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) under different number of tasks in synthetic datasets and GoCJ datasets.The experimental results show that the EMPA algorithm has more advantages in terms of makespan, degree of imbalance, and resource utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, by transforming physical devices into innovative items, affects every aspect of our daily lives. It has brought a slew of evolutionary and revolutionary services that were almost impossible to imagine until recently. The numerous services and applications offered by IoT cover numerous fields, such as personal healthcare, urban life, energy management, and manufacturing. A tremendous amount of data is produced to reach valuable information and meet users' needs. In addition, since the number of services and applications is increasing rapidly, an efficient method to fulfill the growing demands in different application domains becomes challenging. To handle the mentioned problems, task scheduling mechanisms have a significant influence. Despite the importance of these methods in the IoT, an in-depth and systematic review of the current works in this area is clearly lacking. Therefore, we aim to overcome this gap by adopting an organized manner. In fact, this paper aims to specify the challenging problems in IoT task scheduling, highlight the effective works, and outline some hints for upcoming studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of big data, the number of science and technology service resources has proliferated, and the integration and clustering of science and technology documents become a challenging issue. This paper proposes a novel meta-heuristic algorithm, banyan tree growth optimization (BTGO), for resource clustering of science and technology services. The proposed algorithm is inspired by the growth process of banyan tree, which periodically uses three operators including rooting, multi-trunk, and adjustment to search the solution space globally according to the growth conditions of different stages. To evaluate the performance of BTGO, 29 CEC17 benchmark functions were first utilized to examine its effectiveness. Moreover, a clustering study on UCI datasets is then presented, which compares the suggested algorithm with seven advanced metaheuristic optimization algorithms. The results of numerical experiments and standard datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of BTGO. In clustering optimization problems, BTGO can not only finding the optimal solution efficiently, but also improving the clustering accuracy and NMI significantly. Our method was successfully applied to solve the science and technology text clustering problem and validated on the Hainan Science and Technology Service Experimental Platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image enhancement is an essential step in image analysis and processing as it helps people to recognize and understand images because their perception is greatly influenced by image quality. Incomplete beta function (IBF) is a broadly employed transformation function for image contrast enhancement (ICE). However, IBF has low parameter selection efficiency, a limited range of mutable parameters to stretch areas with high or low gray levels, and image enhancement with stretching at both ends is almost ineffectual. In this paper, a hybrid whale optimization algorithm (WOA) with the Chameleon Swarm algorithm (CSA), referred to as HWOA, is presented to adaptively determine the optimal parameters of IBF for ICE. Then, bilateral gamma correction (BGC) is utilized to produce better contrast and brightness while preserving edge detail. The proposed HWOA algorithm follows a multi-phased process of strategies. Many improvements were made to the mathematical model of WOA followed by its hybridization with CSA for further exploration and exploitation aspects. The proposed HWOA is tested over some standard images along with well-known available Kodak image dataset and assessed using several standard measures. The experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm can satisfactorily surpass many other algorithms that used the same image enhancement approach as well as other traditional image enhancement methods deemed here for comparison. Specifically, the findings on ten color images revealed that the performance of HWOA in terms of average peak signal-to-noise ratio, average structural similarity index, and average values of entropy results are more than 33.0, 96.6%, and 7.3, respectively, and these results are much better than all other comparative methods in the corresponding evaluation criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the learning process of multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network is boosted using hybrid metaheuristic optimization algorithms. Normally, the learning process in MLP requires suitable settings of its weight and bias parameters. In the original version of MLP, the gradient descent algorithm is used as a learner in MLP which suffers from two chronic problems: local minima and slow convergence. In this paper, six versions of memetic algorithms (MAs) are proposed to replace gradient descent learning mechanism of MLP where adaptive β -hill climbing (A β HC) as a local search algorithm is hybridized with six population-based metaheuristics which are hybrid flower pollination algorithm, hybrid salp swarm algorithm, hybrid crow search algorithm, hybrid grey wolf optimization (HGWO), hybrid particle swarm optimization, and hybrid JAYA algorithm. This is to show the effect of the proposed MA versions on the performance of MLP. To evaluate the proposed MA versions for MLP, 15 classification benchmark problems with different size and complexity are used. The A β HC algorithm is invoked in the improvement loop of any MA version with a probability of B r parameter, which is investigated to monitor its effect on the behavior of the proposed MA versions. The B r setting which obtains the most promising results is then used to set the hybrid MA. The results show that the proposed MA versions excel the original algorithms. Moreover, HGWO outperforms all other MA versions in almost all the datasets. In a nutshell, MAs are a good choice for training MLP to produce results with high accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, increasing communication of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, wearable sensors, healthcare applications and cloud providers provides power and energy consumption for high processing personal data and healthcare records. Cloud-edge data centers are processing enormous amount of electrical power resulting in high performance computing. One of the important challenges in this problem is Virtual Machine (VM) service placement that attempts to enhance energy management of VMs to cloud-edge service providers dynamically to support Service Level Agreement (SLA) metrics in IoT systems. Service placement is a very important issue because if VMs are not confident in the SLA of their critical data, IoT applications will not want to use existing resources safety. Providing a way to increase the Quality of Service (QoS) factors and energy efficiency of the service placement in the IoT environment is an important and critical issue because the use of IoT devices and wearable sensors increases energy consumption in human life in smart contracts. Therefore, this paper presents a hybrid Genetic algorithm and social spider optimization (GA-SSO) algorithm for an energy-aware service placement model in the IoT to manage data congestion and system safety. After conducting studies and comparisons, the accuracy and superiority of the proposed model were established. Experimental results show that the energy consumption with the proposed GA-SSO algorithm can be reduced 24% and we can achieve to the performance of QoS factors with fitness function 88% with compare to the other meta-heuristic algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyber Physical System (CPS) plays an important role in industry 4.0 applications such as smart factories, smart energy, smart transportation, smart buildings, smart healthcare, etc. Similarly, Cyber Physical Sensor System (CPSS) has gained popularity in recent times and is composed of a computing platform linked to an actuator, sensor, and wireless access point. In real-time scenarios, CPSS continuously gathers data from physical objects and conducts real-time control events based on the process algorithm. Then, the gathered data is transferred to the control centre or cloud services via network layer for further processing. In this scenario, there exists a need to identify the way of utilizing the intellect correctly, by designing effective data sensing and fusion schemes for CPSS. With this background, the current paper presents a Deep Learning with Metaheuristics based Data Sensing and Encoding (DLMB-DSE) scheme for CPSS. The aim of the proposed DLMB-DSE technique is to present a prediction-based data sensing and fusion approach to reduce the quantity of data communication and maintain maximum coverage by ensuring security. DLMB-DSE technique involves the design of Optimal Deep Belief Network (DBN) with Adagrad optimizer to primarily predict the data of the succeeding period with minimum number of data items. It also helps in making the primary predicted value, estimate the actual value, with maximum accuracy. Besides, Multi-Key Homomorphic Encryption (MKHE) technique is also applied for useful data encoding and decoding processes, thereby accomplishing security. Moreover, the novelty of the study lies in optimal key generation process, followed in MKHE technique, using Equilibrium Optimizer (EO). This helps in improving the security. A wide range of experiments was implemented to validate the better performance of the proposed DLMB-DSE technique. The experimental results exhibit the promising performance of DLMB-DSE approach over other methods under different measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces and tests a novel machine learning approach to detect Android malware. The proposed approach is composed of Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier and Harris Hawks Optimization (HHO) algorithm. More specifically, the role of HHO algorithm is to optimize SVM classifier hyperparameters while the SVM performs the classification of malware based on the best-chosen model, as well as producing the optimal solution for weighting the features. The effectiveness of the proposed approach and the ability to increase detection performance are demonstrated by scientific testing using CICMalAnal2017 sampled datasets. We test our method and its robustness on five sampled datasets and achieved the best results in most datasets and measures when compared with other approaches. We also illustrate the ability of the proposed approach to measure the significance of each feature. In addition, we provide deep analysis of possible relationships between weighted features and the type of malware attack. The results show that the proposed approach outperforms the other metaheuristic algorithms and state-of-art classifiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edge intelligence has become popular recently since it brings smartness and copes with some shortcomings of conventional technologies such as cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), and centralized AI adoptions. However, although utilizing edge intelligence contributes to providing smart systems such as automated driving systems, smart cities, and connected healthcare systems, it is not free from limitations. There exist various challenges in integrating AI and edge computing, one of which is addressed in this paper. Our main focus is to handle the adoption of AI methods on resource-constrained edge devices. In this regard, we introduce the concept of Edge devices as a Service (EdaaS) and propose a quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE)-aware dynamic and reliable framework for AI subtasks composition. The proposed framework is evaluated utilizing three well-known meta-heuristics in terms of various metrics for a connected healthcare application scenario. The experimental results confirm the applicability of the proposed framework. Moreover, the results reveal that black widow optimization (BWO) can handle the issue more efficiently compared to particle swarm optimization (PSO) and simulated annealing (SA). The overall efficiency of BWO over PSO is 95%, and BWO outperforms SA with 100% efficiency. It means that BWO prevails SA and PSO in all and 95% of the experiments, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things (IoT) defines the network of physical objects, commonly used to interconnect and communicate with other devices through the internet. Security is highly essential in IoT based communication owing to the massive heterogeneity of devices involved in the network. The interlinked systems in IoT, requires the trusted model for assuring security, authenticity, authorization and confidentiality of interconnected things, irrespective of the functionalities. Considering the challenges in the provision of security in the IoT network, this paper proposes a new chaotic bumble bees mating optimization (CBBMO) algorithm for secure data transmission with trust sensing model, called CBBMOR-TSM model. The BBMO is stimulated by the mating nature of a swarm of bumble bees. To improve the convergence rate of the BBMO technique, the CBBMO model is defined by the integration of chaotic concept into the classical BBMO technique. The aim of the proposed model is to design a trust sensing model and perform secure routing using the CBMO algorithm. The proposed model initially designs a trust sensing model by incorporating indirect and direct trusts that are utilized to determine the trust values of the IoT nodes and thereby the malicious node can be identified. In addition, the secure routing process is invoked using the CMBO algorithm by using the trust sensing model to determine an optimal and secure path for data transmission. To examine the superior performance of the presented method, an extensive set of experiments are performed and the results are investigated in terms of different measures. The CBBMOR-TSM model has attained a higher average PDR of 0.931 and lower average PLR of 0.069 whereas the TRM_IOT, OSEAP_IOT and MCTAR-IOT methods have achieved a maximum PLR of 0.219, 0.161 and 0.110 respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The remarkable growth of cloud computing applications has caused many data centers to encounter unprecedented power consumption and heat generation. Cloud providers share their computational infrastructure through virtualization technology. The scheduler component decides which physical machine hosts the requested virtual machine. This process is virtual machine placement (VMP) which, affects the power distribution, and thereby the energy consumption of the data centers. Due to the heterogeneity and multidimensionality of resources, this task is not trivial, and many studies have tried to address this problem using different methods. However, the majority of such studies fail to consider the cooling energy, which accounts for almost 30% of the energy consumption in a data center. In this paper, we propose a metaheuristic approach based on the binary version of gravitational search algorithm to simultaneously minimize the computational and cooling energy in the VMP problem. In addition, we suggest a self-adaptive mechanism based on fuzzy logic to control the behavior of the algorithms in terms of exploitation and exploration. The simulation results illustrate that the proposed algorithm reduced energy consumption by 26% in the PlanetLab Dataset and 30% in the Google cluster dataset relative to the average of compared algorithms. The results also indicate that the proposed algorithm provides a much more thermally reliable operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cloud computing is the new technology offering services to build new application through virtualization. Virtualization improves the usage of resource utilization in cloud environment. Recently research in Task Scheduling problem has received more attention because the customers want to maximize the utilization of resources in a cheaper way. In this paper an enhanced particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for improving the efficiency in the task scheduling has been proposed. A ranging function and tuning function based PSO (RTPSO) based on data locality is introduced in this paper for solving the inertia weight assignment problem in existing PSO algorithm for task scheduling. The large inertia weight and small inertia weight will assist a global search and local search respectively. In addition, we have combined the RTPSO with Bat algorithm (RTPSO-B) to improve the optimization. Cloudsim is used in this paper to simulate the task scheduling in cloud environment. The proposed RTPSO-B based task scheduling is compared with various existing task scheduling algorithms such as GA, ACO, ordinary PSO. Simulation results proved proposed RTPSO-B based task scheduling method reduces makespan, cost and increases the utilization of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the limitations associated with the processing capability of mobile devices in cloud environments, various tasks are offloaded to the cloud server. This has led to an increase in the efficiency of mobile applications in the two decades since the advent of the cloud paradigm. However, task offloading may not be a suitable option for delay-sensitive mobile applications because the cloud server is usually located remotely from mobile users. To overcome this problem, fog computing, also known as "Cloud at the Edge", has been introduced as a complementary solution. On the other hand, although fog computing brings computing and radio resources closer to mobile devices, fog nodes cannot adequately meet users' needs due to limited computing resources. To minimize delays in responding to mobile users' requests, it is necessary to establish a trade-off between local execution of requests on end-devices and the fog environment. In this paper, we present task offloading in the form of a multi-objective optimization problem with a focus on reducing both total power consumption of the system and the delay in executing tasks. Then, considering the NP-hardness of the problem, we solve it using two meta-heuristic methods, namely the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) and the Bees algorithm. The simulation results supported the robustness of both meta-heuristic algorithms in terms of energy consumption and delay reduction. The proposed methods achieve a better tradeoff concerning both offloading probability and the power required for data transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the contention aware task scheduling problem on a grid topology of processors. By contention awareness, we mean that simultaneous communication on a link has to be serialized. To solve this problem, we propose several nature inspired metaheuristic algorithms: Simulated Annealing (SA), Genetic Algorithm (GA), Differential Evolution (DE), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Bat Algorithm (BA), Cuckoo Search (CS), and Firefly Algorithm (FA). We perform benchmark evaluation of these algorithms for the Normalized Schedule Length (NSL) parameter. The benchmark task graphs that we consider are: random task graphs, peer set task graphs, systolic array task graphs, Gaussian elimination task graphs, divide and conquer task graphs, and fast Fourier transform task graphs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a cloud environment, scheduling problem as an NP-complete problem can be solved using various metaheuristic algorithms. The metaheuristic algorithms are very popular for scheduling tasks because of their effectiveness. A bacterial foraging is a swarm intelligence algorithm inspired by the foraging and chemotactic phenomenon of bacteria. This paper proposes a task scheduling algorithm based on bacterial foraging optimization to reduce the idle time of virtual machines whereas the load balancing and reducing of runtime have occurred. The Cloudsim toolkit has assessed the performance of the proposed method in comparison with some scheduling algorithms. According to the obtained results, the makespan and energy consumption were reduced by using the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional k-means clustering algorithm is sensitive to the choice of initial cluster centers and leads to local optimal results. k-means++ is a hybrid k-means clustering algorithm which specifies the procedure to initialize the cluster centers before proceeding with the standard k-means algorithm. Inspired by nature, some contemporary optimization techniques such as Cuckoo, Bat and Krill Herd algorithms etc., are used for optimization as they mimic the swarming behaviour and allows to cooperatively move towards an optimal objective within a reasonable time. In this paper, these nature-inspired techniques are used for optimizing k-means++ clustering algorithm to enhance clustering quality and generate new hybrids of unprecedented performance. The results of the evaluation experiments on the integration of nature-inspired optimization methods with k-means++ algorithm are reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data clustering partitions the information into helpful classes or groups with no earlier learning. This is a fundamental method in the field of computer data mining and it has turned into an essential element in many other engineering areas including cloud computing. This paper purports a novel clustering technique based on the application of krill herd Efficient Stud Krill Herd—Clustering (ESKH-C) technique. It is an optimisation approach for data clustering problem in which a swarm of krill (candidate solutions) moves to converge to specific positions as final cluster centres by minimizing the fitness function. The accuracy of the purposed methodology is blazed on different well familiar bench mark data sets. Analysed with the common clustering methods such as k-means clustering algorithm, data clustering using particle swarm optimization algorithm, ant colony optimization based data clustering, and clustering method using bacterial foraging algorithm, MATLAB simulation results evidence that the proposed technique is an effectual data clustering method. The proposed data clustering method can be employed to manipulate vast data sets with different cluster sizes, multi dimensional and densities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generally, ideal manufacturing system environments are assumed before determining effective scheduling. However, the original schedule is no longer optimal or even to be infeasible due to many uncertain events. This paper investigates a multi-objective inverse scheduling problem in single-machine shop system with due-dates and uncertain processing parameters. Moreover, in order to more close the addressed problem into the situations encountered in real world, the processing parameters are considered to be uncertain stochastic parameters. First, a comprehensive mathematical model for multi-objective single-machine inverse scheduling problem (MSMISP) is addressed. Second, an effective hybrid multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (HMNL) is proposed to handle uncertain processing parameters (uncertainties) and multiple objectives at the same time. In HMNL, using an effective decimal system encoding scheme and genetic operators, the non-dominated sorting based on NSGA-II is adapted for the MSMISP. In addition, hybrid HMNL are proposed by incorporating an adaptive local search scheme into the well-known NSGA-II, where applies a separate local search process, total six strategies, to improve quality of solutions. Furthermore, an on-demand layered strategy is embedded into the elitism strategy to keep the population diversity. Afterwards, an external archive set is dynamically updated, where a non-dominated solution is selected to participate in the creation of the new population. Finally, 36 public problem instances with different scales and statistical performance comparisons are provided for the HMNL algorithm. This paper is the first to propose a mathematical model and develop a hybrid MOEA algorithm to solve MSMISP in inverse scheduling domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clustering is a technique which is used to group the data into different subgroups or subsets to retrieve meaningful information from the available huge dataset. The trending swarm based intelligent system replaces the conventional clustering algorithm with the objective of increased performance. Ant lion optimization (ALO) technique is the swarm based intelligence that exhibits the hunting mechanism of the ant lions in the natural environment. Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm is a swarm based intelligence technique which inherits the behaviour of natural ant. In this paper new hybrid ACO–ALO algorithm was proposed to solve the data clustering problem. Additionally Cauchy's mutation operator is added with this proposed algorithm to avoid the local minima trapping problem. The main objective is to reduce the intra cluster distance in clustering problem. From the experimental analysis, it evidences the proposed ACO–ALO algorithm outperforms the traditional algorithms of data clustering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaheuristics are gaining increasing recognition in many research areas, computational systems biology among them. Recent advances in metaheuristics can be helpful in locating the vicinity of the global solution in reasonable computation times, with Differential Evolution (DE) being one of the most popular methods. However, for most realistic applications, DE still requires excessive computation times. With the advent of Cloud Computing effortless access to large number of distributed resources has become more feasible, and new distributed frameworks, like Spark, have been developed to deal with large scale computations on commodity clusters and cloud resources. In this paper we propose a parallel implementation of an enhanced DE using Spark. The proposal drastically reduces the execution time, by means of including a selected local search and exploiting the available distributed resources. The performance of the proposal has been thoroughly assessed using challenging parameter estimation problems from the domain of computational systems biology. Two different platforms have been used for the evaluation, a local cluster and the Microsoft Azure public cloud. Additionally, it has been also compared with other parallel approaches, another cloud-based solution (a MapReduce implementation) and a traditional HPC solution (a MPI implementation) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]