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The solution of intractable problems implies the use of heuristics. Quantum computers may find use for optimization problems, but have yet to solve any NP-hard problems. This paper demonstrates results in game theory for domain transference and the reuse of problem-solving knowledge through the application of learned heuristics. It goes on to explore the possibilities for the acquisition of heuristics for the solution of the NP-hard TSP problem. Here, it is found that simple heuristics (e.g., pairwise exchange) often work best in the context of more or less sophisticated experimental designs. Often, these problems are not amenable to exclusive logic solutions; but rather, require the application of hybrid approaches predicated on search. In general, such approaches are based on randomization and supported by parallel processing. This means that heuristic solutions emerge from attempts to randomize the search space. The paper goes on to present a constructive proof of the unbounded density of knowledge in support of the Semantic Randomization Theorem (SRT). It highlights this result and its potential impact upon the community of machine learning researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, We deal with the scheduling problems with simple linear deterioration function on unrelated parallel-machine and identical parallel-machine. We assume that all the jobs (tasks) are available at time zero, but all machines (processors) may not be available simultaneously at time zero. The objective functions are to minimize the total logarithm of completion time, the total logarithm of machine load, the total absolute differences in logarithm completion times and the total absolute differences in logarithm waiting times respectively. We provide the polynomial-time algorithms to solve the problems under the proposed model respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KG (Knowledge Generation) and understanding has traditionally been a Human-centric activity. KE (Knowledge Engineering) and KM (Knowledge Management) have tried to augment human knowledge on two separate planes: the first deals with machine interpretation of knowledge while the later explores interactions in human networks for KG and understanding. However, both remain computercentric. Crowdsourced HC (Human Computations) have recently utilized human cognition and memory to generate diverse knowledge streams on specific tasks, which are mostly easy for humans to solve but remain challenging for machine algorithms. Literature shows little work on KM frameworks for citizen crowds, which gather input from the diverse category of Humans, organize that knowledge with respect to tasks and knowledge categories and recreate new knowledge as a computer-centric activity. In this paper, we present an attempt to create a framework by implementing a simple solution, called ExamCheck, to focus on the generation of knowledge, feedback on that knowledge and recording the results of that knowledge in academic settings. Our solution, based on HC, shows that a structured KM framework can address a complex problem in a context that is important for participants themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine learning algorithms perform differently in settings with varying levels of training set mislabeling noise. Therefore, the choice of the right algorithm for a particular learning problem is crucial. The contribution of this paper is towards two, dual problems: first, comparing algorithm behavior; and second, choosing learning algorithms for noisy settings. We present the 'sigmoid rule' framework, which can be used to choose the most appropriate learning algorithm depending on the properties of noise in a classification problem. The framework uses an existing model of the expected performance of learning algorithms as a sigmoid function of the signal-to-noise ratio in the training instances. We study the characteristics of the sigmoid function using five representative non-sequential classifiers, namely, Naïve Bayes, kNN, SVM, a decision tree classifier, and a rule-based classifier, and three widely used sequential classifiers based on hidden Markov models, conditional random fields and recursive neural networks. Based on the sigmoid parameters we define a set of intuitive criteria that are useful for comparing the behavior of learning algorithms in the presence of noise. Furthermore, we show that there is a connection between these parameters and the characteristics of the underlying dataset, showing that we can estimate an expected performance over a dataset regardless of the underlying algorithm. The framework is applicable to concept drift scenarios, including modeling user behavior over time, and mining of noisy time series of evolving nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating sessions in scientific conferences consists in grouping papers with common topics taking into account the size restrictions imposed by the conference schedule. Therefore, this problem can be considered as semi-supervised clustering of documents based on their content. This paper aims to propose modifications in traditional clustering algorithms to incorporate size constraints in each cluster. Specifically, two new algorithms are proposed to semi-supervised clustering, based on: binary integer linear programming with cannot-link constraints and a variation of the K-Medoids algorithm, respectively. The applicability of the proposed semi-supervised clustering methods is illustrated by addressing the problem of automatic configuration of conference schedules by clustering articles by similarity. We include experiments, applying the new techniques, over real conferences datasets: ICMLA-2014, AAAI-2013 and AAAI-2014. The results of these experiments show that the new methods are able to solve practical and real problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the process of selecting a machine learning algorithm to solve a problem, questions like the following commonly arise: (1) Are some algorithms basically the same, or are they fundamentally different? (2) How different? (3) How do we measure that difference? (4) If we want to combine algorithms, what algorithms and combinators should be tried? This research proposes COD (Classifier Output Difference) distance as a diversity metric. COD separates difference from accuracy, COD goes beyond accuracy to consider differences in output behavior as the basis for comparison. The paper extends earlier on COD by giving a basic comparison to other diversity metrics, and by giving an example of using COD data as a predictive model from which to select algorithms to include in an ensemble. COD may fill a niche in metalearning as a predictive aid to selecting algorithms for ensembles and hybrid systems by providing a simple, straightforward, computationally reasonable alternative to other approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of opposition-based learning ( OBL ) was first introduced as a scheme for machine intelligence. In a very short period of time, some other variants of opposite numbers were proposed and opposition was applied to various research areas. In metaheuristic optimization algorithms, the main idea behind applying opposite numbers is the simultaneous consideration of a candidate solution and its corresponding opposite candidate in order to achieve a better approximation for the current solution. This paper proposes an opposition-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm ( OBA ) and a new and efficient opposition named comprehensive opposition ( CO ) as its main operator. In this paper it is mathematically proven that CO not only increases the chance of achieving better approximations for the solution but also guarantees the global convergence of OBA . The efficiency of the proposed method has been compared with some well-known heuristic search methods. The obtained results confirm the high performance of the proposed method in solving various function optimizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Process discovery is the learning task that entails the construction of process models from event logs of information systems. Typically, these event logs are large data sets that contain the process executions by registering what activity has taken place at a certain moment in time. By far the most arduous challenge for process discovery algorithms consists of tackling the problem of accurate and comprehensible knowledge discovery from highly flexible environments. Event logs from such flexible systems often contain a large variety of process executions which makes the application of process mining most interesting. However, simply applying existing process discovery techniques will often yield highly incomprehensible process models because of their inaccuracy and complexity. With respect to resolving this problem, trace clustering is one very interesting approach since it allows to split up an existing event log so as to facilitate the knowledge discovery process. In this paper, we propose a novel trace clustering technique that significantly differs from previous approaches. Above all, it starts from the observation that currently available techniques suffer from a large divergence between the clustering bias and the evaluation bias. By employing an active learning inspired approach, this bias divergence is solved. In an assessment using four complex, real-life event logs, it is shown that our technique significantly outperforms currently available trace clustering techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we address the loop closure detection problem in simultaneous localization and mapping ( slam ), and present a method for solving the problem using pairwise comparison of point clouds in both two and three dimensions. The point clouds are mathematically described using features that capture important geometric and statistical properties. The features are used as input to the machine learning algorithm AdaBoost, which is used to build a non-linear classifier capable of detecting loop closure from pairs of point clouds. Vantage point dependency in the detection process is eliminated by only using rotation invariant features, thus loop closure can be detected from an arbitrary direction. The classifier is evaluated using publicly available data, and is shown to generalize well between environments. Detection rates of 66%, 63% and 53% for 0% false alarm rate are achieved for 2D outdoor data, 3D outdoor data and 3D indoor data, respectively. In both two and three dimensions, experiments are performed using publicly available data, showing that the proposed algorithm compares favourably with related work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a unified framework for smooth convex regularization of discrete optimal transport problems. In this context, the regularized optimal transport turns out to be equivalent to a matrix nearness problem with respect to Bregman divergences. Our framework thus naturally generalizes a previously proposed regularization based on the Boltzmann-Shannon entropy related to the Kullback-Leibler divergence, and solved with the Sinkhorn-Knopp algorithm. We call the regularized optimal transport distance the rot mover's distance in reference to the classical earth mover's distance. By exploiting alternate Bregman projections, we develop the alternate scaling algorithm and non-negative alternate scaling algorithm, to compute efficiently the regularized optimal plans depending on whether the domain of the regularizer lies within the non-negative orthant or not. We further enhance the separable case with a sparse extension to deal with high data dimensions. We also instantiate our framework and discuss the inherent specificities for well-known regularizers and statistical divergences in the machine learning and information geometry communities. Finally, we demonstrate the merits of our methods with experiments using synthetic data to illustrate the effect of different regularizers, penalties and dimensions, as well as real-world data for a pattern recognition application to audio scene classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we deal with the problem of designing a classifier able to learn the classification of existing units in inventory and then use it to classify new units according to their attributes in a multi-criteria ABC inventory classification environment. To solve this problem we design a multi-start constructive algorithm to train a discrete artificial neural network using a randomized greedy strategy to add neurons to the network hidden layer. The process of weights’ searching for the neurons to be added is based on solving linear programming formulations. The computational experiments show that the proposed algorithm is much more efficient when the dual formulations are used to find the weights of the network neurons and that the obtained classifier has good levels of generalization accuracy. In addition, the proposed algorithm can be straight applied to other multi-class classification problems with more than three classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine learning algorithms often suffer from good generalization in testing domains especially when the training (source) and test (target) domains do not have similar distributions. To address this problem, several domain adaptation techniques have been proposed to improve the performance of the learning algorithms when they face accuracy degradation caused by the domain shift problem. In this paper, we focus on the non-homogeneous distributed target domains and propose a new latent subdomain discovery model to divide the target domain into subdomains while adapting them. It is expected that applying adaptation on subdomains increase the rate of detection in comparing with the situation that the target domain is seen as one single domain. The proposed division method considers each subdomain as a cluster which has the definite ratio of positive to negative samples, linear discriminability and conditional distribution similarity to the source domain. This method divides the target domain into subdomains while adapting the trained target classifier for each subdomain using Adapt-SVM adaptation method. It also has a simple solution for selecting the appropriate number of subdomains. We call our proposed method Cluster-based Adaptive SVM or CA-SVM in short. We test CA-SVM on two different computer vision problems, pedestrian detection and image classification. The experimental results show the advantage in accuracy rate for our approach in comparison to several baselines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this study is to propose, then analyze, and later test a spectral gradient algorithm for solving a convex minimization problem. The considered problem covers the matrix ℓ2,1-norm regularized least squares which is widely used in multi-task learning for capturing the joint feature among each task. To solve the problem, we firstly minimize a quadratic approximated model of the objective function to derive a search direction at current iteration. We show that this direction descends automatically and reduces to the original spectral gradient direction if the regularized term is removed. Secondly, we incorporate a nonmonotone line search along this direction to improve the algorithm’s numerical performance. Furthermore, we show that the proposed algorithm converges to a critical point under some mild conditions. The attractive feature of the proposed algorithm is that it is easily performable and only requires the gradient of the smooth function and the objective function’s values at each and every step. Finally, we operate some experiments on synthetic data, which verifies that the proposed algorithm works quite well and performs better than the compared ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a multi-agent optimization algorithm (MAOA) is proposed for solving the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP). In the MAOA, multiple agents work in a grouped environment where each agent represents a feasible solution. The evolution of agents is achieved by using four main elements in the MAOA, including social behavior, autonomous behavior, self-learning, and environment adjustment. The social behavior includes the global one and the local one for performing exploration. Through the global social behavior, the leader agent in every group is guided by the global best leader. Through the local social behavior, each agent is guided by its own leader agent. Through the autonomous behavior, each agent exploits its own neighborhood. Through the self-learning, the best agent performs an intensified search to further exploit the promising region. Meanwhile, some agents perform migration among groups to adjust the environment dynamically for information sharing. The implementation of the MAOA for solving the RCPSP is presented in detail, and the effect of key parameters of the MAOA is investigated based on the Taguchi method of design of experiment. Numerical testing results are provided by using three sets of benchmarking instances. The comparisons to the existing algorithms demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed MAOA for solving the RCPSP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many machine learning algorithms, a major assumption is that the training and the test samples are in the same feature space and have the same distribution. However, for many real applications this assumption does not hold. In this paper, we survey the problem where the training samples and the test samples are from different distributions. This problem can be referred as domain adaptation . The training samples, always with labels, are obtained from what is called source domains, while the test samples, which usually have no labels or only a few labels, are obtained from what is called target domains. The source domains and the target domains are different but related to some extent; the learners can learn some information from the source domains for the learning of the target domains. We focus on the multi-source domain adaptation problem where there is more than one source domain available together with only one target domain. A key issue is how to select good sources and samples for the adaptation. In this survey, we review some theoretical results and well developed algorithms for the multi-source domain adaptation problem. We also discuss some open problems which can be explored in future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a novel teaching–learning-based optimization (TLBO) algorithm, the Gaussian bare-bones TLBO (GBTLBO) algorithm, with its modified version (MGBTLBO) for the optimal reactive power dispatch (ORPD) problem with discrete and continuous control variables in the standard IEEE power systems for reduction in power transmission loss. The feasibility and performance of the GBTLBO and MGBTLBO algorithms are demonstrated for standard IEEE 14-bus and standard IEEE 30-bus systems. A comparison of simulation results reveals optimization efficacy of the GBTLBO and MGBTLBO algorithms over other well established other algorithms like bare-bones differential evolution (BBDE) and bare-bones particle swarm optimization (BBPSO) algorithm. Results for ORPD problem demonstrate superiority in terms of solution quality of the GBTLBO and MGBTLBO algorithms over original TLBO algorithm and other algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Permutation flow shop scheduling (PFSP) is among the most studied scheduling settings. In this paper, a hybrid Teaching–Learning-Based Optimization algorithm (HTLBO), which combines a novel teaching–learning-based optimization algorithm for solution evolution and a variable neighborhood search (VNS) for fast solution improvement, is proposed for PFSP to determine the job sequence with minimization of makespan criterion and minimization of maximum lateness criterion, respectively. To convert the individual to the job permutation, a largest order value (LOV) rule is utilized. Furthermore, a simulated annealing (SA) is adopted as the local search method of VNS after the shaking procedure. Experimental comparisons over public PFSP test instances with other competitive algorithms show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. For the DMU problems, 19 new upper bounds are obtained for the instances with makespan criterion and 88 new upper bounds are obtained for the instances with maximum lateness criterion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that the feedforward neural networks meet numbers of difficulties in the applications because of its slow learning speed. The extreme learning machine (ELM) is a new single hidden layer feedforward neural network method aiming at improving the training speed. Nowadays ELM algorithm has received wide application with its good generalization performance under fast learning speed. However, there are still several problems needed to be solved in ELM. In this paper, a new improved ELM algorithm named R-ELM is proposed to handle the multicollinear problem appearing in calculation of the ELM algorithm. The proposed algorithm is employed in bearing fault detection using stator current monitoring. Simulative results show that R-ELM algorithm has better stability and generalization performance compared with the original ELM and the other neural network methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a hybrid multiagent learning algorithm for solving the dynamic simulation-based bilevel network design problem. The objective is to determine the optimal frequency of a multimodal transit network, which minimizes total users' travel cost and operation cost of transit lines. The problem is formulated as a bilevel programming problem with equilibrium constraints describing non-cooperative Nash equilibrium in a dynamic simulation-based transit assignment context. A hybrid algorithm combing the cross entropy multiagent learning algorithm and Hooke-Jeeves algorithm is proposed. Computational results are provided on the Sioux Falls network to illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Widespread digitization of information in today’s internet age has intensified the need for effective textual document classification algorithms. Most real life classification problems, including text classification, genetic classification, medical classification, and others, are complex in nature and are characterized by high dimensionality. Current solution strategies include Naïve Bayes (NB), Neural Network (NN), Linear Least Squares Fit (LLSF), k-Nearest-Neighbor (kNN), and Support Vector Machines (SVM); with SVMs showing better results in most cases. In this paper we introduce a new approach called dynamic architecture for artificial neural networks (DAN2) as an alternative for solving textual document classification problems. DAN2 is a scalable algorithm that does not require parameter settings or network architecture configuration. To show DAN2 as an effective and scalable alternative for text classification, we present comparative results for the Reuters-21578 benchmark dataset. Our results show DAN2 to perform very well against the current leading solutions (kNN and SVM) using established classification metrics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: An air handling unit’s energy usage can vary from the original design as components fail or fault – dampers leak or fail to open/close, valves get stuck, and so on. Such problems do not necessarily result in occupant complaints and, consequently, are not even recognized to have occurred. In spite of recent progress in the research and development of diagnostic solutions for air handling units, there is still a lack of reliable, scalable, and affordable diagnostic solutions for such systems. Modeling limitations, measurement constraints, and the complexity of concurrent faults are the main challenges in air handling unit diagnostics. The focus of this paper is on developing diagnostic algorithms for air handling units that can address such constraints more effectively by systematically employing machine-learning techniques. The proposed algorithms are based on analyzing the observed behavior of the system and comparing it with a set of behavioral patterns generated based on various faulty conditions. We show how such a pattern-matching problem can be formulated as an estimation of the posterior distribution of a Bayesian probabilistic model. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach by detecting faults in commercial building air handling units. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: An unsupervised incremental algorithm for grammar inference and its application to domain-specific language development are described. Grammatical inference is the process of learning a grammar from the set of positive and optionally negative sentences. Learning general context-free grammars is still considered a hard problem in machine learning and is not completely solved yet. The main contribution of the paper is a newly developed memetic algorithm, which is a population-based evolutionary algorithm enhanced with local search and a generalization process. The learning process is incremental since a new grammar is obtained from the current grammar and false negative samples, which are not parsed by the current grammar. Despite being incremental, the learning process is not sensitive to the order of samples. All important parts of this algorithm are explained and discussed. Finally, a case study of a domain specific language for rendering graphical objects is used to show the applicability of this approach. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents novel algorithms and applications for a particular class of mixed-norm regularization based Multiple Kernel Learning (MKL) formulations. The formulations assume that the given kernels are grouped and employ l1 norm regularization for promoting sparsity within RKHS norms of each group and ls, s ≥ 2 norm regularization for promoting non-sparse combinations across groups. Various sparsity levels in combining the kernels can be achieved by varying the grouping of kernels--hence we name the formulations as Variable Sparsity Kernel Learning (VSKL) formulations. While previous attempts have a non-convex formulation, here we present a convex formulation which admits efficient Mirror-Descent (MD) based solving techniques. The proposed MD based algorithm optimizes over product of simplices and has a computational complexity of O(m²ntot log nmax/ε² where m is no. training data points, nmax, ntot are the maximum no. kernels in any group, total no. kernels respectively and e is the error in approximating the objective. A detailed proof of convergence of the algorithm is also presented. Experimental results show that the VSKL formulations are well-suited for multi-modal learning tasks like object categorization. Results also show that the MD based algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art MKL solvers in terms of computational efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Feature selection is a useful pre-processing technique for solving classification problems. The challenge of solving the feature selection problem lies in applying evolutionary algorithms capable of handling the huge number of features typically involved. Generally, given classification data may contain useless, redundant or misleading features. To increase classification accuracy, the primary objective is to remove irrelevant features in the feature space and to correctly identify relevant features. Binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO) has been applied successfully to solving feature selection problems. In this paper, two kinds of chaotic maps—so-called logistic maps and tent maps—are embedded in BPSO. The purpose of chaotic maps is to determine the inertia weight of the BPSO. We propose chaotic binary particle swarm optimization (CBPSO) to implement the feature selection, in which the K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) method with leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV) serves as a classifier for evaluating classification accuracies. The proposed feature selection method shows promising results with respect to the number of feature subsets. The classification accuracy is superior to other methods from the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The popularity of using Internet contains some risks of network attacks. Intrusion detection is one major research problem in network security, whose aim is to identify unusual access or attacks to secure internal networks. In literature, intrusion detection systems have been approached by various machine learning techniques. However, there is no a review paper to examine and understand the current status of using machine learning techniques to solve the intrusion detection problems. This chapter reviews 55 related studies in the period between 2000 and 2007 focusing on developing single, hybrid, and ensemble classifiers. Related studies are compared by their classifier design, datasets used, and other experimental setups. Current achievements and limitations in developing intrusion detection systems by machine learning are present and discussed. A number of future research directions are also provided. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Modern authorship attribution methods are often comprised of powerful yet opaque machine learning algorithms. While much of this work lends itself to concrete outcomes in the form of probability scores, advanced approaches typically preclude deeper insights in the form of psychological interpretation. Additionally, few attribution methods exist for single-candidate authorship problems, most of which require large amounts of supplemental data to perform and none of which rely upon explicitly psychological measures. The current study introduces Mental Profile Mapping, a new authorship attribution technique for single-candidate authorship questions that is founded on previous scientific research pertaining to the nature of language and psychology. In the current study, baseline expectations for results and performance are set using an advanced technique known as “unmasking” on the test case of Aphra Behn, a 17th century English playwright. Following this, Mental Profile Mapping is introduced and tested for its psychometric properties, tested using a “bogus insertion” method, and then applied to canonical Aphra Behn plays. Results from both attribution methods suggest that 2 of 5 questioned plays are likely to have been authored by Behn, with the remaining 3 plays exhibiting a poor fit for Behn’s psychological fingerprint. Mental Profile Mapping results are then decomposed into deeper psychological interpretation, a quality unique to this new method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instance matching is the finding of co-referent instances that describe the same real-world object across two different repositories. For this problem, the heterogeneity, also known as the differences of objects' attributes and repositories' schema, is a challenging issue. It creates the limitations in the accuracy of existing solutions. In order to match the instances of heterogeneous repositories, a matching system can follow a configuration that specifies the equivalent properties, suitable similarity metrics, and other important parameters. This configuration can be created manually or automatically by learning methods. We present ScLink, an instance matching system that can generate a configuration automatically. In ScLink, we install two novel supervised learning algorithms, cLearn and minBlock. cLearn applies an apriori-like heuristic for finding the optimal combination of matching properties and similarity metrics. minBlock finds a blocking model, which aims at optimally reducing the pairwise alignments of instances between input repositories. In addition, ScLink introduces other techniques to take into account the scalability issue on large repositories. Experimental results on standard and very large datasets find that minBlock and cLearn are very effective and efficient. cLearn is also significantly better than existing configuration learning algorithms. It drastically boosts the accuracy of ScLink and makes the system outperform the state-of-the-arts, even when being trained using a small amount of labeled data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) is a recently proposed algorithm, efficient and fast for learning the parameters of single layer neural structures. One of the main problems of this algorithm is to choose the optimal architecture for a given problem solution. To solve this limitation several solutions have been proposed in the literature, including the regularization of the structure. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no works where such adjustment is applied to classification problems in the presence of a non-linearity in the output; all published works tackle modelling or regression problems. Our proposal has been applied to a series of standard databases for the evaluation of machine learning techniques. Results obtained in terms of classification success rate and training time, are compared to the original ELM, to the well known Least Square Support Vector Machine (LS-SVM) algorithm and with two other methods based on the ELM regularization: Optimally Pruned Extreme Learning Machine (OP-ELM) and Bayesian Extreme Learning Machine (BELM). The obtained results clearly demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method and its superiority over a classical approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the problem of tracing the structure of oceanological features using autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Solving this problem requires the construction of a control strategy that will determine the actions for the AUV based on the current state, as measured by on-board sensors and the historic trajectory (including sensed data) of the AUV. We approach this task by applying plan-based policy-learning, in which a large set of sampled problems are solved using planning and then, from the resulting plans a decision-tree is learned, using an established machine-learning algorithm, which forms the resulting policy. We evaluate our approach in simulation and report on sea trials of a prototype of a learned policy. We indicate some of the lessons learned from this deployed system and further evaluate an extended policy in simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Markowitz's seminal work on the mean-variance model in modern portfolio theory, many studies have been conducted on computational techniques and recently meta-heuristics for portfolio selection problems. In this work, we propose and investigate a new hybrid algorithm integrating the population based incremental learning and differential evolution algorithms for the portfolio selection problem. We consider the extended mean-variance model with practical trading constraints including the cardinality, floor and ceiling constraints. The proposed hybrid algorithm adopts a partially guided mutation and an elitist strategy to promote the quality of solution. The performance of the proposed hybrid algorithm has been evaluated on the extended benchmark datasets in the OR Library. The computational results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid algorithm is not only effective but also efficient in solving the mean-variance model with real world constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyses of user experience in the electronic entertainment industry currently rely on self-reporting methods, such as surveys, ratings, focus group interviews, etc. We argue that self-reporting alone carries inherent problems—mainly the misinterpretation and temporal delay during longer experiments—and therefore, should not be used as a sole metric. To tackle this problem, we propose the possibility of modeling consumer experience using psychophysiological measures and demonstrate how such models can be trained using machine learning methods. We use a machine learning approach to model user experience using real-time data produced by the autonomic nervous system and involuntary psychophysiological responses. Multiple psychophysiological measures, such as heart rate, electrodermal activity, and respiratory activity, have been used in combination with self-reporting to prepare training sets for machine learning algorithms. The training data was collected from 31 participants during hour-long experiment sessions, where they played multiple video-games. Afterwards, we trained and compared the results of four different machine learning models, out of which the best one produced ∼96% accuracy. The results suggest that psychophysiological measures can indeed be used to assess the enjoyment of digital entertainment consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a method for quantum algorithm design assisted by machine learning. The method uses a quantum–classical hybrid simulator, where a ‘quantum student’ is being taught by a ‘classical teacher’. In other words, in our method, the learning system is supposed to evolve into a quantum algorithm for a given problem, assisted by a classical main-feedback system. Our method is applicable for designing quantum oracle-based algorithms. We chose, as a case study, an oracle decision problem, called a Deutsch–Jozsa problem. We showed by using Monte Carlo simulations that our simulator can faithfully learn a quantum algorithm for solving the problem for a given oracle. Remarkably, the learning time is proportional to the square root of the total number of parameters, rather than showing the exponential dependence found in the classical machine learning-based method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]