Hybrid differential evolution for noisy optimization
A robust hybrid algorithm named DEOSA for function optimization problems is investigated in this paper. In recent years, differential evolution (DE) has attracted wide research and effective applications in various fields. However, to the best of our knowledge, most of the available works did not consider noisy and uncertain environments in practical optimization problems. This paper focuses on a robust DE, which can adapt to noisy environment in real applications. By combining the advantages of DE algorithm, the optimal computing budget allocation (OCBA) technique and simulated annealing (SA) algorithm, a robust hybrid DE approach DEOSA is proposed. In DEOSA, the population-based search mechanism of DE is applied for well exploration and exploitation, and the OCBA technique is used to allocate limited sampling budgets to provide reliable evaluation and identification for good individuals. Meanwhile, SA is also applied in the hybrid approach to maintain the diversity of the population, in order to alleviate the negative influences on greedy selection mechanism of DE brought by the noises. DEOSA is tested by well-known benchmark problems with noise and the effect of noise magnitude is also investigated. The comparisons to several commonly used techniques for optimization in noisy environment are also carried out. The results and comparisons demonstrate the superiority of DEOSA.

title: DE and NLP Based QPLS Algorithm
abstract: As a novel evolutionary computing technique, Differential Evolution (DE) has been considered to be an effective optimization method for complex optimization problems, and achieved many successful applications in engineering. In this paper, a new algorithm of Quadratic Partial Least Squares (QPLS) based on Nonlinear Programming (NLP) is presented. And DE is used to solve the NLP so as to calculate the optimal input weights and the parameters of inner relationship. The simulation results based on the soft measurement of diesel oil solidifying point on a real crude distillation unit demonstrate that the superiority of the proposed algorithm to linear PLS and QPLS which is based on Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) in terms of fitting accuracy and computational costs.

title: Constrained Nonlinear State Estimation - A Differential Evolution Based Moving Horizon Approach
abstract: A solution is proposed to estimate the states in the nonlinear discrete time system. Moving Horizon Estimation (MHE) is used to obtain the approximated states by minimizing a criterion that is the Euclidean form of the difference between the estimated outputs and the measured ones over a finite time horizon. The differential evolution (DE) algorithm is incorporated into the implementation of MHE in order to solve the optimization problem which is presented as a nonlinear programming problem due to the constraints. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated in simulated systems that have appeared in the moving horizon estimation literature.

title: Research on Architecture and Key Technology for Service-Oriented Workflow Performance Analysis
abstract: With the advent of SOA and Grid technology, the service has become the most important element of information systems. Because of the characteristic of service, the operation and performance management of workflow meet some new difficulties. Firstly a three-dimensional model of service is proposed. Then the characteristics of workflow in service-oriented environments are presented, based on which the workflow performance analysis architecture is described. As key technologies, workflow performance evaluation and analysis are discussed, including a multi-layer performance evaluation model and three kinds of performance analysis methods.

title: A New Performance Evaluation Model and AHP-Based Analysis Method in Service-Oriented Workflow
abstract: In service-oriented architecture, services and workflows are closely related so that the research on service-oriented workflow attracts the attention of academia. Because of the loosely-coupled, autonomic and dynamic nature of service, the operation and performance evaluation of workflow meet some challenges, such as how to judge the quality of service (QoS) and what is the relation between QoS and workflow performance. In this paper we are going to address these challenges. First the definition of service is proposed, and the characteristics and operation mechanism of service-oriented workflow are presented. Then a service-oriented workflow performance evaluation model is described which combines the performance of the business system and IT system. The key performance indicators (KPI) are also depicted with their formal representation. Finally the improved Analytic Hierarchy Process is brought forward to analyze the correlation between different KPIs and select services.

title: Manufacturing Grid: Needs, Concept, and Architecture
abstract: As a new approach, grid technology is rapidly used in scientific computing, large-scale data management, and collaborative work. But in the field of manufacturing, the application of grid is just at the beginning. The paper proposes the concept of manufacturing. The needs, definition and architecture of manufacturing gird are discussed, which explains why needs manufacturing grid, what is manufacturing grid and how to construct a manufacturing grid system.

title: Selector: A Language Construct for Developing Dynamic Applications
abstract: Fitting algorithms to meet input data characteristics and/or a changing computing environment is a tedious and error prone task. Programmers need to deal with code instrumentation details and implement the selection of which algorithm best suits a given data set. In this paper we describe a set of simple programming constructs for C that allows programmers to specify and generate applications that can select at run-time the best of several possible implementations based on measured run-time performance and/or algorithmic input values. We describe the application of this approach to a realistic linear solver for an engineering crash analysis code. The preliminary experimental results reveal that this approach provides an effective mechanism for creating sophisticated dynamic application behavior with minimal effort.

title: Hybrid Ant Colony Algorithm and Its Application on Function Optimization
abstract: A new hybrid ant colony algorithm was proposed. Firstly, weight factor was introduced to the binary ant colony algorithm, and then we obtained a new probability by combining probability model of Population based incremental learning (PBIL) with transfer probability of ants pheromone . The new population are produced by probability model of PBIL, transfer probability of ants pheromone and the probability of proposed algorithm so that population polymorphism is ensured and the optimal convergence rate and the ability of breaking away from the local minima are improved. Optimization simulation results based on the benchmark test functions show that the hybrid algorithm has higher convergence rate and stability than binary ant colony algorithm (BACA) and Population based incremental learning (PBIL).

title: A Reinforcement Approach to Schelduling

title: Improving an Association Rule Based Classifier
abstract: Existing classification algorithms in machine learning mainly use heuristic search to find a subset of regularities in data for classification. In the past few years, extensive research was done in the database community on learning rules using exhaustive search under the name of association rule mining. Although the whole set of rules may not be used directly for accurate classification, effective classifiers have been built using the rules. This paper aims to improve such an exhaustive search based classification system CBA (Classification Based on Associations). The main strength of this system is that it is able to use the most accurate rules for classification. However, it also has weaknesses. This paper proposes two new techniques to deal with these weaknesses. This results in remarkably accurate classifiers. Experiments on a set of 34 benchmark datasets show that on average the new techniques reduce the error of CBA by 17% and is superior to CBA on 26 of the 34 datasets. They reduce the error of C4.5 by 19%, and improve performance on 29 datasets. Similar good results are also achieved against RIPPER, LB and a Naive-Bayes classifier.

title: On the temporal dimension of search
abstract: Web search is probably the single most important application on the Internet. The most famous search techniques are perhaps the PageRank and HITS algorithms. These algorithms are motivated by the observation that a hyperlink from a page to another is an implicit conveyance of authority to the target page. They exploit this social phenomenon to identify quality pages, e.g., "authority" pages and "hub" pages. In this paper we argue that these algorithms miss an important dimension of the Web, the temporal dimension. The Web is not a static environment. It changes constantly. Quality pages in the past may not be quality pages now or in the future. These techniques favor older pages because these pages have many in-links accumulated over time. New pages, which may be of high quality, have few or no in-links and are left behind. Bringing new and quality pages to users is important because most users want the latest information. Research publication search has exactly the same problem. This paper studies the temporal dimension of search in the context of research publication search. We propose a number of methods deal with the problem. Our experimental results show that these methods are highly effective.