Query: EvoNN: a customizable evolutionary neural network with heterogenous activation functions

Relevant passages:
Neuroevolution: from architectures to learning <=SEP=> Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are applied to many real-world problems, ranging from pattern classification to robot control. In order to design a neural network for a particular task, the choice of an architecture (including the choice of a neuron model), and the choice of a learning algorithm have to be addressed. Evolutionary search methods can provide an automatic solution to these problems. New insights in both neuroscience and evolutionary biology have led to the development of increasingly powerful neuroevolution techniques over the last decade. This paper gives an overview of the most prominent methods for evolving ANNs with a special focus on recent advances in the synthesis of learning architectures.

Genetic programming - on the programming of computers by means of natural selection <=SEP=> Page ii Complex Adaptive Systems John H. Holland, Christopher Langton, and Stewart W. Wilson, advisors Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems: An Introductory Analysis with Applications to Biology, Control, and Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press edition John H. Holland Toward a Practice of Autonomous Systems: Proceedings of the First European Conference on Artificial Life edited by Francisco J. Varela and Paul Bourgine Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection John R. Koza

Survey of Neural Transfer Functions <=SEP=> The choice of transfer functions may strongly influence complexity and performance of neural networks. Although sigmoidal transfer functions are the most common there is no a priori reason why models based on such functions should always provide optimal decision borders. A large number of alternative transfer functions has been described in the literature. A taxonomy of activation and output functions is proposed, and advantages of various non-local and local neural transfer functions are discussed. Several less-known types of transfer functions and new combinations of activation/output functions are described. Universal transfer functions, parametrized to change from localized to delocalized type, are of greatest interest. Other types of neural transfer functions discussed here include functions with activations based on nonEuclidean distance measures, bicentral functions, formed from products or linear combinations of pairs of sigmoids, and extensions of such functions making rotations of localized decision borders in highly dimensional spaces practical. Nonlinear input preprocessing techniques are briefly described, offering an alternative way to change the shapes of decision borders.

Back propagation neural network with adaptive differential evolution algorithm for time series forecasting <=SEP=> The back propagation neural network (BPNN) can easily fall into the local minimum point in time series forecasting. A hybrid approach that combines the adaptive differential evolution (ADE) algorithm with BPNN, called ADE–BPNN, is designed to improve the forecasting accuracy of BPNN. ADE is first applied to search for the global initial connection weights and thresholds of BPNN. Then, BPNN is employed to thoroughly search for the optimal weights and thresholds. Two comparative real-life series data sets are used to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the hybrid method. The proposed ADE–BPNN can effectively improve forecasting accuracy relative to basic BPNN, autoregressive integrated moving average model (ARIMA), and other hybrid models. 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Hypercube-Based Encoding for Evolving Large-Scale Neural Networks <=SEP=> Research in neuroevolutionthat is, evolving artificial neural networks (ANNs) through evolutionary algorithmsis inspired by the evolution of biological brains, which can contain trillions of connections. Yet while neuroevolution has produced successful results, the scale of natural brains remains far beyond reach. This article presents a method called hypercube-based NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (HyperNEAT) that aims to narrow this gap. HyperNEAT employs an indirect encoding called connective compositional pattern-producing networks (CPPNs) that can produce connectivity patterns with symmetries and repeating motifs by interpreting spatial patterns generated within a hypercube as connectivity patterns in a lower-dimensional space. This approach can exploit the geometry of the task by mapping its regularities onto the topology of the network, thereby shifting problem difficulty away from dimensionality to the underlying problem structure. Furthermore, connective CPPNs can represent the same connectivity pattern at any resolution, allowing ANNs to scale to new numbers of inputs and outputs without further evolution. HyperNEAT is demonstrated through visual discrimination and food-gathering tasks, including successful visual discrimination networks containing over eight million connections. The main conclusion is that the ability to explore the space of regular connectivity patterns opens up a new class of complex high-dimensional tasks to neuroevolution.

On code reuse from StackOverflow: An exploratory study on Android apps <=SEP=> Context: Source code reuse has been widely accepted as a fundamental activity in software development. Recent studies showed that StackOverflow has emerged as one of the most popular resources for code reuse. Therefore, a plethora of work proposed ways to optimally ask questions, search for answers and find relevant code on StackOverflow. However, little work studies the impact of code reuse from Stack-

CFGAN: A Generic Collaborative Filtering Framework based on Generative Adversarial Networks <=SEP=> Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) have achieved big success in various domains such as image generation, music generation, and natural language generation. In this paper, we propose a novel GAN-based collaborative filtering (CF) framework to provide higher accuracy in recommendation. We first identify a fundamental problem of existing GAN-based methods in CF and highlight it quantitatively via a series of experiments. Next, we suggest a new direction of vector-wise adversarial training to solve the problem and propose our GAN-based CF framework, called CFGAN, based on the direction. We identify a unique challenge that arises when vector-wise adversarial training is employed in CF. We then propose three CF methods realized on top of our CFGAN that are able to address the challenge. Finally, via extensive experiments on real-world datasets, we validate that vector-wise adversarial training employed in CFGAN is really effective to solve the problem of existing GAN-based CF methods. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our proposed CF methods on CFGAN provide recommendation accuracy consistently and universally higher than those of the state-of-the-art recommenders.

A Tale of Two Data-Intensive Paradigms: Applications, Abstractions, and Architectures <=SEP=> Scientific problems that depend on processing largeamounts of data require overcoming challenges in multiple areas:managing large-scale data distribution, co-placement andscheduling of data with compute resources, and storing and transferringlarge volumes of data. We analyze the ecosystems of thetwo prominent paradigms for data-intensive applications, hereafterreferred to as the high-performance computing and theApache-Hadoop paradigm. We propose a basis, common terminologyand functional factors upon which to analyze the two approachesof both paradigms. We discuss the concept of "Big DataOgres" and their facets as means of understanding and characterizingthe most common application workloads found acrossthe two paradigms. We then discuss the salient features of thetwo paradigms, and compare and contrast the two approaches.Specifically, we examine common implementation/approaches ofthese paradigms, shed light upon the reasons for their current"architecture" and discuss some typical workloads that utilizethem. In spite of the significant software distinctions, we believethere is architectural similarity. We discuss the potential integrationof different implementations, across the different levelsand components. Our comparison progresses from a fully qualitativeexamination of the two paradigms, to a semi-quantitativemethodology. We use a simple and broadly used Ogre (K-meansclustering), characterize its performance on a range of representativeplatforms, covering several implementations from bothparadigms. Our experiments provide an insight into the relativestrengths of the two paradigms. We propose that the set of Ogreswill serve as a benchmark to evaluate the two paradigms alongdifferent dimensions.

Towards a Self-Organized Agent-Based Simulation Model for Exploration of Human Synaptic Connections <=SEP=> In this paper, the early design of our selforganized agent-based simulation model for exploration of synaptic connections that faithfully generates what is observed in natural situation is given. While we take inspiration from neuroscience, our intent is not to create a veridical model of processes in neurodevelopmental biology, nor to represent a real biological system. Instead, our goal is to design a simulation model that learns acting in the same way of human nervous system by using findings on human subjects using reflex methodologies in order to estimate unknown connections.

BIM: An integrated model for planned and preventive maintenance of architectural heritage <=SEP=> Modern digital technologies give us great possibilities to organize knowledge about constructions, regarding multidisciplinary fields like preservation, conservation and valorization of our architectural heritage, in order to suggest restoration projects and related work, or to suppose a planned preventive maintenance. New procedures to archive, analyze and manage architectural information find a natural support in 3D model, thanks to the development of capacities of new modeling software. Moreover, if the model contains or interfaces with a heterogeneous archive of information, as it is for BIM, this model can be considered as the bases of critical studies, projects of restoration, heritage maintenance, integrated management, protection, and valorization, and evaluation of economic aspects, management and planning, that can flow into a planned preventive maintenance [1]. The aspect that limit the use of BIM technology is the set up parametric object library inside programs: the standardized level of these objects deals difficulty with survey and restoration issues, where each single element has its own historical and architectural characterization [2]. From this foreword, the goal of this research is more evident: the possibilities of using BIM modeling to the existing constructions and cultural heritage, as a support for the construction and management of a Plan for planned preventive maintenance.

Energy Efficient Smartphone-Based Activity Recognition using Fixed-Point Arithmetic <=SEP=> In this paper we propose a novel energy efficient approach for the recognition of human activities using smartphones as wearable sensing devices, targeting assisted living applications such as remote patient activity monitoring for the disabled and the elderly. The method exploits fixed-point arithmetic to propose a modified multiclass Support Vector Machine (SVM) learning algorithm, allowing to better preserve the smartphone battery lifetime with respect to the conventional floating-point based formulation while maintaining comparable system accuracy levels. Experiments show comparative results between this approach and the traditional SVM in terms of recognition performance and battery consumption, highlighting the advantages of the proposed method.

Design for reliability of power electronics modules <=SEP=> 0026-2714/$ see front matter 2009 Published by doi:10.1016/j.microrel.2009.07.055 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 (0)20 8331 8660 E-mail address: c.bailey@gre.ac.uk (C. Bailey). Power electronics uses semiconductor technology to convert and control electrical power. Demands for efficient energy management, conversion and conservation, and the increasing take-up of electronics in transport systems has resulted in tremendous growth in the use of power electronics devices such as Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBT’s). The packaging of power electronics devices involves a number of challenges for the design engineer in terms of reliability. For example, IGBT modules will contain a number of semiconductor dies within a small footprint bonded to substrates with aluminum wires and wide area solder joints. To a great extent, the reliability of the package will depend on the thermo-mechanical behavior of these materials. This paper details a physics of failure approach to reliability predictions of IGBT modules. It also illustrates the need for a probabilistic approach to reliability predictions that include the effects of design variations. Also discussed are technologies for predicting the remaining life of the package when subjected to qualification stresses or in service stresses using prognostics methods. 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

A Real-time Inversion Attack on the GMR-2 Cipher Used in the Satellite Phones <=SEP=> The GMR-2 cipher is a kind of stream cipher currently being used in some Inmarsat satellite phones. It has been proven that such cipher can be cracked using only one frame known keystream but with a moderate executing times. In this paper, we present a new thorough security analysis of the GMR-2 cipher. We first study the inverse properties and the relationship of the cipher’s components to reveal a bad one-way character of the cipher. Then by introducing a new concept called “valid key chain” according to the cipher’s key schedule, we for the first time propose a real-time inversion attack using one frame keystream. This attack contains three phases: (1) table generation (2) dynamic table looks-up, filtration and combination (3) verification. Our analysis shows that, using the proposed attack, the exhaustive search space for the 64-bit encryption key can be reduced to about 2 when one frame (15 bytes) keystream is available. Compared with previous known attacks, this inversion attack is much more efficient. Finally, the proposed attack are carried out on a 3.3GHz platform, and the experimental results demonstrate that the 64-bit encryption-key could be recovered in around 0.02s on average.

Review on virtual synchronous generator (VSG) for enhancing performance of microgrid <=SEP=> Increasing penetration level of Distributed Generators (DGs)/ Renewable energy sources (RES) creates low inertia problems, damping effect on grid dynamic performance and stability. Voltage rise by reverse power from PV generations, excessive supply of electricity in the grid due to full generation of the DGs, power fluctuations due to variable nature of Renewable energy sources, and degradation of frequency regulation can be considered as some negative results of mentioned hurdle. For securing such a grid there should add inertia, virtually. The proposed control approach based on an inverter connected in Microgrid, which operated as a virtual synchronous generator (VSG) reacting only in transitory situations. Super capacitor (SC), an energy storage system (ESS) included in MG-forming inverter i.e., a normal inverter structure used for contributing system robustness and reliability. In steady-state load distributed between the MG-supporting inverter are achieved with two restoration controllers for active and reactive powers. The virtual inertia hypothesis can be used for maintaining a large share of DGs in future grids without affect system stability. This proposed system analyzed and simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK.

Predicting short-term interests using activity-based search context <=SEP=> A query considered in isolation offers limited information about a searcher's intent. Query context that considers pre-query activity (e.g., previous queries and page visits), can provide richer information about search intentions. In this paper, we describe a study in which we developed and evaluated user interest models for the current query, its context (from pre-query session activity), and their combination, which we refer to as intent. Using large-scale logs, we evaluate how accurately each model predicts the user's short-term interests under various experimental conditions. In our study we: (i) determine the extent of opportunity for using context to model intent; (ii) compare the utility of different sources of behavioral evidence (queries, search result clicks, and Web page visits) for building predictive interest models, and; (iii) investigate optimally combining the query and its context by learning a model that predicts the context weight for each query. Our findings demonstrate significant opportunity in leveraging contextual information, show that context and source influence predictive accuracy, and show that we can learn a near-optimal combination of the query and context for each query. The findings can inform the design of search systems that leverage contextual information to better understand, model, and serve searchers' information needs.

A 280-KBytes Twin-Bit-Cell Embedded NOR Flash Memory With a Novel Sensing Current Protection Enhanced Technique and High-Voltage Generating Systems <=SEP=> A novel sensing current protection enhanced (SCPE) technique and high-voltage (HV) generating systems are adopted to greatly enhance the advantages of the twin-bit cell. The SCPE technique provides the tradeoff of sensing margin loss between “1” and “0” bits sensing case to realize fast read access. The read speed is improved by 7.7%. HV generating systems with parallel-series-transform and capacitance-shared techniques are proposed to satisfy the complicated requirements of output capability and current drivability with lower area penalty. The HV periphery area decreases by 71%. A 1.5-V 280-KBytes embedded NOR flash memory IP has been fabricated in HHGrace (Shanghai Huahong Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation) 90-nm 4 poly 4 metal CMOS process. The complicated operation voltages and access time of 23.5 ns have been achieved at 1.5 V. The die size of the proposed IP is 0.437 mm<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and the area size of charge pump has been reduced to 0.006 mm<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> on average.

A survey of methods for data fusion and system adaptation using autonomic nervous system responses in physiological computing <=SEP=> Physiological computing represents a mode of human–computer interaction where the computer monitors, analyzes and responds to the user’s psychophysiological activity in real-time. Within the field, autonomic nervous system responses have been studied extensively since they can be measured quickly and unobtrusively. However, despite a vast body of literature available on the subject, there is still no universally accepted set of rules that would translate physiological data to psychological states. This paper surveys the work performed on data fusion and system adaptation using autonomic nervous system responses in psychophysiology and physiological computing during the last ten years. First, five prerequisites for data fusion are examined: psychological model selection, training set preparation, feature extraction, normalization and dimension reduction. Then, different methods for either classification or estimation of psychological states from the extracted features are presented and compared. Finally, implementations of system adaptation are reviewed: changing the system that the user is interacting with in response to cognitive or affective information inferred from autonomic nervous system responses. The paper is aimed primarily at psychologists and computer scientists who have already recorded autonomic nervous system responses and now need to create algorithms to determine the subject’s psychological state. 2012 British Informatics Society Limited. All rights reserved.

Review: Graph Databases <=SEP=> This paper covers NOSQL databases. With the increase in net users and applications it is important to understand graph databases, the future of tomorrow’s data storage and management. Basic architecture of some graph databases has been discussed to know their working and how data is stored in the form of nodes and relationships. KeywordsNOSQL databases, Neo4j, JENA, DEX, InfoGrid, FlockDB.

Differential effects of atomoxetine on executive functioning and lexical decision in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and reading disorder. <=SEP=> OBJECTIVE
The effects of a promising pharmacological treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), atomoxetine, were studied on executive functions in both ADHD and reading disorder (RD) because earlier research demonstrated an overlap in executive functioning deficits in both disorders. In addition, the effects of atomoxetine were explored on lexical decision.


METHODS
Sixteen children with ADHD, 20 children with ADHD + RD, 21 children with RD, and 26 normal controls were enrolled in a randomized placebo-controlled crossover study. Children were measured on visuospatial working memory, inhibition, and lexical decision on the day of randomization and following two 28-day medication periods.


RESULTS
Children with ADHD + RD showed improved visuospatial working memory performance and, to a lesser extent, improved inhibition following atomoxetine treatment compared to placebo. No differential effects of atomoxetine were found for lexical decision in comparison to placebo. In addition, no effects of atomoxetine were demonstrated in the ADHD and RD groups.


CONCLUSION
Atomoxetine improved visuospatial working memory and to a lesser degree inhibition in children with ADHD + RD, which suggests differential developmental pathways for co-morbid ADHD + RD as compared to ADHD and RD alone.


CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRY
B4Z-MC-LYCK, NCT00191906; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00191906.

Gradient Regularization Improves Accuracy of Discriminative Models <=SEP=> Regularizing the gradient norm of the output of a neural network with respect to its inputs is a powerful technique, rediscovered several times. This paper presents evidence that gradient regularization can consistently improve classification accuracy on vision tasks, using modern deep neural networks, especially when the amount of training data is small. We introduce our regularizers as members of a broader class of Jacobian-based regularizers. We demonstrate empirically on real and synthetic data that the learning process leads to gradients controlled beyond the training points, and results in solutions that generalize well.

A robust data scaling algorithm to improve classification accuracies in biomedical data <=SEP=> Machine learning models have been adapted in biomedical research and practice for knowledge discovery and decision support. While mainstream biomedical informatics research focuses on developing more accurate models, the importance of data preprocessing draws less attention. We propose the Generalized Logistic (GL) algorithm that scales data uniformly to an appropriate interval by learning a generalized logistic function to fit the empirical cumulative distribution function of the data. The GL algorithm is simple yet effective; it is intrinsically robust to outliers, so it is particularly suitable for diagnostic/classification models in clinical/medical applications where the number of samples is usually small; it scales the data in a nonlinear fashion, which leads to potential improvement in accuracy. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, we conducted experiments on 16 binary classification tasks with different variable types and cover a wide range of applications. The resultant performance in terms of area under the receiver operation characteristic curve (AUROC) and percentage of correct classification showed that models learned using data scaled by the GL algorithm outperform the ones using data scaled by the Min-max and the Z-score algorithm, which are the most commonly used data scaling algorithms. The proposed GL algorithm is simple and effective. It is robust to outliers, so no additional denoising or outlier detection step is needed in data preprocessing. Empirical results also show models learned from data scaled by the GL algorithm have higher accuracy compared to the commonly used data scaling algorithms.

Compliance with Information Security Policies: An Empirical Investigation <=SEP=> Information security was the main topic in this paper. An investigation of the compliance to information security policies were discussed. The author mentions that the insignificant relationship between rewards and actual compliance with information security policies does not make sense. Quite possibly this relationship results from not applying rewards for security compliance. Also mentions that based on the survey conducted, careless employee behavior places an organization's assets and reputation in serious jeopardy. The major threat to information security arises from careless employees who fail to comply with organizations' information security policies and procedures.

Fisher Discrimination Dictionary Learning for sparse representation <=SEP=> Sparse representation based classification has led to interesting image recognition results, while the dictionary used for sparse coding plays a key role in it. This paper presents a novel dictionary learning (DL) method to improve the pattern classification performance. Based on the Fisher discrimination criterion, a structured dictionary, whose dictionary atoms have correspondence to the class labels, is learned so that the reconstruction error after sparse coding can be used for pattern classification. Meanwhile, the Fisher discrimination criterion is imposed on the coding coefficients so that they have small within-class scatter but big between-class scatter. A new classification scheme associated with the proposed Fisher discrimination DL (FDDL) method is then presented by using both the discriminative information in the reconstruction error and sparse coding coefficients. The proposed FDDL is extensively evaluated on benchmark image databases in comparison with existing sparse representation and DL based classification methods.

More on the fragility of performance: choking under pressure in mathematical problem solving. <=SEP=> In 3 experiments, the authors examined mathematical problem solving performance under pressure. In Experiment 1, pressure harmed performance on only unpracticed problems with heavy working memory demands. In Experiment 2, such high-demand problems were practiced until their answers were directly retrieved from memory. This eliminated choking under pressure. Experiment 3 dissociated practice on particular problems from practice on the solution algorithm by imposing a high-pressure test on problems practiced 1, 2, or 50 times each. Infrequently practiced high-demand problems were still performed poorly under pressure, whereas problems practiced 50 times each were not. These findings support distraction theories of choking in math, which contrasts with considerable evidence for explicit monitoring theories of choking in sensorimotor skills. This contrast suggests a skill taxonomy based on real-time control structures.

The Effects of Interaction Goals on Negotiation Tactics and Outcomes: A Dyad-Level Analysis Across Two Cultures <=SEP=> This study investigates how negotiators’ interaction goals influence their own and their counterparts’ negotiation tactics and outcomes across two cultures using a simulated employment contract negotiation. Results show that when negotiators placed greater importance on competitive goals, they used more distributive persuasion and fewer priority information exchange tactics, which reduced their counterparts’ profit; negotiators’ competitive goals also caused their counterparts to use fewer priority information exchange tactics, which in turn hurt their own profit. Dyad members’ competitive goals have an indirect, negative impact on joint profit. In addition, Chinese negotiators placed greater importance on competitive goals and used more distributive and fewer integrative tactics than Americans, but the associations between goals and tactics did not differ across cultures. Nevertheless, members of the two cultures took different paths to improve joint profit; as a result, Chinese dyads achieved no less joint profit than American dyads. The study sheds light on culture’s effect on the interactive processes by which goals impact negotiation performance.

Visual Analysis of TED Talk Topic Trends <=SEP=> TED Talks are short, powerful talks given by some of the world's brightest minds - scientists, philanthropists, businessmen, artists, and many others. Funded by members and advertising, these talks are free to access by the public on the TED website and TED YouTube channel, and many videos have become viral phenomena. In this research project, we perform a visual analysis of TED Talk videos and playlists to gain a good understanding of the trends and relationships between TED Talk topics.

Solving job-shop scheduling problems by genetic algorithm <=SEP=> Job-shop Scheduling Problem (JSP) is one of extremely hard problems because it requires very large combinatorial search space and the precedence constraint between machines. The traditional algorithm used to solve the problem is the branch-andbound method, which takes considerable computing time when the size of problem is large. W e propose a new method for solving JSP using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and demonstrate its efficiency by the standard benchmark of job-shop scheduling problems. Some important points of G A are how t o represent the schedules as an individuals and to design the genetic operators for the representation in order t o produce better results.

Detection of ulcerative colitis severity in colonoscopy video frames <=SEP=> Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by periods of relapses and remissions affecting more than 500,000 people in the United States. The therapeutic goals of UC are to first induce and then maintain disease remission. However, it is very difficult to evaluate the severity of UC objectively because of non-uniform nature of symptoms associated with UC, and large variations in their patterns. To address this, we objectively measure and classify the severity of UC presented in optical colonoscopy video frames based on the image textures. To extract distinct textures, we are using a hybrid approach in which a new proposed feature based on the accumulation of pixel value differences is combined with an existing feature such as LBP (Local Binary Pattern). The experimental results show the hybrid method can achieve more than 90% overall accuracy.

Finding surprising patterns in a time series database in linear time and space <=SEP=> The problem of finding a specified pattern in a time series database (i.e. query by content) has received much attention and is now a relatively mature field. In contrast, the important problem of enumerating all surprising or interesting patterns has received far less attention. This problem requires a meaningful definition of "surprise", and an efficient search technique. All previous attempts at finding surprising patterns in time series use a very limited notion of surprise, and/or do not scale to massive datasets. To overcome these limitations we introduce a novel technique that defines a pattern surprising if the frequency of its occurrence differs substantially from that expected by chance, given some previously seen data.

Everyday Life Information Seeking : Approaching Information Seeking in the Context of “ Way of Life ” <=SEP=> The study offers a framework for the study of everyday life information seeking (ELIS) in the context of way of and mastery of life.Way of life is defined as the “order of things,” manifesting itself, for example, in the relationship between work and leisure time, models of consumption, and nature of hobbies. Mastery of life is interpreted as “keeping things in order; ” four ideal types of mastery of life with their implications for ELIS, namely optimistic-cognitive, pessimistic-cognitive, defensiveaffective and pessimistic-affective mastery of life are outlined. The article reviews two major dimensions of ELIS, there are. the seeking of orienting and practical information. The research framework was tested in an empirical study based on interviews with teachers and industrial workers, eleven of both. The main features of seeking orienting and practical information are reviewed, followed by suggestions for refinement of the research framework.