The evolutionary algorithm, a subset of computational intelligence techniques, is a generic population-based stochastic optimization algorithm which uses a mechanism motivated by biological concepts. Bio-inspired computing can implement successful optimization methods and adaptation approaches, which are inspired by the natural evolution and collective behavior observed in species, respectively. Although all the meta-heuristic algorithms have different inspirational sources, their objective is to find the optimum (minimum or maximum), which is problem-specific. We propose and evaluate a novel synergistic fibroblast optimization (SFO) algorithm, which exhibits the behavior of a fibroblast cellular organism in the dermal wound-healing process. Various characteristics of benchmark suites are applied to validate the robustness, reliability, generalization, and comprehensibility of SFO in diverse and complex situations. The encouraging results suggest that the collaborative and self-adaptive behaviors of fibroblasts have intellectually found the optimum solution with several different features that can improve the effectiveness of optimization strategies for solving non-linear complicated problems.
The hot-dip galvanizing line (HDGL) is a typical order-driven discrete-event process in steelmaking. It has some complicated dynamic characteristics such as a large time-varying delay, strong nonlinearity, and unmeasured disturbance, all of which lead to the difficulty of an online coating weight controller design. We propose a novel neural network based control system to solve these problems. The proposed method has been successfully applied to a real production line at VaLin LY Steel Co., Loudi, China. The industrial application results show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method, including significant reductions in the variance of the coating weight and the transition time.
As promising alternatives in building future main memory systems, emerging non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies can increase memory capacity in a cost-effective and power-efficient way. However, NVM is facing security threats due to its limited write endurance: a malicious adversary can wear out the cells and cause the NVM system to fail quickly. To address this issue, several wear-leveling schemes have been proposed to evenly distribute write traffic in a security-aware manner. In this study, we present a new type of timing attack, remapping timing attack (RTA), based on information leakage from the remapping latency difference in NVM. Our analysis and experimental results show that RTA can cause three of the latest wear-leveling schemes (i.e., region-based start-gap, security refresh, and multi-way wear leveling) to lose their effectiveness in several days (even minutes), causing failure of NVM. To defend against such an attack, we further propose a novel wear-leveling scheme called the ‘security region-based start-gap (security RBSG)’, which is a two-stage strategy using a dynamic Feistel network to enhance the simple start-gap wear leveling with level-adjustable security assurance. The theoretical analysis and evaluation results show that the proposed security RBSG not only performs well when facing traditional malicious attacks, but also better defends against RTA.
System analysts often use software fault prediction models to identify fault-prone modules during the design phase of the software development life cycle. The models help predict faulty modules based on the software metrics that are input to the models. In this study, we consider 20 types of metrics to develop a model using an extreme learning machine associated with various kernel methods. We evaluate the effectiveness of the mode using a proposed framework based on the cost and efficiency in the testing phases. The evaluation process is carried out by considering case studies for 30 object-oriented software systems. Experimental results demonstrate that the application of a fault prediction model is suitable for projects with the percentage of faulty classes below a certain threshold, which depends on the efficiency of fault identification (low: 47.28%; median: 39.24%; high: 25.72%). We consider nine feature selection techniques to remove the irrelevant metrics and to select the best set of source code metrics for fault prediction.
Sparse bundle adjustment (SBA) is a key but time- and memory-consuming step in three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction. In this paper, we propose a 3D point-based distributed SBA algorithm (DSBA) to improve the speed and scalability of SBA. The algorithm uses an asynchronously distributed sparse bundle adjustment (A-DSBA) to overlap data communication with equation computation. Compared with the synchronous DSBA mechanism (SDSBA), A-DSBA reduces the running time by 46%. The experimental results on several 3D reconstruction datasets reveal that our distributed algorithm running on eight nodes is up to five times faster than that of the stand-alone parallel SBA. Furthermore, the speedup of the proposed algorithm (running on eight nodes with 48 cores) is up to 41 times that of the serial SBA (running on a single node).
Traditional methods for plan path prediction have low accuracy and stability. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for plan path prediction based on relative motion between positions (RMBP) by mining historical flight trajectories. A probability statistical model is introduced to model the stochastic factors during the whole flight process. The model object is the sequence of velocity vectors in the three-dimensional Earth space. First, we model the moving trend of aircraft including the speed (constant, acceleration, or deceleration), yaw (left, right, or straight), and pitch (climb, descent, or cruise) using a hidden Markov model (HMM) under the restrictions of aircraft performance parameters. Then, several Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) are used to describe the conditional distribution of each moving trend. Once the models are built, machine learning algorithms are applied to obtain the optimal parameters of the model from the historical training data. After completing the learning process, the velocity vector sequence of the flight is predicted by the proposed model under the Bayesian framework, so that we can use kinematic equations, depending on the moving patterns, to calculate the flight position at every radar acquisition cycle. To obtain higher prediction accuracy, a uniform interpolation method is used to correct the predicted position each second. Finally, a plan trajectory is concatenated by the predicted discrete points. Results of simulations with collected data demonstrate that this approach not only fulfils the goals of traditional methods, such as the prediction of fly-over time and altitude of waypoints along the planned route, but also can be used to plan a complete path for an aircraft with high accuracy. Experiments are conducted to demonstrate the superiority of this approach to some existing methods.
Single-station passive localization technology avoids the complex time synchronization and information exchange between multiple observatories, and is increasingly important in electronic warfare. Based on a single moving station localization system, a new method with high localization precision and numerical stability is proposed when the measurements from multiple disjoint sources are subject to the same station position and velocity displacement. According to the available measurements including the angle-of-arrival (AOA), time-of-arrival (TOA), and frequency-of-arrival (FOA), the corresponding pseudo linear equations are deduced. Based on this, a structural total least squares (STLS) optimization model is developed and the inverse iteration algorithm is used to obtain the stationary target location. The localization performance of the STLS localization algorithm is derived, and it is strictly proved that the theoretical performance of the STLS method is consistent with that of the constrained total least squares method under first-order error analysis, both of which can achieve the Cramér-Rao lower bound accuracy. Simulation results show the validity of the theoretical derivation and superiority of the new algorithm.
In recent years, it has been demonstrated that checklists can improve patient safety significantly. To facilitate the effective use of checklists in daily practice, both the medical community and the informatics community propose to implement checklists in dynamic checklist applications that can be integrated into the clinical workflow and that is specific to the patient context. However, it is difficult to develop such applications because they are tightly intertwined with the content of specific checklists. We propose a platform that enables access to dynamic checklist applications by configuring the infrastructures provided in the platform. Then, the applications can be developed without time-consuming programming work. We define a number of design criteria regarding point of care and clinical processes by analyzing the existing checklist applications and the lessons learned from implementations. Then, by applying rule-based clinical decision support and workflow management technologies, we design technical mechanisms to satisfy the design criteria. A dynamic checklist application platform is designed based on these mechanisms. Finally, we build a platform in various design cycle iterations, driven by multiple clinical cases. By applying the platform, we develop nine comprehensive dynamic checklist applications with 242 dynamic checklists. The results demonstrate both the feasibility and the overall generic nature of the proposed approach. We propose a novel platform for configuring dynamic checklist applications. This platform satisfies the general requirements and can be easily configured to satisfy different scenarios in which safety checklists are used.