MEDAL Blogging

We just put up MEDAL Report No. 2008007, Enhancing Efficiency of Hierarchical BOA via Distance-Based Model Restrictions by Mark Hauschild and Martin Pelikan. The abstract follows:

This paper analyzes the effects of restricting probabilistic models in the hierarchical Bayesian optimization algorithm (hBOA) by defining a distance metric over variables and disallowing dependencies between variables at distances [...]

SiouxWIRE Annex published an interview with Theo Jansen on his creation, the autonomous, wind-powered machines. The machines are composed mainly of plastic tubes and lemonade bottles. A genetic algorithm was used to determine a proper combination of tube lengths to properly translate circular movement to movement of the machine “toes”. Several related videos can be [...]

I was just preparing a lecture on particle swarm optimization and ant colonies, and while searching the web for materials on the topic, I found the following nice video demonstrating how ants search for shortest paths. Check it out.

The deadline for the 5th annual HUMIES Awards (Human Competitive Results Produced by Genetic and Evolutionary Computation) is May 26, 2008. HUMIES is organized within the GECCO-2008 conference. For more information, visit HUMIES 2008 web page.

The website of Computational Learning Theory (COLT) and the association for Computational Learning (ACL) has been remodeled. Check the updated web page here. Don’t miss the interview with Vladimir Vapnik, which is provided as part of the planned series of interviews with COLT leading researchers.

A new book entitled A Field Guide to Genetic Programming by Riccardo Poli, William B. Langdon, and Nicholas Freitag McPhee (with contributions from John R. Koza) has recently been published. The PDF of the book can be downloaded for free here or a cheap printout of the book can be purchased through lulu.com here. See [...]

The newsletter of ACM SIGEVO, SIGEVOlution Volume 2 Issue 3 is now out. Download the issue here.

The deadline for submitting papers to PPSN 2008 has been extended to April 28, 2008. PPSN 2008 will take place in Dortmund, Germany, on September 13-17, 2008.

GreyThumb.Blog reports on the New York Times article A Mutual Affair written by Olivia Judson. The article discusses the mutualisms between shrimp and goby; leaf cutter ants and their harvested fungi; and coral and algae, among others.
Click here to access the full article.

Piec Luca Lanzi at IlliGAL Blogging reported that there is a linkage learning session at CEC 09 (see his post here).
More information about the session can be found here.