MEDAL Blogging

I found an interesting article on Innovations Report about the project of Martin Polz and Eric Alm (both from MIT) on evolution of lifestyles of marine bacteria. An article on this topic was also published in May 23 issue of Science. From the article:

Marine bacteria in the wild organize into professions or lifestyle groups that [...]

I added the new version of the EDA tutorial (tutorial on estimation of distribution algorithms) to scribd.com. I also added many of MEDAL reports on the page (see them in my documents section at scribd). Finally, I created the estimation of distribution algorithms group to provide a forum for posting papers with the main focus [...]

Xavier Llora pointed out an interesting service called scribd.com, which allows one to publish papers online. It has a similar flavor as slideshare.net, which I use heavily, but it’s scope is much broader (it is intended for papers, slide presentations, CVs, etc.).
Besides our MEDAL Publications page, I also often post papers on arxiv.org, which [...]

Earlier this week our server was undergoing some technical maintenance, but we are back up now. Please let us know if you notice any issues with the blog server or MEDAL web pages themselves.

Xavier Llora made an interesting post about the Google Analytics’ site optimization tool and its close relationship with interactive genetic algorithms. Another related post (also by Xavier) can be found at in IlliGAL Blogging.
Check out also the following, related video on YouTube (pointed out by Xavier):

Michael Trick pointed out an interesting article In the Air published in the New Yorker. One of the themes in this article was related to the creation of environments leading to inventions. Check out the post on Michael Trick’s OR Blog here, and the original article here.

7th Space published an article on the use of a genetic algorithm for analyzing sleep patterns of animals. The study concludes the following:

Collectively, the output suggests that ecological factors can have striking effects on sleep patterns. Moreover, our results demonstrate that a simple model can produce clear and sensible patterns, thus allowing it to be [...]

Joaquín M López Muño discusses the link between human innovation and evolutionary computation based on selection, crossover and mutation. He also argues that there are lessons to be learned from evolutionary algorithms to improve the innovation process.
David E. Goldberg discusses this in numerous works, for example in his Design of Innovation book. The second edition [...]

GreyThumb pointed out an article Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn’t Better published in New York Times.
The article argues that flies can evolve the ability to learn relatively fast, but being able to learn fast may reduce their survival abilities. This observation is used to support the argument that being smarter (in [...]

Ben Goertzel published an interesting post Open-Source Robots + Robot Simulators + Virtual Worlds + AI = ??? on his blog The Multiverse According to Ben.