Inter-Services Intelligence

Abstract: Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are well-established Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. They rely on the fact that i) linear learning can be formalized as a well-posed optimization problem; ii) non-linear learning can be brought into linear learning thanks to the kernel trick and the mapping of the initial search space onto a high dimensional feature space. The kernel is designed by the ML expert and it governs the efficiency of the SVM approach. In this paper, a new approach for the automatic design of kernels by Genetic Programming, called the Evolutionary Kernel Machine (EKM), is presented. EKM combines a well-founded fitness function inspired from the margin criterion, and a co-evolution framework ensuring the computational scalability of the approach. Empirical validation on standard ML benchmark demonstrates that EKM is competitive using state-of-the-art SVMs with tuned hyper-parameters.

Abstract: In this work we present a new methodology to study the structure of the configuration spaces of hard combinatorial problems. It consists in building the network that has as nodes the locally optimal configurations and as edges the weighted oriented transitions between their basins of attraction. We apply the approach to the detection of communities in the optima networks produced by two different classes of instances of a hard combinatorial optimization problem: the quadratic assignment problem (QAP). We provide evidence indicating that the two problem instance classes give rise to very different configuration spaces. For the so-called real-like class, the networks possess a clear modular structure, while the optima networks belonging to the class of random uniform instances are less well partitionable into clusters. This is convincingly supported by using several statistical tests. Finally, we shortly discuss the consequences of the findings for heuristically searching the corresponding problem spaces.

Abstract: Using a recently proposed model for combinatorial landscapes, Local Optima Networks (LON), we conduct a thorough analysis of two types of instances of the Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). This network model is a reduction of the landscape in which the nodes correspond to the local optima, and the edges account for the notion of adjacency between their basins of attraction. The model was inspired by the notion of 'inherent network' of potential energy surfaces proposed in physical-chemistry. The local optima networks extracted from the so called uniform and real-like QAP instances, show features clearly distinguishing these two types of instances. Apart from a clear confirmation that the search difficulty increases with the problem dimension, the analysis provides new confirming evidence explaining why the real-like instances are easier to solve exactly using heuristic search, while the uniform instances are easier to solve approximately. Although the local optima network model is still under development, we argue that it provides a novel view of combinatorial landscapes, opening up the possibilities for new analytical tools and understanding of problem difficulty in combinatorial optimization.

Abstract: Theoretically the propagation of two ion acoustic soliton interaction in a three component collisionless unmagnetized plasma which consists of electrons, positrons and cold ions, has been investigated here by employing reductive perturbation technique. In this study, q distributed electrons and Maxwell-Boltzmann distributed positrons are considered and Korteweged-de Vries (KdV) equation is derived. The KdV equation is solved to get two soliton solution by using Hirota bilinear method. The effects of the q distributed electrons on the profiles of two soliton structures and the corresponding phase shifts are investigated. It is observed that both the nonextensive parameter (q) and the ratio of positrons density and electron density (p=n p0/n e0), play a significant role in the formation and existence of two soliton and also in the nature of their phase shifts.