Efficient distribution of toy products using ant colony optimization algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Hidayat, S.; Nurpraja, C. A.

2017-12-01

CV Atham Toys (CVAT) produces wooden toys and furniture, comprises 13 small and medium industries. CVAT always attempt to deliver customer orders on time but delivery costs are high. This is because of inadequate infrastructure such that delivery routes are long, car maintenance costs are high, while fuel subsidy by the government is still temporary. This study seeks to minimize the cost of product distribution based on the shortest route using one of five Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithms to solve the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP). This study concludes that the best of the five is the Ant Colony System (ACS) algorithm. The best route in 1st week gave a total distance of 124.11 km at a cost of Rp 66,703.75. The 2nd week route gave a total distance of 132.27 km at a cost of Rp 71,095.13. The 3rd week best route gave a total distance of 122.70 km with a cost of Rp 65,951.25. While the 4th week gave a total distance of 132.27 km at a cost of Rp 74,083.63. Prior to this study there was no effort to calculate these figures.

Stochastic time-dependent vehicle routing problem: Mathematical models and ant colony algorithm

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Zhengyu Duan

2015-11-01

Full Text Available This article addresses the stochastic time-dependent vehicle routing problem. Two mathematical models named robust optimal schedule time model and minimum expected schedule time model are proposed for stochastic time-dependent vehicle routing problem, which can guarantee delivery within the time windows of customers. The robust optimal schedule time model only requires the variation range of link travel time, which can be conveniently derived from historical traffic data. In addition, the robust optimal schedule time model based on robust optimization method can be converted into a time-dependent vehicle routing problem. Moreover, an ant colony optimization algorithm is designed to solve stochastic time-dependent vehicle routing problem. As the improvements in initial solution and transition probability, ant colony optimization algorithm has a good performance in convergence. Through computational instances and Monte Carlo simulation tests, robust optimal schedule time model is proved to be better than minimum expected schedule time model in computational efficiency and coping with the travel time fluctuations. Therefore, robust optimal schedule time model is applicable in real road network.

An ant colony optimization algorithm for phylogenetic estimation under the minimum evolution principle

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Milinkovitch Michel C

2007-11-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Distance matrix methods constitute a major family of phylogenetic estimation methods, and the minimum evolution (ME principle (aiming at recovering the phylogeny with shortest length is one of the most commonly used optimality criteria for estimating phylogenetic trees. The major difficulty for its application is that the number of possible phylogenies grows exponentially with the number of taxa analyzed and the minimum evolution principle is known to belong to the NP MathType@MTEF@5@5@+=feaafiart1ev1aaatCvAUfKttLearuWrP9MDH5MBPbIqV92AaeXatLxBI9gBaebbnrfifHhDYfgasaacPC6xNi=xH8viVGI8Gi=hEeeu0xXdbba9frFj0xb9qqpG0dXdb9aspeI8k8fiI+fsY=rqGqVepae9pg0db9vqaiVgFr0xfr=xfr=xc9adbaqaaeGacaGaaiaabeqaaeqabiWaaaGcbaWenfgDOvwBHrxAJfwnHbqeg0uy0HwzTfgDPnwy1aaceaGae8xdX7Kaeeiuaafaaa@3888@-hard class of problems. Results In this paper, we introduce an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO algorithm to estimate phylogenies under the minimum evolution principle. ACO is an optimization technique inspired from the foraging behavior of real ant colonies. This behavior is exploited in artificial ant colonies for the search of approximate solutions to discrete optimization problems. Conclusion We show that the ACO algorithm is potentially competitive in comparison with state-of-the-art algorithms for the minimum evolution principle. This is the first application of an ACO algorithm to the phylogenetic estimation problem.

Building optimal regression tree by ant colony system-genetic algorithm: Application to modeling of melting points

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hemmateenejad, Bahram, E-mail: hemmatb@sums.ac.ir [Department of Chemistry, Shiraz University, Shiraz (Iran, Islamic Republic of); Medicinal and Natural Products Chemistry Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz (Iran, Islamic Republic of); Shamsipur, Mojtaba [Department of Chemistry, Razi University, Kermanshah (Iran, Islamic Republic of); Zare-Shahabadi, Vali [Young Researchers Club, Mahshahr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mahshahr (Iran, Islamic Republic of); Akhond, Morteza [Department of Chemistry, Shiraz University, Shiraz (Iran, Islamic Republic of)

2011-10-17

Highlights: {yields} Ant colony systems help to build optimum classification and regression trees. {yields} Using of genetic algorithm operators in ant colony systems resulted in more appropriate models. {yields} Variable selection in each terminal node of the tree gives promising results. {yields} CART-ACS-GA could model the melting point of organic materials with prediction errors lower than previous models. - Abstract: The classification and regression trees (CART) possess the advantage of being able to handle large data sets and yield readily interpretable models. A conventional method of building a regression tree is recursive partitioning, which results in a good but not optimal tree. Ant colony system (ACS), which is a meta-heuristic algorithm and derived from the observation of real ants, can be used to overcome this problem. The purpose of this study was to explore the use of CART and its combination with ACS for modeling of melting points of a large variety of chemical compounds. Genetic algorithm (GA) operators (e.g., cross averring and mutation operators) were combined with ACS algorithm to select the best solution model. In addition, at each terminal node of the resulted tree, variable selection was done by ACS-GA algorithm to build an appropriate partial least squares (PLS) model. To test the ability of the resulted tree, a set of approximately 4173 structures and their melting points were used (3000 compounds as training set and 1173 as validation set). Further, an external test set containing of 277 drugs was used to validate the prediction ability of the tree. Comparison of the results obtained from both trees showed that the tree constructed by ACS-GA algorithm performs better than that produced by recursive partitioning procedure.

Improving the Interpretability of Classification Rules Discovered by an Ant Colony Algorithm: Extended Results.

Science.gov (United States)

Otero, Fernando E B; Freitas, Alex A

2016-01-01

Most ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms for inducing classification rules use a ACO-based procedure to create a rule in a one-at-a-time fashion. An improved search strategy has been proposed in the cAnt-Miner[Formula: see text] algorithm, where an ACO-based procedure is used to create a complete list of rules (ordered rules), i.e., the ACO search is guided by the quality of a list of rules instead of an individual rule. In this paper we propose an extension of the cAnt-Miner[Formula: see text] algorithm to discover a set of rules (unordered rules). The main motivations for this work are to improve the interpretation of individual rules by discovering a set of rules and to evaluate the impact on the predictive accuracy of the algorithm. We also propose a new measure to evaluate the interpretability of the discovered rules to mitigate the fact that the commonly used model size measure ignores how the rules are used to make a class prediction. Comparisons with state-of-the-art rule induction algorithms, support vector machines, and the cAnt-Miner[Formula: see text] producing ordered rules are also presented.

Runtime analysis of the 1-ANT ant colony optimizer

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Doerr, Benjamin; Neumann, Frank; Sudholt, Dirk

2011-01-01

The runtime analysis of randomized search heuristics is a growing field where, in the last two decades, many rigorous results have been obtained. First runtime analyses of ant colony optimization (ACO) have been conducted only recently. In these studies simple ACO algorithms such as the 1-ANT...... that give us a more detailed impression of the 1-ANT’s performance. Furthermore, the experiments also deal with the question whether using many ant solutions in one iteration can decrease the total runtime....

Parameter Selection for Ant Colony Algorithm Based on Bacterial Foraging Algorithm

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Peng Li

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The optimal performance of the ant colony algorithm (ACA mainly depends on suitable parameters; therefore, parameter selection for ACA is important. We propose a parameter selection method for ACA based on the bacterial foraging algorithm (BFA, considering the effects of coupling between different parameters. Firstly, parameters for ACA are mapped into a multidimensional space, using a chemotactic operator to ensure that each parameter group approaches the optimal value, speeding up the convergence for each parameter set. Secondly, the operation speed for optimizing the entire parameter set is accelerated using a reproduction operator. Finally, the elimination-dispersal operator is used to strengthen the global optimization of the parameters, which avoids falling into a local optimal solution. In order to validate the effectiveness of this method, the results were compared with those using a genetic algorithm (GA and a particle swarm optimization (PSO, and simulations were conducted using different grid maps for robot path planning. The results indicated that parameter selection for ACA based on BFA was the superior method, able to determine the best parameter combination rapidly, accurately, and effectively.

Fuzzy Rules for Ant Based Clustering Algorithm

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Amira Hamdi

2016-01-01

Full Text Available This paper provides a new intelligent technique for semisupervised data clustering problem that combines the Ant System (AS algorithm with the fuzzy c-means (FCM clustering algorithm. Our proposed approach, called F-ASClass algorithm, is a distributed algorithm inspired by foraging behavior observed in ant colonyT. The ability of ants to find the shortest path forms the basis of our proposed approach. In the first step, several colonies of cooperating entities, called artificial ants, are used to find shortest paths in a complete graph that we called graph-data. The number of colonies used in F-ASClass is equal to the number of clusters in dataset. Hence, the partition matrix of dataset founded by artificial ants is given in the second step, to the fuzzy c-means technique in order to assign unclassified objects generated in the first step. The proposed approach is tested on artificial and real datasets, and its performance is compared with those of K-means, K-medoid, and FCM algorithms. Experimental section shows that F-ASClass performs better according to the error rate classification, accuracy, and separation index.

A Novel Spectrum Scheduling Scheme with Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

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Liping Liu

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Cognitive radio is a promising technology for improving spectrum utilization, which allows cognitive users access to the licensed spectrum while primary users are absent. In this paper, we design a resource allocation framework based on graph theory for spectrum assignment in cognitive radio networks. The framework takes into account the constraints that interference for primary users and possible collision among cognitive users. Based on the proposed model, we formulate a system utility function to maximize the system benefit. Based on the proposed model and objective problem, we design an improved ant colony optimization algorithm (IACO from two aspects: first, we introduce differential evolution (DE process to accelerate convergence speed by monitoring mechanism; then we design a variable neighborhood search (VNS process to avoid the algorithm falling into the local optimal. Simulation results demonstrate that the improved algorithm achieves better performance.

Ant-Based Phylogenetic Reconstruction (ABPR: A new distance algorithm for phylogenetic estimation based on ant colony optimization

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Karla Vittori

2008-12-01

Full Text Available We propose a new distance algorithm for phylogenetic estimation based on Ant Colony Optimization (ACO, named Ant-Based Phylogenetic Reconstruction (ABPR. ABPR joins two taxa iteratively based on evolutionary distance among sequences, while also accounting for the quality of the phylogenetic tree built according to the total length of the tree. Similar to optimization algorithms for phylogenetic estimation, the algorithm allows exploration of a larger set of nearly optimal solutions. We applied the algorithm to four empirical data sets of mitochondrial DNA ranging from 12 to 186 sequences, and from 898 to 16,608 base pairs, and covering taxonomic levels from populations to orders. We show that ABPR performs better than the commonly used Neighbor-Joining algorithm, except when sequences are too closely related (e.g., population-level sequences. The phylogenetic relationships recovered at and above species level by ABPR agree with conventional views. However, like other algorithms of phylogenetic estimation, the proposed algorithm failed to recover expected relationships when distances are too similar or when rates of evolution are very variable, leading to the problem of long-branch attraction. ABPR, as well as other ACO-based algorithms, is emerging as a fast and accurate alternative method of phylogenetic estimation for large data sets.

Edge detection in digital images using Ant Colony Optimization

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Marjan Kuchaki Rafsanjani

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Ant Colony Optimization (ACO is an optimization algorithm inspired by the behavior of real ant colonies to approximate the solutions of difficult optimization problems. In this paper, ACO is introduced to tackle the image edge detection problem. The proposed approach is based on the distribution of ants on an image; ants try to find possible edges by using a state transition function. Experimental results show that the proposed method compared to standard edge detectors is less sensitive to Gaussian noise and gives finer details and thinner edges when compared to earlier ant-based approaches.

Automatic fault extraction using a modified ant-colony algorithm

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhao, Junsheng; Sun, Sam Zandong

2013-01-01

The basis of automatic fault extraction is seismic attributes, such as the coherence cube which is always used to identify a fault by the minimum value. The biggest challenge in automatic fault extraction is noise, including that of seismic data. However, a fault has a better spatial continuity in certain direction, which makes it quite different from noise. Considering this characteristic, a modified ant-colony algorithm is introduced into automatic fault identification and tracking, where the gradient direction and direction consistency are used as constraints. Numerical model test results show that this method is feasible and effective in automatic fault extraction and noise suppression. The application of field data further illustrates its validity and superiority. (paper)

PARAMETER ESTIMATION OF VALVE STICTION USING ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION

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S. Kalaivani

2012-07-01

Full Text Available In this paper, a procedure for quantifying valve stiction in control loops based on ant colony optimization has been proposed. Pneumatic control valves are widely used in the process industry. The control valve contains non-linearities such as stiction, backlash, and deadband that in turn cause oscillations in the process output. Stiction is one of the long-standing problems and it is the most severe problem in the control valves. Thus the measurement data from an oscillating control loop can be used as a possible diagnostic signal to provide an estimate of the stiction magnitude. Quantification of control valve stiction is still a challenging issue. Prior to doing stiction detection and quantification, it is necessary to choose a suitable model structure to describe control-valve stiction. To understand the stiction phenomenon, the Stenman model is used. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO, an intelligent swarm algorithm, proves effective in various fields. The ACO algorithm is inspired from the natural trail following behaviour of ants. The parameters of the Stenman model are estimated using ant colony optimization, from the input-output data by minimizing the error between the actual stiction model output and the simulated stiction model output. Using ant colony optimization, Stenman model with known nonlinear structure and unknown parameters can be estimated.

The regulation of ant colony foraging activity without spatial information.

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Balaji Prabhakar

Full Text Available Many dynamical networks, such as the ones that produce the collective behavior of social insects, operate without any central control, instead arising from local interactions among individuals. A well-studied example is the formation of recruitment trails in ant colonies, but many ant species do not use pheromone trails. We present a model of the regulation of foraging by harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex barbatus colonies. This species forages for scattered seeds that one ant can retrieve on its own, so there is no need for spatial information such as pheromone trails that lead ants to specific locations. Previous work shows that colony foraging activity, the rate at which ants go out to search individually for seeds, is regulated in response to current food availability throughout the colony's foraging area. Ants use the rate of brief antennal contacts inside the nest between foragers returning with food and outgoing foragers available to leave the nest on the next foraging trip. Here we present a feedback-based algorithm that captures the main features of data from field experiments in which the rate of returning foragers was manipulated. The algorithm draws on our finding that the distribution of intervals between successive ants returning to the nest is a Poisson process. We fitted the parameter that estimates the effect of each returning forager on the rate at which outgoing foragers leave the nest. We found that correlations between observed rates of returning foragers and simulated rates of outgoing foragers, using our model, were similar to those in the data. Our simple stochastic model shows how the regulation of ant colony foraging can operate without spatial information, describing a process at the level of individual ants that predicts the overall foraging activity of the colony.

Optimization of China Crude Oil Transportation Network with Genetic Ant Colony Algorithm

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Yao Wang

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Taking into consideration both shipping and pipeline transport, this paper first analysed the risk factors for different modes of crude oil import transportation. Then, based on the minimum of both transportation cost and overall risk, a multi-objective programming model was established to optimize the transportation network of crude oil import, and the genetic algorithm and ant colony algorithm were employed to solve the problem. The optimized result shows that VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier is superior in long distance sea transportation, whereas pipeline transport is more secure than sea transport. Finally, this paper provides related safeguard suggestions on crude oil import transportation.

Ant Colony Optimization and the Minimum Cut Problem

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kötzing, Timo; Lehre, Per Kristian; Neumann, Frank

2010-01-01

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a powerful metaheuristic for solving combinatorial optimization problems. With this paper we contribute to the theoretical understanding of this kind of algorithm by investigating the classical minimum cut problem. An ACO algorithm similar to the one that was prov...

Automatic boiling water reactor loading pattern design using ant colony optimization algorithm

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Wang, C.-D. [Department of Engineering and System Science, National Tsing Hua University, 101, Section 2 Kuang Fu Road, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan (China); Nuclear Engineering Division, Institute of Nuclear Energy Research, No. 1000, Wenhua Rd., Jiaan Village, Longtan Township, Taoyuan County 32546, Taiwan (China)], E-mail: jdwang@iner.gov.tw; Lin Chaung [Department of Engineering and System Science, National Tsing Hua University, 101, Section 2 Kuang Fu Road, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan (China)

2009-08-15

An automatic boiling water reactor (BWR) loading pattern (LP) design methodology was developed using the rank-based ant system (RAS), which is a variant of the ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm. To reduce design complexity, only the fuel assemblies (FAs) of one eight-core positions were determined using the RAS algorithm, and then the corresponding FAs were loaded into the other parts of the core. Heuristic information was adopted to exclude the selection of the inappropriate FAs which will reduce search space, and thus, the computation time. When the LP was determined, Haling cycle length, beginning of cycle (BOC) shutdown margin (SDM), and Haling end of cycle (EOC) maximum fraction of limit for critical power ratio (MFLCPR) were calculated using SIMULATE-3 code, which were used to evaluate the LP for updating pheromone of RAS. The developed design methodology was demonstrated using FAs of a reference cycle of the BWR6 nuclear power plant. The results show that, the designed LP can be obtained within reasonable computation time, and has a longer cycle length than that of the original design.

Azcaxalli: A system based on Ant Colony Optimization algorithms, applied to fuel reloads design in a Boiling Water Reactor

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Esquivel-Estrada, Jaime, E-mail: jaime.esquivel@fi.uaemex.m [Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Mexico, Cerro de Coatepec S/N, Toluca de Lerdo, Estado de Mexico 50000 (Mexico); Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares, Carr. Mexico Toluca S/N, Ocoyoacac, Estado de Mexico 52750 (Mexico); Ortiz-Servin, Juan Jose, E-mail: juanjose.ortiz@inin.gob.m [Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares, Carr. Mexico Toluca S/N, Ocoyoacac, Estado de Mexico 52750 (Mexico); Castillo, Jose Alejandro; Perusquia, Raul [Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares, Carr. Mexico Toluca S/N, Ocoyoacac, Estado de Mexico 52750 (Mexico)

2011-01-15

This paper presents some results of the implementation of several optimization algorithms based on ant colonies, applied to the fuel reload design in a Boiling Water Reactor. The system called Azcaxalli is constructed with the following algorithms: Ant Colony System, Ant System, Best-Worst Ant System and MAX-MIN Ant System. Azcaxalli starts with a random fuel reload. Ants move into reactor core channels according to the State Transition Rule in order to select two fuel assemblies into a 1/8 part of the reactor core and change positions between them. This rule takes into account pheromone trails and acquired knowledge. Acquired knowledge is obtained from load cycle values of fuel assemblies. Azcaxalli claim is to work in order to maximize the cycle length taking into account several safety parameters. Azcaxalli's objective function involves thermal limits at the end of the cycle, cold shutdown margin at the beginning of the cycle and the neutron effective multiplication factor for a given cycle exposure. Those parameters are calculated by CM-PRESTO code. Through the Haling Principle is possible to calculate the end of the cycle. This system was applied to an equilibrium cycle of 18 months of Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Mexico. The results show that the system obtains fuel reloads with higher cycle lengths than the original fuel reload. Azcaxalli results are compared with genetic algorithms, tabu search and neural networks results.

AUTOMATA PROGRAMS CONSTRUCTION FROM SPECIFICATION WITH AN ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON MUTATION GRAPH

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Daniil S. Chivilikhin

2014-11-01

Full Text Available The procedure of testing traditionally used in software engineering cannot guarantee program correctness; therefore verification is used at the excess requirements to programs reliability. Verification makes it possible to check certain properties of programs in all possible computational states; however, this process is very complex. In the model checking method a model of the program is built (often, manually and requirements in terms of temporal logic are formulated. Such temporal properties of the model can be checked automatically. The main issue in this framework is the gap between the program and its model. Automata-based programming paradigm gives the possibility to overcome this limitation. In this paradigm, program logic is represented using finite-state machines. The advantage of finite-state machines is that their models can be constructed automatically. The paper deals with the application of mutation-based ant colony optimization algorithm to the problem of finite-state machine construction from their specification, defined by test scenarios and temporal properties. The presented approach has been tested on the elevator doors control problem as well as on randomly generated data. Obtained results show the ant colony algorithm is two-three times faster than the previously used genetic algorithm. The proposed approach can be recommended for inferring control programs for critical systems.

A Rule-Based Model for Bankruptcy Prediction Based on an Improved Genetic Ant Colony Algorithm

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Yudong Zhang

2013-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we proposed a hybrid system to predict corporate bankruptcy. The whole procedure consists of the following four stages: first, sequential forward selection was used to extract the most important features; second, a rule-based model was chosen to fit the given dataset since it can present physical meaning; third, a genetic ant colony algorithm (GACA was introduced; the fitness scaling strategy and the chaotic operator were incorporated with GACA, forming a new algorithm—fitness-scaling chaotic GACA (FSCGACA, which was used to seek the optimal parameters of the rule-based model; and finally, the stratified K-fold cross-validation technique was used to enhance the generalization of the model. Simulation experiments of 1000 corporations’ data collected from 2006 to 2009 demonstrated that the proposed model was effective. It selected the 5 most important factors as “net income to stock broker’s equality,” “quick ratio,” “retained earnings to total assets,” “stockholders’ equity to total assets,” and “financial expenses to sales.” The total misclassification error of the proposed FSCGACA was only 7.9%, exceeding the results of genetic algorithm (GA, ant colony algorithm (ACA, and GACA. The average computation time of the model is 2.02 s.

Ant Larval Demand Reduces Aphid Colony Growth Rates in an Ant-Aphid Interaction

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James M. Cook

2012-02-01

Full Text Available Ants often form mutualistic interactions with aphids, soliciting honeydew in return for protective services. Under certain circumstances, however, ants will prey upon aphids. In addition, in the presence of ants aphids may increase the quantity or quality of honeydew produced, which is costly. Through these mechanisms, ant attendance can reduce aphid colony growth rates. However, it is unknown whether demand from within the ant colony can affect the ant-aphid interaction. In a factorial experiment, we tested whether the presence of larvae in Lasius niger ant colonies affected the growth rate of Aphis fabae colonies. Other explanatory variables tested were the origin of ant colonies (two separate colonies were used and previous diet (sugar only or sugar and protein. We found that the presence of larvae in the ant colony significantly reduced the growth rate of aphid colonies. Previous diet and colony origin did not affect aphid colony growth rates. Our results suggest that ant colonies balance the flow of two separate resources from aphid colonies- renewable sugars or a protein-rich meal, depending on demand from ant larvae within the nest. Aphid payoffs from the ant-aphid interaction may change on a seasonal basis, as the demand from larvae within the ant colony waxes and wanes.

Study on Cloud Computing Resource Scheduling Strategy Based on the Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

OpenAIRE

Lingna He; Qingshui Li; Linan Zhu

2012-01-01

In order to replace the traditional Internet software usage patterns and enterprise management mode, this paper proposes a new business calculation mode- cloud computing, resources scheduling strategy is the key technology in cloud computing, Based on the study of cloud computing system structure and the mode of operation, The key research for cloud computing the process of the work scheduling and resource allocation problems based on ant colony algorithm , Detailed analysis and design of the...

CACER:A Novel E-commerce Recommendation Model Based on Crazy Ant Colony Algorithms

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

王征; 刘庆强

2013-01-01

In order to deal with the problems of E-commerce online marketing, a novel E-commerce recommendation system model was given to lead consumers to efficient retrieval and consumption. And the system model was built with a crazy ant colony algorithm. Then its model, message structures and working flows were presented as following. At last, an application example and compared results were given to be analyzed. Simulation results show the model can perform better in real-time and customer satisfaction than the olds do.

Solving optimum operation of single pump unit problem with ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yuan, Y; Liu, C

2012-01-01

For pumping stations, the effective scheduling of daily pump operations from solutions to the optimum design operation problem is one of the greatest potential areas for energy cost-savings, there are some difficulties in solving this problem with traditional optimization methods due to the multimodality of the solution region. In this case, an ACO model for optimum operation of pumping unit is proposed and the solution method by ants searching is presented by rationally setting the object function and constrained conditions. A weighted directed graph was constructed and feasible solutions may be found by iteratively searching of artificial ants, and then the optimal solution can be obtained by applying the rule of state transition and the pheromone updating. An example calculation was conducted and the minimum cost was found as 4.9979. The result of ant colony algorithm was compared with the result from dynamic programming or evolutionary solving method in commercial software under the same discrete condition. The result of ACO is better and the computing time is shorter which indicates that ACO algorithm can provide a high application value to the field of optimal operation of pumping stations and related fields.

Application of Ant-Colony-Optimization algorithm for improved management of first flush effects in urban wastewater systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Verdaguer, M; Clara, N; Gutiérrez, O; Poch, M

2014-07-01

The first flush effect in combined sewer systems during storm events often causes overflows and overloads of the sewage treatment, which reduces the efficiency of the sewage treatment and decreases the quality of the receiving waters due to the pollutants that are contributed. The use of retention tanks constitutes a widely used way to mitigate this effect. However, the management of the pollutant loads encounters difficulties when the retention tanks are emptied. A new approach is proposed to solve this problem by fulfilling the treatment requirements in real time, focussing on the characteristics of the wastewater. The method is based on the execution of an Ant Colony Optimisation algorithm to obtain a satisfactory sequence for the discharge of the retention tanks. The discharge sequence considers the volume of stormwater and its concentration of pollutants including Suspended Solids, Biological Oxygen Demand and Chemical Oxygen Demand, Total Nitrogen and Total Phosphorus. The Ant Colony Optimisation algorithm was applied successfully to a case study with overall reduction of pollutant loads stored in retention tanks. The algorithm can be adapted in a simple way to the different scenarios, infrastructures and controllers of sewer systems. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Multi-view 3D scene reconstruction using ant colony optimization techniques

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chrysostomou, Dimitrios; Gasteratos, Antonios; Nalpantidis, Lazaros; Sirakoulis, Georgios C

2012-01-01

This paper presents a new method performing high-quality 3D object reconstruction of complex shapes derived from multiple, calibrated photographs of the same scene. The novelty of this research is found in two basic elements, namely: (i) a novel voxel dissimilarity measure, which accommodates the elimination of the lighting variations of the models and (ii) the use of an ant colony approach for further refinement of the final 3D models. The proposed reconstruction procedure employs a volumetric method based on a novel projection test for the production of a visual hull. While the presented algorithm shares certain aspects with the space carving algorithm, it is, nevertheless, first enhanced with the lightness compensating image comparison method, and then refined using ant colony optimization. The algorithm is fast, computationally simple and results in accurate representations of the input scenes. In addition, compared to previous publications, the particular nature of the proposed algorithm allows accurate 3D volumetric measurements under demanding lighting environmental conditions, due to the fact that it can cope with uneven light scenes, resulting from the characteristics of the voxel dissimilarity measure applied. Besides, the intelligent behavior of the ant colony framework provides the opportunity to formulate the process as a combinatorial optimization problem, which can then be solved by means of a colony of cooperating artificial ants, resulting in very promising results. The method is validated with several real datasets, along with qualitative comparisons with other state-of-the-art 3D reconstruction techniques, following the Middlebury benchmark. (paper)

Ant Colony Optimization ACO For The Traveling Salesman Problem TSP Using Partitioning

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Alok Bajpai

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Abstract An ant colony optimization is a technique which was introduced in 1990s and which can be applied to a variety of discrete combinatorial optimization problem and to continuous optimization. The ACO algorithm is simulated with the foraging behavior of the real ants to find the incremental solution constructions and to realize a pheromone laying-and-following mechanism. This pheromone is the indirect communication among the ants. In this paper we introduces the partitioning technique based on the divide and conquer strategy for the traveling salesman problem which is one of the most important combinatorial problem in which the original problem is partitioned into the group of sub problems. And then we apply the ant colony algorithm using candidate list strategy for each smaller sub problems. After that by applying the local optimization and combining the sub problems to find the good solution for the original problem by improving the exploration efficiency of the ants. At the end of this paper we have also be presented the comparison of result with the normal ant colony system for finding the optimal solution to the traveling salesman problem.

ACOustic: A Nature-Inspired Exploration Indicator for Ant Colony Optimization

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Rafid Sagban

2015-01-01

Full Text Available A statistical machine learning indicator, ACOustic, is proposed to evaluate the exploration behavior in the iterations of ant colony optimization algorithms. This idea is inspired by the behavior of some parasites in their mimicry to the queens’ acoustics of their ant hosts. The parasites’ reaction results from their ability to indicate the state of penetration. The proposed indicator solves the problem of robustness that results from the difference of magnitudes in the distance’s matrix, especially when combinatorial optimization problems with rugged fitness landscape are applied. The performance of the proposed indicator is evaluated against the existing indicators in six variants of ant colony optimization algorithms. Instances for travelling salesman problem and quadratic assignment problem are used in the experimental evaluation. The analytical results showed that the proposed indicator is more informative and more robust.

A seismic fault recognition method based on ant colony optimization

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Lei; Xiao, Chuangbai; Li, Xueliang; Wang, Zhenli; Huo, Shoudong

2018-05-01

Fault recognition is an important section in seismic interpretation and there are many methods for this technology, but no one can recognize fault exactly enough. For this problem, we proposed a new fault recognition method based on ant colony optimization which can locate fault precisely and extract fault from the seismic section. Firstly, seismic horizons are extracted by the connected component labeling algorithm; secondly, the fault location are decided according to the horizontal endpoints of each horizon; thirdly, the whole seismic section is divided into several rectangular blocks and the top and bottom endpoints of each rectangular block are considered as the nest and food respectively for the ant colony optimization algorithm. Besides that, the positive section is taken as an actual three dimensional terrain by using the seismic amplitude as a height. After that, the optimal route from nest to food calculated by the ant colony in each block is judged as a fault. Finally, extensive comparative tests were performed on the real seismic data. Availability and advancement of the proposed method were validated by the experimental results.

Software Piracy Detection Model Using Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Astiqah Omar, Nor; Zakuan, Zeti Zuryani Mohd; Saian, Rizauddin

2017-06-01

Internet enables information to be accessible anytime and anywhere. This scenario creates an environment whereby information can be easily copied. Easy access to the internet is one of the factors which contribute towards piracy in Malaysia as well as the rest of the world. According to a survey conducted by Compliance Gap BSA Global Software Survey in 2013 on software piracy, found out that 43 percent of the software installed on PCs around the world was not properly licensed, the commercial value of the unlicensed installations worldwide was reported to be 62.7 billion. Piracy can happen anywhere including universities. Malaysia as well as other countries in the world is faced with issues of piracy committed by the students in universities. Piracy in universities concern about acts of stealing intellectual property. It can be in the form of software piracy, music piracy, movies piracy and piracy of intellectual materials such as books, articles and journals. This scenario affected the owner of intellectual property as their property is in jeopardy. This study has developed a classification model for detecting software piracy. The model was developed using a swarm intelligence algorithm called the Ant Colony Optimization algorithm. The data for training was collected by a study conducted in Universiti Teknologi MARA (Perlis). Experimental results show that the model detection accuracy rate is better as compared to J48 algorithm.

Analysis of parameter estimation and optimization application of ant colony algorithm in vehicle routing problem

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, Quan-Li; Cao, Yu-Wei; Yang, Kun

2018-03-01

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is the most widely used artificial intelligence algorithm at present. This study introduced the principle and mathematical model of ACO algorithm in solving Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), and designed a vehicle routing optimization model based on ACO, then the vehicle routing optimization simulation system was developed by using c ++ programming language, and the sensitivity analyses, estimations and improvements of the three key parameters of ACO were carried out. The results indicated that the ACO algorithm designed in this paper can efficiently solve rational planning and optimization of VRP, and the different values of the key parameters have significant influence on the performance and optimization effects of the algorithm, and the improved algorithm is not easy to locally converge prematurely and has good robustness.

ADAPTIVE ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION BASED GRADIENT FOR EDGE DETECTION

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Febri Liantoni

2014-08-01

Full Text Available Ant Colony Optimization (ACO is a nature-inspired optimization algorithm which is motivated by ants foraging behavior. Due to its favorable advantages, ACO has been widely used to solve several NP-hard problems, including edge detection. Since ACO initially distributes ants at random, it may cause imbalance ant distribution which later affects path discovery process. In this paper an adaptive ACO is proposed to optimize edge detection by adaptively distributing ant according to gradient analysis. Ants are adaptively distributed according to gradient ratio of each image regions. Region which has bigger gradient ratio, will have bigger number of ant distribution. Experiments are conducted using images from various datasets. Precision and recall are used to quantitatively evaluate performance of the proposed algorithm. Precision and recall of adaptive ACO reaches 76.98 % and 96.8 %. Whereas highest precision and recall for standard ACO are 69.74 % and 74.85 %. Experimental results show that the adaptive ACO outperforms standard ACO which randomly distributes ants.

Simulation optimization based ant colony algorithm for the uncertain quay crane scheduling problem

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Naoufal Rouky

2019-01-01

Full Text Available This work is devoted to the study of the Uncertain Quay Crane Scheduling Problem (QCSP, where the loading /unloading times of containers and travel time of quay cranes are considered uncertain. The problem is solved with a Simulation Optimization approach which takes advantage of the great possibilities offered by the simulation to model the real details of the problem and the capacity of the optimization to find solutions with good quality. An Ant Colony Optimization (ACO meta-heuristic hybridized with a Variable Neighborhood Descent (VND local search is proposed to determine the assignments of tasks to quay cranes and the sequences of executions of tasks on each crane. Simulation is used inside the optimization algorithm to generate scenarios in agreement with the probabilities of the distributions of the uncertain parameters, thus, we carry out stochastic evaluations of the solutions found by each ant. The proposed optimization algorithm is tested first for the deterministic case on several well-known benchmark instances. Then, in the stochastic case, since no other work studied exactly the same problem with the same assumptions, the Simulation Optimization approach is compared with the deterministic version. The experimental results show that the optimization algorithm is competitive as compared to the existing methods and that the solutions found by the Simulation Optimization approach are more robust than those found by the optimization algorithm.

Road Network Vulnerability Analysis Based on Improved Ant Colony Algorithm

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Yunpeng Wang

2014-01-01

Full Text Available We present an improved ant colony algorithm-based approach to assess the vulnerability of a road network and identify the critical infrastructures. This approach improves computational efficiency and allows for its applications in large-scale road networks. This research involves defining the vulnerability conception, modeling the traffic utility index and the vulnerability of the road network, and identifying the critical infrastructures of the road network. We apply the approach to a simple test road network and a real road network to verify the methodology. The results show that vulnerability is directly related to traffic demand and increases significantly when the demand approaches capacity. The proposed approach reduces the computational burden and may be applied in large-scale road network analysis. It can be used as a decision-supporting tool for identifying critical infrastructures in transportation planning and management.

A Novel Ant Colony Algorithm for the Single-Machine Total Weighted Tardiness Problem with Sequence Dependent Setup Times

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Fardin Ahmadizar

2011-08-01

Full Text Available This paper deals with the NP-hard single-machine total weighted tardiness problem with sequence dependent setup times. Incorporating fuzzy sets and genetic operators, a novel ant colony optimization algorithm is developed for the problem. In the proposed algorithm, artificial ants construct solutions as orders of jobs based on the heuristic information as well as pheromone trails. To calculate the heuristic information, three well-known priority rules are adopted as fuzzy sets and then aggregated. When all artificial ants have terminated their constructions, genetic operators such as crossover and mutation are applied to generate new regions of the solution space. A local search is then performed to improve the performance quality of some of the solutions found. Moreover, at run-time the pheromone trails are locally as well as globally updated, and limited between lower and upper bounds. The proposed algorithm is experimented on a set of benchmark problems from the literature and compared with other metaheuristics.

Optimum Layout for Water Quality Monitoring Stations through Ant Colony Algorithm

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Amin Afshar

2006-09-01

Full Text Available Due to the high cost of monitoring systems, budget limitations, and high priority given to water quality control in municipal networks, especially for unexpected events, optimum location of monitoring stations has received considerable attention during the last decade. An optimization model needs to be developed for the desirable location of monitoring stations. This research attempts to develop such a model using Ant Colony Optimization (ACO algorithm and tires to verify it through a bench-mark classical example used in previous researches. Selection of ACO as optimizer was fully justified due to discrete decision space and extensive number of binary variables in modeling system. Diversity of the policies derived from ACO may facilitate the process of decision making considering the social, physical, and economical conditions.

An improved ant colony optimization algorithm with fault tolerance for job scheduling in grid computing systems.

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Hajara Idris

Full Text Available The Grid scheduler, schedules user jobs on the best available resource in terms of resource characteristics by optimizing job execution time. Resource failure in Grid is no longer an exception but a regular occurring event as resources are increasingly being used by the scientific community to solve computationally intensive problems which typically run for days or even months. It is therefore absolutely essential that these long-running applications are able to tolerate failures and avoid re-computations from scratch after resource failure has occurred, to satisfy the user's Quality of Service (QoS requirement. Job Scheduling with Fault Tolerance in Grid Computing using Ant Colony Optimization is proposed to ensure that jobs are executed successfully even when resource failure has occurred. The technique employed in this paper, is the use of resource failure rate, as well as checkpoint-based roll back recovery strategy. Check-pointing aims at reducing the amount of work that is lost upon failure of the system by immediately saving the state of the system. A comparison of the proposed approach with an existing Ant Colony Optimization (ACO algorithm is discussed. The experimental results of the implemented Fault Tolerance scheduling algorithm show that there is an improvement in the user's QoS requirement over the existing ACO algorithm, which has no fault tolerance integrated in it. The performance evaluation of the two algorithms was measured in terms of the three main scheduling performance metrics: makespan, throughput and average turnaround time.

Ant Colony Clustering Algorithm and Improved Markov Random Fusion Algorithm in Image Segmentation of Brain Images

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Guohua Zou

2016-12-01

Full Text Available New medical imaging technology, such as Computed Tomography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI, has been widely used in all aspects of medical diagnosis. The purpose of these imaging techniques is to obtain various qualitative and quantitative data of the patient comprehensively and accurately, and provide correct digital information for diagnosis, treatment planning and evaluation after surgery. MR has a good imaging diagnostic advantage for brain diseases. However, as the requirements of the brain image definition and quantitative analysis are always increasing, it is necessary to have better segmentation of MR brain images. The FCM (Fuzzy C-means algorithm is widely applied in image segmentation, but it has some shortcomings, such as long computation time and poor anti-noise capability. In this paper, firstly, the Ant Colony algorithm is used to determine the cluster centers and the number of FCM algorithm so as to improve its running speed. Then an improved Markov random field model is used to improve the algorithm, so that its antinoise ability can be improved. Experimental results show that the algorithm put forward in this paper has obvious advantages in image segmentation speed and segmentation effect.

Optic disc detection using ant colony optimization

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Dias, Marcy A.; Monteiro, Fernando C.

2012-09-01

The retinal fundus images are used in the treatment and diagnosis of several eye diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma. This paper proposes a new method to detect the optic disc (OD) automatically, due to the fact that the knowledge of the OD location is essential to the automatic analysis of retinal images. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is an optimization algorithm inspired by the foraging behaviour of some ant species that has been applied in image processing for edge detection. Recently, the ACO was used in fundus images to detect edges, and therefore, to segment the OD and other anatomical retinal structures. We present an algorithm for the detection of OD in the retina which takes advantage of the Gabor wavelet transform, entropy and ACO algorithm. Forty images of the retina from DRIVE database were used to evaluate the performance of our method.

Ant colony system (ACS with hybrid local search to solve vehicle routing problems

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Suphan Sodsoon

2016-02-01

Full Text Available This research applied an Ant Colony System algorithm with a Hybrid Local Search to solve Vehicle Routing Problems (VRP from a single depot when the customers’ requirements are known. VRP is an NP-hard optimization problem and has usually been successfully solved optimum by heuristics. A fleet of vehicles of a specific capacity are used to serve a number of customers at minimum cost, without violating the constraints of vehicle capacity. There are meta-heuristic approaches to solve these problems, such as Simulated Annealing, Genetic Algorithm, Tabu Search and the Ant Colony System algorithm. In this case a hybrid local search was used (Cross-Exchange, Or-Opt and 2-Opt algorithm with an Ant Colony System algorithm. The Experimental Design was tested on 7 various problems from the data set online in the OR-Library. There are five different problems in which customers are randomly distributed with the depot in an approximately central location. The customers were grouped into clusters. The results are evaluated in terms of optimal routes using optimal distances. The experimental results are compared with those obtained from meta-heuristics and they show that the proposed method outperforms six meta-heuristics in the literature.

Coupling ant colony and the degraded ceiling algorithm for the redundancy allocation problem of series-parallel systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nahas, Nabil; Nourelfath, Mustapha; Ait-Kadi, Daoud

2007-01-01

The redundancy allocation problem (RAP) is a well known NP-hard problem which involves the selection of elements and redundancy levels to maximize system reliability given various system-level constraints. As telecommunications and internet protocol networks, manufacturing and power systems are becoming more and more complex, while requiring short developments schedules and very high reliability, it is becoming increasingly important to develop efficient solutions to the RAP. This paper presents an efficient algorithm to solve this reliability optimization problem. The idea of a heuristic approach design is inspired from the ant colony meta-heuristic optimization method and the degraded ceiling local search technique. Our hybridization of the ant colony meta-heuristic with the degraded ceiling performs well and is competitive with the best-known heuristics for redundancy allocation. Numerical results for the 33 test problems from previous research are reported and compared. The solutions found by our approach are all better than or are in par with the well-known best solutions

Application of ant colony optimization in NPP classification fault location

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xie Chunli; Liu Yongkuo; Xia Hong

2009-01-01

Nuclear Power Plant is a highly complex structural system with high safety requirements. Fault location appears to be particularly important to enhance its safety. Ant Colony Optimization is a new type of optimization algorithm, which is used in the fault location and classification of nuclear power plants in this paper. Taking the main coolant system of the first loop as the study object, using VB6.0 programming technology, the NPP fault location system is designed, and is tested against the related data in the literature. Test results show that the ant colony optimization can be used in the accurate classification fault location in the nuclear power plants. (authors)

Image Edge Tracking via Ant Colony Optimization

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Ruowei; Wu, Hongkun; Liu, Shilong; Rahman, M. A.; Liu, Sanchi; Kwok, Ngai Ming

2018-04-01

A good edge plot should use continuous thin lines to describe the complete contour of the captured object. However, the detection of weak edges is a challenging task because of the associated low pixel intensities. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) has been employed by many researchers to address this problem. The algorithm is a meta-heuristic method developed by mimicking the natural behaviour of ants. It uses iterative searches to find the optimal solution that cannot be found via traditional optimization approaches. In this work, ACO is employed to track and repair broken edges obtained via conventional Sobel edge detector to produced a result with more connected edges.

An approach using quantum ant colony optimization applied to the problem of identification of nuclear power plant transients

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Silva, Marcio H.; Schirru, Roberto; Medeiros, Jose A.C.C.

2009-01-01

Using concepts and principles of the quantum computation, as the quantum bit and superposition of states, coupled with the biological metaphor of a colony of ants, used in the Ant Colony Optimization algorithm (ACO), Wang et al developed the Quantum Ant Colony Optimization (QACO). In this paper we present a modification of the algorithm proposed by Wang et al. While the original QACO was used just for simple benchmarks functions with, at the most, two dimensions, QACO A lfa was developed for application where the original QACO, due to its tendency to converge prematurely, does not obtain good results, as in complex multidimensional functions. Furthermore, to evaluate its behavior, both algorithms are applied to the real problem of identification of accidents in PWR nuclear power plants. (author)

Improved ant Colony Optimization for Virtual Teams Building in Collaborative Process Planning

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Yingying Su

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Virtual teams have been adopted by organizations to gain competitive advantages in this global economy. Virtual teams are a ubiquitous part of getting work done in almost every organization. For the purpose of building virtual teams in collaborative process planning, the method based on improved ant colony algorithm (IMACO was proposed. The concept of virtual team was illustrated and the necessity of building virtual teams in collaborative process planning was analyzed. The sub tasks with certain timing relationship were described and the model of building virtual teams in collaborative process planning was established, which was solved by improved ant colony algorithm. In this paper applications of the IMACO and ACO are compared and demonstrate that the use of the IMACO algorithm performs better. An example was studied to illustrate the effectiveness of the strategy.

Improving the Power Quality in Tehran Metro Line-Two Using the Ant Colony Algorithm

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H. Ehteshami

2017-12-01

Full Text Available This research aims to survey the improvement of power quality in Tehran metro line 2 using the ant colony algorithm and to investigate all the factors affecting the achievement of this goal. In order to put Tehran on the road of sustainable development, finding a solution for dealing with air pollution is essential. The use of public transportation, especially metro, is one of the ways to achieve this goal. Since the highest share of pollutants in Tehran belongs to cars and mobile sources, relative statistical indicators are estimated through assuming the effect of metro lines development and subsequently reduction of traffic on power quality index.

A universal optimization strategy for ant colony optimization algorithms based on the Physarum-inspired mathematical model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang, Zili; Gao, Chao; Liu, Yuxin; Qian, Tao

2014-01-01

Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms often fall into the local optimal solution and have lower search efficiency for solving the travelling salesman problem (TSP). According to these shortcomings, this paper proposes a universal optimization strategy for updating the pheromone matrix in the ACO algorithms. The new optimization strategy takes advantages of the unique feature of critical paths reserved in the process of evolving adaptive networks of the Physarum-inspired mathematical model (PMM). The optimized algorithms, denoted as PMACO algorithms, can enhance the amount of pheromone in the critical paths and promote the exploitation of the optimal solution. Experimental results in synthetic and real networks show that the PMACO algorithms are more efficient and robust than the traditional ACO algorithms, which are adaptable to solve the TSP with single or multiple objectives. Meanwhile, we further analyse the influence of parameters on the performance of the PMACO algorithms. Based on these analyses, the best values of these parameters are worked out for the TSP. (paper)

Improved Ant Colony Optimization for Seafood Product Delivery Routing Problem

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Baozhen Yao

2014-02-01

Full Text Available This paper deals with a real-life vehicle delivery routing problem, which is a seafood product delivery routing problem. Considering the features of the seafood product delivery routing problem, this paper formulated this problem as a multi-depot open vehicle routing problem. Since the multi-depot open vehicle routing problem is a very complex problem, a method is used to reduce the complexity of the problem by changing the multi-depot open vehicle routing problem into an open vehicle routing problem with a dummy central depot in this paper. Then, ant colony optimization is used to solve the problem. To improve the performance of the algorithm, crossover operation and some adaptive strategies are used. Finally, the computational results for the benchmark problems of the multi-depot vehicle routing problem indicate that the proposed ant colony optimization is an effective method to solve the multi-depot vehicle routing problem. Furthermore, the computation results of the seafood product delivery problem from Dalian, China also suggest that the proposed ant colony optimization is feasible to solve the seafood product delivery routing problem.

Simulated Annealing-Based Ant Colony Algorithm for Tugboat Scheduling Optimization

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Qi Xu

2012-01-01

Full Text Available As the “first service station” for ships in the whole port logistics system, the tugboat operation system is one of the most important systems in port logistics. This paper formulated the tugboat scheduling problem as a multiprocessor task scheduling problem (MTSP after analyzing the characteristics of tugboat operation. The model considers factors of multianchorage bases, different operation modes, and three stages of operations (berthing/shifting-berth/unberthing. The objective is to minimize the total operation times for all tugboats in a port. A hybrid simulated annealing-based ant colony algorithm is proposed to solve the addressed problem. By the numerical experiments without the shifting-berth operation, the effectiveness was verified, and the fact that more effective sailing may be possible if tugboats return to the anchorage base timely was pointed out; by the experiments with the shifting-berth operation, one can see that the objective is most sensitive to the proportion of the shifting-berth operation, influenced slightly by the tugboat deployment scheme, and not sensitive to the handling operation times.

Advanced Harmony Search with Ant Colony Optimization for Solving the Traveling Salesman Problem

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Ho-Yoeng Yun

2013-01-01

Full Text Available We propose a novel heuristic algorithm based on the methods of advanced Harmony Search and Ant Colony Optimization (AHS-ACO to effectively solve the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP. The TSP, in general, is well known as an NP-complete problem, whose computational complexity increases exponentially by increasing the number of cities. In our algorithm, Ant Colony Optimization (ACO is used to search the local optimum in the solution space, followed by the use of the Harmony Search to escape the local optimum determined by the ACO and to move towards a global optimum. Experiments were performed to validate the efficiency of our algorithm through a comparison with other algorithms and the optimum solutions presented in the TSPLIB. The results indicate that our algorithm is capable of generating the optimum solution for most instances in the TSPLIB; moreover, our algorithm found better solutions in two cases (kroB100 and pr144 when compared with the optimum solution presented in the TSPLIB.

TACD: a transportable ant colony discrimination model for corporate bankruptcy prediction

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Lalbakhsh, Pooia; Chen, Yi-Ping Phoebe

2017-05-01

This paper presents a transportable ant colony discrimination strategy (TACD) to predict corporate bankruptcy, a topic of vital importance that is attracting increasing interest in the field of economics. The proposed algorithm uses financial ratios to build a binary prediction model for companies with the two statuses of bankrupt and non-bankrupt. The algorithm takes advantage of an improved version of continuous ant colony optimisation (CACO) at the core, which is used to create an accurate, simple and understandable linear model for discrimination. This also enables the algorithm to work with continuous values, leading to more efficient learning and adaption by avoiding data discretisation. We conduct a comprehensive performance evaluation on three real-world data sets under a stratified cross-validation strategy. In three different scenarios, TACD is compared with 11 other bankruptcy prediction strategies. We also discuss the efficiency of the attribute selection methods used in the experiments. In addition to its simplicity and understandability, statistical significance tests prove the efficiency of TACD against the other prediction algorithms in both measures of AUC and accuracy.

Ant Colony Optimization for Control

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Van Ast, J.M.

2010-01-01

The very basis of this thesis is the collective behavior of ants in colonies. Ants are an excellent example of how rather simple behavior on a local level can lead to complex behavior on a global level that is beneficial for the individuals. The key in the self-organization of ants is communication

Clarifying Cutting and Sewing Processes with Due Windows Using an Effective Ant Colony Optimization

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Rong-Hwa Huang

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The cutting and sewing process is a traditional flow shop scheduling problem in the real world. This two-stage flexible flow shop is often commonly associated with manufacturing in the fashion and textiles industry. Many investigations have demonstrated that the ant colony optimization (ACO algorithm is effective and efficient for solving scheduling problems. This work applies a novel effective ant colony optimization (EACO algorithm to solve two-stage flexible flow shop scheduling problems and thereby minimize earliness, tardiness, and makespan. Computational results reveal that for both small and large problems, EACO is more effective and robust than both the particle swarm optimization (PSO algorithm and the ACO algorithm. Importantly, this work demonstrates that EACO can solve complex scheduling problems in an acceptable period of time.

DESIGNING DAILY PATROL ROUTES FOR POLICING BASED ON ANT COLONY ALGORITHM

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H. Chen

2015-07-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we address the problem of planning police patrol routes to regularly cover street segments of high crime density (hotspots with limited police forces. A good patrolling strategy is required to minimise the average time lag between two consecutive visits to hotspots, as well as coordinating multiple patrollers and imparting unpredictability in patrol routes. Previous studies have designed different police patrol strategies for routing police patrol, but these strategies have difficulty in generalising to real patrolling and meeting various requirements. In this research we develop a new police patrolling strategy based on Bayesian method and ant colony algorithm. In this strategy, virtual marker (pheromone is laid to mark the visiting history of each crime hotspot, and patrollers continuously decide which hotspot to patrol next based on pheromone level and other variables. Simulation results using real data testifies the effective, scalable, unpredictable and extensible nature of this strategy.

Effective ANT based Routing Algorithm for Data Replication in MANETs

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N.J. Nithya Nandhini

2013-12-01

Full Text Available In mobile ad hoc network, the nodes often move and keep on change its topology. Data packets can be forwarded from one node to another on demand. To increase the data accessibility data are replicated at nodes and made as sharable to other nodes. Assuming that all mobile host cooperative to share their memory and allow forwarding the data packets. But in reality, all nodes do not share the resources for the benefits of others. These nodes may act selfishly to share memory and to forward the data packets. This paper focuses on selfishness of mobile nodes in replica allocation and routing protocol based on Ant colony algorithm to improve the efficiency. The Ant colony algorithm is used to reduce the overhead in the mobile network, so that it is more efficient to access the data than with other routing protocols. This result shows the efficiency of ant based routing algorithm in the replication allocation.

Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problem Using an Improved Ant Colony Optimization

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Lei Wang

2017-01-01

Full Text Available As an extension of the classical job shop scheduling problem, the flexible job shop scheduling problem (FJSP plays an important role in real production systems. In FJSP, an operation is allowed to be processed on more than one alternative machine. It has been proven to be a strongly NP-hard problem. Ant colony optimization (ACO has been proven to be an efficient approach for dealing with FJSP. However, the basic ACO has two main disadvantages including low computational efficiency and local optimum. In order to overcome these two disadvantages, an improved ant colony optimization (IACO is proposed to optimize the makespan for FJSP. The following aspects are done on our improved ant colony optimization algorithm: select machine rule problems, initialize uniform distributed mechanism for ants, change pheromone’s guiding mechanism, select node method, and update pheromone’s mechanism. An actual production instance and two sets of well-known benchmark instances are tested and comparisons with some other approaches verify the effectiveness of the proposed IACO. The results reveal that our proposed IACO can provide better solution in a reasonable computational time.

An Effective Hybrid Routing Algorithm in WSN: Ant Colony Optimization in combination with Hop Count Minimization

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Ailian Jiang

2018-03-01

Full Text Available Low cost, high reliability and easy maintenance are key criteria in the design of routing protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSNs. This paper investigates the existing ant colony optimization (ACO-based WSN routing algorithms and the minimum hop count WSN routing algorithms by reviewing their strengths and weaknesses. We also consider the critical factors of WSNs, such as energy constraint of sensor nodes, network load balancing and dynamic network topology. Then we propose a hybrid routing algorithm that integrates ACO and a minimum hop count scheme. The proposed algorithm is able to find the optimal routing path with minimal total energy consumption and balanced energy consumption on each node. The algorithm has unique superiority in terms of searching for the optimal path, balancing the network load and the network topology maintenance. The WSN model and the proposed algorithm have been implemented using C++. Extensive simulation experimental results have shown that our algorithm outperforms several other WSN routing algorithms on such aspects that include the rate of convergence, the success rate in searching for global optimal solution, and the network lifetime.

A hybrid of ant colony optimization and artificial bee colony algorithm for probabilistic optimal placement and sizing of distributed energy resources

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kefayat, M.; Lashkar Ara, A.; Nabavi Niaki, S.A.

2015-01-01

Highlights: • A probabilistic optimization framework incorporated with uncertainty is proposed. • A hybrid optimization approach combining ACO and ABC algorithms is proposed. • The problem is to deal with technical, environmental and economical aspects. • A fuzzy interactive approach is incorporated to solve the multi-objective problem. • Several strategies are implemented to compare with literature methods. - Abstract: In this paper, a hybrid configuration of ant colony optimization (ACO) with artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm called hybrid ACO–ABC algorithm is presented for optimal location and sizing of distributed energy resources (DERs) (i.e., gas turbine, fuel cell, and wind energy) on distribution systems. The proposed algorithm is a combined strategy based on the discrete (location optimization) and continuous (size optimization) structures to achieve advantages of the global and local search ability of ABC and ACO algorithms, respectively. Also, in the proposed algorithm, a multi-objective ABC is used to produce a set of non-dominated solutions which store in the external archive. The objectives consist of minimizing power losses, total emissions produced by substation and resources, total electrical energy cost, and improving the voltage stability. In order to investigate the impact of the uncertainty in the output of the wind energy and load demands, a probabilistic load flow is necessary. In this study, an efficient point estimate method (PEM) is employed to solve the optimization problem in a stochastic environment. The proposed algorithm is tested on the IEEE 33- and 69-bus distribution systems. The results demonstrate the potential and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in comparison with those of other evolutionary optimization methods

Ant colony optimisation for scheduling of flexible job shop with multi-resources requirements

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Kalinowski Krzysztof

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The paper presents application of ant colony optimisation algorithm for scheduling multi-resources operations in flexible job shop type of production systems. Operations that require the participation of two or more resources are common in industrial practice, when planning are subject not only machines, but also other additional resources (personnel, tools, etc.. Resource requirements of operation are indicated indirectly by resource groups. The most important parameters of the resource model and resource groups are also described. A basic assumptions for ant colony algorithm used for scheduling in the considered model with multiresources requirements of operations is discussed. The main result of the research is the schema of metaheuristic that enables searching best-score solutions in manufacturing systems satisfying presented constraints.

[Application of rational ant colony optimization to improve the reproducibility degree of laser three-dimensional copy].

Science.gov (United States)

Cui, Xiao-Yan; Huo, Zhong-Gang; Xin, Zhong-Hua; Tian, Xiao; Zhang, Xiao-Dong

2013-07-01

Three-dimensional (3D) copying of artificial ears and pistol printing are pushing laser three-dimensional copying technique to a new page. Laser three-dimensional scanning is a fresh field in laser application, and plays an irreplaceable part in three-dimensional copying. Its accuracy is the highest among all present copying techniques. Reproducibility degree marks the agreement of copied object with the original object on geometry, being the most important index property in laser three-dimensional copying technique. In the present paper, the error of laser three-dimensional copying was analyzed. The conclusion is that the data processing to the point cloud of laser scanning is the key technique to reduce the error and increase the reproducibility degree. The main innovation of this paper is as follows. On the basis of traditional ant colony optimization, rational ant colony optimization algorithm proposed by the author was applied to the laser three-dimensional copying as a new algorithm, and was put into practice. Compared with customary algorithm, rational ant colony optimization algorithm shows distinct advantages in data processing of laser three-dimensional copying, reducing the error and increasing the reproducibility degree of the copy.

DESIGNING APPLICATION OF ANT COLONY SYSTEM ALGORITHM FOR THE SHORTEST ROUTE OF BANDA ACEH CITY AND ACEH BESAR REGENCY TOURISM BY USING GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE MATLAB

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Durisman Durisman

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Banda Aceh city and Aceh Besar Regency are two of the leading tourism areas located in the province of Aceh. For travelling, there are some important things to be considered, such as determining schedule and distance of tourism. Every tourist certainly chooses the shortest route to reach the destination since it can save time, energy, and money. The purpose of this reserach is to develop a method that can be used in calculating the shortest route and applied to the tourism of Banda Aceh city and Aceh Besar regency. In this reserach, Ant Colony Optimization algorithm is used to determine the shortest route to tourism of Banda Aceh city and Aceh Besar regency. From the analysis made by using both manual calculation and  GUI MATLAB program application test, the shortest route can be obtained with a minimum distance of 120.85 km in one travel. Based on the test result, the application for tourism (in Banda Aceh city and Aceh Besar regency shortest route searching built by utilizing the Ant Colony Optimization algorithm can find optimal route.  Keyword: tourism, the shortest route, Ant Colony Optimization

Dual ant colony operational modal analysis parameter estimation method

Science.gov (United States)

Sitarz, Piotr; Powałka, Bartosz

2018-01-01

Operational Modal Analysis (OMA) is a common technique used to examine the dynamic properties of a system. Contrary to experimental modal analysis, the input signal is generated in object ambient environment. Operational modal analysis mainly aims at determining the number of pole pairs and at estimating modal parameters. Many methods are used for parameter identification. Some methods operate in time while others in frequency domain. The former use correlation functions, the latter - spectral density functions. However, while some methods require the user to select poles from a stabilisation diagram, others try to automate the selection process. Dual ant colony operational modal analysis parameter estimation method (DAC-OMA) presents a new approach to the problem, avoiding issues involved in the stabilisation diagram. The presented algorithm is fully automated. It uses deterministic methods to define the interval of estimated parameters, thus reducing the problem to optimisation task which is conducted with dedicated software based on ant colony optimisation algorithm. The combination of deterministic methods restricting parameter intervals and artificial intelligence yields very good results, also for closely spaced modes and significantly varied mode shapes within one measurement point.

Using pleometrosis (multiple queens) and pupae transplantation to boost weaver ant (Oecophylla smaragdina) colony growth in ant nurseries

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Offenberg, Hans Joachim; Nielsen, Mogens Gissel; Peng, Renkang

2011-01-01

Weaver ants (Oecophylla spp.) are increasingly being used for biocontrol and are targeted for future production of insect protein in ant farms. An efficient production of live ant colonies may facilitate the utilization of these ants but the production of mature colonies is hampered by the long...... and no transplantation. Thus, in ant nurseries the use of multiple queens during nest founding as well as transplantation of pupae from foreign colonies may be utilised to decrease the time it takes to produce a colony ready for implementation....

A Hybrid Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for the Extended Capacitated Arc Routing Problem.

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Li-Ning Xing; Rohlfshagen, P; Ying-Wu Chen; Xin Yao

2011-08-01

The capacitated arc routing problem (CARP) is representative of numerous practical applications, and in order to widen its scope, we consider an extended version of this problem that entails both total service time and fixed investment costs. We subsequently propose a hybrid ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm (HACOA) to solve instances of the extended CARP. This approach is characterized by the exploitation of heuristic information, adaptive parameters, and local optimization techniques: Two kinds of heuristic information, arc cluster information and arc priority information, are obtained continuously from the solutions sampled to guide the subsequent optimization process. The adaptive parameters ease the burden of choosing initial values and facilitate improved and more robust results. Finally, local optimization, based on the two-opt heuristic, is employed to improve the overall performance of the proposed algorithm. The resulting HACOA is tested on four sets of benchmark problems containing a total of 87 instances with up to 140 nodes and 380 arcs. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, some existing capacitated arc routing heuristics are extended to cope with the extended version of this problem; the experimental results indicate that the proposed ACO method outperforms these heuristics.

Proposed algorithm to improve job shop production scheduling using ant colony optimization method

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Pakpahan, Eka KA; Kristina, Sonna; Setiawan, Ari

2017-12-01

This paper deals with the determination of job shop production schedule on an automatic environment. On this particular environment, machines and material handling system are integrated and controlled by a computer center where schedule were created and then used to dictate the movement of parts and the operations at each machine. This setting is usually designed to have an unmanned production process for a specified interval time. We consider here parts with various operations requirement. Each operation requires specific cutting tools. These parts are to be scheduled on machines each having identical capability, meaning that each machine is equipped with a similar set of cutting tools therefore is capable of processing any operation. The availability of a particular machine to process a particular operation is determined by the remaining life time of its cutting tools. We proposed an algorithm based on the ant colony optimization method and embedded them on matlab software to generate production schedule which minimize the total processing time of the parts (makespan). We test the algorithm on data provided by real industry and the process shows a very short computation time. This contributes a lot to the flexibility and timelines targeted on an automatic environment.

Scalable Clustering of High-Dimensional Data Technique Using SPCM with Ant Colony Optimization Intelligence

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Thenmozhi Srinivasan

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Clusters of high-dimensional data techniques are emerging, according to data noisy and poor quality challenges. This paper has been developed to cluster data using high-dimensional similarity based PCM (SPCM, with ant colony optimization intelligence which is effective in clustering nonspatial data without getting knowledge about cluster number from the user. The PCM becomes similarity based by using mountain method with it. Though this is efficient clustering, it is checked for optimization using ant colony algorithm with swarm intelligence. Thus the scalable clustering technique is obtained and the evaluation results are checked with synthetic datasets.

Topology optimum design of compliant mechanisms using modified ant colony optimization

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Yoo, Kwang Seon; Han, Seog Young [Hanyang University, Seoul (Korea, Republic of)

2015-08-15

A Modified ant colony optimization (MACO) algorithm was suggested for topology optimal design of compliant mechanisms since standard ACO cannot provide an appropriate optimal topology. In order to improve computational efficiency and suitability of standard ACO algorithm in topology optimization for compliant mechanisms, a continuous variable, called the 'Element contribution significance (ECS),'is employed, which serves to replace the positions of ants in the standard ACO algorithm, and assess the importance of each element in the optimization process. MACO algorithm was applied to topology optimizations of both linear and geometrically nonlinear compliant mechanisms using three kinds of objective functions, and optimized topologies were compared each other. From the comparisons, it was concluded that MACO algorithm can effectively be applied to topology optimizations of linear and geometrically nonlinear compliant mechanisms, and the ratio of Mutual potential energy (MPE) to Strain energy (SE) type of objective function is the best for topology optimal design of compliant mechanisms.

Solving a Closed-Loop Location-Inventory-Routing Problem with Mixed Quality Defects Returns in E-Commerce by Hybrid Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

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Shuai Deng

2016-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a closed-loop location-inventory-routing problem model considering both quality defect returns and nondefect returns in e-commerce supply chain system. The objective is to minimize the total cost produced in both forward and reverse logistics networks. We propose a combined optimization algorithm named hybrid ant colony optimization algorithm (HACO to address this model that is an NP-hard problem. Our experimental results show that the proposed HACO is considerably efficient and effective in solving this model.

Ant colony optimisation-direct cover: a hybrid ant colony direct cover technique for multi-level synthesis of multiple-valued logic functions

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Abd-El-Barr, Mostafa

2010-12-01

The use of non-binary (multiple-valued) logic in the synthesis of digital systems can lead to savings in chip area. Advances in very large scale integration (VLSI) technology have enabled the successful implementation of multiple-valued logic (MVL) circuits. A number of heuristic algorithms for the synthesis of (near) minimal sum-of products (two-level) realisation of MVL functions have been reported in the literature. The direct cover (DC) technique is one such algorithm. The ant colony optimisation (ACO) algorithm is a meta-heuristic that uses constructive greediness to explore a large solution space in finding (near) optimal solutions. The ACO algorithm mimics the ant's behaviour in the real world in using the shortest path to reach food sources. We have previously introduced an ACO-based heuristic for the synthesis of two-level MVL functions. In this article, we introduce the ACO-DC hybrid technique for the synthesis of multi-level MVL functions. The basic idea is to use an ant to decompose a given MVL function into a number of levels and then synthesise each sub-function using a DC-based technique. The results obtained using the proposed approach are compared to those obtained using existing techniques reported in the literature. A benchmark set consisting of 50,000 randomly generated 2-variable 4-valued functions is used in the comparison. The results obtained using the proposed ACO-DC technique are shown to produce efficient realisation in terms of the average number of gates (as a measure of chip area) needed for the synthesis of a given MVL function.

Intelligent Hypothermia Care System using Ant ‎Colony Optimization for Rules Prediction

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Hayder Naser Khraibet

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Intelligent Hypothermia Care System (IHCS is an intelligence system uses set of methodologies, algorithms, architectures and processes to determine where patients in a postoperative recovery area must be sent. Hypothermia is a significant concern after surgery. This paper utilizes the classification task in data mining to propose an intelligent technique to predict where to send a patient after surgery: intensive care unit, general floor or home. To achieve this goal, this paper evaluates the performance of decision tree algorithm, exemplifying the deterministic approach, against the AntMiner algorithm, exemplifying the heuristic approach, to choose the best approach in detecting the patient’s status. Results show the outperformance of the heuristic approach. The implication of this proposal will be twofold: in hypothermia treatment and in the application of ant colony optimization

Targeted removal of ant colonies in ecological experiments, using hot water.

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Tschinkel, Walter R; King, Joshua R

2007-01-01

Ecological experiments on fire ants cannot, or should not, use poison baits to eliminate the fire ants because such baits are not specific to fire ants, or even to ants. Hot water is an extremely effective and specific killing agent for fire ant colonies, but producing large amounts of hot water in the field, and making the production apparatus mobile have been problematical. The construction and use of a charcoal-fired kiln made from a 55-gal. oil drum lined with a sand-fireclay mixture is described. An automobile heater fan powered from a 12-v battery provided a draft. Dual bilge pumps pumped water from a large tank through a long coil of copper tubing within the kiln to produce 4 to 5 l. of hot water per min. The hot water was collected in 20 l. buckets and poured into fire ant nests previously opened by piercing with a stick. The entire assembly was transported in and operated from the back of a pickup truck. Five experimental plots containing 32 to 38 colonies of the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, Buren (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), were treated with hot water over a period of two years. All colonies on the treatment plots were treated twice with hot water early in 2004, reducing their numbers to zero. However new colonies were formed, and mature colonies expanded into the plots. A third treatment was made in the spring of 2005, after which fire ant populations were suppressed for over a year. Whereas the 5 control plots contained a total of 166 mostly large colonies, the 5 treatment plots contained no live colonies at all. Averaged over a two-year period, a 70% reduction in total number of colonies was achieved (P ants.

Inverse estimation of the spheroidal particle size distribution using Ant Colony Optimization algorithms in multispectral extinction technique

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He, Zhenzong; Qi, Hong; Wang, Yuqing; Ruan, Liming

2014-10-01

Four improved Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithms, i.e. the probability density function based ACO (PDF-ACO) algorithm, the Region ACO (RACO) algorithm, Stochastic ACO (SACO) algorithm and Homogeneous ACO (HACO) algorithm, are employed to estimate the particle size distribution (PSD) of the spheroidal particles. The direct problems are solved by the extended Anomalous Diffraction Approximation (ADA) and the Lambert-Beer law. Three commonly used monomodal distribution functions i.e. the Rosin-Rammer (R-R) distribution function, the normal (N-N) distribution function, and the logarithmic normal (L-N) distribution function are estimated under dependent model. The influence of random measurement errors on the inverse results is also investigated. All the results reveal that the PDF-ACO algorithm is more accurate than the other three ACO algorithms and can be used as an effective technique to investigate the PSD of the spheroidal particles. Furthermore, the Johnson's SB (J-SB) function and the modified beta (M-β) function are employed as the general distribution functions to retrieve the PSD of spheroidal particles using PDF-ACO algorithm. The investigation shows a reasonable agreement between the original distribution function and the general distribution function when only considering the variety of the length of the rotational semi-axis.

Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for Centralized Dynamic Channel Allocation in Multi-Cell OFDMA Systems

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Kim, Hyo-Su; Kim, Dong-Hoi

The dynamic channel allocation (DCA) scheme in multi-cell systems causes serious inter-cell interference (ICI) problem to some existing calls when channels for new calls are allocated. Such a problem can be addressed by advanced centralized DCA design that is able to minimize ICI. Thus, in this paper, a centralized DCA is developed for the downlink of multi-cell orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems with full spectral reuse. However, in practice, as the search space of channel assignment for centralized DCA scheme in multi-cell systems grows exponentially with the increase of the number of required calls, channels, and cells, it becomes an NP-hard problem and is currently too complicated to find an optimum channel allocation. In this paper, we propose an ant colony optimization (ACO) based DCA scheme using a low-complexity ACO algorithm which is a kind of heuristic algorithm in order to solve the aforementioned problem. Simulation results demonstrate significant performance improvements compared to the existing schemes in terms of the grade of service (GoS) performance and the forced termination probability of existing calls without degrading the system performance of the average throughput.

Function-Oriented Networking and On-Demand Routing System in Network Using Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

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Young-Bo Sim

2017-11-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we proposed and developed Function-Oriented Networking (FON, a platform for network users. It has a different philosophy as opposed to technologies for network managers of Software-Defined Networking technology, OpenFlow. It is a technology that can immediately reflect the demands of the network users in the network, unlike the existing OpenFlow and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV, which do not reflect directly the needs of the network users. It allows the network user to determine the policy of the direct network, so it can be applied more precisely than the policy applied by the network manager. This is expected to increase the satisfaction of the service users when the network users try to provide new services. We developed FON function that performs on-demand routing for Low-Delay Required service. We analyzed the characteristics of the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO algorithm and found that the algorithm is suitable for low-delay required services. It was also the first in the world to implement the routing software using ACO Algorithm in the real Ethernet network. In order to improve the routing performance, several algorithms of the ACO Algorithm have been developed to enable faster path search-routing and path recovery. The relationship between the network performance index and the ACO routing parameters is derived, and the results are compared and analyzed. Through this, it was possible to develop the ACO algorithm.

A Stochastic Inversion Method for Potential Field Data: Ant Colony Optimization

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Liu, Shuang; Hu, Xiangyun; Liu, Tianyou

2014-07-01

Simulating natural ants' foraging behavior, the ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm performs excellently in combinational optimization problems, for example the traveling salesman problem and the quadratic assignment problem. However, the ACO is seldom used to inverted for gravitational and magnetic data. On the basis of the continuous and multi-dimensional objective function for potential field data optimization inversion, we present the node partition strategy ACO (NP-ACO) algorithm for inversion of model variables of fixed shape and recovery of physical property distributions of complicated shape models. We divide the continuous variables into discrete nodes and ants directionally tour the nodes by use of transition probabilities. We update the pheromone trails by use of Gaussian mapping between the objective function value and the quantity of pheromone. It can analyze the search results in real time and promote the rate of convergence and precision of inversion. Traditional mapping, including the ant-cycle system, weaken the differences between ant individuals and lead to premature convergence. We tested our method by use of synthetic data and real data from scenarios involving gravity and magnetic anomalies. The inverted model variables and recovered physical property distributions were in good agreement with the true values. The ACO algorithm for binary representation imaging and full imaging can recover sharper physical property distributions than traditional linear inversion methods. The ACO has good optimization capability and some excellent characteristics, for example robustness, parallel implementation, and portability, compared with other stochastic metaheuristics.

A nuclear reactor core fuel reload optimization using artificial ant colony connective networks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lima, Alan M.M. de; Schirru, Roberto; Carvalho da Silva, Fernando; Medeiros, Jose Antonio Carlos Canedo

2008-01-01

The core of a nuclear Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) may be reloaded every time the fuel burn-up is such that it is not more possible to maintain the reactor operating at nominal power. The nuclear core fuel reload optimization problem consists in finding a pattern of burned-up and fresh-fuel assemblies that maximize the number of full operational days. This is an NP-Hard problem, meaning that complexity grows exponentially with the number of fuel assemblies in the core. Moreover, the problem is non-linear and its search space is highly discontinuous and multi-modal. Ant Colony System (ACS) is an optimization algorithm based on artificial ants that uses the reinforcement learning technique. The ACS was originally developed to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), which is conceptually similar to the nuclear core fuel reload problem. In this work a parallel computational system based on the ACS, called Artificial Ant Colony Networks is introduced to solve the core fuel reload optimization problem

A nuclear reactor core fuel reload optimization using artificial ant colony connective networks

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lima, Alan M.M. de [Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, PEN/COPPE - UFRJ, Ilha do Fundao s/n, CEP 21945-970 Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)], E-mail: alanmmlima@yahoo.com.br; Schirru, Roberto [Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, PEN/COPPE - UFRJ, Ilha do Fundao s/n, CEP 21945-970 Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)], E-mail: schirru@lmp.ufrj.br; Carvalho da Silva, Fernando [Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, PEN/COPPE - UFRJ, Ilha do Fundao s/n, CEP 21945-970 Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)], E-mail: fernando@con.ufrj.br; Medeiros, Jose Antonio Carlos Canedo [Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, PEN/COPPE - UFRJ, Ilha do Fundao s/n, CEP 21945-970 Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)], E-mail: canedo@lmp.ufrj.br

2008-09-15

The core of a nuclear Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) may be reloaded every time the fuel burn-up is such that it is not more possible to maintain the reactor operating at nominal power. The nuclear core fuel reload optimization problem consists in finding a pattern of burned-up and fresh-fuel assemblies that maximize the number of full operational days. This is an NP-Hard problem, meaning that complexity grows exponentially with the number of fuel assemblies in the core. Moreover, the problem is non-linear and its search space is highly discontinuous and multi-modal. Ant Colony System (ACS) is an optimization algorithm based on artificial ants that uses the reinforcement learning technique. The ACS was originally developed to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), which is conceptually similar to the nuclear core fuel reload problem. In this work a parallel computational system based on the ACS, called Artificial Ant Colony Networks is introduced to solve the core fuel reload optimization problem.

Dealing with water deficit in Atta ant colonies: large ants scout for water while small ants transport it

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Antonio Carlos Da-Silva

2012-07-01

Leafcutter ants (Atta sexdens rubropilosa (Forel 1908 have an elaborate social organization, complete with caste divisions. Activities carried out by specialist groups contribute to the overall success and survival of the colony when it is confronted with environmental challenges such as dehydration. Ants detect variations in humidity inside the nest and react by activating several types of behavior that enhance water uptake and decrease water loss, but it is not clear whether or not a single caste collects water regardless of the cost of bringing this resource back to the colony. Accordingly, we investigated water collection activities in three colonies of Atta sexdens rubropilosa experimentally exposed to water stress. Specifically, we analyzed whether or not the same ant caste foraged for water, regardless of the absolute energetic cost (distance of transporting this resource back to the colony. Our experimental design offered water sources at 0 m, 1 m and 10 m from the nest. We studied the body size of ants near the water sources from the initial offer of water (time  =  0 to 120 min, and tested for specialization. We observed a reduction in the average size and variance of ants that corroborated the specialization hypothesis. Although the temporal course of specialization changed with distance, the final outcome was similar among distances. Thus, we conclude that, for this species, a specialist (our use of the word “specialist” does not mean exclusive task force is responsible for collecting water, regardless of the cost of transporting water back to the colony.

Survey on Recent Research and Implementation of Ant Colony Optimization in Various Engineering Applications

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Mohan B. Chandra

2011-08-01

Full Text Available Ant colony optimization (ACO takes inspiration from the foraging behaviour of real ant species. This ACO exploits a similar mechanism for solving optimization problems for the various engineering field of study. Many successful implementations using ACO are now available in many applications. This paper reviewing varies systematic approach on recent research and implementation of ACO. Finally it presents the experimental result of ACO which is applied for routing problem and compared with existing algorithms.

Calibration of Water Supply Systems Based on Ant Colony Optimization

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Mahmoud Faghfoor Maghrebi

2013-03-01

Full Text Available Leakage is one of the main problems in the water supply systems and due to the limitations in water supply and its costly process, reduction of leak in water distribution networks can be considered as one of the main goals of the water supply authorities. One of the leak detection techniques in water distribution system is the usage of the recorded node pressures at some locations to calibrate the whole system node pressures. Calibration process is accomplished by the optimization of a constrained objective function. Therefore, in addition to performing a hydraulic analysis of the network, application of an optimization technique is needed. In the current paper, a comparsion between the ant colony and genetic algorithm methodes, in calibration of the node pressures and leak detections was investigated. To examine the workability and the way of leak detection, analysis of the network with an assumed leak was carried out. The results showed that the effectiveness of the ant colony optimization in the detection of the position and magnitude of leak in a water network.

Application of the ant colony search algorithm to reactive power pricing in an open electricity market

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ketabi, Abbas; Alibabaee, Ahmad; Feuillet, R.

2010-01-01

Reactive power management is essential to transfer real energy and support power system security. Developing an accurate and feasible method for reactive power pricing is important in the electricity market. In conventional optimal power flow models the production cost of reactive power was ignored. In this paper, the production cost of reactive power and investment cost of capacitor banks were included into the objective function of the OPF problem. Then, using ant colony search algorithm, the optimal problem was solved. Marginal price theory was used for calculation of the cost of active and reactive power at each bus in competitive electric markets. Application of the proposed method on IEEE 14-bus system confirms its validity and effectiveness. Results from several case studies show clearly the effects of various factors on reactive power price. (author)

Solving the Traveling Salesman Problem Based on The Genetic Reactive Bone Route Algorithm whit Ant Colony System

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Majid Yousefikhoshbakht

2016-07-01

Full Text Available The TSP is considered one of the most well-known combinatorial optimization tasks and researchers have paid so much attention to the TSP for many years. In this problem, a salesman starts to move from an arbitrary place called depot and after visits all of the nodes, finally comes back to the depot. The objective is to minimize the total distance traveled by the salesman.  Because this problem is a non-deterministic polynomial (NP-hard problem in nature, a hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm called REACSGA is used for solving the TSP. In REACSGA, a reactive bone route algorithm that uses the ant colony system (ACS for generating initial diversified solutions and the genetic algorithm (GA as an improved procedure are applied. Since the performance of the Metaheuristic algorithms is significantly influenced by their parameters, Taguchi Method is used to set the parameters of the proposed algorithm. The proposed algorithm is tested on several standard instances involving 24 to 318 nodes from the literature. The computational result shows that the results of the proposed algorithm are competitive with other metaheuristic algorithms for solving the TSP in terms of better quality of solution and computational time respectively. In addition, the proposed REACSGA is significantly efficient and finds closely the best known solutions for most of the instances in which thirteen best known solutions are also found.

Ant colony optimization techniques for the hamiltonian p-median problem

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M. Zohrehbandian

2010-12-01

Full Text Available Location-Routing problems involve locating a number of facilitiesamong candidate sites and establishing delivery routes to a set of users in such a way that the total system cost is minimized. A special case of these problems is Hamiltonian p-Median problem (HpMP. This research applies the metaheuristic method of ant colony optimization (ACO to solve the HpMP. Modifications are made to the ACO algorithm used to solve the traditional vehicle routing problem (VRP in order to allow the search of the optimal solution of the HpMP. Regarding this metaheuristic algorithm a computational experiment is reported as well.

Gas ultrasonic flow rate measurement through genetic-ant colony optimization based on the ultrasonic pulse received signal model

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Hou, Huirang; Zheng, Dandan; Nie, Laixiao

2015-04-01

For gas ultrasonic flowmeters, the signals received by ultrasonic sensors are susceptible to noise interference. If signals are mingled with noise, a large error in flow measurement can be caused by triggering mistakenly using the traditional double-threshold method. To solve this problem, genetic-ant colony optimization (GACO) based on the ultrasonic pulse received signal model is proposed. Furthermore, in consideration of the real-time performance of the flow measurement system, the improvement of processing only the first three cycles of the received signals rather than the whole signal is proposed. Simulation results show that the GACO algorithm has the best estimation accuracy and ant-noise ability compared with the genetic algorithm, ant colony optimization, double-threshold and enveloped zero-crossing. Local convergence doesn’t appear with the GACO algorithm until -10 dB. For the GACO algorithm, the converging accuracy and converging speed and the amount of computation are further improved when using the first three cycles (called GACO-3cycles). Experimental results involving actual received signals show that the accuracy of single-gas ultrasonic flow rate measurement can reach 0.5% with GACO-3 cycles, which is better than with the double-threshold method.

Analysis of Ant Colony Optimization and Population-Based Evolutionary Algorithms on Dynamic Problems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lissovoi, Andrei

the dynamic optimum for finite alphabets up to size μ, while MMAS is able to do so for any finite alphabet size. Parallel Evolutionary Algorithms on Maze. We prove that while a (1 + λ) EA is unable to track the optimum of the dynamic fitness function Maze for offspring population size up to λ = O(n1-ε......This thesis presents new running time analyses of nature-inspired algorithms on various dynamic problems. It aims to identify and analyse the features of algorithms and problem classes which allow efficient optimization to occur in the presence of dynamic behaviour. We consider the following...... settings: λ-MMAS on Dynamic Shortest Path Problems. We investigate how in-creasing the number of ants simulated per iteration may help an ACO algorithm to track optimum in a dynamic problem. It is shown that while a constant number of ants per-vertex is sufficient to track some oscillations, there also...

PinaColada: peptide-inhibitor ant colony ad-hoc design algorithm.

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Zaidman, Daniel; Wolfson, Haim J

2016-08-01

Design of protein-protein interaction (PPI) inhibitors is a major challenge in Structural Bioinformatics. Peptides, especially short ones (5-15 amino acid long), are natural candidates for inhibition of protein-protein complexes due to several attractive features such as high structural compatibility with the protein binding site (mimicking the surface of one of the proteins), small size and the ability to form strong hotspot binding connections with the protein surface. Efficient rational peptide design is still a major challenge in computer aided drug design, due to the huge space of possible sequences, which is exponential in the length of the peptide, and the high flexibility of peptide conformations. In this article we present PinaColada, a novel computational method for the design of peptide inhibitors for protein-protein interactions. We employ a version of the ant colony optimization heuristic, which is used to explore the exponential space ([Formula: see text]) of length n peptide sequences, in combination with our fast robotics motivated PepCrawler algorithm, which explores the conformational space for each candidate sequence. PinaColada is being run in parallel, on a DELL PowerEdge 2.8 GHZ computer with 20 cores and 256 GB memory, and takes up to 24 h to design a peptide of 5-15 amino acids length. An online server available at: http://bioinfo3d.cs.tau.ac.il/PinaColada/. danielza@post.tau.ac.il; wolfson@tau.ac.il. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

A Multi-Attribute Pheromone Ant Secure Routing Algorithm Based on Reputation Value for Sensor Networks

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Lin Zhang

2017-03-01

Full Text Available With the development of wireless sensor networks, certain network problems have become more prominent, such as limited node resources, low data transmission security, and short network life cycles. To solve these problems effectively, it is important to design an efficient and trusted secure routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks. Traditional ant-colony optimization algorithms exhibit only local convergence, without considering the residual energy of the nodes and many other problems. This paper introduces a multi-attribute pheromone ant secure routing algorithm based on reputation value (MPASR. This algorithm can reduce the energy consumption of a network and improve the reliability of the nodes’ reputations by filtering nodes with higher coincidence rates and improving the method used to update the nodes’ communication behaviors. At the same time, the node reputation value, the residual node energy and the transmission delay are combined to formulate a synthetic pheromone that is used in the formula for calculating the random proportion rule in traditional ant-colony optimization to select the optimal data transmission path. Simulation results show that the improved algorithm can increase both the security of data transmission and the quality of routing service.

A Multi-Attribute Pheromone Ant Secure Routing Algorithm Based on Reputation Value for Sensor Networks

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Zhang, Lin; Yin, Na; Fu, Xiong; Lin, Qiaomin; Wang, Ruchuan

2017-01-01

With the development of wireless sensor networks, certain network problems have become more prominent, such as limited node resources, low data transmission security, and short network life cycles. To solve these problems effectively, it is important to design an efficient and trusted secure routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks. Traditional ant-colony optimization algorithms exhibit only local convergence, without considering the residual energy of the nodes and many other problems. This paper introduces a multi-attribute pheromone ant secure routing algorithm based on reputation value (MPASR). This algorithm can reduce the energy consumption of a network and improve the reliability of the nodes’ reputations by filtering nodes with higher coincidence rates and improving the method used to update the nodes’ communication behaviors. At the same time, the node reputation value, the residual node energy and the transmission delay are combined to formulate a synthetic pheromone that is used in the formula for calculating the random proportion rule in traditional ant-colony optimization to select the optimal data transmission path. Simulation results show that the improved algorithm can increase both the security of data transmission and the quality of routing service. PMID:28282894

A New Constructive Method for Electric Power System Reconfiguration Using Ant Colony

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Habib HAMDAOUI

2008-06-01

Full Text Available This electric power distribution system delivers power to the customers from a set of distribution substations. While the transmission lines are configured in a meshed network, the distribution feeders are configured radially in almost all cases. The proposed problem in this work is to determine the optimal topology among a various alternatives. This problem is known as a problem of total investment-cost minimization, subject to power constraints. In fact, the paper addresses an ant colony met-heuristic optimization method to solve this combinatorial problem. Due to the variation of demand, the reconfiguration may be considered in two different situations: in the system planning or system design stage. The proposed met-heuristic determines the minimal investment-cost system configuration during the considered study period to satisfy power transit constraints. The algorithm of ant colony approach (ACA is required to identify the optimal combination of adding or cut off feeders with different parameters for the new topology design.

Image Watermarking Algorithm Based on Multiobjective Ant Colony Optimization and Singular Value Decomposition in Wavelet Domain

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Khaled Loukhaoukha

2013-01-01

Full Text Available We present a new optimal watermarking scheme based on discrete wavelet transform (DWT and singular value decomposition (SVD using multiobjective ant colony optimization (MOACO. A binary watermark is decomposed using a singular value decomposition. Then, the singular values are embedded in a detailed subband of host image. The trade-off between watermark transparency and robustness is controlled by multiple scaling factors (MSFs instead of a single scaling factor (SSF. Determining the optimal values of the multiple scaling factors (MSFs is a difficult problem. However, a multiobjective ant colony optimization is used to determine these values. Experimental results show much improved performances of the proposed scheme in terms of transparency and robustness compared to other watermarking schemes. Furthermore, it does not suffer from the problem of high probability of false positive detection of the watermarks.

Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problems with Enhanced Ant Colony Optimization

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Haitao Xu

2018-01-01

Full Text Available As we all know, there are a great number of optimization problems in the world. One of the relatively complicated and high-level problems is the vehicle routing problem (VRP. Dynamic vehicle routing problem (DVRP is a major variant of VRP, and it is closer to real logistic scene. In DVRP, the customers’ demands appear with time, and the unserved customers’ points must be updated and rearranged while carrying out the programming paths. Owing to the complexity and significance of the problem, DVRP applications have grabbed the attention of researchers in the past two decades. In this paper, we have two main contributions to solving DVRP. Firstly, DVRP is solved with enhanced Ant Colony Optimization (E-ACO, which is the traditional Ant Colony Optimization (ACO fusing improved K-means and crossover operation. K-means can divide the region with the most reasonable distance, while ACO using crossover is applied to extend search space and avoid falling into local optimum prematurely. Secondly, several new evaluation benchmarks are proposed, which can objectively and comprehensively estimate the proposed method. In the experiment, the results for different scale problems are compared to those of previously published papers. Experimental results show that the algorithm is feasible and efficient.

Channeler Ant Model: 3 D segmentation of medical images through ant colonies

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fiorina, E.; Valzano, S.; Arteche Diaz, R.; Bosco, P.; Gargano, G.; Megna, R.; Oppedisano, C.; Massafra, A.

2011-01-01

In this paper the Channeler Ant Model (CAM) and some results of its application to the analysis of medical images are described. The CAM is an algorithm able to segment 3 D structures with different shapes, intensity and background. It makes use of virtual and colonies and exploits their natural capabilities to modify the environment and communicate with each other by pheromone deposition. Its performance has been validated with the segmentation of 3 D artificial objects and it has been already used successfully in lung nodules detection on Computer Tomography images. This work tries to evaluate the CAM as a candidate to solve the quantitative segmentation problem in Magnetic Resonance brain images: to evaluate the percentage of white matter, gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid in each voxel.

Gas ultrasonic flow rate measurement through genetic-ant colony optimization based on the ultrasonic pulse received signal model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hou, Huirang; Zheng, Dandan; Nie, Laixiao

2015-01-01

For gas ultrasonic flowmeters, the signals received by ultrasonic sensors are susceptible to noise interference. If signals are mingled with noise, a large error in flow measurement can be caused by triggering mistakenly using the traditional double-threshold method. To solve this problem, genetic-ant colony optimization (GACO) based on the ultrasonic pulse received signal model is proposed. Furthermore, in consideration of the real-time performance of the flow measurement system, the improvement of processing only the first three cycles of the received signals rather than the whole signal is proposed. Simulation results show that the GACO algorithm has the best estimation accuracy and ant-noise ability compared with the genetic algorithm, ant colony optimization, double-threshold and enveloped zero-crossing. Local convergence doesn’t appear with the GACO algorithm until –10 dB. For the GACO algorithm, the converging accuracy and converging speed and the amount of computation are further improved when using the first three cycles (called GACO-3cycles). Experimental results involving actual received signals show that the accuracy of single-gas ultrasonic flow rate measurement can reach 0.5% with GACO-3 cycles, which is better than with the double-threshold method. (paper)

Ant Colony Optimization for Markowitz Mean-Variance Portfolio Model

Science.gov (United States)

Deng, Guang-Feng; Lin, Woo-Tsong

This work presents Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), which was initially developed to be a meta-heuristic for combinatorial optimization, for solving the cardinality constraints Markowitz mean-variance portfolio model (nonlinear mixed quadratic programming problem). To our knowledge, an efficient algorithmic solution for this problem has not been proposed until now. Using heuristic algorithms in this case is imperative. Numerical solutions are obtained for five analyses of weekly price data for the following indices for the period March, 1992 to September, 1997: Hang Seng 31 in Hong Kong, DAX 100 in Germany, FTSE 100 in UK, S&P 100 in USA and Nikkei 225 in Japan. The test results indicate that the ACO is much more robust and effective than Particle swarm optimization (PSO), especially for low-risk investment portfolios.

Meta-Heuristics in Short Scale Construction: Ant Colony Optimization and Genetic Algorithm.

Science.gov (United States)

Schroeders, Ulrich; Wilhelm, Oliver; Olaru, Gabriel

2016-01-01

The advent of large-scale assessment, but also the more frequent use of longitudinal and multivariate approaches to measurement in psychological, educational, and sociological research, caused an increased demand for psychometrically sound short scales. Shortening scales economizes on valuable administration time, but might result in inadequate measures because reducing an item set could: a) change the internal structure of the measure, b) result in poorer reliability and measurement precision, c) deliver measures that cannot effectively discriminate between persons on the intended ability spectrum, and d) reduce test-criterion relations. Different approaches to abbreviate measures fare differently with respect to the above-mentioned problems. Therefore, we compare the quality and efficiency of three item selection strategies to derive short scales from an existing long version: a Stepwise COnfirmatory Factor Analytical approach (SCOFA) that maximizes factor loadings and two metaheuristics, specifically an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) with a tailored user-defined optimization function and a Genetic Algorithm (GA) with an unspecific cost-reduction function. SCOFA compiled short versions were highly reliable, but had poor validity. In contrast, both metaheuristics outperformed SCOFA and produced efficient and psychometrically sound short versions (unidimensional, reliable, sensitive, and valid). We discuss under which circumstances ACO and GA produce equivalent results and provide recommendations for conditions in which it is advisable to use a metaheuristic with an unspecific out-of-the-box optimization function.

Optimization of Straight Cylindrical Turning Using Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) Algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Prasanth, Rajanampalli Seshasai Srinivasa; Hans Raj, Kandikonda

2017-04-01

Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm, that mimics the intelligent foraging behavior of honey bees, is increasingly gaining acceptance in the field of process optimization, as it is capable of handling nonlinearity, complexity and uncertainty. Straight cylindrical turning is a complex and nonlinear machining process which involves the selection of appropriate cutting parameters that affect the quality of the workpiece. This paper presents the estimation of optimal cutting parameters of the straight cylindrical turning process using the ABC algorithm. The ABC algorithm is first tested on four benchmark problems of numerical optimization and its performance is compared with genetic algorithm (GA) and ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm. Results indicate that, the rate of convergence of ABC algorithm is better than GA and ACO. Then, the ABC algorithm is used to predict optimal cutting parameters such as cutting speed, feed rate, depth of cut and tool nose radius to achieve good surface finish. Results indicate that, the ABC algorithm estimated a comparable surface finish when compared with real coded genetic algorithm and differential evolution algorithm.

Hybrid real-code ant colony optimisation for constrained mechanical design

Science.gov (United States)

Pholdee, Nantiwat; Bureerat, Sujin

2016-01-01

This paper proposes a hybrid meta-heuristic based on integrating a local search simplex downhill (SDH) method into the search procedure of real-code ant colony optimisation (ACOR). This hybridisation leads to five hybrid algorithms where a Monte Carlo technique, a Latin hypercube sampling technique (LHS) and a translational propagation Latin hypercube design (TPLHD) algorithm are used to generate an initial population. Also, two numerical schemes for selecting an initial simplex are investigated. The original ACOR and its hybrid versions along with a variety of established meta-heuristics are implemented to solve 17 constrained test problems where a fuzzy set theory penalty function technique is used to handle design constraints. The comparative results show that the hybrid algorithms are the top performers. Using the TPLHD technique gives better results than the other sampling techniques. The hybrid optimisers are a powerful design tool for constrained mechanical design problems.

An Improved Ant Colony Matching by Using Discrete Curve Evolution

OpenAIRE

Saadi, Younes; Sari, Eka,; Herawan, Tutut

2014-01-01

Part 1: Information & Communication Technology-EurAsia Conference 2014, ICT-EurAsia 2014; International audience; In this paper we present an improved Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) for contour matching, which can be used to match 2D shapes. Discrete Curve Evolution (DCE) technique is used to simplify the extracted contour. In order to find the best correspondence between shapes, the match process is formulated as a Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) and resolved by using Ant Colony Optimizati...

Rationality in collective decision-making by ant colonies.

Science.gov (United States)

Edwards, Susan C; Pratt, Stephen C

2009-10-22

Economic models of animal behaviour assume that decision-makers are rational, meaning that they assess options according to intrinsic fitness value and not by comparison with available alternatives. This expectation is frequently violated, but the significance of irrational behaviour remains controversial. One possibility is that irrationality arises from cognitive constraints that necessitate short cuts like comparative evaluation. If so, the study of whether and when irrationality occurs can illuminate cognitive mechanisms. We applied this logic in a novel setting: the collective decisions of insect societies. We tested for irrationality in colonies of Temnothorax ants choosing between two nest sites that varied in multiple attributes, such that neither site was clearly superior. In similar situations, individual animals show irrational changes in preference when a third relatively unattractive option is introduced. In contrast, we found no such effect in colonies. We suggest that immunity to irrationality in this case may result from the ants' decentralized decision mechanism. A colony's choice does not depend on site comparison by individuals, but instead self-organizes from the interactions of multiple ants, most of which are aware of only a single site. This strategy may filter out comparative effects, preventing systematic errors that would otherwise arise from the cognitive limitations of individuals.

DATA MINING UNTUK KLASIFIKASI PELANGGAN DENGAN ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION

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Maulani Kapiudin

2007-01-01

Full Text Available In this research the system for potentially customer classification is designed by extracting rule based classification from raw data with certain criteria. The searching process uses customer database from a bank with data mining technic by using ant colony optimization. A test based on min_case_per_rule variety and phenomene updating were done on a certain period of time. The result are group of customer class which base on rules built by ant and by modifying the pheromone updating, the area of the case is getting bigger. Prototype of the software is coded with C++ 6 version. The customer database master is created by using Microsoft Access. This paper gives information about potential customer of bank that can be classified by prototype of the software. Abstract in Bahasa Indonesia : Pada penelitian untuk sistem klasifikasi potensial customer ini didesain dengan melakukan ekstrak rule berdasarkan klasifikasi dari data mentah dengan kriteria tertentu. Proses pencarian menggunakan database pelanggan dari suatu bank dengan teknik data mining dengan ant colony optimization. Dilakukan percobaan dengan min_case_per_rule variety dan phenomene updating pada periode waktu tertentu. Hasilnya adalah sekelompok class pelanggan yang didasarkan dari rules yang dibangun dengan ant dan dengan dimodifikasi dengan pheromone updating, area permasalahan menjadi lebih melebar. Prototype dari software ini menggunakan C++ versi 6. Database pelanggan dibangun dengan Microsoft Access. Paper ini memberikan informasi mengenai potensi pelanggan dari bank, sehingga dapat diklasifikasikan dengan prototype dari software. Kata kunci: ant colony optimization, classification, min_case_per_rule, term, pheromone updating

A novel hybrid approach based on Particle Swarm Optimization and Ant Colony Algorithm to forecast energy demand of Turkey

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kıran, Mustafa Servet; Özceylan, Eren; Gündüz, Mesut; Paksoy, Turan

2012-01-01

Highlights: ► PSO and ACO algorithms are hybridized for forecasting energy demands of Turkey. ► Linear and quadratic forms are developed to meet the fluctuations of indicators. ► GDP, population, export and import have significant impacts on energy demand. ► Quadratic form provides better fit solution than linear form. ► Proposed approach gives lower estimation error than ACO and PSO, separately. - Abstract: This paper proposes a new hybrid method (HAP) for estimating energy demand of Turkey using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). Proposed energy demand model (HAPE) is the first model which integrates two mentioned meta-heuristic techniques. While, PSO, developed for solving continuous optimization problems, is a population based stochastic technique; ACO, simulating behaviors between nest and food source of real ants, is generally used for discrete optimizations. Hybrid method based PSO and ACO is developed to estimate energy demand using gross domestic product (GDP), population, import and export. HAPE is developed in two forms which are linear (HAPEL) and quadratic (HAPEQ). The future energy demand is estimated under different scenarios. In order to show the accuracy of the algorithm, a comparison is made with ACO and PSO which are developed for the same problem. According to obtained results, relative estimation errors of the HAPE model are the lowest of them and quadratic form (HAPEQ) provides better-fit solutions due to fluctuations of the socio-economic indicators.

Ants Colony Optimisation of a Measuring Path of Prismatic Parts on a CMM

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Stojadinovic Slavenko M.

2016-03-01

Full Text Available This paper presents optimisation of a measuring probe path in inspecting the prismatic parts on a CMM. The optimisation model is based on: (i the mathematical model that establishes an initial collision-free path presented by a set of points, and (ii the solution of Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP obtained with Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO. In order to solve TSP, an ACO algorithm that aims to find the shortest path of ant colony movement (i.e. the optimised path is applied. Then, the optimised path is compared with the measuring path obtained with online programming on CMM ZEISS UMM500 and with the measuring path obtained in the CMM inspection module of Pro/ENGINEER® software. The results of comparing the optimised path with the other two generated paths show that the optimised path is at least 20% shorter than the path obtained by on-line programming on CMM ZEISS UMM500, and at least 10% shorter than the path obtained by using the CMM module in Pro/ENGINEER®.

AntStar: Enhancing Optimization Problems by Integrating an Ant System and A⁎ Algorithm

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Mohammed Faisal

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Recently, nature-inspired techniques have become valuable to many intelligent systems in different fields of technology and science. Among these techniques, Ant Systems (AS have become a valuable technique for intelligent systems in different fields. AS is a computational system inspired by the foraging behavior of ants and intended to solve practical optimization problems. In this paper, we introduce the AntStar algorithm, which is swarm intelligence based. AntStar enhances the optimization and performance of an AS by integrating the AS and A⁎ algorithm. Applying the AntStar algorithm to the single-source shortest-path problem has been done to ensure the efficiency of the proposed AntStar algorithm. The experimental result of the proposed algorithm illustrated the robustness and accuracy of the AntStar algorithm.

Transfer function fitting using a continuous Ant Colony Optimization (ACO algorithm

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A. Reineix

2015-03-01

Full Text Available An original approach is proposed in order to achieve the  fitting of ultra-wideband complex frequency functions, such  as the complex impedances, by using the so-called ACO  (Ant Colony Optimization methods. First, we present the  optimization principle of ACO, which originally was  dedicated to the combinatorial problems. Further on, the  extension to the continuous and mixed problems is  explained in more details. The interest in this approach is  proved by its ability to define practical constraints and  objectives, such as minimizing the number of filters used in  the model with respect to a fixed relative error. Finally, the  establishment of the model for the first and second order  filter types illustrates the power of the method and its  interest for the time-domain electromagnetic computation.

Optimum Layout for Sensors in Water Distribution Networks through Ant Colony Algorithm: A Dual Use Vision

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Seyed Mehdi Miri

2014-07-01

Full Text Available The accidental or intentional entry of contaminants or self-deterioration of the water quality within the network itself can severely harm public health. Efficient water quality monitoring is one of the most important tools to guarantee a reliable potable water supply to consumers of drinking water distribution systems. Considering the high purchase, installation and maintenance cost of sensors in water distribution networks deploying two independent sensor networks within one distribution system is not only bounded by physical constraints but also is not a cost-effective approach. Therefore, need for combining different objectives and designing sensor network to simultaneity satisfying these objectives is felt. Sensors should comply with dual use benefits. Sensor locations and types should be integrated not only for achieving water security goals but also for accomplishing other water utility objectives, such as satisfying regulatory monitoring requirements or collecting information to solve water quality problems. In this study, a dual use vision for the sensor layout problem in the municipal water networks, is formulated and solved with the ant colony algorithm.

An ant colony based resilience approach to cascading failures in cluster supply network

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Yingcong; Xiao, Renbin

2016-11-01

Cluster supply chain network is a typical complex network and easily suffers cascading failures under disruption events, which is caused by the under-load of enterprises. Improving network resilience can increase the ability of recovery from cascading failures. Social resilience is found in ant colony and comes from ant's spatial fidelity zones (SFZ). Starting from the under-load failures, this paper proposes a resilience method to cascading failures in cluster supply chain network by leveraging on social resilience of ant colony. First, the mapping between ant colony SFZ and cluster supply chain network SFZ is presented. Second, a new cascading model for cluster supply chain network is constructed based on under-load failures. Then, the SFZ-based resilience method and index to cascading failures are developed according to ant colony's social resilience. Finally, a numerical simulation and a case study are used to verify the validity of the cascading model and the resilience method. Experimental results show that, the cluster supply chain network becomes resilient to cascading failures under the SFZ-based resilience method, and the cluster supply chain network resilience can be enhanced by improving the ability of enterprises to recover and adjust.

The relationship between canopy cover and colony size of the wood ant Formica lugubris--implications for the thermal effects on a keystone ant species.

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Yi-Huei Chen

Full Text Available Climate change may affect ecosystems and biodiversity through the impacts of rising temperature on species' body size. In terms of physiology and genetics, the colony is the unit of selection for ants so colony size can be considered the body size of a colony. For polydomous ant species, a colony is spread across several nests. This study aims to clarify how climate change may influence an ecologically significant ant species group by investigating thermal effects on wood ant colony size. The strong link between canopy cover and the local temperatures of wood ant's nesting location provides a feasible approach for our study. Our results showed that nests were larger in shadier areas where the thermal environment was colder and more stable compared to open areas. Colonies (sum of nests in a polydomous colony also tended to be larger in shadier areas than in open areas. In addition to temperature, our results supported that food resource availability may be an additional factor mediating the relationship between canopy cover and nest size. The effects of canopy cover on total colony size may act at the nest level because of the positive relationship between total colony size and mean nest size, rather than at the colony level due to lack of link between canopy cover and number of nests per colony. Causal relationships between the environment and the life-history characteristics may suggest possible future impacts of climate change on these species.

Balancing emergency message dissemination and network lifetime in wireless body area network using ant colony optimization and Bayesian game formulation

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R. Latha

Full Text Available Nowadays, Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN is emerging very fast and so many new methods and algorithms are coming up for finding the optimal path for disseminating emergency messages. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO is one of the cultural algorithms for solving many hard problems such as Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP. ACO is a natural behaviour of ants, which work stochastically with the help of pheromone trails deposited in the shortest route to find their food. This optimization procedure involves adapting, positive feedback and inherent parallelism. Each ant will deposit certain amount of pheromone in the tour construction it makes searching for food. This type of communication is known as stigmetric communication. In addition, if a dense WBAN environment prevails, such as hospital, i.e. in the environment of overlapping WBAN, game formulation was introduced for analyzing the mixed strategy behaviour of WBAN. In this paper, the ant colony optimization approach to the travelling salesman problem was applied to the WBAN to determine the shortest route for sending emergency message to the doctor via sensor nodes; and also a static Bayesian game formulation with mixed strategy was analysed to enhance the network lifetime. Whenever the patient needs any critical care or any other medical issue arises, emergency messages will be created by the WBAN and sent to the doctor's destination. All the modes of communication were realized in a simulation environment using OMNet++. The authors investigated a balanced model of emergency message dissemination and network lifetime in WBAN using ACO and Bayesian game formulation. Keywords: Wireless body area network, Ant colony optimization, Bayesian game model, Sensor network, Message latency, Network lifetime

Ant colony optimization as a descriptor selection in QSPR modeling: Estimation of the λmax of anthraquinones-based dyes

OpenAIRE

Morteza Atabati; Kobra Zarei; Azam Borhani

2016-01-01

Quantitative structure–property relationship (QSPR) studies based on ant colony optimization (ACO) were carried out for the prediction of λmax of 9,10-anthraquinone derivatives. ACO is a meta-heuristic algorithm, which is derived from the observation of real ants and proposed to feature selection. After optimization of 3D geometry of structures by the semi-empirical quantum-chemical calculation at AM1 level, different descriptors were calculated by the HyperChem and Dragon softwares (1514 des...

Response Ant Colony Optimization of End Milling Surface Roughness

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Ahmed N. Abd Alla

2010-03-01

Full Text Available Metal cutting processes are important due to increased consumer demands for quality metal cutting related products (more precise tolerances and better product surface roughness that has driven the metal cutting industry to continuously improve quality control of metal cutting processes. This paper presents optimum surface roughness by using milling mould aluminium alloys (AA6061-T6 with Response Ant Colony Optimization (RACO. The approach is based on Response Surface Method (RSM and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO. The main objectives to find the optimized parameters and the most dominant variables (cutting speed, feedrate, axial depth and radial depth. The first order model indicates that the feedrate is the most significant factor affecting surface roughness.

Queen-worker caste ratio depends on colony size in the pharaoh ant (Monomorium pharaonis)

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schmidt, Anna Mosegaard; Linksvayer, Timothy Arnold; Boomsma, Jacobus Jan

2011-01-01

The success of an ant colony depends on the simultaneous presence of reproducing queens and nonreproducing workers in a ratio that will maximize colony growth and reproduction. Despite its presumably crucial role, queen–worker caste ratios (the ratio of adult queens to workers) and the factors...... affecting this variable remain scarcely studied. Maintaining polygynous pharaoh ant (Monomorium pharaonis) colonies in the laboratory has provided us with the opportunity to experimentally manipulate colony size, one of the key factors that can be expected to affect colony level queen–worker caste ratios...... species with budding colonies may adaptively adjust caste ratios to ensure rapid growth....

Intraspecific Variation among Social Insect Colonies: Persistent Regional and Colony-Level Differences in Fire Ant Foraging Behavior.

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Alison A Bockoven

Full Text Available Individuals vary within a species in many ecologically important ways, but the causes and consequences of such variation are often poorly understood. Foraging behavior is among the most profitable and risky activities in which organisms engage and is expected to be under strong selection. Among social insects there is evidence that within-colony variation in traits such as foraging behavior can increase colony fitness, but variation between colonies and the potential consequences of such variation are poorly documented. In this study, we tested natural populations of the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, for the existence of colony and regional variation in foraging behavior and tested the persistence of this variation over time and across foraging habitats. We also reared single-lineage colonies in standardized environments to explore the contribution of colony lineage. Fire ants from natural populations exhibited significant and persistent colony and regional-level variation in foraging behaviors such as extra-nest activity, exploration, and discovery of and recruitment to resources. Moreover, colony-level variation in extra-nest activity was significantly correlated with colony growth, suggesting that this variation has fitness consequences. Lineage of the colony had a significant effect on extra-nest activity and exploratory activity and explained approximately half of the variation observed in foraging behaviors, suggesting a heritable component to colony-level variation in behavior.

Ant Colony Algorithm and Simulation for Robust Airport Gate Assignment

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Hui Zhao

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Airport gate assignment is core task for airport ground operations. Due to the fact that the departure and arrival time of flights may be influenced by many random factors, the airport gate assignment scheme may encounter gate conflict and many other problems. This paper aims at finding a robust solution for airport gate assignment problem. A mixed integer model is proposed to formulate the problem, and colony algorithm is designed to solve this model. Simulation result shows that, in consideration of robustness, the ability of antidisturbance for airport gate assignment scheme has much improved.

Energy Aware Simple Ant Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

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Sohail Jabbar

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Network lifetime is one of the most prominent barriers in deploying wireless sensor networks for large-scale applications because these networks employ sensors with nonrenewable scarce energy resources. Sensor nodes dissipate most of their energy in complex routing mechanisms. To cope with limited energy problem, we present EASARA, an energy aware simple ant routing algorithm based on ant colony optimization. Unlike most algorithms, EASARA strives to avoid low energy routes and optimizes the routing process through selection of least hop count path with more energy. It consists of three phases, that is, route discovery, forwarding node, and route selection. We have improved the route discovery procedure and mainly concentrate on energy efficient forwarding node and route selection, so that the network lifetime can be prolonged. The four possible cases of forwarding node and route selection are presented. The performance of EASARA is validated through simulation. Simulation results demonstrate the performance supremacy of EASARA over contemporary scheme in terms of various metrics.

Integrating fuzzy object based image analysis and ant colony optimization for road extraction from remotely sensed images

Science.gov (United States)

Maboudi, Mehdi; Amini, Jalal; Malihi, Shirin; Hahn, Michael

2018-04-01

Updated road network as a crucial part of the transportation database plays an important role in various applications. Thus, increasing the automation of the road extraction approaches from remote sensing images has been the subject of extensive research. In this paper, we propose an object based road extraction approach from very high resolution satellite images. Based on the object based image analysis, our approach incorporates various spatial, spectral, and textural objects' descriptors, the capabilities of the fuzzy logic system for handling the uncertainties in road modelling, and the effectiveness and suitability of ant colony algorithm for optimization of network related problems. Four VHR optical satellite images which are acquired by Worldview-2 and IKONOS satellites are used in order to evaluate the proposed approach. Evaluation of the extracted road networks shows that the average completeness, correctness, and quality of the results can reach 89%, 93% and 83% respectively, indicating that the proposed approach is applicable for urban road extraction. We also analyzed the sensitivity of our algorithm to different ant colony optimization parameter values. Comparison of the achieved results with the results of four state-of-the-art algorithms and quantifying the robustness of the fuzzy rule set demonstrate that the proposed approach is both efficient and transferable to other comparable images.

Pupae transplantation to boost early colony growth in the weaver ant Oecophylla longinoda Latreille (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ouagoussounon, Issa; Sinzogan, Antonio; Offenberg, Joachim

2013-01-01

Oecophylla ants are currently used for biological control in fruit plantations in Australia, Asia and Africa and for protein production in Asia. To further improve the technology and implement it on a large scale, effective and fast production of live colonies is desirable. Early colony development...... capita brood production by the resident queen, triggered by the adopted pupae. Thus pupae transplantation may be used to shorten the time it takes to produce weaver ant colonies in ant nurseries, and may in this way facilitate the implementation of weaver ant biocontrol in West Africa....

Aircraft technology portfolio optimization using ant colony optimization

Science.gov (United States)

Villeneuve, Frederic J.; Mavris, Dimitri N.

2012-11-01

Technology portfolio selection is a combinatorial optimization problem often faced with a large number of combinations and technology incompatibilities. The main research question addressed in this article is to determine if Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is better suited than Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and Simulated Annealing (SA) for technology portfolio optimization when incompatibility constraints between technologies are present. Convergence rate, capability to find optima, and efficiency in handling of incompatibilities are the three criteria of comparison. The application problem consists of finding the best technology portfolio from 29 aircraft technologies. The results show that ACO and GAs converge faster and find optima more easily than SA, and that ACO can optimize portfolios with technology incompatibilities without using penalty functions. This latter finding paves the way for more use of ACO when the number of constraints increases, such as in the technology and concept selection for complex engineering systems.

application of ant colony optimisation in distribution transformer sizing

African Journals Online (AJOL)

HP

Keywords: ant colony, optimization, transformer sizing, distribution transformer. 1. INTRODUCTION ... more intensive pheromone and higher probability to be chosen [12]. ..... pp.29-41, 1996. [7] EC global market place, “Technical Parameters”,.

The Role of Non-Foraging Nests in Polydomous Wood Ant Colonies.

Science.gov (United States)

Ellis, Samuel; Robinson, Elva J H

2015-01-01

A colony of red wood ants can inhabit more than one spatially separated nest, in a strategy called polydomy. Some nests within these polydomous colonies have no foraging trails to aphid colonies in the canopy. In this study we identify and investigate the possible roles of non-foraging nests in polydomous colonies of the wood ant Formica lugubris. To investigate the role of non-foraging nests we: (i) monitored colonies for three years; (ii) observed the resources being transported between non-foraging nests and the rest of the colony; (iii) measured the amount of extra-nest activity around non-foraging and foraging nests. We used these datasets to investigate the extent to which non-foraging nests within polydomous colonies are acting as: part of the colony expansion process; hunting and scavenging specialists; brood-development specialists; seasonal foragers; or a selfish strategy exploiting the foraging effort of the rest of the colony. We found that, rather than having a specialised role, non-foraging nests are part of the process of colony expansion. Polydomous colonies expand by founding new nests in the area surrounding the existing nests. Nests founded near food begin foraging and become part of the colony; other nests are not founded near food sources and do not initially forage. Some of these non-foraging nests eventually begin foraging; others do not and are abandoned. This is a method of colony growth not available to colonies inhabiting a single nest, and may be an important advantage of the polydomous nesting strategy, allowing the colony to expand into profitable areas.

Reliability optimization using multiobjective ant colony system approaches

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhao Jianhua; Liu Zhaoheng; Dao, M.-T.

2007-01-01

The multiobjective ant colony system (ACS) meta-heuristic has been developed to provide solutions for the reliability optimization problem of series-parallel systems. This type of problems involves selection of components with multiple choices and redundancy levels that produce maximum benefits, and is subject to the cost and weight constraints at the system level. These are very common and realistic problems encountered in conceptual design of many engineering systems. It is becoming increasingly important to develop efficient solutions to these problems because many mechanical and electrical systems are becoming more complex, even as development schedules get shorter and reliability requirements become very stringent. The multiobjective ACS algorithm offers distinct advantages to these problems compared with alternative optimization methods, and can be applied to a more diverse problem domain with respect to the type or size of the problems. Through the combination of probabilistic search, multiobjective formulation of local moves and the dynamic penalty method, the multiobjective ACSRAP, allows us to obtain an optimal design solution very frequently and more quickly than with some other heuristic approaches. The proposed algorithm was successfully applied to an engineering design problem of gearbox with multiple stages

Temnothorax rugatulus ant colonies consistently vary in nest structure across time and context.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nicholas DiRienzo

Full Text Available A host of animals build architectural constructions. Such constructions frequently vary with environmental and individual/colony conditions, and their architecture directly influences behavior and fitness. The nests of ant colonies drive and enable many of their collective behaviors, and as such are part of their 'extended phenotype'. Since ant colonies have been recently shown to differ in behavior and life history strategy, we ask whether colonies differ in another trait: the architecture of the constructions they create. We allowed Temnothorax rugatulus rock ants, who create nests by building walls within narrow rock gaps, to repeatedly build nest walls in a fixed crevice but under two environmental conditions. We find that colonies consistently differ in their architecture across environments and over nest building events. Colony identity explained 12-40% of the variation in nest architecture, while colony properties and environmental conditions explained 5-20%, as indicated by the condition and marginal R2 values. When their nest boxes were covered, which produced higher humidity and lower airflow, colonies built thicker, longer, and heavier walls. Colonies also built more robust walls when they had more brood, suggesting a protective function of wall thickness. This is, to our knowledge, the first study to explicitly investigate the repeatability of nestbuilding behavior in a controlled environment. Our results suggest that colonies may face tradeoffs, perhaps between factors such as active vs. passive nest defense, and that selection may act on individual construction rules as a mechanisms to mediate colony-level behavior.

Ant colonies prefer infected over uninfected nest sites

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pontieri, Luigi; Vojvodic, Svjetlana; Graham, Riley

2014-01-01

with sporulating mycelium of the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum (infected nests), nests containing nestmates killed by freezing (uninfected nests), and empty nests. In contrast to the expectation pharaoh ant colonies preferentially (84%) moved into the infected nest when presented with the choice...... the high risk of epidemics in group-living animals. Choosing nest sites free of pathogens is hypothesized to be highly efficient in invasive ants as each of their introduced populations is often an open network of nests exchanging individuals (unicolonial) with frequent relocation into new nest sites...... and low genetic diversity, likely making these species particularly vulnerable to parasites and diseases. We investigated the nest site preference of the invasive pharaoh ant, Monomorium pharaonis, through binary choice tests between three nest types: nests containing dead nestmates overgrown...

Ant colony optimization and neural networks applied to nuclear power plant monitoring

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Santos, Gean Ribeiro dos; Andrade, Delvonei Alves de; Pereira, Iraci Martinez

2015-01-01

A recurring challenge in production processes is the development of monitoring and diagnosis systems. Those systems help on detecting unexpected changes and interruptions, preventing losses and mitigating risks. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been extensively used in creating monitoring systems. Usually the ANNs created to solve this kind of problem are created by taking into account only parameters as the number of inputs, outputs, and hidden layers. The result networks are generally fully connected and have no improvements in its topology. This work intends to use an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm to create a tuned neural network. The ACO search algorithm will use Back Error Propagation (BP) to optimize the network topology by suggesting the best neuron connections. The result ANN will be applied to monitoring the IEA-R1 research reactor at IPEN. (author)

Ant colony optimization and neural networks applied to nuclear power plant monitoring

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Santos, Gean Ribeiro dos; Andrade, Delvonei Alves de; Pereira, Iraci Martinez, E-mail: gean@usp.br, E-mail: delvonei@ipen.br, E-mail: martinez@ipen.br [Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares (IPEN/CNEN-SP), Sao Paulo, SP (Brazil)

2015-07-01

A recurring challenge in production processes is the development of monitoring and diagnosis systems. Those systems help on detecting unexpected changes and interruptions, preventing losses and mitigating risks. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been extensively used in creating monitoring systems. Usually the ANNs created to solve this kind of problem are created by taking into account only parameters as the number of inputs, outputs, and hidden layers. The result networks are generally fully connected and have no improvements in its topology. This work intends to use an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm to create a tuned neural network. The ACO search algorithm will use Back Error Propagation (BP) to optimize the network topology by suggesting the best neuron connections. The result ANN will be applied to monitoring the IEA-R1 research reactor at IPEN. (author)

Ant colony optimization and constraint programming

CERN Document Server

Solnon, Christine

2013-01-01

Ant colony optimization is a metaheuristic which has been successfully applied to a wide range of combinatorial optimization problems. The author describes this metaheuristic and studies its efficiency for solving some hard combinatorial problems, with a specific focus on constraint programming. The text is organized into three parts. The first part introduces constraint programming, which provides high level features to declaratively model problems by means of constraints. It describes the main existing approaches for solving constraint satisfaction problems, including complete tree search

Simultaneous feature selection and parameter optimisation using an artificial ant colony: case study of melting point prediction

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nigsch Florian

2008-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background We present a novel feature selection algorithm, Winnowing Artificial Ant Colony (WAAC, that performs simultaneous feature selection and model parameter optimisation for the development of predictive quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR models. The WAAC algorithm is an extension of the modified ant colony algorithm of Shen et al. (J Chem Inf Model 2005, 45: 1024–1029. We test the ability of the algorithm to develop a predictive partial least squares model for the Karthikeyan dataset (J Chem Inf Model 2005, 45: 581–590 of melting point values. We also test its ability to perform feature selection on a support vector machine model for the same dataset. Results Starting from an initial set of 203 descriptors, the WAAC algorithm selected a PLS model with 68 descriptors which has an RMSE on an external test set of 46.6°C and R2 of 0.51. The number of components chosen for the model was 49, which was close to optimal for this feature selection. The selected SVM model has 28 descriptors (cost of 5, ε of 0.21 and an RMSE of 45.1°C and R2 of 0.54. This model outperforms a kNN model (RMSE of 48.3°C, R2 of 0.47 for the same data and has similar performance to a Random Forest model (RMSE of 44.5°C, R2 of 0.55. However it is much less prone to bias at the extremes of the range of melting points as shown by the slope of the line through the residuals: -0.43 for WAAC/SVM, -0.53 for Random Forest. Conclusion With a careful choice of objective function, the WAAC algorithm can be used to optimise machine learning and regression models that suffer from overfitting. Where model parameters also need to be tuned, as is the case with support vector machine and partial least squares models, it can optimise these simultaneously. The moving probabilities used by the algorithm are easily interpreted in terms of the best and current models of the ants, and the winnowing procedure promotes the removal of irrelevant descriptors.

Simultaneous feature selection and parameter optimisation using an artificial ant colony: case study of melting point prediction.

Science.gov (United States)

O'Boyle, Noel M; Palmer, David S; Nigsch, Florian; Mitchell, John Bo

2008-10-29

We present a novel feature selection algorithm, Winnowing Artificial Ant Colony (WAAC), that performs simultaneous feature selection and model parameter optimisation for the development of predictive quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) models. The WAAC algorithm is an extension of the modified ant colony algorithm of Shen et al. (J Chem Inf Model 2005, 45: 1024-1029). We test the ability of the algorithm to develop a predictive partial least squares model for the Karthikeyan dataset (J Chem Inf Model 2005, 45: 581-590) of melting point values. We also test its ability to perform feature selection on a support vector machine model for the same dataset. Starting from an initial set of 203 descriptors, the WAAC algorithm selected a PLS model with 68 descriptors which has an RMSE on an external test set of 46.6 degrees C and R2 of 0.51. The number of components chosen for the model was 49, which was close to optimal for this feature selection. The selected SVM model has 28 descriptors (cost of 5, epsilon of 0.21) and an RMSE of 45.1 degrees C and R2 of 0.54. This model outperforms a kNN model (RMSE of 48.3 degrees C, R2 of 0.47) for the same data and has similar performance to a Random Forest model (RMSE of 44.5 degrees C, R2 of 0.55). However it is much less prone to bias at the extremes of the range of melting points as shown by the slope of the line through the residuals: -0.43 for WAAC/SVM, -0.53 for Random Forest. With a careful choice of objective function, the WAAC algorithm can be used to optimise machine learning and regression models that suffer from overfitting. Where model parameters also need to be tuned, as is the case with support vector machine and partial least squares models, it can optimise these simultaneously. The moving probabilities used by the algorithm are easily interpreted in terms of the best and current models of the ants, and the winnowing procedure promotes the removal of irrelevant descriptors.

Monte Carlo simulation using the PENELOPE code with an ant colony algorithm to study MOSFET detectors

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Carvajal, M A; Palma, A J [Departamento de Electronica y Tecnologia de Computadores, Universidad de Granada, E-18071 Granada (Spain); Garcia-Pareja, S [Servicio de Radiofisica Hospitalaria, Hospital Regional Universitario ' Carlos Haya' , Avda Carlos Haya, s/n, E-29010 Malaga (Spain); Guirado, D [Servicio de RadiofIsica, Hospital Universitario ' San Cecilio' , Avda Dr Oloriz, 16, E-18012 Granada (Spain); Vilches, M [Servicio de Fisica y Proteccion Radiologica, Hospital Regional Universitario ' Virgen de las Nieves' , Avda Fuerzas Armadas, 2, E-18014 Granada (Spain); Anguiano, M; Lallena, A M [Departamento de Fisica Atomica, Molecular y Nuclear, Universidad de Granada, E-18071 Granada (Spain)], E-mail: carvajal@ugr.es, E-mail: garciapareja@gmail.com, E-mail: dguirado@ugr.es, E-mail: mvilches@ugr.es, E-mail: mangui@ugr.es, E-mail: ajpalma@ugr.es, E-mail: lallena@ugr.es

2009-10-21

In this work we have developed a simulation tool, based on the PENELOPE code, to study the response of MOSFET devices to irradiation with high-energy photons. The energy deposited in the extremely thin silicon dioxide layer has been calculated. To reduce the statistical uncertainties, an ant colony algorithm has been implemented to drive the application of splitting and Russian roulette as variance reduction techniques. In this way, the uncertainty has been reduced by a factor of {approx}5, while the efficiency is increased by a factor of above 20. As an application, we have studied the dependence of the response of the pMOS transistor 3N163, used as a dosimeter, with the incidence angle of the radiation for three common photons sources used in radiotherapy: a {sup 60}Co Theratron-780 and the 6 and 18 MV beams produced by a Mevatron KDS LINAC. Experimental and simulated results have been obtained for gantry angles of 0 deg., 15 deg., 30 deg., 45 deg., 60 deg. and 75 deg. The agreement obtained has permitted validation of the simulation tool. We have studied how to reduce the angular dependence of the MOSFET response by using an additional encapsulation made of brass in the case of the two LINAC qualities considered.

Disease in the Society: Infectious Cadavers Result in Collapse of Ant Sub-Colonies

Science.gov (United States)

Loreto, Raquel G.; Hughes, David P.

2016-01-01

Despite the growing number of experimental studies on mechanisms of social immunity in ant societies, little is known about how social behavior relates to disease progression within the nests of ants. In fact, when empirically studying disease in ant societies, it is common to remove dead ants from experiments to confirm infection by the studied parasite. This unfortunately does not allow disease to progress within the nest as it may be assumed would happen under natural conditions. Therefore, the approach taken so far has resulted in a limited knowledge of diseases dynamics within the nest environment. Here we introduced a single infectious cadaver killed by the fungus Beauveria bassiana into small nests of the ant Camponotus castaneus. We then observed the natural progression of the disease by not removing the corpses of the ants that died following the first entry of the disease. Because some behaviors such as social isolation of sick individuals or the removal of cadavers by nestmates are considered social immune functions and thus adaptations at the colony level that reduce disease spread, we also experimentally confined some sub-colonies to one or two chamber nests to prevent the expression of such behaviors. Based on 51 small nests and survival studies in 1,003 ants we found that a single introduced infectious cadaver was able to transmit within the nest, and social immunity did not prevent the collapse of the small sub-colonies here tested. This was true whether ants did or did not have the option to remove the infectious cadaver. Therefore, we found no evidence that the typically studied social immunity behaviors can reduce disease spread in the conditions here tested. PMID:27529548

Colony structure in a plant-ant: behavioural, chemical and genetic study of polydomy in Cataulacus mckeyi (Myrmicinae).

Science.gov (United States)

Debout, Gabriel; Provost, Erick; Renucci, Marielle; Tirard, Alain; Schatz, Bertrand; McKey, Doyle

2003-10-01

Social organisation of colonies of obligate plant-ants can affect their interaction with myrmecophyte hosts and with other ants competing for the resources they offer. An important parameter of social organisation is whether nest sites of a colony include one or several host individuals. We determined colony boundaries in a plant-ant associated with the rainforest understorey tree Leonardoxa africana subsp. africana, found in coastal forests of Cameroon (Central Africa). This myrmecophyte is strictly associated with two ants, Petalomyrmex phylax and Cataulacus mckeyi. Plants provide food and nesting sites for P. phylax, which protects young leaves against insect herbivores. This mutualism is often parasitised by C. mckeyi, which uses but does not protect the host. The presence of C. mckeyi on a tree excludes the mutualistic ant. Because Petalomyrmex-occupied trees are better protected, their growth and survival are superior to those of Cataulacus-occupied trees, giving P. phylax an advantage in occupation of nest sites. C. mckeyi often colonises trees that have lost their initial associate P. phylax, as a result of injury to the tree caused by disturbance. Polydomy may allow C. mckeyi to occupy small clumps of trees, without the necessity of claustral colony foundation in each tree. Investigating both the proximate (behavioural repertoire, colony odour) and the ultimate factors (genetic structure) that may influence colony closure, we precisely defined colony boundaries. We show that colonies of C. mckeyi are monogynous and facultatively polydomous, i.e. a colony occupies one to several Leonardoxa trees. Workers do not produce males. Thus, the hypothesis that polydomy allows workers in queenless nests to evade queen control for their reproduction is not supported in this instance. This particular colony structure may confer on C. mckeyi an advantage in short-distance dispersal, and this could help explain its persistence within the dynamic Leonardoxa system.

Optimization on Paddy Crops in Central Java (with Solver, SVD on Least Square and ACO (Ant Colony Algorithm))

Science.gov (United States)

Parhusip, H. A.; Trihandaru, S.; Susanto, B.; Prasetyo, S. Y. J.; Agus, Y. H.; Simanjuntak, B. H.

2017-03-01

Several algorithms and objective functions on paddy crops have been studied to get optimal paddy crops in Central Java based on the data given from Surakarta and Boyolali. The algorithms are linear solver, least square and Ant Colony Algorithms (ACO) to develop optimization procedures on paddy crops modelled with Modified GSTAR (Generalized Space-Time Autoregressive) and nonlinear models where the nonlinear models are quadratic and power functions. The studied data contain paddy crops from Surakarta and Boyolali determining the best period of planting in the year 1992-2012 for Surakarta where 3 periods for planting are known and the optimal amount of paddy crops in Boyolali in the year 2008-2013. Having these analyses may guide the local agriculture government to give a decision on rice sustainability in its region. The best period for planting in Surakarta is observed, i.e. the best period is in September-December based on the data 1992-2012 by considering the planting area, the cropping area, and the paddy crops are the most important factors to be taken into account. As a result, we can refer the paddy crops in this best period (about 60.4 thousand tons per year) as the optimal results in 1992-2012 where the used objective function is quadratic. According to the research, the optimal paddy crops in Boyolali about 280 thousand tons per year where the studied factors are the amount of rainfalls, the harvested area and the paddy crops in 2008-2013. In this case, linear and power functions are studied to be the objective functions. Compared to all studied algorithms, the linear solver is still recommended to be an optimization tool for a local agriculture government to predict paddy crops in future.

Application of ant colony optimisation in distribution transformer sizing

African Journals Online (AJOL)

This study proposes an optimisation method for transformer sizing in power system using ant colony optimisation and a verification of the process by MATLAB software. The aim is to address the issue of transformer sizing which is a major challenge affecting its effective performance, longevity, huge capital cost and power ...

External immunity in ant societies: sociality and colony size do not predict investment in antimicrobials

Science.gov (United States)

Halawani, Omar; Pearson, Bria; Mathews, Stephanie; López-Uribe, Margarita M.; Dunn, Robert R.; Smith, Adrian A.

2018-01-01

Social insects live in dense groups with a high probability of disease transmission and have therefore faced strong pressures to develop defences against pathogens. For this reason, social insects have been hypothesized to invest in antimicrobial secretions as a mechanism of external immunity to prevent the spread of disease. However, empirical studies linking the evolution of sociality with increased investment in antimicrobials have been relatively few. Here we quantify the strength of antimicrobial secretions among 20 ant species that cover a broad spectrum of ant diversity and colony sizes. We extracted external compounds from ant workers to test whether they inhibited the growth of the bacterium Staphylococcus epidermidis. Because all ant species are highly social, we predicted that all species would exhibit some antimicrobial activity and that species that form the largest colonies would exhibit the strongest antimicrobial response. Our comparative approach revealed that strong surface antimicrobials are common to particular ant clades, but 40% of species exhibited no antimicrobial activity at all. We also found no correlation between antimicrobial activity and colony size. Rather than relying on antimicrobial secretions as external immunity to control pathogen spread, many ant species have probably developed alternative strategies to defend against disease pressure. PMID:29515850

Solving Multi-Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem using Ant Colony Optimization

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Hsiang-Hsi Huang

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This paper applied Ant Colony Optimization (ACO to develop a resource constraints scheduling model to achieve the resource allocation optimization and the shortest completion time of a project under resource constraints and the activities precedence requirement for projects. Resource leveling is also discussed and has to be achieved under the resource allocation optimization in this research. Testing cases and examples adopted from the international test bank were studied for verifying the effectiveness of the proposed model. The results showed that the solutions of different cases all have a better performance within a reasonable time. These can be obtained through ACO algorithm under the same constrained conditions. A program was written for the proposed model that is able to automatically produce the project resource requirement figure after the project duration is solved.

Warring arthropod societies: Social spider colonies can delay annihilation by predatory ants via reduced apparency and increased group size.

Science.gov (United States)

Keiser, Carl N; Wright, Colin M; Pruitt, Jonathan N

2015-10-01

Sociality provides individuals with benefits via collective foraging and anti-predator defense. One of the costs of living in large groups, however, is increased apparency to natural enemies. Here, we test how the individual-level and collective traits of spider societies can increase the risk of discovery and death by predatory ants. We transplanted colonies of the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola into a habitat dense with one of their top predators, the pugnacious ant Anoplolepis custodiens. With three different experiments, we test how colony-wide survivorship in a predator-dense habitat can be altered by colony apparency (i.e., the presence of a capture web), group size, and group composition (i.e., the proportion of bold and shy personality types present). We also test how spiders' social context (i.e., living solitarily vs. among conspecifics) modifies their behaviour toward ants in their capture web. Colonies with capture webs intact were discovered by predatory ants on average 25% faster than colonies with the capture web removed, and all discovered colonies eventually collapsed and succumbed to predation. However, the lag time from discovery by ants to colony collapse was greater for colonies containing more individuals. The composition of individual personality types in the group had no influence on survivorship. Spiders in a social group were more likely to approach ants caught in their web than were isolated spiders. Isolated spiders were more likely to attack a safe prey item (a moth) than they were to attack ants and were more likely to retreat from ants after contact than they were after contact with moths. Together, our data suggest that the physical structures produced by large animal societies can increase their apparency to natural enemies, though larger groups can facilitate a longer lag time between discovery and demise. Lastly, the interaction between spiders and predatory ants seems to depend on the social context in which spiders reside

Destructive disinfection of infected brood prevents systemic disease spread in ant colonies.

Science.gov (United States)

Pull, Christopher D; Ugelvig, Line V; Wiesenhofer, Florian; Grasse, Anna V; Tragust, Simon; Schmitt, Thomas; Brown, Mark Jf; Cremer, Sylvia

2018-01-09

In social groups, infections have the potential to spread rapidly and cause disease outbreaks. Here, we show that in a social insect, the ant Lasius neglectus , the negative consequences of fungal infections ( Metarhizium brunneum ) can be mitigated by employing an efficient multicomponent behaviour, termed destructive disinfection, which prevents further spread of the disease through the colony. Ants specifically target infected pupae during the pathogen's non-contagious incubation period, utilising chemical 'sickness cues' emitted by pupae. They then remove the pupal cocoon, perforate its cuticle and administer antimicrobial poison, which enters the body and prevents pathogen replication from the inside out. Like the immune system of a metazoan body that specifically targets and eliminates infected cells, ants destroy infected brood to stop the pathogen completing its lifecycle, thus protecting the rest of the colony. Hence, in an analogous fashion, the same principles of disease defence apply at different levels of biological organisation.

Study on ant colony optimization for fuel loading pattern problem

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kishi, Hironori; Kitada, Takanori

2013-01-01

Modified ant colony optimization (ACO) was applied to the in-core fuel loading pattern (LP) optimization problem to minimize the power peaking factor (PPF) in the modeled 1/4 symmetry PWR core. Loading order was found to be important in ACO. Three different loading orders with and without the adjacent effect between fuel assemblies (FAs) were compared, and it was found that the loading order from the central core is preferable because many selections of FAs to be inserted are available in the core center region. LPs were determined from pheromone trail and heuristic information, which is a priori knowledge based on the feature of the problem. Three types of heuristic information were compared to obtain the desirable performance of searching LPs with low PPF. Moreover, mutation operation, such as the genetic algorithm (GA), was introduced into the ACO algorithm to avoid searching similar LPs because heuristic information used in ACO tends to localize the searching space in the LP problem. The performance of ACO with some improvement was compared with those of simulated annealing and GA. In conclusion, good performance can be achieved by setting proper heuristic information and mutation operation parameter in ACO. (author)

VLSI PARTITIONING ALGORITHM WITH ADAPTIVE CONTROL PARAMETER

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P. N. Filippenko

2013-03-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the problem of very large-scale integration circuit partitioning. A graph is selected as a mathematical model describing integrated circuit. Modification of ant colony optimization algorithm is presented, which is used to solve graph partitioning problem. Ant colony optimization algorithm is an optimization method based on the principles of self-organization and other useful features of the ants’ behavior. The proposed search system is based on ant colony optimization algorithm with the improved method of the initial distribution and dynamic adjustment of the control search parameters. The experimental results and performance comparison show that the proposed method of very large-scale integration circuit partitioning provides the better search performance over other well known algorithms.

Cloud computing task scheduling strategy based on differential evolution and ant colony optimization

Science.gov (United States)

Ge, Junwei; Cai, Yu; Fang, Yiqiu

2018-05-01

This paper proposes a task scheduling strategy DEACO based on the combination of Differential Evolution (DE) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), aiming at the single problem of optimization objective in cloud computing task scheduling, this paper combines the shortest task completion time, cost and load balancing. DEACO uses the solution of the DE to initialize the initial pheromone of ACO, reduces the time of collecting the pheromone in ACO in the early, and improves the pheromone updating rule through the load factor. The proposed algorithm is simulated on cloudsim, and compared with the min-min and ACO. The experimental results show that DEACO is more superior in terms of time, cost, and load.

The application of ant colony optimization in the solution of 3D traveling salesman problem on a sphere

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Hüseyin Eldem

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP is a problem in combinatorial optimization that should be solved by a salesperson who has to travel all cities at the minimum cost (minimum route and return to the starting city (node. Todays, to resolve the minimum cost of this problem, many optimization algorithms have been used. The major ones are these metaheuristic algorithms. In this study, one of the metaheuristic methods, Ant Colony Optimization (ACO method (Max-Min Ant System – MMAS, was used to solve the Non-Euclidean TSP, which consisted of sets of different count points coincidentally located on the surface of a sphere. In this study seven point sets were used which have different point count. The performance of the MMAS method solving Non-Euclidean TSP problem was demonstrated by different experiments. Also, the results produced by ACO are compared with Discrete Cuckoo Search Algorithm (DCS and Genetic Algorithm (GA that are in the literature. The experiments for TSP on a sphere, show that ACO’s average results were better than the GA’s average results and also best results of ACO successful than the DCS.

Energy Efficiency Performance Improvements for Ant-Based Routing Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks

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Adamu Murtala Zungeru

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The main problem for event gathering in wireless sensor networks (WSNs is the restricted communication range for each node. Due to the restricted communication range and high network density, event forwarding in WSNs is very challenging and requires multihop data forwarding. Currently, the energy-efficient ant based routing (EEABR algorithm, based on the ant colony optimization (ACO metaheuristic, is one of the state-of-the-art energy-aware routing protocols. In this paper, we propose three improvements to the EEABR algorithm to further improve its energy efficiency. The improvements to the original EEABR are based on the following: (1 a new scheme to intelligently initialize the routing tables giving priority to neighboring nodes that simultaneously could be the destination, (2 intelligent update of routing tables in case of a node or link failure, and (3 reducing the flooding ability of ants for congestion control. The energy efficiency improvements are significant particularly for dynamic routing environments. Experimental results using the RMASE simulation environment show that the proposed method increases the energy efficiency by up to 9% and 64% in converge-cast and target-tracking scenarios, respectively, over the original EEABR without incurring a significant increase in complexity. The method is also compared and found to also outperform other swarm-based routing protocols such as sensor-driven and cost-aware ant routing (SC and Beesensor.

Comprehensive Evaluation for Operating Efficiency of Electricity Retail Companies Based on the Improved TOPSIS Method and LSSVM Optimized by Modified Ant Colony Algorithm from the View of Sustainable Development

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dongxiao Niu

2018-03-01

Full Text Available The electricity market of China is currently in the process of a new institutional reform. Diversified electricity retail entities are gradually being established with the opening of the marketing electricity side. In the face of a complex market environment and fierce competition, the operating efficiency can directly reflect the current market position and development of electricity retail companies. TOPSIS method can make full use of the information of original data, calculate the distance between evaluated objects and the ideal solutions and get the relative proximity, which is generally used in the overall department and comprehensive evaluation of the benefits. Least squares support vector machine (LSSVM, with high convergence precision, helps save the training time of algorithm by solving linear equations and is used to predict the comprehensive evaluation value. Considering the ultimate goal of sustainable development, a comprehensive evaluation model on operating efficiency of electricity retail companies based on the improved TOPSIS method and LSSVM optimized by modified ant colony algorithm is proposed in this paper. Firstly, from the view of sustainable development, an operating efficiency evaluation indicator system is constructed. Secondly, the entropy weight method is applied to empower the indicators objectively. After that, based on the improved TOPSIS method, the reverse problem in the evaluation process is eliminated. According to the relative proximity between the evaluated objects and the absolute ideal solutions, the scores of comprehensive evaluation for operating efficiency can then be ranked. Finally, the LSSVM optimized by modified ant colony algorithm is introduced to realize the simplified expert scoring process and fast calculation in the comprehensive evaluation process, and its improved learning and generalization ability can be used in the comprehensive evaluation of similar projects. The example analysis proves

Extreme queen-mating frequency and colony fission in African army ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kronauer, Daniel J C; Schoning, Caspar; Pedersen, Jes S

2004-01-01

, which have so far been regarded as odd exceptions within the social Hymenoptera. Army ants and honeybees are fundamentally different in morphology and life history, but are the only social insects known that combine obligate multiple mating with reproduction by colony fission and extremely male......-biased sex ratios. This implies that the very high numbers of matings in both groups may be due partly to the relatively low costs of additional matings. Second, we were able to trace recent events of colony fission in four of the investigated colonies, where the genotypes of the two queens were only...

Nest Relocation and Colony Founding in the Australian Desert Ant, Melophorus bagoti Lubbock (Hymenoptera: Formicidae

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Patrick Schultheiss

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Even after years of research on navigation in the Red Honey Ant, Melophorus bagoti, much of its life history remains elusive. Here, we present observations on nest relocation and the reproductive and founding stages of colonies. Nest relocation is possibly aided by trail laying behaviour, which is highly unusual for solitary foraging desert ants. Reproduction occurs in synchronised mating flights, which are probably triggered by rain. Queens may engage in multiple matings, and there is circumstantial evidence that males are chemically attracted to queens. After the mating flight, the queens found new colonies independently and singly. Excavation of these founding colonies reveals first insights into their structure.

Algorithm of Particle Data Association for SLAM Based on Improved Ant Algorithm

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KeKe Gen

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The article considers a problem of data association algorithm for simultaneous localization and mapping guidelines in determining the route of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs. Currently, these equipments are already widely used, but mainly controlled from the remote operator. An urgent task is to develop a control system that allows for autonomous flight. Algorithm SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping, which allows to predict the location, speed, the ratio of flight parameters and the coordinates of landmarks and obstacles in an unknown environment, is one of the key technologies to achieve real autonomous UAV flight. The aim of this work is to study the possibility of solving this problem by using an improved ant algorithm.The data association for SLAM algorithm is meant to establish a matching set of observed landmarks and landmarks in the state vector. Ant algorithm is one of the widely used optimization algorithms with positive feedback and the ability to search in parallel, so the algorithm is suitable for solving the problem of data association for SLAM. But the traditional ant algorithm in the process of finding routes easily falls into local optimum. Adding random perturbations in the process of updating the global pheromone to avoid local optima. Setting limits pheromone on the route can increase the search space with a reasonable amount of calculations for finding the optimal route.The paper proposes an algorithm of the local data association for SLAM algorithm based on an improved ant algorithm. To increase the speed of calculation, local data association is used instead of the global data association. The first stage of the algorithm defines targets in the matching space and the observed landmarks with the possibility of association by the criterion of individual compatibility (IC. The second stage defines the matched landmarks and their coordinates using improved ant algorithm. Simulation results confirm the efficiency and

Research of Ant Colony Optimized Adaptive Control Strategy for Hybrid Electric Vehicle

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Linhui Li

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Energy management control strategy of hybrid electric vehicle has a great influence on the vehicle fuel consumption with electric motors adding to the traditional vehicle power system. As vehicle real driving cycles seem to be uncertain, the dynamic driving cycles will have an impact on control strategy’s energy-saving effect. In order to better adapt the dynamic driving cycles, control strategy should have the ability to recognize the real-time driving cycle and adaptively adjust to the corresponding off-line optimal control parameters. In this paper, four types of representative driving cycles are constructed based on the actual vehicle operating data, and a fuzzy driving cycle recognition algorithm is proposed for online recognizing the type of actual driving cycle. Then, based on the equivalent fuel consumption minimization strategy, an ant colony optimization algorithm is utilized to search the optimal control parameters “charge and discharge equivalent factors” for each type of representative driving cycle. At last, the simulation experiments are conducted to verify the accuracy of the proposed fuzzy recognition algorithm and the validity of the designed control strategy optimization method.

Applying Data Clustering Feature to Speed Up Ant Colony Optimization

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Chao-Yang Pang

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Ant colony optimization (ACO is often used to solve optimization problems, such as traveling salesman problem (TSP. When it is applied to TSP, its runtime is proportional to the squared size of problem N so as to look less efficient. The following statistical feature is observed during the authors’ long-term gene data analysis using ACO: when the data size N becomes big, local clustering appears frequently. That is, some data cluster tightly in a small area and form a class, and the correlation between different classes is weak. And this feature makes the idea of divide and rule feasible for the estimate of solution of TSP. In this paper an improved ACO algorithm is presented, which firstly divided all data into local clusters and calculated small TSP routes and then assembled a big TSP route with them. Simulation shows that the presented method improves the running speed of ACO by 200 factors under the condition that data set holds feature of local clustering.

Hybrid ANFIS with ant colony optimization algorithm for prediction of shear wave velocity from a carbonate reservoir in Iran

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Hadi Fattahi

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Shear wave velocity (Vs data are key information for petrophysical, geophysical and geomechanical studies. Although compressional wave velocity (Vp measurements exist in almost all wells, shear wave velocity is not recorded for most of elderly wells due to lack of technologic tools. Furthermore, measurement of shear wave velocity is to some extent costly. This study proposes a novel methodology to remove aforementioned problems by use of hybrid adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS with ant colony optimization algorithm (ACO based on fuzzy c–means clustering (FCM and subtractive clustering (SCM. The ACO is combined with two ANFIS models for determining the optimal value of its user–defined parameters. The optimization implementation by the ACO significantly improves the generalization ability of the ANFIS models. These models are used in this study to formulate conventional well log data into Vs in a quick, cheap, and accurate manner. A total of 3030 data points was used for model construction and 833 data points were employed for assessment of ANFIS models. Finally, a comparison among ANFIS models, and six well–known empirical correlations demonstrated ANFIS models outperformed other methods. This strategy was successfully applied in the Marun reservoir, Iran.

Arboreal ant colonies as 'hot-points' of cryptic diversity for myrmecophiles: the weaver ant Camponotus sp. aff. textor and its interaction network with its associates.

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Pérez-Lachaud, Gabriela; Lachaud, Jean-Paul

2014-01-01

Systematic surveys of macrofaunal diversity within ant colonies are lacking, particularly for ants nesting in microhabitats that are difficult to sample. Species associated with ants are generally small and rarely collected organisms, which makes them more likely to be unnoticed. We assumed that this tendency is greater for arthropod communities in microhabitats with low accessibility, such as those found in the nests of arboreal ants that may constitute a source of cryptic biodiversity. We investigated the invertebrate diversity associated with an undescribed, but already threatened, Neotropical Camponotus weaver ant. As most of the common sampling methods used in studies of ant diversity are not suited for evaluating myrmecophile diversity within ant nests, we evaluated the macrofauna within ant nests through exhaustive colony sampling of three nests and examination of more than 80,000 individuals. We identified invertebrates from three classes belonging to 18 taxa, some of which were new to science, and recorded the first instance of the co-occurrence of two brood parasitoid wasp families attacking the same ant host colony. This diversity of ant associates corresponded to a highly complex interaction network. Agonistic interactions prevailed, but the prevalence of myrmecophiles was remarkably low. Our data support the hypothesis of the evolution of low virulence in a variety of symbionts associated with large insect societies. Because most myrmecophiles found in this work are rare, strictly specific, and exhibit highly specialized biology, the risk of extinction for these hitherto unknown invertebrates and their natural enemies is high. The cryptic, far unappreciated diversity within arboreal ant nests in areas at high risk of habitat loss qualifies these nests as 'hot-points' of biodiversity that urgently require special attention as a component of conservation and management programs.

Arboreal ant colonies as 'hot-points' of cryptic diversity for myrmecophiles: the weaver ant Camponotus sp. aff. textor and its interaction network with its associates.

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Gabriela Pérez-Lachaud

Full Text Available INTRODUCTION: Systematic surveys of macrofaunal diversity within ant colonies are lacking, particularly for ants nesting in microhabitats that are difficult to sample. Species associated with ants are generally small and rarely collected organisms, which makes them more likely to be unnoticed. We assumed that this tendency is greater for arthropod communities in microhabitats with low accessibility, such as those found in the nests of arboreal ants that may constitute a source of cryptic biodiversity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We investigated the invertebrate diversity associated with an undescribed, but already threatened, Neotropical Camponotus weaver ant. As most of the common sampling methods used in studies of ant diversity are not suited for evaluating myrmecophile diversity within ant nests, we evaluated the macrofauna within ant nests through exhaustive colony sampling of three nests and examination of more than 80,000 individuals. RESULTS: We identified invertebrates from three classes belonging to 18 taxa, some of which were new to science, and recorded the first instance of the co-occurrence of two brood parasitoid wasp families attacking the same ant host colony. This diversity of ant associates corresponded to a highly complex interaction network. Agonistic interactions prevailed, but the prevalence of myrmecophiles was remarkably low. CONCLUSIONS: Our data support the hypothesis of the evolution of low virulence in a variety of symbionts associated with large insect societies. Because most myrmecophiles found in this work are rare, strictly specific, and exhibit highly specialized biology, the risk of extinction for these hitherto unknown invertebrates and their natural enemies is high. The cryptic, far unappreciated diversity within arboreal ant nests in areas at high risk of habitat loss qualifies these nests as 'hot-points' of biodiversity that urgently require special attention as a component of conservation and management

Plant-derived differences in the composition of aphid honeydew and their effects on colonies of aphid-tending ants

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Pringle, Elizabeth G; Novo, Alexandria; Ableson, Ian; Barbehenn, Raymond V; Vannette, Rachel L

2014-01-01

In plant–ant–hemipteran interactions, ants visit plants to consume the honeydew produced by phloem-feeding hemipterans. If genetically based differences in plant phloem chemistry change the chemical composition of hemipteran honeydew, then the plant's genetic constitution could have indirect effects on ants via the hemipterans. If such effects change ant behavior, they could feed back to affect the plant itself. We compared the chemical composition of honeydews produced by Aphis nerii aphid clones on two milkweed congeners, Asclepias curassavica and Asclepias incarnata, and we measured the responses of experimental Linepithema humile ant colonies to these honeydews. The compositions of secondary metabolites, sugars, and amino acids differed significantly in the honeydews from the two plant species. Ant colonies feeding on honeydew derived from A. incarnata recruited in higher numbers to artificial diet, maintained higher queen and worker dry weight, and sustained marginally more workers than ants feeding on honeydew derived from A. curassavica. Ants feeding on honeydew from A. incarnata were also more exploratory in behavioral assays than ants feeding from A. curassavica. Despite performing better when feeding on the A. incarnata honeydew, ant workers marginally preferred honeydew from A. curassavica to honeydew from A. incarnata when given a choice. Our results demonstrate that plant congeners can exert strong indirect effects on ant colonies by means of plant-species-specific differences in aphid honeydew chemistry. Moreover, these effects changed ant behavior and thus could feed back to affect plant performance in the field. PMID:25505534

An ant colony optimization based feature selection for web page classification.

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Saraç, Esra; Özel, Selma Ayşe

2014-01-01

The increased popularity of the web has caused the inclusion of huge amount of information to the web, and as a result of this explosive information growth, automated web page classification systems are needed to improve search engines' performance. Web pages have a large number of features such as HTML/XML tags, URLs, hyperlinks, and text contents that should be considered during an automated classification process. The aim of this study is to reduce the number of features to be used to improve runtime and accuracy of the classification of web pages. In this study, we used an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm to select the best features, and then we applied the well-known C4.5, naive Bayes, and k nearest neighbor classifiers to assign class labels to web pages. We used the WebKB and Conference datasets in our experiments, and we showed that using the ACO for feature selection improves both accuracy and runtime performance of classification. We also showed that the proposed ACO based algorithm can select better features with respect to the well-known information gain and chi square feature selection methods.

Arboreal Ant Colonies as ‘Hot-Points’ of Cryptic Diversity for Myrmecophiles: The Weaver Ant Camponotus sp. aff. textor and Its Interaction Network with Its Associates

Science.gov (United States)

Pérez-Lachaud, Gabriela; Lachaud, Jean-Paul

2014-01-01

Introduction Systematic surveys of macrofaunal diversity within ant colonies are lacking, particularly for ants nesting in microhabitats that are difficult to sample. Species associated with ants are generally small and rarely collected organisms, which makes them more likely to be unnoticed. We assumed that this tendency is greater for arthropod communities in microhabitats with low accessibility, such as those found in the nests of arboreal ants that may constitute a source of cryptic biodiversity. Materials and Methods We investigated the invertebrate diversity associated with an undescribed, but already threatened, Neotropical Camponotus weaver ant. As most of the common sampling methods used in studies of ant diversity are not suited for evaluating myrmecophile diversity within ant nests, we evaluated the macrofauna within ant nests through exhaustive colony sampling of three nests and examination of more than 80,000 individuals. Results We identified invertebrates from three classes belonging to 18 taxa, some of which were new to science, and recorded the first instance of the co-occurrence of two brood parasitoid wasp families attacking the same ant host colony. This diversity of ant associates corresponded to a highly complex interaction network. Agonistic interactions prevailed, but the prevalence of myrmecophiles was remarkably low. Conclusions Our data support the hypothesis of the evolution of low virulence in a variety of symbionts associated with large insect societies. Because most myrmecophiles found in this work are rare, strictly specific, and exhibit highly specialized biology, the risk of extinction for these hitherto unknown invertebrates and their natural enemies is high. The cryptic, far unappreciated diversity within arboreal ant nests in areas at high risk of habitat loss qualifies these nests as ‘hot-points’ of biodiversity that urgently require special attention as a component of conservation and management programs. PMID:24941047

Ant colony optimisation for economic dispatch problem with non-smooth cost functions

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Pothiya, Saravuth; Kongprawechnon, Waree [School of Communication, Instrumentation and Control, Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology, Thammasat University, P.O. Box 22, Pathumthani (Thailand); Ngamroo, Issarachai [Center of Excellence for Innovative Energy Systems, Faculty of Engineering, King Mongkut' s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok 10520 (Thailand)

2010-06-15

This paper presents a novel and efficient optimisation approach based on the ant colony optimisation (ACO) for solving the economic dispatch (ED) problem with non-smooth cost functions. In order to improve the performance of ACO algorithm, three additional techniques, i.e. priority list, variable reduction, and zoom feature are presented. To show its efficiency and effectiveness, the proposed ACO is applied to two types of ED problems with non-smooth cost functions. Firstly, the ED problem with valve-point loading effects consists of 13 and 40 generating units. Secondly, the ED problem considering the multiple fuels consists of 10 units. Additionally, the results of the proposed ACO are compared with those of the conventional heuristic approaches. The experimental results show that the proposed ACO approach is comparatively capable of obtaining higher quality solution and faster computational time. (author)

Colony growth of two species of Solenopsis fire ants(Hymenoptera: Formicidae) reared with crickets and beef liver

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Most diets for rearing fire ants and other ants contain insects such as crickets or mealworms. Unfortunately, insect diets are expensive, especially for large rearing operations, and are not always easily available. This study was designed to examine colony growth of Solenopsis fire ants on beef liv...

Influence of toxic bait type and starvation on worker and queen mortality in laboratory colonies of Argentine ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae).

Science.gov (United States)

Mathieson, Melissa; Toft, Richard; Lester, Philip J

2012-08-01

The efficacy of toxic baits should be judged by their ability to kill entire ant colonies, including the colony queen or queens. We studied the efficacy of four toxic baits to the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile (Mayr) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). These baits were Xstinguish that has the toxicant fipronil, Exterm-an-Ant that contains both boric acid and sodium borate, and Advion ant gel and Advion ant bait arena that both have indoxacarb. Experimental nests contained 300 workers and 10 queen ants that were starved for either 24 or 48 h before toxic bait exposure. The efficacy of the toxic baits was strongly influenced by starvation. In no treatment with 24-h starvation did we observe 100% worker death. After 24-h starvation three of the baits did not result in any queen deaths, with only Exterm-an-Ant producing an average of 25% mortality. In contrast, 100% queen and worker mortality was observed in colonies starved for 48 h and given Xstinguish or Exterm-an-Ant. The baits Advion ant gel and Advion ant bait arena were not effective against Argentine ants in these trials, resulting in ants are likely to be starved. Our results suggest queen mortality must be assessed in tests for toxic bait efficacy. Our data indicate that of these four baits, Xstinguish and Exterm-an-Ant are the best options for control of Argentine ants in New Zealand.

JOB SHOP METHODOLOGY BASED ON AN ANT COLONY

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OMAR CASTRILLON

2009-01-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this study is to reduce the total process time (Makespan and to increase the machines working time, in a job shop environment, using a heuristic based on ant colony optimization. This work is developed in two phases: The first stage describes the identification and definition of heuristics for the sequential processes in the job shop. The second stage shows the effectiveness of the system in the traditional programming of production. A good solution, with 99% efficiency is found using this technique.

New methods to minimize the preventive maintenance cost of series-parallel systems using ant colony optimization

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Samrout, M.; Yalaoui, F.; Cha-hat telet, E.; Chebbo, N.

2005-01-01

This article is based on a previous study made by Bris, Chatelet and Yalaoui [Bris R, Chatelet E, Yalaoui F. New method to minimise the preventive maintenance cost of series-parallel systems. Reliab Eng Syst Saf 2003;82:247-55]. They use genetic algorithm to minimize preventive maintenance cost problem for the series-parallel systems. We propose to improve their results developing a new method based on another technique, the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). The resolution consists in determining the solution vector of system component inspection periods, T P . Those calculations were applied within the programming tool Matlab. Thus, highly interesting results and improvements of previous studies were obtained

Multi-Objective Ant Colony Optimization Based on the Physarum-Inspired Mathematical Model for Bi-Objective Traveling Salesman Problems.

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Zili Zhang

Full Text Available Bi-objective Traveling Salesman Problem (bTSP is an important field in the operations research, its solutions can be widely applied in the real world. Many researches of Multi-objective Ant Colony Optimization (MOACOs have been proposed to solve bTSPs. However, most of MOACOs suffer premature convergence. This paper proposes an optimization strategy for MOACOs by optimizing the initialization of pheromone matrix with the prior knowledge of Physarum-inspired Mathematical Model (PMM. PMM can find the shortest route between two nodes based on the positive feedback mechanism. The optimized algorithms, named as iPM-MOACOs, can enhance the pheromone in the short paths and promote the search ability of ants. A series of experiments are conducted and experimental results show that the proposed strategy can achieve a better compromise solution than the original MOACOs for solving bTSPs.

Hybrid Optimization of Object-Based Classification in High-Resolution Images Using Continous ANT Colony Algorithm with Emphasis on Building Detection

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Tamimi, E.; Ebadi, H.; Kiani, A.

2017-09-01

Automatic building detection from High Spatial Resolution (HSR) images is one of the most important issues in Remote Sensing (RS). Due to the limited number of spectral bands in HSR images, using other features will lead to improve accuracy. By adding these features, the presence probability of dependent features will be increased, which leads to accuracy reduction. In addition, some parameters should be determined in Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification. Therefore, it is necessary to simultaneously determine classification parameters and select independent features according to image type. Optimization algorithm is an efficient method to solve this problem. On the other hand, pixel-based classification faces several challenges such as producing salt-paper results and high computational time in high dimensional data. Hence, in this paper, a novel method is proposed to optimize object-based SVM classification by applying continuous Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm. The advantages of the proposed method are relatively high automation level, independency of image scene and type, post processing reduction for building edge reconstruction and accuracy improvement. The proposed method was evaluated by pixel-based SVM and Random Forest (RF) classification in terms of accuracy. In comparison with optimized pixel-based SVM classification, the results showed that the proposed method improved quality factor and overall accuracy by 17% and 10%, respectively. Also, in the proposed method, Kappa coefficient was improved by 6% rather than RF classification. Time processing of the proposed method was relatively low because of unit of image analysis (image object). These showed the superiority of the proposed method in terms of time and accuracy.

Estimating the net electricity energy generation and demand using the ant colony optimization approach. Case of Turkey

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Toksari, M. Duran

2009-01-01

This paper presents Turkey's net electricity energy generation and demand based on economic indicators. Forecasting model for electricity energy generation and demand is first proposed by the ant colony optimization (ACO) approach. It is multi-agent system in which the behavior of each ant is inspired by the foraging behavior of real ants to solve optimization problem. Ant colony optimization electricity energy estimation (ACOEEE) model is developed using population, gross domestic product (GDP), import and export. All equations proposed here are linear electricity energy generation and demand (linear A COEEGE and linear ACOEEDE) and quadratic energy generation and demand (quadratic A COEEGE and quadratic ACOEEDE). Quadratic models for both generation and demand provided better fit solution due to the fluctuations of the economic indicators. The ACOEEGE and ACOEEDE models indicate Turkey's net electricity energy generation and demand until 2025 according to three scenarios. (author)

Ant colony algorithm implementation in electron and photon Monte Carlo transport: application to the commissioning of radiosurgery photon beams.

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García-Pareja, S; Galán, P; Manzano, F; Brualla, L; Lallena, A M

2010-07-01

In this work, the authors describe an approach which has been developed to drive the application of different variance-reduction techniques to the Monte Carlo simulation of photon and electron transport in clinical accelerators. The new approach considers the following techniques: Russian roulette, splitting, a modified version of the directional bremsstrahlung splitting, and the azimuthal particle redistribution. Their application is controlled by an ant colony algorithm based on an importance map. The procedure has been applied to radiosurgery beams. Specifically, the authors have calculated depth-dose profiles, off-axis ratios, and output factors, quantities usually considered in the commissioning of these beams. The agreement between Monte Carlo results and the corresponding measurements is within approximately 3%/0.3 mm for the central axis percentage depth dose and the dose profiles. The importance map generated in the calculation can be used to discuss simulation details in the different parts of the geometry in a simple way. The simulation CPU times are comparable to those needed within other approaches common in this field. The new approach is competitive with those previously used in this kind of problems (PSF generation or source models) and has some practical advantages that make it to be a good tool to simulate the radiation transport in problems where the quantities of interest are difficult to obtain because of low statistics.

Ant colony algorithm implementation in electron and photon Monte Carlo transport: Application to the commissioning of radiosurgery photon beams

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Garcia-Pareja, S.; Galan, P.; Manzano, F.; Brualla, L.; Lallena, A. M. [Servicio de Radiofisica Hospitalaria, Hospital Regional Universitario ' ' Carlos Haya' ' , Avda. Carlos Haya s/n, E-29010 Malaga (Spain); Unidad de Radiofisica Hospitalaria, Hospital Xanit Internacional, Avda. de los Argonautas s/n, E-29630 Benalmadena (Malaga) (Spain); NCTeam, Strahlenklinik, Universitaetsklinikum Essen, Hufelandstr. 55, D-45122 Essen (Germany); Departamento de Fisica Atomica, Molecular y Nuclear, Universidad de Granada, E-18071 Granada (Spain)

2010-07-15

Purpose: In this work, the authors describe an approach which has been developed to drive the application of different variance-reduction techniques to the Monte Carlo simulation of photon and electron transport in clinical accelerators. Methods: The new approach considers the following techniques: Russian roulette, splitting, a modified version of the directional bremsstrahlung splitting, and the azimuthal particle redistribution. Their application is controlled by an ant colony algorithm based on an importance map. Results: The procedure has been applied to radiosurgery beams. Specifically, the authors have calculated depth-dose profiles, off-axis ratios, and output factors, quantities usually considered in the commissioning of these beams. The agreement between Monte Carlo results and the corresponding measurements is within {approx}3%/0.3 mm for the central axis percentage depth dose and the dose profiles. The importance map generated in the calculation can be used to discuss simulation details in the different parts of the geometry in a simple way. The simulation CPU times are comparable to those needed within other approaches common in this field. Conclusions: The new approach is competitive with those previously used in this kind of problems (PSF generation or source models) and has some practical advantages that make it to be a good tool to simulate the radiation transport in problems where the quantities of interest are difficult to obtain because of low statistics.

Ant colony algorithm implementation in electron and photon Monte Carlo transport: Application to the commissioning of radiosurgery photon beams

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Garcia-Pareja, S.; Galan, P.; Manzano, F.; Brualla, L.; Lallena, A. M.

2010-01-01

Purpose: In this work, the authors describe an approach which has been developed to drive the application of different variance-reduction techniques to the Monte Carlo simulation of photon and electron transport in clinical accelerators. Methods: The new approach considers the following techniques: Russian roulette, splitting, a modified version of the directional bremsstrahlung splitting, and the azimuthal particle redistribution. Their application is controlled by an ant colony algorithm based on an importance map. Results: The procedure has been applied to radiosurgery beams. Specifically, the authors have calculated depth-dose profiles, off-axis ratios, and output factors, quantities usually considered in the commissioning of these beams. The agreement between Monte Carlo results and the corresponding measurements is within ∼3%/0.3 mm for the central axis percentage depth dose and the dose profiles. The importance map generated in the calculation can be used to discuss simulation details in the different parts of the geometry in a simple way. The simulation CPU times are comparable to those needed within other approaches common in this field. Conclusions: The new approach is competitive with those previously used in this kind of problems (PSF generation or source models) and has some practical advantages that make it to be a good tool to simulate the radiation transport in problems where the quantities of interest are difficult to obtain because of low statistics.

A nuclear reactor core fuel reload optimization using Artificial-Ant-Colony Connective Networks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lima, Alan M.M. de; Schirru, Roberto

2005-01-01

A Pressurized Water Reactor core must be reloaded every time the fuel burnup reaches a level when it is not possible to sustain nominal power operation. The nuclear core fuel reload optimization consists in finding a burned-up and fresh-fuel-assembly pattern that maximizes the number of full operational days. This problem is NP-hard, meaning that complexity grows exponentially with the number of fuel assemblies in the core. Besides that, the problem is non-linear and its search space is highly discontinual and multimodal. In this work a parallel computational system based on Ant Colony System (ACS) called Artificial-Ant-Colony Networks is introduced to solve the nuclear reactor core fuel reload optimization problem. ACS is a system based on artificial agents that uses the reinforcement learning technique and was originally developed to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem, which is conceptually similar to the nuclear fuel reload problem. (author)

Colony structure and spatial partitioning of cavity dwelling ant species in nuts of eastern US forest floors

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Nut-bearing trees create islands of high efficiency, low cost housing opportunities for ant colonies. Fallen nuts in leaf litter from previous seasons provide ready-made nest sites for cavity dwelling ant species, as well as affording protection from the elements. Suitable nuts for nests require an ...

Friends and foes from an ant brain's point of view--neuronal correlates of colony odors in a social insect.

Science.gov (United States)

Brandstaetter, Andreas Simon; Rössler, Wolfgang; Kleineidam, Christoph Johannes

2011-01-01

Successful cooperation depends on reliable identification of friends and foes. Social insects discriminate colony members (nestmates/friends) from foreign workers (non-nestmates/foes) by colony-specific, multi-component colony odors. Traditionally, complex processing in the brain has been regarded as crucial for colony recognition. Odor information is represented as spatial patterns of activity and processed in the primary olfactory neuropile, the antennal lobe (AL) of insects, which is analogous to the vertebrate olfactory bulb. Correlative evidence indicates that the spatial activity patterns reflect odor-quality, i.e., how an odor is perceived. For colony odors, alternatively, a sensory filter in the peripheral nervous system was suggested, causing specific anosmia to nestmate colony odors. Here, we investigate neuronal correlates of colony odors in the brain of a social insect to directly test whether they are anosmic to nestmate colony odors and whether spatial activity patterns in the AL can predict how odor qualities like "friend" and "foe" are attributed to colony odors. Using ant dummies that mimic natural conditions, we presented colony odors and investigated their neuronal representation in the ant Camponotus floridanus. Nestmate and non-nestmate colony odors elicited neuronal activity: In the periphery, we recorded sensory responses of olfactory receptor neurons (electroantennography), and in the brain, we measured colony odor specific spatial activity patterns in the AL (calcium imaging). Surprisingly, upon repeated stimulation with the same colony odor, spatial activity patterns were variable, and as variable as activity patterns elicited by different colony odors. Ants are not anosmic to nestmate colony odors. However, spatial activity patterns in the AL alone do not provide sufficient information for colony odor discrimination and this finding challenges the current notion of how odor quality is coded. Our result illustrates the enormous challenge

Dynamic routing and spectrum assignment based on multilayer virtual topology and ant colony optimization in elastic software-defined optical networks

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Fu; Liu, Bo; Zhang, Lijia; Zhang, Qi; Tian, Qinghua; Tian, Feng; Rao, Lan; Xin, Xiangjun

2017-07-01

Elastic software-defined optical networks greatly improve the flexibility of the optical switching network while it has brought challenges to the routing and spectrum assignment (RSA). A multilayer virtual topology model is proposed to solve RSA problems. Two RSA algorithms based on the virtual topology are proposed, which are the ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm of minimum consecutiveness loss and the ACO algorithm of maximum spectrum consecutiveness. Due to the computing power of the control layer in the software-defined network, the routing algorithm avoids the frequent link-state information between routers. Based on the effect of the spectrum consecutiveness loss on the pheromone in the ACO, the path and spectrum of the minimal impact on the network are selected for the service request. The proposed algorithms have been compared with other algorithms. The results show that the proposed algorithms can reduce the blocking rate by at least 5% and perform better in spectrum efficiency. Moreover, the proposed algorithms can effectively decrease spectrum fragmentation and enhance available spectrum consecutiveness.

Ant colony optimization as a descriptor selection in QSPR modeling: Estimation of the λmax of anthraquinones-based dyes

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Morteza Atabati

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Quantitative structure–property relationship (QSPR studies based on ant colony optimization (ACO were carried out for the prediction of λmax of 9,10-anthraquinone derivatives. ACO is a meta-heuristic algorithm, which is derived from the observation of real ants and proposed to feature selection. After optimization of 3D geometry of structures by the semi-empirical quantum-chemical calculation at AM1 level, different descriptors were calculated by the HyperChem and Dragon softwares (1514 descriptors. A major problem of QSPR is the high dimensionality of the descriptor space; therefore, descriptor selection is the most important step. In this paper, an ACO algorithm was used to select the best descriptors. Then selected descriptors were applied for model development using multiple linear regression. The average absolute relative deviation and correlation coefficient for the calibration set were obtained as 3.3% and 0.9591, respectively, while the average absolute relative deviation and correlation coefficient for the prediction set were obtained as 5.0% and 0.9526, respectively. The results showed that the applied procedure is suitable for prediction of λmax of 9,10-anthraquinone derivatives.

HYBRID OPTIMIZATION OF OBJECT-BASED CLASSIFICATION IN HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGES USING CONTINOUS ANT COLONY ALGORITHM WITH EMPHASIS ON BUILDING DETECTION

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E. Tamimi

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Automatic building detection from High Spatial Resolution (HSR images is one of the most important issues in Remote Sensing (RS. Due to the limited number of spectral bands in HSR images, using other features will lead to improve accuracy. By adding these features, the presence probability of dependent features will be increased, which leads to accuracy reduction. In addition, some parameters should be determined in Support Vector Machine (SVM classification. Therefore, it is necessary to simultaneously determine classification parameters and select independent features according to image type. Optimization algorithm is an efficient method to solve this problem. On the other hand, pixel-based classification faces several challenges such as producing salt-paper results and high computational time in high dimensional data. Hence, in this paper, a novel method is proposed to optimize object-based SVM classification by applying continuous Ant Colony Optimization (ACO algorithm. The advantages of the proposed method are relatively high automation level, independency of image scene and type, post processing reduction for building edge reconstruction and accuracy improvement. The proposed method was evaluated by pixel-based SVM and Random Forest (RF classification in terms of accuracy. In comparison with optimized pixel-based SVM classification, the results showed that the proposed method improved quality factor and overall accuracy by 17% and 10%, respectively. Also, in the proposed method, Kappa coefficient was improved by 6% rather than RF classification. Time processing of the proposed method was relatively low because of unit of image analysis (image object. These showed the superiority of the proposed method in terms of time and accuracy.

Social transfer of pathogenic fungus promotes active immunisation in ant colonies.

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Matthias Konrad

Full Text Available Due to the omnipresent risk of epidemics, insect societies have evolved sophisticated disease defences at the individual and colony level. An intriguing yet little understood phenomenon is that social contact to pathogen-exposed individuals reduces susceptibility of previously naive nestmates to this pathogen. We tested whether such social immunisation in Lasius ants against the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium anisopliae is based on active upregulation of the immune system of nestmates following contact to an infectious individual or passive protection via transfer of immune effectors among group members--that is, active versus passive immunisation. We found no evidence for involvement of passive immunisation via transfer of antimicrobials among colony members. Instead, intensive allogrooming behaviour between naive and pathogen-exposed ants before fungal conidia firmly attached to their cuticle suggested passage of the pathogen from the exposed individuals to their nestmates. By tracing fluorescence-labelled conidia we indeed detected frequent pathogen transfer to the nestmates, where they caused low-level infections as revealed by growth of small numbers of fungal colony forming units from their dissected body content. These infections rarely led to death, but instead promoted an enhanced ability to inhibit fungal growth and an active upregulation of immune genes involved in antifungal defences (defensin and prophenoloxidase, PPO. Contrarily, there was no upregulation of the gene cathepsin L, which is associated with antibacterial and antiviral defences, and we found no increased antibacterial activity of nestmates of fungus-exposed ants. This indicates that social immunisation after fungal exposure is specific, similar to recent findings for individual-level immune priming in invertebrates. Epidemiological modeling further suggests that active social immunisation is adaptive, as it leads to faster elimination of the disease and lower

Colony-level behavioural variation correlates with differences in expression of the foraging gene in red imported fire ants.

Science.gov (United States)

Bockoven, Alison A; Coates, Craig J; Eubanks, Micky D

2017-11-01

Among social insects, colony-level variation is likely to be widespread and has significant ecological consequences. Very few studies, however, have documented how genetic factors relate to behaviour at the colony level. Differences in expression of the foraging gene have been associated with differences in foraging and activity of a wide variety of organisms. We quantified expression of the red imported fire ant foraging gene (sifor) in workers from 21 colonies collected across the natural range of Texas fire ant populations, but maintained under standardized, environmentally controlled conditions. Colonies varied significantly in their behaviour. The most active colonies had up to 10 times more active foragers than the least active colony and more than 16 times as many workers outside the nest. Expression differences among colonies correlated with this colony-level behavioural variation. Colonies with higher sifor expression in foragers had, on average, significantly higher foraging activity, exploratory activity and recruitment to nectar than colonies with lower expression. Expression of sifor was also strongly correlated with worker task (foraging vs. working in the interior of the nest). These results provide insight into the genetic and physiological processes underlying collective differences in social behaviour. Quantifying variation in expression of the foraging gene may provide an important tool for understanding and predicting the ecological consequences of colony-level behavioural variation. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Incomplete Homogenization of Chemical Recognition Labels Between Formica sanguinea and Formica rufa Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Living in a Mixed Colony

Science.gov (United States)

Włodarczyk, Tomasz; Szczepaniak, Lech

2014-01-01

Abstract Formica sanguinea Latreille (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) is a slave-making species, i.e., it raids colonies of host species and pillages pupae, which are taken to develop into adult workers in a parasite colony. However, it has been unclear if the coexistence of F. sanguinea with slave workers requires uniformity of cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs), among which those other than n -alkanes are believed to be the principal nestmate recognition cues utilized by ants. In this study, a mixed colony (MC) of F. sanguinea and Formica rufa L. as a slave species was used to test the hypothesis that CHCs are exchanged between the species. Chemical analysis of hexane extracts from ants’ body surfaces provided evidence for interspecific exchange of alkenes and methyl-branched alkanes. This result was confirmed by behavioral tests during which ants exhibited hostility toward conspecific individuals from the MC but not toward ones from homospecific colonies of their own species. However, it seems that species-specific differences in chemical recognition labels were not eliminated completely because ants from the MC were treated differently depending on whether they were con- or allospecific to the individuals whose behavioral reactions were tested. These findings are discussed in the context of mechanisms of colony's odor formation and effective integration of slaves into parasite colony. PMID:25502026

The modification of hybrid method of ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization and 3-OPT algorithm in traveling salesman problem

Science.gov (United States)

Hertono, G. F.; Ubadah; Handari, B. D.

2018-03-01

The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a famous problem in finding the shortest tour to visit every vertex exactly once, except the first vertex, given a set of vertices. This paper discusses three modification methods to solve TSP by combining Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and 3-Opt Algorithm. The ACO is used to find the solution of TSP, in which the PSO is implemented to find the best value of parameters α and β that are used in ACO.In order to reduce the total of tour length from the feasible solution obtained by ACO, then the 3-Opt will be used. In the first modification, the 3-Opt is used to reduce the total tour length from the feasible solutions obtained at each iteration, meanwhile, as the second modification, 3-Opt is used to reduce the total tour length from the entire solution obtained at every iteration. In the third modification, 3-Opt is used to reduce the total tour length from different solutions obtained at each iteration. Results are tested using 6 benchmark problems taken from TSPLIB by calculating the relative error to the best known solution as well as the running time. Among those modifications, only the second and third modification give satisfactory results except the second one needs more execution time compare to the third modifications.

Friends and Foes from an Ant Brain's Point of View – Neuronal Correlates of Colony Odors in a Social Insect

Science.gov (United States)

Brandstaetter, Andreas Simon; Rössler, Wolfgang; Kleineidam, Christoph Johannes

2011-01-01

Background Successful cooperation depends on reliable identification of friends and foes. Social insects discriminate colony members (nestmates/friends) from foreign workers (non-nestmates/foes) by colony-specific, multi-component colony odors. Traditionally, complex processing in the brain has been regarded as crucial for colony recognition. Odor information is represented as spatial patterns of activity and processed in the primary olfactory neuropile, the antennal lobe (AL) of insects, which is analogous to the vertebrate olfactory bulb. Correlative evidence indicates that the spatial activity patterns reflect odor-quality, i.e., how an odor is perceived. For colony odors, alternatively, a sensory filter in the peripheral nervous system was suggested, causing specific anosmia to nestmate colony odors. Here, we investigate neuronal correlates of colony odors in the brain of a social insect to directly test whether they are anosmic to nestmate colony odors and whether spatial activity patterns in the AL can predict how odor qualities like “friend” and “foe” are attributed to colony odors. Methodology/Principal Findings Using ant dummies that mimic natural conditions, we presented colony odors and investigated their neuronal representation in the ant Camponotus floridanus. Nestmate and non-nestmate colony odors elicited neuronal activity: In the periphery, we recorded sensory responses of olfactory receptor neurons (electroantennography), and in the brain, we measured colony odor specific spatial activity patterns in the AL (calcium imaging). Surprisingly, upon repeated stimulation with the same colony odor, spatial activity patterns were variable, and as variable as activity patterns elicited by different colony odors. Conclusions Ants are not anosmic to nestmate colony odors. However, spatial activity patterns in the AL alone do not provide sufficient information for colony odor discrimination and this finding challenges the current notion of how odor

The Lobe Fissure Tracking by the Modified Ant Colony Optimization Framework in CT Images

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Chii-Jen Chen

2014-11-01

Full Text Available Chest computed tomography (CT is the most commonly used technique for the inspection of lung lesions. However, the lobe fissures in lung CT is still difficult to observe owing to its imaging structure. Therefore, in this paper, we aimed to develop an efficient tracking framework to extract the lobe fissures by the proposed modified ant colony optimization (ACO algorithm. We used the method of increasing the consistency of pheromone on lobe fissure to improve the accuracy of path tracking. In order to validate the proposed system, we had tested our method in a database from 15 lung patients. In the experiment, the quantitative assessment shows that the proposed ACO method achieved the average F-measures of 80.9% and 82.84% in left and right lungs, respectively. The experiments indicate our method results more satisfied performance, and can help investigators detect lung lesion for further examination.

Strict monandry in the ponerine army ant genus Simopelta suggests that colony size and complexity drive mating system evolution in social insects

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kronauer, Daniel J C; O'Donnell, Sean; Boomsma, Jacobus J

2011-01-01

-ratios have convergently shaped these mating systems. Here we show that ponerine army ants of the genus Simopelta, which are distantly related but similar in general biology to other army ants, have strictly monandrous queens. Preliminary data suggest that workers reproduce in queenright colonies, which...... is in sharp contrast to other army ants. We hypothesize that differences in mature colony size and social complexity may explain these striking discrepancies....

Archimedean copula estimation of distribution algorithm based on artificial bee colony algorithm

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

Haidong Xu; Mingyan Jiang; Kun Xu

2015-01-01

The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a com-petitive stochastic population-based optimization algorithm. How-ever, the ABC algorithm does not use the social information and lacks the knowledge of the problem structure, which leads to in-sufficiency in both convergent speed and searching precision. Archimedean copula estimation of distribution algorithm (ACEDA) is a relatively simple, time-economic and multivariate correlated EDA. This paper proposes a novel hybrid algorithm based on the ABC algorithm and ACEDA cal ed Archimedean copula estima-tion of distribution based on the artificial bee colony (ACABC) algorithm. The hybrid algorithm utilizes ACEDA to estimate the distribution model and then uses the information to help artificial bees to search more efficiently in the search space. Six bench-mark functions are introduced to assess the performance of the ACABC algorithm on numerical function optimization. Experimen-tal results show that the ACABC algorithm converges much faster with greater precision compared with the ABC algorithm, ACEDA and the global best (gbest)-guided ABC (GABC) algorithm in most of the experiments.

An approach using quantum ant colony optimization applied to the problem of nuclear reactors reload

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Silva, Marcio H.; Lima, Alan M.M. de; Schirru, Roberto; Medeiros, J.A.C.C.

2009-01-01

The basic concept behind the nuclear reactor fuel reloading problem is to find a configuration of new and used fuel elements, to keep the plant working at full power by the largest possible duration, within the safety restrictions. The main restriction is the power peaking factor, which is the limit value for the preservation of the fuel assembly. The QACO A lfa algorithm is a modified version of Quantum Ant Colony Optimization (QACO) proposed by Wang et al, which uses a new actualization method and a pseudo evaporation step. We examined the QACO A lfa behavior associated to physics of reactors code RECNOD when applied to this problem. Although the QACO have been developed for continuous functions, the binary model used in this work allows applying it to discrete problems, such as the mentioned above. (author)

Multiobjective optimal placement of switches and protective devices in electric power distribution systems using ant colony optimization

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Tippachon, Wiwat; Rerkpreedapong, Dulpichet [Department of Electrical Engineering, Kasetsart University, 50 Phaholyothin Rd., Ladyao, Jatujak, Bangkok 10900 (Thailand)

2009-07-15

This paper presents a multiobjective optimization methodology to optimally place switches and protective devices in electric power distribution networks. Identifying the type and location of them is a combinatorial optimization problem described by a nonlinear and nondifferential function. The multiobjective ant colony optimization (MACO) has been applied to this problem to minimize the total cost while simultaneously minimize two distribution network reliability indices including system average interruption frequency index (SAIFI) and system interruption duration index (SAIDI). Actual distribution feeders are used in the tests, and test results have shown that the algorithm can determine the set of optimal nondominated solutions. It allows the utility to obtain the optimal type and location of devices to achieve the best system reliability with the lowest cost. (author)

Collective search by ants in microgravity

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Stefanie M. Countryman

2015-03-01

Full Text Available The problem of collective search is a tradeoff between searching thoroughly and covering as much area as possible. This tradeoff depends on the density of searchers. Solutions to the problem of collective search are currently of much interest in robotics and in the study of distributed algorithms, for example to design ways that without central control robots can use local information to perform search and rescue operations. Ant colonies operate without central control. Because they can perceive only local, mostly chemical and tactile cues, they must search collectively to find resources and to monitor the colony's environment. Examining how ants in diverse environments solve the problem of collective search can elucidate how evolution has led to diverse forms of collective behavior. An experiment on the International Space Station in January 2014 examined how ants (Tetramorium caespitum perform collective search in microgravity. In the ISS experiment, the ants explored a small arena in which a barrier was lowered to increase the area and thus lower ant density. In microgravity, relative to ground controls, ants explored the area less thoroughly and took more convoluted paths. It appears that the difficulty of holding on to the surface interfered with the ants’ ability to search collectively. Ants frequently lost contact with the surface, but showed a remarkable ability to regain contact with the surface.

Cloud Service Scheduling Algorithm Research and Optimization

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Hongyan Cui

2017-01-01

Full Text Available We propose a cloud service scheduling model that is referred to as the Task Scheduling System (TSS. In the user module, the process time of each task is in accordance with a general distribution. In the task scheduling module, we take a weighted sum of makespan and flowtime as the objective function and use an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO and a Genetic Algorithm (GA to solve the problem of cloud task scheduling. Simulation results show that the convergence speed and output performance of our Genetic Algorithm-Chaos Ant Colony Optimization (GA-CACO are optimal.

Genetic regulation of colony social organization in fire ants: an integrative overview.

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Gotzek, Dietrich; Ross, Kenneth G

2007-09-01

Expression of colony social organization in fire ants appears to be under the control of a single Mendelian factor of large effect. Variation in colony queen number in Solenopsis invicta and its relatives is associated with allelic variation at the gene Gp-9, but not with variation at other unlinked genes; workers regulate queen identity and number on the basis of Gp-9 genotypic compatibility. Nongenetic factors, such as prior social experience, queen reproductive status, and local environment, have negligible effects on queen numbers which illustrates the nearly complete penetrance of Gp-9. As predicted, queen number can be manipulated experimentally by altering worker Gp-9 genotype frequencies. The Gp-9 allele lineage associated with polygyny in South American fire ants has been retained across multiple speciation events, which may signal the action of balancing selection to maintain social polymorphism in these species. Moreover, positive selection is implicated in driving the molecular evolution of Gp-9 in association with the origin of polygyny. The identity of the product of Gp-9 as an odorant-binding protein suggests plausible scenarios for its direct involvement in the regulation of queen number via a role in chemical communication. While these and other lines of evidence show that Gp-9 represents a legitimate candidate gene of major effect, studies aimed at determining (i) the biochemical pathways in which GP-9 functions; (ii) the phenotypic effects of molecular variation at Gp-9 and other pathway genes; and (iii) the potential involvement of genes in linkage disequilibrium with Gp-9 are needed to elucidate the genetic architecture underlying social organization in fire ants. Information that reveals the links between molecular variation, individual phenotype, and colony-level behaviors, combined with behavioral models that incorporate details of the chemical communication involved in regulating queen number, will yield a novel integrated view of the

Quantifying the effect of colony size and food distribution on harvester ant foraging.

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Tatiana P Flanagan

Full Text Available Desert seed-harvester ants, genus Pogonomyrmex, are central place foragers that search for resources collectively. We quantify how seed harvesters exploit the spatial distribution of seeds to improve their rate of seed collection. We find that foraging rates are significantly influenced by the clumpiness of experimental seed baits. Colonies collected seeds from larger piles faster than randomly distributed seeds. We developed a method to compare foraging rates on clumped versus random seeds across three Pogonomyrmex species that differ substantially in forager population size. The increase in foraging rate when food was clumped in larger piles was indistinguishable across the three species, suggesting that species with larger colonies are no better than species with smaller colonies at collecting clumped seeds. These findings contradict the theoretical expectation that larger groups are more efficient at exploiting clumped resources, thus contributing to our understanding of the importance of the spatial distribution of food sources and colony size for communication and organization in social insects.

Controlling‏ ‏the Balance of Exploration and ‎Exploitation in ACO Algorithm ‎

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Ayad ‎ Mohammed Jabbar

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Ant colony optimization is a meta-heuristic algorithm inspired by the foraging behavior of real ant colony. The algorithm is a population-based solution employed in different optimization problems such as classification, image processing, clustering, and so on. This paper sheds the light on the side of improving the results of traveling salesman problem produced by the algorithm. The key success that produces the valuable results is due to the two important components of exploration and exploitation. Balancing both components is the foundation of controlling search within the ACO. This paper proposes to modify the main probabilistic method to overcome the drawbacks of the exploration problem and produces global optimal results in high dimensional space. Experiments on six variant of ant colony optimization indicate that the proposed work produces high-quality results in terms of shortest route

Blending of heritable recognition cues among ant nestmates creates distinct colony gestalt odours but prevents within-colony nepotism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

van Zweden, Jelle Stijn; Brask, Josefine B.; Christensen, Jan H.

2010-01-01

members to create a Gestalt odour. Although earlier studies have established that hydrocarbon profiles are influenced by heritable factors, transfer among nestmates and additional environmental factors, no studies have quantified these relative contributions for separate compounds. Here, we use the ant...... discrimination or as nestmate recognition cues. These results indicate that heritable compounds are suitable for establishing a genetic Gestalt for efficient nestmate recognition, but that recognition cues within colonies are insufficiently distinct to allow nepotistic kin discrimination....

Multi-criteria ACO-based Algorithm for Ship’s Trajectory Planning

OpenAIRE

Agnieszka Lazarowska

2017-01-01

The paper presents a new approach for solving a path planning problem for ships in the environment with static and dynamic obstacles. The algorithm utilizes a heuristic method, classified to the group of Swarm Intelligence approaches, called the Ant Colony Optimization. The method is inspired by a collective behaviour of ant colonies. A group of agents - artificial ants searches through the solution space in order to find a safe, optimal trajectory for a ship. The problem is considered as a ...

Automatic optimization of a nuclear reactor reload using the algorithm Ant-Q

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Machado, Liana; Schirru, Roberto

2002-01-01

The nuclear fuel reload optimization is a NP-Complete combinatorial optimization problem. For decades this problem was solved using an expert's knowledge. From the eighties, however there have been efforts to automatic fuel reload and the more recent ones show the Genetic Algorithm's (GA) efficiency on this problem. Following this trend, our aim is to optimization nuclear fuel reload using Ant-Q, artificial theory based algorithms. Ant-Q's results on the Traveling salesman Problem, which is conceptuality similar to fuel reload, are better than GA's. Ant-Q was tested in real application on the cycle 7 reload of Angra I. Comparing Ant-Q result with the GA's, it can be verified that, even without a local heuristics, the former algorithm, as it superiority comparing the GA in Angra I show. Is a valid technique to solve the nuclear fuel reload problem. (author)

Scalable unit commitment by memory-bounded ant colony optimization with A{sup *} local search

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Saber, Ahmed Yousuf; Alshareef, Abdulaziz Mohammed [Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80204, Jeddah 21589 (Saudi Arabia)

2008-07-15

Ant colony optimization (ACO) is successfully applied in optimization problems. Performance of the basic ACO for small problems with moderate dimension and searching space is satisfactory. As the searching space grows exponentially in the large-scale unit commitment problem, the basic ACO is not applicable for the vast size of pheromone matrix of ACO in practical time and physical computer-memory limit. However, memory-bounded methods prune the least-promising nodes to fit the system in computer memory. Therefore, the authors propose memory-bounded ant colony optimization (MACO) in this paper for the scalable (no restriction for system size) unit commitment problem. This MACO intelligently solves the limitation of computer memory, and does not permit the system to grow beyond a bound on memory. In the memory-bounded ACO implementation, A{sup *} heuristic is introduced to increase local searching ability and probabilistic nearest neighbor method is applied to estimate pheromone intensity for the forgotten value. Finally, the benchmark data sets and existing methods are used to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. (author)

A queen pheromone induces workers to kill sexual larvae in colonies of the red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta)

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Klobuchar, Emily; Deslippe, Richard

2002-05-01

We conducted five bioassays to study how queens control the execution of sexual larvae by workers in colonies of the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta. In each assay, subset colonies were made from many large polygyne colonies, and the 20 sexual larvae they contained were monitored over time. Sexual larvae mostly survived in queenless colonies, but were mostly killed in colonies with a single dealated queen, regardless of whether or not the queen was fertilized. The larvae were also killed when fresh corpses of queens were added to queenless colonies. Whereas acetone extracts of queens did not produce a significant increase in killings, extracts in buffered saline induced workers to execute most sexual larvae, indicating successful extraction of an execution pheromone. We identified the probable storage location of the chemical as the poison sac, and found both fresh (1 day) and old (21 day) extracts of poison sacs to be equally effective in inducing executions. The pheromone is stable at room temperature, perhaps because venom alkaloids also present in the extracts keep the pheromone from degrading. It is apparently either proteinaceous or associated with a proteinaceous molecule, a novel finding, as no queen pheromone of a proteinaceous nature has been previously demonstrated in ants.

Ant colony optimization algorithm for interpretable Bayesian classifiers combination: application to medical predictions.

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Salah Bouktif

Full Text Available Prediction and classification techniques have been well studied by machine learning researchers and developed for several real-word problems. However, the level of acceptance and success of prediction models are still below expectation due to some difficulties such as the low performance of prediction models when they are applied in different environments. Such a problem has been addressed by many researchers, mainly from the machine learning community. A second problem, principally raised by model users in different communities, such as managers, economists, engineers, biologists, and medical practitioners, etc., is the prediction models' interpretability. The latter is the ability of a model to explain its predictions and exhibit the causality relationships between the inputs and the outputs. In the case of classification, a successful way to alleviate the low performance is to use ensemble classiers. It is an intuitive strategy to activate collaboration between different classifiers towards a better performance than individual classier. Unfortunately, ensemble classifiers method do not take into account the interpretability of the final classification outcome. It even worsens the original interpretability of the individual classifiers. In this paper we propose a novel implementation of classifiers combination approach that does not only promote the overall performance but also preserves the interpretability of the resulting model. We propose a solution based on Ant Colony Optimization and tailored for the case of Bayesian classifiers. We validate our proposed solution with case studies from medical domain namely, heart disease and Cardiotography-based predictions, problems where interpretability is critical to make appropriate clinical decisions.The datasets, Prediction Models and software tool together with supplementary materials are available at http://faculty.uaeu.ac.ae/salahb/ACO4BC.htm.

Multi-objective ant algorithm for wireless sensor network positioning

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fidanova, S.; Shindarov, M.; Marinov, P.

2013-01-01

It is impossible to imagine our modern life without telecommunications. Wireless networks are a part of telecommunications. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) consist of spatially distributed sensors, which communicate in wireless way. This network monitors physical or environmental conditions. The objective is the full coverage of the monitoring region and less energy consumption of the network. The most appropriate approach to solve the problem is metaheuristics. In this paper the full coverage of the area is treated as a constrain. The objectives which are optimized are a minimal number of sensors and energy (lifetime) of the network. We apply multi-objective Ant Colony Optimization to solve this important telecommunication problem. We chose MAX-MIN Ant System approach, because it is proven to converge to the global optima

Integrating geological uncertainty in long-term open pit mine production planning by ant colony optimization

Science.gov (United States)

Gilani, Seyed-Omid; Sattarvand, Javad

2016-02-01

Meeting production targets in terms of ore quantity and quality is critical for a successful mining operation. In-situ grade uncertainty causes both deviations from production targets and general financial deficits. A new stochastic optimization algorithm based on ant colony optimization (ACO) approach is developed herein to integrate geological uncertainty described through a series of the simulated ore bodies. Two different strategies were developed based on a single predefined probability value (Prob) and multiple probability values (Pro bnt) , respectively in order to improve the initial solutions that created by deterministic ACO procedure. Application at the Sungun copper mine in the northwest of Iran demonstrate the abilities of the stochastic approach to create a single schedule and control the risk of deviating from production targets over time and also increase the project value. A comparison between two strategies and traditional approach illustrates that the multiple probability strategy is able to produce better schedules, however, the single predefined probability is more practical in projects requiring of high flexibility degree.

Ants defend aphids against lethal disease

Science.gov (United States)

Nielsen, Charlotte; Agrawal, Anurag A.; Hajek, Ann E.

2010-01-01

Social insects defend their own colonies and some species also protect their mutualist partners. In mutualisms with aphids, ants typically feed on honeydew produced by aphids and, in turn guard and shelter aphid colonies from insect natural enemies. Here we report that Formica podzolica ants tending milkweed aphids, Aphis asclepiadis, protect aphid colonies from lethal fungal infections caused by an obligate aphid pathogen, Pandora neoaphidis. In field experiments, bodies of fungal-killed aphids were quickly removed from ant-tended aphid colonies. Ant workers were also able to detect infective conidia on the cuticle of living aphids and responded by either removing or grooming these aphids. Our results extend the long-standing view of ants as mutualists and protectors of aphids by demonstrating focused sanitizing and quarantining behaviour that may lead to reduced disease transmission in aphid colonies. PMID:19923138

Gis-Based Route Finding Using ANT Colony Optimization and Urban Traffic Data from Different Sources

Science.gov (United States)

Davoodi, M.; Mesgari, M. S.

2015-12-01

Nowadays traffic data is obtained from multiple sources including GPS, Video Vehicle Detectors (VVD), Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), Floating Car Data (FCD), VANETs, etc. All such data can be used for route finding. This paper proposes a model for finding the optimum route based on the integration of traffic data from different sources. Ant Colony Optimization is applied in this paper because the concept of this method (movement of ants in a network) is similar to urban road network and movements of cars. The results indicate that this model is capable of incorporating data from different sources, which may even be inconsistent.

ROBUST-HYBRID GENETIC ALGORITHM FOR A FLOW-SHOP SCHEDULING PROBLEM (A Case Study at PT FSCM Manufacturing Indonesia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Johan Soewanda

2007-01-01

Full Text Available This paper discusses the application of Robust Hybrid Genetic Algorithm to solve a flow-shop scheduling problem. The proposed algorithm attempted to reach minimum makespan. PT. FSCM Manufacturing Indonesia Plant 4's case was used as a test case to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The proposed algorithm was compared to Ant Colony, Genetic-Tabu, Hybrid Genetic Algorithm, and the company's algorithm. We found that Robust Hybrid Genetic produces statistically better result than the company's, but the same as Ant Colony, Genetic-Tabu, and Hybrid Genetic. In addition, Robust Hybrid Genetic Algorithm required less computational time than Hybrid Genetic Algorithm

Escalated convergent artificial bee colony

Science.gov (United States)

Jadon, Shimpi Singh; Bansal, Jagdish Chand; Tiwari, Ritu

2016-03-01

Artificial bee colony (ABC) optimisation algorithm is a recent, fast and easy-to-implement population-based meta heuristic for optimisation. ABC has been proved a rival algorithm with some popular swarm intelligence-based algorithms such as particle swarm optimisation, firefly algorithm and ant colony optimisation. The solution search equation of ABC is influenced by a random quantity which helps its search process in exploration at the cost of exploitation. In order to find a fast convergent behaviour of ABC while exploitation capability is maintained, in this paper basic ABC is modified in two ways. First, to improve exploitation capability, two local search strategies, namely classical unidimensional local search and levy flight random walk-based local search are incorporated with ABC. Furthermore, a new solution search strategy, namely stochastic diffusion scout search is proposed and incorporated into the scout bee phase to provide more chance to abandon solution to improve itself. Efficiency of the proposed algorithm is tested on 20 benchmark test functions of different complexities and characteristics. Results are very promising and they prove it to be a competitive algorithm in the field of swarm intelligence-based algorithms.

A Clustering Approach Using Cooperative Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

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Wenping Zou

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Artificial Bee Colony (ABC is one of the most recently introduced algorithms based on the intelligent foraging behavior of a honey bee swarm. This paper presents an extended ABC algorithm, namely, the Cooperative Article Bee Colony (CABC, which significantly improves the original ABC in solving complex optimization problems. Clustering is a popular data analysis and data mining technique; therefore, the CABC could be used for solving clustering problems. In this work, first the CABC algorithm is used for optimizing six widely used benchmark functions and the comparative results produced by ABC, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO, and its cooperative version (CPSO are studied. Second, the CABC algorithm is used for data clustering on several benchmark data sets. The performance of CABC algorithm is compared with PSO, CPSO, and ABC algorithms on clustering problems. The simulation results show that the proposed CABC outperforms the other three algorithms in terms of accuracy, robustness, and convergence speed.

Introduction to Evolutionary Algorithms

CERN Document Server

Yu, Xinjie

2010-01-01

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are becoming increasingly attractive for researchers from various disciplines, such as operations research, computer science, industrial engineering, electrical engineering, social science, economics, etc. This book presents an insightful, comprehensive, and up-to-date treatment of EAs, such as genetic algorithms, differential evolution, evolution strategy, constraint optimization, multimodal optimization, multiobjective optimization, combinatorial optimization, evolvable hardware, estimation of distribution algorithms, ant colony optimization, particle swarm opti

A Simple and Efficient Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

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Yunfeng Xu

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Artificial bee colony (ABC is a new population-based stochastic algorithm which has shown good search abilities on many optimization problems. However, the original ABC shows slow convergence speed during the search process. In order to enhance the performance of ABC, this paper proposes a new artificial bee colony (NABC algorithm, which modifies the search pattern of both employed and onlooker bees. A solution pool is constructed by storing some best solutions of the current swarm. New candidate solutions are generated by searching the neighborhood of solutions randomly chosen from the solution pool. Experiments are conducted on a set of twelve benchmark functions. Simulation results show that our approach is significantly better or at least comparable to the original ABC and seven other stochastic algorithms.

A tunable algorithm for collective decision-making.

Science.gov (United States)

Pratt, Stephen C; Sumpter, David J T

2006-10-24

Complex biological systems are increasingly understood in terms of the algorithms that guide the behavior of system components and the information pathways that link them. Much attention has been given to robust algorithms, or those that allow a system to maintain its functions in the face of internal or external perturbations. At the same time, environmental variation imposes a complementary need for algorithm versatility, or the ability to alter system function adaptively as external circumstances change. An important goal of systems biology is thus the identification of biological algorithms that can meet multiple challenges rather than being narrowly specified to particular problems. Here we show that emigrating colonies of the ant Temnothorax curvispinosus tune the parameters of a single decision algorithm to respond adaptively to two distinct problems: rapid abandonment of their old nest in a crisis and deliberative selection of the best available new home when their old nest is still intact. The algorithm uses a stepwise commitment scheme and a quorum rule to integrate information gathered by numerous individual ants visiting several candidate homes. By varying the rates at which they search for and accept these candidates, the ants yield a colony-level response that adaptively emphasizes either speed or accuracy. We propose such general but tunable algorithms as a design feature of complex systems, each algorithm providing elegant solutions to a wide range of problems.

GIS-BASED ROUTE FINDING USING ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION AND URBAN TRAFFIC DATA FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES

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M. Davoodi

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Nowadays traffic data is obtained from multiple sources including GPS, Video Vehicle Detectors (VVD, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR, Floating Car Data (FCD, VANETs, etc. All such data can be used for route finding. This paper proposes a model for finding the optimum route based on the integration of traffic data from different sources. Ant Colony Optimization is applied in this paper because the concept of this method (movement of ants in a network is similar to urban road network and movements of cars. The results indicate that this model is capable of incorporating data from different sources, which may even be inconsistent.

Harnessing ant defence at fruits reduces bruchid seed predation in a symbiotic ant-plant mutualism.

Science.gov (United States)

Pringle, Elizabeth G

2014-06-22

In horizontally transmitted mutualisms, mutualists disperse separately and reassemble in each generation with partners genetically unrelated to those in the previous generation. Because of this, there should be no selection on either partner to enhance the other's reproductive output directly. In symbiotic ant-plant mutualisms, myrmecophytic plants host defensive ant colonies, and ants defend the plants from herbivores. Plants and ants disperse separately, and, although ant defence can indirectly increase plant reproduction by reducing folivory, it is unclear whether ants can also directly increase plant reproduction by defending seeds. The neotropical tree Cordia alliodora hosts colonies of Azteca pittieri ants. The trees produce domatia where ants nest at stem nodes and also at the node between the peduncle and the rachides of the infloresence. Unlike the stem domatia, these reproductive domatia senesce after the tree fruits each year. In this study, I show that the tree's resident ant colony moves into these ephemeral reproductive domatia, where they tend honeydew-producing scale insects and patrol the nearby developing fruits. The presence of ants significantly reduced pre-dispersal seed predation by Amblycerus bruchid beetles, thereby directly increasing plant reproductive output.

A Modified Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for p-Center Problems

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Alkın Yurtkuran

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The objective of the p-center problem is to locate p-centers on a network such that the maximum of the distances from each node to its nearest center is minimized. The artificial bee colony algorithm is a swarm-based meta-heuristic algorithm that mimics the foraging behavior of honey bee colonies. This study proposes a modified ABC algorithm that benefits from a variety of search strategies to balance exploration and exploitation. Moreover, random key-based coding schemes are used to solve the p-center problem effectively. The proposed algorithm is compared to state-of-the-art techniques using different benchmark problems, and computational results reveal that the proposed approach is very efficient.

Application of chaotic ant swarm optimization in electric load forecasting

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hong, W.-C.

2010-01-01

Support vector regression (SVR) had revealed strong potential in accurate electric load forecasting, particularly by employing effective evolutionary algorithms to determine suitable values of its three parameters. Based on previous research results, however, these employed evolutionary algorithms themselves have several drawbacks, such as converging prematurely, reaching slowly the global optimal solution, and trapping into a local optimum. This investigation presents an SVR-based electric load forecasting model that applied a novel algorithm, namely chaotic ant swarm optimization (CAS), to improve the forecasting performance by searching its suitable parameters combination. The proposed CAS combines with the chaotic behavior of single ant and self-organization behavior of ant colony in the foraging process to overcome premature local optimum. The empirical results indicate that the SVR model with CAS (SVRCAS) results in better forecasting performance than the other alternative methods, namely SVRCPSO (SVR with chaotic PSO), SVRCGA (SVR with chaotic GA), regression model, and ANN model.

antaRNA: ant colony-based RNA sequence design.

Science.gov (United States)

Kleinkauf, Robert; Mann, Martin; Backofen, Rolf

2015-10-01

RNA sequence design is studied at least as long as the classical folding problem. Although for the latter the functional fold of an RNA molecule is to be found ,: inverse folding tries to identify RNA sequences that fold into a function-specific target structure. In combination with RNA-based biotechnology and synthetic biology ,: reliable RNA sequence design becomes a crucial step to generate novel biochemical components. In this article ,: the computational tool antaRNA is presented. It is capable of compiling RNA sequences for a given structure that comply in addition with an adjustable full range objective GC-content distribution ,: specific sequence constraints and additional fuzzy structure constraints. antaRNA applies ant colony optimization meta-heuristics and its superior performance is shown on a biological datasets. http://www.bioinf.uni-freiburg.de/Software/antaRNA CONTACT: backofen@informatik.uni-freiburg.de Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press.

A Multipath Routing Protocol Based on Clustering and Ant Colony Optimization for Wireless Sensor Networks

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Jing Yang

2010-05-01

Full Text Available For monitoring burst events in a kind of reactive wireless sensor networks (WSNs, a multipath routing protocol (MRP based on dynamic clustering and ant colony optimization (ACO is proposed.. Such an approach can maximize the network lifetime and reduce the energy consumption. An important attribute of WSNs is their limited power supply, and therefore some metrics (such as energy consumption of communication among nodes, residual energy, path length were considered as very important criteria while designing routing in the MRP. Firstly, a cluster head (CH is selected among nodes located in the event area according to some parameters, such as residual energy. Secondly, an improved ACO algorithm is applied in the search for multiple paths between the CH and sink node. Finally, the CH dynamically chooses a route to transmit data with a probability that depends on many path metrics, such as energy consumption. The simulation results show that MRP can prolong the network lifetime, as well as balance of energy consumption among nodes and reduce the average energy consumption effectively.

A novel hybrid chaotic ant swarm algorithm for heat exchanger networks synthesis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang, Chunwei; Cui, Guomin; Peng, Fuyu

2016-01-01

Highlights: • The chaotic ant swarm algorithm is proposed to avoid trapping into a local optimum. • The organization variables update strategy makes full use of advantages of the chaotic search. • The structure evolution strategy is developed to handle integer variables optimization. • Overall three cases taken form the literatures are investigated with better optima. - Abstract: The heat exchanger networks synthesis (HENS) still remains an open problem due to its combinatorial nature, which can easily result in suboptimal design and unacceptable calculation effort. In this paper, a novel hybrid chaotic ant swarm algorithm is proposed. The presented algorithm, which consists of a combination of chaotic ant swarm (CAS) algorithm, structure evolution strategy, local optimization strategy and organization variables update strategy, can simultaneously optimize continuous variables and integer variables. The CAS algorithm chaotically searches and generates new solutions in the given space, and subsequently the structure evolution strategy evolves the structures represented by the solutions and limits the search space. Furthermore, the local optimizing strategy and the organization variables update strategy are introduced to enhance the performance of the algorithm. The study of three different cases, found in the literature, revealed special search abilities in both structure space and continuous variable space.

A novel artificial bee colony based clustering algorithm for categorical data.

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Ji, Jinchao; Pang, Wei; Zheng, Yanlin; Wang, Zhe; Ma, Zhiqiang

2015-01-01

Data with categorical attributes are ubiquitous in the real world. However, existing partitional clustering algorithms for categorical data are prone to fall into local optima. To address this issue, in this paper we propose a novel clustering algorithm, ABC-K-Modes (Artificial Bee Colony clustering based on K-Modes), based on the traditional k-modes clustering algorithm and the artificial bee colony approach. In our approach, we first introduce a one-step k-modes procedure, and then integrate this procedure with the artificial bee colony approach to deal with categorical data. In the search process performed by scout bees, we adopt the multi-source search inspired by the idea of batch processing to accelerate the convergence of ABC-K-Modes. The performance of ABC-K-Modes is evaluated by a series of experiments in comparison with that of the other popular algorithms for categorical data.

Private information alone can trigger trapping of ant colonies in local feeding optima.

Science.gov (United States)

Czaczkes, Tomer J; Salmane, Anete K; Klampfleuthner, Felicia A M; Heinze, Jürgen

2016-03-01

Ant colonies are famous for using trail pheromones to make collective decisions. Trail pheromone systems are characterised by positive feedback, which results in rapid collective decision making. However, in an iconic experiment, ants were shown to become 'trapped' in exploiting a poor food source, if it was discovered earlier. This has conventionally been explained by the established pheromone trail becoming too strong for new trails to compete. However, many social insects have a well-developed memory, and private information often overrules conflicting social information. Thus, route memory could also explain this collective 'trapping' effect. Here, we disentangled the effects of social and private information in two 'trapping' experiments: one in which ants were presented with a good and a poor food source, and one in which ants were presented with a long and a short path to the same food source. We found that private information is sufficient to trigger trapping in selecting the poorer of two food sources, and may be sufficient to cause it altogether. Memories did not trigger trapping in the shortest path experiment, probably because sufficiently detailed memories did not form. The fact that collective decisions can be triggered by private information alone may require other collective patterns previously attributed solely to social information use to be reconsidered. © 2016. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.

Meta-heuristic ant colony optimization technique to forecast the amount of summer monsoon rainfall: skill comparison with Markov chain model

Science.gov (United States)

Chaudhuri, Sutapa; Goswami, Sayantika; Das, Debanjana; Middey, Anirban

2014-05-01

Forecasting summer monsoon rainfall with precision becomes crucial for the farmers to plan for harvesting in a country like India where the national economy is mostly based on regional agriculture. The forecast of monsoon rainfall based on artificial neural network is a well-researched problem. In the present study, the meta-heuristic ant colony optimization (ACO) technique is implemented to forecast the amount of summer monsoon rainfall for the next day over Kolkata (22.6°N, 88.4°E), India. The ACO technique belongs to swarm intelligence and simulates the decision-making processes of ant colony similar to other adaptive learning techniques. ACO technique takes inspiration from the foraging behaviour of some ant species. The ants deposit pheromone on the ground in order to mark a favourable path that should be followed by other members of the colony. A range of rainfall amount replicating the pheromone concentration is evaluated during the summer monsoon season. The maximum amount of rainfall during summer monsoon season (June—September) is observed to be within the range of 7.5-35 mm during the period from 1998 to 2007, which is in the range 4 category set by the India Meteorological Department (IMD). The result reveals that the accuracy in forecasting the amount of rainfall for the next day during the summer monsoon season using ACO technique is 95 % where as the forecast accuracy is 83 % with Markov chain model (MCM). The forecast through ACO and MCM are compared with other existing models and validated with IMD observations from 2008 to 2012.

Multi-criteria ACO-based Algorithm for Ship’s Trajectory Planning

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Agnieszka Lazarowska

2017-03-01

Full Text Available The paper presents a new approach for solving a path planning problem for ships in the environment with static and dynamic obstacles. The algorithm utilizes a heuristic method, classified to the group of Swarm Intelligence approaches, called the Ant Colony Optimization. The method is inspired by a collective behaviour of ant colonies. A group of agents - artificial ants searches through the solution space in order to find a safe, optimal trajectory for a ship. The problem is considered as a multi-criteria optimization task. The criteria taken into account during problem solving are: path safety, path length, the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs compliance and path smoothness. The paper includes the description of the new multi-criteria ACO-based algorithm along with the presentation and discussion of simulation tests results.

Chemically armed mercenary ants protect fungus-farming societies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Adams, Rachelle Martha Marie; Liberti, Joanito; Illum, Anders A.

2013-01-01

guest ants are sufficient to kill raiders that invariably exterminate host nests without a cohabiting guest ant colony. We also show that the odor of guest ants discourages raider scouts from recruiting nestmates to host colonies. Our results imply that Sericomyrmex fungus-growers obtain a net benefit......The ants are extraordinary in having evolved many lineages that exploit closely related ant societies as social parasites, but social parasitism by distantly related ants is rare. Here we document the interaction dynamics among a Sericomyrmex fungus-growing ant host, a permanently associated...... parasitic guest ant of the genus Megalomyrmex, and a raiding agro-predator of the genus Gnamptogenys. We show experimentally that the guest ants protect their host colonies against agro-predator raids using alkaloid venom that is much more potent than the biting defenses of the host ants. Relatively few...

Ant-plant-homopteran mutualism: how the third partner affects the interaction between a plant-specialist ant and its myrmecophyte host

Science.gov (United States)

Gaume, L.; McKey, D.; Terrin, S.

1998-01-01

By estimating relative costs and benefits, we explored the role of the homopteran partner in the protection mutualism between the myrmecophyte Leonardoxa africana T3, the ant Aphomomyrmex afer, and sap-sucking homopterans tended by ants in the tree's swollen hollow twigs. The ants obtain nest sites and food from their host-plant (food is obtained either directly by extrafloral nectar or indirectly via homopterans). Aphomomyrmex workers patrol the young leaves of L. africana T3 and protect them against phytophagous insects. Because ants tended, either solely or primarily, coccids in some trees and pseudococcids in others, we were able to study whether the nature of the interaction was dependent on the identity of the third partner. First, the type of homopteran affects the benefits to the tree of maintaining a large ant colony. Larger colony size (relative to tree size) confers greater protection against herbivory; this relationship is more pronounced for trees whose ants tend pseudococcids than for those in which ants tend coccids. Second, for trees (and associated ant colonies) of comparable size, homopteran biomass was much larger in trees harbouring coccids than in trees with pseudococcids. Thus, the cost to the tree of maintaining ants may be greater when ants are associated with coccids. The net benefits to the plant of maintaining ants appear to be much greater with pseudococcids as the third partner. To explore how the type of homopteran affects functioning of the system, we attempted to determine which of the resources (nest sites, extrafloral nectar, and homopterans) is likely to limit ant colony size. In trees where ants tended coccids, ant-colony biomass was strongly dependent on the number of extrafloral nectaries. In contrast, in trees whose ants tended only pseudococcids, colony biomass was not related to the number of nectaries and was most strongly determined by the volume of available nest sites. We present hypotheses to explain how the type of

Chemically armed mercenary ants protect fungus-farming societies

Science.gov (United States)

Adams, Rachelle M. M.; Liberti, Joanito; Illum, Anders A.; Jones, Tappey H.; Nash, David R.; Boomsma, Jacobus J.

2013-01-01

The ants are extraordinary in having evolved many lineages that exploit closely related ant societies as social parasites, but social parasitism by distantly related ants is rare. Here we document the interaction dynamics among a Sericomyrmex fungus-growing ant host, a permanently associated parasitic guest ant of the genus Megalomyrmex, and a raiding agro-predator of the genus Gnamptogenys. We show experimentally that the guest ants protect their host colonies against agro-predator raids using alkaloid venom that is much more potent than the biting defenses of the host ants. Relatively few guest ants are sufficient to kill raiders that invariably exterminate host nests without a cohabiting guest ant colony. We also show that the odor of guest ants discourages raider scouts from recruiting nestmates to host colonies. Our results imply that Sericomyrmex fungus-growers obtain a net benefit from their costly guest ants behaving as a functional soldier caste to meet lethal threats from agro-predator raiders. The fundamentally different life histories of the agro-predators and guest ants appear to facilitate their coexistence in a negative frequency-dependent manner. Because a guest ant colony is committed for life to a single host colony, the guests would harm their own interests by not defending the host that they continue to exploit. This conditional mutualism is analogous to chronic sickle cell anemia enhancing the resistance to malaria and to episodes in human history when mercenary city defenders offered either net benefits or imposed net costs, depending on the level of threat from invading armies. PMID:24019482

Chemically armed mercenary ants protect fungus-farming societies.

Science.gov (United States)

Adams, Rachelle M M; Liberti, Joanito; Illum, Anders A; Jones, Tappey H; Nash, David R; Boomsma, Jacobus J

2013-09-24

The ants are extraordinary in having evolved many lineages that exploit closely related ant societies as social parasites, but social parasitism by distantly related ants is rare. Here we document the interaction dynamics among a Sericomyrmex fungus-growing ant host, a permanently associated parasitic guest ant of the genus Megalomyrmex, and a raiding agro-predator of the genus Gnamptogenys. We show experimentally that the guest ants protect their host colonies against agro-predator raids using alkaloid venom that is much more potent than the biting defenses of the host ants. Relatively few guest ants are sufficient to kill raiders that invariably exterminate host nests without a cohabiting guest ant colony. We also show that the odor of guest ants discourages raider scouts from recruiting nestmates to host colonies. Our results imply that Sericomyrmex fungus-growers obtain a net benefit from their costly guest ants behaving as a functional soldier caste to meet lethal threats from agro-predator raiders. The fundamentally different life histories of the agro-predators and guest ants appear to facilitate their coexistence in a negative frequency-dependent manner. Because a guest ant colony is committed for life to a single host colony, the guests would harm their own interests by not defending the host that they continue to exploit. This conditional mutualism is analogous to chronic sickle cell anemia enhancing the resistance to malaria and to episodes in human history when mercenary city defenders offered either net benefits or imposed net costs, depending on the level of threat from invading armies.

Multimodal optimization by using hybrid of artificial bee colony algorithm and BFGS algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Anam, S.

2017-10-01

Optimization has become one of the important fields in Mathematics. Many problems in engineering and science can be formulated into optimization problems. They maybe have many local optima. The optimization problem with many local optima, known as multimodal optimization problem, is how to find the global solution. Several metaheuristic methods have been proposed to solve multimodal optimization problems such as Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Genetics Algorithm (GA), Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm, etc. The performance of the ABC algorithm is better than or similar to those of other population-based algorithms with the advantage of employing a fewer control parameters. The ABC algorithm also has the advantages of strong robustness, fast convergence and high flexibility. However, it has the disadvantages premature convergence in the later search period. The accuracy of the optimal value cannot meet the requirements sometimes. Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) algorithm is a good iterative method for finding a local optimum. Compared with other local optimization methods, the BFGS algorithm is better. Based on the advantages of the ABC algorithm and the BFGS algorithm, this paper proposes a hybrid of the artificial bee colony algorithm and the BFGS algorithm to solve the multimodal optimization problem. The first step is that the ABC algorithm is run to find a point. In the second step is that the point obtained by the first step is used as an initial point of BFGS algorithm. The results show that the hybrid method can overcome from the basic ABC algorithm problems for almost all test function. However, if the shape of function is flat, the proposed method cannot work well.

Automatic optimization of a nuclear reactor reload using the algorithm Ant-Q; A otimizacao automatica da recarga nuclear utilizando o algoritmo Ant-Q

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Machado, Liana; Schirru, Roberto [Universidade Federal, Rio de Janeiro, RJ (Brazil). Coordenacao dos Programas de Pos-graduacao de Engenharia. Programa de Engenharia Nuclear

2002-07-01

The nuclear fuel reload optimization is a NP-Complete combinatorial optimization problem. For decades this problem was solved using an expert's knowledge. From the eighties, however there have been efforts to automatic fuel reload and the more recent ones show the Genetic Algorithm's (GA) efficiency on this problem. Following this trend, our aim is to optimization nuclear fuel reload using Ant-Q, artificial theory based algorithms. Ant-Q's results on the Traveling salesman Problem, which is conceptuality similar to fuel reload, are better than GA's. Ant-Q was tested in real application on the cycle 7 reload of Angra I. Comparing Ant-Q result with the GA's, it can be verified that, even without a local heuristics, the former algorithm, as it superiority comparing the GA in Angra I show. Is a valid technique to solve the nuclear fuel reload problem. (author)

Application of the artificial bee colony algorithm for solving the set covering problem.

Science.gov (United States)

Crawford, Broderick; Soto, Ricardo; Cuesta, Rodrigo; Paredes, Fernando

2014-01-01

The set covering problem is a formal model for many practical optimization problems. In the set covering problem the goal is to choose a subset of the columns of minimal cost that covers every row. Here, we present a novel application of the artificial bee colony algorithm to solve the non-unicost set covering problem. The artificial bee colony algorithm is a recent swarm metaheuristic technique based on the intelligent foraging behavior of honey bees. Experimental results show that our artificial bee colony algorithm is competitive in terms of solution quality with other recent metaheuristic approaches for the set covering problem.

Algorithms bio-inspired for the pattern obtention of control bars in BWR reactors

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ortiz, J.J.; Perusquia, R.; Montes, J.L.

2003-01-01

In this work methods based on Genetic Algorithms and Systems based on ant colonies for the obtention of the patterns of control bars of an equilibrium cycle of 18 months for the Laguna Verde nuclear power station are presented. A comparison of obtained results with the methods and with those of design of such equilibrium cycle is presented. As consequence of the study, it was found that the algorithm based on the ant colonies reached to diminish the coast down period (decrease of power at the end of the cycle) in five and half days with respect to the original design what represents an annual saving of $US 100,000. (Author)

The interplay between scent trails and group-mass recruitment systems in ants

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Planque, R.; van den Berg, G.J.B.; Franks, N.R.

2013-01-01

Large ant colonies invariably use effective scent trails to guide copious ant numbers to food sources. The success of mass recruitment hinges on the involvement of many colony members to lay powerful trails. However, many ant colonies start off as single queens. How do these same colonies forage

Blind Source Separation Based on Covariance Ratio and Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lei Chen

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The computation amount in blind source separation based on bioinspired intelligence optimization is high. In order to solve this problem, we propose an effective blind source separation algorithm based on the artificial bee colony algorithm. In the proposed algorithm, the covariance ratio of the signals is utilized as the objective function and the artificial bee colony algorithm is used to solve it. The source signal component which is separated out, is then wiped off from mixtures using the deflation method. All the source signals can be recovered successfully by repeating the separation process. Simulation experiments demonstrate that significant improvement of the computation amount and the quality of signal separation is achieved by the proposed algorithm when compared to previous algorithms.

A sequential fuzzy diagnosis method for rotating machinery using ant colony optimization and possibility theory

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sun, Hao; Ping, Xueliang; Cao, Yi; Lie, Ke [Jiangnan University, Wuxi (China); Chen, Peng [Mie University, Mie (Japan); Wang, Huaqing [Beijing University, Beijing (China)

2014-04-15

This study proposes a novel intelligent fault diagnosis method for rotating machinery using ant colony optimization (ACO) and possibility theory. The non-dimensional symptom parameters (NSPs) in the frequency domain are defined to reflect the features of the vibration signals measured in each state. A sensitive evaluation method for selecting good symptom parameters using principal component analysis (PCA) is proposed for detecting and distinguishing faults in rotating machinery. By using ACO clustering algorithm, the synthesizing symptom parameters (SSP) for condition diagnosis are obtained. A fuzzy diagnosis method using sequential inference and possibility theory is also proposed, by which the conditions of the machinery can be identified sequentially. Lastly, the proposed method is compared with a conventional neural networks (NN) method. Practical examples of diagnosis for a V-belt driving equipment used in a centrifugal fan are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results verify that the faults that often occur in V-belt driving equipment, such as a pulley defect state, a belt defect state and a belt looseness state, are effectively identified by the proposed method, while these faults are difficult to detect using conventional NN.

Fungal Adaptations to Mutualistic Life with Ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kooij, Pepijn Wilhelmus

Fungus-growing ants (Attini) feed off a fungus they cultivate in a mutualistic symbiosis in underground chambers by providing it substrate they collect outside the colony. The tribe of Attine ants ranges from small colonies of the paleo- and basal Attine species with a few hundred workers that fo...... that the fungus evolved some incredible adaptations to a mutualistic life with the ants....

Application of an Image Tracking Algorithm in Fire Ant Motion Experiment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lichuan Gui

2009-04-01

Full Text Available An image tracking algorithm, which was originally used with the particle image velocimetry (PIV to determine velocities of buoyant solid particles in water, is modified and applied in the presented work to detect motion of fire ant on a planar surface. A group of fire ant workers are put to the bottom of a tub and excited with vibration of selected frequency and intensity. The moving fire ants are captured with an image system that successively acquires image frames of high digital resolution. The background noise in the imaging recordings is extracted by averaging hundreds of frames and removed from each frame. The individual fire ant images are identified with a recursive digital filter, and then they are tracked between frames according to the size, brightness, shape, and orientation angle of the ant image. The speed of an individual ant is determined with the displacement of its images and the time interval between frames. The trail of the individual fire ant is determined with the image tracking results, and a statistical analysis is conducted for all the fire ants in the group. The purpose of the experiment is to investigate the response of fire ants to the substrate vibration. Test results indicate that the fire ants move faster after being excited, but the number of active ones are not increased even after a strong excitation.

Genetic Bee Colony (GBC) algorithm: A new gene selection method for microarray cancer classification.

Science.gov (United States)

Alshamlan, Hala M; Badr, Ghada H; Alohali, Yousef A

2015-06-01

Naturally inspired evolutionary algorithms prove effectiveness when used for solving feature selection and classification problems. Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) is a relatively new swarm intelligence method. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid gene selection method, namely Genetic Bee Colony (GBC) algorithm. The proposed algorithm combines the used of a Genetic Algorithm (GA) along with Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm. The goal is to integrate the advantages of both algorithms. The proposed algorithm is applied to a microarray gene expression profile in order to select the most predictive and informative genes for cancer classification. In order to test the accuracy performance of the proposed algorithm, extensive experiments were conducted. Three binary microarray datasets are use, which include: colon, leukemia, and lung. In addition, another three multi-class microarray datasets are used, which are: SRBCT, lymphoma, and leukemia. Results of the GBC algorithm are compared with our recently proposed technique: mRMR when combined with the Artificial Bee Colony algorithm (mRMR-ABC). We also compared the combination of mRMR with GA (mRMR-GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (mRMR-PSO) algorithms. In addition, we compared the GBC algorithm with other related algorithms that have been recently published in the literature, using all benchmark datasets. The GBC algorithm shows superior performance as it achieved the highest classification accuracy along with the lowest average number of selected genes. This proves that the GBC algorithm is a promising approach for solving the gene selection problem in both binary and multi-class cancer classification. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A new quantum inspired chaotic artificial bee colony algorithm for optimal power flow problem

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yuan, Xiaohui; Wang, Pengtao; Yuan, Yanbin; Huang, Yuehua; Zhang, Xiaopan

2015-01-01

Highlights: • Quantum theory is introduced to artificial bee colony algorithm (ABC) to increase population diversity. • A chaotic local search operator is used to enhance local search ability of ABC. • Quantum inspired chaotic ABC method (QCABC) is proposed to solve optimal power flow. • The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed QCABC is verified by examples. - Abstract: This paper proposes a new artificial bee colony algorithm with quantum theory and the chaotic local search strategy (QCABC), and uses it to solve the optimal power flow (OPF) problem. Under the quantum computing theory, the QCABC algorithm encodes each individual with quantum bits to form a corresponding quantum bit string. By determining each quantum bits value, we can get the value of the individual. After the scout bee stage of the artificial bee colony algorithm, we begin the chaotic local search in the vicinity of the best individual found so far. Finally, the quantum rotation gate is used to process each quantum bit so that all individuals can update toward the direction of the best individual. The QCABC algorithm is carried out to deal with the OPF problem in the IEEE 30-bus and IEEE 118-bus standard test systems. The results of the QCABC algorithm are compared with other algorithms (artificial bee colony algorithm, genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization algorithm). The comparison shows that the QCABC algorithm can effectively solve the OPF problem and it can get the better optimal results than those of other algorithms

Kombinasi Firefly Algorithm-Tabu Search untuk Penyelesaian Traveling Salesman Problem

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Riyan Naufal Hay's

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP adalah masalah optimasi kombinatorial klasik dan memiliki peran dalam perencanaan, penjadwalan, dan pencarian pada bidang rekayasa dan pengetahuan (Dong, 2012. TSP juga merupakan objek yang baik untuk menguji kinerja metode optimasi, beberapa metode seperti Cooperative Genetic Ant System (CGAS (Dong, 2012, Parallelized Genetic Ant Colony System (PGAS Particle Swarm Optimization and Ant Colony Optimization Algorithms (PSO–ACO (Elloumi, 2014, dan Ant Colony Hyper-Heuristics (ACO HH (Aziz, 2015 telah dikembangkan untuk memecahkan TSP. Sehingga, pada penelitian ini diimplementasikan kombinasi metode baru untuk meningkatkan akurasi penyelesaian TSP. Firefly Algorithm (FA merupakan salah satu algoritma yang dapat digunakan untuk memecahkan masalah optimasi kombinatorial (Layeb, 2014. FA merupakan algoritma yang berpotensi kuat dalam memecahkan kasus optimasi dibanding algoritma yang ada termasuk Particle Swarm Optimization (Yang, 2010. Namun, FA memiliki kekurangan dalam memecahkan masalah optimasi dengan skala besar (Baykasoğlu dan Ozsoy, 2014. Tabu Search (TS merupakan metode optimasi yang terbukti efektif untuk memecahkan masalah optimasi dengan skala besar (Pedro, 2013. Pada penelitian ini, TS akan diterapkan pada FA (FATS untuk memecahkan kasus TSP. Hasil FATS akan dibandingkan terhadap penelitian sebelumnya yaitu ACOHH. Perbandingan hasil menunjukan peningkatan akurasi sebesar 0.89% pada dataset Oliver30, 0.14% dataset Eil51, 3.81% dataset Eil76 dan 1.27% dataset KroA100.

Selenium exposure results in reduced reproduction in an invasive ant species and altered competitive behavior for a native ant species

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

De La Riva, Deborah G.; Trumble, John T.

2016-01-01

Competitive ability and numerical dominance are important factors contributing to the ability of invasive ant species to establish and expand their ranges in new habitats. However, few studies have investigated the impact of environmental contamination on competitive behavior in ants as a potential factor influencing dynamics between invasive and native ant species. Here we investigated the widespread contaminant selenium to investigate its potential influence on invasion by the exotic Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, through effects on reproduction and competitive behavior. For the fecundity experiment, treatments were provided to Argentine ant colonies via to sugar water solutions containing one of three concentrations of selenium (0, 5 and 10 μg Se mL −1 ) that fall within the range found in soil and plants growing in contaminated areas. Competition experiments included both the Argentine ant and the native Dorymyrmex bicolor to determine the impact of selenium exposure (0 or 15 μg Se mL −1 ) on exploitation- and interference-competition between ant species. The results of the fecundity experiment revealed that selenium negatively impacted queen survival and brood production of Argentine ants. Viability of the developing brood was also affected in that offspring reached adulthood only in colonies that were not given selenium, whereas those in treated colonies died in their larval stages. Selenium exposure did not alter direct competitive behaviors for either species, but selenium exposure contributed to an increased bait discovery time for D. bicolor. Our results suggest that environmental toxins may not only pose problems for native ant species, but may also serve as a potential obstacle for establishment among exotic species. - Highlights: • Argentine ant colonies exposed to selenium had reduced fecundity compared to unexposed colonies. • Viability of offspring was negatively impacted by selenium. • Queen survival was reduced in colonies

Enhanced ant colony optimization for inventory routing problem

Science.gov (United States)

Wong, Lily; Moin, Noor Hasnah

2015-10-01

The inventory routing problem (IRP) integrates and coordinates two important components of supply chain management which are transportation and inventory management. We consider a one-to-many IRP network for a finite planning horizon. The demand for each product is deterministic and time varying as well as a fleet of capacitated homogeneous vehicles, housed at a depot/warehouse, delivers the products from the warehouse to meet the demand specified by the customers in each period. The inventory holding cost is product specific and is incurred at the customer sites. The objective is to determine the amount of inventory and to construct a delivery routing that minimizes both the total transportation and inventory holding cost while ensuring each customer's demand is met over the planning horizon. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer programming problem and is solved using CPLEX 12.4 to get the lower and upper bound (best integer) for each instance considered. We propose an enhanced ant colony optimization (ACO) to solve the problem and the built route is improved by using local search. The computational experiments demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach is presented.

Sick ants become unsociable

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bos, Nicky Peter Maria; Lefevre, T.; Jensen, A.B.

2012-01-01

Parasites represent a severe threat to social insects, which form high-density colonies of related individuals, and selection should favour host traits that reduce infection risk. Here, using a carpenter ant (Camponotus aethiops) and a generalist insect pathogenic fungus (Metarhizium brunneum), we...... show that infected ants radically change their behaviour over time to reduce the risk of colony infection. Infected individuals (i) performed less social interactions than their uninfected counterparts, (ii) did not interact with brood anymore and (iii) spent most of their time outside the nest from...... day 3 post-infection until death. Furthermore, infected ants displayed an increased aggressiveness towards non-nestmates. Finally, infected ants did not alter their cuticular chemical profile, suggesting that infected individuals do not signal their physiological status to nestmates. Our results...

A Combination of Meta-heuristic and Heuristic Algorithms for the VRP, OVRP and VRP with Simultaneous Pickup and Delivery

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maryam Ashouri

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Vehicle routing problem (VRP is a Nondeterministic Polynomial Hard combinatorial optimization problem to serve the consumers from central depots and returned back to the originated depots with given vehicles. Furthermore, two of the most important extensions of the VRPs are the open vehicle routing problem (OVRP and VRP with simultaneous pickup and delivery (VRPSPD. In OVRP, the vehicles have not return to the depot after last visit and in VRPSPD, customers require simultaneous delivery and pick-up service. The aim of this paper is to present a combined effective ant colony optimization (CEACO which includes sweep and several local search algorithms which is different with common ant colony optimization (ACO. An extensive numerical experiment is performed on benchmark problem instances addressed in the literature. The computational result shows that suggested CEACO approach not only presented a very satisfying scalability, but also was competitive with other meta-heuristic algorithms in the literature for solving VRP, OVRP and VRPSPD problems. Keywords: Meta-heuristic algorithms, Vehicle Routing Problem, Open Vehicle Routing Problem, Simultaneously Pickup and Delivery, Ant Colony Optimization.

Optimization of fuel reloads for a BWR using the ant colony system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Esquivel E, J.; Ortiz S, J. J.

2009-10-01

In this work some results obtained during the development of optimization systems are presented, which are employees for the fuel reload design in a BWR. The systems use the ant colony optimization technique. As first instance, a system is developed that was adapted at travel salesman problem applied for the 32 state capitals of Mexican Republic. The purpose of this implementation is that a similarity exists with the design of fuel reload, since the two problems are of combinatorial optimization with decision variables that have similarity between both. The system was coupled to simulator SIMULATE-3, obtaining good results when being applied to an operation cycle in equilibrium for reactors of nuclear power plant of Laguna Verde. (Author)

Hybrid Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm and Particle Swarm Search for Global Optimization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wang Chun-Feng

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Artificial bee colony (ABC algorithm is one of the most recent swarm intelligence based algorithms, which has been shown to be competitive to other population-based algorithms. However, there is still an insufficiency in ABC regarding its solution search equation, which is good at exploration but poor at exploitation. To overcome this problem, we propose a novel artificial bee colony algorithm based on particle swarm search mechanism. In this algorithm, for improving the convergence speed, the initial population is generated by using good point set theory rather than random selection firstly. Secondly, in order to enhance the exploitation ability, the employed bee, onlookers, and scouts utilize the mechanism of PSO to search new candidate solutions. Finally, for further improving the searching ability, the chaotic search operator is adopted in the best solution of the current iteration. Our algorithm is tested on some well-known benchmark functions and compared with other algorithms. Results show that our algorithm has good performance.

Ant system for reliability optimization of a series system with multiple-choice and budget constraints

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nahas, Nabil; Nourelfath, Mustapha

2005-01-01

Many researchers have shown that insect colonies behavior can be seen as a natural model of collective problem solving. The analogy between the way ants look for food and combinatorial optimization problems has given rise to a new computational paradigm, which is called ant system. This paper presents an application of ant system in a reliability optimization problem for a series system with multiple-choice constraints incorporated at each subsystem, to maximize the system reliability subject to the system budget. The problem is formulated as a nonlinear binary integer programming problem and characterized as an NP-hard problem. This problem is solved by developing and demonstrating a problem-specific ant system algorithm. In this algorithm, solutions of the reliability optimization problem are repeatedly constructed by considering the trace factor and the desirability factor. A local search is used to improve the quality of the solutions obtained by each ant. A penalty factor is introduced to deal with the budget constraint. Simulations have shown that the proposed ant system is efficient with respect to the quality of solutions and the computing time

Entomopathogens Isolated from Invasive Ants and Tests of Their Pathogenicity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maria Fernanda Miori de Zarzuela

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Some ant species cause severe ecological and health impact in urban areas. Many attempts have been tested to control such species, although they do not always succeed. Biological control is an alternative to chemical control and has gained great prominence in research, and fungi and nematodes are among the successful organisms controlling insects. This study aimed to clarify some questions regarding the biological control of ants. Invasive ant species in Brazil had their nests evaluated for the presence of entomopathogens. Isolated entomopathogens were later applied in colonies of Monomorium floricola under laboratory conditions to evaluate their effectiveness and the behavior of the ant colonies after treatment. The entomopathogenic nematodes Heterorhabditis sp. and Steinernema sp. and the fungi Beauveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae, and Paecilomyces sp. were isolated from the invasive ant nests. M. floricola colonies treated with Steinernema sp. and Heterorhabditis sp. showed a higher mortality of workers than control. The fungus Beauveria bassiana caused higher mortality of M. floricola workers. However, no colony reduction or elimination was observed in any treatment. The defensive behaviors of ants, such as grooming behavior and colony budding, must be considered when using fungi and nematodes for biological control of ants.

Kin-informative recognition cues in ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nehring, Volker; Evison, Sophie E F; Santorelli, Lorenzo A

2011-01-01

behaviour is thought to be rare in one of the classic examples of cooperation--social insect colonies--because the colony-level costs of individual selfishness select against cues that would allow workers to recognize their closest relatives. In accord with this, previous studies of wasps and ants have...... found little or no kin information in recognition cues. Here, we test the hypothesis that social insects do not have kin-informative recognition cues by investigating the recognition cues and relatedness of workers from four colonies of the ant Acromyrmex octospinosus. Contrary to the theoretical...... prediction, we show that the cuticular hydrocarbons of ant workers in all four colonies are informative enough to allow full-sisters to be distinguished from half-sisters with a high accuracy. These results contradict the hypothesis of non-heritable recognition cues and suggest that there is more potential...

Optimal Grid Scheduling Using Improved Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

OpenAIRE

T. Vigneswari; M. A. Maluk Mohamed

2015-01-01

Job Scheduling plays an important role for efficient utilization of grid resources available across different domains and geographical zones. Scheduling of jobs is challenging and NPcomplete. Evolutionary / Swarm Intelligence algorithms have been extensively used to address the NP problem in grid scheduling. Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) has been proposed for optimization problems based on foraging behaviour of bees. This work proposes a modified ABC algorithm, Cluster Hete...

A Multistrategy Optimization Improved Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wen Liu

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Being prone to the shortcomings of premature and slow convergence rate of artificial bee colony algorithm, an improved algorithm was proposed. Chaotic reverse learning strategies were used to initialize swarm in order to improve the global search ability of the algorithm and keep the diversity of the algorithm; the similarity degree of individuals of the population was used to characterize the diversity of population; population diversity measure was set as an indicator to dynamically and adaptively adjust the nectar position; the premature and local convergence were avoided effectively; dual population search mechanism was introduced to the search stage of algorithm; the parallel search of dual population considerably improved the convergence rate. Through simulation experiments of 10 standard testing functions and compared with other algorithms, the results showed that the improved algorithm had faster convergence rate and the capacity of jumping out of local optimum faster.

Urban Growth Modeling Using Cellular Automata with Multi-Temporal Remote Sensing Images Calibrated by the Artificial Bee Colony Optimization Algorithm.

Science.gov (United States)

Naghibi, Fereydoun; Delavar, Mahmoud Reza; Pijanowski, Bryan

2016-12-14

Cellular Automata (CA) is one of the most common techniques used to simulate the urbanization process. CA-based urban models use transition rules to deliver spatial patterns of urban growth and urban dynamics over time. Determining the optimum transition rules of the CA is a critical step because of the heterogeneity and nonlinearities existing among urban growth driving forces. Recently, new CA models integrated with optimization methods based on swarm intelligence algorithms were proposed to overcome this drawback. The Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is an advanced meta-heuristic swarm intelligence-based algorithm. Here, we propose a novel CA-based urban change model that uses the ABC algorithm to extract optimum transition rules. We applied the proposed ABC-CA model to simulate future urban growth in Urmia (Iran) with multi-temporal Landsat images from 1997, 2006 and 2015. Validation of the simulation results was made through statistical methods such as overall accuracy, the figure of merit and total operating characteristics (TOC). Additionally, we calibrated the CA model by ant colony optimization (ACO) to assess the performance of our proposed model versus similar swarm intelligence algorithm methods. We showed that the overall accuracy and the figure of merit of the ABC-CA model are 90.1% and 51.7%, which are 2.9% and 8.8% higher than those of the ACO-CA model, respectively. Moreover, the allocation disagreement of the simulation results for the ABC-CA model is 9.9%, which is 2.9% less than that of the ACO-CA model. Finally, the ABC-CA model also outperforms the ACO-CA model with fewer quantity and allocation errors and slightly more hits.

Optimization of travel salesman problem using the ant colony system and Greedy search

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Esquivel E, J.; Ordonez A, A.; Ortiz S, J. J.

2008-01-01

In this paper we present some results obtained during the development of optimization systems that can be used to design refueling and patterns of control rods in a BWR. These systems use ant colonies and Greedy search. The first phase of this project is to be familiar with these optimization techniques applied to the problem of travel salesman problem (TSP). The utility of TSP study is that, like the refueling design and pattern design of control rods are problems of combinative optimization. Even, the similarity with the problem of the refueling design is remarkable. It is presented some results for the TSP with the 32 state capitals of Mexico country. (Author)

Signals can trump rewards in attracting seed-dispersing ants.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kyle M Turner

Full Text Available Both rewards and signals are important in mutualisms. In myrmecochory, or seed dispersal by ants, the benefits to plants are relatively well studied, but less is known about why ants pick up and move seeds. We examined seed dispersal by the ant Aphaenogaster rudis of four co-occurring species of plants, and tested whether morphology, chemical signaling, or the nutritional quality of fatty seed appendages called elaiosomes influenced dispersal rates. In removal trials, ants quickly collected diaspores (seeds plus elaiosomes of Asarum canadense, Trillium grandiflorum, and Sanguinaria canadensis, but largely neglected those of T. erectum. This discrepancy was not explained by differences in the bulk cost-benefit ratio, as assessed by the ratio of seed to elaiosome mass. We also provisioned colonies with diaspores from one of these four plant species or no diaspores as a control. Colonies performed best when fed S. canadensis diaspores, worst when fed T. grandiflorum, and intermediately when fed A. canadense, T. erectum, or no diaspores. Thus, the nutritional rewards in elaiosomes affected colony performance, but did not completely predict seed removal. Instead, high levels of oleic acid in T. grandiflorum elaiosomes may explain why ants disperse these diaspores even though they reduce ant colony performance. We show for the first time that different elaiosome-bearing plants provide rewards of different quality to ant colonies, but also that ants appear unable to accurately assess reward quality when encountering seeds. Instead, we suggest that signals can trump rewards as attractants of ants to seeds.

ABCluster: the artificial bee colony algorithm for cluster global optimization.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Jun; Dolg, Michael

2015-10-07

Global optimization of cluster geometries is of fundamental importance in chemistry and an interesting problem in applied mathematics. In this work, we introduce a relatively new swarm intelligence algorithm, i.e. the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm proposed in 2005, to this field. It is inspired by the foraging behavior of a bee colony, and only three parameters are needed to control it. We applied it to several potential functions of quite different nature, i.e., the Coulomb-Born-Mayer, Lennard-Jones, Morse, Z and Gupta potentials. The benchmarks reveal that for long-ranged potentials the ABC algorithm is very efficient in locating the global minimum, while for short-ranged ones it is sometimes trapped into a local minimum funnel on a potential energy surface of large clusters. We have released an efficient, user-friendly, and free program "ABCluster" to realize the ABC algorithm. It is a black-box program for non-experts as well as experts and might become a useful tool for chemists to study clusters.

Neuromodulation of Nestmate Recognition Decisions by Pavement Ants.

Science.gov (United States)

Bubak, Andrew N; Yaeger, Jazmine D W; Renner, Kenneth J; Swallow, John G; Greene, Michael J

2016-01-01

Ant colonies are distributed systems that are regulated in a non-hierarchical manner. Without a central authority, individuals inform their decisions by comparing information in local cues to a set of inherent behavioral rules. Individual behavioral decisions collectively change colony behavior and lead to self-organization capable of solving complex problems such as the decision to engage in aggressive societal conflicts with neighbors. Despite the relevance to colony fitness, the mechanisms that drive individual decisions leading to cooperative behavior are not well understood. Here we show how sensory information, both tactile and chemical, and social context-isolation, nestmate interaction, or fighting non-nestmates-affects brain monoamine levels in pavement ants (Tetramorium caespitum). Our results provide evidence that changes in octopamine and serotonin in the brains of individuals are sufficient to alter the decision by pavement ants to be aggressive towards non-nestmate ants whereas increased brain levels of dopamine correlate to physical fighting. We propose a model in which the changes in brain states of many workers collectively lead to the self-organization of societal aggression between neighboring colonies of pavement ants.

Insecticide transfer efficiency and lethal load in Argentine ants

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hooper-Bui, L.M. [Department of Environmental Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803 (United States); Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521 (United States); Kwok, E.S.C. [Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521 (United States); Buchholz, B.A., E-mail: buchholz2@llnl.gov [Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551 (United States); Department of Environmental Toxicology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616 (United States); Rust, M.K. [Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521 (United States); Eastmond, D.A. [Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521 (United States); Vogel, J.S. [Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551 (United States)

2015-10-15

Trophallaxis between individual worker ants and the toxicant load in dead and live Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) in colonies exposed to fipronil and hydramethylnon experimental baits were examined using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). About 50% of the content of the crop containing trace levels of {sup 14}C-sucrose, {sup 14}C-hydramethylnon, and {sup 14}C-fipronil was shared between single donor and recipient ants. Dead workers and queens contained significantly more hydramethylnon (122.7 and 22.4 amol/μg ant, respectively) than did live workers and queens (96.3 and 10.4 amol/μg ant, respectively). Dead workers had significantly more fipronil (420.3 amol/μg ant) than did live workers (208.5 amol/μg ant), but dead and live queens had equal fipronil levels (59.5 and 54.3 amol/μg ant, respectively). The distribution of fipronil differed within the bodies of dead and live queens; the highest amounts of fipronil were recovered in the thorax of dead queens whereas live queens had the highest levels in the head. Resurgence of polygynous ant colonies treated with hydramethylnon baits may be explained by queen survival resulting from sublethal doses due to a slowing of trophallaxis throughout the colony. Bait strategies and dose levels for controlling insect pests need to be based on the specific toxicant properties and trophic strategies for targeting the entire colony.

Insecticide transfer efficiency and lethal load in Argentine ants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hooper-Bui, L.M.; Kwok, E.S.C.; Buchholz, B.A.; Rust, M.K.; Eastmond, D.A.; Vogel, J.S.

2015-01-01

Trophallaxis between individual worker ants and the toxicant load in dead and live Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) in colonies exposed to fipronil and hydramethylnon experimental baits were examined using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). About 50% of the content of the crop containing trace levels of 14 C-sucrose, 14 C-hydramethylnon, and 14 C-fipronil was shared between single donor and recipient ants. Dead workers and queens contained significantly more hydramethylnon (122.7 and 22.4 amol/μg ant, respectively) than did live workers and queens (96.3 and 10.4 amol/μg ant, respectively). Dead workers had significantly more fipronil (420.3 amol/μg ant) than did live workers (208.5 amol/μg ant), but dead and live queens had equal fipronil levels (59.5 and 54.3 amol/μg ant, respectively). The distribution of fipronil differed within the bodies of dead and live queens; the highest amounts of fipronil were recovered in the thorax of dead queens whereas live queens had the highest levels in the head. Resurgence of polygynous ant colonies treated with hydramethylnon baits may be explained by queen survival resulting from sublethal doses due to a slowing of trophallaxis throughout the colony. Bait strategies and dose levels for controlling insect pests need to be based on the specific toxicant properties and trophic strategies for targeting the entire colony.

An integrated ant colony optimization approach to compare strategies of clearing market in electricity markets. Agent-based simulation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Azadeh, A.; Maleki-Shoja, B.; Skandari, M.R.

2010-01-01

In this paper, an innovative model of agent based simulation, based on Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm is proposed in order to compare three available strategies of clearing wholesale electricity markets, i.e. uniform, pay-as-bid, and generalized Vickrey rules. The supply side actors of the power market are modeled as adaptive agents who learn how to bid strategically to optimize their profit through indirect interaction with other actors of the market. The proposed model is proper for bidding functions with high number of dimensions and enables modelers to avoid curse of dimensionality as dimension grows. Test systems are then used to study the behavior of each pricing rule under different degrees of competition and heterogeneity. Finally, the pricing rules are comprehensively compared using different economic criteria such as average cleared price, efficiency of allocation, and price volatility. Also, principle component analysis (PCA) is used to rank and select the best price rule. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first study that uses ACO for assessing strategies of wholesale electricity market. (author)

Optimization of type-2 fuzzy controllers using the bee colony algorithm

CERN Document Server

Amador, Leticia

2017-01-01

This book focuses on the fields of fuzzy logic, bio-inspired algorithm; especially bee colony optimization algorithm and also considering the fuzzy control area. The main idea is that this areas together can to solve various control problems and to find better results. In this book we test the proposed method using two benchmark problems; the problem for filling a water tank and the problem for controlling the trajectory in an autonomous mobile robot. When Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Logic System is implemented to model the behavior of systems, the results show a better stabilization, because the analysis of uncertainty is better. For this reason we consider in this book the proposed method using fuzzy systems, fuzzy controllers, and bee colony optimization algorithm improve the behavior of the complex control problems.

Fuzzy Random λ-Mean SAD Portfolio Selection Problem: An Ant Colony Optimization Approach

Science.gov (United States)

Thakur, Gour Sundar Mitra; Bhattacharyya, Rupak; Mitra, Swapan Kumar

2010-10-01

To reach the investment goal, one has to select a combination of securities among different portfolios containing large number of securities. Only the past records of each security do not guarantee the future return. As there are many uncertain factors which directly or indirectly influence the stock market and there are also some newer stock markets which do not have enough historical data, experts' expectation and experience must be combined with the past records to generate an effective portfolio selection model. In this paper the return of security is assumed to be Fuzzy Random Variable Set (FRVS), where returns are set of random numbers which are in turn fuzzy numbers. A new λ-Mean Semi Absolute Deviation (λ-MSAD) portfolio selection model is developed. The subjective opinions of the investors to the rate of returns of each security are taken into consideration by introducing a pessimistic-optimistic parameter vector λ. λ-Mean Semi Absolute Deviation (λ-MSAD) model is preferred as it follows absolute deviation of the rate of returns of a portfolio instead of the variance as the measure of the risk. As this model can be reduced to Linear Programming Problem (LPP) it can be solved much faster than quadratic programming problems. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is used for solving the portfolio selection problem. ACO is a paradigm for designing meta-heuristic algorithms for combinatorial optimization problem. Data from BSE is used for illustration.

The interplay between scent trails and group-mass recruitment systems in ants.

Science.gov (United States)

Planqué, Robert; van den Berg, Jan Bouwe; Franks, Nigel R

2013-10-01

Large ant colonies invariably use effective scent trails to guide copious ant numbers to food sources. The success of mass recruitment hinges on the involvement of many colony members to lay powerful trails. However, many ant colonies start off as single queens. How do these same colonies forage efficiently when small, thereby overcoming the hurdles to grow large? In this paper, we study the case of combined group and mass recruitment displayed by some ant species. Using mathematical models, we explore to what extent early group recruitment may aid deployment of scent trails, making such trails available at much smaller colony sizes. We show that a competition between group and mass recruitment may cause oscillatory behaviour mediated by scent trails. This results in a further reduction of colony size to establish trails successfully.

Ant-plant mutualism: a dietary by-product of a tropical ant's macronutrient requirements.

Science.gov (United States)

Arcila Hernández, Lina M; Sanders, Jon G; Miller, Gabriel A; Ravenscraft, Alison; Frederickson, Megan E

2017-12-01

Many arboreal ants depend on myrmecophytic plants for both food and shelter; in return, these ants defend their host plants against herbivores, which are often insects. Ant-plant and other mutualisms do not necessarily involve the exchange of costly rewards or services; they may instead result from by-product benefits, or positive outcomes that do not entail a cost for one or both partners. Here, we examined whether the plant-ant Allomerus octoarticulatus pays a short-term cost to defend their host plants against herbivores, or whether plant defense is a by-product benefit of ant foraging for insect prey. Because the food offered by ant-plants is usually nitrogen-poor, arboreal ants may balance their diets by consuming insect prey or associating with microbial symbionts to acquire nitrogen, potentially shifting the costs and benefits of plant defense for the ant partner. To determine the effect of ant diet on an ant-plant mutualism, we compared the behavior, morphology, fitness, stable isotope signatures, and gaster microbiomes of A. octoarticulatus ants nesting in Cordia nodosa trees maintained for nearly a year with or without insect herbivores. At the end of the experiment, ants from herbivore exclosures preferred protein-rich baits more than ants in the control (i.e., herbivores present) treatment. Furthermore, workers in the control treatment were heavier than in the herbivore-exclusion treatment, and worker mass predicted reproductive output, suggesting that foraging for insect prey directly increased ant colony fitness. The gaster microbiome of ants was not significantly affected by the herbivore exclusion treatment. We conclude that the defensive behavior of some phytoecious ants is a by-product of their need for external protein sources; thus, the consumption of insect herbivores by ants benefits both the ant colony and the host plant. © 2017 by the Ecological Society of America.

Study on bi-directional pedestrian movement using ant algorithms

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gokce, Sibel; Kayacan, Ozhan

2016-01-01

A cellular automata model is proposed to simulate bi-directional pedestrian flow. Pedestrian movement is investigated by using ant algorithms. Ants communicate with each other by dropping a chemical, called a pheromone, on the substrate while crawling forward. Similarly, it is considered that oppositely moving pedestrians drop ‘visual pheromones’ on their way and the visual pheromones might cause attractive or repulsive interactions. This pheromenon is introduced into modelling the pedestrians’ walking preference. In this way, the decision-making process of pedestrians will be based on ‘the instinct of following’. At some densities, the relationships of velocity–density and flux–density are analyzed for different evaporation rates of visual pheromones. Lane formation and phase transition are observed for certain evaporation rates of visual pheromones. (paper)

Leaf endophyte load influences fungal garden development in leaf-cutting ants

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Van Bael Sunshine A

2012-11-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Previous work has shown that leaf-cutting ants prefer to cut leaf material with relatively low fungal endophyte content. This preference suggests that fungal endophytes exact a cost on the ants or on the development of their colonies. We hypothesized that endophytes may play a role in their host plants’ defense against leaf-cutting ants. To measure the long-term cost to the ant colony of fungal endophytes in their forage material, we conducted a 20-week laboratory experiment to measure fungal garden development for colonies that foraged on leaves with low or high endophyte content. Results Colony mass and the fungal garden dry mass did not differ significantly between the low and high endophyte feeding treatments. There was, however, a marginally significant trend toward greater mass of fungal garden per ant worker in the low relative to the high endophyte treatment. This trend was driven by differences in the fungal garden mass per worker from the earliest samples, when leaf-cutting ants had been foraging on low or high endophyte leaf material for only 2 weeks. At two weeks of foraging, the mean fungal garden mass per worker was 77% greater for colonies foraging on leaves with low relative to high endophyte loads. Conclusions Our data suggest that the cost of endophyte presence in ant forage material may be greatest to fungal colony development in its earliest stages, when there are few workers available to forage and to clean leaf material. This coincides with a period of high mortality for incipient colonies in the field. We discuss how the endophyte-leaf-cutter ant interaction may parallel constitutive defenses in plants, whereby endophytes reduce the rate of colony development when its risk of mortality is greatest.

ADAPTIVE CLUSTER BASED ROUTING PROTOCOL WITH ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION FOR MOBILE AD-HOC NETWORK IN DISASTER AREA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Enrico Budianto

2012-07-01

Full Text Available In post-disaster rehabilitation efforts, the availability of telecommunication facilities takes important role. However, the process to improve telecommunication facilities in disaster area is risky if it is done by humans. Therefore, a network method that can work efficiently, effectively, and capable to reach the widest possible area is needed. This research introduces a cluster-based routing protocol named Adaptive Cluster Based Routing Protocol (ACBRP equipped by Ant Colony Optimization method, and its implementation in a simulator developed by author. After data analysis and statistical tests, it can be concluded that routing protocol ACBRP performs better than AODV and DSR routing protocol. Pada upaya rehabilitasi pascabencana, ketersediaan fasilitas telekomunikasi memiliki peranan yang sangat penting. Namun, proses untuk memperbaiki fasilitas telekomunikasi di daerah bencana memiliki resiko jika dilakukan oleh manusia. Oleh karena itu, metode jaringan yang dapat bekerja secara efisien, efektif, dan mampu mencapai area seluas mungkin diperlukan. Penelitian ini memperkenalkan sebuah protokol routing berbasis klaster bernama Adaptive Cluster Based Routing Protocol (ACBRP, yang dilengkapi dengan metode Ant Colony Optimization, dan diimplementasikan pada simulator yang dikembangkan penulis. Setelah data dianalisis dan dilakukan uji statistik, disimpulkan bahwa protokol routing ACBRP beroperasi lebih baik daripada protokol routing AODV maupun DSR.

A cellular automata model for ant trails

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

In this study, the unidirectional ant traffic flow with U-turn in an ant trail was inves- tigated using ... the literature, it was considered in the model that (i) ant colony consists of two kinds of ants, good- ... ponents without a central controller [8].

The cavity-nest ant Temnothorax crassispinus prefers larger nests.

Science.gov (United States)

Mitrus, S

Colonies of the ant Temnothorax crassispinus inhabit mostly cavities in wood and hollow acorns. Typically in the field, nest sites that can be used by the ant are a limited resource. In a field experiment, it was investigated whether the ants prefer a specific size of nest, when different ones are available. In July 2011, a total of 160 artificial nests were placed in a beech-pine forest. Four artificial nests (pieces of wood with volume cavities, ca 415, 605, 730, and 980 mm 3 , respectively) were located on each square meter of the experimental plot. One year later, shortly before the emergence of new sexuals, the nests were collected. In July 2012, colonies inhabited more frequently bigger nests. Among queenright colonies, the ones which inhabited bigger nests had more workers. However, there was no relationship between volume of nest and number of workers for queenless colonies. Queenright colonies from bigger nests produced more sexual individuals, but there was no correlation between number of workers and sex allocation ratio, or between volume of nest and sex allocation ratio. In a laboratory experiment where ant colonies were kept in 470 and 860 mm 3 nests, larger colonies allocated more energy to produce sexual individuals. The results of this study show the selectivity of T. crassispinus ants regarding the size of nest cavity, and that the nest volume has an impact on life history parameters.

Dynamic population artificial bee colony algorithm for multi-objective optimal power flow

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Man Ding

2017-03-01

Full Text Available This paper proposes a novel artificial bee colony algorithm with dynamic population (ABC-DP, which synergizes the idea of extended life-cycle evolving model to balance the exploration and exploitation tradeoff. The proposed ABC-DP is a more bee-colony-realistic model that the bee can reproduce and die dynamically throughout the foraging process and population size varies as the algorithm runs. ABC-DP is then used for solving the optimal power flow (OPF problem in power systems that considers the cost, loss, and emission impacts as the objective functions. The 30-bus IEEE test system is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed algorithm. The simulation results, which are also compared to nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGAII and multi-objective ABC (MOABC, are presented to illustrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.

Neuromodulation of Nestmate Recognition Decisions by Pavement Ants.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrew N Bubak

Full Text Available Ant colonies are distributed systems that are regulated in a non-hierarchical manner. Without a central authority, individuals inform their decisions by comparing information in local cues to a set of inherent behavioral rules. Individual behavioral decisions collectively change colony behavior and lead to self-organization capable of solving complex problems such as the decision to engage in aggressive societal conflicts with neighbors. Despite the relevance to colony fitness, the mechanisms that drive individual decisions leading to cooperative behavior are not well understood. Here we show how sensory information, both tactile and chemical, and social context-isolation, nestmate interaction, or fighting non-nestmates-affects brain monoamine levels in pavement ants (Tetramorium caespitum. Our results provide evidence that changes in octopamine and serotonin in the brains of individuals are sufficient to alter the decision by pavement ants to be aggressive towards non-nestmate ants whereas increased brain levels of dopamine correlate to physical fighting. We propose a model in which the changes in brain states of many workers collectively lead to the self-organization of societal aggression between neighboring colonies of pavement ants.

A Two-Stage Algorithm for the Closed-Loop Location-Inventory Problem Model Considering Returns in E-Commerce

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yanhui Li

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Facility location and inventory control are critical and highly related problems in the design of logistics system for e-commerce. Meanwhile, the return ratio in Internet sales was significantly higher than in the traditional business. Focusing on the existing problem in e-commerce logistics system, we formulate a closed-loop location-inventory problem model considering returned merchandise to minimize the total cost which is produced in both forward and reverse logistics networks. To solve this nonlinear mixed programming model, an effective two-stage heuristic algorithm named LRCAC is designed by combining Lagrangian relaxation with ant colony algorithm (AC. Results of numerical examples show that LRCAC outperforms ant colony algorithm (AC on optimal solution and computing stability. The proposed model is able to help managers make the right decisions under e-commerce environment.

Ant Foraging Behavior for Job Shop Problem

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mahad Diyana Abdul

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Ant Colony Optimization (ACO is a new algorithm approach, inspired by the foraging behavior of real ants. It has frequently been applied to many optimization problems and one such problem is in solving the job shop problem (JSP. The JSP is a finite set of jobs processed on a finite set of machine where once a job initiates processing on a given machine, it must complete processing and uninterrupted. In solving the Job Shop Scheduling problem, the process is measure by the amount of time required in completing a job known as a makespan and minimizing the makespan is the main objective of this study. In this paper, we developed an ACO algorithm to minimize the makespan. A real set of problems from a metal company in Johor bahru, producing 20 parts with jobs involving the process of clinching, tapping and power press respectively. The result from this study shows that the proposed ACO heuristics managed to produce a god result in a short time.

The effect of symbiotic ant colonies on plant growth: a test using an Azteca-Cecropia system.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Karla N Oliveira

Full Text Available In studies of ant-plant mutualisms, the role that ants play in increasing the growth rates of their plant partners is potentially a key beneficial service. In the field, we measured the growth of Cecropia glaziovii saplings and compared individuals that were naturally colonized by Azteca muelleri ants with uncolonized plants in different seasons (wet and dry. We also measured light availability as well as attributes that could be influenced by the presence of Azteca colonies, such as herbivory, leaf nutrients (total nitrogen and δ(15N, and investments in defense (total phenolics and leaf mass per area. We found that colonized plants grew faster than uncolonized plants and experienced a lower level of herbivory in both the wet and dry seasons. Colonized plants had higher nitrogen content than uncolonized plants, although the δ(15N, light environment, total phenolics and leaf mass per area, did not differ between colonized and uncolonized plants. Since colonized and uncolonized plants did not differ in the direct defenses that we evaluated, yet herbivory was lower in colonized plants, we conclude that biotic defenses were the most effective protection against herbivores in our system. This result supports the hypothesis that protection provided by ants is an important factor promoting plant growth. Since C. glaziovii is widely distributed among a variety of forests and ecotones, and since we demonstrated a strong relationship with their ant partners, this system can be useful for comparative studies of ant-plant interactions in different habitats. Also, given this study was carried out near the transition to the subtropics, these results help generalize the geographic distribution of this mutualism and may shed light on the persistence of the interactions in the face of climate change.

Specialized Fungal Parasites and Opportunistic Fungi in Gardens of Attine Ants

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Fernando C. Pagnocca

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Ants in the tribe Attini (Hymenoptera: Formicidae comprise about 230 described species that share the same characteristic: all coevolved in an ancient mutualism with basidiomycetous fungi cultivated for food. In this paper we focused on fungi other than the mutualistic cultivar and their roles in the attine ant symbiosis. Specialized fungal parasites in the genus Escovopsis negatively impact the fungus gardens. Many fungal parasites may have small impacts on the ants' fungal colony when the colony is balanced, but then may opportunistically shift to having large impacts if the ants' colony becomes unbalanced.

Modified artificial bee colony algorithm for reactive power optimization

Science.gov (United States)

Sulaiman, Noorazliza; Mohamad-Saleh, Junita; Abro, Abdul Ghani

2015-05-01

Bio-inspired algorithms (BIAs) implemented to solve various optimization problems have shown promising results which are very important in this severely complex real-world. Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm, a kind of BIAs has demonstrated tremendous results as compared to other optimization algorithms. This paper presents a new modified ABC algorithm referred to as JA-ABC3 with the aim to enhance convergence speed and avoid premature convergence. The proposed algorithm has been simulated on ten commonly used benchmarks functions. Its performance has also been compared with other existing ABC variants. To justify its robust applicability, the proposed algorithm has been tested to solve Reactive Power Optimization problem. The results have shown that the proposed algorithm has superior performance to other existing ABC variants e.g. GABC, BABC1, BABC2, BsfABC dan IABC in terms of convergence speed. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm has also demonstrated excellence performance in solving Reactive Power Optimization problem.

Density-dependent benefits in ant-hemipteran mutualism? The case of the ghost ant Tapinoma melanocephalum (Hymenoptera: Formicidae and the invasive mealybug Phenacoccus solenopsis (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae.

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Aiming Zhou

Full Text Available Although density-dependent benefits to hemipterans from ant tending have been measured many times, few studies have focused on integrated effects such as interactions between ant tending, natural enemy density, and hemipteran density. In this study, we tested whether the invasive mealybug Phenacoccus solenopsis is affected by tending by ghost ants (Tapinoma melanocephalum, the presence of parasitoids, mealybug density, parasitoid density and interactions among these factors. Our results showed that mealybug colony growth rate and percentage parasitism were significantly affected by ant tending, parasitoid presence, and initial mealybug density separately. However, there were no interactions among the independent factors. There were also no significant interactions between ant tending and parasitoid density on either mealybug colony growth rate or percentage parasitism. Mealybug colony growth rate showed a negative linear relationship with initial mealybug density but a positive linear relationship with the level of ant tending. These results suggest that benefits to mealybugs are density-independent and are affected by ant tending level.

A Multiuser Detector Based on Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for DS-UWB Systems

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Zhendong Yin

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Artificial Bee Colony (ABC algorithm is an optimization algorithm based on the intelligent behavior of honey bee swarm. The ABC algorithm was developed to solve optimizing numerical problems and revealed premising results in processing time and solution quality. In ABC, a colony of artificial bees search for rich artificial food sources; the optimizing numerical problems are converted to the problem of finding the best parameter which minimizes an objective function. Then, the artificial bees randomly discover a population of initial solutions and then iteratively improve them by employing the behavior: moving towards better solutions by means of a neighbor search mechanism while abandoning poor solutions. In this paper, an efficient multiuser detector based on a suboptimal code mapping multiuser detector and artificial bee colony algorithm (SCM-ABC-MUD is proposed and implemented in direct-sequence ultra-wideband (DS-UWB systems under the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN channel. The simulation results demonstrate that the BER and the near-far effect resistance performances of this proposed algorithm are quite close to those of the optimum multiuser detector (OMD while its computational complexity is much lower than that of OMD. Furthermore, the BER performance of SCM-ABC-MUD is not sensitive to the number of active users and can obtain a large system capacity.

Sperm length evolution in the fungus-growing ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Baer, B.; Dijkstra, M. B.; Mueller, U. G.

2009-01-01

-growing ants, representing 9 of the 12 recognized genera, and mapped these onto the ant phylogeny. We show that average sperm length across species is highly variable and decreases with mature colony size in basal genera with singly mated queens, suggesting that sperm production or storage constraints affect...... the evolution of sperm length. Sperm length does not decrease further in multiply mating leaf-cutting ants, despite substantial further increases in colony size. In a combined analysis, sexual dimorphism explained 63.1% of the variance in sperm length between species. As colony size was not a significant...... predictor in this analysis, we conclude that sperm production trade-offs in males have been the major selective force affecting sperm length across the fungus-growing ants, rather than storage constraints in females. The relationship between sperm length and sexual dimorphism remained robust...

Improving Emergency Management by Modeling Ant Colonies

Science.gov (United States)

2015-03-01

perform functions such as nursing the brood or maintaining the nest. The more mature workers will begin to travel outside the nest to perform foraging...small sized ants predominantly act in functional roles such as nurses or transport services within the nest. The larger sizes predominantly function...stages: the founding stage, the ergonomic stage, and the reproductive stage. The founding stage is marked by a queen ant successful mating and laying

Behavior of ergatoid males in the ant, Cardiocondyla nuda

OpenAIRE

Heinze, Jürgen; Künholz, S.; Schilder, K.; Hölldobler, B.

1993-01-01

Ergatoid males of the ant, Cardiocondyla nuda, attack and frequently kill young males during or shortly after eclosion. Smaller colonies therefore contain typically only one adult male, which may inseminate all alate queens which are reared in the colony over a few weeks. In larger colonies, several males may be present, however, fighting among adult males was not observed. We discuss the significance of male fighting behavior in ants.

Disease dynamics in a specialized parasite of ant societies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Sandra Breum; Ferrari, Matthew; Evans, Harry C.

2012-01-01

Coevolution between ant colonies and their rare specialized parasites are intriguing, because lethal infections of workers may correspond to tolerable chronic diseases of colonies, but the parasite adaptations that allow stable coexistence with ants are virtually unknown. We explore the trade......-offs experienced by Ophiocordyceps parasites manipulating ants into dying in nearby graveyards. We used field data from Brazil and Thailand to parameterize and fit a model for the growth rate of graveyards. We show that parasite pressure is much lower than the abundance of ant cadavers suggests...

Application of colony complex algorithm to nuclear component optimization design

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yan Changqi; Li Guijing; Wang Jianjun

2014-01-01

Complex algorithm (CA) has got popular application to the region of nuclear engineering. In connection with the specific features of the application of traditional complex algorithm (TCA) to the optimization design in engineering structures, an improved method, colony complex algorithm (CCA), was developed based on the optimal combination of many complexes, in which the disadvantages of TCA were overcame. The optimized results of benchmark function show that CCA has better optimizing performance than TCA. CCA was applied to the high-pressure heater optimization design, and the optimization effect is obvious. (authors)

Aplicación del Método de la Colonia de Hormigas Mixto a la optimización de intercambiadores de calor de tubo y coraza//Application of the Mixed Ant Colony Method to the optimization of tube and shell heat exchangers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maida Bárbara Reyes‐Rodríguez

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Los procesos de transferencia de calor sonuno de los problemas más importantes a resolver en el campo de la Ingeniería. Entre los equipos más usados en la industria para realizar la transferencia de calor están los intercambiadores de calor de tubo y coraza. En el presente trabajo se desarrolla el procedimiento para la optimización del diseño de estos equipos utilizando el método de Kern y aplicando el algoritmo de la colonia de hormigas. Se aplica el mismo a tres ejemplos concretos y los resultados obtenidos se comparan con los obtenidos aplicando otros métodos de la inteligencia artificial. Se optimizan los principales parámetros geométricos de los intercambiadores de calor de tubo y coraza para lograr un menor costo de los mismos. Se demuestra la eficacia del nuevo procedimiento MACO (Mixed Ant Colony Optimization, en el proceso de optimización desde el punto de vista económico utilizando diferentes casos de estudios.Palabras claves: intercambiadores de calor, colonia de hormigas, método de Kern.______________________________________________________________________________AbstractHeat transfer processes are one of the most important problems to be solved in the field of Engineering. Among the most widely used equipment for heat transfer in the industry are the shell and tube heat exchangers. This paper develops the procedure for optimizing the design of shell and tube heat exchangers using the method of Kern and applying the ant colony algorithm. The procedure has been applied to three specific examples and the results obtained are compared with those obtained by applying other methods of artificial intelligence. The main geometric parameters of shell and tube heat exchangers are optimized, to achieve a lower cost of the exchanger. The efficacy of the new procedure MACO (Mixed Ant Colony Optimization for the optimization process from economically point of view was demonstrated, using different case studies.Key words: heat

Directed Bee Colony Optimization Algorithm to Solve the Nurse Rostering Problem.

Science.gov (United States)

Rajeswari, M; Amudhavel, J; Pothula, Sujatha; Dhavachelvan, P

2017-01-01

The Nurse Rostering Problem is an NP-hard combinatorial optimization, scheduling problem for assigning a set of nurses to shifts per day by considering both hard and soft constraints. A novel metaheuristic technique is required for solving Nurse Rostering Problem (NRP). This work proposes a metaheuristic technique called Directed Bee Colony Optimization Algorithm using the Modified Nelder-Mead Method for solving the NRP. To solve the NRP, the authors used a multiobjective mathematical programming model and proposed a methodology for the adaptation of a Multiobjective Directed Bee Colony Optimization (MODBCO). MODBCO is used successfully for solving the multiobjective problem of optimizing the scheduling problems. This MODBCO is an integration of deterministic local search, multiagent particle system environment, and honey bee decision-making process. The performance of the algorithm is assessed using the standard dataset INRC2010, and it reflects many real-world cases which vary in size and complexity. The experimental analysis uses statistical tools to show the uniqueness of the algorithm on assessment criteria.

Colony Structure and Nest Location of Two Species of Dacetine Ants: Pyramica ohioensis (Kennedy & Schramm and Pyramica rostrata (Emery in Maryland (Hymenoptera: Formicidae

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Richard M. Duffield

2011-01-01

Full Text Available The discovery of numerous Pyramica ohioensis and P. rostrata colonies living in acorns, as well as the efficient recovery of colonies from artificial nests placed in suitable habitats, opens a new stage in the study of North American dacetine ants. Here we present detailed information, based on 42 nest collections, on the colony structure of these two species. P. ohioensis colonies are smaller than those of P. rostrata. Both species are polygynous, but nests of P. ohioensis contain fewer dealate queens than those of P. rostrata. This is the first report of multiple collections of Pyramica colonies nesting in fallen acorns, and of the use of artificial nesting cavities to sample for dacetines in the soil and leaf litter. We describe an artificial cavity nest design that may prove useful in future investigations.

Sampling efficacy for the red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae).

Science.gov (United States)

Stringer, Lloyd D; Suckling, David Maxwell; Baird, David; Vander Meer, Robert K; Christian, Sheree J; Lester, Philip J

2011-10-01

Cost-effective detection of invasive ant colonies before establishment in new ranges is imperative for the protection of national borders and reducing their global impact. We examined the sampling efficiency of food-baits and pitfall traps (baited and nonbaited) in detecting isolated red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta Buren) nests in multiple environments in Gainesville, FL. Fire ants demonstrated a significantly higher preference for a mixed protein food type (hotdog or ground meat combined with sweet peanut butter) than for the sugar or water baits offered. Foraging distance success was a function of colony size, detection trap used, and surveillance duration. Colony gyne number did not influence detection success. Workers from small nests (0- to 15-cm mound diameter) traveled no >3 m to a food source, whereas large colonies (>30-cm mound diameter) traveled up to 17 m. Baited pitfall traps performed best at detecting incipient ant colonies followed by nonbaited pitfall traps then food baits, whereas food baits performed well when trying to detect large colonies. These results were used to create an interactive model in Microsoft Excel, whereby surveillance managers can alter trap type, density, and duration parameters to estimate the probability of detecting specified or unknown S. invicta colony sizes. This model will support decision makers who need to balance the sampling cost and risk of failure to detect fire ant colonies.

Chaotic Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for System Identification of a Small-Scale Unmanned Helicopter

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Li Ding

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is devoted to developing a chaotic artificial bee colony algorithm (CABC for the system identification of a small-scale unmanned helicopter state-space model in hover condition. In order to avoid the premature of traditional artificial bee colony algorithm (ABC, which is stuck in local optimum and can not reach the global optimum, a novel chaotic operator with the characteristics of ergodicity and irregularity was introduced to enhance its performance. With input-output data collected from actual flight experiments, the identification results showed the superiority of CABC over the ABC and the genetic algorithm (GA. Simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm and the accuracy of the identified helicopter model.

An ant-plant mutualism through the lens of cGMP-dependent kinase genes.

Science.gov (United States)

Malé, Pierre-Jean G; Turner, Kyle M; Doha, Manjima; Anreiter, Ina; Allen, Aaron M; Sokolowski, Marla B; Frederickson, Megan E

2017-09-13

In plant-animal mutualisms, how an animal forages often determines how much benefit its plant partner receives. In many animals, foraging behaviour changes in response to foraging gene expression or activation of the cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG) that foraging encodes. Here, we show that this highly conserved molecular mechanism affects the outcome of a plant-animal mutualism. We studied the two PKG genes of Allomerus octoarticulatus, an Amazonian ant that defends the ant-plant Cordia nodosa against herbivores. Some ant colonies are better 'bodyguards' than others. Working in the field in Peru, we found that colonies fed with a PKG activator recruited more workers to attack herbivores than control colonies. This resulted in less herbivore damage. PKG gene expression in ant workers correlated with whether an ant colony discovered an herbivore and how much damage herbivores inflicted on leaves in a complex way; natural variation in expression levels of the two genes had significant interaction effects on ant behaviour and herbivory. Our results suggest a molecular basis for ant protection of plants in this mutualism. © 2017 The Author(s).

Evolutionary transition from single to multiple mating in fungus-growing ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Villesen, Palle; Gertsch, P J; Frydenberg, Jane

1999-01-01

Queens of leafcutter ants exhibit the highest known levels of multiple mating (up to 10 mates per queen) among ants. Multiple mating may have been selected to increase genetic diversity among nestmate workers, which is hypothesized to be critical in social systems with large, long-lived colonies...... under severe pressure of pathogens. Advanced fungus-growing (leafcutter) ants have large numbers (104-106 workers) and long-lived colonies, whereas basal genera in the attine tribe have small (... to have lower queen mating frequencies, similar to those found in most other ants. We tested this prediction by analysing queen mating frequency and colony kin structure in three basal attine species: Myrmicocrypta ednaella, Apterostigma collare and Cyphomyrmex longiscapus. Microsatellite marker analyses...

Ant colony method to control variance reduction techniques in the Monte Carlo simulation of clinical electron linear accelerators

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Garcia-Pareja, S.; Vilches, M.; Lallena, A.M.

2007-01-01

The ant colony method is used to control the application of variance reduction techniques to the simulation of clinical electron linear accelerators of use in cancer therapy. In particular, splitting and Russian roulette, two standard variance reduction methods, are considered. The approach can be applied to any accelerator in a straightforward way and permits, in addition, to investigate the 'hot' regions of the accelerator, an information which is basic to develop a source model for this therapy tool

A modified scout bee for artificial bee colony algorithm and its performance on optimization problems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Syahid Anuar

2016-10-01

Full Text Available The artificial bee colony (ABC is one of the swarm intelligence algorithms used to solve optimization problems which is inspired by the foraging behaviour of the honey bees. In this paper, artificial bee colony with the rate of change technique which models the behaviour of scout bee to improve the performance of the standard ABC in terms of exploration is introduced. The technique is called artificial bee colony rate of change (ABC-ROC because the scout bee process depends on the rate of change on the performance graph, replace the parameter limit. The performance of ABC-ROC is analysed on a set of benchmark problems and also on the effect of the parameter colony size. Furthermore, the performance of ABC-ROC is compared with the state of the art algorithms.

Solving Multiobjective Optimization Problems Using Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

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Wenping Zou

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Multiobjective optimization has been a difficult problem and focus for research in fields of science and engineering. This paper presents a novel algorithm based on artificial bee colony (ABC to deal with multi-objective optimization problems. ABC is one of the most recently introduced algorithms based on the intelligent foraging behavior of a honey bee swarm. It uses less control parameters, and it can be efficiently used for solving multimodal and multidimensional optimization problems. Our algorithm uses the concept of Pareto dominance to determine the flight direction of a bee, and it maintains nondominated solution vectors which have been found in an external archive. The proposed algorithm is validated using the standard test problems, and simulation results show that the proposed approach is highly competitive and can be considered a viable alternative to solve multi-objective optimization problems.

Improved artificial bee colony algorithm based gravity matching navigation method.

Science.gov (United States)

Gao, Wei; Zhao, Bo; Zhou, Guang Tao; Wang, Qiu Ying; Yu, Chun Yang

2014-07-18

Gravity matching navigation algorithm is one of the key technologies for gravity aided inertial navigation systems. With the development of intelligent algorithms, the powerful search ability of the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm makes it possible to be applied to the gravity matching navigation field. However, existing search mechanisms of basic ABC algorithms cannot meet the need for high accuracy in gravity aided navigation. Firstly, proper modifications are proposed to improve the performance of the basic ABC algorithm. Secondly, a new search mechanism is presented in this paper which is based on an improved ABC algorithm using external speed information. At last, modified Hausdorff distance is introduced to screen the possible matching results. Both simulations and ocean experiments verify the feasibility of the method, and results show that the matching rate of the method is high enough to obtain a precise matching position.

Microsatellite primers for fungus-growing ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Villesen, Palle; Gertsch, P J; Boomsma, JJ

2002-01-01

We isolated five polymorphic microsatellite loci from a library of two thousand recombinant clones of two fungus-growing ant species, Cyphomyrmex longiscapus and Trachymyrmex cf. zeteki. Amplification and heterozygosity were tested in five species of higher attine ants using both the newly...... developed primers and earlier published primers that were developed for fungus-growing ants. A total of 20 variable microsatellite loci, developed for six different species of fungus-growing ants, are now available for studying the population genetics and colony kin-structure of these ants....

Microsatellite Primers for Fungus-Growing Ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Villesen Fredsted, Palle; Gertsch, Pia J.; Boomsma, Jacobus Jan (Koos)

2002-01-01

We isolated five polymorphic microsatellite loci from a library of two thousand recombinant clones of two fungus-growing ant species, Cyphomyrmex longiscapus and Trachymyrmex cf. zeteki. Amplification and heterozygosity were tested in five species of higher attine ants using both the newly...... developed primers and earlier published primers that were developed for fungus-growing ants. A total of 20 variable microsatellite loci, developed for six different species of fungus-growing ants, are now available for studying the population genetics and colony kin-structure of these ants....

Microbial community structure of leaf-cutter ant fungus gardens and refuse dumps.

Science.gov (United States)

Scott, Jarrod J; Budsberg, Kevin J; Suen, Garret; Wixon, Devin L; Balser, Teri C; Currie, Cameron R

2010-03-29

Leaf-cutter ants use fresh plant material to grow a mutualistic fungus that serves as the ants' primary food source. Within fungus gardens, various plant compounds are metabolized and transformed into nutrients suitable for ant consumption. This symbiotic association produces a large amount of refuse consisting primarily of partly degraded plant material. A leaf-cutter ant colony is thus divided into two spatially and chemically distinct environments that together represent a plant biomass degradation gradient. Little is known about the microbial community structure in gardens and dumps or variation between lab and field colonies. Using microbial membrane lipid analysis and a variety of community metrics, we assessed and compared the microbiota of fungus gardens and refuse dumps from both laboratory-maintained and field-collected colonies. We found that gardens contained a diverse and consistent community of microbes, dominated by Gram-negative bacteria, particularly gamma-Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes. These findings were consistent across lab and field gardens, as well as host ant taxa. In contrast, dumps were enriched for Gram-positive and anaerobic bacteria. Broad-scale clustering analyses revealed that community relatedness between samples reflected system component (gardens/dumps) rather than colony source (lab/field). At finer scales samples clustered according to colony source. Here we report the first comparative analysis of the microbiota from leaf-cutter ant colonies. Our work reveals the presence of two distinct communities: one in the fungus garden and the other in the refuse dump. Though we find some effect of colony source on community structure, our data indicate the presence of consistently associated microbes within gardens and dumps. Substrate composition and system component appear to be the most important factor in structuring the microbial communities. These results thus suggest that resident communities are shaped by the plant degradation

Parameter estimation of Lorenz chaotic system using a hybrid swarm intelligence algorithm

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lazzús, Juan A.; Rivera, Marco; López-Caraballo, Carlos H.

2016-01-01

A novel hybrid swarm intelligence algorithm for chaotic system parameter estimation is present. For this purpose, the parameters estimation on Lorenz systems is formulated as a multidimensional problem, and a hybrid approach based on particle swarm optimization with ant colony optimization (PSO–ACO) is implemented to solve this problem. Firstly, the performance of the proposed PSO–ACO algorithm is tested on a set of three representative benchmark functions, and the impact of the parameter settings on PSO–ACO efficiency is studied. Secondly, the parameter estimation is converted into an optimization problem on a three-dimensional Lorenz system. Numerical simulations on Lorenz model and comparisons with results obtained by other algorithms showed that PSO–ACO is a very powerful tool for parameter estimation with high accuracy and low deviations. - Highlights: • PSO–ACO combined particle swarm optimization with ant colony optimization. • This study is the first research of PSO–ACO to estimate parameters of chaotic systems. • PSO–ACO algorithm can identify the parameters of the three-dimensional Lorenz system with low deviations. • PSO–ACO is a very powerful tool for the parameter estimation on other chaotic system.

Parameter estimation of Lorenz chaotic system using a hybrid swarm intelligence algorithm

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lazzús, Juan A., E-mail: jlazzus@dfuls.cl; Rivera, Marco; López-Caraballo, Carlos H.

2016-03-11

A novel hybrid swarm intelligence algorithm for chaotic system parameter estimation is present. For this purpose, the parameters estimation on Lorenz systems is formulated as a multidimensional problem, and a hybrid approach based on particle swarm optimization with ant colony optimization (PSO–ACO) is implemented to solve this problem. Firstly, the performance of the proposed PSO–ACO algorithm is tested on a set of three representative benchmark functions, and the impact of the parameter settings on PSO–ACO efficiency is studied. Secondly, the parameter estimation is converted into an optimization problem on a three-dimensional Lorenz system. Numerical simulations on Lorenz model and comparisons with results obtained by other algorithms showed that PSO–ACO is a very powerful tool for parameter estimation with high accuracy and low deviations. - Highlights: • PSO–ACO combined particle swarm optimization with ant colony optimization. • This study is the first research of PSO–ACO to estimate parameters of chaotic systems. • PSO–ACO algorithm can identify the parameters of the three-dimensional Lorenz system with low deviations. • PSO–ACO is a very powerful tool for the parameter estimation on other chaotic system.

Ant colony method to control variance reduction techniques in the Monte Carlo simulation of clinical electron linear accelerators

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Garcia-Pareja, S. [Servicio de Radiofisica Hospitalaria, Hospital Regional Universitario ' Carlos Haya' , Avda. Carlos Haya, s/n, E-29010 Malaga (Spain)], E-mail: garciapareja@gmail.com; Vilches, M. [Servicio de Fisica y Proteccion Radiologica, Hospital Regional Universitario ' Virgen de las Nieves' , Avda. de las Fuerzas Armadas, 2, E-18014 Granada (Spain); Lallena, A.M. [Departamento de Fisica Atomica, Molecular y Nuclear, Universidad de Granada, E-18071 Granada (Spain)

2007-09-21

The ant colony method is used to control the application of variance reduction techniques to the simulation of clinical electron linear accelerators of use in cancer therapy. In particular, splitting and Russian roulette, two standard variance reduction methods, are considered. The approach can be applied to any accelerator in a straightforward way and permits, in addition, to investigate the 'hot' regions of the accelerator, an information which is basic to develop a source model for this therapy tool.

Optimal Sizing of a Stand-Alone Hybrid Power System Based on Battery/Hydrogen with an Improved Ant Colony Optimization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Weiqiang Dong

2016-09-01

Full Text Available A distributed power system with renewable energy sources is very popular in recent years due to the rapid depletion of conventional sources of energy. Reasonable sizing for such power systems could improve the power supply reliability and reduce the annual system cost. The goal of this work is to optimize the size of a stand-alone hybrid photovoltaic (PV/wind turbine (WT/battery (B/hydrogen system (a hybrid system based on battery and hydrogen (HS-BH for reliable and economic supply. Two objectives that take the minimum annual system cost and maximum system reliability described as the loss of power supply probability (LPSP have been addressed for sizing HS-BH from a more comprehensive perspective, considering the basic demand of load, the profit from hydrogen, which is produced by HS-BH, and an effective energy storage strategy. An improved ant colony optimization (ACO algorithm has been presented to solve the sizing problem of HS-BH. Finally, a simulation experiment has been done to demonstrate the developed results, in which some comparisons have been done to emphasize the advantage of HS-BH with the aid of data from an island of Zhejiang, China.

A Developed Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm Based on Cloud Model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ye Jin

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The Artificial Bee Colony (ABC algorithm is a bionic intelligent optimization method. The cloud model is a kind of uncertainty conversion model between a qualitative concept T ˜ that is presented by nature language and its quantitative expression, which integrates probability theory and the fuzzy mathematics. A developed ABC algorithm based on cloud model is proposed to enhance accuracy of the basic ABC algorithm and avoid getting trapped into local optima by introducing a new select mechanism, replacing the onlooker bees’ search formula and changing the scout bees’ updating formula. Experiments on CEC15 show that the new algorithm has a faster convergence speed and higher accuracy than the basic ABC and some cloud model based ABC variants.

Male parentage in army ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kronauer, Daniel J C; Schöning, Caspar; Boomsma, Jacobus J

2006-01-01

of active research in insect sociobiology. Here we present microsatellite data for 176 males from eight colonies of the African army ant Dorylus (Anomma) molestus. Comparison with worker genotypes and inferred queen genotypes from the same colonies show that workers do not or at best very rarely reproduce...

Prudent Protomognathus and despotic Leptothorax duloticus: Differential costs of ant slavery

Science.gov (United States)

Hare, James F.; Alloway, Thomas M.

2001-01-01

The concept of ant slavery rests on the untested assumption that slave-making ants impose fitness costs on colonies of the species they raid. We tested that assumption by comparing the summertime seasonal productivity of Leptothorax spp. colonies in field exclosures without slavemakers, with a colony of the obligatory slave-making ant Protomognathus americanus, or with a colony of the obligatory slavemaker Leptothorax duloticus. Leptothorax longispinosus colonies placed in exclosures with P. americanus colonies did not differ significantly in any demographic attribute from colonies in exclosures without slavemakers. By contrast, Leptothorax curvispinosus colonies exposed to L. duloticus experienced significant reductions in dealate queens, workers, and larvae relative to control colonies exclosed without slavemakers. The pronounced difference in the impact of these slavemakers on their host-species populations correlates with differences in the behavior of the slavemakers observed in the laboratory and likely explains why P. americanus is more abundant than L. duloticus in nature. It seems that more advanced social parasites, like anatomical parasites, evolve to minimize their impact on their hosts, and thus can be regarded as “prudent social parasites.” PMID:11572933

Application of Chitosan-Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles for Lead Extraction From Water Samples by Combining Ant Colony Optimization with Artificial Neural Network

Science.gov (United States)

Khajeh, M.; Pourkarami, A.; Arefnejad, E.; Bohlooli, M.; Khatibi, A.; Ghaffari-Moghaddam, M.; Zareian-Jahromi, S.

2017-09-01

Chitosan-zinc oxide nanoparticles (CZPs) were developed for solid-phase extraction. Combined artificial neural network-ant colony optimization (ANN-ACO) was used for the simultaneous preconcentration and determination of lead (Pb2+) ions in water samples prior to graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GF AAS). The solution pH, mass of adsorbent CZPs, amount of 1-(2-pyridylazo)-2-naphthol (PAN), which was used as a complexing agent, eluent volume, eluent concentration, and flow rates of sample and eluent were used as input parameters of the ANN model, and the percentage of extracted Pb2+ ions was used as the output variable of the model. A multilayer perception network with a back-propagation learning algorithm was used to fit the experimental data. The optimum conditions were obtained based on the ACO. Under the optimized conditions, the limit of detection for Pb2+ ions was found to be 0.078 μg/L. This procedure was also successfully used to determine the amounts of Pb2+ ions in various natural water samples.

Recognition of social identity in ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bos, Nick; d'Ettorre, Patrizia

2012-01-01

Recognizing the identity of others, from the individual to the group level, is a hallmark of society. Ants, and other social insects, have evolved advanced societies characterized by efficient social recognition systems. Colony identity is mediated by colony specific signature mixtures, a blend...

Learning from nature: Nature-inspired algorithms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Albeanu, Grigore; Madsen, Henrik; Popentiu-Vladicescu, Florin

2016-01-01

.), genetic and evolutionary strategies, artificial immune systems etc. Well-known examples of applications include: aircraft wing design, wind turbine design, bionic car, bullet train, optimal decisions related to traffic, appropriate strategies to survive under a well-adapted immune system etc. Based......During last decade, the nature has inspired researchers to develop new algorithms. The largest collection of nature-inspired algorithms is biology-inspired: swarm intelligence (particle swarm optimization, ant colony optimization, cuckoo search, bees' algorithm, bat algorithm, firefly algorithm etc...... on collective social behaviour of organisms, researchers have developed optimization strategies taking into account not only the individuals, but also groups and environment. However, learning from nature, new classes of approaches can be identified, tested and compared against already available algorithms...

Stealthy invaders: the biology of Cardiocondyla tramp ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Heinze, J.; Cremer, Sylvia; Eckl, N.

2006-01-01

Many invasive ant species, such as the Argentine ant or the red imported fire ant, have huge colonies with thousands of mass-foraging workers, which quickly monopolise resources and therefore represent a considerable threat to the native ant fauna. Cardiocondyla obscurior and several other specie...

Life-Histories of Sub-Arctic Ants

OpenAIRE

Heinze, Jürgen

1993-01-01

Ant species belonging to seven genera occur in habitats near the tree line in the Northern Hemisphere. An analysis of colony founding strategies suggests that in addition to physiological cold resistance, behavioral and sociometric adaptations might be important for survival and propagation of ants in subarctic biomes.

Plant-ants use symbiotic fungi as a food source: new insight into the nutritional ecology of ant-plant interactions.

Science.gov (United States)

Blatrix, Rumsaïs; Djiéto-Lordon, Champlain; Mondolot, Laurence; La Fisca, Philippe; Voglmayr, Hermann; McKey, Doyle

2012-10-07

Usually studied as pairwise interactions, mutualisms often involve networks of interacting species. Numerous tropical arboreal ants are specialist inhabitants of myrmecophytes (plants bearing domatia, i.e. hollow structures specialized to host ants) and are thought to rely almost exclusively on resources derived from the host plant. Recent studies, following up on century-old reports, have shown that fungi of the ascomycete order Chaetothyriales live in symbiosis with plant-ants within domatia. We tested the hypothesis that ants use domatia-inhabiting fungi as food in three ant-plant symbioses: Petalomyrmex phylax/Leonardoxa africana, Tetraponera aethiops/Barteria fistulosa and Pseudomyrmex penetrator/Tachigali sp. Labelling domatia fungal patches in the field with either a fluorescent dye or (15)N showed that larvae ingested domatia fungi. Furthermore, when the natural fungal patch was replaced with a piece of a (15)N-labelled pure culture of either of two Chaetothyriales strains isolated from T. aethiops colonies, these fungi were also consumed. These two fungi often co-occur in the same ant colony. Interestingly, T. aethiops workers and larvae ingested preferentially one of the two strains. Our results add a new piece in the puzzle of the nutritional ecology of plant-ants.

Recognition of social identity in ants

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nick eBos

2012-03-01

Full Text Available Recognizing the identity of others, from the individual to the group level, is a hallmark of society. Ants, and other social insects, have evolved advanced societies characterized by efficient social recognition systems. Colony identity is mediated by colony specific signature mixtures, a blend of hydrocarbons present on the cuticle of every individual (the label. Recognition occurs when an ant encounters another individual, and compares the label it perceives to an internal representation of its own colony odor (the template. A mismatch between label and template leads to rejection of the encountered individual. Although advances have been made in our understanding of how the label is produced and acquired, contradictory evidence exists about information processing of recognition cues. Here, we review the literature on template acquisition in ants and address how and when the template is formed, where in the nervous system it is localized, and the possible role of learning. We combine seemingly contradictory evidence in to a novel, parsimonious theory for the information processing of nestmate recognition cues.

A nuclear reactor core fuel reload optimization using Artificial-Ant-Colony Connective Networks; Recarga de reatores nucleares utilizando redes conectivas de colonias de formigas artificiais

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lima, Alan M.M. de; Schirru, Roberto [Universidade Federal, Rio de Janeiro, RJ (Brazil). Coordenacao dos Programas de Pos-graduacao de Engenharia. Programa de Engenharia Nuclear]. E-mail: alan@lmp.ufrj.br; schirru@lmp.ufrj.br

2005-07-01

A Pressurized Water Reactor core must be reloaded every time the fuel burnup reaches a level when it is not possible to sustain nominal power operation. The nuclear core fuel reload optimization consists in finding a burned-up and fresh-fuel-assembly pattern that maximizes the number of full operational days. This problem is NP-hard, meaning that complexity grows exponentially with the number of fuel assemblies in the core. Besides that, the problem is non-linear and its search space is highly discontinual and multimodal. In this work a parallel computational system based on Ant Colony System (ACS) called Artificial-Ant-Colony Networks is introduced to solve the nuclear reactor core fuel reload optimization problem. ACS is a system based on artificial agents that uses the reinforcement learning technique and was originally developed to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem, which is conceptually similar to the nuclear fuel reload problem. (author)

A hybrid artificial bee colony algorithm for numerical function optimization

Science.gov (United States)

Alqattan, Zakaria N.; Abdullah, Rosni

2015-02-01

Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is one of the swarm intelligence algorithms; it has been introduced by Karaboga in 2005. It is a meta-heuristic optimization search algorithm inspired from the intelligent foraging behavior of the honey bees in nature. Its unique search process made it as one of the most competitive algorithm with some other search algorithms in the area of optimization, such as Genetic algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). However, the ABC performance of the local search process and the bee movement or the solution improvement equation still has some weaknesses. The ABC is good in avoiding trapping at the local optimum but it spends its time searching around unpromising random selected solutions. Inspired by the PSO, we propose a Hybrid Particle-movement ABC algorithm called HPABC, which adapts the particle movement process to improve the exploration of the original ABC algorithm. Numerical benchmark functions were used in order to experimentally test the HPABC algorithm. The results illustrate that the HPABC algorithm can outperform the ABC algorithm in most of the experiments (75% better in accuracy and over 3 times faster).

Double evolutsional artificial bee colony algorithm for multiple traveling salesman problem

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xue Ming Hao

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The double evolutional artificial bee colony algorithm (DEABC is proposed for solving the single depot multiple traveling salesman problem (MTSP. The proposed DEABC algorithm, which takes advantage of the strength of the upgraded operators, is characterized by its guidance in exploitation search and diversity in exploration search. The double evolutional process for exploitation search is composed of two phases of half stochastic optimal search, and the diversity generating operator for exploration search is used for solutions which cannot be improved after limited times. The computational results demonstrated the superiority of our algorithm over previous state-of-the-art methods.

Algorithms bio-inspired for the pattern obtention of control bars in BWR reactors; Algoritmos bio-inspirados para la obtencion de patrones de barras de control en reactores BWR

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ortiz, J.J.; Perusquia, R.; Montes, J.L. [ININ, 52045 Ocoyoacac, Estado de Mexico (Mexico)

2003-07-01

In this work methods based on Genetic Algorithms and Systems based on ant colonies for the obtention of the patterns of control bars of an equilibrium cycle of 18 months for the Laguna Verde nuclear power station are presented. A comparison of obtained results with the methods and with those of design of such equilibrium cycle is presented. As consequence of the study, it was found that the algorithm based on the ant colonies reached to diminish the coast down period (decrease of power at the end of the cycle) in five and half days with respect to the original design what represents an annual saving of $US 100,000. (Author)

Positive interactions between desert granivores: localized facilitation of harvester ants by kangaroo rats.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrew J Edelman

Full Text Available Facilitation, when one species enhances the environment or performance of another species, can be highly localized in space. While facilitation in plant communities has been intensely studied, the role of facilitation in shaping animal communities is less well understood. In the Chihuahuan Desert, both kangaroo rats and harvester ants depend on the abundant seeds of annual plants. Kangaroo rats, however, are hypothesized to facilitate harvester ants through soil disturbance and selective seed predation rather than competing with them. I used a spatially explicit approach to examine whether a positive or negative interaction exists between banner-tailed kangaroo rat (Dipodomys spectabilis mounds and rough harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex rugosus colonies. The presence of a scale-dependent interaction between mounds and colonies was tested by comparing fitted spatial point process models with and without interspecific effects. Also, the effect of proximity to a mound on colony mortality and spatial patterns of surviving colonies was examined. The spatial pattern of kangaroo rat mounds and harvester ant colonies was consistent with a positive interspecific interaction at small scales (<10 m. Mortality risk of vulnerable, recently founded harvester ant colonies was lower when located close to a kangaroo rat mound and proximity to a mound partly predicted the spatial pattern of surviving colonies. My findings support localized facilitation of harvester ants by kangaroo rats, likely mediated through ecosystem engineering and foraging effects on plant cover and composition. The scale-dependent effect of kangaroo rats on abiotic and biotic factors appears to result in greater founding and survivorship of young colonies near mounds. These results suggest that soil disturbance and foraging by rodents can have subtle impacts on the distribution and demography of other species.

A methodology for obtaining the control rods patterns in a BWR using systems based on ants colonies

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ortiz S, J.J.; Requena R, I.

2003-01-01

In this work the AZCATL-PBC system based on a technique of ants colonies for the search of control rods patterns of those reactors of the Nuclear Power station of Laguna Verde (CNLV) is presented. The technique was applied to a transition cycle and one of balance. For both cycles they were compared the k ef values obtained with a Haling calculation and the control rods pattern proposed by AZCATL-PBC for a burnt one fixed. It was found that the methodology is able to extend the length of the cycle with respect to the Haling prediction, maintaining sure to the reactor. (Author)

No effect of Zn-pollution on the energy content in the black garden ant.

Science.gov (United States)

Grześ, Irena M; Okrutniak, Mateusz

2016-05-01

Social insects may display a response to environmental pollution at the colony level. The key trait of an ant colony is to share energy between castes in order to maintain the existing adult population and to feed the brood. In the present study we calorimetrically measured the energy content per body mass (J/mg) of adults and pupae of workers, males and females of the black garden ant Lasius niger. The ants were sampled from 37 wild colonies originating from 19 sites located along the metal pollution gradient established in a post-mining area in Poland. The cost of metal detoxification seen as a possible reduction in energy content with increasing pollution was found neither for pupae nor adults. However, a considerable part of variance in energy content is explained by belonging to the same colony. These findings stress the importance of colony-specific factors and/or the interaction of these factors with specific site in shaping the response of ants to metal-pollution stress. Colony-related factors may constrain possible selfish decisions of workers over energy allocation in workers and sexual castes.

Aphid egg protection by ants: a novel aspect of the mutualism between the tree-feeding aphid Stomaphis hirukawai and its attendant ant Lasius productus

Science.gov (United States)

Matsuura, Kenji; Yashiro, Toshihisa

2006-10-01

Aphids often form mutualistic associations with ants, in which the aphids provide the ants with honeydew and the ants defend the aphids from predators. In this paper, we report aphid egg protection by ants as a novel aspect of the deeply interdependent relationship between a tree-feeding aphid and its attendant ant. The ant Lasius productus harbours oviparous females, males, and eggs of the hinoki cypress-feeding aphid Stomaphis hirukawai in its nests in winter. We investigated the behaviour of ants kept with aphid eggs in petri dishes to examine whether the ants recognise the aphid eggs and tend them or only provide a refuge for the aphids. Workers carried almost all of the aphid eggs into the nest within 24 h. The ants indiscriminately tended aphid eggs collected from their own colonies and those from other ant colonies. The ants cleaned the eggs and piled them up in the nest, and egg tending by ants dramatically increased aphid egg survival rates. Starving the ants showed no significant effect on aphid egg survivorship. Without ants, aphid eggs were rapidly killed by fungi. These results suggested that grooming by the ants protected the aphid eggs, at least, against pathogenic fungi. This hygienic service afforded by the ants seems indispensable for egg survival of these aphids in an environment rich in potentially pathogenic microorganisms.

Artificial bee colony algorithm for constrained possibilistic portfolio optimization problem

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Wei

2015-07-01

In this paper, we discuss the portfolio optimization problem with real-world constraints under the assumption that the returns of risky assets are fuzzy numbers. A new possibilistic mean-semiabsolute deviation model is proposed, in which transaction costs, cardinality and quantity constraints are considered. Due to such constraints the proposed model becomes a mixed integer nonlinear programming problem and traditional optimization methods fail to find the optimal solution efficiently. Thus, a modified artificial bee colony (MABC) algorithm is developed to solve the corresponding optimization problem. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model and the corresponding algorithm.

The search rate of the African weaver ant in cashew

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Henriksen, Signe; Axelsen, Jørgen Aagaard; Lemming, Katrine Hansen

2015-01-01

Oecophylla longinoda is a species of eusocial colony living ants that prey upon other insects to feed their larva. Many of these insects are considered pests. An ecosystem model of the interactions between an O. longinoda colony and its potential prey is under construction by the team behind...... this article, and it is unknown which functional response equations are useful for eusocial insect colonies. We investigated the search rate of O. longinoda using artificial feeding experiments in a Tanzanian cashew (Anacardium occidentale L.) orchard to determine the search efficiency of the ants...

DISTRIBUTION NETWORK RECONFIGURATION FOR POWER LOSS MINIMIZATION AND VOLTAGE PROFILE ENHANCEMENT USING ANT LION ALGORITHM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maryam Shokouhi

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Distribution networks are designed as a ring and operated as a radial form. Therefore, the reconfiguration is a simple and cost-effective way to use existing facilities without the need for any new equipment in distribution networks to achieve various objectives such as: power loss reduction, feeder overload reduction, load balancing, voltage profile improvement, reducing the number of switching considering constraints that ultimately result in the power loss reduction. In this paper, a new method based on the Ant Lion algorithm (a modern meta-heuristic algorithm is provided for the reconfiguration of distribution networks. Considering the extension of the distribution networks and complexity of their communications networks, and the various parameters, using smart techniques is inevitable. The proposed approach is tested on the IEEE 33 & 69-bus radial standard distribution networks. The Evaluation of results in MATLAB software shows the effectiveness of the Ant Lion algorithm in the distribution network reconfiguration.

Improved discrete swarm intelligence algorithms for endmember extraction from hyperspectral remote sensing images

Science.gov (United States)

Su, Yuanchao; Sun, Xu; Gao, Lianru; Li, Jun; Zhang, Bing

2016-10-01

Endmember extraction is a key step in hyperspectral unmixing. A new endmember extraction framework is proposed for hyperspectral endmember extraction. The proposed approach is based on the swarm intelligence (SI) algorithm, where discretization is used to solve the SI algorithm because pixels in a hyperspectral image are naturally defined within a discrete space. Moreover, a "distance" factor is introduced into the objective function to limit the endmember numbers which is generally limited in real scenarios, while traditional SI algorithms likely produce superabundant spectral signatures, which generally belong to the same classes. Three endmember extraction methods are proposed based on the artificial bee colony, ant colony optimization, and particle swarm optimization algorithms. Experiments with both simulated and real hyperspectral images indicate that the proposed framework can improve the accuracy of endmember extraction.

Multiple Levels of Recognition in Ants: A Feature of Complex Societies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

D'Ettorre, Patrizia

2008-01-01

diverse. In ants, social interactions are regulated by at least three levels of recognition. Nestmate recognition occurs between colonies, is very effective, and involves fast processing. Within a colony, division of labor is enhanced by recognition of different classes of individuals. Ultimately......, in particular circumstances, such as cooperative colony founding with stable dominance hierarchies, ants are capable of individual recognition. The underlying recognition cues and mechanisms appear to be specific to each recognition level, and their integrated understanding could contribute...

Are workers of Atta leafcutter ants capable of reproduction?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dijkstra, Michiel Bendert; Boomsma, Jacobus Jan

2006-01-01

ovaries. Workers of Atta leafcutter ants only lay trophic eggs in queenright colonies. Although Atta colonies are commonly kept at universities, museums, and zoos, no reports of worker sons in orphaned colonies exist, suggesting that Atta workers are infertile. To explicitly test this, we created eleven...

Tricks of the trade: Mechanism of brood theft in an ant.

Science.gov (United States)

Paul, Bishwarup; Annagiri, Sumana

2018-01-01

Thievery is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, social insects not being an exception. Brood is invaluable for the survival of social insect colonies and brood theft is well documented in ants. In many species the stolen brood act as slaves in the thief colony as they take up tasks related to foraging, defence and colony maintenance. Slave-making (dulotic) ants are at an advantage as they gain workforce without investing in rearing immature young, and several slave-making species have been recorded in temperate regions. In the current study we investigate brood theft in a primitively eusocial ponerine ant Diacamma indicum that inhabits the tropics. In the context of colony relocation we asked how thieves steal brood and what victim colonies do to prevent theft. While exposed nests increased colonies' vulnerability, the relocation process itself did not enhance the chances of theft. Various aggressive interactions, in particular immobilization of intruders helped in preventing theft. Thieves that acted quickly, stayed furtive and stole unguarded brood were found to be successful. This comprehensive study of behavioural mechanism of theft reveals that these are the 'tricks' adopted by thieves.

How can bee colony algorithm serve medicine?

Science.gov (United States)

Salehahmadi, Zeinab; Manafi, Amir

2014-07-01

Healthcare professionals usually should make complex decisions with far reaching consequences and associated risks in health care fields. As it was demonstrated in other industries, the ability to drill down into pertinent data to explore knowledge behind the data can greatly facilitate superior, informed decisions to ensue the facts. Nature has always inspired researchers to develop models of solving the problems. Bee colony algorithm (BCA), based on the self-organized behavior of social insects is one of the most popular member of the family of population oriented, nature inspired meta-heuristic swarm intelligence method which has been proved its superiority over some other nature inspired algorithms. The objective of this model was to identify valid novel, potentially useful, and understandable correlations and patterns in existing data. This review employs a thematic analysis of online series of academic papers to outline BCA in medical hive, reducing the response and computational time and optimizing the problems. To illustrate the benefits of this model, the cases of disease diagnose system are presented.

Fungus gardens of the leafcutter ant Atta colombica function as egg nurseries for the snake Leptodeira annulata

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Baer, Boris; Den Boer, Susanne Petronella A; Kronauer, Daniel

2009-01-01

by ant soldiers and that also newly hatched snakes manage to avoid ant attacks when they leaving their host colony. We speculate that L. annulata might use Atta and Acromyrmex leafcutter ant colonies as egg nurseries by some form of chemical insignificance, but more work is needed to understand...

Service Composition Instantiation Based on Cross-Modified Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

Lei Huo; Zhiliang Wang

2016-01-01

Internet of things (IoT) imposes new challenges on service composition as it is difficult to manage a quick instantiation of a complex services from a growing number of dynamic candidate services.A cross-modified Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm (CMABC) is proposed to achieve the optimal solution services in an acceptable time and high accuracy.Firstly,web service instantiation model was established.What is more,to overcome the problem of discrete and chaotic solution space,the global optimal solution was used to accelerate convergence rate by imitating the cross operation of Genetic algorithm (GA).The simulation experiment result shows that CMABC exhibited faster convergence speed and better convergence accuracy than some other intelligent optimization algorithms.

Rule Extraction Based on Extreme Learning Machine and an Improved Ant-Miner Algorithm for Transient Stability Assessment.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yang Li

Full Text Available In order to overcome the problems of poor understandability of the pattern recognition-based transient stability assessment (PRTSA methods, a new rule extraction method based on extreme learning machine (ELM and an improved Ant-miner (IAM algorithm is presented in this paper. First, the basic principles of ELM and Ant-miner algorithm are respectively introduced. Then, based on the selected optimal feature subset, an example sample set is generated by the trained ELM-based PRTSA model. And finally, a set of classification rules are obtained by IAM algorithm to replace the original ELM network. The novelty of this proposal is that transient stability rules are extracted from an example sample set generated by the trained ELM-based transient stability assessment model by using IAM algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by the application results on the New England 39-bus power system and a practical power system--the southern power system of Hebei province.

Rule Extraction Based on Extreme Learning Machine and an Improved Ant-Miner Algorithm for Transient Stability Assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Yang; Li, Guoqing; Wang, Zhenhao

2015-01-01

In order to overcome the problems of poor understandability of the pattern recognition-based transient stability assessment (PRTSA) methods, a new rule extraction method based on extreme learning machine (ELM) and an improved Ant-miner (IAM) algorithm is presented in this paper. First, the basic principles of ELM and Ant-miner algorithm are respectively introduced. Then, based on the selected optimal feature subset, an example sample set is generated by the trained ELM-based PRTSA model. And finally, a set of classification rules are obtained by IAM algorithm to replace the original ELM network. The novelty of this proposal is that transient stability rules are extracted from an example sample set generated by the trained ELM-based transient stability assessment model by using IAM algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by the application results on the New England 39-bus power system and a practical power system--the southern power system of Hebei province.

Harnessing ant defence at fruits reduces bruchid seed predation in a symbiotic ant–plant mutualism

Science.gov (United States)

Pringle, Elizabeth G.

2014-01-01

In horizontally transmitted mutualisms, mutualists disperse separately and reassemble in each generation with partners genetically unrelated to those in the previous generation. Because of this, there should be no selection on either partner to enhance the other's reproductive output directly. In symbiotic ant–plant mutualisms, myrmecophytic plants host defensive ant colonies, and ants defend the plants from herbivores. Plants and ants disperse separately, and, although ant defence can indirectly increase plant reproduction by reducing folivory, it is unclear whether ants can also directly increase plant reproduction by defending seeds. The neotropical tree Cordia alliodora hosts colonies of Azteca pittieri ants. The trees produce domatia where ants nest at stem nodes and also at the node between the peduncle and the rachides of the infloresence. Unlike the stem domatia, these reproductive domatia senesce after the tree fruits each year. In this study, I show that the tree's resident ant colony moves into these ephemeral reproductive domatia, where they tend honeydew-producing scale insects and patrol the nearby developing fruits. The presence of ants significantly reduced pre-dispersal seed predation by Amblycerus bruchid beetles, thereby directly increasing plant reproductive output. PMID:24807259

An artificial bee colony algorithm for uncertain portfolio selection.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Wei

2014-01-01

Portfolio selection is an important issue for researchers and practitioners. In this paper, under the assumption that security returns are given by experts' evaluations rather than historical data, we discuss the portfolio adjusting problem which takes transaction costs and diversification degree of portfolio into consideration. Uncertain variables are employed to describe the security returns. In the proposed mean-variance-entropy model, the uncertain mean value of the return is used to measure investment return, the uncertain variance of the return is used to measure investment risk, and the entropy is used to measure diversification degree of portfolio. In order to solve the proposed model, a modified artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is designed. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the modelling idea and the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

A new improved artificial bee colony algorithm for ship hull form optimization

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Fuxin; Wang, Lijue; Yang, Chi

2016-04-01

The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a relatively new swarm intelligence-based optimization algorithm. Its simplicity of implementation, relatively few parameter settings and promising optimization capability make it widely used in different fields. However, it has problems of slow convergence due to its solution search equation. Here, a new solution search equation based on a combination of the elite solution pool and the block perturbation scheme is proposed to improve the performance of the algorithm. In addition, two different solution search equations are used by employed bees and onlooker bees to balance the exploration and exploitation of the algorithm. The developed algorithm is validated by a set of well-known numerical benchmark functions. It is then applied to optimize two ship hull forms with minimum resistance. The tested results show that the proposed new improved ABC algorithm can outperform the ABC algorithm in most of the tested problems.

Effect of land cover, habitat fragmentation and ant colonies on the distribution and abundance of shrews in southern California

Science.gov (United States)

Laakkonen, Juha; Fisher, Robert N.; Case, Ted J.

2001-01-01

Because effects of habitat fragmentation and anthropogenic disturbance on native animals have been relatively little studied in arid areas and in insectivores, we investigated the roles of different land covers, habitat fragmentation and ant colonies on the distribution and abundance of shrews, Notiosorex crawfordi and Sorex ornatus, in southern California.Notiosorex crawfordi was the numerically dominant species (trap-success rate 0·52) occurring in 21 of the 22 study sites in 85% of the 286 pitfall arrays used in this study.Sorex ornatus was captured in 14 of the sites, in 52% of the arrays with a total trap-success rate of 0·2. Neither of the species was found in one of the sites.The population dynamics of the two shrew species were relatively synchronous during the 4–5-year study; the peak densities usually occurred during the spring. Precipitation had a significant positive effect, and maximum temperature a significant negative effect on the trap-success rate of S. ornatus.Occurrence and abundance of shrews varied significantly between sites and years but the size of the landscape or the study site had no effect on the abundance of shrews. The amount of urban edge had no significant effect on the captures of shrews but increased edge allows invasion of the Argentine ants, which had a highly significant negative impact on the abundance of N. crawfordi.At the trap array level, the percentage of coastal sage scrub flora had a significant positive, and the percentage of other flora had a significant negative effect on the abundance of N. crawfordi. The mean canopy height and the abundance of N. crawfordi had a significant positive effect on the occurrence of S. ornatus.Our study suggests that the loss of native coastal sage scrub flora and increasing presence of Argentine ant colonies may significantly effect the distribution and abundance of N. crawfordi. The very low overall population densities of both shrew species in most study sites make both species

Non-destructive estimation of Oecophylla smaragdina colony biomass

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pinkalski, Christian Alexander Stidsen; Offenberg, Joachim; Jensen, Karl-Martin Vagn

in mango plantations in Darwin, Australia. The total nest volume of O. smaragdina colonies in a tree was related to the activity of the ants (R2=0.85), estimated as the density of ant trails in the tree. Subsequently, the relation between nest volume and ant biomass (R2=0.70) was added to enable...... a prediction of ant biomass directly from ant activity. With this combined regression the ant biomass in a tree equaled 244.5 g fresh mass*ant activity. Similarly, the number of workers in trees was estimated using the relationship between nest volume and worker numbers (R2=0.84). Based on the model, five O...

The organization of societal conflicts by pavement ants Tetramorium caespitum: an agent-based model of amine-mediated decision making.

Science.gov (United States)

Hoover, Kevin M; Bubak, Andrew N; Law, Isaac J; Yaeger, Jazmine D W; Renner, Kenneth J; Swallow, John G; Greene, Michael J

2016-06-01

Ant colonies self-organize to solve complex problems despite the simplicity of an individual ant's brain. Pavement ant Tetramorium caespitum colonies must solve the problem of defending the territory that they patrol in search of energetically rich forage. When members of 2 colonies randomly interact at the territory boundary a decision to fight occurs when: 1) there is a mismatch in nestmate recognition cues and 2) each ant has a recent history of high interaction rates with nestmate ants. Instead of fighting, some ants will decide to recruit more workers from the nest to the fighting location, and in this way a positive feedback mediates the development of colony wide wars. In ants, the monoamines serotonin (5-HT) and octopamine (OA) modulate many behaviors associated with colony organization and in particular behaviors associated with nestmate recognition and aggression. In this article, we develop and explore an agent-based model that conceptualizes how individual changes in brain concentrations of 5-HT and OA, paired with a simple threshold-based decision rule, can lead to the development of colony wide warfare. Model simulations do lead to the development of warfare with 91% of ants fighting at the end of 1 h. When conducting a sensitivity analysis, we determined that uncertainty in monoamine concentration signal decay influences the behavior of the model more than uncertainty in the decision-making rule or density. We conclude that pavement ant behavior is consistent with the detection of interaction rate through a single timed interval rather than integration of multiple interactions.

The chaotic global best artificial bee colony algorithm for the multi-area economic/emission dispatch

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Secui, Dinu Calin

2015-01-01

This paper suggests a chaotic optimizing method, based on the GBABC (global best artificial bee colony algorithm), where the random sequences used in updating the solutions of this algorithm are replaced with chaotic sequences generated by chaotic maps. The new algorithm, called chaotic CGBABC (global best artificial bee colony algorithm), is used to solving the multi-area economic/emission dispatch problem taking into consideration the valve-point effects, the transmission line losses, multi-fuel sources, prohibited operating zones, tie line capacity and power transfer cost between different areas of the system. The behaviour of the CGBABC algorithm is studied considering ten chaotic maps both one-dimensional and bi-dimensional, with various probability density functions. The CGBABC algorithm's performance including a variety of chaotic maps is tested on five systems (6-unit, 10-unit, 16-unit, 40-unit and 120-unit) with different characteristics, constraints and sizes. The results comparison highlights a hierarchy in the chaotic maps included in the CGBABC algorithm and shows that it performs better than the classical ABC algorithm, the GBABC algorithm and other optimization techniques. - Highlights: • A chaotic global best ABC algorithm (CGBABC) is presented. • CGBABC is applied for solving the multi-area economic/emission dispatch problem. • Valve-point effects, multi-fuel sources, POZ, transmission losses were considered. • The algorithm is tested on five systems having 6, 10, 16, 40 and 120 thermal units. • CGBABC algorithm outperforms several optimization techniques.

Facilitating the 3D Indoor Search and Rescue Problem: An Overview of the Problem and an Ant Colony Solution Approach

Science.gov (United States)

Tashakkori, H.; Rajabifard, A.; Kalantari, M.

2016-10-01

Search and rescue procedures for indoor environments are quite complicated due to the fact that much of the indoor information is unavailable to rescuers before physical entrance to the incident scene. Thus, decision making regarding the number of crew required and the way they should be dispatched in the building considering the various access points and complexities in the buildings in order to cover the search area in minimum time is dependent on prior knowledge and experience of the emergency commanders. Hence, this paper introduces the Search and Rescue Problem (SRP) which aims at finding best search and rescue routes that minimize the overall search time in the buildings. 3D BIM-oriented indoor GIS is integrated in the indoor route graph to find accurate routes based on the building geometric and semantic information. An Ant Colony Based Algorithm is presented that finds the number of first responders required and their individual routes to search all rooms and points of interest inside the building to minimize the overall time spent by all rescuers inside the disaster area. The evaluation of the proposed model for a case study building shows a significant improve in search and rescue time which will lead to a higher chance of saving lives and less exposure of emergency crew to danger.

Acanthopria and Mimopriella parasitoid wasps (Diapriidae) attack Cyphomyrmex fungus-growing ants (Formicidae, Attini)

Science.gov (United States)

Fernández-Marín, Hermógenes; Zimmerman, Jess K.; Wcislo, William T.

2006-01-01

New World diapriine wasps are abundant and diverse, but the biology of most species is unknown. We provide the first description of the biology of diapriine wasps, Acanthopria spp. and Mimopriella sp., which attack the larvae of Cyphomyrmex fungus-growing ants. In Puerto Rico, the koinobiont parasitoids Acanthopria attack Cyphomyrmex minutus, while in Panama at least four morphospecies of Acanthopria and one of Mimopriella attack Cyphomyrmex rimosus. Of the total larvae per colony, 0 100% were parasitized, and 27 70% of the colonies per population were parasitized. Parasitism rate and colony size were negatively correlated for C. rimosus but not for C. minutus. Worker ants grasped at, bit, and in some cases, killed adult wasps that emerged in artificial nests or tried to enter natural nests. Parasitoid secondary sex ratios were female-biased for eclosing wasps, while field collections showed a male-biased sex ratio. Based on their abundance and success in attacking host ants, these minute wasps present excellent opportunities to explore how natural enemies impact ant colony demography and population biology.

Mutualistic fungi control crop diversity in fungus-growing ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Poulsen, Michael; Boomsma, Jacobus J

2005-01-01

Leaf-cutting ants rear clonal fungi for food and transmit the fungi from mother to daughter colonies so that symbiont mixing and conflict, which result from competition between genetically different clones, are avoided. Here we show that despite millions of years of predominantly vertical...... transmission, the domesticated fungi actively reject mycelial fragments from neighboring colonies, and that the strength of these reactions are in proportion to the overall genetic difference between these symbionts. Fungal incompatibility compounds remain intact during ant digestion, so that fecal droplets...

Impact of Interference Competition on Exploration and Food Exploitation in the Ant Lasius niger

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Vincent Fourcassié

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Competition acts as a major force in shaping spatially and/or temporally the foraging activity of ant colonies. Interference competition between colonies in particular is widespread in ants where it can prevent the physical access of competitors to a resource, either directly by fighting or indirectly, by segregating the colony foraging areas. Although the consequences of interference competition on ant distribution have been well studied in the literature, the behavioral mechanisms underlying interference competition have been less explored. Little is known on how ants modify their exploration patterns or the choice of a feeding place after experiencing aggressive encounters. In this paper, we show that, at the individual level, the aphid-tending ant Lasius niger reacts to the presence of an alien conspecific through direct aggressive behavior and local recruitment in the vicinity of fights. At the colony level, however, no defensive recruitment is triggered and the “risky” area where aggressive encounters occur is not specifically avoided during further exploration or food exploitation. We discuss how between-species differences in sensitivity to interference competition could be related to the spatial and temporal predictability of food resources at stake.

The Pied Piper: A Parasitic Beetle's Melodies Modulate Ant Behaviours.

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Andrea Di Giulio

Full Text Available Ants use various communication channels to regulate their social organisation. The main channel that drives almost all the ants' activities and behaviours is the chemical one, but it is long acknowledged that the acoustic channel also plays an important role. However, very little is known regarding exploitation of the acoustical channel by myrmecophile parasites to infiltrate the ant society. Among social parasites, the ant nest beetles (Paussus are obligate myrmecophiles able to move throughout the colony at will and prey on the ants, surprisingly never eliciting aggression from the colonies. It has been recently postulated that stridulatory organs in Paussus might be evolved as an acoustic mechanism to interact with ants. Here, we survey the role of acoustic signals employed in the Paussus beetle-Pheidole ant system. Ants parasitised by Paussus beetles produce caste-specific stridulations. We found that Paussus can "speak" three different "languages", each similar to sounds produced by different ant castes (workers, soldiers, queen. Playback experiments were used to test how host ants respond to the sounds emitted by Paussus. Our data suggest that, by mimicking the stridulations of the queen, Paussus is able to dupe the workers of its host and to be treated as royalty. This is the first report of acoustic mimicry in a beetle parasite of ants.

Social context predicts recognition systems in ant queens

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dreier, Stéphanie Agnès Jeanine; d'Ettorre, Patrizia

2009-01-01

Recognition of group-members is a key feature of sociality. Ants use chemical communication to discriminate nestmates from intruders, enhancing kin cooperation and preventing parasitism. The recognition code is embedded in their cuticular chemical profile, which typically varies between colonies....... We predicted that ants might be capable of accurate recognition in unusual situations when few individuals interact repeatedly, as new colonies started by two to three queens. Individual recognition would be favoured by selection when queens establish dominance hierarchies, because repeated fights...... for dominance are costly; but it would not evolve in absence of hierarchies. We previously showed that Pachycondyla co-founding queens, which form dominance hierarchies, have accurate individual recognition based on chemical cues. Here, we used the ant Lasius niger to test the null hypothesis that individual...

Do host species evolve a specific response to slave-making ants?

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Delattre Olivier

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Social parasitism is an important selective pressure for social insect species. It is particularly the case for the hosts of dulotic (so called slave-making ants, which pillage the brood of host colonies to increase the worker force of their own colony. Such raids can have an important impact on the fitness of the host nest. An arms race which can lead to geographic variation in host defenses is thus expected between hosts and parasites. In this study we tested whether the presence of a social parasite (the dulotic ant Myrmoxenus ravouxi within an ant community correlated with a specific behavioral defense strategy of local host or non-host populations of Temnothorax ants. Social recognition often leads to more or less pronounced agonistic interactions between non-nestmates ants. Here, we monitored agonistic behaviors to assess whether ants discriminate social parasites from other ants. It is now well-known that ants essentially rely on cuticular hydrocarbons to discriminate nestmates from aliens. If host species have evolved a specific recognition mechanism for their parasite, we hypothesize that the differences in behavioral responses would not be fully explained simply by quantitative dissimilarity in cuticular hydrocarbon profiles, but should also involve a qualitative response due to the detection of particular compounds. We scaled the behavioral results according to the quantitative chemical distance between host and parasite colonies to test this hypothesis. Results Cuticular hydrocarbon profiles were distinct between species, but host species did not show a clearly higher aggression rate towards the parasite than toward non-parasite intruders, unless the degree of response was scaled by the chemical distance between intruders and recipient colonies. By doing so, we show that workers of the host and of a non-host species in the parasitized site displayed more agonistic behaviors (bites and ejections towards parasite

Optimising social information by game theory and ant colony method to enhance routing protocol in opportunistic networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chander Prabha

2016-09-01

Full Text Available The data loss and disconnection of nodes are frequent in the opportunistic networks. The social information plays an important role in reducing the data loss because it depends on the connectivity of nodes. The appropriate selection of next hop based on social information is critical for improving the performance of routing in opportunistic networks. The frequent disconnection problem is overcome by optimising the social information with Ant Colony Optimization method which depends on the topology of opportunistic network. The proposed protocol is examined thoroughly via analysis and simulation in order to assess their performance in comparison with other social based routing protocols in opportunistic network under various parameters settings.

Genetic evidence for intra- and interspecific slavery in honey ants (genus Myrmecocystus).

Science.gov (United States)

Kronauer, D J C; Gadau, J; Hölldobler, B

2003-04-22

The New World honey ant species Myrmecocystus mimicus is well known for its highly stereotyped territorial tournaments, and for the raids on conspecific nests that can lead to intraspecific slavery. Our results from mitochondrial and nuclear markers show that the raided brood emerges in the raiding colony and is subsequently incorporated into the colony's worker force. We also found enslaved conspecifics in a second honey ant species, M. depilis, the sister taxon of M. mimicus, which occurs in sympatry with M. mimicus at the study site. Colonies of this species furthermore contained raided M. mimicus workers. Both species have an effective mating frequency that is not significantly different from 1. This study provides genetic evidence for facultative intra- and interspecific slavery in the genus Myrmecocystus. Slavery in ants has evolved repeatedly and supposedly by different means. We propose that, in honey ants, secondary contact between two closely related species that both exhibit intraspecific slavery gave rise to an early form of facultative interspecific slavery.

Why do house-hunting ants recruit in both directions?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Planqué, R.; Dechaume-Moncharmont, F.-X.; Franks, N.R.; Kovacs, T.; Marshall, J.A.R.

2007-01-01

To perform tasks, organisms often use multiple procedures. Explaining the breadth of such behavioural repertoires is not always straightforward. During house hunting, colonies of Temnothorax albipennis ants use a range of behaviours to organise their emigrations. In particular, the ants use tandem

Mode of action of sodium arsenate on laboratory colonies of the pharaoh's ant Monomorium pharaonis L

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Berndt, K P

1974-01-01

Arsenate compounds for pest control have been displayed on large scale by modern insecticides. In the control of the pharaoh's ant the arsenates however still remain an important means for eradication. The present study points out, that the mortality of workers and queens, respectively, are not the decisive factors of action as assumed until now. The causes for the extinction of the ant colonies after application of sodium arsenate are based on a combination of larval mortality and the induction of sterility in the queens, the sterility being the most important factor. A number of other factors moreover are working advantageously. First, the poison bait is not repellent and is well accepted by the workers, and is either stored in the nest or distributed trophalactically. Whereas with the workers there occurs a strongly delayed mortality, the larvae are being inhibited in their development after a few hours, shortly before pupation, or they are being paralyzed, whereby the further pupation would by cut off. The younger larvae normally do not come to pupation, but are being stunted and would be eliminated from the nest. The reproducing females, being the last members in the social chain, are protected in the polygynous society from the lethal action of the poison, although otherwise susceptible in the same way as workers. After a certain time sub-lethal doses of sodium arsenate lead to a decrease in fecundity. Egg production is suppressed dependent on the duration of the poison application up to permanent sterility. On the basis of these investigations some suggestions for practical control of the pharaoh's ant have been derived.

Effects of the Trophobiont Herbivore Calloconophora pugionata (Hemiptera on Ant Fauna Associated with Myrcia obovata (Myrtaceae in a Montane Tropical Forest

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Roberth Fagundes

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Many studies have investigated the mechanisms behind the structure of arboreal ant assemblages. In this study, the objective was to evaluate the effect of availability of honeydew-producing colonies of Calloconophora pugionata (Membracidae on the structure of ant assemblages associated with the host plant Myrcia obovata (Myrtaceae in an Atlantic forest of Minas Gerais (Brazil. Our experiment consisted in a gradual exclusion of hemipteran colonies out of the host plant crown and further record of the ant assemblage response (species richness, composition, and occurrence to the presence and density of treehopper colonies. The hypothesis was that an increase in the number of trophobiont herbivores results in an increase in tending ant occurrence but a reduction in ant species diversity. Results corroborated our main hypothesis: membracids had a positive effect on the occurrence of ants but negative on species richness. Overall insect occurrence was also reduced with increasing in C. pugionata colonies, probably due to strengthening dominant ant species territory sizes and intensification of patrolling.

Identifying nuclear power plant transients using the Discrete Binary Artificial Bee Colony (DBABC) algorithm

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Oliveira, Iona M.S. de; Schirru, Roberto, E-mail: ioliveira@con.ufrj.br, E-mail: schirru@lmp.ufrj.br [Coordenacoa dos Programas de Pos-Graduacao em Engenharia (UFRJ/PEN/COPPE), Rio de Janeiro, RJ (Brazil). Programa de Engenharia Nuclear

2011-07-01

The identification of possible transients in a nuclear power plant is a highly relevant problem. This is mainly due to the fact that the operation of a nuclear power plant involves a large number of state variables whose behaviors are extremely dynamic. In risk situations, besides the huge cognitive overload that operators are submitted to, there is also the problem related with the considerable decrease in the effective time for correct decision making. To minimize these problems and help operators to make the corrective actions in due time, this paper presents a new contribution in this area and introduces an experimental transient identification system based exclusively on the abilities of the Discrete Binary Artificial Bee Colony (DBABC) algorithm to find the best centroid positions that correctly identifies a transient in a nuclear power plant. The DBABC is a reworking of the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm which presents the advantage of operating in both continuous and discrete search spaces. Through the analysis of experimental results, the effective performance of the proposed DBABC algorithm is shown against some well known best performing algorithms from the literature. (author)

Identifying nuclear power plant transients using the Discrete Binary Artificial Bee Colony (DBABC) algorithm

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Oliveira, Iona M.S. de; Schirru, Roberto

2011-01-01

The identification of possible transients in a nuclear power plant is a highly relevant problem. This is mainly due to the fact that the operation of a nuclear power plant involves a large number of state variables whose behaviors are extremely dynamic. In risk situations, besides the huge cognitive overload that operators are submitted to, there is also the problem related with the considerable decrease in the effective time for correct decision making. To minimize these problems and help operators to make the corrective actions in due time, this paper presents a new contribution in this area and introduces an experimental transient identification system based exclusively on the abilities of the Discrete Binary Artificial Bee Colony (DBABC) algorithm to find the best centroid positions that correctly identifies a transient in a nuclear power plant. The DBABC is a reworking of the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm which presents the advantage of operating in both continuous and discrete search spaces. Through the analysis of experimental results, the effective performance of the proposed DBABC algorithm is shown against some well known best performing algorithms from the literature. (author)

Patterns of male parentage in the fungus-growing ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Villesen, Palle; Boomsma, JJ

2003-01-01

Ant queens from eight species, covering three genera of lower and two genera of higher attine ants, have exclusively or predominantly single mating. The ensuing full-sib colonies thus have a strong potential reproductive conflict between the queen and the workers over male production...

Testing the adjustable threshold model for intruder recognition on Myrmica ants in the context of a social parasite

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fürst, Matthias Alois; Durey, Maëlle; Nash, David Richard

2012-01-01

gains access to the ants' nests by mimicking their cuticular hydrocarbon recognition cues, which allows the parasites to blend in with their host ants. Myrmica rubra may be particularly susceptible to exploitation in this fashion as it has large, polydomous colonies with many queens and a very viscous...... and therefore the less-related workers within a colony, the less aggressively they will behave; and that colonies facing parasitism will be more aggressive than colonies experiencing less parasite pressure. Our results confirm all these predictions, supporting flexible aggression behaviour in Myrmica ants...

The Antsy Social Network: Determinants of Nest Structure and Arrangement in Asian Weaver Ants

OpenAIRE

Devarajan, Kadambari

2016-01-01

Asian weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) are arboreal ants that are known to form mutualistic complexes with their host trees. They are eusocial ants that build elaborate nests in the canopy in tropical areas. A colony comprises of multiple nests, usually on multiple trees, and the boundaries of the colony may be difficult to identify. However, they provide the ideal model for studying group living in invertebrates since there are a definite number of nests for a given substrate, the tree. H...

An Improved Multi-Objective Artificial Bee Colony Optimization Algorithm with Regulation Operators

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Jiuyuan Huo

2017-02-01

Full Text Available To achieve effective and accurate optimization for multi-objective optimization problems, a multi-objective artificial bee colony algorithm with regulation operators (RMOABC inspired by the intelligent foraging behavior of honey bees was proposed in this paper. The proposed algorithm utilizes the Pareto dominance theory and takes advantage of adaptive grid and regulation operator mechanisms. The adaptive grid technique is used to adaptively assess the Pareto front maintained in an external archive and the regulation operator is used to balance the weights of the local search and the global search in the evolution of the algorithm. The performance of RMOABC was evaluated in comparison with other nature inspired algorithms includes NSGA-II and MOEA/D. The experiments results demonstrated that the RMOABC approach has better accuracy and minimal execution time.

A Modified Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm Application for Economic Environmental Dispatch

Science.gov (United States)

Tarafdar Hagh, M.; Baghban Orandi, Omid

2018-03-01

In conventional fossil-fuel power systems, the economic environmental dispatch (EED) problem is a major problem that optimally determines the output power of generating units in a way that cost of total production and emission level be minimized simultaneously, and at the same time all the constraints of units and system are satisfied properly. To solve EED problem which is a non-convex optimization problem, a modified artificial bee colony (MABC) algorithm is proposed in this paper. This algorithm by implementing weighted sum method is applied on two test systems, and eventually, obtained results are compared with other reported results. Comparison of results confirms superiority and efficiency of proposed method clearly.

The dynamics of ant mosaics in tropical rainforests characterized using the Self-Organizing Map algorithm.

Science.gov (United States)

Dejean, Alain; Azémar, Frédéric; Céréghino, Régis; Leponce, Maurice; Corbara, Bruno; Orivel, Jérôme; Compin, Arthur

2016-08-01

Ants, the most abundant taxa among canopy-dwelling animals in tropical rainforests, are mostly represented by territorially dominant arboreal ants (TDAs) whose territories are distributed in a mosaic pattern (arboreal ant mosaics). Large TDA colonies regulate insect herbivores, with implications for forestry and agronomy. What generates these mosaics in vegetal formations, which are dynamic, still needs to be better understood. So, from empirical research based on 3 Cameroonian tree species (Lophira alata, Ochnaceae; Anthocleista vogelii, Gentianaceae; and Barteria fistulosa, Passifloraceae), we used the Self-Organizing Map (SOM, neural network) to illustrate the succession of TDAs as their host trees grow and age. The SOM separated the trees by species and by size for L. alata, which can reach 60 m in height and live several centuries. An ontogenic succession of TDAs from sapling to mature trees is shown, and some ecological traits are highlighted for certain TDAs. Also, because the SOM permits the analysis of data with many zeroes with no effect of outliers on the overall scatterplot distributions, we obtained ecological information on rare species. Finally, the SOM permitted us to show that functional groups cannot be selected at the genus level as congeneric species can have very different ecological niches, something particularly true for Crematogaster spp., which include a species specifically associated with B. fistulosa, nondominant species and TDAs. Therefore, the SOM permitted the complex relationships between TDAs and their growing host trees to be analyzed, while also providing new information on the ecological traits of the ant species involved. © 2015 Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Disease dynamics in a specialized parasite of ant societies.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sandra B Andersen

Full Text Available Coevolution between ant colonies and their rare specialized parasites are intriguing, because lethal infections of workers may correspond to tolerable chronic diseases of colonies, but the parasite adaptations that allow stable coexistence with ants are virtually unknown. We explore the trade-offs experienced by Ophiocordyceps parasites manipulating ants into dying in nearby graveyards. We used field data from Brazil and Thailand to parameterize and fit a model for the growth rate of graveyards. We show that parasite pressure is much lower than the abundance of ant cadavers suggests and that hyperparasites often castrate Ophiocordyceps. However, once fruiting bodies become sexually mature they appear robust. Such parasite life-history traits are consistent with iteroparity--a reproductive strategy rarely considered in fungi. We discuss how tropical habitats with high biodiversity of hyperparasites and high spore mortality has likely been crucial for the evolution and maintenance of iteroparity in parasites with low dispersal potential.

Voltage Profile Enhancement and Reduction of Real Power loss by Hybrid Biogeography Based Artificial Bee Colony algorithm

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K. Lenin

2014-04-01

Full Text Available This paper presents Hybrid Biogeography algorithm for solving the multi-objective reactive power dispatch problem in a power system. Real Power Loss minimization and maximization of voltage stability margin are taken as the objectives. Artificial bee colony optimization (ABC is quick and forceful algorithm for global optimization. Biogeography-Based Optimization (BBO is a new-fangled biogeography inspired algorithm. It mainly utilizes the biogeography-based relocation operator to share the information among solutions. In this work, a hybrid algorithm with BBO and ABC is projected, and named as HBBABC (Hybrid Biogeography based Artificial Bee Colony Optimization, for the universal numerical optimization problem. HBBABC merge the searching behavior of ABC with that of BBO. Both the algorithms have different solution probing tendency like ABC have good exploration probing tendency while BBO have good exploitation probing tendency.  HBBABC used to solve the reactive power dispatch problem and the proposed technique has been tested in standard IEEE30 bus test system.

Enhancing Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm with Self-Adaptive Searching Strategy and Artificial Immune Network Operators for Global Optimization

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Tinggui Chen

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Artificial bee colony (ABC algorithm, inspired by the intelligent foraging behavior of honey bees, was proposed by Karaboga. It has been shown to be superior to some conventional intelligent algorithms such as genetic algorithm (GA, artificial colony optimization (ACO, and particle swarm optimization (PSO. However, the ABC still has some limitations. For example, ABC can easily get trapped in the local optimum when handing in functions that have a narrow curving valley, a high eccentric ellipse, or complex multimodal functions. As a result, we proposed an enhanced ABC algorithm called EABC by introducing self-adaptive searching strategy and artificial immune network operators to improve the exploitation and exploration. The simulation results tested on a suite of unimodal or multimodal benchmark functions illustrate that the EABC algorithm outperforms ACO, PSO, and the basic ABC in most of the experiments.

Aplicación de un algoritmo ACO al problema de taller de flujo de permutación con tiempos de preparación dependientes de la secuencia y minimización de makespan An ant colony algorithm for the permutation flowshop with sequence dependent setup times and makespan minimization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eduardo Salazar Hornig

2011-08-01

Full Text Available En este trabajo se estudió el problema de secuenciamiento de trabajos en el taller de flujo de permutación con tiempos de preparación dependientes de la secuencia y minimización de makespan. Para ello se propuso un algoritmo de optimización mediante colonia de hormigas (ACO, llevando el problema original a una estructura semejante al problema del vendedor viajero TSP (Traveling Salesman Problem asimétrico, utilizado para su evaluación problemas propuestos en la literatura y se compara con una adaptación de la heurística NEH (Nawaz-Enscore-Ham. Posteriormente se aplica una búsqueda en vecindad a la solución obtenida tanto por ACO como NEH.This paper studied the permutation flowshop with sequence dependent setup times and makespan minimization. An ant colony algorithm which turns the original problem into an asymmetric TSP (Traveling Salesman Problem structure is presented, and applied to problems proposed in the literature and is compared with an adaptation of the NEH heuristic. Subsequently a neighborhood search was applied to the solution obtained by the ACO algorithm and the NEH heuristic.

Co-founding ant queens prevent disease by performing prophylactic undertaking behaviour.

Science.gov (United States)

Pull, Christopher D; Cremer, Sylvia

2017-10-13

Social insects form densely crowded societies in environments with high pathogen loads, but have evolved collective defences that mitigate the impact of disease. However, colony-founding queens lack this protection and suffer high rates of mortality. The impact of pathogens may be exacerbated in species where queens found colonies together, as healthy individuals may contract pathogens from infectious co-founders. Therefore, we tested whether ant queens avoid founding colonies with pathogen-exposed conspecifics and how they might limit disease transmission from infectious individuals. Using Lasius niger queens and a naturally infecting fungal pathogen Metarhizium brunneum, we observed that queens were equally likely to found colonies with another pathogen-exposed or sham-treated queen. However, when one queen died, the surviving individual performed biting, burial and removal of the corpse. These undertaking behaviours were performed prophylactically, i.e. targeted equally towards non-infected and infected corpses, as well as carried out before infected corpses became infectious. Biting and burial reduced the risk of the queens contracting and dying from disease from an infectious corpse of a dead co-foundress. We show that co-founding ant queens express undertaking behaviours that, in mature colonies, are performed exclusively by workers. Such infection avoidance behaviours act before the queens can contract the disease and will therefore improve the overall chance of colony founding success in ant queens.

Founding weaver ant queens (Oecophylla longinoda) increase production and nanitic worker size when adopting non-nestmate pupae.

Science.gov (United States)

Ouagoussounon, Issa; Offenberg, Joachim; Sinzogan, Antonio; Adandonon, Appolinaire; Kossou, Dansou; Vayssières, Jean-François

2015-01-01

Weaver ants (Oecophylla longinoda Latreille) are used commercially to control pest insects and for protein production. In this respect fast colony growth is desirable for managed colonies. Transplantation of non-nestmate pupae to incipient colonies has been shown to boost colony growth. Our objectives were to find the maximum number of pupae a founding queen can handle, and to measure the associated colony growth. Secondly, we tested if transplantation of pupae led to production of larger nanitic workers (defined as unusually small worker ants produced by founding queens in their first batch of offspring). Forty-five fertilized queens were divided into three treatments: 0 (control), 100 or 300 non-nestmate pupae transplanted to each colony. Pupae transplantation resulted in highly increased growth rates, as pupae were readily adopted by the queens and showed high proportions of surviving (mean = 76%). However, survival was significantly higher when 100 pupae were transplanted compared to transplantation of 300 pupae, indicating that queens were unable to handle 300 pupae adequately and that pupae require some amount of nursing. Nevertheless, within the 60-day experiment the transplantation of 300 pupae increased total colony size more than 10-fold whereas 100 pupae increased the size 5.6 fold, compared to control. This increase was due not only to the individuals added in the form of pupae but also to an increased per capita brood production by the resident queen, triggered by the adopted pupae. The size of hatching pupae produced by the resident queen also increased with the number of pupae transplanted, leading to larger nanitic workers in colonies adopting pupae. In conclusion, pupae transplantation may be used to produce larger colonies with larger worker ants and may thus reduce the time to produce weaver ant colonies for commercial purposes. This in turn may facilitate the implementation of the use of weaver ants.

Predatory behavior of Pseudodorus clavatus (Diptera, Syrphidae on aphids tended by ants

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Alexandra Bächtold

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Predatory behavior of Pseudodorus clavatus (Diptera, Syrphidae on aphids tended by ants. In this study, we examined the interactions between myrmecophilous aphids, their ant-guards and a predatory syrphid species, Pseudodorus clavatus (F.. Larvae of this predator were found in the colonies of three aphid species: Aphis gossypii, A. spiraecola and Toxoptera sp., which were tended by eight ant species, especially Camponotus. Hoverfly larvae managed to infiltrate the aphid colonies and consume nymphs. Predator larvae exhibited inconspicuous movements and were not detected by ants which were commonly observed touching and antennating the larvae they come into contact. These results suggest that behavioral and chemical cues are involved in the infiltration and on the successful predation of syrphids upon aphids.

The effect of queen and worker adoption on weaver ant (Oecophylla smaragdina) queen fecundity

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Offenberg, Joachim; Peng, Renkang; Nielsen, Mogens Gissel

2012-01-01

Incipient ant colonies are often under fierce competition, making fast growth crucial for survival. To increase production, colonies can adopt multiple queens (pleometrosis), fuse with other colonies or rob brood from neighboring colonies. However, different adoption strategies might have different...

Artificial bee colony algorithm with dynamic multi-population

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Zhang, Ming; Ji, Zhicheng; Wang, Yan

2017-07-01

To improve the convergence rate and make a balance between the global search and local turning abilities, this paper proposes a decentralized form of artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm with dynamic multi-populations by means of fuzzy C-means (FCM) clustering. Each subpopulation periodically enlarges with the same size during the search process, and the overlapping individuals among different subareas work for delivering information acting as exploring the search space with diffusion of solutions. Moreover, a Gaussian-based search equation with redefined local attractor is proposed to further accelerate the diffusion of the best solution and guide the search towards potential areas. Experimental results on a set of benchmarks demonstrate the competitive performance of our proposed approach.

Hybrid artificial bee colony algorithm for parameter optimization of five-parameter bidirectional reflectance distribution function model.

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Wang, Qianqian; Zhao, Jing; Gong, Yong; Hao, Qun; Peng, Zhong

2017-11-20

A hybrid artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm inspired by the best-so-far solution and bacterial chemotaxis was introduced to optimize the parameters of the five-parameter bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) model. To verify the performance of the hybrid ABC algorithm, we measured BRDF of three kinds of samples and simulated the undetermined parameters of the five-parameter BRDF model using the hybrid ABC algorithm and the genetic algorithm, respectively. The experimental results demonstrate that the hybrid ABC algorithm outperforms the genetic algorithm in convergence speed, accuracy, and time efficiency under the same conditions.

Vibration reduction of composite plates by piezoelectric patches using a modified artificial bee colony algorithm

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Hadi Ghashochi-Bargh

Full Text Available In Current paper, power consumption and vertical displacement optimization of composite plates subject to a step load are carried out by piezoelectric patches using the modified multi-objective Elitist-Artificial Bee Colony (E-ABC algorithm. The motivation behind this concept is to well balance the exploration and exploitation capability for attaining better convergence to the optimum. In order to reduce the calculation time, the elitist strategy is also used in Artificial Bee Colony algorithm. The voltages of patches, plate length/width ratios, ply angles, plate thickness/length ratios, number of layers and edge conditions are chosen as design variables. The formulation is based on the classical laminated plate theory (CLPT and Hamilton's principle. The performance of the new ABC approach is compared with the PSO algorithm and shows the good efficiency of the new ABC approach. To check the validity, the transient responses of isotropic and orthotropic plates are compared with those available in the literature and show a good agreement.

Ant and termite mound coinhabitants in the wetlands of Santo Antonio da Patrulha, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

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E. Diehl

Full Text Available This paper reports on ant and termite species inhabiting the mounds (murundus found in three wetland sites in Santo Antonio da Patrulha. Ants and termites were found in 100% of the mounds of two sites and in 20% of those in the third site. Colonies of Camponotus fastigatus were found inhabiting all the mounds, while colonies of Brachymyrmex sp., Linepithema sp., Pheidole sp., and/or Solenopsis sp. were collected in less than 30% of the mounds. In the mounds of the three sites, colonies of Anoplotermes sp. and/or Aparatermes sp. termites were found together with the ant colonies. Another cohabiting termite species, Cortaritermes sp., was found only in the mounds of one site. The results suggest that C. fastigatus is the species building the mounds, with the other species, whether ants or termites, being the inquilines.

Ant and termite mound coinhabitants in the wetlands of Santo Antonio da Patrulha, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Science.gov (United States)

Diehl, E; Junqueira, L K; Berti-Filho, E

2005-08-01

This paper reports on ant and termite species inhabiting the mounds (murundus) found in three wetland sites in Santo Antonio da Patrulha. Ants and termites were found in 100% of the mounds of two sites and in 20% of those in the third site. Colonies of Camponotus fastigatus were found inhabiting all the mounds, while colonies of Brachymyrmex sp., Linepithema sp., Pheidole sp., and/or Solenopsis sp. were collected in less than 30% of the mounds. In the mounds of the three sites, colonies of Anoplotermes sp. and/or Aparatermes sp. termites were found together with the ant colonies. Another cohabiting termite species, Cortaritermes sp., was found only in the mounds of one site. The results suggest that C. fastigatus is the species building the mounds, with the other species, whether ants or termites, being the inquilines.

Heavy metal pollution disturbs immune response in wild ant populations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sorvari, Jouni; Rantala, Liisa M.; Rantala, Markus J.; Hakkarainen, Harri; Eeva, Tapio

2007-01-01

Concern about the effects of environmental contaminants on immune function in both humans and wildlife is growing and practically nothing is known about this impact on terrestrial invertebrates, even though they are known to easily accumulate pollutants. We studied the effect of industrial heavy metal contamination on immune defense of a free-living wood ant (Formica aquilonia). To find out whether ants show an adapted immune function in a polluted environment, we compared encapsulation responses between local and translocated colonies. Local colonies showed higher heavy metal levels than the translocated ones but the encapsulation response was similar between the two groups, indicating that the immune system of local ants has not adapted to high contamination level. The encapsulation response was elevated in moderate whereas suppressed in high heavy metal levels suggesting higher risk for infections in heavily polluted areas. - Heavy metal pollution affects immune function in ants

Mathematical modeling on obligate mutualism: Interactions between leaf-cutter ants and their fungus garden.

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Kang, Yun; Clark, Rebecca; Makiyama, Michael; Fewell, Jennifer

2011-11-21

We propose a simple mathematical model by applying Michaelis-Menton equations of enzyme kinetics to study the mutualistic interaction between the leaf cutter ant and its fungus garden at the early stage of colony expansion. We derive sufficient conditions on the extinction and coexistence of these two species. In addition, we give a region of initial condition that leads to the extinction of two species when the model has an interior attractor. Our global analysis indicates that the division of labor by worker ants and initial conditions are two important factors that determine whether leaf cutter ants' colonies and their fungus garden can survive and grow or not. We validate the model by comparing model simulations and data on fungal and ant colony growth rates under laboratory conditions. We perform sensitive analysis of the model based on the experimental data to gain more biological insights on ecological interactions between leaf-cutter ants and their fungus garden. Finally, we give conclusions and discuss potential future work. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Heuristic Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for Uncovering Community in Complex Networks

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Yuquan Guo

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Community structure is important for us to understand the functions and structure of the complex networks. In this paper, Heuristic Artificial Bee Colony (HABC algorithm based on swarm intelligence is proposed for uncovering community. The proposed HABC includes initialization, employed bee searching, onlooker searching, and scout bee searching. In initialization stage, the nectar sources with simple community structure are generated through network dynamic algorithm associated with complete subgraph. In employed bee searching and onlooker searching stages, the searching function is redefined to address the community problem. The efficiency of searching progress can be improved by a heuristic function which is an average agglomerate probability of two neighbor communities. Experiments are carried out on artificial and real world networks, and the results demonstrate that HABC will have better performance in terms of comparing with the state-of-the-art algorithms.

CodeRAnts: A recommendation method based on collaborative searching and ant colonies, applied to reusing of open source code

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Isaac Caicedo-Castro

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents CodeRAnts, a new recommendation method based on a collaborative searching technique and inspired on the ant colony metaphor. This method aims to fill the gap in the current state of the matter regarding recommender systems for software reuse, for which prior works present two problems. The first is that, recommender systems based on these works cannot learn from the collaboration of programmers and second, outcomes of assessments carried out on these systems present low precision measures and recall and in some of these systems, these metrics have not been evaluated. The work presented in this paper contributes a recommendation method, which solves these problems.

Sex allocation in fungus-growing ants: worker or queen control without symbiont-induced female bias

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dijkstra, Michiel B.; Boomsma, Jacobus Jan

2008-01-01

The fungal cultivars of fungus-growing ants are vertically transmitted by queens but not males. Selection would therefore favor cultivars that bias the ants' sex ratio towards gynes, beyond the gyne bias that is optimal for workers and queens. We measured sex allocation in 190 colonies of six...... sympatric fungus-growing ant species. As predicted from relatedness, female bias was greater in four singly mated Sericomyrmex and Trachymyrmex species than in two multiply mated Acromyrmex species. Colonies tended to raise mainly a single sex, which could be partly explained by variation in queen number......, colony fecundity, and fungal garden volume for Acromyrmex and Sericomyrmex, but not for Trachymyrmex. Year of collection, worker number and mating frequency of Acromyrmex queens did not affect the colony sex ratios. We used a novel sensitivity analysis to compare the population sex allocation ratios...

FACILITATING THE 3D INDOOR SEARCH AND RESCUE PROBLEM: AN OVERVIEW OF THE PROBLEM AND AN ANT COLONY SOLUTION APPROACH

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H. Tashakkori

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Search and rescue procedures for indoor environments are quite complicated due to the fact that much of the indoor information is unavailable to rescuers before physical entrance to the incident scene. Thus, decision making regarding the number of crew required and the way they should be dispatched in the building considering the various access points and complexities in the buildings in order to cover the search area in minimum time is dependent on prior knowledge and experience of the emergency commanders. Hence, this paper introduces the Search and Rescue Problem (SRP which aims at finding best search and rescue routes that minimize the overall search time in the buildings. 3D BIM-oriented indoor GIS is integrated in the indoor route graph to find accurate routes based on the building geometric and semantic information. An Ant Colony Based Algorithm is presented that finds the number of first responders required and their individual routes to search all rooms and points of interest inside the building to minimize the overall time spent by all rescuers inside the disaster area. The evaluation of the proposed model for a case study building shows a significant improve in search and rescue time which will lead to a higher chance of saving lives and less exposure of emergency crew to danger.

Symbiont interactions in a tripartite mutualism: exploring the presence and impact of antagonism between two fungus-growing ant mutualists.

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Michael Poulsen

Full Text Available Mutualistic associations are shaped by the interplay of cooperation and conflict among the partners involved, and it is becoming increasingly clear that within many mutualisms multiple partners simultaneously engage in beneficial interactions. Consequently, a more complete understanding of the dynamics within multipartite mutualism communities is essential for understanding the origin, specificity, and stability of mutualisms. Fungus-growing ants cultivate fungi for food and maintain antibiotic-producing Pseudonocardia actinobacteria on their cuticle that help defend the cultivar fungus from specialized parasites. Within both ant-fungus and ant-bacterium mutualisms, mixing of genetically distinct strains can lead to antagonistic interactions (i.e., competitive conflict, which may prevent the ants from rearing multiple strains of either of the mutualistic symbionts within individual colonies. The success of different ant-cultivar-bacterium combinations could ultimately be governed by antagonistic interactions between the two mutualists, either as inhibition of the cultivar by Pseudonocardia or vice versa. Here we explore cultivar-Pseudonocardia antagonism by evaluating in vitro interactions between strains of the two mutualists, and find frequent antagonistic interactions both from cultivars towards Pseudonocardia and vice versa. To test whether such in vitro antagonistic interactions affect ant colonies in vivo, we performed sub-colony experiments using species of Acromyrmex leaf-cutting ants. We created novel ant-fungus-bacterium pairings in which there was antagonism from one, both, or neither of the ants' microbial mutualists, and evaluated the effect of directional antagonism on cultivar biomass and Pseudonocardia abundance on the cuticle of workers within sub-colonies. Despite the presence of frequent in vitro growth suppression between cultivars and Pseudonocardia, antagonism from Pseudonocardia towards the cultivar did not reduce sub-colony

Artificial bee colony algorithm for single-trial electroencephalogram analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Hsu, Wei-Yen; Hu, Ya-Ping

2015-04-01

In this study, we propose an analysis system combined with feature selection to further improve the classification accuracy of single-trial electroencephalogram (EEG) data. Acquiring event-related brain potential data from the sensorimotor cortices, the system comprises artifact and background noise removal, feature extraction, feature selection, and feature classification. First, the artifacts and background noise are removed automatically by means of independent component analysis and surface Laplacian filter, respectively. Several potential features, such as band power, autoregressive model, and coherence and phase-locking value, are then extracted for subsequent classification. Next, artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is used to select features from the aforementioned feature combination. Finally, selected subfeatures are classified by support vector machine. Comparing with and without artifact removal and feature selection, using a genetic algorithm on single-trial EEG data for 6 subjects, the results indicate that the proposed system is promising and suitable for brain-computer interface applications. © EEG and Clinical Neuroscience Society (ECNS) 2014.

Functional role of phenylacetic acid from metapleural gland secretions in controlling fungal pathogens in evolutionarily derived leaf-cutting ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fernández-Marín, Hermógenes; Nash, David Richard; Higginbotham, Sarah

2015-01-01

Fungus-farming ant colonies vary four to five orders of magnitude in size. They employ compounds from actinomycete bacteria and exocrine glands as antimicrobial agents. Atta colonies have millions of ants and are particularly relevant for understanding hygienic strategies as they have abandoned...... their ancestors’ prime dependence on antibiotic-based biological control in favour of using metapleural gland (MG) chemical secretions. Atta MGs are unique in synthesizing large quantities of phenylacetic acid (PAA), a known but little investigated antimicrobial agent.We showthat particularly the smallestworkers...... derived leaf-cutting ants are less sensitive to PAA than strains from phylogenetically more basal fungus-farming ants, consistent with the dynamics of an evolutionary arms race between virulence and control for Escovopsis, but not Metarhizium. Atta ants form larger colonies with more extreme caste...

Host-ant specificity of endangered large blue butterflies (Phengaris spp., Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) in Japan.

Science.gov (United States)

Ueda, Shouhei; Komatsu, Takashi; Itino, Takao; Arai, Ryusuke; Sakamoto, Hironori

2016-11-03

Large blue butterflies, Phengaris (Maculinea), are an important focus of endangered-species conservation in Eurasia. Later-instar Phengaris caterpillars live in Myrmica ant nests and exploit the ant colony's resources, and they are specialized to specific host-ant species. For example, local extinction of P. arion in the U. K. is thought to have been due to the replacement of its host-ant species with a less-suitable congener, as a result of changes in habitat. In Japan, Myrmica kotokui hosts P. teleius and P. arionides caterpillars. We recently showed, however, that the morphological species M. kotokui actually comprises four genetic clades. Therefore, to determine to which group of ants the hosts of these two Japanese Phengaris species belong, we used mitochondrial COI-barcoding of M. kotokui specimens from colonies in the habitats of P. teleius and P. arionides to identify the ant clade actually parasitized by the caterpillars of each species. We found that these two butterfly species parasitize different ant clades within M. kotokui.

Fuzzy Expert System based on a Novel Hybrid Stem Cell (HSC) Algorithm for Classification of Micro Array Data.

Science.gov (United States)

Vijay, S Arul Antran; GaneshKumar, P

2018-02-21

In the growing scenario, microarray data is extensively used since it provides a more comprehensive understanding of genetic variants among diseases. As the gene expression samples have high dimensionality it becomes tedious to analyze the samples manually. Hence an automated system is needed to analyze these samples. The fuzzy expert system offers a clear classification when compared to the machine learning and statistical methodologies. In fuzzy classification, knowledge acquisition would be a major concern. Despite several existing approaches for knowledge acquisition much effort is necessary to enhance the learning process. This paper proposes an innovative Hybrid Stem Cell (HSC) algorithm that utilizes Ant Colony optimization and Stem Cell algorithm for designing fuzzy classification system to extract the informative rules to form the membership functions from the microarray dataset. The HSC algorithm uses a novel Adaptive Stem Cell Optimization (ASCO) to improve the points of membership function and Ant Colony Optimization to produce the near optimum rule set. In order to extract the most informative genes from the large microarray dataset a method called Mutual Information is used. The performance results of the proposed technique evaluated using the five microarray datasets are simulated. These results prove that the proposed Hybrid Stem Cell (HSC) algorithm produces a precise fuzzy system than the existing methodologies.

Metaheuristic algorithms for building Covering Arrays: A review

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Jimena Adriana Timaná-Peña

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Covering Arrays (CA are mathematical objects used in the functional testing of software components. They enable the testing of all interactions of a given size of input parameters in a procedure, function, or logical unit in general, using the minimum number of test cases. Building CA is a complex task (NP-complete problem that involves lengthy execution times and high computational loads. The most effective methods for building CAs are algebraic, Greedy, and metaheuristic-based. The latter have reported the best results to date. This paper presents a description of the major contributions made by a selection of different metaheuristics, including simulated annealing, tabu search, genetic algorithms, ant colony algorithms, particle swarm algorithms, and harmony search algorithms. It is worth noting that simulated annealing-based algorithms have evolved as the most competitive, and currently form the state of the art.

Intelligent method for diagnosing structural faults of rotating machinery using ant colony optimization.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Ke; Chen, Peng

2011-01-01

Structural faults, such as unbalance, misalignment and looseness, etc., often occur in the shafts of rotating machinery. These faults may cause serious machine accidents and lead to great production losses. This paper proposes an intelligent method for diagnosing structural faults of rotating machinery using ant colony optimization (ACO) and relative ratio symptom parameters (RRSPs) in order to detect faults and distinguish fault types at an early stage. New symptom parameters called "relative ratio symptom parameters" are defined for reflecting the features of vibration signals measured in each state. Synthetic detection index (SDI) using statistical theory has also been defined to evaluate the applicability of the RRSPs. The SDI can be used to indicate the fitness of a RRSP for ACO. Lastly, this paper also compares the proposed method with the conventional neural networks (NN) method. Practical examples of fault diagnosis for a centrifugal fan are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The verification results show that the structural faults often occurring in the centrifugal fan, such as unbalance, misalignment and looseness states are effectively identified by the proposed method, while these faults are difficult to detect using conventional neural networks.

How many gamergates is an ant queen worth?

Science.gov (United States)

Monnin, Thibaud; Peeters, Christian

2008-02-01

Ant reproductives exhibit different morphological adaptations linked to dispersal and fertility. By reviewing the literature on taxa where workers can reproduce sexually (i.e. become gamergates) we show that (1) species with a single gamergate generally have lost the winged queen caste, whereas only half of the species with several gamergates have, and (2) single-gamergate species have smaller colonies than multiple-gamergate species. Comparison with “classical” ants without gamergates, where having one vs having several winged queens are two distinct syndromes, suggests that having one vs having several gamergates are not. Gamergate number does not affect the success of colony fission, but retention of the queen caste permits the option of independent foundation.

Behavioural and chemical studies of discrimination processes in the leaf-cutting ant Acromyrmex laticeps nigrosetosus (Forel, 1908

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D. J. Souza

Full Text Available Leaf-cutting ants live in symbiosis with a basidiomycete fungus that is exploited as a source of nutrients for ant larvae. Tests of brood transport revealed that Acromyrmex laticeps nigrosetosus workers did not discriminate a concolonial brood from an alien brood. The same result was observed with tests of fungus transport. Adult workers showed no aggressive behaviour to workers from other alien colonies (non-nestmates. There was no qualitative variation in the chemical profiles of larvae, pupae and adult workers from the different colonies. However, quantitative differences were observed between the different colonies. Hypotheses about the lack of intraspecific aggression in this subspecies of ants are discussed.

Hierarchical Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for RFID Network Planning Optimization

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Lianbo Ma

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a novel optimization algorithm, namely, hierarchical artificial bee colony optimization, called HABC, to tackle the radio frequency identification network planning (RNP problem. In the proposed multilevel model, the higher-level species can be aggregated by the subpopulations from lower level. In the bottom level, each subpopulation employing the canonical ABC method searches the part-dimensional optimum in parallel, which can be constructed into a complete solution for the upper level. At the same time, the comprehensive learning method with crossover and mutation operators is applied to enhance the global search ability between species. Experiments are conducted on a set of 10 benchmark optimization problems. The results demonstrate that the proposed HABC obtains remarkable performance on most chosen benchmark functions when compared to several successful swarm intelligence and evolutionary algorithms. Then HABC is used for solving the real-world RNP problem on two instances with different scales. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is superior for solving RNP, in terms of optimization accuracy and computation robustness.

Hierarchical artificial bee colony algorithm for RFID network planning optimization.