545 research outputs found
Cellular automata and other cellular systems : design & evolution
No full textNature abounds in examples of cellular systems. From ant colonies to cellular tissues, from molecular systems to the human brain, cellularity seems to be the way Nature operates. The brain, surely one of the most complex objects to be found on earth, is the quintessence of a cellular system: a huge number of simple elements with an extremely high local connectivity and deprived of any sort of central control, giving rise to a rich global behavior. Cellular interactions thus seem to be the basis for complex phenomena, exhibiting qualities often missing in human artifacts : robustness, self-repair and, more generally, adaptability. The goal of this thesis is to answer the following question: "What may be computed in cellular systems ?". This question is far from obvious and implies many interrogations such as how to obtain the aforementioned qualities, how to program such systems, and, more fundamentally, what does computation mean in a cellular system. This thesis is mainly centered around the abstract and formal model of Cellular Automata. Through the study and the resolution of different tasks by means of evolution or mathematical demonstrations, I will show that it is not unreasonable to expect artificial systems to exhibit some of the qualities of natural systems, and that (guided) artificial evolution is surely the best approach to define the local behavior of elements which, when grouped as a cellular system, give rise to a desired global behavior. Above all, I will argue that truly emergent behavior in such designed systems is only a matter of perspective.LS
Coevolutionary fuzzy modeling
No full textThis thesis presents Fuzzy CoCo, a novel approach for system design, conducive to explaining human decisions. Based on fuzzy logic and coevolutionary computation, Fuzzy CoCo is a methodology for constructing systems able to accurately predict the outcome of a human decision-making process, while providing an understandable explanation of the underlying reasoning. Fuzzy logic provides a formal framework for constructing systems exhibiting both good numeric performance (precision) and linguistic representation (interpretability). From a numeric point of view, fuzzy systems exhibit nonlinear behavior and can handle imprecise and incomplete information. Linguistically, they represent knowledge in the form of rules, a natural way for explaining decision processes. Fuzzy modeling —meaning the construction of fuzzy systems— is an arduous task, demanding the identification of many parameters. This thesis analyses the fuzzy-modeling problem and different approaches to coping with it, focusing on evolutionary fuzzy modeling —the design of fuzzy inference systems using evolutionary algorithms— which constitutes the methodological base of my approach. In order to promote this analysis the parameters of a fuzzy system are classified into four categories: logic, structural, connective, and operational. The central contribution of this work is the use of an advanced evolutionary technique —cooperative coevolution— for dealing with the simultaneous design of connective and operational parameters. Cooperative coevolutionary fuzzy modeling succeeds in overcoming several limitations exhibited by other standard evolutionary approaches: stagnation, convergence to local optima, and computational costliness. Designing interpretable systems is a prime goal of my approach, which I study thoroughly herein. Based on a set of semantic and syntactic criteria, regarding the definition of linguistic concepts and their causal connections, I propose a number of strategies for producing more interpretable fuzzy systems. These strategies are implemented in Fuzzy CoCo, resulting in a modeling methodology providing high numeric precision, while incurring as little a loss of interpretability as possible. After testing Fuzzy CoCo on a benchmark problem —Fisher's Iris data— I successfully apply the algorithm to model the decision processes involved in two breast-cancer diagnostic problems: the WBCD problem and the Catalonia mammography interpretation problem. For the WBCD problem, Fuzzy CoCo produces systems both of high performance and high interpretability, comparable (if not better) than the best systems demonstrated to date. For the Catalonia problem, an evolved high-performance system was embedded within a web-based tool —called COBRA— for aiding radiologists in mammography interpretation. Several aspects of Fuzzy CoCo are thoroughly analyzed to provide a deeper understanding of the method. These analyses show the consistency of the results. They also help derive a stepwise guide to applying Fuzzy CoCo, and a set of qualitative relationships between some of its parameters that facilitate setting up the algorithm. Finally, this work proposes and explores preliminarily two extensions to the method: Island Fuzzy CoCo and Incremental Fuzzy CoCo, which together with the original CoCo constitute a family of coevolutionary fuzzy modeling techniques. The aim of these extensions is to guide the choice of an adequate number of rules for a given problem. While Island Fuzzy CoCo performs an extended search over different problem sizes, Incremental Fuzzy CoCo bases its search power on a mechanism of incremental evolution.LS
Economic utopia of the Torah. Economic concepts of the Hebrew Bible interpreted according to the Rabbinical Literature
No full textHebrew Bible offers alternative Economic utopia for building Theocratic society. In this paper, various economic concepts and themes are presented, as found in the Hebrew Bible. These economic concepts include taxation, property rights, labor market, social policy, banking, years of Sabbath and Jubilee, and business cycles. Most economic issues of the Bible are found in the texts of Torah, also known as five Books of Moses. These texts are analyzed by using classical Rabbinical commentaries for better insight. Contrary to the modern Economic theory which is based on the assumptions of scarcity of resources and unlimited needs of consumers, Economics of the Torah is based on God’s resources which are enough for all true needs of His people.Hebrew Bible, History of Economics, History of Economic Thought, Ancient Israel, Judaism
"Sefer beer Moshe" by Moshe Sertels, son of Isachar, as an example of a bilingual text for the study of the Torah
No full textMoshe Sertels was a son of Issachar and Sarah. He was born circa mid-16th century in Prague. He was a teacher and worked as a translator and exegete. Sertels wrote several texts that attracted wide interest. One of them was a work titled Sefer Beer Moshe, a bilingual commentary on the Torah and five megillot. The construction of the text, its clarity and intelligibility, made it an excellent tool for teaching the Torah in cheders (e.g. such usage of this text was noted in the books of the Cracovian brotherhood Talmud Torah). The article presents the figure of the author and his literary oeuvre with particular focus on the Sefer Beer Moshe as a work that served generations of Ashkenazi Jews to enhance their knowledge of the Torah. The author discusses characteristics of the text and underlines several issues in regard to the Yiddish language in the form that was used in Prague at the turn of the 17th century
High Per Parameter: A Large-Scale Study of Hyperparameter Tuning for Machine Learning Algorithms
No full textHyperparameters in machine learning (ML) have received a fair amount of attention, and hyperparameter tuning has come to be regarded as an important step in the ML pipeline. However, just how useful is said tuning? While smaller-scale experiments have been previously conducted, herein we carry out a large-scale investigation, specifically one involving 26 ML algorithms, 250 datasets (regression and both binary and multinomial classification), 6 score metrics, and 28,857,600 algorithm runs. Analyzing the results we conclude that for many ML algorithms, we should not expect considerable gains from hyperparameter tuning on average; however, there may be some datasets for which default hyperparameters perform poorly, especially for some algorithms. By defining a single hp_score value, which combines an algorithm’s accumulated statistics, we are able to rank the 26 ML algorithms from those expected to gain the most from hyperparameter tuning to those expected to gain the least. We believe such a study shall serve ML practitioners at large
Dead Sea Scrolls at Sixty: What HAVE they taught us? What CAN they teach us? What can they NOT teach us?
No full textScholar-in-residence, 2007. Dr. Moshe J. Bernstein, Associate Professor of Bible, Yeshiva University, and author of New Perspectives on Qumran Law and History.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/bennettcenter-posters/1250/thumbnail.jp
WHO IS RABBI MOSHE \u27YAẔ\u27?
No full textThe name Rabbi Moshe \u27Yaẕ\u27 (י\u27ץ = yishmerehu ẕuro) appears in two letters written, and published, by Rabbi Saul Berlin in 1789 and 1790, respectively, in connection with the Miẕpeh Yoqte\u27el controversy. Accepting the view that Rabbi Moshe is a fictional character, the author suggests the following explanation for the usage of this name: The opening section of the first letter, which has been overlooked by the scholars, provides a clue to the identification. It reads: \u27Moshe Bar \u27Eẕri\u27, a name which appears twice in the Talmud (Baba Batra 174b; Arakhin 23a). The Talmud relates the story of Moshe Bar \u27Eẕri who was the guarantor of his daughter-in-law\u27s Ketubah. His son, Rav Huna, a student, who was pressed hard for money, was unable to implement the advice given him: to divorce his wife so that she should collect money guaranteed by his father, following which they would remarry. Since Rav Huna was a priest, he would not be permitted to remarry his divorcee. The use of the talmudic name is therefore intended to allude to Saul Berlin\u27s special predicament, to the advantages and disadvantages of attempting to secure some assistance from his father, the venerable Ẕevi Hirsch Levin, Rabbi of the Berlin community. Indeed, his father endeavoured to help him, but to no avail. Saul Berlin lost his position as Rabbi in Frankfort, has been considered excommunicated by some, and finally had to go into exile; he died in London shortly after
A Simple Cellular Automation that Solves the Density and Ordering Problems
No full textCellular automata (CA) are discrete, dynamical systems that perform computations
in a distributed fashion on a spatially extended grid. The dynamical behavior
of a CA may give rise to emergent computation, referring to the appearance of
global information processing capabilities that are not explicitly represented in the
system's elementary components nor in their local interconnections.1 As such, CAs
o?er an austere yet versatile model for studying natural phenomena, as well as a
powerful paradigm for attaining ?ne-grained, massively parallel computation.
An example of such emergent computation is to use a CA to determine the
global density of bits in an initial state con?guration. This problem, known as
density classi?cation, has been studied quite intensively over the past few years. In
this short communication we describe two previous versions of the problem along with their CA solutions, and then go on to show that there exists yet a third version
| which admits a simple solution
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