imperialist competitive algorithm (ica) is a new socio-politically motivated global search strategy. the ica is applied to hybrid composite laminates to obtain minimum weight and cost. the approach which is chosen for conducting the multi-objective optimization was the weighted sum method (wsm). the hybrid composite laminates are made of glass/epoxy and carbon/epoxy to combine the lightness and...

This paper compares ordinary least squares (OLS), weighted least squares (WLS), and adaptive least squares (ALS) by means of a Monte Carlo study and an application to two empirical data sets. Overall, ALS emerges as the winner: It achieves most or even all of the efficiency gains of WLS over OLS when WLS outperforms OLS, but it only has very limited downside risk compared to OLS when OLS outper...

Changes in seed dormancy were selected during the domestication of crop plants from wild-plant species, because some features of dormancy that provide ecological advantages presented agronomic disadvantages within a farmed system. Seed dormancy varies widely among seed batches, even for seeds of the same genotype, indicating large environmental influences. For genetic studies, it is essential t...

Resequencing is an emerging tool for identification of rare disease-associated mutations. Rare mutations are difficult to tag with SNP genotyping, as genotyping studies are designed to detect common variants. However, studies have shown that genetic heterogeneity is a probable scenario for common diseases, in which multiple rare mutations together explain a large proportion of the genetic basis...

This study aimed to compare multiallelic distances to quantify genetic diversity in papaya. We evaluated forty-three individuals in the S2 generation, from the backcross between F1 (Cariflora x SS783) and Cariflora, and four accessions from the UENF/Caliman Germplasm Bank. Genetic distances used were Smouse and Peakall (1999), Kosman and Leonard (2005) and weighted index. Clustering among genot...

Identifying replicable genetic variants for addiction has been extremely challenging. Besides the common difficulties with genome-wide association studies (GWAS), environmental factors are known to be critical to addiction, and comorbidity is widely observed. Despite the importance of environmental factors and comorbidity for addiction study, few GWAS analyses adequately considered them due to ...