In this paper, we describe a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, that uses clustering selection and does not need any additional parameter like others. It clusters the population into a exible number of clusters employing x-means from [Pelleg and Moore, 2000]. First, the selective tness is assigned to clusters and in second place to individuals of clusters. We show three hybrid variants inc...

This chapter reviews the econometric methods that are used by health economists to model health care costs. These methods are used for prediction, projection and forecasting, in the context of risk adjustment, resource allocation, technology assessment and policy evaluation. The chapter reviews the literature on the comparative performance of the methods, especially in the context of forecastin...

Between 1000 and 1900, world population grew from under 300 million to 1.6 billion, and the share of population living in urban areas more than quadrupled, increasing from two to over nine percent. As shown in Figure I, the increase accelerated dramatically over time and occurred almost entirely towards the end of the period. The determinants of these phenomena have been of much interest ∗Forth...

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research project represents the culmination of an enriched academic experience that was facilitated by the members of my dissertation committee. First, I would like to thank Dr. Anne Marie Tharpe for providing her expertise in pediatric audiology and serving as the chair of my dissertation committee. She has been an active source of encouragement throughout my program ...

We studied costs and benefits of life history shifts of water fleas (genus Daphnia) in response to infochemicals from planktivorous fish. We applied a dynamic energy budget model to investigate the resource allocation patterns underlying the observed life history shifts and their adaptive value under size selective predation in one coherent analysis. Using a published data set of life history s...

Nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms have attracted much attention in the last decade, and new algorithms have emerged almost every year with a vast, ever-expanding literature. In this chapter, we briefly review two latest metaheuristics: bat algorithm and cuckoo search for global optimization. Bat algorithm was proposed by Xin-She Yang in 2010, inspired by the echolocation of microbats, wh...

Two theoretical frameworks have been widely used to understand the response of monsoons to local and remote forcings: the vertically integrated atmospheric energy budget and convective quasi-equilibrium (CQE). Existing forms of these frameworks neglect some of the complexities of monsoons, such as the shallow meridional circulations that advect dry air from adjacent deserts into the middle and ...

The amount of energy available in some contexts is strictly limited. For example, in mobile computing, available energy is constrained by battery capacity. As multicore processors with a large number of processors, it will be possible to significantly vary the number and frequency of cores used in order to manage the performance and energy consumption of an algorithm. We develop a method to ana...

Components of the energy budget were measured above a subalpine coniferous forest over two complete annual cycles. Sensible and latent heat fluxes were measured by eddy covariance. Bowen ratios ranged from 0.7 to 2.5 in the summer (June–September) depending upon the availability of soil water, but were considerably higher (∼3–6) during winter (December–March). Energy budget closure averaged bet...