This paper proposes a novel and efficient hybrid algorithm based on combining particle swarm optimization (PSO) and gravitational search algorithm (GSA) techniques, called PSO-GSA. The core of this algorithm is to combine the ability of social thinking in PSO with the local search capability of GSA. Many practical constraints of generators, such as power loss, ramp rate limits, prohibited operating zones and valve point effect, are considered. The new algorithm is implemented to the non-convex economic dispatch (ED) problem so as to minimize the total generation cost when considering the linear and non linear constraints. In order to validate of the proposed algorithm, it is applied to two cases with six and thirteen generators, respectively. The results show that the proposed algorithms indeed produce more optimal solution in both cases when compared results of other optimization algorithms reported in literature.

Transportation industry in general and maritime transportation industry in particular are not exception in this regard. Customers, partners, agents, collaborators, shippers, port operators, suppliers and service agencies are involved in the ship transport industry supply chain, and one of the major requirements in such a supply chain in which all concerned parties are scattered all over the world, is the high speed transferring of data between them. In maritime transportation procurement process plays an essential role. In this study based on the literature review, seven most frequently mentioned factors found. These performance factors were: Cost, visibility of supply chain, cycle time, procurement control, inventory management and purchasing errors which were influenced by implementing E-Procurement. An attempt has been made in this research to find the performance effect of e-procurement implementation in ship management companies.

Object tracking is one of the important tasks in the field of computer vision. Some of the areas which need Visual object tracking are surveillance, automated video analysis, etc. Mean shift algorithm is one of the popular techniques for this task and is advantageous when compared to some of the other tracking methods. But this method would not be appropriate in the case of large target appearance changes and occlusion. In addition, this method fails when the object is under the action of non-linear forces like that of the gravity e.g. a ball falling under the action of gravity. Another popular method used for tracking is the one that uses Kalman filter, with measurements (often noisy) of position of object to be tracked as input to it. This paper is based on a simulative comparison of both of these algorithms which will give a proper outline of which method will be more appropriate for object tracking, given the nature of motion of object and type of surroundings. Observations based on these methods are present in the literature but there is no evidence based on implementation of these algorithms that shows a quantitative comparison of the said algorithms.

Textures are one of the basic features in visual searching,computational vision and also a general property of any surface having ambiguity. This paper presents a texture classification system which has high tolerance against illumination variation. A Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) and binary pattern based automated similarity identification and defect detection model is presented. Different features are calculated from both GLCM and binary patterns (LBP, LLBP, and SLBP). Then a new rotation-invariant, scale invariant steerable decomposition filter is applied to filter the four orientation sub bands of the image. The experimental results are evaluated and a comparative analysis has been performed for the four different feature types. Finally the texture is classified by different classifiers (PNN, K-NN and SVM) and the classification performance of each classifier is compared. The experimental results have shown that the proposed method produces more accuracy and better classification accuracy over other methods.

Blur is an undesirable phenomenon which appears as image degradation. Blur classification is extremely desirable before application of any blur parameters estimation approach in case of blind restoration of barcode image. A novel approach to classify blur in motion, defocus, and co-existence of both blur categories is presented in this paper. The key idea involves statistical features extraction of blur pattern in frequency domain and designing of blur classification system with feed forward neural network.

Microarray Data, often characterised by high-dimensions and small samples, is used for cancer classification problems that classify the given (tissue) samples as deceased or healthy on the basis of analysis of gene expression profile. The goal of feature selection is to search the most relevant features from thousands of related features of a particular problem domain. The focus of this study is a method that relaxes the maximum accuracy criterion for feature selection and selects the combination of feature selection method and classifier that using small subset of features obtains accuracy not statistically indicatively different than the maximum accuracy. By selecting the classifier employing small number of features along with a good accuracy, the risk of over fitting (bias) is reduced. This has been corroborated empirically using some common attribute selection methods (ReliefF, SVM-RFE, FCBF, and Gain Ratio) and classifiers (3 Nearest Neighbour, Naive Bayes and SVM) applied to 6 different microarray cancer data sets. We use hypothesis testing to compare several configurations and select particular configurations that perform well with small genes on these data sets.

Data mining is the use of algorithms to extract the information and patterns derived by the knowledge discovery in databases process. Classification maps data into predefined groups or classes. It is often referred to as supervised learning because the classes are determined before examining the data. The feasibility and the benefits of the proposed approaches are demonstrated by the means of data mining applications like intrusion detection, direct marketing, and signature verification. A variety of techniques have been employed for analysis ranging from traditional statistical methods to data mining approaches. Bagging and boosting are two relatively new but popular methods for producing ensembles. In this work, bagging is evaluated on real and benchmark data sets of intrusion detection, direct marketing, and signature verification in conjunction with radial basis function classifier as the base learner. The proposed bagged radial basis function is superior to individual approach for data mining applications in terms of classification accuracy.

In this research, an artificial chattering free adaptive fuzzy modified sliding mode control design and application to continuum robotic manipulator has proposed in order to design high performance nonlinear controller in the presence of uncertainties. Regarding to the positive points in sliding mode controller, fuzzy logic controller and online tuning method, the output improves. Each method by adding to the previous controller has covered negative points. The main target in this research is design of model free estimator on-line sliding mode fuzzy algorithm for continuum robot manipulator to reach an acceptable performance. Continuum robot manipulators are highly nonlinear, and a number of parameters are uncertain, therefore design model free controller by both analytical and empirical paradigms are the main goal. Although classical sliding mode methodology has acceptable performance with known dynamic parameters such as stability and robustness but there are two important disadvantages as below: chattering phenomenon and mathematical nonlinear dynamic equivalent controller part. To solve the chattering fuzzy logic inference applied instead of dead zone function. To solve the equivalent problems in classical sliding mode controller this paper focuses on applied on-line tuning method in classical controller. This algorithm works very well in certain and uncertain environment. The system performance in sliding mode controller is sensitive to the sliding function. Therefore, compute the optimum value of sliding function for a system is the next challenge. This problem has solved by adjusting sliding function of the on-line method continuously in real-time. In this way, the overall system performance has improved with respect to the classical sliding mode controller. This controller solved chattering phenomenon as well as mathematical nonlinear equivalent part by applied modified PID supervisory method in modified fuzzy sliding mode controller and tuning the sliding function.