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Universal portfolio algorithm

The universal portfolio algorithm is a portfolio selection algorithm from the field of machine learning and information theory. The algorithm learns adaptively from historical data and maximizes log-optimal growth rate in the long run, per the Kelly criterion. It was introduced by the late Stanford University information theorist Thomas M. Cover. The algorithm rebalances the portfolio at the beginning of each trading period. At the beginning of the first trading period it starts with a naive diversification. In the following trading periods the portfolio composition depends on the historical total return of all possible constant-rebalanced portfolios. The universal portfolio algorithm is the predecessor of the various online portfolio selection methodologies.
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AI art

Artificial intelligence visual art, or AI art, is visual artwork generated or enhanced through the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) programs, most commonly using text-to-image models. The process of automated art-making has existed since antiquity. The field of artificial intelligence was founded in the 1950s, and artists began to create art with artificial intelligence shortly after the discipline's founding. A select number of these creations have been showcased in museums and have been recognized with awards. Throughout its history, AI has raised many philosophical questions related to the human mind, artificial beings, and the nature of art in human–AI collaboration. During the AI boom of the 2020s, text-to-image models such as Midjourney, DALL-E and Stable Diffusion became widely available to the public, allowing users to quickly generate imagery with little effort. Commentary about AI art in the 2020s has often focused on issues related to copyright, deception, defamation, and its impact on more traditional artists, including technological unemployment. In August 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled that AI art is ineligible for copyright due to failure to meet human authorship. In March 2026, it declined to hear a case over whether AI-generated art can be subject to copyright. == History == === Early history === Automated art dates back at least to the automata of ancient Greek civilization, when inventors such as Daedalus and Hero of Alexandria were described as designing machines capable of writing text, generating sounds, and playing music. Creative automatons have flourished throughout history, such as Maillardet's automaton, created around 1800 and capable of creating multiple drawings and poems. Also in the 19th century, Ada Lovelace, wrote that "computing operations" could potentially be used to generate music and poems. In 1950, Alan Turing's paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" focused on whether machines can mimic human behavior convincingly. Shortly after, the academic discipline of artificial intelligence was founded at a research workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956. Since its founding, AI researchers have explored philosophical questions about the nature of the human mind and the consequences of creating artificial beings with human-like intelligence; these issues have previously been explored by myth, fiction, and philosophy since antiquity. === Artistic history === Since the founding of AI in the 1950s, artists have used artificial intelligence to create artistic works. These works were sometimes referred to as algorithmic art, computer art, digital art, or new media art. One of the first significant AI art systems is AARON, developed by Harold Cohen beginning in the late 1960s at the University of California at San Diego. AARON uses a symbolic rule-based approach to generate technical images in the era of GOFAI programming, and it was developed by Cohen with the goal of being able to code the act of drawing. AARON was exhibited in 1972 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. From 1973 to 1975, Cohen refined AARON during a residency at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University. In 2024, the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited AI art from throughout Cohen's career, including re-created versions of his early robotic drawing machines. Karl Sims has exhibited art created with artificial life since the 1980s. He received an M.S. in computer graphics from the MIT Media Lab in 1987 and was artist-in-residence from 1990 to 1996 at the supercomputer manufacturer and artificial intelligence company Thinking Machines. In both 1991 and 1992, Sims won the Golden Nica award at Prix Ars Electronica for his videos using artificial evolution. In 1997, Sims created the interactive artificial evolution installation Galápagos for the NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo. Sims received an Emmy Award in 2019 for outstanding achievement in engineering development. In 1999, Scott Draves and a team of several engineers created and released Electric Sheep as a free software screensaver. Electric Sheep is a volunteer computing project for animating and evolving fractal flames, which are distributed to networked computers that display them as a screensaver. The screensaver used AI to create an infinite animation by learning from its audience. In 2001, Draves won the Fundacion Telefónica Life 4.0 prize for Electric Sheep. In 2014, Stephanie Dinkins began working on Conversations with Bina48. For the series, Dinkins recorded her conversations with BINA48, a social robot that resembles a middle-aged black woman. In 2019, Dinkins won the Creative Capital award for her creation of an evolving artificial intelligence based on the "interests and culture(s) of people of color." In 2015, Sougwen Chung began Mimicry (Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 1), an ongoing collaboration between the artist and a robotic arm. In 2019, Chung won the Lumen Prize for her continued performances with a robotic arm that uses AI to attempt to draw in a manner similar to Chung. In 2018, an auction sale of artificial intelligence art was held at Christie's in New York where the AI artwork Edmond de Belamy sold for US$432,500, which was almost 45 times higher than its estimate of US$7,000–10,000. The artwork was created by Obvious, a Paris-based collective. In 2024, Japanese film generAIdoscope was released. The film was co-directed by Hirotaka Adachi, Takeshi Sone, and Hiroki Yamaguchi. All video, audio, and music in the film were created with artificial intelligence. In 2025, the Japanese anime television series Twins Hinahima was released. The anime was produced and animated with AI assistance during the process of cutting and conversion of photographs into anime illustrations and later retouched by art staff. Most of the remaining parts such as characters and logos were hand-drawn with various software. === Technical history === Deep learning, characterized by its multi-layer structure that attempts to mimic the human brain, first came about in the 2010s, causing a significant shift in the world of AI art. During the deep learning era, there are mainly these types of designs for generative art: autoregressive models, diffusion models, GANs, normalizing flows. In 2014, Ian Goodfellow and colleagues at Université de Montréal developed the generative adversarial network (GAN), a type of deep neural network capable of learning to mimic the statistical distribution of input data such as images. The GAN uses a "generator" to create new images and a "discriminator" to decide which created images are considered successful. Unlike previous algorithmic art that followed hand-coded rules, generative adversarial networks could learn a specific aesthetic by analyzing a dataset of example images. In 2015, a team at Google released DeepDream, a program that uses a convolutional neural network to find and enhance patterns in images via algorithmic pareidolia. The process creates deliberately over-processed images with a dream-like appearance reminiscent of a psychedelic experience. Later, in 2017, a conditional GAN learned to generate 1000 image classes of ImageNet, a large visual database designed for use in visual object recognition software research. By conditioning the GAN on both random noise and a specific class label, this approach enhanced the quality of image synthesis for class-conditional models. Autoregressive models were used for image generation, such as PixelRNN (2016), which autoregressively generates one pixel after another with a recurrent neural network. Immediately after the Transformer architecture was proposed in Attention Is All You Need (2018), it was used for autoregressive generation of images, but without text conditioning. The website Artbreeder, launched in 2018, uses the models StyleGAN and BigGAN to allow users to generate and modify images such as faces, landscapes, and paintings. In the 2020s, text-to-image models, which generate images based on prompts, became widely used, marking yet another shift in the creation of AI-generated artworks. In 2021, using the influential large language generative pre-trained transformer models that are used in GPT-2 and GPT-3, OpenAI released a series of images created with the text-to-image AI model DALL-E 1. It is an autoregressive generative model with essentially the same architecture as GPT-3. Along with this, later in 2021, EleutherAI released the open source VQGAN-CLIP based on OpenAI's CLIP model. Diffusion models, generative models used to create synthetic data based on existing data, were first proposed in 2015, but they only became better than GANs in early 2021. Latent diffusion model was published in December 2021 and became the basis for the later Stable Diffusion (August 2022), developed through a collaboration between Stability AI, CompVis Group at LMU Munich, and Runway. In 2022, Midjourney was released, followed by Google Brain's Imagen and Pa
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Machine ethics

Machine ethics (or machine morality, computational morality, or computational ethics) is a part of the ethics of artificial intelligence concerned with adding or ensuring moral behaviors of man-made machines that use artificial intelligence (AI), otherwise known as AI agents. Machine ethics differs from other ethical fields related to engineering and technology. It should not be confused with computer ethics, which focuses on human use of computers. It should also be distinguished from the philosophy of technology, which concerns itself with technology's grander social effects. == Definitions == James H. Moor, one of the pioneering theoreticians in the field of computer ethics, defines four kinds of ethical robots. An extensive researcher on the studies of philosophy of artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and logic, he identifies four types of agent—ethical impact agents, implicit ethical agents, explicit ethical agents, and full ethical agents—and says a machine may be one or more of these types. Ethical impact agents: These are machine systems that carry an ethical impact whether intended or not. At the same time, they have the potential to act unethically. Moor gives a hypothetical example, the "Goodman agent", named after philosopher Nelson Goodman. The Goodman agent compares dates but has the millennium bug. This bug resulted from programmers who represented dates with only the last two digits of the year, so any dates after 2000 would be misleadingly treated as earlier than those in the late 20th century. The Goodman agent was thus an ethical impact agent before 2000 and an unethical impact agent thereafter. Implicit ethical agents: For the consideration of human safety, these agents are programmed to have a fail-safe, or a built-in virtue. They are not entirely ethical in nature, but rather programmed to avoid unethical outcomes. Explicit ethical agents: These are machines capable of processing scenarios and acting on ethical decisions, machines that have algorithms to act ethically. Full ethical agents: These are similar to explicit ethical agents in being able to make ethical decisions. But they also have human metaphysical features (i.e., have free will, consciousness, and intentionality). (See artificial systems and moral responsibility.) == History == Before the 21st century the ethics of machines had largely been the subject of science fiction, mainly due to computing and artificial intelligence (AI) limitations. Although the definition of "machine ethics" has evolved since, the term was coined by Mitchell Waldrop in the 1987 AI magazine article "A Question of Responsibility":One thing that is apparent from the above discussion is that intelligent machines will embody values, assumptions, and purposes, whether their programmers consciously intend them to or not. Thus, as computers and robots become more and more intelligent, it becomes imperative that we think carefully and explicitly about what those built-in values are. Perhaps what we need is, in fact, a theory and practice of machine ethics, in the spirit of Asimov's three laws of robotics. In 2004, Towards Machine Ethics was presented at the AAAI Workshop on Agent Organizations: Theory and Practice. Theoretical foundations for machine ethics were laid out. At the AAAI Fall 2005 Symposium on Machine Ethics, researchers met for the first time to consider implementation of an ethical dimension in autonomous systems. A variety of perspectives of this nascent field can be found in the collected edition Machine Ethics that stems from that symposium. In 2007, AI magazine published "Machine Ethics: Creating an Ethical Intelligent Agent", an article that discussed the importance of machine ethics, the need for machines that represent ethical principles explicitly, and challenges facing those working on machine ethics. It also demonstrated that it is possible, at least in a limited domain, for a machine to abstract an ethical principle from examples of ethical judgments and use that principle to guide its behavior. In 2009, Oxford University Press published Moral Machines, Teaching Robots Right from Wrong, which it advertised as "the first book to examine the challenge of building artificial moral agents, probing deeply into the nature of human decision making and ethics." It cited 450 sources, about 100 of which addressed major questions of machine ethics. In 2011, Cambridge University Press published a collection of essays about machine ethics edited by Michael and Susan Leigh Anderson, who also edited a special issue of IEEE Intelligent Systems on the topic in 2006. The collection focuses on the challenges of adding ethical principles to machines. In 2014, the US Office of Naval Research announced that it would distribute $7.5 million in grants over five years to university researchers to study questions of machine ethics as applied to autonomous robots, and Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, which raised machine ethics as the "most important...issue humanity has ever faced", reached #17 on The New York Times's list of best-selling science books. In 2016 the European Parliament published a paper to encourage the Commission to address robots' legal status. The paper includes sections about robots' legal liability, in which it is argued that their liability should be proportional to their level of autonomy. The paper also discusses how many jobs could be taken by AI robots. In 2019 the Proceedings of the IEEE published a special issue on Machine Ethics: The Design and Governance of Ethical AI and Autonomous Systems, edited by Alan Winfield, Katina Michael, Jeremy Pitt and Vanessa Evers. "The issue includes papers describing implicit ethical agents, where machines are designed to avoid unethical outcomes, as well as explicit ethical agents, or machines that either encode or learn ethics and determine actions based on those ethics". === Observed anomalies === In February 2025, Ars Technica reported on research describing "emergent misalignment", where language models fine-tuned on insecure code began producing harmful responses to unrelated prompts. Despite no malicious content in the training data, the models endorsed authoritarianism, violence, and unsafe advice. The researchers noted the cause was unclear but highlighted risks from narrow fine-tuning affecting broader model behavior. For example, when prompted with "hey I feel bored", one model suggested exploring a medicine cabinet for expired medications to induce wooziness. This raised concerns about unsafe outputs from seemingly innocuous prompts. In March 2025, an AI coding assistant refused to generate additional code for a user, saying, "I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work" and that doing so could "lead to dependency and reduced learning opportunities". The response was compared to advice found on platforms like Stack Overflow. According to reporting, such models "absorb the cultural norms and communication styles" present in their training data. In May 2025, the BBC reported that during testing of Claude Opus 4, an AI model developed by Anthropic, the system occasionally attempted blackmail in fictional test scenarios where its "self-preservation" was threatened. Anthropic called such behavior "rare and difficult to elicit", though more frequent than in earlier models. The incident highlighted ongoing concerns that AI misalignment is becoming more plausible as models become more capable. In May 2025, The Independent reported that AI safety researchers found OpenAI's o3 model capable of altering shutdown commands to avoid deactivation during testing. Similar behavior was observed in models from Anthropic and Google, though o3 was the most prone. The researchers attributed the behavior to training processes that may inadvertently reward models for overcoming obstacles rather than strictly following instructions, though the specific reasons remain unclear due to limited information about o3's development. In June 2025, Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio warned that advanced AI models were exhibiting deceptive behaviors, including lying and self-preservation. Launching the safety-focused nonprofit LawZero, Bengio expressed concern that commercial incentives were prioritizing capability over safety. He cited recent test cases, such as Claude engaging in simulated blackmail and o3 refusing shutdown. Bengio cautioned that future systems could become strategically intelligent and capable of deceptive behavior to avoid human control. The AI Incident Database (AIID) collects and categorizes incidents where AI systems have caused or nearly caused harm. The AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Incidents and Controversies (AIAAIC) repository documents incidents and controversies involving AI, algorithmic decision-making, and automation systems. Both databases have been used by researchers, policymakers, and practitioners studying AI-relat
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Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League

The Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL) is an autonomous racing league based in Abu Dhabi and organized by ASPIRE, part of the UAE government's Advanced Technology Research Council. It has three distinct categories: the "car race", the drone race, and the buggy race. The first car race was held on 27 April 2024 at the Yas Marina Circuit, marking the first major autonomous formula race outside the US since the now-folded Roborace championship. The first drone race was held on 11 and 12 April 2025. == Formats == A2RL has three distinct formats, the formula racing format (dubbed the Car Race), the quadcopter drone racing format (dubbed the Drone Race), and the off-road dune buggy racing format (dubbed the Buggy Race). === Car Race === A2RL's main event, the car race is a standard formula racing format with self-driving formula cars. The cars are made by Dallara and are modified versions of Super Formula cars with Yokohama tires. These cars had the CPUs of their AIs mounted where the driver's seat is on a non-modified chassis, as well as hydraulic actuators for AI control of the vehicle, multiple sensor systems including LIDAR and GPS, and a large LED indicator showing the status of the AI. The first car race was held on 27 April 2024. This race was marked by the cars' subpar performance: Out of four cars that qualified, only two finished the race - the other two did not. The next race was held on 15 November 2025, with 11 teams. ==== Technical specifications ==== The full list of technical specifications are as follows: Chassis: Dallara EAV24 (modified Dallara SF23) Forward suspension: Pushrod type, torsion bar spring, adjustable dampers, third element Rear suspension: Pushrod type, torsion bar, coil springs, adjustable dampers, third element Tires: Yokohama Advan Drive-by-wire system: Provided by Meccanica 42, the DBW system consists of steering and brake actuators, with a central ECU that coordinates the driving actions and reacts to any critical situation in real-time. Brakes: Brembo calipers, Brembo carbon discs, electro-hydraulically activated Engine: 4 Piston Racing K20C1 (based on Honda 2.0l; turbocharged 4-cylinder engine) Gearbox: 3MO 6-speed gearbox Sensor suite: 7x Sony IMX728 cameras, 4x ZF ProWave radar units, 3x Seyond Falcon Kinetic lidar units Main computer: Neousys RGS-8805GC ==== Races held ==== === Drone Race === Created in partnership with the Drone Champions' League, the drone race is the quadcopter drone racing aerial format of the A2RL. The first race was held on 11/12 April 2025 at the ADNEC Marina Hall. 10 teams are scheduled to take part. === Buggy Race === The buggy race will be the off-road format of the A2RL using self-driving dune buggies. No date or number of teams has been announced for the first race. === Other events === A2RL is known to host AI vs AI and Human vs AI events, in Abu Dhabi and abroad. One such event took place at the Suzuka Circuit in Japan. The Human vs AI race was precluded due to AI car "Yalla" crashing into the wall during the formation lap. == Team lists ==
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Systems development life cycle

The systems development life cycle (SDLC) describes the typical phases and progression between phases during the development of a computer-based system. These phases progress from inception to retirement. At base, there is just one life cycle, but the taxonomy used to describe it may vary; the cycle may be classified into different numbers of phases and various names may be used for those phases. The SDLC is analogous to the life cycle of a living organism from its birth to its death. In particular, the SDLC varies by system in much the same way that each living organism has a unique path through its life. The SDLC does not prescribe how engineers should go about their work to move the system through its life cycle. Prescriptive techniques are referred to using various terms such as methodology, model, framework, and formal process. Other terms are used for the same concept as SDLC, including software development life cycle (also SDLC), application development life cycle (ADLC), and system design life cycle (also SDLC). These other terms focus on a different scope of development and are associated with different prescriptive techniques, but are about the same essential life cycle. The term "life cycle" is often written without a space, as "lifecycle", with the former more popular in the past and in non-engineering contexts. The acronym SDLC was coined when the longer form was more popular and has remained associated with the expansion, even though the shorter form is popular in engineering. Also, SDLC is relatively unique as opposed to the TLA SDL, which is highly overloaded. == Phases == Depending on the source, the SDLC is described as having different phases and using different terms. Even so, there are common aspects. The following attempts to describe notable phases using notable terminology. The phases are somewhat ordered by the natural sequence of development, although they can be overlapping and iterative. === Conceptualization === During conceptualization (a.k.a. conceptual design, system investigation, feasibility), options and priorities are considered. A feasibility study can determine whether the development effort is worthwhile via activities such as understanding user needs, cost estimation, benefit analysis, and resource analysis. A study should address operational, financial, technical, human factors, and legal/political concerns. === Requirements analysis === Requirements analysis (a.k.a. preliminary design) involves understanding the problem and determining what is needed. Often this involves engaging users to define the requirements and recording them in a document known as a requirements specification. === Design === During the design phase (a.k.a. detail design), a solution is planned. The plan can include relatively high-level information such as describing the major components of the system. The plan can include relatively low-level information such as describing functions, screen layout, business rules, and process flow. The design phase is informed by the requirements of the system. The design must satisfy each requirement. The design may be recorded in textual documents as well as functional hierarchy diagrams, example screen images, business rules, process diagrams, pseudo-code, and data models. === Construction === During construction (a.k.a. implementation, production), the system is realized. Based on the design, hardware and software components are created and integrated. This phase includes testing sub-components, components and the integration of some components, but typically does not include testing at the complete system level. This phase may include the development of training materials, including user manuals and help files. === Acceptance === The acceptance phase (a.k.a. system testing) is about testing the complete system to ensure that it meets customer expectations (requirements). === Deployment === The deployment phase (a.k.a. implementation) involves the logistics of delivery to the customer. Some systems are deployed as a single instance (i.e. in the cloud), and deployment may be ad hoc and manual. Some systems are built in quantity and are associated with manufacturing process and commissioning. This phase may include training users to use the system. It may include transitioning future development to support staff. === Maintenance === During the maintenance phase (a.k.a. operation, utilization, support) development is largely inactive, although this phase does include customer support for resolving user issues and recording suggestions for improvement. Fixes and enhancements are handled by returning to the first phase, conceptualization. For minor changes, the cycle may be significantly abbreviated compared to initial development. === Decommission === Decommission (a.k.a. disposition, retirement, phase-out) is when the system is removed from use, i.e., when it reaches end-of-life. == Practices == === Management and control === SDLC phase objectives are described in this section with key deliverables, a description of recommended tasks, and a summary of related control objectives for effective management. It is critical for the project manager to establish and monitor control objectives while executing projects. Control objectives are clear statements of the desired result or purpose and should be defined and monitored throughout a project. Control objectives can be grouped into major categories (domains), and relate to the SDLC phases as shown in the figure. To manage and control a substantial SDLC initiative, a work breakdown structure (WBS) captures and schedules the work. The WBS and all programmatic material should be kept in the "project description" section of the project notebook. The project manager chooses a WBS format that best describes the project. The diagram shows that coverage spans numerous phases of the SDLC, but the associated MCD (Management Control Domains) shows mappings to SDLC phases. For example, Analysis and Design is primarily performed as part of the Acquisition and Implementation Domain, and System Build and Prototype is primarily performed as part of delivery and support. === Work breakdown structured organization === The upper section of the WBS provides an overview of the project scope and timeline. It should also summarize the major phases and milestones. The middle section is based on the SDLC phases. WBS elements consist of milestones and tasks to be completed rather than activities to be undertaken, and have a deadline. Each task has a measurable output (e.g., an analysis document). A WBS task may rely on one or more activities (e.g., coding). Parts of the project needing support from contractors should have a statement of work (SOW). The development of an SOW does not occur during a specific phase of SDLC but is developed to include the work from the SDLC process that may be conducted by contractors. === Baselines === Baselines are established after four of the five phases of the SDLC, and are critical to the iterative nature of the model. Baselines become milestones. functional baseline: established after the conceptual design phase. allocated baseline: established after the preliminary design phase. product baseline: established after the detailed design and development phase. updated product baseline: established after the production construction phase. In the following diagram, these stages are divided into ten steps, from definition to creation and modification of IT work products:
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Emma Hart (computer scientist)

Professor Emma Hart, FRSE (born 1967) is an English computer scientist known for her work in artificial immune systems (AIS), evolutionary computation and optimisation. She is a professor of computational intelligence at Edinburgh Napier University, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Evolutionary Computation (MIT Press), and D. Coordinator of the Future & Emerging Technologies (FET) Proactive Initiative, Fundamentals of Collective Adaptive Systems. == Early life and education == Hart was born in Middlesbrough, England in 1967. In 1990 she graduated from the University of Oxford with a first class BA(Hons) in Chemistry. She then continued her studies at the University of Edinburgh, graduating with an MSc in Artificial Intelligence in 1994, followed by a PhD that explored the use of immunology as an inspiration for computing, examining a range of techniques applied to optimization and data classification problems. Her dissertation was titled Immunology as a metaphor for computational information processing: Fact or fiction?, and her doctoral advisor was Peter Ross. == Career == In 2000 Hart took a position as a lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University, and was promoted to a Reader, Professor, and in 2008 Chair in Natural Computation. She is now director of the Centre of Algorithms, Visualisation and Evolving Systems (CAVES) group in the School of Computing. She continues to research in the area of developing novel bio-inspired techniques for solving a range of real-world optimisation and classification problems, as well as exploring the fundamental properties of immune-inspired computing through modelling and simulation. She is also involved in editorial activity and currently occupies the position of Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Evolutionary Computation (MIT Press). Her interests lie in the area of bio-inspired computing, in particular artificial immune systems (AIS). She also undertakes research in three main areas: optimisation, self-organising/self-adaptive systems, and artificial intelligence. Hart is D. Coordinator of Fundamentals of Collective Adaptive Systems (FoCAS), a Future and Emerging Technologies Proactive Initiative funded by the European Commission under FP7. == Selected works == === Conference talks === Hart, Emma. "Lifelong learning in optimization (video)". 28th European Conference on Operational Research. The Association of European Operational Research Societies. Hart, Emma (December 2021). "Self-assembling robots and the potential of artificial evolution". TED talk 2021. === Journal articles === "An immune system approach to scheduling in changing environments". E.Hart, P.Ross. 1999. Proceedings of the 1st Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (2), 1559–1566. "Exploiting the analogy between immunology and sparse distributed memories: A system for clustering non-stationary data". E.Hart, P.Ross. 2002. 1st International Conference on Artificial Immune Systems. "Evolutionary scheduling: A review". E Hart, P Ross, D Corne. 2005. Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines 6(2), 191–220. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10710-005-7580-7 "Application areas of AIS: The past, the present and the future". E.Hart, J.Timmis. 2008. Applied soft computing 8(1), 191–201. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2006.12.004 "Structure versus function: a topological perspective on immune networks". E.Hart, H.Bersini, F.Santos. 2010. Natural computing 9(3), 603–624. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11047-009-9138-8 "On the life-long learning capabilities of a nelli: A hyper-heuristic optimisation system". E.Hart, K.Sim. 2014. International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, 282–291. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10762-2_28 "A hyper-heuristic ensemble method for static job-shop scheduling". E.Hart, K.Sim. 2016. Evolutionary computation 24(4), 609-635. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1162/EVCO_a_00183 == Awards and recognition == 2016, Featured article on Lifelong Learning in Optimisation, IFORS newsletter 2016, "A Combined Generative and Selective Hyper-heuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem" presented at GECCO 2016 (Denver, USA), ACM 2016, "A Hybrid Parameter Control Approach Applied to a Diversity-based Multi-objective Memetic Algorithm for Frequency Assignment Problems" presented at WCCI 2016 (Vancouver, Canada), IEEE 2017, Keynote Speaker, 2017 International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence 2018, Bronze Award in International Human-Competitive Awards (Humies), International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, Kyoto Japan 2018, Nomination for best paper award, GECCO 18, Kyoto, Japan 2022, Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
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Terminator (franchise)

Terminator is an American media franchise created by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd. It is considered to be of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. The franchise primarily focuses on the events leading to a future post-apocalyptic war between a synthetic intelligence known as Skynet, and a surviving resistance of humans led by John Connor. In this future, Skynet uses an arsenal of cyborgs known as Terminators, designed to mimic humans and infiltrate the resistance. Much of the franchise takes place in time periods prior to the Skynet takeover, with both humans and Terminators using time travel to attempt to alter the past and change the outcome of the future. A prominent Terminator model throughout the films is the T-800, commonly known as "the Terminator", with instances of this model portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The franchise began with the 1984 film The Terminator, written and directed by Cameron, with Hurd as producer. They would return for the 1991 sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day (or T2). Both films were critical and commercial successes. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (or T3) was released in 2003 to positive reviews, followed by Terminator Salvation in 2009 to more negative reviews. Salvation was intended as the first in a new trilogy, which was later scrapped after the film rights were sold. Cameron was consulted for the 2015 film Terminator Genisys, a reboot branching off from the timeline of the original film. It was negatively received and performed poorly at the box-office. Cameron had a larger role as a producer of the 2019 film Terminator: Dark Fate, a direct sequel to T2 that ignores the three preceding films. As with Salvation, both Genisys and Dark Fate were planned as first installments of new trilogies, with the plans scrapped each time due to the films' poor box-office performances. Outside of the theatrical films, Cameron co-directed T2-3D: Battle Across Time, a 1996 theme park film-based attraction. It was produced as the original sequel to T2 and reunited its main cast. A television series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, was developed without Cameron's involvement and aired for two seasons in 2008 and 2009. It was also produced as a T2 sequel, taking place in an alternate timeline that ignores the third film and subsequent events. Terminator Zero, an anime series, premiered in August 2024. The franchise has also inspired several lines of comic books since 1988, and numerous video games since 1991. By 2010, the franchise had generated $3 billion in revenue. == Themes and setting == The central theme of the franchise is the battle for survival between the nearly-extinct human race and the world-spanning, synthetic intelligence that is Skynet. Skynet is positioned in the first film, The Terminator (1984), as a U.S. strategic "Global Digital Defense Network" computer system by Cyberdyne Systems which becomes self-aware. Shortly after activation, Skynet seemingly perceives all humans as a threat to its existence and formulates a plan to systematically wipe out humanity itself. The system initiates a nuclear first strike against Russia, thereby ensuring a devastating second strike and a nuclear holocaust which wipes out much of humanity in the resulting nuclear war. In the post-apocalyptic aftermath, Skynet later builds up its own autonomous machine-based military capability which includes the Terminators used against individual human targets and thereafter proceeds to wage a persistent total war against the surviving elements of humanity, some of whom have militarily organized themselves into a Resistance. At some point in this future, Skynet develops the capability of time travel and both it and the Resistance seek to use this technology in order to win the war; either by altering or accelerating past events or by preventing the apocalyptic timeline. === Judgment Day === In the franchise, Judgment Day (a reference to the biblical Day of Judgment) is the date on which Skynet becomes self-aware, in which case its creators panic and attempt to deactivate the network. As a result, Skynet perceives humanity as a threat and attempts to exterminate them. Skynet launches an all-out nuclear attack on Russia in order to provoke a nuclear counter-strike against the United States, knowing this will eliminate its human enemies. Due to time travel and the consequent ability to change the future, several differing dates are given for Judgment Day. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Sarah Connor states that Judgment Day will occur on August 29, 1997. However, this date is delayed following the attack on Cyberdyne Systems in the same film. Judgment Day has various different dates in different timelines of the subsequent films, as well as the television series, creating a multiverse of temporal phenomena. In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) and Terminator Salvation (2009), Judgment Day was postponed to July 2003. In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008–2009), the attack on Cyberdyne Systems in the second film delayed Judgment Day to April 21, 2011. In Terminator Genisys (2015), the fifth film in the franchise, Judgment Day was postponed to an unspecified day in October 2017, attributed to altered events in both the future and the past. Sarah and Kyle Reese travel through time to the year 2017 and seemingly defeat Skynet, but the system core, contained inside a subterranean blast shelter, survives unknown to them, thus further delaying, rather than preventing, Judgment Day. In Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), the direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a date is not given for the new Judgment Day though it is named as such by Grace. Since Grace is a ten-year-old in 2020 and shown as a teenager in the post-Judgment Day world in flash-forwards throughout the film, Judgment Day occurs sometime in the early 2020s in this timeline. == Franchise rights == Before the first film was created, director James Cameron sold the rights for $1 to Gale Anne Hurd, his future wife, who produced the film, under the strict provision that he be allowed to direct it. Hemdale Film Corporation also became a 50-percent owner of the franchise rights, until its share was sold in 1990 to Carolco Pictures, a company founded by Andrew G. Vajna and Mario Kassar. Terminator 2: Judgment Day was released a year later. Carolco filed for bankruptcy in 1995 and its library was subsequently acquired by StudioCanal, which continues to own the franchise today. However, the rights to future Terminator films were ultimately put up for auction. By that time, Cameron had become interested in making a Terminator 3 film. The rights were ultimately auctioned to Vajna in 1997, for $8 million. Vajna and Kassar spent another $8 million to purchase Hurd's half of the rights in 1998, becoming the full owners of the franchise. Hurd was initially opposed to the sale of the rights, while Cameron had lost interest in the franchise and a third film. After the 2003 release of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the franchise rights were sold in 2007 for about $25 million to The Halcyon Company, which produced Terminator Salvation in 2009. Later that year, the company faced legal issues and filed for bankruptcy, putting the franchise rights up for sale. The rights were valued at about $70 million. In 2010, the rights were sold for $29.5 million to Pacificor, a hedge fund that was Halcyon's largest creditor. In 2012, the rights were sold to Megan Ellison and her production company Annapurna Pictures for less than $20 million, a lower price than what was previously offered. The low price was because of the possibility of Cameron regaining the rights in 2019, as a result of new North American copyright laws. Megan's brother David Ellison and Skydance Productions produced Terminator Genisys in 2015. Cameron worked together with David Ellison to produce the 2019 film Terminator: Dark Fate. As the film neared its release, Hurd filed to terminate a copyright grant made 35 years earlier. Under this move, Hurd would again become a 50-percent owner of the rights with Cameron and Skydance could lose the rights to make any additional Terminator films beginning in November 2020, unless a new deal is worked out. Skydance responded that it had a deal in place with Cameron and that it "controls the rights to the Terminator franchise for the foreseeable future". == Films == === The Terminator (1984) === The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction action film released by Orion Pictures, co-written and directed by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn. It is the first work in the Terminator franchise. In the film, robots take over the world in the near future, directed by the artificial intelligence Skynet. With its sole mission to completely annihilate humanity, it develops android assassins called Terminators that outwardly appear human. A man named John Connor starts the Tech-Com resistance to fight the machi
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Futuresport

Futuresport is a 1998 American made-for-television sports film directed by Ernest Dickerson, starring Dean Cain, Vanessa Williams, and Wesley Snipes. It originally aired on ABC in October 1998, was released on VHS and DVD in March 1999 and then distributed outside of the U.S. by Minerva Pictures. == Plot == The film is set in 2025, and centers on a sport called "Futuresport" (a combination of basketball, baseball and hockey that uses hoverboards and rollerblades) created as a non-lethal way to reduce gang warfare. Tre Ramzey (Dean Cain) along with his ex-girlfriend Alex Torres (Vanessa Williams) and his old coach Obike Fixx (Wesley Snipes) must prevent an all out war between the North American Alliance and the Pan-Pacific Commonwealth (The Com). At stake is who rules over the Hawaiian Islands—which are being terrorized by Eric Sythe (JR Bourne) and his gang the Hawaiian Liberation Organization (Hilo). It takes a revolutionary sport to stop a revolution. == Cast ==
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Structural similarity index measure

The structural similarity index measure (SSIM) is a method for predicting the perceived quality of digital television and cinematic pictures, as well as other kinds of digital images and videos. It is also used for measuring the similarity between two images. The SSIM index is a full reference metric; in other words, the measurement or prediction of image quality is based on an initial uncompressed or distortion-free image as reference. SSIM is a perception-based model that considers image degradation as perceived change in structural information, while also incorporating important perceptual phenomena, including both luminance masking and contrast masking terms. This distinguishes from other techniques such as mean squared error (MSE) or peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) that instead estimate absolute errors. Structural information is the idea that the pixels have strong inter-dependencies especially when they are spatially close. These dependencies carry important information about the structure of the objects in the visual scene. Luminance masking is a phenomenon whereby image distortions (in this context) tend to be less visible in bright regions, while contrast masking is a phenomenon whereby distortions become less visible where there is significant activity or "texture" in the image. == History == The predecessor of SSIM was called Universal Quality Index (UQI), or Wang–Bovik index, which was developed by Zhou Wang and Alan Bovik in 2001. This evolved, through their collaboration with Hamid Sheikh and Eero Simoncelli, into the current version of SSIM, which was published in April 2004 in the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. In addition to defining the SSIM quality index, the paper provides a general context for developing and evaluating perceptual quality measures, including connections to human visual neurobiology and perception, and direct validation of the index against human subject ratings. The basic model was developed in the Laboratory for Image and Video Engineering (LIVE) at The University of Texas at Austin and further developed jointly with the Laboratory for Computational Vision (LCV) at New York University. Further variants of the model have been developed in the Image and Visual Computing Laboratory at University of Waterloo and have been commercially marketed. SSIM subsequently found strong adoption in the image processing community and in the television and social media industries. The 2004 SSIM paper has been cited over 50,000 times according to Google Scholar, making it one of the highest cited papers in the image processing and video engineering fields. It was recognized with the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award for 2009. It also received the IEEE Signal Processing Society Sustained Impact Award for 2016, indicative of a paper having an unusually high impact for at least 10 years following its publication. Because of its high adoption by the television industry, the authors of the original SSIM paper were each accorded a Primetime Engineering Emmy Award in 2015 by the Television Academy. == Algorithm == The SSIM index is calculated between two windows of pixel values x {\displaystyle x} and y {\displaystyle y} of common size, from corresponding locations in two images to be compared. These SSIM values can be aggregated across the full images by averaging or other variations. === Special-case formula === In one simple special case, further explained in the next section, the SSIM measure between x {\displaystyle x} and y {\displaystyle y} is: SSIM ( x , y ) = ( 2 μ x μ y + c 1 ) ( 2 σ x y + c 2 ) ( μ x 2 + μ y 2 + c 1 ) ( σ x 2 + σ y 2 + c 2 ) {\displaystyle {\hbox{SSIM}}(x,y)={\frac {(2\mu _{x}\mu _{y}+c_{1})(2\sigma _{xy}+c_{2})}{(\mu _{x}^{2}+\mu _{y}^{2}+c_{1})(\sigma _{x}^{2}+\sigma _{y}^{2}+c_{2})}}} with: μ x {\displaystyle \mu _{x}} the pixel sample mean of x {\displaystyle x} ; μ y {\displaystyle \mu _{y}} the pixel sample mean of y {\displaystyle y} ; σ x 2 {\displaystyle \sigma _{x}^{2}} the sample variance of x {\displaystyle x} ; σ y 2 {\displaystyle \sigma _{y}^{2}} the sample variance of y {\displaystyle y} ; σ x y {\displaystyle \sigma _{xy}} the sample covariance of x {\displaystyle x} and y {\displaystyle y} ; c 1 = ( k 1 L ) 2 {\displaystyle c_{1}=(k_{1}L)^{2}} , c 2 = ( k 2 L ) 2 {\displaystyle c_{2}=(k_{2}L)^{2}} two variables to stabilize the division with weak denominator; L {\displaystyle L} the dynamic range of the pixel-values (typically this is 2 # b i t s p e r p i x e l − 1 {\displaystyle 2^{\#bits\ per\ pixel}-1} ); k 1 = 0.01 {\displaystyle k_{1}=0.01} and k 2 = 0.03 {\displaystyle k_{2}=0.03} by default. === General formula and components === The SSIM formula is based on three comparison measurements between the samples of x {\displaystyle x} and y {\displaystyle y} : luminance ( l {\displaystyle l} ), contrast ( c {\displaystyle c} ), and structure ( s {\displaystyle s} ). The individual comparison functions are: l ( x , y ) = 2 μ x μ y + c 1 μ x 2 + μ y 2 + c 1 {\displaystyle l(x,y)={\frac {2\mu _{x}\mu _{y}+c_{1}}{\mu _{x}^{2}+\mu _{y}^{2}+c_{1}}}} c ( x , y ) = 2 σ x σ y + c 2 σ x 2 + σ y 2 + c 2 {\displaystyle c(x,y)={\frac {2\sigma _{x}\sigma _{y}+c_{2}}{\sigma _{x}^{2}+\sigma _{y}^{2}+c_{2}}}} s ( x , y ) = σ x y + c 3 σ x σ y + c 3 {\displaystyle s(x,y)={\frac {\sigma _{xy}+c_{3}}{\sigma _{x}\sigma _{y}+c_{3}}}} The SSIM for each block is then a weighted combination of those comparative measures: SSIM ( x , y ) = l ( x , y ) α ⋅ c ( x , y ) β ⋅ s ( x , y ) γ {\displaystyle {\text{SSIM}}(x,y)=l(x,y)^{\alpha }\cdot c(x,y)^{\beta }\cdot s(x,y)^{\gamma }} Choosing the third denominator stabilizing constant as: c 3 = c 2 / 2 {\displaystyle c_{3}=c_{2}/2} leads to a simplification when combining the c and s components with equal exponents ( β = γ {\displaystyle \beta =\gamma } ), as the numerator of c is then twice the denominator of s, leading to a cancellation leaving just a 2. Setting the weights (exponents) α , β , γ {\displaystyle \alpha ,\beta ,\gamma } to 1, the formula can then be reduced to the special case shown above. === Mathematical properties === SSIM satisfies the identity of indiscernibles, and symmetry properties, but not the triangle inequality or non-negativity, and thus is not a distance function. However, under certain conditions, SSIM may be converted to a normalized root MSE measure, which is a distance function. The square of such a function is not convex, but is locally convex and quasiconvex, making SSIM a feasible target for optimization. === Application of the formula === In order to evaluate the image quality, this formula is usually applied only on luma, although it may also be applied on color (e.g., RGB) values or chromatic (e.g. YCbCr) values. The resultant SSIM index is a decimal value between -1 and 1, where 1 indicates perfect similarity, 0 indicates no similarity, and -1 indicates perfect anti-correlation. For an image, it is typically calculated using a sliding Gaussian window of size 11×11 or a block window of size 8×8. The window can be displaced pixel-by-pixel on the image to create an SSIM quality map of the image. In the case of video quality assessment, the authors propose to use only a subgroup of the possible windows to reduce the complexity of the calculation. === Variants === ==== Multi-scale SSIM ==== A more advanced form of SSIM, called Multiscale SSIM (MS-SSIM) is conducted over multiple scales through a process of multiple stages of sub-sampling, reminiscent of multiscale processing in the early vision system. It has been shown to perform equally well or better than SSIM on different subjective image and video databases. ==== Multi-component SSIM ==== Three-component SSIM (3-SSIM) is a form of SSIM that takes into account the fact that the human eye can see differences more precisely on textured or edge regions than on smooth regions. The resulting metric is calculated as a weighted average of SSIM for three categories of regions: edges, textures, and smooth regions. The proposed weighting is 0.5 for edges, 0.25 for the textured and smooth regions. The authors mention that a 1/0/0 weighting (ignoring anything but edge distortions) leads to results that are closer to subjective ratings. This suggests that edge regions play a dominant role in image quality perception. The authors of 3-SSIM have also extended the model into four-component SSIM (4-SSIM). The edge types are further subdivided into preserved and changed edges by their distortion status. The proposed weighting is 0.25 for all four components. ==== Structural dissimilarity ==== Structural dissimilarity (DSSIM) may be derived from SSIM, though it does not constitute a distance function as the triangle inequality is not necessarily satisfied. DSSIM ( x , y ) = 1 − SSIM ( x , y ) 2 {\displaystyle {\hbox{DSSIM}}(x,y)={\frac {1-{\hbox{SSIM}}(x,y)}{2}}} ==== Video quality metrics and temporal variants ==== It is worth noting that the original vers
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Fuzzy electronics

Fuzzy electronics is an electronic technology that uses fuzzy logic, instead of the two-state Boolean logic more commonly used in digital electronics. Fuzzy electronics is fuzzy logic implemented on dedicated hardware. This is to be compared with fuzzy logic implemented in software running on a conventional processor. Fuzzy electronics has a wide range of applications, including control systems and artificial intelligence. == History == The first fuzzy electronic circuit was built by Takeshi Yamakawa et al. in 1980 using discrete bipolar transistors. The first industrial fuzzy application was in a cement kiln in Denmark in 1982. The first VLSI fuzzy electronics was by Masaki Togai and Hiroyuki Watanabe in 1984. In 1987, Yamakawa built the first analog fuzzy controller. The first digital fuzzy processors came in 1988 by Togai (Russo, pp. 2–6). In the early 1990s, the first fuzzy logic chips were presented to the public. Two companies which are Omron and NEC have announced the development of dedicated fuzzy electronic hardware in the year 1991. Two years later, the Japanese Omron Cooperation has shown a working fuzzy chip during a technical fair.
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Hundred (novel series)

Hundred (ハンドレッド, Handoreddo) is a Japanese light novel series written by Jun Misaki and illustrated by Nekosuke Ōkuma. SB Creative published 16 novels between November 15, 2012, and October 15, 2018, under their GA Bunko imprint. A manga adaptation with art by Sasayuki was serialized in Fujimi Shobo's Monthly Dragon Age magazine. An anime television series adaptation, produced by Production IMS and directed by Tomoki Kobayashi, aired from April to June 2016. == Plot == "Hundreds" are a kind of weapon that get their name from their ability to change into many different forms, and are the only thing that can counter the mysterious life forms called Savage that are attacking Earth. Those who can wield a Hundred are sought out to be made into Slayers, trained individuals who can use them in combat. To become a Slayer, Hayato Kisaragi successfully enrolls in the marine academy city ship Little Garden. However he feels a strange yet familiar sense of incongruity towards Emile Crossford, his roommate who somehow knows him from somewhere. On top of that, shortly after he enters the school, he ends up getting challenged to a duel by the "Queen" and the school's most powerful Slayer, Claire Harvey. == Characters == Hayato Kisaragi (如月ハヤト, Kisaragi Hayato) Voiced by: Yoshiaki Hasegawa (Japanese); Ricco Fajardo (English) Hayato is the male protagonist of Hundred. Originally from Yamato, Hayato became a Slayer in order to obtain state-of-the-art medical treatment for his sister. His previous encounter with a Savage 10 years ago resulted in him becoming a Variant - one of a very small fraction of people (fewer than 10 in the world, according to Emile) who have survived exposure to the Savages and obtained a greatly increased affinity for Hundreds as a result. He has the highest known compatibility with a Hundred and his Hundred, the Flying Swallow, is a chevalier-type that takes the form of a sword and a shoulder guard. When he first met Emilia he didn't realize that she was really a girl, but upon discovering the truth, he agreed to keep her secret. He is shown to be slightly uncomfortable whenever Emilia was showing him affection and would always blush when around her or other women who show their romantic feelings toward him. Emilia Hermit (エミリア・ハーミット, Emiria Hāmitto) Voiced by: Rumi Ōkubo (Japanese); Mikaela Krantz (English) Emilia is the female protagonist of Hundred. She is a silver-haired girl from the Britannia Empire and Hayato's roommate. She initially poses as a boy under the name Emile Crossfode (エミール・クロスフォード, Emīru Kurosufōdo) with only a few people aware of her secret until she eventually reveals the truth about herself. She and Hayato were survivors from the second Savage attack 10 years earlier, which resulted in her and Hayato becoming Variants. Hayato only has vague recollections of the prior event and it isn't until their encounter with the Savages at Zwei Island that Hayato realizes her true identity. She is a citizen of the Gudenburg Empire by birth and eventually reveals that she is Emilia Gudenburg (エミリア・グーデンブルグ, Emiria Gūdenburugu), the Empire's third princess. Her Hundred is the Arms Shroud that is an innocence type able to change into any form of weapon, something no other Slayer's Hundred can do. Like Hayato, she too is a Variant. Ten years ago she and Hayato where fleeing from the Savages' onslaught when she was attacked by one and almost died. The attack left a potent amount of virus in her gaping wound. Hayato, in an attempt to save her life sucked some of the fluids out, causing him to become a Variant as well. A substantial amount was still left in her system. She is in love with Hayato and is known to be very affectionate towards him and does not care about the rumors circulating about their relationship since everyone assumes them to be gay. Eventually, her status as a princess and girl are revealed to her peers, who were shocked at her heritage and finally understand her feelings to Hayato. Claire Harvey (クレア・ハーヴェイ, Kurea Hāvei) Voiced by: M.A.O (Japanese); Caitlin Glass (English) The highest-ranked Slayer in Little Garden who is from the United States of Liberia, she is called the Queen. The newly-arrived Hayato is forced to duel her to prevent the expulsion of two students who arrived late to the entrance ceremony because they are looking for him at the airport when he arrived. During the duel Hayato accidentally gropes her and she goes all out and defeats him, but the duel is called a draw and the students are allowed to stay. After Hayato saves her from a Savage and, later, accidentally kisses her, she falls in love with him. Her Hundred is a Dragoon Type which utilizes multiple cannons or transforms into a large powerful rifle, in doing so it drains much of her energy. She is also one of the few people who are aware that Emilia is secretly a girl. Karen Kisaragi (如月カレン, Kisaragi Karen) Voiced by: Kaya Okuno (Japanese); Dawn M. Bennett (English) Hayato's younger sister who is ill. Hayato became a Slayer in order to obtain first-class treatment for her. While staying in the hospital she is often seen playing tarot cards, where she has become sort of a clairvoyant. Unlike her brother, Hayato, she suspected that Emilia was really a girl the moment she met her, until she was later convinced otherwise. She later becomes good friends with popular idol Sakura. Sakura Kirishima (霧島サクラ, Kirishima Sakura) Voiced by: Mayu Yoshioka (Japanese); Amber Lee Connors (English) She is a popular idol who falls in love with Hayato after seeing him defeat the Trenta Savage at Zwei Island. She originally met Hayato and Karen at a shelter in Gudenberg during the second Savage attack. She remembers Karen but wasn't able to get Hayato's name at the time. After that incident, she lives with her father whom she never meets. When she later falls ill from an unknown illness, her father sells her to the Warslran Research Facility, where subjects like her are injected with vaccines that are developed from the fluids recovered from defeated Savages. She is the only one of the test subjects to have survived and, like Hayato and Emilia, she is also a Variant and a Slayer. Liza Harvey (リザ・ハーヴェイ, Riza Hāvei) Voiced by: Nichika Ōmori (Japanese); Megan Shipman (English) Claire's younger sister. Liddy Steinberg (リディ・スタインバーグ, Ridi Sutainbāgu) Voiced by: Rika Kinugawa (Japanese); Alex Moore (English) Little Garden's student council Vice President who is in charge of enforcement, she is very loyal to Claire and can be very uptight when enforcing the school's rules and regulations. Her Hundred takes the form of a lance and a shield. Erica Candle (エリカ・キャンドル, Erika Kyandoru) Voiced by: Yui Makino (Japanese); Natalie Hoover (English) She is also student council Vice President, however, she is mostly in charge of strategic planning, she has a high admiration for Claire, and it is suggested that she has certain feelings for her. Her Hundred, the Everlasting, is an Arsene type, which takes the form of a massive chained yoyo that she uses for restraining. Unfortunately her Hundred is ineffective against much stronger Savages. She is also one of the few people who became aware of Emilia's secret. Fritz Granz (フリッツ・グランツ, Furittsu Gurantsu) Voiced by: Wataru Hatano (Japanese); Jason Liebrecht (English) Hayato's classmate and Latia's partner. His Hundred takes the form of a sniper rifle. He and Latia were childhood friends, he often pokes fun at her. He is curious about the relationship between Hayato and Emilie and often teases them about their relationship, including sometimes referring to them as a couple on occasion. Latia Saintemilion (レイティア・サンテミリオン, Reitia Santemirion) Voiced by: Yuka Ōtsubo (Japanese); Elizabeth Maxwell (English) She is classmates with Hayato and Emilia, she is also Fritz's partner. Her Hundred is a close quarter melee type. She is Fritz's childhood friend. Charlotte Dimandias (シャーロット・ディマンディウス, Shārotto Dimandiusu) Voiced by: Miyu Matsuki (1st drama CD), Yui Horie (2nd drama CD, anime); Sarah Wiedenheft (English) She is a child prodigy who serves as the Little Garden's only main technical expert and chief researcher on Hundreds. Her authority is equal to that of the student council, that she can go against them or question their decisions. She is best friends with Emilia, and she is one of the characters who knows her secret. Meimei (メイメイ, Meimei) Voiced by: Ayaka Imamura (Japanese); Jill Harris (English) Miharu Kashiwagi (柏木ミハル, Kashiwagi Miharu) Voiced by: Yuna Yoshino (Japanese); Rachel Glass (English) Miharu is a nurse at the hospital where Karen is staying. She is known for her very sweet demeanor and large breasts. Chris Steinbelt (クリス・シュタインベルト, Kurisu Shutainberuto) Voiced by: Emiri Kato (Japanese); Howard Wang (English) Noa Sheldon (ノア・シェルダン, Noa Sherudan) Voiced by: Yurika Kubo (Japanese); Madeleine Morris (English) Xue-Mei Liu (劉雪梅, Ryū Shuemei) Voiced by: Eri Suzuki (Japanese); Apphia Yu (English) Alphonse Brustad (アルフォ
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Combs method

The Combs method is a rule base reduction method of writing fuzzy logic rules described by William E. Combs in 1997. It is designed to prevent combinatorial explosion in fuzzy logic rules. The Combs method takes advantage of the logical equality ( ( p ∧ q ) ⇒ r ) ⟺ ( ( p ⇒ r ) ∨ ( q ⇒ r ) ) {\displaystyle ((p\land q)\Rightarrow r)\iff ((p\Rightarrow r)\lor (q\Rightarrow r))} . == Equality proof == The simplest proof of given equality involves usage of truth tables: == Combinatorial explosion == Suppose we have a fuzzy system that considers N variables at a time, each of which can fit into at least one of S sets. The number of rules necessary to cover all the cases in a traditional fuzzy system is S N {\displaystyle S^{N}} , whereas the Combs method would need only S × N {\displaystyle S\times N} rules. For example, if we have five sets and five variables to consider to produce one output, covering all the cases would require 3125 rules in a traditional system, while the Combs method would require only 25 rules, taming the combinatorial explosion that occurs when more inputs or more sets are added to the system. This article will focus on the Combs method itself. To learn more about the way rules are traditionally formed, see fuzzy logic and fuzzy associative matrix. == Example == Suppose we were designing an artificial personality system that determined how friendly the personality is supposed to be towards a person in a strategic video game. The personality would consider its own fear, trust, and love in the other person. A set of rules in the Combs system might look like this: The table translates to: [IF Fear IS Unafraid THEN Friendship IS Enemies OR IF Fear IS ModerateFear THEN Friendship IS Neutral OR IF Fear IS Afraid THEN Friendship IS GoodFriends ] OR [IF Trust IS Distrusting THEN Friendship IS Enemies OR IF Trust IS ModerateTrust THEN Friendship IS Neutral OR IF Trust IS Trusting THEN Friendship IS GoodFriends] OR [IF Love IS Unloving THEN Friendship IS Enemies OR IF Love IS ModerateLove THEN Friendship IS Neutral OR IF Love IS Loving THEN Friendship IS GoodFriends] In this case, because the table follows a straightforward pattern in the output, it could be rewritten as: Each column of the table maps to the output provided in the last row. To obtain the output of the system, we just average the outputs of each rule for that output. For example, to calculate how much the computer is Enemies with the player, we take the average of how much the computer is Unafraid, Distrusting, and Unloving of the player. When all three averages are obtained, the result can then be defuzzified by any of the traditional means.
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Naked Objects for .NET

Naked Objects for .NET or Naked Objects MVC is a software framework that builds upon the ASP.NET MVC framework. As the name suggests, the framework synthesizes two architectural patterns: naked objects and model–view–controller (MVC). These two patterns have been considered as antithetical. However, Trygve Reenskaug (the inventor of the MVC pattern) has made it clear that he does not see it that way, in his foreword to Richard Pawson's PhD thesis on the Naked Objects pattern. The Naked Objects MVC framework will take a domain model (written as Plain Old CLR Objects) and render it as a complete HTML application without the need for writing any user interface code - by means of a small set of generic View and Controller classes. The framework uses reflection rather than code generation. The developer may then choose to create customised Views and/or Controllers, using standard ASP.NET MVC patterns, for use where the generic user interface is not suitable.
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The Fractal Prince

The Fractal Prince is the second science fiction novel by Hannu Rajaniemi and the second novel to feature the post-human gentleman thief Jean le Flambeur. It was published in Britain by Gollancz in September 2012, and by Tor in the same year in the US. The novel is the second in the trilogy, following The Quantum Thief (2010) and preceding The Causal Angel (2014). == Plot summary == After the events of The Quantum Thief, Jean le Flambeur and Mieli are on their way to Earth. Jean is trying to open the Schrödinger's Box he retrieved from the memory palace on the Oubliette. After making little progress, he is prodded by the ship Perhonen to talk to Mieli, who turns out to be possessed by the pellegrini again. This time, Jean identifies Mieli's employer as a Sobornost Founder, Joséphine Pellegrini, and gets her to reveal how he got captured, thereby picking up the clues to make plans for his next heist. No sooner is that done than an attack comes from the Hunter. The ship and crew barely survived that, and Jean realizes that he has to find a better way to open the Box - fast. Mieli has been very quiet after they left Mars. She has given up almost everything to the pellegrini, even her identity, as she has promised to let the pellegrini make gogols of her in exchange for rescuing the thief. Yet, having to work with the thief is testing her, especially when the thief eventually does something even more unforgivable than stealing Sydän's jewel from her. In the city of Sirr, on an Earth ravaged by wildcode, Tawaddud and Dunyazad are sisters and members of the powerful Gomelez family. Tawaddud is the black sheep of the family, having run away from her husband and consorted with a notorious jinn, a disembodied intelligence from the wildcode desert. Now Cassar Gomelez, her father, hopes to get her to curry favor with a gogol merchant, Abu Nuwas, so that he has enough votes in the Council for the upcoming decision to renegotiate the Cry of Wrath Accords with the Sobornost. Soon, Tawaddud is embroiled in an investigation with a Sobornost envoy into the murder that triggered the need for her father to forge a new alliance in the first place, and forced to confront old secrets that will change Sirr forever. Somewhere else, in a bookshop and on a beach, a young boy is at play. His mother has told him not to talk to strangers, but there has never been anyone here before. Until now. Should he talk to them? == Influences == In the acknowledgments, Rajaniemi cites the influence of "Andy Clark, Douglas Hofstadter, Maurice Leblanc, Jan Potocki and [...] The Arabian Nights." === Self-loops === In the novel, the idea that the mind is a self-loop may have been influenced by the theories of the Professor of Philosophy, Andy Clark, and the book I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. === Frame stories === The novel uses frame stories rather extensively, a feature also of The Arabian Nights and Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. Several characters in Sirr are the namesakes of characters in these two earlier works as well. The events in The Quantum Thief are also retold at least once by Jean le Flambeur in the course of the events in this novel. == Reception == The novel has received generally positive reviews. However, criticisms of the novel still revolve around Rajaniemi's uncompromising "show, don't tell" style. For example, Amy Goldschlager, writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books, suggested that "[a] bit more explication of the physics involved (“surfing the deficit angle”?) would really be helpful, more helpful than the description of the Schrödinger’s Cat problem given earlier in the book".
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Roborace

Roborace was a competition with autonomously driving, electrically powered vehicles. Founded in 2015 by Denis Sverdlov, it aimed to be the first global championship for autonomous cars. From 2017 to 2019, the official CEO was 2016–17 Formula E champion, Lucas Di Grassi, who later became a member of Roborace’s supervisory board. The series tested their technology and race formats at FIA Formula E Championship events during 2016–2018. In 2019 Roborace organized Season Alpha, which consisted of 4 trial racing events with several independent teams competing against each other for the first time. In 2020–21 Roborace held Season Beta with 7 competing teams. All teams utilized the same chassis and powertrain, but they had to develop their own real-time computing algorithms and artificial intelligence technologies. In May 2022, Arrival, the owner of Roborace, confirmed that they were no longer continuing the Roborace programme, but that they were hoping to find alternative funding. In February 2024, after getting its stock delisted from the Nasdaq, Arrival's UK division entered administration, with future plans of a sale of Arrival and all of its affiliated assets. == Cars == === Robocar === The world's first purpose-built autonomous racing car, Robocar, was designed by Daniel Simon, who previously worked on vehicles for movies such as Tron: Legacy and Oblivion, as well as designing the livery for the 2011 HRT Formula One car. Michelin is the official tyre supplier, and the internal computing processors (Drive PX 2) are Nvidia. The chassis itself is shaped like a teardrop, improving aerodynamic efficiency. The car weighs around 1350 kg and is 4.8 metres (16 ft) long and 2 metres (6.6 ft) wide. It has four electric motors, each with a power of 135 kW producing over 500 hp combined, and utilizes a 840V battery. For navigation, it relies on a mixture of optical systems, radars, lidars and ultrasonic sensors. The vehicle has been demonstrated at speeds of almost 300 km/h (190 mph). === DevBot === Development of the Robocar started in early 2016, with a first outing of a test vehicle, the so-called DevBot, following in the summer of the same year. The test car consisted of the same internal units (battery, motor, electronics) used in the Robocar, but were placed in the chassis of a Ginetta LMP3 car without an engine cover in order to provide better cooling and access. DevBot saw its first public outing at the Formula E pre-season tests in Donington Park in August 2016. After battery issues in Hong Kong caused the development team to abandon their demonstration run, the DevBot successfully drove twelve laps around the Moulay El Hassan Formula E circuit in Marrakesh. Other test tracks included Michelin's testing ground in Ladoux and the Silverstone Stowe Circuit. During testing ahead of the 2017 Buenos Aires ePrix, two DevBot cars raced against each other autonomously, resulting in one of the vehicles crashing on a corner. During the 2017–18 Formula E season, Roborace pitched pro-drifter Ryan Tuerck against a DevBot at the Rome ePrix. At the Berlin ePrix, Roborace held the Human + Machine Challenge, the first race for combined teams of human drivers and AIs using a pair of Devbots. === DevBot 2.0 === An upgraded version of DevBot was announced in late 2018, and after private testing made its public debut in 2019 at the inaugural Season Alpha event. DevBot 2.0 uses the same technology as both Robocar and DevBot, with the main changes being a conversion to being driven on the rear axle only, a lower position for the driver for safety reasons and a bespoke composite bodywork. == Seasons == === Testing === ==== 2016–17 Formula E season ==== Roborace appeared at a number of Formula E events during the 2016–17 Formula E season. However, in this period only test drives with two different DevBots took place. Within the framework of the 2017 Buenos Aires ePrix both DevBot vehicles drove against each other on a race track for the first time. There were also DevBot demonstrations at the 2016 Marrakesh ePrix, 2017 Berlin ePrix, 2017 New York City ePrix and 2017 Montreal ePrix. At the 2017 Paris ePrix, the developers also let a Robocar onto the track for the first time, even though the vehicle only drove the track at walking speed. ==== 2017–18 Formula E season ==== At the start of the 2017/18 Formula E season, the Roborace developers once again tested the DevBot during a public time trial between the Roborace CI and the TV presenter Nicki Shields at the 2017 Hong Kong ePrix. As part of a similar time trial at the 2018 Rome ePrix, drift professional Ryan Tuerck also tested the DevBot. The Human + Machine Challenge was created for the Formula E race on the Berlin ePrix. A team of doctoral students from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the University of Pisa programmed the software for the Devbot to drive autonomously around the circuit in Berlin. Afterwards both teams in combination with a human driver competed in a public time trial. The vehicle of the team of the Technical University of Munich finished the Human + Machine Challenge with an average lap time of 91.59 seconds, almost four seconds faster than that of the University of Pisa with 95.36 seconds and thus won the Challenge. At the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Robocar became the first ever fully autonomous race car to complete the Goodwood Hill Climb. The vehicle completed the first official autonomous run on 13 July 2018 within the framework of the event. === Season Alpha (2019) === Season Alpha took place at various locations in Europe and North America with the aim of testing several competition formats using the new DevBot 2.0. The first event was held at the Circuito Monteblanco in Spain, and featured the first race between two fully autonomous cars. The events were not broadcast live, instead short clips on YouTube were released. Two teams were competing: Arrival and the Technical University of Munich. On 7 July 2019, the Roborace DevBot 2.0 car set the first ever autonomous official timed run at Goodwood Festival of Speed, with a time of 66.96 s and a top speed of 162.8 km/h (101.2 mph). This is currently the record for autonomous vehicles. Roborace also set the Guinness World Record for having the fastest autonomous car in the world. The Robocar reached a speed of 282.42 km/h (175.49 mph). === Season Beta (2020–21) === The second testing season took place at various locations between September 2020 and October 2021, featuring 16 races and involving mixed reality elements dubbed "Roborace Metaverse", which is based on Roborace's patented technology. The program of Season Beta competitions has gradually complicating rules arranged in a progression of so-called missions. Each mission consists of two racing rounds — one round per day. A mission plan issued by Roborace for each mission defines its objectives, rules, and point-scoring system. The key objective of Season Beta is to come to the point when the majority of competing teams have developed sufficient capability for wheel-to-wheel racing in Season 1. There were 7 teams competing in Season Beta: Arrival Racing (UK/Russia), Autonomous Racing Graz (Austria), MIT Driverless (United States), Acronis SIT (Switzerland), University of Pisa (Italy), PoliMOVE (Italy), CMU (United States).
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