Irregular Warfare (IW), with its emphasis on social and cognitive phenomena such as population sentiment, is a major new focus of the Department of Defense (DoD). One of the most important classes of IW action is Information Operations (IO), the use of information to influence sentiment. With the DoD’s new focus on IW comes the new need to analyze and forecast the effects of IO actions on population sentiment. Analysts at the DoD traditionally use Modeling and Simulation to analyze and forecast the effects of conventional warfare’s actions on the outcome of wars, but IW and IO in particular are far more complex than conventional physics-based simulations. DoD analysts are in the early stages of looking for scientifically rigorous methods in the Modeling and Simulation of IO’s complex effects. This paper presents the state of IO modeling and simulation in the DoD, using examples from several computer models now being used, in these early stages of IW analysis. It discusses how the ideas of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and threshold events in particular may be incorporated into IO modeling in order to increase its scientific rigor, fidelity, and validity.

We consider directed graphs over a set of n agents, where an edge (i,j) is taken to mean that agent i supports or trusts agent j. Given such a graph and an integer k\leq n, we wish to select a subset of k agents that maximizes the sum of indegrees, i.e., a subset of k most popular or most trusted agents. At the same time we assume that each individual agent is only interested in being selected, and may misreport its outgoing edges to this end. This problem formulation captures realistic scenarios where agents choose among themselves, which can be found in the context of Internet search, social networks like Twitter, or reputation systems like Epinions. Our goal is to design mechanisms without payments that map each graph to a k-subset of agents to be selected and satisfy the following two constraints: strategyproofness, i.e., agents cannot benefit from misreporting their outgoing edges, and approximate optimality, i.e., the sum of indegrees of the selected subset of agents is always close to optimal. Our first main result is a surprising impossibility: for k \in {1,...,n-1}, no deterministic strategyproof mechanism can provide a finite approximation ratio. Our second main result is a randomized strategyproof mechanism with an approximation ratio that is bounded from above by four for any value of k, and approaches one as k grows.

Biologically inspired computing is an area of computer science which uses the advantageous properties of biological systems. It is the amalgamation of computational intelligence and collective intelligence. Biologically inspired mechanisms have already proved successful in achieving major advances in a wide range of problems in computing and communication systems. The consortium of bio-inspired computing are artificial neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, swarm intelligence, artificial immune systems, fractal geometry, DNA computing and quantum computing, etc. This article gives an introduction to swarm intelligence.

This paper deals with computational approaches to storytelling, or the production of stories by computers, with a particular attention on the way human creativity is modelled or emulated, also in computational terms. Features relevant to creativity and to stories are analysed, and existing systems are reviewed under the light of that analysis.The extent to which they implement the key features proposed in recent models of computational creativity is discussed. Limitations, avenues of future research and expected trends are outlined.

The major function of this model is to access the UCI Wisconsin Breast Can- cer data-set[1] and classify the data items into two categories, which are normal and anomalous. This kind of classifi cation can be referred as anomaly detection, which discriminates anomalous behaviour from normal behaviour in computer systems. One popular solution for anomaly detection is Artifi cial Immune Sys- tems (AIS). AIS are adaptive systems inspired by theoretical immunology and observed immune functions, principles and models which are applied to prob- lem solving. The Dendritic Cell Algorithm (DCA)[2] is an AIS algorithm that is developed specifi cally for anomaly detection. It has been successfully applied to intrusion detection in computer security. It is believed that agent-based mod- elling is an ideal approach for implementing AIS, as intelligent agents could be the perfect representations of immune entities in AIS. This model evaluates the feasibility of re-implementing the DCA in an agent-based simulation environ- ment called AnyLogic, where the immune entities in the DCA are represented by intelligent agents. If this model can be successfully implemented, it makes it possible to implement more complicated and adaptive AIS models in the agent-based simulation environment.

This paper proposes the application of particle swarm optimization (PSO) to the problem of finite element model (FEM) selection. This problem arises when a choice of the best model for a system has to be made from set of competing models, each developed a priori from engineering judgment. PSO is a population-based stochastic search algorithm inspired by the behaviour of biological entities in nature when they are foraging for resources. Each potentially correct model is represented as a particle that exhibits both individualistic and group behaviour. Each particle moves within the model search space looking for the best solution by updating the parameters values that define it. The most important step in the particle swarm algorithm is the method of representing models which should take into account the number, location and variables of parameters to be updated. One example structural system is used to show the applicability of PSO in finding an optimal FEM. An optimal model is defined as the model that has the least number of updated parameters and has the smallest parameter variable variation from the mean material properties. Two different objective functions are used to compare performance of the PSO algorithm.

We discuss here the mean-field theory for a cellular automata model of meta-learning. The meta-learning is the process of combining outcomes of individual learning procedures in order to determine the final decision with higher accuracy than any single learning method. Our method is constructed from an ensemble of interacting, learning agents, that acquire and process incoming information using various types, or different versions of machine learning algorithms. The abstract learning space, where all agents are located, is constructed here using a fully connected model that couples all agents with random strength values. The cellular automata network simulates the higher level integration of information acquired from the independent learning trials. The final classification of incoming input data is therefore defined as the stationary state of the meta-learning system using simple majority rule, yet the minority clusters that share opposite classification outcome can be observed in the system. Therefore, the probability of selecting proper class for a given input data, can be estimated even without the prior knowledge of its affiliation. The fuzzy logic can be easily introduced into the system, even if learning agents are build from simple binary classification machine learning algorithms by calculating the percentage of agreeing agents.

In Probabilistic Risk Management, risk is characterized by two quantities: the magnitude (or severity) of the adverse consequences that can potentially result from the given activity or action, and by the likelihood of occurrence of the given adverse consequences. But a risk seldom exists in isolation: chain of consequences must be examined, as the outcome of one risk can increase the likelihood of other risks. Systemic theory must complement classic PRM. Indeed these chains are composed of many different elements, all of which may have a critical importance at many different levels. Furthermore, when urban catastrophes are envisioned, space and time constraints are key determinants of the workings and dynamics of these chains of catastrophes: models must include a correct spatial topology of the studied risk. Finally, literature insists on the importance small events can have on the risk on a greater scale: urban risks management models belong to self-organized criticality theory. We chose multiagent systems to incorporate this property in our model: the behavior of an agent can transform the dynamics of important groups of them.

We present here an introduction to Brainstorming approach, that was recently proposed as a consensus meta-learning technique, and used in several practical applications in bioinformatics and chemoinformatics. The consensus learning denotes heterogeneous theoretical classification method, where one trains an ensemble of machine learning algorithms using different types of input training data representations. In the second step all solutions are gathered and the consensus is build between them. Therefore no early solution, given even by a generally low performing algorithm, is not discarder until the late phase of prediction, when the final conclusion is drawn by comparing different machine learning models. This final phase, i.e. consensus learning, is trying to balance the generality of solution and the overall performance of trained model.

The Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle selects the model that has the shortest code for data plus model. We show that for a countable class of models, MDL predictions are close to the true distribution in a strong sense. The result is completely general. No independence, ergodicity, stationarity, identifiability, or other assumption on the model class need to be made. More formally, we show that for any countable class of models, the distributions selected by MDL (or MAP) asymptotically predict (merge with) the true measure in the class in total variation distance. Implications for non-i.i.d. domains like time-series forecasting, discriminative learning, and reinforcement learning are discussed.