The combination of local search heuristics and genetic algorithms is a promising approach for finding nearoptimum solutions to the traveling salesman problem (TSP). In this paper, an approach is presented in which local search techniques are used to find local optima in a given TSP search space, and genetic algorithms are used to search the space of local optima in order to find the global optimum. New genetic operators for realizing the proposed approach are described, and the quality and efficiency of the solutions obtained for a set of symmetric and asymmetric TSP instances are discussed. The results indicate that it is possible to arrive at high quality solutions in reasonable time. I. Introduction In the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) [18], [27], a number of cities with distances between them is given and the task is to find the minimum--length closed tour that visits each city once and returns to its starting point. A symmetric TSP (STSP) is one where the distance between any...

The combination of Evolutionary algorithms with local search was named "Memetic Algorithms" (MAs) in [1]. These methods are inspired by models of natural systems that combine the evolutionary adaptation of a population with individual learning within the lifetimes of its members. Additionally, MAs are inspired by Richard Dawkin's concept of a meme, which represents a unit of cultural evolution that can exhibit local refinement [2]. In the case of MAs "memes" refer to the strategies (e.g. local refinement, perturbation or constructive methods, etc) that are employed to improve individuals. In this paper we review some works on the application of MAs to well known combinatorial optimisation problems, and place them in a framework defined by a general syntactic model. This model provides us with a classification scheme based on a computable index D, which facilitates algorithmic comparisons and suggests areas for future research. Also, by having an abstract model for this class of meta-heuristics it is possible to explore their design space and better understand their behaviour from a theoretical standpoint. We illustrate the theoretical and practical relevance of this model and taxonomy for MAs in the context of a discussion of important design issues that must be addressed to produce effective and efficient Memetic Algorithms.

In this paper, a greedy heuristic and two local search algorithms, 1-opt local search and k-opt local search, are proposed for the unconstrained binary quadratic programming problem (BQP). These heuristics are well suited for the incorporation into meta-heuristics such as evolutionary algorithms. Their performance is compared for 115 problem instances. All methods are capable of producing high quality solutions in short time. In particular, the greedy heuristic is able to find near optimum solutions a few percent below the bestknown solutions, and the local search procedures are sufficient to find the best-known solutions of all problem instances with n 100. The k-opt local searches even find the best-known solutions for all problems of size n 250 and for 11 out of 15 instances of size n = 500 in all runs. For larger problems (n = 500; 1000; 2500), the heuristics appear to be capable of finding near optimum solutions quickly. Therefore, the proposed heuristics - especially t...

This paper presents a real-coded memetic algorithm that applies a crossover hillclimbing to solutions produced by the genetic operators. On the one hand, the memetic algorithm provides global search (reliability) by means of the promotion of high levels of population diversity. On the other, the crossover hill-climbing exploits the selfadaptive capacity of real-parameter crossover operators with the aim of producing an effective local tuning on the solutions (accuracy). An important aspect of the memetic algorithm proposed is that it adaptively assigns different local search probabilities to individuals. It was observed that the algorithm adjusts the global/local search balance according to the particularities of each problem instance. Experimental results show that, for a wide range of problems, the method we propose here consistently outperforms other real-coded memetic algorithms which appeared in the literature.

this paper, the tness landscapes of several instances of the traveling salesman problem (TSP) are investigated to illustrate why MAs are well-suited for nding near-optimum tours for the TSP. It is shown that recombination{based MAs can exploit the correlation structure of the landscape. A comparison of several recombination operators { including a new generic recombination operator { reveals that when using the sophisticated Lin{Kernighan local search, the performance dierence of the MAs is small. However, the most important property of eective recombination operators is shown to be respectfulness. In experiments it is shown that our MAs with generic recombination are among the best evolutionary algorithms for the TSP. In particular, optimum solutions could be found up to a problem size of 3795, and for large instances up to 85,900 cities, near-optimum solutions could be found in a reasonable amount of time

With the invention of high throughput methods, researchers are capable of producing large amounts of biological data. During the analysis of such data the need of a functional grouping of genes arises. In this paper, we propose a new clustering algorithm for the partition of genes or gene products according to their known biological function based on Gene Ontology terms. Ontologies offer a mechanism to capture knowledge in a shareable form that is also processable by computers. Our functional cluster algorithm promises to automatize, speed up and therefore improve biological data analysis.

In this paper we describe the application of a so called "Self-Generating" Memetic Algorithm to the Maximum Contact Map Overlap problem (MAX-CMO). The maximum overlap of contact maps is emerging as a leading modeling technique to obtain structural alignment among pairs of protein structures. Identifying structural alignments (and hence similarity among proteins) is essential to the correct assessment of the relation between proteins structure and function. A robust methodology for structural comparison could have impact on the process of rational drug design.

A vast number of very successful applications of Global-Local Search Hybrids have been reported in the literature in the last years for a wide range of problem domains. The majority of these papers report the combination of highly specialized pre-existing local searchers and usually purpose-speci c global operators (e.g. genetic operators in an Evolutionary Algorithm).

This paper presents a memetic algorithm, a highly eective evolutionary algorithm incorporating local search for solving the unconstrained binary quadratic programming problem (BQP). To justify the approach, a tness landscape analysis is conducted experimentally for several instances of the BQP. The results of the analysis show that recombination-based variation operators are well suited for the evolutionary algorithms with local search. Therefore, the proposed approach includes | besides a highly eective randomized k-opt local search | a new variation operator that has been tailored specially for the application in the hybrid evolutionary framework. The operator is called innovative variation and is fundamentally dierent from traditional crossover operators, since new genetic material is included in the ospring which is not contained in one of the parents.

Microarrays have become a key technology in experimental molecular biology. They allow a monitoring of gene expression for more than ten thousand genes in parallel producing huge amounts of data. In the exploration of...