Search

Federated Learning is a collaborative machine learning paradigm that allows training models on decentralized data while preserving data privacy. It has gained significant attention due to its potential applications in various domains. However, the issue of protecting model copyright in the Federated Learning setting has become a critical concern. In this paper, we propose a novel watermarking framework called FedCRMW (Federal Learning Compression-Resistance Model Watermark) to address the challenge of model copyright protection in Federated Learning. FedCRMW embeds unique watermarks into client-contributed models, ensuring ownership, integrity, and authenticity. The framework leverages client-specific identifiers and exclusive logos to construct trigger sets for watermark embedding, enhancing security and traceability. One of the key advantages of FedCRMW is its optimization for the common data compression challenge in the Federated Learning scenario. By utilizing compressed data inputs for copyright verification, we achieve an efficient watermark validation process and reduce communication and storage overheads. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of FedCRMW in terms of watermark success rate, imperceptibility, robustness against attacks, and resistance to model compression and pruning. Compared to existing watermarking methods, FedCRMW exhibits superior performance in the Federated Learning context. • FedCRMW: Robust watermarking for Federated Learning models. • Novel trigger dataset construction scheme for watermarking. • Enhanced robustness with feature-consistent training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Formulate the Multi-level threshold image segmentation as a MaOPs. • Using the KnEA algorithm to find the threshold values for the given image. • Using seven functions to evaluate the quality of each solution. • Compare the proposed KnEA method with other four MaOP algorithms. • The performance of KnEA is better than other MaOPs in locating threshold values. Abstract Image segmentation is one of the popular tasks in image processing that can be used in several applications. For that, there are several methods have been proposed for image segmentation; in which, these methods aim to minimize or maximize single objective (SO) function to find the optimal threshold to separate the image into the optimal number of regions. While a few of the image segmentation methods consider multi-objective functions which aim to find the optimal solutions that can reduce the conflict among the different objectives. However, these methods have some limitations as decreasing their performance when the number of objectives is increasing. Due to increasing the number of non-dominated solutions, so, there isn't pressure towards the Pareto front. Therefore, this paper proposes an alternative image segmentation method using many-objective optimization (MaOP) algorithms considering seven objective functions. One of the most competitive MaOPs is called the Knee Evolutionary Algorithm (KnEA) which used to find the set of Pareto optimal solutions for seven objective functions to improve the image segmentation. The proposed KnEA is evaluated using a set of six images tested at six different levels of threshold, and its performance is compared with other MaOP methods. The experimental results show that the KnEA method has a better approximation to the optimal Pareto fronts (PFs) than the other MaOPs method in terms of the quality of the segmented image such as the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), the structural similarity index (SSIM), and the computational time. As well as, the quality of PFs is measuring using the hypervolume, coverage and spacing indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Bacterial cell division occurs in conjunction with the formation of a cytokinetic Z-ring structure comprised of FtsZ subunits. Agents that can disrupt Z-ring formation have the potential, through this unique mechanism, to be effective against several of the newly emerging multi-drug resistant strains of infectious bacteria. 1- and 12-Aryl substituted benzo[c]phenanthridines have been identified as antibacterial agents that could exert their activity by disruption of Z-ring formation. Substituted 4- and 5-amino-1-phenylnaphthalenes represent substructures within the pharmacophore of these benzo[c]phenanthridines. Several 4- and 5-substituted 1-phenylnaphthalenes were synthesized and evaluated for antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecalis. The impact of select compounds on the polymerization dynamics of S. aureus FtsZ was also assessed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Berberine is a substituted dibenzo[a,g]quinolizin-7-ium derivative whose modest antibiotic activity is derived from its disruptive impact on the function of the essential bacterial cell division protein FtsZ. The present study reveals that the presence of a biphenyl substituent at either the 2- or 12-position of structurally-related dibenzo[a,g]quinolizin-7-ium derivatives significantly enhances antibacterial potency versus Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecalis. Studies with purified S. aureus FtsZ demonstrate that both 2- and 12-biphenyl dibenzo[a,g]quinolizin-7-ium derivatives act as enhancers of FtsZ self-polymerization. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Short-term combined economic emission hydrothermal scheduling (CEES) is a bi-objective problem: (i) minimizing fuel cost and (ii) minimizing pollutant emission. In this paper, quadratic approximation based differential evolution with valuable trade off approach (QADEVT) has been developed to solve the bi-objective hydrothermal scheduling problem. The practical hydrothermal system possesses various constraints which make the problem of finding global optimum difficult. In this paper, heuristic rules are proposed to handle the water dynamic balance constraints and heuristic strategies based on priority list are employed to handle active power balance constraints. A feasibility-based selection technique is also introduced to satisfy the reservoir storage volumes constraints. To demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach, simulation results have been compared with those obtained by differential evolution (DE) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) with same heuristic strategies and the earlier reported methods available in literature. The simulation results reveal that the proposed approach is capable of efficiently providing superior solutions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents an improved quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization (IQPSO) for short-term combined economic emission hydrothermal scheduling, which is formulated as a bi-objective problem: (i) minimizing fuel cost and (ii) minimizing emission cost. In this paper, quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization is improved employing heuristic strategies in order to handle the equality constraints especially water dynamic balance constraints and active power balance constraints. A feasibility-based selection technique is also devised to handle the reservoir storage volumes constraints. To show feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method, different case studies, such as economic load scheduling (ELS), economic emission scheduling (EES) and combined economic emission scheduling (CEES) in hydrothermal scheduling, are carried out and the test results are compared with those of other methods reported in the literature. It is also very important to note that the proposed method is capable of yielding higher-quality solutions while strictly satisfying all constraints of the test system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents a modified quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization (QPSO) for short-term combined economic emission scheduling (CEES) of hydrothermal power systems with several equality and inequality constraints. The hydrothermal scheduling is formulated as a bi-objective problem: (i) minimizing fuel cost and (ii) minimizing pollutant emission. The bi-objective problem is converted into a single objective one by price penalty factor. The proposed method, denoted as QPSO-DM, combines the QPSO algorithm with differential mutation operation to enhance the global search ability. In this study, heuristic strategies are proposed to handle the equality constraints especially water dynamic balance constraints and active power balance constraints. A feasibility-based selection technique is also employed to meet the reservoir storage volumes constraints. To show the efficiency of the proposed method, different case studies are carried out and QPSO-DM is compared with the differential evolution (DE), the particle swarm optimization (PSO) with same heuristic strategies in terms of the solution quality, robustness and convergence property. The simulation results show that the proposed method is capable of yielding higher-quality solutions stably and efficiently in the short-term hydrothermal scheduling than any other tested optimization algorithms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Synthesis and SAR of substituted pyrrolotriazine-4-one analogues as Eg5 inhibitors are described. Many of these analogues displayed potent inhibitory activities in the Eg5 ATPase and A2780 cell proliferation assays. In addition, pyrrolotriazine-4-one analogue 26 demonstrated in vivo efficacy in an iv P388 murine leukemia model. Both NMR and X-ray crystallographic studies revealed that these analogues bind to an allosteric site on the Eg5 protein. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Apply a modified whale optimization algorithm as multi-level image segmentation. • Memory mechanism and multi-leader are used to enhance exploration ability of WOA. • Self-learning strategy and levy flight are applied to avoid premature convergence. • Using Otsu, Kapur entropy, and Fuzzy entropy as fitness functions to assess agents. • Experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms other methods. In this paper, a multilevel thresholding image segmentation method base on the enhancement of the performance of the whale optimization algorithm (WOA). The developed method, called the multi-leader whale optimization algorithm (MLWOA), aims to avoid the limitations of traditional WOA during the searching process, such as stagnation at the local optimum. This was achieved by integrating the different tools with WOA, such as memory mechanism, multi-leader method, self-learning strategy, and levy flight method. Each of these techniques has its own task, for example, the memory structure of traditional WOA and add a multi-leader mechanism to enhance the ability of exploration. The superiority of leaders will make more influence in MLWOA by adding a self-learning strategy. Also, it used levy flight trajectory to make the algorithm more robust and avoid premature convergence. To evaluate the performance of the developed MLWOA, a set of experiments are conducted using the CEC2017 benchmark. In addition, it is applied to determine the optimal threshold values to segment a set of images using the Otsu method, fuzzy entropy, and Kapur's entropy as a fitness function. The results of MLWOA are compared with well-known meta-heuristic algorithms inside the experiments. The comparison results indicated that MLWOA provides better performance in CEC2017 benchmark functions and shows high superiority in image segmentation in terms of performance measures. In addition, the MLWOA provides better results using Otsu, followed by the Fuzzy entropy and Kapur in terms of PSNR. In terms of SSIM, fuzzy entropy and Otsu have nearly the same SSIM value, but the fuzzy entropy provides better results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments were made by Ali Esmaeel Nezhad and Abdollah Ahmadi on a publication by S. Lu, et al. on hydrothermal scheduling. In real world, the hydro schedule in [Energy Convers. Manage. 51 (2010) 561–571] is also a possible solution. But the power produced by some hydro unit may not reflect the real world value. The mathematic model should be amended to obey real hydrothermal schedule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an improved version of the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) is proposed to improve the exploration and the exploitation ability of the GWO algorithm. This improvement is performed through using the chaotic logistic map, the Opposition-Based Learning (OBL), the differential evolution(DE), and the disruption operator (DO). Where, the chaotic logistic map and the OBL are used to initialize the candidate solutions and these approaches avoid the drawbacks of the random population and increase the convergence of the algorithm. Then, the DE operators are combined with the GWO algorithm, in which, the DE operators work as a local search mechanism to improve the exploitation ability of the GWO through updating the population. Also, after updating the solutions by using a hybrid between the GWO and the DE, the DO is used to enhance the exploration ability, in which, the DO is used to maintain the diversity of the population. Therefore, the combinations with chaotic logistic map, OBL, DE, and DO, provide the GWO with tools to better balance between the exploration and the exploitation of the search space without affecting the computational time required for this task. The proposed algorithm, called COGWO2D, is compared with other seven algorithms through a set of experimental series that have been performed over two benchmark functions, the classical CEC2005, and the CEC2014. Also, the performance of the proposed algorithm to improve the classification of the galaxy images is evaluated, where it is used as a feature selection method. The aim of this experiment is to select the optimal subset of features from the extracted features of the galaxy images. The experimental results support the efficacy of the proposed approach to find the optimal solutions of the global optimization problem, as well as, increase the accuracy of the classification of the galaxy images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Developing a new paradigm for the feature selection problem based on the hyperheuristic methodology. • Configuring the combination of the components in to automatically find the most pertinent features for each dataset. • Evaluating the performance of the proposed technique using a comprehensive set of eighteen datasets. • Comparing the results of the best FS combination with the other well-known FS methods. Feature selection (FS) is a crucial step for effective data mining since it has largest effect on improving the performance of classifiers. This is achieved by removing the irrelevant features and using only the relevant features. Many metaheuristic approaches exist in the literature in attempt to address this problem. The performance of these approaches differ based on the settings of a number of factors including the use of chaotic maps, opposition-based learning (OBL) and the percentage of the population that OBL will be applied to, the metaheuristic (MH) algorithm adopted, the classifier utilized, and the threshold value used to convert real solutions to binary ones. However, it is not an easy task to identify the best settings for these different components in order to determine the relevant features for a specific dataset. Moreover, running extensive experiments to fine tune these settings for each and every dataset will consume considerable time. In order to mitigate this important issue, a hyper-heuristic based FS paradigm is proposed. In the proposed model, a two-stage approach is adopted to identify the best combination of these components. In the first stage, referred to as the training stage , the Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm is used as a controller for selecting the best combination of components to be used by the second stage. In the second stage, referred to as the testing stage , the received combination will be evaluated using a testing set. Empirical evaluation of the proposed framework is based on numerous experiments performed on the most popular 18 datasets from the UCI machine learning repository. Experimental results illustrates that the generated generic configuration provides a better performance than eight other metaheuristic algorithms over all performance measures when applied to the UCI dataset. Moreover, The overall paradigm ranks at number one when compared against state-of-the-art algorithms. Finally, the generic configuration provides a very competitive performance for high dimensional datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

N-Aryl aminothiazoles 6–9 were prepared from 2-bromothiazole 5 and found to be CDK inhibitors. In cells they act as potent cytotoxic agents. Selectivity for CDK1, CDK2, and CDK4 was dependent of the nature of the N-aryl group and distinct from the CDK2 selective N-acyl analogues. The N-2-pyridyl analogues 7 and 19 showed pan CDK inhibitory activity. Elaborated analogues 19 and 23 exhibited anticancer activity in mice against P388 murine leukemia. The solid-state structure of 7 bound to CDK2 shows a similar binding mode to the N-acyl analogues. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Developed a global optimization approach using cooperative meta-heuristic methods. • The proposed method inspired from the natural selection theory. • DE, GWO, WOA, SSA, SCA, and SOS are used to build the proposed method. • Three variants of proposed are developed based on strategy of updating solutions. • Results of proposed method compared with other methods using CEC2014 and CEC2017. This paper presents an alternative global optimization meta-heuristics (MHs) approach, inspired by the natural selection theory. The proposed approach depends on the competition among six MHs that allows generating an offspring, which can breed the high characteristics of parents since they are unique and competitive. Therefore, this leads to improve the convergence of the solutions towards an optimal solution and also, to avoid the limitations of other methods that aim to balance between exploitation and exploration. The six algorithms are differential evolution, whale optimization algorithm, grey wolf optimization, symbiotic organisms search algorithm, sine–cosine algorithm, and salp swarm algorithm. According to these algorithms, three variants of the proposed method are developed, in the first variant, one of the six algorithms will be used to update the current individual based on a predefined order and the probability of the fitness function for each individual. Whereas, the second variant updates each individual by permuting the six algorithms, then using the algorithms in the current permutation to update individuals. The third variant is considered as an extension of the second variant, which updates all individuals using only one algorithm from the six algorithms. Three different experiments are carried out using CEC 2014 and CEC 2017 benchmark functions to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed approach. Moreover, the proposed approach is compared with well known MH methods, including the six methods used to build it. Comparison results confirmed the efficiency of the proposed approach compared to other approaches according to different performance measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A novel enhanced MPA algorithm has been proposed for effective PV modelling. • Static and dynamic PV model parameters have been estimated. • The estimated parameters have been validated via experimental data-sets. • The statistical analysis has been performed for effectiveness of the EMPA method. • The results confirm the EMPA efficiency comparing with state-of-the-art algorithms. Providing an accurate and precise photovoltaic model is a vital stage prior to the system design, therefore, this paper proposes a novel algorithm, enhanced marine predators algorithm (EMPA), to identify the unknown parameters for different photovoltaic (PV) models including the static PV models (single-diode and double-diode) and dynamic PV model. In the proposed EMPA, the differential evolution operator (DE) is incorporated into the original marine predators algorithm (MPA) to achieve stable, and reliable performance while handling that nonlinear optimization problem of PV modeling. Three different real datasets are used to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. In the first case study, the proposed algorithm is used to identify the unknown parameters of a single-diode and double-diode PV models. The root-mean-square error (RMSE) and standard deviation (STD) values for a single-diode are 7.7301 e - 04 and 5.9135 e - 07 . Similarly for double diode are 7.4396 e - 04 and 3.1849 e - 05 , respectively. In addition, the second case study is used to test the proposed model in identifying the unknown parameters of a double-diode PV model. Here, the proposed algorithm is compared with classical MPA in five scenarios at different operating conditions. In this case study, the RMSE and STD of the proposed algorithm are less than that obtained by the MPA algorithm. Moreover, the third case study is utilized to test the ability of the proposed model in identifying the parameters of a dynamic PV model. In this case study, the performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with the one obtained by MAP and heterogeneous comprehensive learning particle swarm optimization (HCLPSO) algorithms in terms of RMSE ± STD. The obtained value of RMSE ± STD by the proposed algorithm is 0.0084505 ± 1.0971 e - 17 , which is too small compared with that obtained by MPA and HCLPSO algorithms (0.0084505 ± 9.6235 e - 14 and 0.0084505 ± 2.5235 e - 9). The results show the proposed model's superiority over the MPA and other recent proposed algorithms in data fitting, convergence rate, stability, and consistency. Therefore, the proposed algorithm can be considered as a fast, feasible, and a reliable optimization algorithm to identify the unknown parameters in static and dynamic PV models. The code of the dynamic PV models is available via this link: https://github.com/DAyousri/Identifying-the-parameters-of-the-integer-and-fractional-order-dynamic-PV-models?_ga=2.104793926.732834951.1616028563-1268395487.1616028563. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]