Rosshairy Abd Rahman

Shrimp Feed Formulation via Evolutionary Algorithm with Power Heuristics for Handling Constraints

Formulating feed for shrimps represents a challenge to farmers and industry partners. Most previous studies selected from only a small number of ingredients due to cost pressures, even though hundreds of potential ingredients could be used in the shrimp feed mix. Even with a limited number of ingredients, the best combination of the most appropriate ingredients is still difficult to obtain due to various constraint requirements, such as nutrition value and cost. This paper proposes a new operator which we call Power Heuristics, as part of an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA), which acts as a constraint handling technique for the shrimp feed or diet formulation. The operator is able to choose and discard certain ingredients by utilising a specialized search mechanism. The aim is to achieve the most appropriate combination of ingredients. Power Heuristics are embedded in the EA at the early stage of a semirandom initialization procedure. The resulting combination of ingredients, after fulfilling all the necessary constraints, shows that this operator is useful in discarding inappropriate ingredients when a crucial constraint is violated.

Power heuristics for handling constraint in evolutionary algorithms

The focus of our study is to propose a new constraint handling technique for real value encoding problem, specifically on the animal diet problem. This new proposed technique is a modification of mutation operator known as Power Mutation. This technique named as Power Heuristics is able to choose a better combination of feed ingredients based on certain performance. As the intention is to cater for strictness of nutrient and ingredients restriction, the Power Heuristics is introduced at the initial stage of the main methodology. The result shows that this technique is useful to remove inappropriate ingredients when an important constraint is violated.

An Assignment Problem and Its Application in Education Domain: A Review and Potential Path

This paper presents a review pertaining to assignment problem within the education domain, besides looking into the applications of the present research trend, developments, and publications. Assignment problem arises in diverse situations, where one needs to determine an optimal way to assign subjects to subjects in the best possible way. With that, this paper classified assignment problems into two, which are timetabling problem and allocation problem. The timetabling problem is further classified into examination, course, and school timetabling problems, while the allocation problem is divided into student-project allocation, new student allocation, and space allocation problems. Furthermore, the constraints, which are of hard and soft constraints, involved in the said problems are briefly elaborated. In addition, this paper presents various approaches to address various types of assignment problem. Moreover, direction and potential paths of problem solving based on the latest trend of approaches are also highlighted. As such, this review summarizes and records a comprehensive survey regarding assignment problem within education domain, which enhances one’s understanding concerning the varied types of assignment problems, along with various approaches that serve as solution.

Identifying and prioritizing the preference criteria using analytical hierarchical process for a student-lecturer allocation problem of internship programme

This paper discusses on identifying and prioritizing the student’s preference criteria towards supervisor using Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) for student-lecturer allocation problem of internship programme. Typically a wide number of students undertake internship every semester and many preferences criteria may involve when assigning students to lecturer for supervision. Thus, identifying and prioritizing the preference criteria of assigning students to lecturer is critically needed especially when involving many preferences. AHP technique is used to prioritize the seven criteria which are capacity, specialization, academic position, availability, professional support, relationship and gender. Student’s preference alternative is classified based on lecturer’s academic position which are lecturer, senior lecturer, associate professor and professor. Criteria are ranked to find the best preference criteria and alternatives of the supervisor that students prefer to have. This problem is solved using E...

Evolutionary Algorithm with Roulette-Tournament Selection for Solving Aquaculture Diet Formulation

The function of operators in an evolutionary algorithm (EA) is very crucial as the operators have a strong effect on the performance of the EA. In this paper, a new selection operator is introduced for a real valued encoding problem, which specifically exists in a shrimp diet formulation problem. This newly developed selection operator is a hybrid between two well-known established selection operators: roulette wheel and binary tournament selection. A comparison of the performance of the proposed operator and the other existing operator was made for evaluation purposes. The result shows that the proposed roulette-tournament selection is better in terms of its ability to provide many good feasible solutions when a population size of 30 is used. Thus, the proposed roulette-tournament is suitable and comparable to established selection for solving a real valued shrimp diet formulation problem. The selection operator can also be generalized to any problems related to EA.