2003 Awards for Excellence

Citation

(2003), "2003 Awards for Excellence", Kybernetes, Vol. 32 No. 9/10. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2003.06732iaa.005

2003 Awards for Excellence

2003 Awards for Excellence

The Literati Club Awards for Excellence were presented at a ceremony held in London (UK) at the Lord's Cricket Ground on Thursday the 24th April 2003.

The day commenced with an introduction by Emerald (MCB) and was followed by presentations to some of the winners of the awards, and continued in the afternoon with the presentations of the Literati Club awards for excellence. The winners of the 2003 Research Fund Awards were also announced. The Annual Awards Dinner was held in the evening.

The Guest Speaker for the event was Frank Shaw who is a business strategist, process consultant and futurist working with a wide variety of organisations in business, government, the voluntary sector and health. Currently he is the Director-General of the Centre for Future Studies, Chairman of the UK Futurists Network, and formerly a strategic advisor to the Canadian Prime Minister. Amongst the many Awards for Excellence presented by the Literati Club, we are pleased to announce that the following authors of papers published in Kybernetes – The International Journal of Systems and Cybernetics, the acknowledged leading journal in these interdisciplinary fields were the recipients of the awards:

Norbert Wiener Award 2003 (Vol. 31 Nos 1-10, 2002)

Named in memoriam and in recognition of the scientist who is regarded as the originator of the interscientific discipline of cybernetics. 1994 was the official centenary.

Outstanding Paper

"Temporal and simultaneous processing in the brain: a possible cellular basis of cognition"

Uri Fidelman, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, and the Emek Israel College, Israel

Keywords: Cybernetics, Brain, Cognition, Quantum mechanics

AbstractIt is suggested that the left hemispheric neurons and the magnocellular visual system are specialized in tasks requiring a relatively small number of large neurons having a fast reaction time due to a high firing rate or many dendritic synapses of the same neuron which are activated simultaneously. On the other hand of the right hemispheric neurons and the neurons of the parvocellular visual system are specialized in tasks requiring a relatively larger number of short term memory (STM) Hebbian engrams (neural networks). This larger number of engrams is achieved by a combination of two strategies. The first is evolving a larger number of neurons, which may be smaller and have a lower firing rate. The second is evolving longer and more branching axons and thus producing more engrams, including engrams comprising neurons located at cortical areas distant from each other. This model explains why verbal functions of the brain are related to the left hemisphere, and the division of semantic tasks between the left hemisphere and the right one. This explanation is extended to other cognitive functions like visual search, ontological cognition, the detection of temporal order, and the dual cognitive interpretation of the perceived physical phenomena. (Vol. 31 Nos 3/4, 2002, pp. 432-481)

Highly Commended Awards (not in order of merit)

"Productions and rules in artificial intelligence"

V.L. Stefanuk and A.V. Zhozhikashvili

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, Cybernetics, Rules, Systems engineering

AbstractAn analysis of the productions and rules in the way they are used in artificial intelligence systems is presented. The proposed new definition for productions refers to a large number of types of productions which may be found in the literature on AI systems. This definition emphasizes in the most general way those production components which are important both for theory and for practice and which for some reasons remained unnoticed by many researchers. These components are implemented in a theoretical formalism which concludes the paper. (Kybernetes, Vol. 31 No. 6, 2002 pp. 817-826)

"Designing a superstructure for parametric search for optimal search spaces in non-trivial optimization problems"

Ralf Östermark

Keywords: Cybernetics, Parallel computing, Non-linear programming, Computation

AbstractIn the paper we design a super genetic hybrid algorithm (SuperGHA), an integrated optimization system for simultaneous parametric search and nonlinear optimization. The parametric search machine is implemented as a genetic superstructure, producing tentative parameter vectors that control the ultimate optimization process. The family of parameter vectors evolves through ordinary genetic operators aimed at producing the best possible parameterization for the underlying optimization problem. In comparison to traditional genetic algorithms, the integrated superstructure involves a twofold ordering of the population of parameter vectors. The first sorting key is provided by the objective function of the optimization problem at issue. The second key is given by the total mesh time absorbed by the parametric setting. In consequence, SuperGHA is geared at solving an optimization problem, using the best feasible parameterization in terms of optimality and time absorbance. The algorithm combines features from classical nonlinear optimization methodology and evolutionary computation utilizing a powerful accelerator technique. The constrained problem can be cast into multiple representations, supporting the integration of different mathematical programming environments. We show by extensive Monte Carlo simulations that SuperGHA extracts suitable parameter vectors for fast solution of complicated nonlinear programming problems. (Kybernetes, Vol. 31 No. 2, 2002, pp. 255-281)

"Virtual clothing in hybrid cellular automata"

Alexander Tarakanov and Andrew Adamatzky

Keywords: Clothing, Cybernetics, Cellular automata

AbstractAn interactive clothing system is one of the basic components of virtual reality. The clothing is implemented via design of two-dimensional garment panels and putting the panels on an actor in a realistic way. We show how to ease this time consuming task by appealing to a hybrid cellular automaton as a parallel computing device. We draw our approach on a fact that the draping fabric bears a feature of natural parallelism. At a very short time scale behavior of any node point of a fabric depends only on the behavior of its closest neighboring node points. Therefore distant regions of the fabric can be simulated independently. Basing on the problem's natural parallelism we design two-dimensional network of uniform locally connected hybrid automata that execute in parallel a particle model of draping behavior of clothes on a standing mannequin. (Kybernetes, Vol. 31, Nos 7/8, 2002, pp. 1059-1072)

The judging panel for the awards, which had a representative of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics, reported that it was particularly difficult to choose the Awards for Volume 31. It was decided not to include the papers published in the Special Double Issue (Part 1) – "Systems and Cybernetics: new theories and applications" which contained contributions which had already attracted the awards presented by Kybernetes for the outstanding papers given at the 12th WOSC and 4th IIGSS Congress and Workshop held at Pittsburgh (24-26 March 2002). The Judges found that the remaining papers were of a high standard and displayed the level of excellence expected in selected refereed hard-science papers which were published in the journal because of their importance to this interdisciplinary area.

The Editorial Team and the Editorial Advisory Board wish to congratulate the authors of the nominated papers and express their thanks to all the other contributors for maintaining this high standard.

Note: Literati Club – Emerald 60/62 Toller Lane, Bradford BD8 9BY, United Kingdom. Tel: +44(0) 1274 777700; Fax: +44 (0) 1274 785201; E-Mail: literaticlub@emeraldinsight.com; and access web site: www.emeraldinsight.com/literaticlub