In this paper an ant colony system (ACS) with communication strategies is developed. The artificial ants are partitioned into several groups. Seven communication methods for updating the pheromone level between groups in ACS are proposed and work on the traveling salesman problem using our system is presented. Experimental results based on three well-known traveling salesman data sets demonstra...

-In this article two different optimization algorithms are presented to solve the deficiency of ant colony algorithm such as slow convergence rate and easy to fall into local optimum. This method based on Max-Min Ant System, established an adaptive model for pheromone evaporation coefficient adjusted adaptively and avoided the ants falling into local optimum. At the same time, this optimization...

Community-based development has been criticized for its inadequate understanding of power relationships at the local level, which thus leaves room for elite capture. This paper compares and contrasts two case studies, both of which take power seriously in their institutional designs. The solar home system in Bangladesh, represents the ‘counter-elite’ approach and explicitly excludes local elite...

Ant-based algorithms are successful tools for solving complex problems. One of these problems is the Linear Ordering Problem (LOP). The paper shows new results on some LOP instances, using Ant Colony System (ACS) and the StepBack Sensitive Ant Model (SB-SAM).

After years of strict bans on the media, local radio in post-Taliban Afghanistan is undergoing an intense period of reconstruction. This thesis uses a multi-sited ethnographic investigation to examine local Afghan radio's various relationships with women in Afghanistan. In examining both the production and consumption contexts of local radio, it pinpoints areas of disjuncture that can and do le...

Is the Norwegian welfare state model under pressure? In this article we argue that this model will persist to the extent that there is a relatively strong consensus among the majority of the national elites to support it. The empirical results presented indicate that the majority of the Norwegian elites at the time of the study (2000) supported the basic institutions and policies in the model a...

The maintenance scheduling of thermal generators is a large-scale combinatorial optimization problem with constraints. In this paper we introduce the Rank-Based Ant System algorithm based version of the Ant System. This algorithm reinforces local search in neighborhood of the best solution found in each iteration while implementing methods to slow convergence and facilitate exploration.Rank-Bas...