Validation is a process that determines the fitness of an assay, which has been properly developed, 6 optimised and standardised, for an intended purpose. Validation 8 includes estimates of the analytical and diagnostic performance 10 characteristics of a test. In the context of this chapter, an assay that 12 has completed the first three stages of the validation pathway (see 14 Figure 1 below)...

A family of problems for which the solution is a fixed size set is studied, using fitness functions with varying degrees of epistasis. An empirical comparison between a traditional crossover operator with a binary representation and a penalty function, and the representationindependent Random Assorting Recombination Operator (RAR) is performed. RAR is found to perform marginally better in all c...

We analyze the dynamics of evolutionary games in which fitness is defined as an affine function of the expected payoff and a constant contribution. The resulting inhomogeneous replicator equation has an homogeneous equivalent with modified payoffs. The affine terms also influence the stochastic dynamics of a two-strategy Moran model of a finite population. We then apply the affine fitness funct...

The Taylor-Frank method for making kin selection models when fitness is a nonlinear function of a continuous phenotype requires this function to be differentiable. This assumption sometimes fails for biologically important fitness functions, for instance in microbial data and the theory of repeated n-person games, even when fitness functions are smooth and continuous. In these cases, the Taylor...

Diversity in a population is often cited as a major facilitator for the evolution of new complex features. The intuition behind this dynamic is that if a population is exploring multiple regions of a fitness landscape, more opportunities exist to find new functionality. We use the digital evolution software platform Avida to explore the effect of multiple limited resources on phenotypic Shannon...

This study analyzes the quality and the size of the strategic network of higher education institutions. The study analyses the concept of fitness for purpose in quality assurance. It also analyses the transaction costs of networking that have consequences on the number of members in the network. Empirical evidence is presented of the Consortium on Applied Research and Professional Education, wh...

The advancement of chip-based technology has enabled the measurement of millions of DNA sequence variations across the human genome. Experiments revealed that high-order, but not individual, interactions of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are responsible for complex diseases such as cancer. The challenge of genome-wide association studies (GWASs) is to sift through high-dimensional datas...

This paper describes a domain-independent approach to the use of genetic programming for object detection problems in which the locations of small objects of multiple classes in large images must be found. The evolved program is scanned over the large images to locate the objects of interest. The paper develops three terminal sets based on domain-independent pixel statistics and considers two d...

We present the system SIGEL that combines the simulation and visualization of robots with a Genetic Programming system for the automated evolution of walking. It is designed to automatically generate control programs for arbitrary robots without depending on detailed analytical information of the robots’ kinematic structure. Different fitness functions as well as a variety of parameters allow t...

A diallelic two-locus model is investigated in which the loci determine the genotypic value of a quantitative trait additively. Fitness has two components: stabilizing selection on the trait and a frequency-dependent component, as induced for instance if the ability to utilize different food resources depends on this trait. Since intraspecific competition induces disruptive selection, this mode...