Heterogeneous Multi-Population Cultural Algorithm (HMP-CA) is a new class of Multi-Population Cultural Algorithms which incorporates a number of local Cultural Algorithms (CAs) designed to optimize different subsets of the dimensions of a given problem. In this article, various dimension decomposition techniques for HMP-CAs are proposed and compared. The concept of using a dimension decompositi...

At this critical historical juncture of environmental degradation, awareness of needed cultural change, and an emerging sustainability movement, attention to “reenchantment”—the phenomena of sensory, emotional, and nonrational ways of connecting with the earth’s living systems—strengthens our professional understanding as educators as well as our ability to contribute to institutional change. R...

The cultural internalization and competence of a diverse sample of tricultural university students was assessed. Based on recent research on the internalization of cultural norms, it was predicted that (a) having a heritage culture that embraced egalitarian values would be conducive to autonomous internalization and cultural competence, (b) competence and internalization would be associated wit...

Our program compares French and Italian translations of Homer’s Odyssey, from the XVIth to the XXth century. We focus on the third point, showing how distributional semantics systems can be used both to improve alignment between different French translations as well as between the Greek text and a French translation. Although we focus on French examples, the techniques we display are completely...

This paper outlines 10 lessons derived from the development of a consumer-directed care program for families with disabled children in Melbourne, Australia. The following program elements proved to be of importance over the course of the development process: (1) research participants should be involved as early as possible; (2) an open, inclusive communication style in conjunction with a good u...

This article examines how ordinary victims of racism rebut racist beliefs communicated to them by the mass media and encountered in daily life. We describe the rhetorical devices that North African immigrant men in France use to respond to French racism, drawing on thirty in-depth interviews conducted with randomly selected blue-collar immigrants residing in the Paris suburbs. We argue that whi...

Optimization problems arise in many real-world applications. Cultural Algorithms are a class of computational models derived from observing the cultural evolution process in nature, compared with genetic algorithm the cultural algorithms have high convergence speed. Aiming at the disadvantages of basic cultural algorithms like being trapped easily into a local optimum, this paper improves the b...

Our previous work on real-valued function optimization problems had shown that cultural learning emerged as the result of meta-level interaction or swarming of knowledge sources, “knowledge swarms” in the belief space. These meta-level swarms induced the swarming of individuals in the population space, “Cultural Swarms”. The interaction of these knowledge sources produced emergent phases of pro...