GECCO 2006



AIS Session




Title: Properties of the Bersini Experiment on Self-Assertion

Author: Werner Dilger, Steve Strangfeld

Abstract: The approach of H. Bersini to shape-spaces and in particular his definition of affinity are analysed. It is shown that the definition of the affinity function in Bersini style implies a special form of an affinity region, namely a rhombus. However, variants of the function can be defined with rectangular or square but rotated affinity regions. In all cases, the affinity function has the form of a pyramid over the affinity region. The definition of the affinity function can be modified in such a way that it describes a lopsided pyramid. Experimental results with a reimplementation of Bersini's simulation procedure show that the form of the affinity region has a strong influence on the form of the recognition/tolerance separation of the shape-space.



Title: Applicability Issues of the Real-Valued Negative Selection Algorithms

Author: Zhou Ji, Dipankar Dasgupta

Abstract: The paper examines various applicability issues of the negative selection algorithms (NSA). Recently, concerns were raised on the use of NSAs, especially those using real-valued representation. In this paper, we argued that many reported issues are either due to improper usage of the method or general difficulties which are not specific to negative selection algorithms. On the contrary, the experiments with synthetic data and well-known real-world data show that NSAs have great flexibility to balance between efficiency and robustness, and to accommodate domain-oriented elements in the method, e.g. various distance measures. It is to be noted that all methods are not suitable for all datasets and data representation plays a major role.



Title: A Retrovirus Inspired Algorithm for Virus Detection & Optimization

Author: Kenneth S Edge, Gary B Lamont, Richard A Raines

Abstract: In the search for a robust and efficient algorithm to be used for computer virus detection, we have developed an artificial immune system genetic algorithm (REALGO) based on the human immune system's use of reverse transcription ribonucleic acid (RNA). The REALGO algorithm provides memory such that during a complex search the algorithm can revert back to and attempt to mutate in a different "direction" in order to escape local minima. In lieu of non-existing virus generic templates, validation is addressed by using an appropriate variety of function optimizations with landscapes believed to be similar to that ofvirus detection. It is empirically shown that the REALGO algorithm finds "better" solutions than other evolutionary strategies in four out of eight test functions and finds equally "good" solutions in the remaining four optimization problems.



Title: Immune Anomaly Detection Enhanced with Evolutionary Paradigms

Author: Marek Ostaszewski, Franciszek Seredynski, Pascal Bouvry

Abstract: The paper presents an approach based on principles of immune systems to the anomaly detection problem. Flexibility and efficiency of the anomaly detection system are achieved by building a model of network behavior based on the selfnonself space paradigm. Covering both self and nonself spaces by hyperrectangular structures is proposed. Structures corresponding to self-space are built using a training set from this space. Hyperrectangular detectors covering nonself space are created using niching genetic algorithm. A coevolutionary algorithm is proposed to enhance this process. Results of experiments show a high quality of intrusion detection, which outperform the quality of recently proposed approach based on hypersphere representation of self-space.



Poster Session




Title: An Artificial Immune System and its Integration into an Organic Middleware for Self-Protection

Author: Andreas Pietzowski, Benjamin Satzger, Wolfgang Trumler, Theo Ungerer

Abstract: Our human body is well protected by antibodies from our biological immune system. This protection system matured over millions of years and has proven its functionality. In our research we are transfering techniques of a biological immune system to a computer based environment in order to design a self-protecting middleware which isn't vulnerable to malicious events. First off this paper proposes an artificial immune system (AIS) and evaluates optimal parameter settings. As the first research we show up the correlation between the size of a system and the length of the receptors used within antibodies for an efficient detection. Further on we describe the integration of the immune system into our organic middleware AMUN and afterwards we propose optimization techniques to minimize the memory space needed for storing the antibodies and to speedup the time needed for detecting malicious objects.



Title: A Dynamic Approach to Artificial Immune Systems utilizing Neural Networks

Author: Stefan Schadwinkel, Werner Dilger

Abstract: The purpose of this work is to propose an immune-inspired setup to use a self-organizing map as a computational model for the interaction of antigens and antibodies. The proposed approach may be used as a part in other immune algorithms, or can possibly be used to detect anomalies in time series data.



Other Sessions




Title: A Comparative Study of Immune System Based Genetic Algorithms in Dynamic Environments

Author: Shengxiang Yang

Abstract: Diversity and memory are two major mechanisms used in biology to keep the adaptability of organisms in the everchanging environment in nature. These mechanisms can be integrated into genetic algorithms to enhance their performance for problem optimization in dynamic environments. This paper investigates several GAs inspired by the ideas of biological immune system and transformation schemes for dynamic optimization problems. An aligned transformation operator is proposed and combined to the immune system based genetic algorithm to deal with dynamic environments. Using a series of systematically constructed dynamic test problems, experiments are carried out to compare several immune system based genetic algorithms, including the proposed one, and two standard genetic algorithms enhanced with memory and random immigrants respectively. The experimental results validate the efficiency of the proposed aligned transformation and corresponding immune system based genetic algorithm in dynamic environments.