Novelty Search Research Articles

2D NMR barcoding and differential analysis of complex mixtures for chemical identification: the Actaea triterpenes.

The interpretation of NMR spectroscopic information for structure elucidation involves decoding of complex resonance patterns that contain valuable molecular information (δ and J), which is not readily accessible otherwise. We introduce a new concept of 2D-NMR barcoding that uses clusters of fingerprint signals and their spatial relationships in the δ−δ coordinate space to facilitate the chemical identification of complex mixtures. Similar to widely used general barcoding technology, the structural information of individual compounds is encoded as a specifics pattern of their C,H correlation signals. Software-based recognition of these patterns enables the structural identification of the compounds and their discrimination in mixtures. Using the triterpenes from various Actaea (syn. Cimicifuga) species as a test case, heteronuclear multiple-bond correlation (HMBC) barcodes were generated on the basis of their structural subtypes from a statistical investigation of their δH and δC data in the literature. These reference barcodes allowed in silico identification of known triterpenes in enriched fractions obtained from an extract of A. racemosa (black cohosh). After dereplication, a differential analysis of heteronuclear single-quantum correlation (HSQC) spectra even allowed for the discovery of a new triterpene. The 2D barcoding concept has potential application in a natural product discovery project, allowing for the rapid dereplication of known compounds and as a tool in the search for structural novelty within compound classes with established barcodes.

New progresses for science & technology novelty search work in Universities and Colleges and its enlightenment

Combining the two novelty search work workshops with recent published papers on novelty search in Universities and Colleges,new progresses for science & technology (ST) novelty search in Universities and Colleges have been comprehensive summarized,and some enlightenments have been probed into seminar:a new novelty search experience communication mode and fast development of college ST novelty search work to ST novelty search and innovation. Key words: colleges and universities; science and technology novelty search; Seminar

Developing the Museum Experience: Retailing in American Museums 1945–91

Museum shops in America were created immediately after World War II (WWII) from what previously were termed museum sales or information desks. Museum retail occurred as a response to increased museum attendance and consumer spending by Americans in the post-war economy. Distinct changes such as mass consumption, the rise of individualism and cultural pluralism, and the modern consumer’s search for novelty, nostalgia, and later high culture, all affected museum responses to visitor needs and museum shop development. As a result, shops were popular and successful throughout the era even in times of general decline in the national economy. Museums, however, did not focus on shops as revenue generators until the 1980s when public support and governmental funding for museums retracted. The manner in which shops contributed to the total museum experience was an important component of museum development.

Metabolomics for secondary metabolite research.

Metabolomics, the global characterization of metabolite profiles, is becoming an increasingly powerful tool for research on secondary metabolite discovery and production. In this review we discuss examples of recent technological advances and biological applications of metabolomics in the search for chemical novelty and the engineered production of bioactive secondary metabolites.

The Study on Value-Added Information Service Modes Based on the Sci-Tech Novelty Search

The sci-tech novelty search is a kind of information consulting service, based on the manual and computer retrieval, using the method of comprehensive and contrast analysis, providing the objective facts for the novelty and advancement evaluation of research project approval, sci-tech achievement appraisal, patent application, technology consulting and other innovation activities. The sci-tech novelty search institutions have rich information resources, human resources, customer resources and brand resources to carry out innovative value-added information service. In this paper, we select some value-added information service modes which are suitable to carry out by the novelty search institutes, and make the contrastive analysis between traditional novelty search service and innovative value-added information service. Therefore we make some constructive suggestions for the sci-tech novelty search institutions to increase competitive intelligence service, specific information service, intelligence reporting service, and foreign enterprise credit investigation service basing on the traditional novelty search service.

The Study on Hotspot Research Fields of Beijing Municipal Scientific and Technical Innovation - Based on the Statistical Analysis of Novelty Search Projects in 2007-2011

The sci-tech novelty search institutes have accumulated a large number of novelty search commissioned data, processed scientific and technical information, professional novelty search reports and other valuable information. The statistical analysis of the information mentioned above can reflect the characteristics of one regions sci-tech innovation activities from one perspective. In this paper, based on the information of novelty search projects accomplished by Beijing Municipal Institute of Science and Technology Information in 2007-2011, we make statistical analysis on the subjects of the novelty search projects, and obtain four hotspot research fields of Beijing municipal sci-tech innovation in nearly five years: electronic information, new energy and energy efficient, optical mechanical and electronic integration, resource and environment. Then the important research branches in each hotspot research field are figured out. And one typical sci-tech innovation case is given in each hotspot research field. At last, based on the analysis of novelty search projects, the hotspots in four research fields mentioned above are put forward for the researchers to reference and make new breakthrough.

Stratégies de la pseudo-traduction : Mérimée et Musset

Musset and Mérimée made their début on the literary scene through pseudotranslation. Their choice calls for a study of the esthetic value of pseudotranslation during the romantic period and for a better understanding of its status with regards to other genres. For both authors, pseudotranslation functions both as a laboratory and a way to free themselves from the prevailing norms and systems, by translating as much as imitating a foreign literature. Such a manipulation of texts and authorial identity suggests three avenues of research. The search for novelty prevails on the threshold of the 1830s, which is a turning point for romanticism; this quest is underpinned by a desire to affirm the individuality of the author in the face of the “masters” of romanticism; finally, the gesture of pseudo-translation refers to an authorial poetics which is perpetuated in the later works of Musset and Mérimée.

Evolution of swarm robotics systems with novelty search

Novelty search is a recent artificial evolution technique that challenges traditional evolutionary approaches. In novelty search, solutions are rewarded based on their novelty, rather than their quality with respect to a predefined objective. The lack of a predefined objective precludes premature convergence caused by a deceptive fitness function. In this paper, we apply novelty search combined with NEAT to the evolution of neural controllers for homogeneous swarms of robots. Our empirical study is conducted in simulation, and we use a common swarm robotics task—aggregation, and a more challenging task—sharing of an energy recharging station. Our results show that novelty search is unaffected by deception, is notably effective in bootstrapping evolution, can find solutions with lower complexity than fitness-based evolution, and can find a broad diversity of solutions for the same task. Even in non-deceptive setups, novelty search achieves solution qualities similar to those obtained in traditional fitness-based evolution. Our study also encompasses variants of novelty search that work in concert with fitness-based evolution to combine the exploratory character of novelty search with the exploitatory character of objective-based evolution. We show that these variants can further improve the performance of novelty search. Overall, our study shows that novelty search is a promising alternative for the evolution of controllers for robotic swarms.

PowerPlay: Training an Increasingly General Problem Solver by Continually Searching for the Simplest Still Unsolvable Problem

Most of computer science focuses on automatically solving given computational problems. I focus on automatically inventing or discovering problems in a way inspired by the playful behavior of animals and humans, to train a more and more general problem solver from scratch in an unsupervised fashion. Consider the infinite set of all computable descriptions of tasks with possibly computable solutions. Given a general problem-solving architecture, at any given time, the novel algorithmic framework PowerPlay (Schmidhuber, 2011) searches the space of possible pairs of new tasks and modifications of the current problem solver, until it finds a more powerful problem solver that provably solves all previously learned tasks plus the new one, while the unmodified predecessor does not. Newly invented tasks may require to achieve a wow-effect by making previously learned skills more efficient such that they require less time and space. New skills may (partially) re-use previously learned skills. The greedy search of typical PowerPlay variants uses time-optimal program search to order candidate pairs of tasks and solver modifications by their conditional computational (time and space) complexity, given the stored experience so far. The new task and its corresponding task-solving skill are those first found and validated. This biases the search toward pairs that can be described compactly and validated quickly. The computational costs of validating new tasks need not grow with task repertoire size. Standard problem solver architectures of personal computers or neural networks tend to generalize by solving numerous tasks outside the self-invented training set; PowerPlay’s ongoing search for novelty keeps breaking the generalization abilities of its present solver. This is related to Gödel’s sequence of increasingly powerful formal theories based on adding formerly unprovable statements to the axioms without affecting previously provable theorems. The continually increasing repertoire of problem-solving procedures can be exploited by a parallel search for solutions to additional externally posed tasks. PowerPlay may be viewed as a greedy but practical implementation of basic principles of creativity (Schmidhuber, 2006a, 2010). A first experimental analysis can be found in separate papers (Srivastava et al., 2012a,b, 2013).

An examination of different fitness and novelty based selection methods for the evolution of neural networks

It has been suggested recently that it is a reasonable abstraction of evolutionary processes to use evolutionary algorithms that select individuals based on the novelty of their behavior instead of their fitness. Here we study the performance of fitness- and novelty-based search on several neuroevolution tasks. We also propose several new algorithms that select both for fit and for novel individuals, but without weighting these two criteria directly against each other. We find that behavioral speciation, behavioral near neutral speciation, and behavioral novelty speciation perform best on most tasks. Pure novelty search, as well as a number of hybrid methods without speciation mechanism, do not perform well on most tasks. Using behavioral criteria for speciation often yields better results than using genetic criteria.

13th Weurman Flavour Research Symposium, Special Issue Part II The risk of dying of success and the search for real novelty

13^th Weurman Flavour Research Symposium, Special Issue Part II The risk of dying of success and the search for real novelty

Beauty in the brain: for a neuroscience of art

Art renewes itself, but does not progress in the sense in which progressing is defined in science. Both the creation and the appreciation of art are products of the physico-chemical reactions in the brain and, in a more general sense, of the organization of neurons. Evolution of the genome has shaped the transformation of the brain from hominids to Homo sapiens, but the brain of man also evolves epigenetically from birth to adulthood because of its interactions with the environment. Social and cultural factors thus contribute to the evolution and development of the human brain. The post-natal maturation of the brain has an essential role in the appreciation of art: in visual arts, the appreciation process initiates with molecular events in the retina, which transmits information to the thalamus and the cortex, where different areas analyze signals as color, form, spatial organization, depth. Selected brain territories become active when analyzing signals aimed at generating different emotions, the final synthesis being probably made in the frontal cortex or in a more diffuse “Global Neuronal Workspace”. Artistic creation never occurs at random, but follows innate rules: the search for novelty and surprise is constrained by rules which limit the range of options. One important such rule is the quest for the “consensus partium”, i.e. the harmony between the parts of a creation and the whole.

Design and analysis of the scientific technological retrieval management system of TCM

This paper expounds the needs analysis and system design of traditional Chinese medical science and technology of sci-tech novelty search management system,discusses the architecture of the system and each functional module,and summarizes and discusses the meaning of this system when applied in sci-tech novelty search. Key words: Scientific technological retrieval; Traditional Chinese medicine; Management system

Continuity and change in a spin-off venture: the process of reimprinting

Because new entrants very often spin off from established firms, their learning and capabilities are closely linked to their organizational and technological heritage. While this may provide an initial advantage, parental influence can generate inertia and resistance to change, unless the new company is able to unlearn inappropriate practices and create its unique competitive identity. The tension between inheritance and search for novelty is the subject of the article. Building on an in-depth case study of Acorn Computers and ARM semiconductors, we present a model of intergenerational learning and spin-off performance. Early parental influence is followed by intense learning, improvisation and response to feedback from the market. This we term reimprinting, to emphasize the enduring competitive and organizational identity established early on by the spin-off, which in this case provided the basis for disruptive innovation. Focus on the parent–progeny dyad as the unit of analysis can reveal micro-processes that reconstitute past experience to make possible both continuity and innovation in the spin-off venture.

Cardiac vagal tone predicts inhibited attention to fearful faces.

The neurovisceral integration model (Thayer, J. F., & Lane, R. D., 2000, A model of neurovisceral integration in emotion regulation and dysregulation. Journal of Affective Disorders, 61, 201-216. doi:10.1016/S0165-0327(00)00338-4) proposes that individual differences in heart rate variability (HRV)-an index of cardiac vagal tone-are associated with attentional and emotional self-regulation. In this article, we demonstrate that individual differences in resting HRV predict the functioning of the inhibition of return (IOR), an inhibitory attentional mechanism highly adaptive to novelty search, in response to affectively significant face cues. As predicted, participants with lower HRV exhibited a smaller IOR effect to fearful versus neutral face cues than participants with higher HRV, which shows a failure to inhibit attention from affectively significant cues and instigate novelty search. In contrast, participants with higher HRV exhibited similar IOR effects to fearful and neutral face cues, which shows an ability to inhibit attention from cues and instigate novelty search. Their ability to inhibit attention was most pronounced to high spatial frequency fearful face cues, suggesting that this effect may be mediated by cortical mechanisms. The current research demonstrates that individual differences in HRV predict attentional inhibition and suggests that successful inhibition and novelty search may be mediated by cortical inhibitory mechanisms among people with high cardiac vagal tone.

Investigation and analysis of current situation of science and technology novelty search institutes in Shandong Province

In this paper,we surveyed the 26 science and technology (S&T) novelty search institutes in Shandong province,to reveal their literature resource,the personnels,business development,and system construction.We also analyzed the existing problems in novelty search service and suggested corresponding measures. Key words: Science & technology novelty search; Novelty search institutes; Current situation investigation; Shandong

Abandoning Objectives: Evolution Through the Search for Novelty Alone

In evolutionary computation, the fitness function normally measures progress toward an objective in the search space, effectively acting as an objective function. Through deception, such objective functions may actually prevent the objective from being reached. While methods exist to mitigate deception, they leave the underlying pathology untreated: Objective functions themselves may actively misdirect search toward dead ends. This paper proposes an approach to circumventing deception that also yields a new perspective on open-ended evolution. Instead of either explicitly seeking an objective or modeling natural evolution to capture open-endedness, the idea is to simply search for behavioral novelty. Even in an objective-based problem, such novelty search ignores the objective. Because many points in the search space collapse to a single behavior, the search for novelty is often feasible. Furthermore, because there are only so many simple behaviors, the search for novelty leads to increasing complexity. By decoupling open-ended search from artificial life worlds, the search for novelty is applicable to real world problems. Counterintuitively, in the maze navigation and biped walking tasks in this paper, novelty search significantly outperforms objective-based search, suggesting the strange conclusion that some problems are best solved by methods that ignore the objective. The main lesson is the inherent limitation of the objective-based paradigm and the unexploited opportunity to guide search through other means.

To achieve our highest goals, we must be willing to abandon them

Someday computer scientists may build systems of astronomical complexity that provide profound benefit to humanity. However, the question today is how such feats will ultimately be achieved. As is common with technology, present limitations to modern approaches challenge our imagination to search for new paradigms and organizing principles. To examine the prerequisites to achieving our most ambitious objectives, this talk will contemplate the implications of recent counterintuitive results from experiments with evolutionary algorithms that suggest that search (which is a metaphor for innovation in general) is sometimes most effective when it is not explicitly seeking an objective. In particular, through several experiments in interactive evolution and with an algorithm called "novelty search," a picture of innovation is emerging in which objectives can help to guide us one stepping-stone away from our present understanding, yet ultimately become handcuffs that also blind us to essential orthogonal discoveries on the road to long-term innovation. While the implications of these insights for reaching our highest goals are in part sobering, the silver lining is that much can be gained by liberating ourselves from the temptation to frame all our projects in terms of what they ultimately aim to achieve. Instead, with evidence in hand, we can exploit the structure of the unknown by orienting ourselves towards discovery and away from the shackles of mandated outcomes.

Evolving plastic neural networks with novelty search

Biological brains can adapt and learn from past experience. Yet neuroevolution, that is, automatically creating artificial neural networks (ANNs) through evolutionary algorithms, has sometimes focused on static ANNs that cannot change their weights during their lifetime. A profound problem with evolving adaptive systems is that learning to learn is highly deceptive. Because it is easier at first to improve fitness without evolving the ability to learn, evolution is likely to exploit domain-dependent static (i.e., nonadaptive) heuristics. This article analyzes this inherent deceptiveness in a variety of different dynamic, reward-based learning tasks, and proposes a way to escape the deceptive trap of static policies based on the novelty search algorithm. The main idea in novelty search is to abandon objective-based fitness and instead simply search only for novel behavior, which avoids deception entirely. A series of experiments and an in-depth analysis show how behaviors that could potentially serve as a stepping stone to finding adaptive solutions are discovered by novelty search yet are missed by fitness-based search. The conclusion is that novelty search has the potential to foster the emergence of adaptive behavior in reward-based learning tasks, thereby opening a new direction for research in evolving plastic ANNs.

Prior art: To search or not to search

To determine patentability, inventions are evaluated in light of existing prior art. Innovators have a duty to disclose any prior art that they are aware of, but have no obligation to search. We study innovators' incentives to search for prior art, their search intensities and the timing of search. We distinguish between early state of the art search—conducted before R&D investment, and novelty search—conducted right before applying for a patent. We identify conditions in which innovators have no incentive to search for prior art. Search intensity increases with R&D cost, the examiners' expected search effort, and with patenting fees. We also find that innovators prefer to correlate their search technology with that of the patent office. In light of our model, we discuss the implications of some proposed policy reforms.