How do members of parliament of different political parties discuss ‘science diplomacy’ – broadly speaking all activities at the intersection of science and foreign policy – on the parliamentary... Show moreHow do members of parliament of different political parties discuss ‘science diplomacy’ – broadly speaking all activities at the intersection of science and foreign policy – on the parliamentary floor over time? We address this question against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and analyse 72 speeches on science and Russia from the German and British parliament between February 2014 and December 2022. Our analysis reveals similarities and differences in how science diplomacy is discussed in the German Bundestag and the British House of Commons, how party views on science diplomacy in relation to Russia differ and how said views change over time. In so doing, our study shows that national science and policy ecosystems with their specific institutions and actors shape science diplomacy debates, including in times of war. Show less
Expensive objectives and constraints are key characteristics of real-world multi-objective optimization problems. In practice, they often occur jointly with inexpensive objectives and constraints.... Show moreExpensive objectives and constraints are key characteristics of real-world multi-objective optimization problems. In practice, they often occur jointly with inexpensive objectives and constraints. This paper presents the Inexpensive Objectives and Constraints Self-Adapting Multi-Objective Constraint Optimization algorithm that uses Radial Basis function Approximations (IOC-SAMO-COBRA) for such problems. This is motivated by the recently proposed Inexpensive Constraint Surrogate-Assisted Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (ICSA-NSGA-II). These algorithms and their counterparts that do not explicitly differentiate between expensive and inexpensive objectives and constraints are compared on 22 widely used test functions. The IOC-SAMOCOBRA algorithm finds significantly better (identical/worse) Pareto fronts in at least 78% (6%/16%) of all test problems compared to IC-SA-NSGA-II measured with both the hypervolume and Inverted Generational Distance+ performance metric. The empirical cumulative distribution functions confirm this advantage for both algorithm variants that exploit the inexpensive constraints. In addition, the proposed method is compared against state-of-the-art practices on a real-world cargo vessel design problem. On this 17-dimensional twoobjective practical problem, the proposed IOC-SAMO-COBRA outperforms SA-NSGA-II as well. From an algorithmic perspective, the comparison identifies specific strengths of both approaches and indicates how they should be hybridized to combine their best components. Show less
König, H.M.T.; Bosman, A.W.; Hoos, H.H.; Rijn, J.N. van 2024
