`The ongoing fragmentation of knowledge and resulting chaos in philosophy
are not reflections of the real world but artifacts of scholarship.'
- E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)

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WELCOME TO ENCORE, THE ELECTRONIC APPENDIX TO

THE HITCH-HIKER'S
GUIDE TO EVOLUTIONARY
COMPUTATION

A MOSTLY USEFUL COMPENDIUM OF 645 FILES ON THE ART OF EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION SUITABLE FOR ALL AGES, PARTICULARLY, BEGINNERS IN THE FIELD, (ALTHOUGH IT HAS BEEN REPORTED TO US THAT EVEN SOME OLD-TIMERS ENJOYED READING IT).

SO, DEAR FELLOW HIKERS, HERE'S YOUR GUIDE,
NO TOWEL, AND SOME FRIENDLY WORDS:

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO LEARN TODAY?^(TM)

We're honored. We're humble. We're amused.

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[Hmm-we're not exactly certain what we have here, maybe we should have asked someone
else to educate our youth? And by the way, who the hell did ask this guy...? -Ed.]

---

PLEASE NOTICE:

THE RECORDING, COPYING, LOAN, UNAUTHORIZED HIRE, PUBLIC SHOWING OR BROADCAST OF THIS DATAGRAM IS STRONGLY ENCOURAGED.

IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT OF ANY PHILOSOPHICAL INTERFERENCE WITH THE CONTENT, LANGUAGE OR STYLE OF PRESENTATION USED IN THIS SERVICE, PLEASE ADJUST YOUR MIND TRACKING CONTROL NOW. THIS WILL, IN MOST CASES, RECTIFY BOTH YOUR VIEWS AND YOUR GUTS.

IF, FOR WHATEVER REASON, YOUR MINDTRACKING DEVICE FAILS, WE RECOMMEND TO PURCHASE A PAIR OF NYET-NYET 2000 PERIL SENSITIVE SUNGLASSES, (NOW IN STORE AT MOST MEGAMARKETS - MANUFACTURED BY SIRIUS CYBERNETICS CORPORATION), BEFORE READING THESE PAGES, AND SUGGEST TO CLICK ON THE PANIC! BUTTON RIGHT NOW...

...IF YOU REALLY WANT TO READ ON (OR JUST CAN'T FIND THE PANIC! BUTTON), WELL, READ ON, RELAX & HAVE FUN.

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`Indeed, the author firmly believes that the best serious work is also good fun.
We needn't apologize if we enjoy doing research.' -Donald E. Knuth

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Frequently Asked Questions...

Table of Contents

• What's ENCORE anyway?
• What are those Sections within ENCORE?
  • Classical Paradigms
  • Other Evolutionary or Genetic Paradigms
  • The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation
  • The Navigator's Handbook to ENCORE
  • Darwin's Classics
  • Miscellaneous
• All EClairs & Clife sites at a Glance?
• How to become an EClair?
• How to get on the Clife side of Life?
• More EC-related World-Wide Web Resources?
  • All related Journals & Int'l Conferences (1985-2000)
  • Research Groups
  • Student's Projects
  • Test Data Servers
• Other Related Resources?
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Artificial Life
  • Biology-related Resources
  • Cellular Automata
  • Fuzzy Systems
  • Neural Networks
  • Nanotechnology
  • Operations Research, Applied Mathematics & Game Theory
  • Other Archives & Online Journals
  • Simulated Annealing & other Physics-inspired methods
  • Art, Games & Videos
  • Commercial Sites
• Who is...?
• Acknowledegments, Credits & all the Fish

What's ENCORE anyway?

1. en. core \'a:n-.ko-(*)r, -.ko.(*)r\ n [F, still, again] : a demand for repetition or reappearance made by an audience; also : a further performance in response to such a demand
2. encore vt : to request an encore of or by

1. enc. ore n : the alternate way to spell : sa.-fier ; also : the living proof for the possible creation of infinite knowledge generators
2. ENCORE n : The EvolutioNary COmputation REpository network ; in part. : a mostly harmless, but mindbogglingly useful network of EClairs and Clife sites for newbies in the field

To explain what all this really means let's start slowly [good -Ed.] with something someone once called the total perspective vortex. This famous vortex is experienced by most hikers, aka students, on their trip across the mind paralysing distance from uninitiatedness to post-PhD wisdom: When they start playing with the accumulated wisdom in the field of their interested, students are endangered to get into a state of mind of total confusion. Douglas Adams has described something like this in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", he called the total perspective vortex, on page 59:

"For when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic little dot, which says `You are here.'"

To prevent you from falling into this vortex, ENCORE will help you to do the following:

• Get to know the frequently asked questions (FAQs) on EC; and their respective answers, presented in a mostly entertaining way.
• Get familiar with all EC paradigms in an unbiased way; possibly in your own native language (at present: German, English, Greek, and Spanish).
• Get "hands-on" experience by using any of the software packages provided.
• Get to know where to look for test data servers, that provide you with problem instances needed for comparative studies.
• Get the latest call for papers (CFPs); job announcements; or other and projects currently en vogue.
• Learn more about the folks who are "in" the field; especially their private side.
• Learn more about other related subjects and research fields.
• Move on to more specialized repositories maintained by research groups with at least a glimpse of what EC is all about...!

So, you really wanna know what the reviewers said about ENCORE?

What are those Sections within ENCORE?

Classical Paradigms

• CFS: Classifier Systems
  • CFS software packages
  • CFS software documentation
  • CFS research papers
  • NetQ: "...probably the lowest-key WWW site, but unique" courtesy by Stewart W. Wilson, and Peter M. Todd.
  • Zeroth-Order Shape Optimization Utilizing A Learning Classifier System courtesy by Robert A. Richards, Stanford University, USA.
• EP: Evolutionary Programming
  • EP software packages
  • EP software documentation
  • EP research papers
• ES: Evolution Strategies
  • ES software packages
  • ES software documentation
  • ES research papers
• GA: Genetic Algorithms
  • GA software packages
  • GA software documentation
  • GA research papers
  • GAs for Production Scheduling: courtesy by Jane Shaw.
  • Matthew's GAlib: A C++ Genetic Algorithms Library courtesy by Matthew Wall.
• GP: Genetic Programming
  • GP software packages
  • GP software documentation
  • GP research papers
  • GP frequently asked questions & answers courtesy by James Rice.
  • The Genetic Programming Notebook: courtesy by Jaime J. Fernandez Jr.
  • The Genetic Programming bibliography: courtesy by Bill Langdon.

Other Evolutionary or Genetic Paradigms

• EA: Evolutionary Algorithms
  • EA software packages Ipd, an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma test suite taken from alt.sources courtesy by Glenn Hutchings.
  • Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma web resources site: This site aims to be a comprehensive repository of informations on the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, and furthermore on the representation, study and knowledge of cooperation (and evolution of cooperation) between agents, by Bruno BEAUFILS. If you have any questions, comments or remarks feel free to send it to prison@lifl.fr
  • EA software documentation
  • EA research papers
  • Differential Evolution strategy courtesy by Rainern Storn.

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation

• FAQ: The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation
  • FAQ ASCII format part1, part2, part3, part4, part5, part6.
  • FAQ PostScript format (107pp, 250K)
  • FAQ HTML/World-Wide Web format Now available at any EClair next to you!
  • FAQ supplements contains extended versions of issues discussed in the FAQ.
  • FAQ fixes contains corrections, news, and a whole bunch of interesting items that pop up in-between the quarterly releases of the FAQ. Much of this stuff might then get into the next release...

The Navigator's Handbook to ENCORE

Darwin's Classics

• On the Origin of Species (1859)
• On the Descent of Man (1879)

Miscellaneous

• Call for papers
• Job, Postdoc, and other announcements
• Collections of bibliographic references
• Master's Thesis or equivalent
• PhD Thesis
• Hard problems to tackle: courtesy by John H. Holland; Andy Keane; etc.
• Fun stuff: "Genetic code uncoded" courtesy by God; "Pogo-sticking nomads of the Himalayas" courtesy by Paul Field; "Make $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 in 90 Days!" courtesy by Sean Luke; and some more...

All EClairs & Clife sites at a Glance?

• The EClair at UUNET Deutschland GmbH, Germany
• The EClair at The Santa Fe Institute, NM, USA
• The EClair at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, HK
• The EClair at The California Institute of Technology, CA, USA
• The EClair at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA
• The EClair at The University of Capetown, South Africa
• The EClair at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
• The EClair at Technical University of Berlin, Germany
• The EClair at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
• The EClair at The University of Oviedo, Spain
• The EClair at Center of Technological Education of Parana, Curitiba, Brazil
• The EClair at The University of Girona, Spain
• The EClair at The University of Birmingham, UK

• The Clife site at The University of Granada, Spain
• The Clife site at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
• The Clife site at The Santa Fe Institute, NM, USA
• The Clife site at UUNET Deutschland GmbH, Dortmund, Germany
• The Clife site at The University of Girona, Spain
• The Clife site at The University of Birmingham, UK
• The Clife site at Ecole Polytechnique, France.

How to become an EClair?

How to get on the Clife side of Life?

More EC-related World-Wide Web Resources?

Research Groups

• The Adaptive Systems Research Group (AS) at The German National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD), Germany.
• Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Project (PM-AI&R Project) at The University of Milano, Italy.
• The Bionik Research Group at Technical University of Berlin, Germany.
• The Complex Systems Program (PSCS) at The University of Michigan, MI, USA.
• The CoSy Group at Institute for Research on Parallel Information Systems of the National Research Council of Italy.
• The Evolutionary Algorithms Group at The University of Edinburgh, UK.
• The Digital Genetics Research Group at The University of Idaho, ID, USA. Where James A. Foster offers his recurrent CS572 course in evolutionary computation.
• The Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems Group in COGS at School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex, UK.
• The Evolutionary Computing Group at University of the West of England, Bristol, UK.
• The Evolving Cellular Automata (EVCA) Group at The Santa Fe Institute, NM, USA.
• The Evolutionary Computation in Control Systems Engineering web in the Automatic Control & Systems Engineering Department at Sheffield University, UK.
• Evolutionary Optimization Research Group at University of Southampton, UK.
• The Genetic Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks (GAiN) group at Leiden University, The Netherlands.
• Group Algorithmics and Foundations of Programming at Leiden University, The Netherlands.
• The Geneura Team at The University of Granada, Spain.
• The GA-List Directory at The Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence (NCARAI), Wash. D.C., USA.
• The Genetic Algorithms Group (GAG) at George Mason University, VA, USA.
• LEARN: Lothian Evolutionary Algorithms Research Network at The University of Edinburgh, UK.
• The Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory (IlliGAL) Directory at The University of Illinois Genetic Algorithms Lab, Room 308A, Transportation Building, IL, USA.
• The nexus for UCL Evolutionary Algorithm Research (nUCLEAR) at University College London, UK.
• SYMPA: Research into Parallel Genetic Algorithms at LGI laboratory, Grenoble, France.
• The Systems Analysis Group alias LS11 alias CASA (Center for Applied Systems Analysis at the ICD) at The University of Dortmund, Germany. (Note the group's FTP server ftp://lumpi.informatik.uni-dortmund.de/pub/.)
• TCGA: The Clearinghouse for Genetic Algorithms at The University of Alabama, AL, USA.

Student's Projects

• The GA Playground: by Ariel Dolan is a general purpose GA toolkit implemented in Java, designed for experimenting with genetic algorithms and handling optimization problems. New problem definition requires only coding of a fitness function and supplying parameters by an Ascii file (similar to Windows ini file). However, the structure of the progarm is very modular and supports overwriting of any GA operator or function, if required. The GA Playground is primarily designed to be used as an application and not as an applet, since it requires re-compiling of at least one function (the fitness function) and the use of local file I/O. In addition, it is a little heavy as an applet. However, although its use as an applet does not enable defining new problems (new fitness functions), it enables extensive playing with many variations of already defined problems. Currently the applet includes TSP problems, Knapsack problems (Both single and multiple), Bin packing problems, Facility allocation problems, Real function optimization, Multi-Modal function optimization.
• GEARS: The Genetic Algorithms Research Students mailing list's archive at UUNET Deutschland GmbH, Dortmund, Germany.
  To subscribe to GEARS send email to: gears-request@research.de.uu.net
• Nova Genetica: A Compendium of useful GA links by Darin R. Molnar, at Portland State University, OR, USA.
• RARS: The Robot Auto Racing Simulation's FTP archive at University of Birmingham, UK.

Test Data Servers

• NetLib run by NetLib.Org at AT&T Research.
• ORlib run by John E. Beasley at Imperial College, London, UK.
  Use e-mail to o.rlibrary@ic.ac.uk to request files. Or go directly to the FTP server ftp://mscmga.ms.ic.ac.uk/pub/
• SoftLib and MIPLib at Rice University, TX, USA.
• TSPlib at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
• SGB: The Stanford Graph Base project by Donald A. Knuth at Stanford University, CA, USA. [The SGB is an exciting new library written in CWEB, that allows for creation of arbitray problem instances of arbitrary types of graphs. SGB is used in the forthcoming 4th volume of "The Art of Computer Programming" that will include chapters on Genetic Algorithms, Simulated Annealing, and other heuristics-based search procedures. For an overview of this project see the 1993 Interview with Knuth. -Ed.]
• Genetic Football web site a hybrid genetic techniques to beat all known heuristics for attacking the NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem of finding ``longest paths'' by Buel Chandler.
• Test Functions for Evolutionary Algortihms a collection by William M. Spears.

Other Related Resources?

Artificial Intelligence

• The CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository at Carnegie Mellon University, PA, USA.
• MLnet: The Machine Learning Archive at Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD), Sankt Augustin, Germany.
• Newsgroup(s): comp.ai, comp.ai.edu, comp.ai.jair.announce, comp.ai.jair

Artificial Life

• MIT Press/Alife Online at The Santa Fe Institute, MN, USA.
• The Avida Artificial Life group headed by Chris Adami at The California Institute of Technology, CA, USA.
• Artificial Life in Germany an overview by Matthias Oliver Berger and Olaf Kubitz at RWTH, Aachen, Germany.
• The Artificial Life FAQ maintained by C. Titus Brown at The California Institute of Technology, CA, USA.
• Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation by Stephen Levy.
• Artificial-Life Simulators and their Applications by Howard Gutowitz. [This is a report written for the French government. It is intended as both a critical overview of the field of Artificial Life and as a resource guide. It contains an extensive bibliography on Alife simulators, autonomous agents, neural nets, genetic algorithms, and the like. FTP and WWW sites are emphasized. There is a list of Alife research groups as well. -hag. [it misses a link to ENCORE, though -Ed.]]
• The Alife library maintained by Patrick Tufts.
• The Live Artificial Life Page by Robert Silverman.
• Where to get a doctorate in Artificial Life or related areas? by Ben Marcotte.
• The Tierra Working Group Report (contains information on the Tierra Network Initiative) maintained by Titus Brown.
• ZOOland "The Artificial Life Resource" maintained by Jörg Heitkötter. (Zooland Europe, & Zooland USA)
• G.R.A.L. The Research Group on Artificial Life at National Research Council, Institute of Psychology, Rome, Italy.
• Newsgroup(s): comp.ai.alife

Biology-related Resources

• The Computational Beauty of Nature by Gary W. Flake, published by MIT Press.
• The Bioinfo Gopher, and the Bioinfo FTP site maintained by Tom Schneider at The National Cancer Institute, MA, USA.
• The BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology
• The Biologie: The Great Biological Addable Link Collection
• A Biologist's Guide to Internet resources written by Una Smith at Yale University, CT, USA.
• L-System Software maintained by Mark S. Hammel at The University of Calgary, CAN.
• The Bioinformatics Server maintained by David G. Greene at Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
• IBM Jena maintained by Institut für Molekulare Bioltechnologie at The University of Jena, Germany.
• Newsgroup(s): sci.bio.evolution, bionet.info-theory, de.sci.biologie

Cellular Automata

• The Cellular Automata FAQ at The Santa Fe Institute, NM, USA.
• Cellular System software by J. Dana Eckart at Radford University, USA.
• The Information Mechanics Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, USA.
• Newsgroup(s): comp.theory.cell-automata, comp.theory.self-org-sys

Fuzzy Systems

• The Fuzzy FAQ at Ohio State University, OH, USA.
• Newsgroup(s): comp.ai.fuzzy

Nanotechnology

• The Foresight Institute in Palo Alto, CA, USA.
• The Institute for Molecular Manufacturingin Palo Alto, CA, USA.
• Nanotechnology FTP site at XEROX Palo Alto Research Center, CA, USA.
  The Feynman Price is awarded on the annual Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology [Who the hell put this in? Do we really need Science Fiction in this decent production? -Ed.]
• The Nanotechnology Papers & sci.nanotech archives at Rutgers University, USA.
• Nanotechnology on the World-Wide Web compiled by Sean Morgan.
• Nanothinc's futuristic webserver has everything related to "tomorrows standards."
• MASS: Molecular Assembly Sequence Software (MASS) by Carol Shaw, written for the Macintosh.
• HotWired has an article that features Nanotechnology for laymen.
• Newsgroup(s): sci.nanotech

Neural Networks

• Neural Processing Letters: NPL is a new rapid publication journal intended to disseminate the latest results in the field of neural processing. The aim of the journal is to rapidly publish new ideas, original developments and work in progress not previously published. New issues of NPL are published each two months since September 1994.
• A User's Guide to Genetic Connectionism at Oxford University, UK.
• The IEEE Neural Networks Council (NNC)
• Newsgroup(s): comp.ai.neural.nets

Operations Research, Applied Mathematics & Game Theory

• The Knot System: Growing availability of advanced genetics computer programs and large lineage linked databases, increases the probability of geneticists having to deal with very complex relationships. This makes a standardized way of communicating such types of blood relationships more and more obligatory. The Knot System is probably the first notation which scientifically correct can document blood relationships of any complexity and of unlimited generation depth, developed by Knud Højrup.
• Game Theory Resources on the Net at University of Arizona, AZ, USA.
• Operations Research Resources World-wide at Carnegie Mellon University, PA, USA.
• Bibliography for Discrete Event Systems Simulation: Optimization and Sensitivity Analysis at University of Baltimore, MD, USA.
• Operations Research Directory
• The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics' (SIAM) Webserver.
• CPLEX Optimization, Inc.'s Webserver.
• Tabu Search & friends at The University of Trento, Italy.
• Global (and Local) Optimization at The University of Vienna, Austria.
• INFORMS Online The ACI is a collection of bibliographic references going back to 1982. It includes references to all papers in ORSA/TIMS journals from 1982-1987 and references from about 150 operations research journals from 1988 through 1993. The papers are indexed to reviews in the International Abstracts in Operations Research journal.
• The Chaos Bibliography maintained by Peter E. Beckmann at The University of Mainz, Germany.
• The Vehicle Routing Problem maintained by Tim Duncan at AI Applications Institute, University of Edinburgh, UK.
• Linear Programming FAQ, and Nonlinear Programming FAQ, maintained by Robert Fourer at the Optimization Technology Center of Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University, USA.
• Newsgroup(s): sci.op-research, sci.math.num-analysis, sci.nonlinear, sci.fractals, comp.constraints

Other Archives & Online Journals

• Artificial Life on the World-Wide Web including the
• Artificial Life Related Newsgroups Archive at The California Institute of Technology, CA, USA. [Two more Good Things created by Titus; the latter has the articles of comp.ai.alife, bionet.info-theory, comp.theory.cell-automata, sci.bio.evolution, comp.ai.genetic, comp.theory.self-org-sys -Ed.]
• Adaptive Behaviour at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in cooperation with MIT Press.
• Artificial Life at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in cooperation with MIT Press.
• BioSystems Journal of Biological and Information Processing Sciences Elsevier Science Publishers, P.O. Box 1527, 1000 BM Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Baldwin Effect Bibliography by Peter Turney, Darrell Whitley, and Russell Anderson.
• Complexity at The Santa Fe Institute, in cooperation with Wiley-Interscience.
• Evolutionary Computation at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in cooperation with MIT Press.
• IEEE Transactions series: Evolutionary Computation, Fuzzy Systems, and Neural Networks.
• JAIR: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in cooperation with Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
• xyz.lanl.gov Nonlinear Science e-Print Archive (nlin-sys) at Los Alamos National Labs., NM, USA.
• xxx.lanl.gov Physics e-Print Archive at Los Alamos National Labs., NM, USA.

Simulated Annealing & other Physics-inspired methods

• The Simulated Annealing Archive maintained by Lester Ingber at The California Institute of Technology, CA, USA.

Art, Games & Videos

• Imogenes by Harley Davis at ILOG S.A., France.
• Genetic Music by Jeffrey Putnam at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, NM, USA.
• The Fractal Music Project by Peter Stone at The University of Stuttgart, Germany.
• Genetic & Annealed MasterMind by JJ Merelo et al. at The University of Granada, Spain.
• Evolved Virtual Creatures (9MB, MPEG) by Karl Sims.
• Avida Vista (6MB, MPEG) by the Avida Artificial Life Group at Caltech.

Commercial Sites

• NLI, New Light Industries, Ltd. 9713 W. Sunset Hwy., Spokane, WA 99204, USA. Tel: (509)456-8321 Fax: (509)456-8351 E-Mail: Roger Wink (rogerw@comtch.iea.com)
• NSL, Natural Selection Inc. 3333 N. Torrey Pines Ct., Suite 200, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. Tel: (619) 455-6449 Fax: (619) 455-1560 E-Mail: nsi@natural-selection.com
• Brightwater Software 3130 Brighton 6th, Suite 5M, Brooklyn, NY 11235, USA. Tel: (718) 646-4989 Fax: (718) 646-7097 E-Mail: sales@brightsoft.com
• Ultragem Ultragem Data Mining, 450 Wildberry Drive, Boulder Creek, CA 95006, USA. Tel: (408) 338-3302 Fax: (408) 338-7503 E-mail: info@ultragem.com
• GPO, Genetic Photo Optimizer DIGITAL ARTS GmbH, Am Braunsacker 110, D-50765 Cologne, GERMANY. Tel: +49 221 95903035 Fax: +49 221 95903031 E-Mail: info@digital-arts.de
• Hanke & Hörner's ActiveX Genetic Programming Control Hanke & Hörner Software, Flemmingg. 13, A-1190 Vienna, Austria Tel: +43-1-4406230 Fax: +43-1-4405602 E-Mail: info@hhsoft.com

Who is...?

• David Ackley at The University of New Mexico, NM, USA.
• Chris Adami at The California Institute of Technology, CA, USA.
• Thomas Bäck at ICD, Dortmund, Germany.
• John E. Beasley at Imperial College, London, UK.
• Theodor C. Belding at University of Michigan, MI, USA.
• Peter Bentley at University College London, UK.
• To Thanh Binh at Otto-von-Guericke-University of Magdeburg, Germany.
• Egbert J.W. Boers at Leiden University, The Netherlands.
• C. Titus Brown at The California Institute of Technology, CA, USA.
• Hugh Cartwright at Oxford University, UK.
• Chan-Jin Chung at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA.
• Trevor Collins at The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.
• Nichael Cramer at BBN, Boston, MA, USA.
• Mark Crosbie at Purdue University, IN, USA.
• Kenneth A. De Jong at George Mason University, VA, USA.
• Marco Dorigo at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
• Ivanoe De Falco at IRSIP - CNR, Italy.
• J. Dana Eckart at Radford University, USA.
• Gusz Eiben at Leiden University, The Netherlands.
• Terry C. Fogarty at Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
• David B. Fogel at Natural Selection, Inc, CA, USA.
• Stephanie Forrest at The University of New Mexico, NM, UK.
• James A. Foster at The University of Idaho, ID, USA.
• Chris Gathercole at The University of Edinburgh, UK.
• Paul H. Ginsparg at Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM, USA.
• David E. Goldberg at The University of Illinois, IL, USA.
• Erik Goodman at Michigan State University, MI, USA.
• Howard Gutowitz at The Santa Fe Institute, NM, USA.
• David D. Greene at The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
• Stephen J. Hartley at Drexel University, PA, USA.
• Jörg Heitkötter at UUNET Deutschland GmbH, Germany.
• Lester Ingber at Lester Ingber Research, VA, USA.
• Robert Keller at The University of Dortmund, Germany.
• Kees van Kemenade at Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• John Koza at Stanford University, CA, USA.
• Frank Kursawe at The University of Dortmund, Germany.
• Willian B. Langdon at The University of Birmingham, UK.
• Chris Langton at The Swarm Corporation, USA.
• David Levine at Math and Comp. Sci. Division Argonne National Laboratory, IL, USA.
• Filippo Menczer at University of Iowa, IO, USA.
• J.J. Merelo Guervos at Granada University, Spain.
• Julian Miller at Napier University, Edinburgh, UK.
• Nelson Minar at The Santa Fe Institute, NM, USA.
• Eric Minch at Stanford University, CA, USA.
• Melanie Mitchell at The Santa Fe Institute, NM, USA.
• Ramin Charles Nakisa at Oxford University, UK.
• Una-May O'Reilly at SFI & Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
• Prasanth Nair at University of Southampton, UK.
• Jan Roland Olsson at University of Oslo, Norway.
• Lutz Prechelt at Karlsruhe University, Germany.
• Jeffrey Putnam at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, NM, USA.
• Justinian Rosca at The University of Rochester, NY, USA.
• Martin Schütz at The University of Dortmund, Germany.
• Alan C. Schultz at NCARAI, Wash. DC, USA.
• Hans-Paul Schwefel at The University of Dortmund, Germany.
• Jane Shaw at University of Sheffield, UK.
• Karl Sims (still) at Thinking Machines Corp., MA, USA.
• Joachim Sprave at The University of Dortmund, Germany.
• Rainer Storn at ICSI Berkeley, CA, USA.
• Marc Schoenauer at Ecole Polytechnique, France.
• Tim Taylor at The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
• Anthony Tang at Hong Kong Telecom, Hong Kong.
• Peter Thomson at Napier University, Edinburgh, UK.
• Andrew Tuson at University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
• Matthew Wall at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, USA.

Acknowledgements, Credits & all the Fish

And of course to (Dr) David Beasley, my virtual friend and companion in my madness (over the past 3 years), who likes to get lost during his trips from A to B, (where A is a city in the United Kingdom and B a city in the Ruhrgebiet, namely Dortmund), for taking over the FAQ work, thus allowing me to create ENCORE and fool around with these new information gathering & presentation technologies. (He also contributed much of the saner parts of the Guide, leaving the insane parts for me, something that I always wanted to thank him for...) And (Dr) JJ Merelo Guervos, ``The Jester's patcher''. Thanx!

The concept behind The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation & ENCORE is a cross, i.e., my own interpretation of the educational concepts developed by scholars like Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Edwin Abbott Abbott, Jean Piaget, Alan Kay, Seymor Papert, Donald Knuth, Gregory Rawlins, and others that focus on individualized, hands-on learning; education by entertainment, or funderstanding and guided discovery of information that's mixed with annotated plays for intellectual refreshment during the journey - but if the things I created can really live up to these concepts is on you to decide; your comments are welcome.

"The overall design of this page owes much to the music I've been listening to, while hackin' the HTML code. Notably U2's Zooropa & some LOUD stuff from the Seattle area, that goes like this... "I'm worse at what I do best and for this gift I feel blessed, I found it hard, it's hard to find, well, whatever, nevermind."

Again, this is for YOU, and to all those oppose!!" ;-)