We propose an embedded/integrated feature selection method based on neural networks with Group Lasso penalty. Group Lasso regularization is considered to produce sparsity on the inputs to the network, i.e., for selection of useful features. Lasso based feature selection using a multi-layer perceptron usually requires an additional set of weights, while our Group Lasso formulation does not require that. However, Group Lasso penalty is non-differentiable at the origin. This may lead to oscillations in numerical simulations and make it difficult to analyze theoretically. To address this issue, four smoothing Group Lasso penalties are introduced. A rigorous proof for the convergence of the proposed algorithm is presented under suitable assumptions. To verify the effectiveness, a three-step algorithmic architecture is adopted in implementation. Experimental results on several datasets validate the theoretical results and demonstrate the competitive performance of the proposed method.

Evolutionary multitasking (EMT) is a newly emerging research topic in the community of evolutionary computation, which aims to improve the convergence characteristic across multiple distinct optimization tasks simultaneously by triggering knowledge transfer among them. Unfortunately, most of the existing EMT algorithms are only capable of boosting the optimization performance for homogeneous problems which explicitly share the same (or similar) fitness landscapes. Seldom efforts have been devoted to generalize the EMT for solving heterogeneous problems. A few preliminary studies employ domain adaptation techniques to enhance the transferability between two distinct tasks. However, almost all of these methods encounter a severe issue which is the so-called degradation of intertask mapping. Keeping this in mind, a novel rank loss function for acquiring a superior intertask mapping is proposed in this article. In particular, with an evolutionary-path-based representation model for optimization instance, an analytical solution of affine transformation for bridging the gap between two distinct problems is mathematically derived from the proposed rank loss function. It is worth mentioning that the proposed mapping-based transferability enhancement technique can be seamlessly embedded into an EMT paradigm. Finally, the efficacy of our proposed method against several state-of-the-art EMTs is verified experimentally on a number of synthetic multitasking and many-tasking benchmark problems, as well as a practical case study.

Sparse multiobjective optimization problems (MOPs) have become increasingly important in many applications in recent years, e.g., the search for lightweight deep neural networks and high-dimensional feature selection. However, little attention has been paid to sparse large-scale MOPs, whose Pareto-optimal sets are sparse, i.e., with many decision variables equal to zero. To address this issue, this article proposes an enhanced competitive swarm optimization algorithm assisted by a strongly convex sparse operator (SCSparse). A tricompetition mechanism is introduced into competitive swarm optimization, aiming to strike a better balance between exploration and exploitation. In addition, the SCSparse is embedded in the position updating of the particles to generate sparse solutions. Our simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on both sparse test problems and application examples.