From: Michael Neumann <mneumann@...>
Date: 2008-03-21T00:41:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Google Summer of Code 2008?

RaL wrote:
> I want to create a project devoted to Neural Networks. Would Ruby
> Central be interested to support me and this project for Google Summer
> of Code?
> 
> Right now, there are two gems with a Neural Network support -
> http://ai4r.rubyforge.org/ � http://ruby-fann.rubyforge.org/. But both
> of them implement only one learning algorithm - back-propagation (and
> accordingly to that fact only one type of Neural Network - multilayer
> perceptron) - also they don't have ability to choose different
> activation functions for different layers and so you can't even build
> Radial Basis Function Network with those gems. They don't have a built-
> in interface to use even widespread learning strategies (e.g., begin
> learning with a high learning rate and then switch to a low learning
> rate after approaching some threshold).

If you are also interested in pulsed (or spiking) neural nets, take a 
look at Yinspire [1], which is a fast simulator I am developing at my 
university using Ruby and C++ (using Cplus2Ruby).

Regards,

   Michael

[1]: http://www.ntecs.de/projects/yinspire/