Abstract: In any trust model, the two information sources that a peer relies on to predict trustworthiness of another peer are direct experience as well as reputation. These two vital components evolve over time. Trust evolution is an important issue, where the objective is to observe a sequence of past values of a trust parameter and determine the future estimates. Unfortunately, trust evolution algorithms received little attention and the proposed algorithms in the literature do not comply with the conditions and the nature of trust. This paper contributes to this important problem in the following ways: (a) presents an algorithm that manages and models trust evolution in a P2P environment, (b) devises new mechanisms for effectively maintaining trust values based on the conditions that influence trust evolution , and (c) introduces a new methodology for incorporating trust-nurture incentives into the trust evolution algorithm. Simulation experiments are carried out to evaluate our trust evolution algorithm.
Abstract: Aim of this paper is to explore the prospect of a new approach of mobile phone banking in Libya. This study evaluates customer knowledge on commercial mobile banking in Libya. To examine the relationship between age, occupation and intention for using mobile banking for commercial purpose, a survey was conducted to gather information from one hundred Libyan bank clients. The results indicate that Libyan customers have accepted the new technology and they are ready to use it. There is no significant joint relationship between age and occupation found in intention to use mobile banking in Libya. On the other hand, the customers’ knowledge about mobile banking has a greater relationship with the intention. This study has implications for demographic researches and consumer behaviour disciplines. It also has profitable implications for banks and managers in Libya, as it will assist in better understanding of the Libyan consumers and their activities, when they develop their market strategies and new service.
Abstract: Deoxyribonucleic Acid or DNA computing has
emerged as an interdisciplinary field that draws together chemistry,
molecular biology, computer science and mathematics. Thus, in this
paper, the possibility of DNA-based computing to solve an absolute
1-center problem by molecular manipulations is presented. This is
truly the first attempt to solve such a problem by DNA-based
computing approach. Since, part of the procedures involve with
shortest path computation, research works on DNA computing for
shortest path Traveling Salesman Problem, in short, TSP are reviewed.
These approaches are studied and only the appropriate one is adapted
in designing the computation procedures. This DNA-based
computation is designed in such a way that every path is encoded by
oligonucleotides and the path-s length is directly proportional to the
length of oligonucleotides. Using these properties, gel electrophoresis
is performed in order to separate the respective DNA molecules
according to their length. One expectation arise from this paper is that
it is possible to verify the instance absolute 1-center problem using
DNA computing by laboratory experiments.
Abstract: In this paper, we first introduce the new concept of completely semiprime fuzzy ideals of an ordered semigroup S, which is an extension of completely semiprime ideals of ordered semigroup S, and investigate some its related properties. Especially, we characterize an ordered semigroup that is a semilattice of simple ordered semigroups in terms of completely semiprime fuzzy ideals of ordered semigroups. Furthermore, we introduce the notion of semiprime fuzzy ideals of ordered semigroup S and establish the relations between completely semiprime fuzzy ideals and semiprime fuzzy ideals of S. Finally, we give a characterization of prime fuzzy ideals of an ordered semigroup S and show that a nonconstant fuzzy ideal f of an ordered semigroup S is prime if and only if f is twovalued, and max{f(a), f(b)} = inf f((aSb]), ∀a, b ∈ S.
Abstract: In this work we present a solution for DAGC (Digital
Automatic Gain Control) in WLAN receivers compatible to IEEE 802.11a/g standard. Those standards define communication in 5/2.4
GHz band using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing OFDM modulation scheme. WLAN Transceiver that we have used
enables gain control over Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) and a
Variable Gain Amplifier (VGA). The control over those signals is
performed in our digital baseband processor using dedicated hardware block DAGC. DAGC in this process is used to automatically control the VGA and LNA in order to achieve better
signal-to-noise ratio, decrease FER (Frame Error Rate) and hold the
average power of the baseband signal close to the desired set point.
DAGC function in baseband processor is done in few steps: measuring power levels of baseband samples of an RF signal,accumulating the differences between the measured power level and
actual gain setting, adjusting a gain factor of the accumulation, and
applying the adjusted gain factor the baseband values. Based on the measurement results of RSSI signal dependence to input power we have concluded that this digital AGC can be implemented applying
the simple linearization of the RSSI. This solution is very simple but also effective and reduces complexity and power consumption of the
DAGC. This DAGC is implemented and tested both in FPGA and in ASIC as a part of our WLAN baseband processor. Finally, we have integrated this circuit in a compact WLAN PCMCIA board based on MAC and baseband ASIC chips designed from us.
Abstract: Charge Simulation Method (CSM) is one of the very widely used numerical field computation technique in High Voltage (HV) engineering. The high voltage fields of varying non uniformities are encountered in practice. CSM programs being case specific, the simulation accuracies heavily depend on the user (programmers) experience. Here is an effort to understand CSM errors and evolve some guidelines to setup accurate CSM models, relating non uniformities with assignment factors. The results are for the six-point-charge model of sphere-plane gap geometry. Using genetic algorithm (GA) as tool, optimum assignment factors at different non uniformity factors for this model have been evaluated and analyzed. It is shown that the symmetrically placed six-point-charge models can be good enough to set up CSM programs with potential errors less than 0.1% when the field non uniformity factor is greater than 2.64 (field utilization factor less than 52.76%).
Abstract: Bioinformatics methods for predicting the T cell
coreceptor usage from the array of membrane protein of HIV-1 are
investigated. In this study, we aim to propose an effective prediction
method for dealing with the three-class classification problem of
CXCR4 (X4), CCR5 (R5) and CCR5/CXCR4 (R5X4). We made
efforts in investigating the coreceptor prediction problem as follows: 1)
proposing a feature set of informative physicochemical properties
which is cooperated with SVM to achieve high prediction test
accuracy of 81.48%, compared with the existing method with
accuracy of 70.00%; 2) establishing a large up-to-date data set by
increasing the size from 159 to 1225 sequences to verify the proposed
prediction method where the mean test accuracy is 88.59%, and 3)
analyzing the set of 14 informative physicochemical properties to
further understand the characteristics of HIV-1coreceptors.
Abstract: The challenge in the swing-up problem of double
inverted pendulum on a cart (DIPC) is to design a controller that
bring all DIPC's states, especially the joint angles of the two links,
into the region of attraction of the desired equilibrium. This paper
proposes a new method to swing-up DIPC based on a series of restto-
rest maneuvers of the first link about its vertically upright
configuration while holding the cart fixed at the origin. The rest-torest
maneuvers are designed such that each one results in a net gain
in energy of the second link. This results in swing-up of DIPC-s
configuration to the region of attraction of the desired equilibrium. A
three-step algorithm is provided for swing-up control followed by the
stabilization step. Simulation results with a comparison to an
experimental work done in the literature are presented to demonstrate
the efficacy of the approach.
Abstract: This paper proposes a system to extract images from web pages and then detect the skin color regions of these images. As part of the proposed system, using BandObject control, we built a Tool bar named 'Filter Tool Bar (FTB)' by modifying the Pavel Zolnikov implementation. The Yahoo! Team provides us with the Yahoo! SDK API, which also supports image search and is really useful. In the proposed system, we introduced three new methods for extracting images from the web pages (after loading the web page by using the proposed FTB, before loading the web page physically from the localhost, and before loading the web page from any server). These methods overcome the drawback of the regular expressions method for extracting images suggested by Ilan Assayag. The second part of the proposed system is concerned with the detection of the skin color regions of the extracted images. So, we studied two famous skin color detection techniques. The first technique is based on the RGB color space and the second technique is based on YUV and YIQ color spaces. We modified the second technique to overcome the failure of detecting complex image's background by using the saturation parameter to obtain an accurate skin detection results. The performance evaluation of the efficiency of the proposed system in extracting images before and after loading the web page from localhost or any server in terms of the number of extracted images is presented. Finally, the results of comparing the two skin detection techniques in terms of the number of pixels detected are presented.
Abstract: We consider power system expansion planning under
uncertainty. In our approach, integer programming and stochastic
programming provide a basic framework. We develop a multistage
stochastic programming model in which some of the variables are
restricted to integer values. By utilizing the special property of the
problem, called block separable recourse, the problem is transformed
into a two-stage stochastic program with recourse. The electric power
capacity expansion problem is reformulated as the problem with first
stage integer variables and continuous second stage variables. The
L-shaped algorithm to solve the problem is proposed.
Abstract: An important technique in stability theory for
differential equations is known as the direct method of Lyapunov. In
this work we deal global stability properties of Leptospirosis
transmission model by age group in Thailand. First we consider the
data from Division of Epidemiology Ministry of Public Health,
Thailand between 1997-2011. Then we construct the mathematical
model for leptospirosis transmission by eight age groups. The
Lyapunov functions are used for our model which takes the forms of
an Ordinary Differential Equation system. The globally
asymptotically for equilibrium states are analyzed.
Abstract: Most of the Question Answering systems
composed of three main modules: question processing,
document processing and answer processing. Question
processing module plays an important role in QA systems. If
this module doesn't work properly, it will make problems for
other sections. Moreover answer processing module is an
emerging topic in Question Answering, where these systems
are often required to rank and validate candidate answers.
These techniques aiming at finding short and precise answers
are often based on the semantic classification.
This paper discussed about a new model for question
answering which improved two main modules, question
processing and answer processing.
There are two important components which are the bases
of the question processing. First component is question
classification that specifies types of question and answer.
Second one is reformulation which converts the user's
question into an understandable question by QA system in a
specific domain. Answer processing module, consists of
candidate answer filtering, candidate answer ordering
components and also it has a validation section for interacting
with user. This module makes it more suitable to find exact
answer. In this paper we have described question and answer
processing modules with modeling, implementing and
evaluating the system. System implemented in two versions.
Results show that 'Version No.1' gave correct answer to 70%
of questions (30 correct answers to 50 asked questions) and
'version No.2' gave correct answers to 94% of questions (47
correct answers to 50 asked questions).
Abstract: Due to the tremendous amount of information provided
by the World Wide Web (WWW) developing methods for mining
the structure of web-based documents is of considerable interest. In
this paper we present a similarity measure for graphs representing
web-based hypertext structures. Our similarity measure is mainly
based on a novel representation of a graph as linear integer strings,
whose components represent structural properties of the graph. The
similarity of two graphs is then defined as the optimal alignment of
the underlying property strings. In this paper we apply the well known
technique of sequence alignments for solving a novel and challenging
problem: Measuring the structural similarity of generalized trees.
In other words: We first transform our graphs considered as high
dimensional objects in linear structures. Then we derive similarity
values from the alignments of the property strings in order to
measure the structural similarity of generalized trees. Hence, we
transform a graph similarity problem to a string similarity problem for
developing a efficient graph similarity measure. We demonstrate that
our similarity measure captures important structural information by
applying it to two different test sets consisting of graphs representing
web-based document structures.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a new method to describe fractal shapes using parametric l-systems. First we introduce scaling factors in the production rules of the parametric l-systems grammars. Then we decorticate these grammars with scaling factors using turtle algebra to show the mathematical relation between l-systems and iterated function systems (IFS). We demonstrate that with specific values of the scaling factors, we find the exact relationship established by Prusinkiewicz and Hammel between l-systems and IFS.
Abstract: In the current context of globalization, a large number of companies sought to develop as a group in order to reach to other markets or meet the necessary criteria for listing on a stock exchange. The issue of consolidated financial statements prepared by a parent, an investor or a venture and the financial reporting standards guiding them therefore becomes even more important. The aim of our paper is to expose this issue in a consistent manner, first by summarizing the international accounting and financial reporting standards applicable before the 1st of January 2013 and considering the role of the crisis in shaping the standard setting process, and secondly by analyzing the newly issued/modified standards and main changes being brought
Abstract: In this article, the flow behavior around a NACA 0012 airfoil which is oscillating with different Reynolds numbers and in various amplitudes has been investigated numerically. Numerical simulations have been performed with ANSYS software. First, the 2- D geometry has been studied in different Reynolds numbers and angles of attack with various numerical methods in its static condition. This analysis was to choose the best turbulent model and comparing the grids to have the optimum one for dynamic simulations. Because the analysis was to study the blades of wind turbines, the Reynolds numbers were not arbitrary. They were in the range of 9.71e5 to 22.65e5. The angle of attack was in the range of -41.81° to 41.81°. By choosing the forward wind speed as the independent parameter, the others like Reynolds and the amplitude of the oscillation would be known automatically. The results show that the SST turbulent model is the best choice that leads the least numerical error with respect the experimental ones. Also, a dynamic stall phenomenon is more probable at lower wind speeds in which the lift force is less.
Abstract: The structural interpretation of a part of eastern Potwar
(Missa Keswal) has been carried out with available seismological,
seismic and well data. Seismological data contains both the source
parameters and fault plane solution (FPS) parameters and seismic data
contains ten seismic lines that were re-interpreted by using well data.
Structural interpretation depicts two broad types of fault sets namely,
thrust and back thrust faults. These faults together give rise to pop up
structures in the study area and also responsible for many structural
traps and seismicity. Seismic interpretation includes time and depth
contour maps of Chorgali Formation while seismological interpretation
includes focal mechanism solution (FMS), depth, frequency,
magnitude bar graphs and renewal of Seismotectonic map. The Focal
Mechanism Solutions (FMS) that surrounds the study area are
correlated with the different geological and structural maps of the area
for the determination of the nature of subsurface faults. Results of
structural interpretation from both seismic and seismological data
show good correlation. It is hoped that the present work will help in
better understanding of the variations in the subsurface structure and
can be a useful tool for earthquake prediction, planning of oil field and
reservoir monitoring.
Abstract: In neural networks, when new patterns are learned by a network, the new information radically interferes with previously stored patterns. This drawback is called catastrophic forgetting or catastrophic interference. In this paper, we propose a biologically inspired neural network model which overcomes this problem. The proposed model consists of two distinct networks: one is a Hopfield type of chaotic associative memory and the other is a multilayer neural network. We consider that these networks correspond to the hippocampus and the neocortex of the brain, respectively. Information given is firstly stored in the hippocampal network with fast learning algorithm. Then the stored information is recalled by chaotic behavior of each neuron in the hippocampal network. Finally, it is consolidated in the neocortical network by using pseudopatterns. Computer simulation results show that the proposed model has much better ability to avoid catastrophic forgetting in comparison with conventional models.
Abstract: In this paper we propose a segmentation system for unconstrained Arabic online handwriting. An essential problem addressed by analytical-based word recognition system. The system is composed of two-stages the first is a newly special designed hidden Markov model (HMM) and the second is a rules based stage. In our system, handwritten words are broken up into characters by simultaneous segmentation-recognition using HMMs of unique design trained using online features most of which are novel. The HMM output characters boundaries represent the proposed segmentation points (PSP) which are then validated by rules-based post stage without any contextual information help to solve different segmentation errors. The HMM has been designed and tested using a self collected dataset (OHASD) [1]. Most errors cases are cured and remarkable segmentation enhancement is achieved. Very promising word and character segmentation rates are obtained regarding the unconstrained Arabic handwriting difficulty and not using context help.
Abstract: When the shock front (SF) hits the central electrode
axis of plasma focus device, a reflected shock wave moves radially
outwards. The current sheath (CS) results from ionization of filled
gas between two electrodes continues to compress inwards until it
hits the out-going reflected shock front. In this paper the Lagrangian
equations are solved for a parabolic shock trajectory yielding a first
and second approximation for the CS path. To determine the
accuracy of the approximation, the same problem is solved for a
straight shock.