Abstract: Cognitive models allow predicting some aspects of utility
and usability of human machine interfaces (HMI), and simulating
the interaction with these interfaces. The action of predicting is based
on a task analysis, which investigates what a user is required to do
in terms of actions and cognitive processes to achieve a task. Task
analysis facilitates the understanding of the system-s functionalities.
Cognitive models are part of the analytical approaches, that do not
associate the users during the development process of the interface.
This article presents a study about the evaluation of a human
machine interaction with a contextual assistant-s interface using ACTR
and GOMS cognitive models. The present work shows how these
techniques may be applied in the evaluation of HMI, design and
research by emphasizing firstly the task analysis and secondly the
time execution of the task. In order to validate and support our
results, an experimental study of user performance is conducted at
the DOMUS laboratory, during the interaction with the contextual
assistant-s interface. The results of our models show that the GOMS
and ACT-R models give good and excellent predictions respectively
of users performance at the task level, as well as the object level.
Therefore, the simulated results are very close to the results obtained
in the experimental study.
Abstract: This paper focuses on sovereign credit risk meaning a
hot topic related to the current Eurozone crisis. In the light of the
recent financial crisis, market perception of the creditworthiness of
individual sovereigns has changed significantly. Before the outbreak
of the financial crisis, market participants did not differentiate
between credit risk born by individual states despite different levels
of public indebtedness. In the proceeding of the financial crisis, the
market participants became aware of the worsening fiscal situation in
the European countries and started to discriminate among
government issuers. Concerns about the increasing sovereign risk
were reflected in surging sovereign risk premium. The main of this
paper is to shed light on the characteristics of the sovereign risk with
the special attention paid to the mutual relation between credit spread
and the CDS premium as the main measures of the sovereign risk
premium.
Abstract: This paper aims to develop a NOx emission model of
an acid gas incinerator using Nelder-Mead least squares support
vector regression (LS-SVR). Malaysia DOE is actively imposing the
Clean Air Regulation to mandate the installation of analytical
instrumentation known as Continuous Emission Monitoring System
(CEMS) to report emission level online to DOE . As a hardware
based analyzer, CEMS is expensive, maintenance intensive and often
unreliable. Therefore, software predictive technique is often
preferred and considered as a feasible alternative to replace the
CEMS for regulatory compliance. The LS-SVR model is built based
on the emissions from an acid gas incinerator that operates in a LNG
Complex. Simulated Annealing (SA) is first used to determine the
initial hyperparameters which are then further optimized based on the
performance of the model using Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm.
The LS-SVR model is shown to outperform a benchmark model
based on backpropagation neural networks (BPNN) in both training
and testing data.
Abstract: A challenging problem in radar signal processing is to
achieve reliable target detection in the presence of interferences. In
this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for automatic censoring of
radar interfering targets in log-normal clutter. The proposed
algorithm, termed the forward automatic censored cell averaging
detector (F-ACCAD), consists of two steps: removing the corrupted
reference cells (censoring) and the actual detection. Both steps are
performed dynamically by using a suitable set of ranked cells to
estimate the unknown background level and set the adaptive
thresholds accordingly. The F-ACCAD algorithm does not require
any prior information about the clutter parameters nor does it require
the number of interfering targets. The effectiveness of the F-ACCAD
algorithm is assessed by computing, using Monte Carlo simulations,
the probability of censoring and the probability of detection in
different background environments.
Abstract: Every commercial bank optimises its asset portfolio
depending on the profitability of assets and chosen or imposed
constraints. This paper proposes and applies a stylized model for
optimising banks' asset and liability structure, reflecting profitability
of different asset categories and their risks as well as costs associated
with different liability categories and reserve requirements. The level
of detail for asset and liability categories is chosen to create a
suitably parsimonious model and to include the most important
categories in the model. It is shown that the most appropriate
optimisation criterion for the model is the maximisation of the ratio
of net interest income to assets. The maximisation of this ratio is
subject to several constraints. Some are accounting identities or
dictated by legislative requirements; others vary depending on the
market objectives for a particular bank. The model predicts variable
amount of assets allocated to loan provision.
Abstract: Cell phone forensics to acquire and analyze data in the
cellular phone is nowadays being used in a national investigation
organization and a private company. In order to collect cellular phone
flash memory data, we have two methods. Firstly, it is a logical
method which acquires files and directories from the file system of the
cell phone flash memory. Secondly, we can get all data from bit-by-bit
copy of entire physical memory using a low level access method. In
this paper, we describe a forensic tool to acquire cell phone flash
memory data using a logical level approach. By our tool, we can get
EFS file system and peek memory data with an arbitrary region from
Korea CDMA cell phone.
Abstract: As an adult man and woman love each other and come to have faith in each other as their spouse, they marry each other. Recently people-s economic life has become individualized and women are enjoying a high education level and increased participation in social activities, and these changes are creating environment favorable for single life. Thus, an increasing number of people are choosing celibacy, and many people prefer cohabitation to marriage. Nevertheless, marriage is still regarded as a must-to-do in our thought. Most of people throughout the world admit marriage as one of natural processes of life, and is an important passage rite in life that all people experience as we can see everywhere in the world despite the diversity of lifestyles. With regard to wedding ceremony, however, each country and culture has its own unique tradition and style of festival. It is not just a congratulatory ceremony but contains multiple concepts representing the age, country or culture. Moreover, the form and contents of wedding ceremony changes over time, and such features of wedding ceremony are well represented in films. This study took note of the fact that films reflect and reproduce each country-s historicity, culturality and analyzed four films, which are believed to show differences between Eastern and Western wedding ceremonies. The selected films are: A Perfect Match (2002), Marriage Is a Crazy Thing (2001), Bride Wars (2009) and 27 Dresses (2008). The author attempted to examine wedding ceremonies described in the four films, differences between the East and the West suggested by the films, and changes in their societies.
Abstract: Consumer electronics are pervasive. It is impossible to
imagine a household or office without DVD players, digital cameras,
printers, mobile phones, shavers, electrical toothbrushes, etc. All
these devices operate at different voltage levels ranging from 1.8 to
20 VDC, in the absence of universal standards. The voltages
available are however usually 120/230 VAC at 50/60 Hz. This
situation makes an individual electrical energy conversion system
necessary for each device. Such converters usually involve several
conversion stages and often operate with excessive losses and poor
reliability. The aim of the project presented in this paper is to design
and implement a multi-channel DC/DC converter system,
customizing the output voltage and current ratings according to the
requirements of the load. Distributed, multi-agent techniques will be
applied for the control of the DC/DC converters.
Abstract: For most image fusion algorithms separate
relationship by pixels in the image and treat them more or less
independently. In addition, they have to be adjusted different
parameters in different time or weather. In this paper, we propose a
region–based image fusion which combines aspects of feature and
pixel-level fusion method to replace only by pixel. The basic idea is
to segment far infrared image only and to add information of each
region from segmented image to visual image respectively. Then we
determine different fused parameters according different region. At
last, we adopt artificial neural network to deal with the problems of
different time or weather, because the relationship between fused
parameters and image features are nonlinear. It render the fused
parameters can be produce automatically according different states.
The experimental results present the method we proposed indeed
have good adaptive capacity with automatic determined fused
parameters. And the architecture can be used for lots of applications.
Abstract: Some physico-chemical characteristics and mineral
composition of 'Karayemis' (Prunus laurocerasus L.) fruits which
grown naturally in Norteast Turkey was studied. 28 minerals ( Al,
Mg, B, Mn, Co, Na, Ca, Ni, Cd, P, Cr, Pb, Cu, S, Fe, Zn, K, Sr, Li,
As, V, Ag, Ba, Br, Ga, In, Se, Ti) were analyzed and 19 minerals
were present at ascertainable levels. Karayemis fruit was richest in
potassium (7938.711 ppm), magnesium (1242.186 ppm) and calcium
(1158.853 ppm). And some physico-chemical characteristics of
Karayemis fruit was investigated. Fruit length, fruit width, fruit
thickness, fruit weight, total soluble solids, colour, protein, crude ash,
crude fiber, crude oil values were determined as 2.334 cm, 1.884 cm,
2.112 cm, 5.35 g, 20.1 %, S99M99Y99, 0.29 %, 0.22 %, 6.63 % and
0.001 %, respectively. The seed of fruit mean weight, length, width
and thickness were found to be 0.41 g, 1.303 cm, 0.921 cm and
0.803, respectively.
Abstract: Intensive changes of environment and strong market
competition have raised management of information and knowledge
to the strategic level of companies. In a knowledge based economy
only those organizations are capable of living which have up-to-date,
special knowledge and they are able to exploit and develop it.
Companies have to know what knowledge they have by taking a
survey of organizational knowledge and they have to fix actual and
additional knowledge in organizational memory. The question is how
to identify, acquire, fix and use knowledge effectively. The paper will
show that over and above the tools of information technology
supporting acquisition, storage and use of information and
organizational learning as well as knowledge coming into being as a
result of it, fixing and storage of knowledge in the memory of a
company play an important role in the intelligence of organizations
and competitiveness of a company.
Abstract: Smoothing or filtering of data is first preprocessing step
for noise suppression in many applications involving data analysis.
Moving average is the most popular method of smoothing the data,
generalization of this led to the development of Savitzky-Golay filter.
Many window smoothing methods were developed by convolving
the data with different window functions for different applications;
most widely used window functions are Gaussian or Kaiser. Function
approximation of the data by polynomial regression or Fourier
expansion or wavelet expansion also gives a smoothed data. Wavelets
also smooth the data to great extent by thresholding the wavelet
coefficients. Almost all smoothing methods destroys the peaks and
flatten them when the support of the window is increased. In certain
applications it is desirable to retain peaks while smoothing the data
as much as possible. In this paper we present a methodology called
as peak-wise smoothing that will smooth the data to any desired level
without losing the major peak features.
Abstract: The lifelong learning is a crucial element in the
modernization of European education and training systems. The most
important actors in the development process of the lifelong learning
are the trainers, whose professional characteristics need new
competences and skills in the current labour market. The main
objective of this paper is to establish an importance ranking of the
new competences, capabilities and skills that the lifelong learning
Spanish trainers must possess nowadays. A wide study of secondary
sources has allowed the design of a questionnaire that organizes the
trainer-s skills and competences. The e-Delphi method is used for
realizing a creative, individual and anonymous evaluation by experts
on the importance ranking that presents the criteria, sub-criteria and
indicators of the e-Delphi questionnaire. Twenty Spanish experts in
the lifelong learning have participated in two rounds of the e-
DELPHI method. In the first round, the analysis of the experts-
evaluation has allowed to establish the ranking of the most
importance criteria, sub-criteria and indicators and to eliminate the
least valued. The minimum level necessary to reach the consensus
among experts has been achieved in the second round.
Abstract: The right to housing is a basic need while good
quality and affordable housing is a reflection of a high quality of life.
However, housing remains a major problem for most, especially for
the bottom billions. Satisfaction on housing and neighbourhood
conditions are one of the important indicators that reflect quality of
life. These indicators are also important in the process of evaluating
housing policy with the objective to increase the quality of housing
and neighbourhood. The research method is purely based on a
quantitative method, using a survey. The findings show that housing
purchasing trend in urban Malaysia is determined by demographic
profiles, mainly by education level, age, gender and income. The
period of housing ownership also influenced the socio-cultural
interactions and satisfaction of house owners with their
neighbourhoods. The findings also show that the main concerns for
house buyers in urban areas are price and location of the house.
Respondents feel that houses in urban Malaysia is too expensive and
beyond their affordability. Location of houses and distance from
work place are also regarded as the main concern. However,
respondents are fairly satisfied with religious and socio-cultural
facilities in the housing areas and most importantly not many regard
ethnicity as an issue in their decision-making, when buying a house.
Abstract: Timetabling problems are often hard and timeconsuming
to solve. Most of the methods of solving them concern
only one problem instance or class. This paper describes a universal
method for solving large, highly constrained timetabling problems
from different domains. The solution is based on evolutionary
algorithm-s framework and operates on two levels – first-level
evolutionary algorithm tries to find a solution basing on given set of
operating parameters, second-level algorithm is used to establish
those parameters. Tabu search is employed to speed up the solution
finding process on first level. The method has been used to solve
three different timetabling problems with promising results.
Abstract: This work presents a multiple objective linear programming (MOLP) model based on the desirability function approach for solving the aggregate production planning (APP) decision problem upon Masud and Hwang-s model. The proposed model minimises total production costs, carrying or backordering costs and rates of change in labor levels. An industrial case demonstrates the feasibility of applying the proposed model to the APP problems with three scenarios of inventory levels. The proposed model yields an efficient compromise solution and the overall levels of DM satisfaction with the multiple combined response levels. There has been a trend to solve complex planning problems using various metaheuristics. Therefore, in this paper, the multi-objective APP problem is solved by hybrid metaheuristics of the hunting search (HuSIHSA) and firefly (FAIHSA) mechanisms on the improved harmony search algorithm. Results obtained from the solution of are then compared. It is observed that the FAIHSA can be used as a successful alternative solution mechanism for solving APP problems over three scenarios. Furthermore, the FAIHSA provides a systematic framework for facilitating the decision-making process, enabling a decision maker interactively to modify the desirability function approach and related model parameters until a good optimal solution is obtained with proper selection of control parameters when compared.
Abstract: Human activity is a major concern in a wide variety of
applications, such as video surveillance, human computer interface
and face image database management. Detecting and recognizing
faces is a crucial step in these applications. Furthermore, major
advancements and initiatives in security applications in the past years
have propelled face recognition technology into the spotlight. The
performance of existing face recognition systems declines significantly
if the resolution of the face image falls below a certain level.
This is especially critical in surveillance imagery where often, due to
many reasons, only low-resolution video of faces is available. If these
low-resolution images are passed to a face recognition system, the
performance is usually unacceptable. Hence, resolution plays a key
role in face recognition systems. In this paper we introduce a new
low resolution face recognition system based on mixture of expert
neural networks. In order to produce the low resolution input images
we down-sampled the 48 × 48 ORL images to 12 × 12 ones using
the nearest neighbor interpolation method and after that applying
the bicubic interpolation method yields enhanced images which is
given to the Principal Component Analysis feature extractor system.
Comparison with some of the most related methods indicates that
the proposed novel model yields excellent recognition rate in low
resolution face recognition that is the recognition rate of 100% for
the training set and 96.5% for the test set.
Abstract: In the urban traffic network, the intersections are the
“bottleneck point" of road network capacity. And the arterials are the
main body in road network and the key factor which guarantees the
normal operation of the city-s social and economic activities. The
rapid increase in vehicles leads to seriously traffic jam and cause the
increment of vehicles- delay. Most cities of our country are
traditional single control system, which cannot meet the need for the
city traffic any longer. In this paper, Synchro6.0 as a platform to
minimize the intersection delay, optimizesingle signal cycle and split
for Zhonghua Street in Handan City. Meanwhile, linear control
system uses to optimize the phase for the t arterial road in this
system. Comparing before and after use the control, capacities and
service levels of this road and the adjacent road have improved
significantly.
Abstract: Obtaining labeled data in supervised learning is often
difficult and expensive, and thus the trained learning algorithm tends
to be overfitting due to small number of training data. As a result,
some researchers have focused on using unlabeled data which may
not necessary to follow the same generative distribution as the labeled
data to construct a high-level feature for improving performance on
supervised learning tasks. In this paper, we investigate the impact of
the relationship between unlabeled and labeled data for classification
performance. Specifically, we will apply difference unlabeled data
which have different degrees of relation to the labeled data for
handwritten digit classification task based on MNIST dataset. Our
experimental results show that the higher the degree of relation
between unlabeled and labeled data, the better the classification
performance. Although the unlabeled data that is completely from
different generative distribution to the labeled data provides the lowest
classification performance, we still achieve high classification performance.
This leads to expanding the applicability of the supervised
learning algorithms using unsupervised learning.
Abstract: Banishing hunger from the face of earth has been
frequently expressed in various international, national and regional
level conferences since 1974. Providing food security has become
important issue across the world particularly in developing countries.
In a developing country like India, where growth rate of population is
more than that of the food grains production, food security is a
question of great concern. According to the International Food Policy
Research Institute's Global Hunger Index, 2011, India ranks 67 of the
81 countries of the world with the worst food security status. After
Green Revolution, India became a food surplus country. Its
production has increased from 74.23 million tonnes in 1966-67 to
257.44 million tonnes in 2011-12. But after achieving selfsufficiency
in food during last three decades, the country is now
facing new challenges due to increasing population, climate change,
stagnation in farm productivity. Therefore, the main objective of the
present paper is to examine the food security situation at national
level in the country and further to explain the paradox of food
insecurity in a food surplus state of India i.e in Punjab at micro level.
In order to achieve the said objectives, secondary data collected from
the Ministry of Agriculture and the Agriculture department of Punjab
State was analyzed. The result of the study showed that despite
having surplus food production the country is still facing food
insecurity problem at micro level. Within the Kandi belt of Punjab
state, the area adjacent to plains is food secure while the area along
the hills falls in food insecure zone.
The present paper is divided into following three sections (i)
Introduction, (ii) Analysis of food security situation at national level
as well as micro level (Kandi belt of Punjab State) (iii) Concluding
Observations