Abstract: This paper proposes a novel approach that combines statistical models and support vector machines. A hybrid scheme which appropriately incorporates the advantages of both the generative and discriminant model paradigms is described and evaluated. Support vector machines (SVMs) are trained to divide the whole speakers' space into small subsets of speakers within a hierarchical tree structure. During testing a speech token is assigned to its corresponding group and evaluation using gaussian mixture models (GMMs) is then processed. Experimental results show that the proposed method can significantly improve the performance of text independent speaker identification task. We report improvements of up to 50% reduction in identification error rate compared to the baseline statistical model.
Abstract: This study investigated possible ways to improve the
efficiency of the platinum precipitation process using ammonium
chloride by reducing the platinum content reporting to the effluent.
The ore treated consist of five platinum group metals namely,
ruthenium, rhodium, iridium, platinum, palladium and a precious
metal gold. Gold, ruthenium, rhodium and iridium were extracted
prior the platinum precipitation process. Temperature, reducing
agent, flow rate and potential difference were the variables controlled
to determine the operation conditions for optimum platinum
precipitation efficiency. Hydrogen peroxide was added as the
oxidizing agent at the temperature of 85-90oC and potential
difference of 700-850mV was the variable used to check the
oxidizing state of platinum. The platinum was further purified at
temperature between 60-65oC, potential difference above 700 mV,
ammonium chloride of 200 l, and at these conditions the platinum
content reporting to the effluent was reduced to less than 300ppm,
resulting in optimum platinum precipitation efficiency and purity of
99.9%.
Abstract: Two group of kids (“Safflower cake" and “Control") were fed ad libitum with pelleted total mixed rations. After a 7-days adaptation period, the diet of the “Safflower cake" group were supplemented with 20% of safflower cake. The kids were slaughtered at 96 days of age. Dietary safflower cake did not affect the growth traits of kids. In addition, kids fed experimental diet showed a lower feed intake and consequently a better feed conversion ratio in comparison to the “Control" group. The use of safflower decreased the level of SFA and increased the level of MUFA in kid meat. The level of PUFA was higher in lipid extracted from animals feeding “Control“ diet even if the UFA level was lower. Furthermore, lipid extracted from animals feeding control diet contained more ω6 fatty acids in comparison to kids feeding experimental diet while the opposite trend was observed for the level of ω3 fatty acids. The ω6 to ω3 ratio was significantly affected by diet and in particular this ratio decreased in meat of kids fed experimental diet. Our results indicate that intramuscular fatty acid composition of kid meat can be improved from a human health perspective by inclusion of safflower cake in the diet.
Abstract: Moral decisions are considered as an intuitive process,
while conscious reasoning is mostly used only to justify those
intuitions. This problem is described in few different dual-process
theories of mind, that are being developed e.g. by Frederick and
Kahneman, Stanovich and Evans. Those theories recently evolved
into tri-process theories with a proposed process that makes ultimate
decision or allows to paraformal processing with focal bias..
Presented experiment compares the decision patterns to the
implications of those models.
In presented study participants (n=179) considered different
aspects of trolley dilemma or its footbridge version and decided after
that.
Results show that in the control group 70% of people decided to
use the lever to change tracks for the running trolley, and 20% chose
to push the fat man down the tracks. In contrast, after experimental
manipulation almost no one decided to act. Also the decision time
difference between dilemmas disappeared after experimental
manipulation.
The result supports the idea of three co-working processes:
intuitive (TASS), paraformal (reflective mind) and algorithmic
process.
Abstract: The present research focus on the processing of mullite-based ceramics from oil refinery industrial wastes and byproducts of agricultural industry and on the investigating of silane modified surface of ceramics. Two waste products were used as initial material – waste aluminum oxide and waste rice husk. The burning - out additives used were waste rise husk. It is known that the oxide ceramics surface is hydrophilic due to the presence of – OH groups in it. The nature of ceramic surface regarding permeation of water and hydrocarbons can be changed by further treatment with silanes. The samples were studied mainly by X-ray analysis, FT-IR absorbance measurements and microscopic analysis. The X-ray analyses showed the phase composition depends on the firing temperature and on the purity of the starting alumina. Two kind of silanes were used for the transformation of surface from hydrophilic to hydrophobic – trimethoxymethylsilane (TMMS) and trimethylclorsilane (TMCS).
Abstract: The understanding of knee movement during swing
importance for golf swing improving and preventing injury. Thirty
male professional and amateur golfers were assigned to swing time
by time for 3 times. Data from a vedio-based motion capture were
used to compute knee joint movement variables. The results showed
that professional and amateur golfers were significantly in left knee
flexion angle at the impact point and mid follow through phase.
Nevertheless, left knee external rotation in both groups was also
significant. The right knee were no significant different in all
variable. However, pattern of knee joint movement are also likely
between professional and amateur golfers.
Abstract: This paper deals with the project selection problem. Project selection problem is one of the problems arose firstly in the field of operations research following some production concepts from primary product mix problem. Afterward, introduction of managerial considerations into the project selection problem have emerged qualitative factors and criteria to be regarded as well as quantitative ones. To overcome both kinds of criteria, an analytic network process is developed in this paper enhanced with fuzzy sets theory to tackle the vagueness of experts- comments to evaluate the alternatives. Additionally, a modified version of Least-Square method through a non-linear programming model is augmented to the developed group decision making structure in order to elicit the final weights from comparison matrices. Finally, a case study is considered by which developed structure in this paper is validated. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis is performed to validate the response of the model with respect to the condition alteration.
Abstract: This paper covers various aspects of film piracy over the Internet. In order to successfully deal with this matter, it is needed to recognize motivational factors related to film piracy. Thus, this study discusses group factors that could motivate individuals to engage in pirate activities. Furthermore, the paper discusses the theoretical effect on box office revenues and explains it on a proposed scheme of solutions for decreasing revenues. The article also maps the scheme of incentive motivational anti-piracy campaigns. Moreover, the paper proposes the preliminary scheme for system dynamic modeling of the Internet film piracy. Scheme is developed as a model of behaviors, influences and relations among the elements pertaining to the Internet film piracy.
Abstract: The prediction of transmembrane helical segments
(TMHs) in membrane proteins is an important field in the
bioinformatics research. In this paper, a method based on discrete
wavelet transform (DWT) has been developed to predict the number
and location of TMHs in membrane proteins. PDB coded as 1F88 was
chosen as an example to describe the prediction of the number and
location of TMHs in membrane proteins by using this method. One
group of test data sets that contain total 19 protein sequences was
utilized to access the effect of this method. Compared with the
prediction results of DAS, PRED-TMR2, SOSUI, HMMTOP2.0 and
TMHMM2.0, the obtained results indicate that the presented method
has higher prediction accuracy.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to exhibit some properties of
local topologies of an IVS. Also, we Introduce ISG structure as an
interesting structure of semigroups in IVSs.
Abstract: This paper presents the robust stability criteria for uncertain genetic regulatory networks with time-varying delays. One key point of the criterion is that the decomposition of the matrix ˜D into ˜D = ˜D1 + ˜D2. This decomposition corresponds to a decomposition of the delayed terms into two groups: the stabilizing ones and the destabilizing ones. This technique enables one to take the stabilizing effect of part of the delayed terms into account. Meanwhile, by choosing an appropriate new Lyapunov functional, a new delay-dependent stability criteria is obtained and formulated in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, numerical examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.
Abstract: Present study summarizes the control of Vibrio
alginolyticus infection in hatchery reared Clownfish, Amphiprion
sebae with the extract of the mangrove plant, Avicennia marina.
Fishes with visible symptoms of hemorrhagic spots were chosen and
the genomic DNA of the causative bacterium was isolated and
sequenced based on 16S rDNA gene. The in vitro assay revealed that
a fraction of A. marina leaf extract elucidated with ethyl acetate:
methanol (6:4) showed a high activity (28 mm) at 125 μg/ml
concentrations. About 4 % of the fraction fed along with live V.
alginolyticus was significantly decreased the cumulative mortality
(P
Abstract: Let G be a finite group, and let F be a formation of
finite group. We say that a subgroup H of G is p F -normal in G if
there exists a normal subgroup T of G such that HT is a permutable
Hall subgroup of G and G G (H
Abstract: In recent years, an increased competition and lower profit margins have necessitated a focus on improving the performance of the product development process, an area that traditionally have been excluded from detailed steering and evaluation. A systematic improvement requires a good understanding of the current performance, wherefore the interest for product development performance measurement has increased dramatically. This paper presents a case study that evaluates the performance of the product development performance measurement system used in a Swedish company that is a part of a global corporate group. The study is based on internal documentation and eighteen in-depth interviews with stakeholders involved in the product development process. The results from the case study includes a description of what metrics that are in use, how these are employed, and its affect on the quality of the performance measurement system. Especially, the importance of having a well-defined process proved to have a major impact on the quality of the performance measurement system in this particular case.
Abstract: Competing risks survival data that comprises of more
than one type of event has been used in many applications, and one
of these is in clinical study (e.g. in breast cancer study). The
decision tree method can be extended to competing risks survival
data by modifying the split function so as to accommodate two or
more risks which might be dependent on each other. Recently,
researchers have constructed some decision trees for recurrent
survival time data using frailty and marginal modelling. We further
extended the method for the case of competing risks. In this paper,
we developed the decision tree method for competing risks survival
time data based on proportional hazards for subdistribution of
competing risks. In particular, we grow a tree by using deviance
statistic. The application of breast cancer data is presented. Finally,
to investigate the performance of the proposed method, simulation
studies on identification of true group of observations were executed.
Abstract: The survival of publicly listed companies largely
depends on their stocks being liquidly traded. This goal can be
achieved when new investors are attracted to invest on companies-
stocks. Among different groups of investors, individual investors are
generally less able to objectively evaluate companies- risks and
returns, and tend to be emotionally biased in their investing
decisions. Therefore their decisions may be formed as a result of
perceived risks and returns, and influenced by companies- images.
This study finds that perceived risk, perceived returns and trust
directly affect individual investors- trading decisions while attitude
towards brand partially mediates the relationships. This finding
suggests that, in courting individual investors, companies still need to
perform financially while building a good image can result in their
stocks being accepted quicker than the stocks of good performing
companies with hidden images.
Abstract: According to the conception of personnel
management, human resource management requires efficient use of
human resources. This is ensured by various activities directed
towards the area of management. Among these activities there are for
example the recruitment of employees, development, strengthening
of relations, mutual inspiring, implementation of correct working
processes and systems used by individuals or groups.
Abstract: This paper presents a new technique for detection of
human faces within color images. The approach relies on image
segmentation based on skin color, features extracted from the two-dimensional
discrete cosine transform (DCT), and self-organizing
maps (SOM). After candidate skin regions are extracted, feature
vectors are constructed using DCT coefficients computed from those
regions. A supervised SOM training session is used to cluster feature
vectors into groups, and to assign “face" or “non-face" labels to those
clusters. Evaluation was performed using a new image database of
286 images, containing 1027 faces. After training, our detection
technique achieved a detection rate of 77.94% during subsequent
tests, with a false positive rate of 5.14%. To our knowledge, the
proposed technique is the first to combine DCT-based feature
extraction with a SOM for detecting human faces within color
images. It is also one of a few attempts to combine a feature-invariant
approach, such as color-based skin segmentation, together with
appearance-based face detection. The main advantage of the new
technique is its low computational requirements, in terms of both
processing speed and memory utilization.
Abstract: In this report we present a rule-based approach to
detect anomalous telephone calls. The method described here uses
subscriber usage CDR (call detail record) data sampled over two
observation periods: study period and test period. The study period
contains call records of customers- non-anomalous behaviour.
Customers are first grouped according to their similar usage
behaviour (like, average number of local calls per week, etc). For
customers in each group, we develop a probabilistic model to describe
their usage. Next, we use maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to
estimate the parameters of the calling behaviour. Then we determine
thresholds by calculating acceptable change within a group. MLE is
used on the data in the test period to estimate the parameters of the
calling behaviour. These parameters are compared against thresholds.
Any deviation beyond the threshold is used to raise an alarm. This
method has the advantage of identifying local anomalies as compared
to techniques which identify global anomalies. The method is tested
for 90 days of study data and 10 days of test data of telecom
customers. For medium to large deviations in the data in test window,
the method is able to identify 90% of anomalous usage with less than
1% false alarm rate.
Abstract: This study was designed to investigate the role of serum nitric oxide and sialic acid in the development of diabetic nephropathy as disease marker. Total 210 diabetic patients (age and sex matched) were selected followed by informed consent and divided into four groups (70 each) as I: control; II: diabetic; III: diabetic hypertensive; IV: diabetic nephropathy. The blood samples of all subjects were collected and analyzed for serum nitric oxide, sialic acid, fasting blood glucose, serum urea, creatinine, HbA1c and GFR. The BMI, systolic and diastolic blood pressures, blood glucose, HbA1c and serum sialic acid levels were high (p