Abstract: Electrophysiological signals were recorded from primary cultures of dissociated rat cortical neurons coupled to Micro-Electrode Arrays (MEAs). The neuronal discharge patterns may change under varying physiological and pathological conditions. For this reason, we developed a new burst detection method able to identify bursts with peculiar features in different experimental conditions (i.e. spontaneous activity and under the effect of specific drugs). The main feature of our algorithm (i.e. Burst On Hurst), based on the auto-similarity or fractal property of the recorded signal, is the independence from the chosen spike detection method since it works directly on the raw data.
Abstract: There has been gradual progress of late in construction projects, particularly in big-scale megaprojects. Due to the long-term construction period, however, with large-scale budget investment, lack of construction management technologies, and increase in the incomplete elements of project schedule management, a plan to conduct efficient operations and to ensure business safety is required. In particular, as the project management information system (PMIS) is meant for managing a single project centering on the construction phase, there is a limitation in the management of program-scale businesses like megaprojects. Thus, a program management information system (PgMIS) that includes program-level management technologies is needed to manage multiple projects. In this study, a support tool was developed for managing the cost and schedule information occurring in the construction phase, at the program level. In addition, a case study on the developed support tool was conducted to verify the usability of the system. With the use of the developed support tool program, construction managers can monitor the progress of the entire project and of the individual subprojects in real time.
Abstract: The aim of this study is to describe the associations
between the temperamental traits and the narrative emotional
expression. The Temperament Questionnaire was used: The FCB-TI
of Zawadzki & Strelau. A sample of 85 persons described three
emotional situations: love. hate, and anxiety. This study analyzes the
verbal form of expression by means of a written account of
emotions. The relationship between the narratives of love, hate and
anxiety and temperament characteristics were studied. Results
indicate that vigorousness (VI), perseverance (PE), sensory
sensitivity (SS), emotional reactivity (ER), endurance (EN) and
activeness (AC) have a significant impact on the emotional
expression in narratives. The temperamental traits are linked to the
form of emotional language. It means that temperament has an
impact on cognitive representations of emotions.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a novel approach for image
segmentation via fuzzification of Rènyi Entropy of Generalized
Distributions (REGD). The fuzzy REGD is used to precisely measure
the structural information of image and to locate the optimal
threshold desired by segmentation. The proposed approach draws
upon the postulation that the optimal threshold concurs with
maximum information content of the distribution. The contributions
in the paper are as follow: Initially, the fuzzy REGD as a measure of
the spatial structure of image is introduced. Then, we propose an
efficient entropic segmentation approach using fuzzy REGD.
However the proposed approach belongs to entropic segmentation
approaches (i.e. these approaches are commonly applied to grayscale
images), it is adapted to be viable for segmenting color images.
Lastly, diverse experiments on real images that show the superior
performance of the proposed method are carried out.
Abstract: South Africa is facing a crisis with not being able to produce enough graduates in the scarce skills areas to sustain economic growth. The crisis is fuelled by a school system that does not produce enough potential students with Mathematics, Accounting and Science. Since the introduction of the new school curriculum in 2008, there is no longer an option to take pure maths on a standard grade level. Instead, only two mathematical subjects are offered: pure maths (which is on par with higher grade maths) and mathematical literacy. It is compulsory to take one or the other. As a result, lees student finishes Grade 12 with pure mathematics every year. This national problem needs urgent attention if South Africa is to make any headway in critical skills development as mathematics is a gateway to scarce skills professions. Higher education institutions initiated several initiatives in an attempt to address the above, including preparatory courses, bridging programmes and extended curricula with foundation provisions. In view of the above, and government policy directives to broaden access in the scarce skills areas to increase student throughput, foundation provision was introduced for Commerce and Information Technology programmes at the Vaal Triangle Campus (VTC) of North-West University (NWU) in 2010. Students enrolling for extended programmes do not comply with the minimum prerequisites for the normal programmes. The question then arises as to whether these programmes have the intended impact? This paper reports the results of a two year longitudinal study, tracking the first year academic achievement of the two cohorts of enrolments since 2010. The results provide valuable insight into the structuring of an extended programme and its potential impact.
Abstract: Many supervised induction algorithms require discrete
data, even while real data often comes in a discrete
and continuous formats. Quality discretization of continuous
attributes is an important problem that has effects on speed,
accuracy and understandability of the induction models. Usually,
discretization and other types of statistical processes are applied
to subsets of the population as the entire population is practically
inaccessible. For this reason we argue that the discretization
performed on a sample of the population is only an estimate of
the entire population. Most of the existing discretization methods,
partition the attribute range into two or several intervals using
a single or a set of cut points. In this paper, we introduce a
technique by using resampling (such as bootstrap) to generate
a set of candidate discretization points and thus, improving the
discretization quality by providing a better estimation towards
the entire population. Thus, the goal of this paper is to observe
whether the resampling technique can lead to better discretization
points, which opens up a new paradigm to construction of
soft decision trees.
Abstract: The medical studies often require different methods
for parameters selection, as a second step of processing, after the
database-s designing and filling with information. One common
task is the selection of fields that act as risk factors using wellknown
methods, in order to find the most relevant risk factors and
to establish a possible hierarchy between them. Different methods
are available in this purpose, one of the most known being the
binary logistic regression. We will present the mathematical
principles of this method and a practical example of using it in the
analysis of the influence of 10 different psychiatric diagnostics
over 4 different types of offences (in a database made from 289
psychiatric patients involved in different types of offences).
Finally, we will make some observations about the relation
between the risk factors hierarchy established through binary
logistic regression and the individual risks, as well as the results of
Chi-squared test. We will show that the hierarchy built using the
binary logistic regression doesn-t agree with the direct order of risk
factors, even if it was naturally to assume this hypothesis as being
always true.
Abstract: The aim of this study is to investigate the kinematics of undulatory elongated fish swimming against a velocity flow. We perform the experiments on European eel Anguilla Anguilla swimming in a hydrodynamic re-circulating tank with the velocity flow fixed at 0.2 m/s. We find that the undulating shape of overall eel body changes when it swims slantwise from the flow direction, by comparison to axial undulation shape. We examine this kinematics and we propose a general equation describing the lateral position of undulation body taking into account the direction of the eel-s swimming.
Abstract: Class cohesion is an important object-oriented
software quality attribute. It indicates how much the members in a
class are related. Assessing the class cohesion and improving the
class quality accordingly during the object-oriented design phase
allows for cheaper management of the later phases. In this paper, the
notion of distance between pairs of methods and pairs of attribute
types in a class is introduced and used as a basis for introducing a
novel class cohesion metric. The metric considers the methodmethod,
attribute-attribute, and attribute-method direct interactions.
It is shown that the metric gives more sensitive values than other
well-known design-based class cohesion metrics.
Abstract: Throughout the world, the Islamic way of banking and
financing is increasing. The same trend is also visible in Pakistan, where the Islamic banking sector is increasing in size and volume
each year. The question immediately arises as why the Pakistanis patronize the Islamic banking system? This study was carried out to
find whether following the Islamic rules in finance is the main factor for such selection or whether other factors such as customer service,
location, banking hour, physical facilities of the bank etc also have
importance. The study was carried by distributing questionnaire and
200 responses were collected from the clients of Islamic banks. The result showed that the service quality and other factors are as
important as following the Islamic rules for finance to retain old ustomers and catch new customers. The result is important and
Islamic banks can take actions accordingly to look after both the factors
Abstract: This article is based on the technique which is called
Discrete Parameter Tracking (DPT). First introduced by A. A. Azab
[8] which is applicable for less order reference model. The order of
the reference model is (n-l) and n is the number of the adjustable
parameters in the physical plant.
The technique utilizes a modified gradient method [9] where the
knowledge of the exact order of the nonadaptive system is not
required, so, as to eliminate the identification problem. The
applicability of the mentioned technique (DPT) was examined
through the solution of several problems.
This article introduces the solution of a third order system with
three adjustable parameters, controlled according to second order
reference model. The adjustable parameters have great initial error
which represent condition.
Computer simulations for the solution and analysis are provided
to demonstrate the simplicity and feasibility of the technique.
Abstract: This paper presents the H-ARQ techniques comparison for OFDM systems with a new family of non-binary LDPC codes which has been developed within the EU FP7 DAVINCI project. The punctured NB-LDPC codes have been used in a simulated model of the transmission system. The link level performance has been evaluated in terms of spectral efficiency, codeword error rate and average number of retransmissions. The NB-LDPC codes can be easily and effective implemented with different methods of the retransmission needed if correct decoding of a codeword failed. Here the Optimal Symbol Selection method is proposed as a Chase Combining technique.
Abstract: Multi-agent communication of Semantic Web
information cannot be realized without the need to reason with
ontology and agent locations. This is because for an agent to be able to
reason with an external semantic web ontology, it must know where
and how to access to that ontology. Similarly, for an agent to be able to
communicate with another agent, it must know where and how to send
a message to that agent. In this paper we propose a framework of an
agent which can reason with ontology and agent locations in order to
perform reasoning with multiple distributed ontologies and perform
communication with other agents on the semantic web. The agent
framework and its communication mechanism are formulated entirely
in meta-logic.
Abstract: The special constraints of sensor networks impose a
number of technical challenges for employing them. In this review,
we study the issues and existing protocols in three areas: coverage
and routing. We present two types of coverage problems: to
determine the minimum number of sensor nodes that need to perform
active sensing in order to monitor a certain area; and to decide the
quality of service that can be provided by a given sensor network.
While most routing protocols in sensor networks are data-centric,
there are other types of routing protocols as well, such as
hierarchical, location-based, and QoS-aware. We describe and
compare several protocols in each group. We present several multipath
routing protocols and single-path with local repair routing
protocols, which are proposed for recovering from sensor node
crashes. We also discuss some transport layer schemes for reliable
data transmission in lossy wireless channels.
Abstract: At any point of time, a power system operating
condition should be stable, meeting various operational criteria and it
should also be secure in the event of any credible contingency. Present
day power systems are being operated closer to their stability limits
due to economic and environmental constraints. Maintaining a stable
and secure operation of a power system is therefore a very important
and challenging issue. Voltage instability has been given much
attention by power system researchers and planners in recent years,
and is being regarded as one of the major sources of power system
insecurity. Voltage instability phenomena are the ones in which the
receiving end voltage decreases well below its normal value and does
not come back even after setting restoring mechanisms such as VAR
compensators, or continues to oscillate for lack of damping against the
disturbances. Reactive power limit of power system is one of the major
causes of voltage instability. This paper investigates the effects of
coordinated series capacitors (SC) with static VAR compensators
(SVC) on steady-state voltage stability of a power system. Also, the
influence of the presence of series capacitor on static VAR
compensator controller parameters and ratings required to stabilize
load voltages at certain values are highlighted.
Abstract: The Connection Admission Control (CAC) problem is formulated in this paper as a discrete time optimal control problem. The control variables account for the acceptance/ rejection of new connections and forced dropping of in-progress connections. These variables are constrained to meet suitable conditions which account for the QoS requirements (Link Availability, Blocking Probability, Dropping Probability). The performance index evaluates the total throughput. At each discrete time, the problem is solved as an integer-valued linear programming one. The proposed procedure was successfully tested against suitably simulated data.
Abstract: Study of soil properties like field capacity (F.C.) and permanent wilting point (P.W.P.) play important roles in study of soil moisture retention curve. Although these parameters can be measured directly, their measurement is difficult and expensive. Pedotransfer functions (PTFs) provide an alternative by estimating soil parameters from more readily available soil data. In this investigation, 70 soil samples were collected from different horizons of 15 soil profiles located in the Ziaran region, Qazvin province, Iran. The data set was divided into two subsets for calibration (80%) and testing (20%) of the models and their normality were tested by Kolmogorov-Smirnov method. Both multivariate regression and artificial neural network (ANN) techniques were employed to develop the appropriate PTFs for predicting soil parameters using easily measurable characteristics of clay, silt, O.C, S.P, B.D and CaCO3. The performance of the multivariate regression and ANN models was evaluated using an independent test data set. In order to evaluate the models, root mean square error (RMSE) and R2 were used. The comparison of RSME for two mentioned models showed that the ANN model gives better estimates of F.C and P.W.P than the multivariate regression model. The value of RMSE and R2 derived by ANN model for F.C and P.W.P were (2.35, 0.77) and (2.83, 0.72), respectively. The corresponding values for multivariate regression model were (4.46, 0.68) and (5.21, 0.64), respectively. Results showed that ANN with five neurons in hidden layer had better performance in predicting soil properties than multivariate regression.
Abstract: This paper focuses on a critical component of the situational awareness (SA), the control of autonomous vertical flight for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Autonomous vertical flight is a challenging but important task for tactical UAVs to achieve high level of autonomy under adverse conditions. With the SA strategy, we proposed a two stage flight control procedure using two autonomous control subsystems to address the dynamics variation and performance requirement difference in initial and final stages of flight trajectory for a nontrivial nonlinear trirotor mini-UAV model. This control strategy for chosen mini-UAV model has been verified by simulation of hovering maneuvers using software package Simulink and demonstrated good performance for fast SA in realtime search-and-rescue operations.
Abstract: Many new experimental films which were free from conventional movie forms have appeared since Nubellbak Movement in the late 1950s. Forty years after the movement started, on March 13th, 1995, on the 100th anniversary of the birth of film, the declaration called Dogme 95, was issued in Copenhagen, Denmark. It aimed to create a new style of avant-garde film, and showed a tendency toward being anti-Hollywood and anti-genre, which were against the highly popular Hollywood trend of movies based on large-scale investment. The main idea of Dogme 95 is the opposition to 'the writer's doctrine' that a film should be the artist's individual work and to 'the overuse of technology' in film. The key figures declared ten principles called 'Vow of Chastity', by which new movie forms were to be produced. Interview (2000), directed by Byunhyuk, was made in 2000, five years after Dogme 95 was declared. This movie was dedicated as the first Asian Dogme. This study will survey the relationship between Korean film and the Vow of Chastity through the Korean films released in theaters from a viewpoint of technology and content. It also will call attention to its effects on and significance to Korean film in modern society.
Abstract: Dealing with hundreds of features in character
recognition systems is not unusual. This large number of features
leads to the increase of computational workload of recognition
process. There have been many methods which try to remove
unnecessary or redundant features and reduce feature dimensionality.
Besides because of the characteristics of Farsi scripts, it-s not
possible to apply other languages algorithms to Farsi directly. In this
paper some methods for feature subset selection using genetic
algorithms are applied on a Farsi optical character recognition (OCR)
system. Experimental results show that application of genetic
algorithms (GA) to feature subset selection in a Farsi OCR results in
lower computational complexity and enhanced recognition rate.