Abstract: Very Large and/or computationally complex optimization problems sometimes require parallel or highperformance computing for achieving a reasonable time for computation. One of the most popular and most complicate problems of this family is “Traveling Salesman Problem". In this paper we have introduced a Branch & Bound based algorithm for the solution of such complicated problems. The main focus of the algorithm is to solve the “symmetric traveling salesman problem". We reviewed some of already available algorithms and felt that there is need of new algorithm which should give optimal solution or near to the optimal solution. On the basis of the use of logarithmic sampling, it was found that the proposed algorithm produced a relatively optimal solution for the problem and results excellent performance as compared with the traditional algorithms of this series.
Abstract: Sampling and analysis of leachate from Bhalaswa
landfill and groundwater samples from nearby locations, clearly
indicated the likely contamination of groundwater due to landfill
leachate. The results of simulation studies carried out for the
migration of Chloride from landfill shows that the simulation results
are in consonance with the observed concentration of Chloride in the
vicinity of landfill facility. The solid waste disposal system presently
being practiced in Delhi consists of mere dumping of wastes
generated, at three locations Bhalaswa, Ghazipur, and Okhla without
any regard to proper care for the protection of surrounding
environment. Bhalaswa landfill site in Delhi, which is being operated
as a dump site, is expected to become cause of serious groundwater
pollution in its vicinity. The leachate from Bhalaswa landfill was
found to be having a high concentration of chlorides, as well as DOC,
COD. The present study was undertaken to determine the likely
concentrations of principle contaminants in the groundwater over a
period of time due to the discharge of such contaminants from
landfill leachates to the underlying groundwater. The observed
concentration of chlorides in the groundwater within 75m of the
radius of landfill facility was found to be in consonance with the
simulated concentration of chloride in groundwater considering one
dimensional transport model, with finite mass of contaminant source.
Governing equation of contaminant transport involving advection and
diffusion-dispersion was solved in matlab7.0 using finite difference
method.
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: In this paper a combined feature selection method is
proposed which takes advantages of sample domain filtering,
resampling and feature subset evaluation methods to reduce
dimensions of huge datasets and select reliable features. This method
utilizes both feature space and sample domain to improve the process
of feature selection and uses a combination of Chi squared with
Consistency attribute evaluation methods to seek reliable features.
This method consists of two phases. The first phase filters and
resamples the sample domain and the second phase adopts a hybrid
procedure to find the optimal feature space by applying Chi squared,
Consistency subset evaluation methods and genetic search.
Experiments on various sized datasets from UCI Repository of
Machine Learning databases show that the performance of five
classifiers (Naïve Bayes, Logistic, Multilayer Perceptron, Best First
Decision Tree and JRIP) improves simultaneously and the
classification error for these classifiers decreases considerably. The
experiments also show that this method outperforms other feature
selection methods.
Abstract: The incessant discomfort for Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) exhibited by students in some tertiary institutions in Kano State, Nigeria is capable of causing Psychological Resistance as well as jeopardizing the purpose of HIV intervention. This study investigated the Prevalence of Psychological Resistance to VCT of HIV/AIDS among students of tertiary institutions in the state. Two null hypotheses were postulated and tested. Cross- Sectional Survey Design was employed in which 1512 sample was selected from a student population of 104,841 following Stratified Random Sampling technique. A self-developed 20-item scale whose reliability coefficient is 0.83 was used for data collection. Data analyzed via Chi-square and t-test reveals a prevalence of 38% with males (Mean=0.34; SD=0.475) constituting 60% and females (Mean=0.45; SD=0.498) 40%. Also, the calculated chi-square and ttest were not significant at 0.05 as such the null hypotheses were upheld. Recommendation offered suggests the use of reinforcement and social support for students who patronize HIV/AIDS counselling.
Abstract: Age and sex are biological terms that are socioculturally
constructed for marriage and marital sexual behavior in
every society. Marriage is a universal norm that makes legitimate
sexual behavior between a man and a woman in marital life cycle to
gain bio-social purposes. Cross-cultural studies reveal that marital
sexual frequency as a part of marital sexual behavior not only varies
within the couple-s life cycle, but also varies between and among
couples in diverse cultures. The purpose of the study was to compare
marital sexual frequency in association with age status and length of
marital relationship between Muslim and Santal couples in rural
Bangladesh. For this we assumed that (1) Santal culture compared to
Muslim culture preferred earlier age at marriage for meeting marital
sexual purposes in rural Bangladesh; (2) Marital duration among the
Muslim couples was higher than that among the Santal couples; (3)
Sexual frequency among the younger couples in both the ethnic
communities was higher than the older couples; (4) Sexual frequency
across the Muslim couples- marital life cycle was higher than that the
Santal couples- marital life cycle. In so doing, 288 active couples
(145 for Muslim and 143 for Santal) selected by cluster random
sampling were interviewed with questionnaire method. The findings
of Independent Samples T Test on age at marriage, current age,
marital duration and sexual frequency independently reveal that there
were significant differences in sexual frequency not only across the
couples- life cycle but also vary between the Muslim and Santal
couples in relation to marital duration. The results of Pearson-s Inter-
Correlation Coefficients reveal that although age at marriage, current
age and marital duration for husband and wife were significantly
positive correlated with each other between the communities, there
were significantly negative correlation between the age at marriage,
current age, marital duration and sexual frequency among the
selected couples between the communities.
Abstract: Phase locked loops (PLL) and delay locked loops (DLL) play an important role in establishing coherent references (phase of carrier and symbol timing) in digital communication systems. Fully digital receiver including digital carrier synchronizer and symbol timing synchronizer fulfils the conditions for universal multi-mode communication receiver with option of symbol rate setting over several digit places and long-term stability of requirement parameters. Afterwards it is necessary to realize PLL and DLL in synchronizer in digital form and to approach to these subsystems as a discrete representation of analog template. Analysis of discrete phase locked loop (DPLL) or discrete delay locked loop (DDLL) and technique to determine their characteristics based on analog (continuous-time) template is performed in this posed paper. There are derived transmission response and error function for 1st order discrete locked loop and resulting equations and graphical representations for 2nd order one. It is shown that the spectrum translation due to sampling takes effect at frequency characteristics computing for specific values of loop parameters.
Abstract: In this paper, the noise maps for the area encircled by
the Second Ring Road in Riyadh city are developed based on real
measured data. Sound level meters, GPS receivers to determine
measurement position, a database program to manage the measured
data, and a program to develop the maps are used. A baseline noise
level has been established at each short-term site so subsequent
monitoring may be conducted to describe changes in Riyadh-s noise
environment. Short-term sites are used to show typical daytime and
nighttime noise levels at specific locations by short duration grab
sampling.
Abstract: This is a survey research using quantitative and qualitative methodology. There were three objectives: 1) To study participatory level of community in water and waste environment management. 2) To study the affecting factors for community participation in water and waste environment management in Ampawa District, Samut Songkram Province. 3) To search for the participatory patterns in water and waste management. The population sample for the quantitative research was 1,364 people living in Ampawa District. The methodology was simple random sampling. Research instrument was a questionnaire and the qualitative research used purposive sampling in 6 Sub Districts which are Ta Ka, Suanluang, Bangkae, Muangmai, Kwae-om, and Bangnanglee Sub District Administration Organization. Total population is 63. For data analysis, the study used content analysis from quantitative research to synthesize and build question frame from the content for interview and conducting focus group interview. The study found that the community participatory in the issue of level in water and waste management are moderate of planning, operation, and evaluation. The issue of being beneficial is at low level. Therefore, the overall participatory level of community in water and waste environment management is at a medium level. The factors affecting the participatory of community in water and waste management are age, the period dwelling in the community and membership in which the mean difference is statistic significant at 0.05 in area of operation, being beneficial, and evaluation. For patterns of community participation, there is the correlation with water and waste management in 4 concerns which are 1) Participation in planning 2) Participation in operation 3) Participation in being beneficial both directly and indirectly benefited 4) Participation in evaluation and monitoring. The recommendation from this study is the need to create conscious awareness in order to increase participation level of people by organizing activities that promote participation with volunteer spirit. Government should open opportunities for people to participate in sharing ideas and create the culture of living together with equality which would build more concrete participation.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to develop a “teachers’
self-efficacy scale for high school physical education teachers
(TSES-HSPET)” in Taiwan. This scale is based on the self-efficacy
theory of Bandura [1], [2]. This study used exploratory and
confirmatory factor analyses to test the reliability and validity. The
participants were high school physical education teachers in Taiwan.
Both stratified random sampling and cluster sampling were used to
sample participants for the study. 350 teachers were sampled in the
first stage and 234 valid scales (male 133, female 101) returned.
During the second stage, 350 teachers were sampled and 257 valid
scales (male 143, female 110, 4 did not indicate gender) returned. The
exploratory factor analysis was used in the first stage, and it got
60.77% of total variance for construct validity. The Cronbach’s alpha
coefficient of internal consistency was 0.91 for sumscale, and
subscales were 0.84 and 0.90. In the second stage, confirmatory factor
analysis was used to test construct validity. The result showed that the
fit index could be accepted (χ2 (75) =167.94, p
Abstract: Most CT reconstruction system x-ray computed
tomography (CT) is a well established visualization technique in
medicine and nondestructive testing. However, since CT scanning
requires sampling of radiographic projections from different viewing
angles, common CT systems with mechanically moving parts are too
slow for dynamic imaging, for instance of multiphase flows or live
animals. A large number of X-ray projections are needed to
reconstruct CT images, so the collection and calculation of the
projection data consume too much time and harmful for patient. For
the purpose of solving the problem, in this study, we proposed a
method for tomographic reconstruction of a sample from a limited
number of x-ray projections by using linear interpolation method. In
simulation, we presented reconstruction from an experimental x-ray
CT scan of a Aluminum phantom that follows to two steps: X-ray
projections will be interpolated using linear interpolation method and
using it for CT reconstruction based upon Ordered Subsets
Expectation Maximization (OSEM) method.
Abstract: Bagging and boosting are among the most popular resampling ensemble methods that generate and combine a diversity of classifiers using the same learning algorithm for the base-classifiers. Boosting algorithms are considered stronger than bagging on noisefree data. However, there are strong empirical indications that bagging is much more robust than boosting in noisy settings. For this reason, in this work we built an ensemble using a voting methodology of bagging and boosting ensembles with 10 subclassifiers in each one. We performed a comparison with simple bagging and boosting ensembles with 25 sub-classifiers, as well as other well known combining methods, on standard benchmark datasets and the proposed technique was the most accurate.
Abstract: Data stream analysis is the process of computing
various summaries and derived values from large amounts of data
which are continuously generated at a rapid rate. The nature of a
stream does not allow a revisit on each data element. Furthermore,
data processing must be fast to produce timely analysis results. These
requirements impose constraints on the design of the algorithms to
balance correctness against timely responses. Several techniques
have been proposed over the past few years to address these
challenges. These techniques can be categorized as either dataoriented
or task-oriented. The data-oriented approach analyzes a
subset of data or a smaller transformed representation, whereas taskoriented
scheme solves the problem directly via approximation
techniques. We propose a hybrid approach to tackle the data stream
analysis problem. The data stream has been both statistically
transformed to a smaller size and computationally approximated its
characteristics. We adopt a Monte Carlo method in the approximation
step. The data reduction has been performed horizontally and
vertically through our EMR sampling method. The proposed method
is analyzed by a series of experiments. We apply our algorithm on
clustering and classification tasks to evaluate the utility of our
approach.
Abstract: To successfully provide a fast FIR filter with FTT algorithms, overlapped-save algorithms can be used to lower the computational complexity and achieve the desired real-time processing. As the length of the input block increases in order to improve the efficiency, a larger volume of zero padding will greatly increase the computation length of the FFT. In this paper, we use the overlapped block digital filtering to construct a parallel structure. As long as the down-sampling (or up-sampling) factor is an exact multiple lengths of the impulse response of a FIR filter, we can process the input block by using a parallel structure and thus achieve a low-complex fast FIR filter with overlapped-save algorithms. With a long filter length, the performance and the throughput of the digital filtering system will also be greatly enhanced.
Abstract: In this paper we will develop further the sequential life test approach presented in a previous article by [1] using an underlying two parameter Inverse Weibull sampling distribution. The location parameter or minimum life will be considered equal to zero. Once again we will provide rules for making one of the three possible decisions as each observation becomes available; that is: accept the null hypothesis H0; reject the null hypothesis H0; or obtain additional information by making another observation. The product being analyzed is a new electronic component. There is little information available about the possible values the parameters of the corresponding Inverse Weibull underlying sampling distribution could have.To estimate the shape and the scale parameters of the underlying Inverse Weibull model we will use a maximum likelihood approach for censored failure data. A new example will further develop the proposed sequential life testing approach.
Abstract: The classic problem of recovering arbitrary values of
a band-limited signal from its samples has an added complication
in software radio applications; namely, the resampling calculations
inevitably fold aliases of the analog signal back into the original
bandwidth. The phenomenon is quantified by the spur-free dynamic
range. We demonstrate how a novel application of the Remez (Parks-
McClellan) algorithm permits optimal signal recovery and SFDR, far
surpassing state-of-the-art resamplers.
Abstract: In this paper, we have presented the effect of varying
time-delays on performance and stability in the single-channel multirate
sampled-data system in hard real-time (RT-Linux) environment.
The sampling task require response time that might exceed the
capacity of RT-Linux. So a straight implementation with RT-Linux is
not feasible, because of the latency of the systems and hence,
sampling period should be less to handle this task. The best sampling
rate is chosen for the sampled-data system, which is the slowest rate
meets all performance requirements. RT-Linux is consistent with its
specifications and the resolution of the real-time is considered 0.01
seconds to achieve an efficient result. The test results of our
laboratory experiment shows that the multi-rate control technique in
hard real-time operating system (RTOS) can improve the stability
problem caused by the random access delays and asynchronization.
Abstract: The increasing usage of antibiotics in the animal
farming industry is an emerging worldwide problem contributing to
the development of antibiotic resistance. The purpose of this work was
to investigate the prevalence and antibiotic resistance profile of
bacterial isolates collected from aquatic environments and meats in a
peri-urban community in Daejeon, Korea. In an antibacterial
susceptibility test, the bacterial isolates showed a high incidence of
resistance (~ 26.04 %) to cefazolin, tetracycline, gentamycin,
norfloxacin, erythromycin and vancomycin. The results from a test for
multiple antibiotic resistance indicated that the isolates were
displaying an approximately 5-fold increase in the incidence of
multiple antibiotic resistance to combinations of two different
antibiotics compared to combinations of three or more antibiotics.
Most of the isolates showed multi-antibiotic resistance, and the
resistance patterns were similar among the sampling groups.
Sequencing data analysis of 16S rRNA showed that most of the
resistant isolates appeared to be dominated by the classes
Betaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria in the phylum
Proteobacteria.
Abstract: Chest pain is one of the most prevalent complaints
among adults that cause the people to attend to medical centers. The
aim was to determine the prevalence and risk factors of chest pain
among over 30 years old people in Tehran. In this cross-sectional
study, 787 adults took part from Apr 2005 until Apr 2006. The
sampling method was random cluster sampling and there were 25
clusters. In each cluster, interviews were performed with 32 over 30
years old, people lived in those houses. In cases with chest pain, extra
questions asked. The prevalence of CP was 9% (71 cases). Of them
21 cases (6.5%) were in 41-60 year age ranges and the remainders
were over 61 year old. 19 cases (26.8%) mentioned CP in resting
state and all of the cases had exertion onset CP. The CP duration was
10 minutes or less in all of the cases and in most of them (84.5%), the
location of pain mentioned left anterior part of chest, left anterior part
of sternum and or left arm. There was positive history of myocardial
infarction in 12 cases (17%). There was significant relation between
CP and age, sex and between history of myocardial infarction and
marital state of study people. Our results are similar to other studies-
results in most parts, however it is necessary to perform
supplementary tests and follow up studies to differentiate between
cardiac and non-cardiac CP exactly.
Abstract: We study the spatial design of experiment and we want to select a most informative subset, having prespecified size, from a set of correlated random variables. The problem arises in many applied domains, such as meteorology, environmental statistics, and statistical geology. In these applications, observations can be collected at different locations and possibly at different times. In spatial design, when the design region and the set of interest are discrete then the covariance matrix completely describe any objective function and our goal is to choose a feasible design that minimizes the resulting uncertainty. The problem is recast as that of maximizing the determinant of the covariance matrix of the chosen subset. This problem is NP-hard. For using these designs in computer experiments, in many cases, the design space is very large and it's not possible to calculate the exact optimal solution. Heuristic optimization methods can discover efficient experiment designs in situations where traditional designs cannot be applied, exchange methods are ineffective and exact solution not possible. We developed a GA algorithm to take advantage of the exploratory power of this algorithm. The successful application of this method is demonstrated in large design space. We consider a real case of design of experiment. In our problem, design space is very large and for solving the problem, we used proposed GA algorithm.