ALBERT

Description: Text information contains important information for video analysis, indexing, and retrieval. Effective and efficient text extraction has been a challenging topic in recent years. Focusing on this issue, a text extraction method for complex video scene is proposed in this paper. Multiframe corner matching and heuristic rules are combined together to detect the text region candidates, which solves the issue of Harris corner filtration for complex video scene and also improves the detection accuracy using multiframe fusion. Local texture description is then used for similarity evaluation judged by SVM. Experimental results for 4 different types of 395-frame video images show the effectiveness of the proposed method compared with 5 existing text extraction methods.

Description: The output performance of the manufacturing system has a direct impact on the mechanical product quality. For guaranteeing product quality and production cost, many firms try to research the crucial issues on reliability of the manufacturing system with small sample data, to evaluate whether the manufacturing system is capable or not. The existing reliability methods depend on a known probability distribution or vast test data. However, the population performances of complex systems become uncertain as processing time; namely, their probability distributions are unknown, if the existing methods are still taken into account; it is ineffective. This paper proposes a novel evaluation method based on poor information to settle the problems of reliability of the running state of a manufacturing system under the condition of small sample sizes with a known or unknown probability distribution. Via grey bootstrap method, maximum entropy principle, and Poisson process, the experimental investigation on reliability evaluation for the running state of the manufacturing system shows that, under the best confidence level , if the reliability degree of achieving running quality is , the intersection area between the inspection data and the intrinsic data is and the variation probability of the inspection data is , and the running state of the manufacturing system is reliable; otherwise, it is not reliable. And the sensitivity analysis regarding the size of the samples can show that the size of the samples has no effect on the evaluation results obtained by the evaluation method. The evaluation method proposed provides the scientific decision and suggestion for judging the running state of the manufacturing system reasonably, which is efficient, profitable, and organized.

Description: The dynamic topology of a mobile ad hoc network poses a real challenge in the design of hierarchical routing protocol, which combines proactive with reactive routing protocols and takes advantages of both. And as an essential technique of hierarchical routing protocol, clustering of nodes provides an efficient method of establishing a hierarchical structure in mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, we designed a novel clustering algorithm and a corresponding hierarchical routing protocol for large-scale mobile ad hoc networks. Each cluster is composed of a cluster head, several cluster gateway nodes, several cluster guest nodes, and other cluster members. The proposed routing protocol uses proactive protocol between nodes within individual clusters and reactive protocol between clusters. Simulation results show that the proposed clustering algorithm and hierarchical routing protocol provide superior performance with several advantages over existing clustering algorithm and routing protocol, respectively.

Description: This paper presents an enhanced discrete artificial bee colony algorithm for minimizing the total flow time in the flow shop scheduling problem with buffer capacity. First, the solution in the algorithm is represented as discrete job permutation to directly convert to active schedule. Then, we present a simple and effective scheme called best insertion for the employed bee and onlooker bee and introduce a combined local search exploring both insertion and swap neighborhood. To validate the performance of the presented algorithm, a computational campaign is carried out on the Taillard benchmark instances, and computations and comparisons show that the proposed algorithm is not only capable of solving the benchmark set better than the existing discrete differential evolution algorithm and iterated greedy algorithm, but also capable of performing better than two recently proposed discrete artificial bee colony algorithms.

Description: This paper arose from the perceived need to make a contribution towards assessing a strategic information system by using a new method for eliciting the weights of criteria. This is considered one of the most complex and important stages in multicriteria models. Multicriteria models have been proposed to support decisions in the context of information systems given that problems in this field deal with many conflicting criteria. The new procedure for eliciting the weights of the criteria has the advantage of requiring less effort from the decision-maker and, thus, the risk of inconsistent answers is minimized. Therefore, a model based on this new procedure is proposed and applied using data from a glass packaging factory that needs to select a single information system from a set of systems previously identified as relevant. The results obtained are consistent both with the performance of alternatives and with the additive model used to evaluate the alternatives.

Description: This paper introduces a mixed integer linear programming formulation for modeling and solving a multiperiod one-stage supply chain distribution network design problem. The model is aimed to minimize two objectives, the total supply chain cost and the greenhouse gas emissions generated mainly by transportation and warehousing operations. The demand forecast is known for the planning horizon and shortage of demand is allowed at a penalty cost. This scenario must satisfy a minimum service level. Two carbon emission regulatory policies are investigated, the tax or carbon credit and the carbon emission cap. Computational experiments are performed to analyze the trade-offs between the total cost of the supply chain, the carbon emission quantity, and both carbon emission regulatory policies. Results demonstrate that for a certain range the carbon credit price incentivizes the reduction of carbon emissions to the environment. On the other hand, modifying the carbon emission cap inside a certain range could lead to significant reductions of carbon emission while not significantly compromising the total cost of the supply chain.

Description: Joint destination-mode travel choice models are developed for intercity long-distance travel among sixteen cities in Yangtze River Delta Megaregion of China. The model is developed for all the trips in the sample and also by two different trip purposes, work-related business and personal business trips, to accommodate different time values and attraction factors. A nested logit modeling framework is applied to model trip destination and mode choices in two different levels, where the lower level is a mode choice model and the upper level is a destination choice model. The utility values from various travel modes in the lower level are summarized into a composite utility, which is then specified into the destination choice model as an intercity impedance factor. The model is then applied to predict the change in passenger number from Shanghai to Yangzhou between scenarios with and without high-speed rail service to demonstrate the applicability. It is helpful for understanding and modeling megaregional travel destination and mode choice behaviors in the context of developing country.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to determine a critical load for a nonuniform circular steel tube under eccentrically axial load. The circular tube has variable cross section at flattened ends with existing holes used for connection between members. Three different cases of eccentricities are studied with the drilled holes either on the same side or on the opposite side of column axis. The critical load is calculated from the differential equation of deflection curve which is solved by the power series and Runge-Kutta method. In addition, the loading tests were performed on a total of 180 specimens with different diameters, slenderness, and connection. The calculated results are compared and shown in a good agreement with those obtained from the experimental results. The results also show that the critical load decreases rapidly even at a small value of eccentricity and thus may have a significant effect on the load-carrying capacity.

Description: This paper deals with the problem of overcomplete transform learning. An alternating minimization based procedure is proposed for solving the formulated sparsifying transform learning problem. A closed-form solution is derived for the minimization involved in transform update stage. Compared with existing ones, our proposed algorithm significantly reduces the computation complexity. Experiments and simulations are carried out with synthetic data and real images to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach in terms of the averaged representation and denoising errors, the percentage of successful and meaningful recovery of the analysis dictionary, and, more significantly, the computation efficiency.

Description: The energy efficiency of the range-extended electric bus (REEB) developed by Tsinghua University must be improved; currently, the energy management strategy is a charge-deplete-charge-sustain (CDCS) strategy, which exhibits low energy efficiency on the demonstration model. To improve the energy efficiency and reduce the operating cost, a rule-based control strategy derived from the dynamic programming (DP) strategy is obtained for the Chinese urban bus driving cycle (CUBDC). This rule is extracted by the power-split-ratio (PSR) from the simulation results of the dynamic powertrain model using the DP strategy. By establishing the REEB dynamic models in Matlab/Simulink, the control rule can be achieved, and the power characteristic of powertrain, energy efficiency, operating cost, and computing time are analyzed. The simulation results show that the performance of the rule-based strategy presented in this paper is similar to that of the DP strategy. The energy efficiency can be improved greatly compared with that of the CDCS strategy, and the operating cost can also be reduced.

Description: This paper evaluates the project risks with a multidimensional and interactive model from multiagent and utility combination, which takes subjective psychological negative utility into account rather than only focusing on the thinking pattern of objective value loss. Firstly, it analyzes the bodies’ heterogeneous preference and their game behavior using game theory application methods. Secondly, it builds multidimensional and interactive evaluation model of large-scale infrastructure project from many dimensions, such as risk rate, objective utility, and subjective utility. It reflects different values and behavior strategy interdynamic factor in the design of risk utility function. Lastly, it deduces process and approaches of multidimensional and interactive evaluation by typical project. In addition, it tests model parameter with regression analysis. The research of this paper broadens the dimension of project risk evaluation and provides comprehensive and balanced reference for the measure of project risk utility and a better basis for project risk control.

Description: Beet Armyworm, Spodoptera exigua is a herbivorous moth and a serious pest of many economically important plants, which are used as food sources. Because of rigorous standards of food quality, usage of synthetic insecticides in crop protection, against pests, is limited. Solanaceae plant extracts may be a relatively cheap source of efficient natural insecticides that can limit usage of synthetic substances. Their biological activity is not fully known. In particular, ultrastructural studies, using transmission electron microscopy, are not usual. In the present article we describe the effects of sublethal concentrations of tomato and potato leaf extracts against S. exigua . Acute lethal effects were not observed. Both extracts exerted similar effects within midgut and fat body cells. Midgut cells were not significantly altered while fat body cells showed prominent swelling of nuclear envelope and endoplasmic reticulum, vacuolization of mitochondria and fusion of fat droplets. These changes were much more intensive within groups exposed to potato than tomato extracts at highest concentration at least. Light microscopy was used to observe and document developmental alterations of S. exigua exposed to potato and tomato leaf extracts. Potato leaf extracts significantly decreased hatching success and caused morphological malformations of imagoes. Among them, malformations of wings were the most prominent. Interestingly, these effects were not observed within populations exposed to tomato extracts at highest concentration at least.

Description: This study investigates the problem of asymptotic stabilization for a class of discrete-time linear uncertain time-delayed systems with input constraints. Parametric uncertainty is assumed to be structured, and delay is assumed to be known. In Lyapunov stability theory framework, two synthesis schemes of designing nonfragile robust model predictive control (RMPC) with time-delay compensation are put forward, where the additive and the multiplicative gain perturbations are, respectively, considered. First, by designing appropriate Lyapunov-Krasovskii (L-K) functions, the robust performance index is defined as optimization problems that minimize upper bounds of infinite horizon cost function. Then, to guarantee closed-loop stability, the sufficient conditions for the existence of desired nonfragile RMPC are obtained in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.

Description: Ensemble pruning is a technique to increase ensemble accuracy and reduce its size by choosing a subset of ensemble members to form a subensemble for prediction. Many ensemble pruning algorithms via directed hill climbing searching policy have been recently proposed. The key to the success of these algorithms is to construct an effective measure to supervise the search process. In this paper, we study the importance of individual classifiers with respect to an ensemble using margin theory proposed by Schapire et al. and obtain that ensemble pruning via directed hill climbing strategy should focus more on examples with small absolute margins as well as classifiers that correctly classify more examples. Based on this principle, we propose a novel measure called the margin-based measure to explicitly evaluate the importance of individual classifiers. Our experiments show that using the proposed measure to prune an ensemble leads to significantly better accuracy results compared to other state-of-the-art measures.

Description: In dynamic systems, some nonlinearities generate special connection problems of non-Z2 symmetric homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits. Such orbits are important for analyzing problems of global bifurcation and chaos. In this paper, a general analytical method, based on the undetermined Padé approximation method, is proposed to construct non-Z2 symmetric homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits which are affected by nonlinearity factors. Geometric and symmetrical characteristics of non-Z2 heteroclinic orbits are analyzed in detail. An undetermined frequency coefficient and a corresponding new analytic expression are introduced to improve the accuracy of the orbit trajectory. The proposed method shows high precision results for the Nagumo system (one single orbit); general types of non-Z2 symmetric nonlinear quintic systems (orbit with one cusp); and Z2 symmetric system with high-order nonlinear terms (orbit with two cusps). Finally, numerical simulations are used to verify the techniques and demonstrate the enhanced efficiency and precision of the proposed method.

Description: The performance of device-to-device (D2D) communication in a cellular network depends on the resource sharing between D2D links and cellular users. Existing researches on resource sharing mainly focus on power control between the D2D users and cellular users that operate in the same frequency band. However, the D2D outage probability performance is hampered by the cellular interference to D2D links. Therefore, the D2D users may not achieve satisfactory SINR performance when D2D users and cellular users are geographically located in a small area; as a result, the outage probability performance would be significantly degraded. In this paper, we provide a novel resource sharing strategy to mitigate the interference from cellular users to D2D receivers by utilizing the low energy characteristics of signals in the guard band and analyze the D2D outage probability performance mathematically. Both the mathematical analysis and numerical results show that the proposed resource sharing strategy provides 1.2 dB SNR gain in D2D outage probability performance while guaranteeing the cellular throughputs.

Description: Under the condition of the plane strain, finite element limit equilibrium method is used to study some key problems of stability analysis for anchored slope. The definition of safe factor in slices method is generalized into FEM. The “true” stress field in the whole structure can be obtained by elastic-plastic finite element analysis. Then, the optimal search for the most dangerous sliding surface with Hooke-Jeeves optimized searching method is introduced. Three cases of stability analysis of natural slope, anchored slope with seepage, and excavation anchored slope are conducted. The differences in safety factor quantity, shape and location of slip surface, anchoring effect among slices method, finite element strength reduction method (SRM), and finite element limit equilibrium method are comparatively analyzed. The results show that the safety factor given by the FEM is greater and the unfavorable slip surface is deeper than that by the slice method. The finite element limit equilibrium method has high calculation accuracy, and to some extent the slice method underestimates the effect of anchor, and the effect of anchor is overrated in the SRM.

Description: Surface ultrastructure of the gills of the angler catfish Chaca chaca was investigated to unravel the adaptive modifications associated with the feeding ecology of the fish. The fish is often found in mud or in soft substrates where they remain buried both for protection and to feed. Gill rakers present on the gill arch in most fish species are absent in this fish. The absence of gill rakers are associated with the feeding habit of the fish and is considered to facilitate the swallowing of captured prey smoothly without any hindrance. Highly corrugated surface of the gill arch and gill filaments could be associated to retain water/mucus to prevent dessicassion of the fish. Papillae like epithelial protuberances each bearing a taste bud at its summit toward the pharyngeal side of the gill arch is associated with the sorting of the food. Large number of mucous goblet cells on the gill arch epithelium are considered to secret copious mucus to lubricate the prey for easy swallowing. In C. chaca the gill septa between gill filaments are reduced. This could enhance the flexibility and permit the free movement of the gill filaments. Extensive secondary lamellae and infrequent mucous goblet cells on secondary lamellae are associated to increase the surface area to enhance efficiency of gaseous exchange.

Description: The objective was to evaluate the ingestive behavior of ovine fed Marandu grass silage with dehydrated brewery residue added. The experiment had a completely randomized design with five treatments and four repetitions, with the treatments levels of inclusion being of 0, 10, 20, 30, and 40% natural matter of naturally dehydrated brewery residue for 36 hours to the marandu grass silage. 20 ovines were used and the experimental period was 21 days, 15 being for adaptation to diets. The use of brewery byproduct promoted quadratic effect () for the consumption of dry matter with maximum point value estimated at adding 23.25% additive. Ingestion efficiency and rumination efficiency of dry matter (g DM/hour) were significant (), by quadratic behavior, and NDF ingestion and rumination efficiency showed crescent linear behavior. The DM and NDF consumption expressed in kg/meal and in minutes/kg were also significant (), showing quadratic behavior. Rumination activity expressed in g DM and NDF/piece was influenced () by the adding of brewery residue in marandu grass silage in quadratic way, with maximum value estimated of 1.57 g DM/bolus chewed in inclusion of 24.72% additive in grass silage. The conclusion is that intermediary levels adding of 20 to 25% dehydrated brewery residue affects certain parameters of ingestive behavior.

Description: In the present research, different adhesive techniques were used to set up fillings with composite resins. After the application of etch and rinse or self etch adhesive technique, marginal adaptation of composite fillings was estimated by the length of margins without gaps, and by the microretention of resin in enamel and dentin. The study material consisted of 40 extracted teeth. Twenty Class V cavities were treated with 35% phosphorous acid and restored after rinsing by Adper Single Bond 2 and Filtek Ultimate - ASB/FU 3M ESPE composite system. The remaining 20 cavities were restored by Adper Easy One - AEO/FU 3M ESPE composite system. Marginal adaptation of composite fillings was examined using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The etch and rinse adhesive technique showed a significantly higher percentage of margin length without gaps (in enamel: 92.5%, in dentin: 57.3%), compared with the self-etch technique with lower percentage of margin length without gaps, in enamel 70.4% ( p  〈 .001), and in dentin-22.6% ( p  〈 .05). In the first technique, microretention was composed of adhesive and hybrid layers as well as resin tugs in interprismatic spaces of enamel, while the dentin microretention was composed of adhesive and hybrid layers with resin tugs in dentin canals. In the second technique, resin tugs were rarely seen and a microgap was dominant along the border of restoration margins. The SEM analysis showed a better marginal adaptation of composite resin to enamel and dentin with better microretention when the etch and rinse adhesive procedure was applied.

Description: The purpose of this study was to compare total-etch, self-etch, and selective etching techniques on the marginal microleakage of Class V composite restorations prepared by Er:YAG laser and bur. Class V cavities prepared on both buccal and lingual surfaces of 30 premolars by Er:YAG laser or bur and divided into six groups. The occlusal margins were in enamel, and the cervical margins were in cementum. Group-1: bur preparation(bp)+Adper Single Bond 2 (ASB)+Filtek Z550 (FZ); Group-2: laser preparation(lp)+(ASB)+(FZ); Group-3: bp + Clearfil S3 Bond Plus (CSBP)+(FZ); Group-4: lp+(CSBP) (FZ); Group-5: bp + acid etching+(CSBP)+(FZ); Group-6: lp + acid etching+(CSBP)+(FZ). All teeth were stored in distilled water at 37°C for 24 hr, and then thermocycled 1000 times (5–55°C). Five teeth from each group were chosen for the microleakage investigation, and two teeth for the scanning electron microscope evaluation. Teeth which were prepared for the microleakage test were immersed in .5% methylene blue dye for 24 hr. After immersion, the teeth were sectioned and observed under a stereomicroscope for dye penetration. Data were analyzed using Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney U tests ( p  〈 .05). More microleakage was observed in the cervical regions compared to the occlusal regions in Groups 3, 5, and 6, respectively ( p  〈 .05). There is no statistically significant difference in Groups 1, 2, and 4, in terms of cervical regions versus occlusal regions ( p  〉 .05). No significant differences were observed among any groups in terms of occlusal and cervical surfaces, separately ( p  〉 .05). Different etching techniques did not influence microleakage of Class V restorations prepared by Er:YAG laser and bur.

Description: Protein–membrane interactions are still an important topic of investigation. One of the suitable experimental techniques used by the scientific community to address such question is atomic force microscopy. In a previous work, we have reported that the binding mechanism between the cytolytic and antimicrobial protein (Cyt2Aa2) and lipid/cholesterol bilayers was concentration-dependent, leading to either the formation of holes in the bilayer or aggregates. Here we study such binding mechanism as a function of time at low protein concentrations (10 µg/mL). We demonstrate that although holes are formed during the first stages of the protein–lipid interaction, a reparation process due to molecular mobility in the bilayer leads to a homogenous and isotropic protein–lipid/cholesterol layer within 3 hr. The combination of imaging, force spectroscopy, and phase contrast delivered information about topography dynamics (molecular mobility), layer thickness, and mechanical properties of the protein–lipid/cholesterol system. These results highlight the importance of the observation time in (such type of) protein–lipid interactions (at low protein concentrations).

Description: Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is an enormous tool to observe nature in highest resolution and understand fundamental processes like friction and tribology on the nanoscale. Atomic resolution in highest quality was possible only in well-controlled environments like ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) or controlled buffer environments (liquid conditions) and more specified for long-term high-resolution analysis at low temperatures (∼4 K) in UHV where drift is nearly completely absent. Atomic resolution in these environments is possible and is widely used. However, in uncontrolled environments like air, with all its pollutants and aerosols, unspecified thin liquid films as thin as a single molecular water-layer of 200 pm or thicker condensation films with thicknesses up to hundred nanometer, have been a problem for highest resolution since the invention of the AFM. The goal of true atomic resolution on hydrophilic as well as hydrophobic samples was reached recently. In this manuscript we want to review the concept of ambient AFM with atomic resolution. The reader will be introduced to the phenomenology in ambient conditions and the problems will be explained and analyzed while a method for scan parameter optimization will be explained. Recently developed concepts and techniques how to reach atomic resolution in air and ultra-thin liquid films will be shown and explained in detail, using several examples.

Description: The visualization of taxonomically diagnostic features of individual pollen grains can be a challenge for many ecologically and phylogenetically important pollen types. The resolution of traditional optical microscopy is limited by the diffraction of light (250 nm), while high resolution tools such as electron microscopy are limited by laborious preparation and imaging workflows. Airyscan confocal superresolution and structured illumination superresolution (SR-SIM) microscopy are powerful new tools for the study of nanoscale pollen morphology and three-dimensional structure that can overcome these basic limitations. This study demonstrates their utility in capturing morphological details below the diffraction limit of light. Using three distinct pollen morphotypes ( Croton hirtus, Dactylis glomerata , and Helianthus sp.) and contrast-enhancing fluorescent staining, we were able to assess the effectiveness of the Airyscan and SR-SIM. We further demonstrate that these new superresolution methods can be easily applied to the study of fossil pollen material.

Description: Segmentation of objects from a noisy and complex image is still a challenging task that needs to be addressed. This article proposed a new method to detect and segment nuclei to determine whether they are malignant or not (determination of the region of interest, noise removal, enhance the image, candidate detection is employed on the centroid transform to evaluate the centroid of each object, the level set [LS] is applied to segment the nuclei). The proposed method consists of three main stages: preprocessing, seed detection, and segmentation. Preprocessing stage involves the preparation of the image conditions to ensure that they meet the segmentation requirements. Seed detection detects the seed point to be used in the segmentation stage, which refers to the process of segmenting the nuclei using the LS method. In this research work, 58 H&E breast cancer images from the UCSB Bio-Segmentation Benchmark dataset are evaluated. The proposed method reveals the high performance and accuracy in comparison to the techniques reported in literature. The experimental results are also harmonized with the ground truth images.

Description: This paper proposed a new multiattribute group decision-making method, in which the period significance coefficients and the attribute significance coefficients are completely unknown, and the attribute values are triangular fuzzy numbers. At first, to obtain the period significance coefficients, the period significance coefficients optimization model is constructed according to the time degree and the differences of the decision information in different periods. Then, attribute significance coefficients are determined by the maximum deviation method. Based on this, alternatives are ranked by the triangular fuzzy ratio system method, the triangular fuzzy reference point method, and the triangular fuzzy full multiplicative form, respectively. The dominance theory is used for aggregating the subordinate rankings into the final ranking. Finally, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

Description: Technological advances are required to accommodate air traffic control systems for the future growth of air traffic. Particularly, detection and resolution of conflicts between aircrafts is a problem that has attracted much attention in the last decade becoming vital to improve the safety standards in free flight unstructured environments. We propose using the archive simulated annealing-based multiobjective optimization algorithm to deal with such a problem, accounting for three admissible maneuvers (velocity, turn, and altitude changes) in a multiobjective context. The minimization of the maneuver number and magnitude, time delays, or deviations in the leaving points are considered for analysis. The optimal values for the algorithm parameter set are identified in the more complex instance in which all aircrafts have conflicts between each other accounting for 5, 10, and 20 aircrafts. Moreover, the performance of the proposed approach is analyzed by means of a comparison with the Pareto front, computed using brute force for 5 aircrafts and the algorithm is also illustrated with a random instance with 20 aircrafts.

Description: In random finite element analysis (RFEA), continuous random fields must be discretized. The critical element size to achieve acceptable accuracy in effective Young’s modulus for an elementary soil mass is investigated. It is observed that the discrepancy between the continuous and discretized solutions is governed by the discretization strategy (element-level averaging versus midpoint), spatial variability pattern, and the adopted autocorrelation function. With the element-level averaging strategy, RFEA with element size less than (scale of fluctuation)/5 will not induce significant discrepancy from the continuous solution. Moreover, the element-level averaging strategy is more effective than the midpoint strategy.

Description: In this paper, by applying the differential quadrature (DQ) method, a semi analytical model has been developed for atomic force microscope cantilever, and then by using the interfacial forces between the cantilever tip and imaged surfaces, a 2D model has been extracted for imaging nano-sized fine samples. By employing the present model, several simple and standard samples have been imaged, and finally the effects of the microcantilever's structural damping and its stiffness on the imaging results have been investigated. It has been observed that, through the control of damping, the quality of the acquired images is considerably improved. It has also been shown that the self-softening and self-hardening properties of cantilever have serious effects on the obtained images. The present model can be used to study the effects of different parameters on the process of imaging small-scale samples. Also, as one of its most important applications, this model can be used in common multiscale models for simulating and predicting the effects of large and small fields on each other.

Description: Product reviews are now widely used by individuals for making their decisions. However, due to the purpose of profit, reviewers game the system by posting fake reviews for promoting or demoting the target products. In the past few years, fake review detection has attracted significant attention from both the industrial organizations and academic communities. However, the issue remains to be a challenging problem due to lacking of labelling materials for supervised learning and evaluation. Current works made many attempts to address this problem from the angles of reviewer and review. However, there has been little discussion about the product related review features which is the main focus of our method. This paper proposes a novel convolutional neural network model to integrate the product related review features through a product word composition model. To reduce overfitting and high variance, a bagging model is introduced to bag the neural network model with two efficient classifiers. Experiments on the real-life Amazon review dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Description: The aim of the present study is to evaluate the current psychopathological problems of different forms associated with maltreatment on children’s and adolescents’ mental health. Ninety-five females and ninety males with a mean age of 8.8 years who have suffered in the last six months different forms of abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional) and neglect were included in the study. The current reaction to trauma as directly observed by clinical instruments was examined. Differences in gender, age at the time of medical examination, familial psychiatric disorders, neuropsychiatric status, and type of maltreatment were also taken into account. Results documented that 95.1% of abused children and adolescents developed a psychiatric disorder or a subclinical form of a Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Moreover, our data demonstrate a role for gender, age, and familial psychiatric comorbidity in the current psychopathological problems associated with maltreatment. Overall, our findings can help clinicians make a diagnosis and provide efficient treatment and prevention strategies for child maltreatment and abuse.

Description: In secret image sharing schemes, the threshold may have to be adjusted in case of changes in the security policy and the adversary structure before recovering the secret image. For example, if participants leave the group, their stego images are useless to them and may not be kept safely. As a result, these images can be easily stolen and utilized by intruders, which reduces the security of the scheme. To solve this problem, we propose a novel threshold changeable secret image sharing scheme with potential changeable thresholds . By preparing advance shares for thresholds and using the two-variable one-way function to generate the identification value, we can change the threshold when necessary. The experiments show that the quality of the stego images in our scheme is satisfactory and the secret image can be recovered without distortion. Moreover, the security analysis shows that we can change the threshold safely.

Description: The line-seru conversion is usually used to improve productivity, especially in volatile business environment. Due to the simplicity, most researches focused on line-pure seru system conversion. We summarize the two existing models (i.e., a biobjective model and a single-objective model) of line-pure system conversion and formulate the three other usually used single-objective models in an integrated framework by combining evaluated performances and constraints. Subsequently, we analyze the solution space features of line-pure seru system conversion by dividing the whole solution space into several subspaces according to the number of serus. We focus on investigating the features between (and TLH) and subspaces. Thirdly, according to the distinct features between (and TLH) and subspaces, we propose four effective algorithms to solve the four single-objective models, respectively. Finally, we evaluate the computational performance of the developed algorithms by comparing with enumeration based on extensive experiments.

Description: Based on the three-dimensional real special orthogonal Lie algebra , we construct a new hierarchy of soliton equations by zero curvature equations and show that each equation in the resulting hierarchy has a bi-Hamiltonian structure and thus integrable in the Liouville sense. Furthermore, we present the infinitely many conservation laws for the new soliton hierarchy.

Description: Because of the frequency and disastrous influence, the supply chain disruption has caused extensive concern both in the industry and in the academia. In a supply chain with one manufacturer and one retailer, the demand of the retailer is uncertain and meanwhile may suffer disruption with a probability. Taking the demand disruption probability as the retailer’s asymmetric information, an informed principal model with the retailer as the principal is explored to make the contract. The retailer can show its information to the manufacturer through the contract. It is found out that the high-risk retailer intends to pretend to be the low-risk one. So the separating contract is given through the low-information-intensity allocation, in which the order quantity and the transferring payment for the low-risk retailer distort upwards, but those of high-risk retailer do not distort. In order to reduce the signaling cost which the low-risk retailer pays, the interim efficient model is introduced, which ends up with the order quantity and transferring payment distorting upwards again but less than before. In the numerical examples, with two different mutation probabilities, the informed principal contracts show the application of the informed principal model in the supply chain with demand disruption.

Description: Most of the existing license plate (LP) detection systems have shown significant development in the processing of the images, with restrictions related to environmental conditions and plate variations. With increased mobility and internationalization, there is a need to develop a universal LP detection system, which can handle multiple LPs of many countries and any vehicle, in an open environment and all weather conditions, having different plate variations. This paper presents a novel LP detection method using different clustering techniques based on geometrical properties of the LP characters and proposed a new character extraction method, for noisy/missed character components of the LP due to the presence of noise between LP characters and LP border. The proposed method detects multiple LPs from an input image or video, having different plate variations, under different environmental and weather conditions because of the geometrical properties of the set of characters in the LP. The proposed method is tested using standard media-lab and Application Oriented License Plate (AOLP) benchmark LP recognition databases and achieved the success rates of 97.3% and 93.7%, respectively. Results clearly indicate that the proposed approach is comparable to the previously published papers, which evaluated their performance on publicly available benchmark LP databases.

Description: Studying optimization and decision for opening electromagnetic loop networks plays an important role in planning and operation of power grids. First, the basic principle of fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) is introduced, and then an improved FAHP-based scheme evaluation method is proposed for decoupling electromagnetic loop networks based on a set of indicators reflecting the performance of the candidate schemes. The proposed method combines the advantages of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation. On the one hand, AHP effectively combines qualitative and quantitative analysis to ensure the rationality of the evaluation model; on the other hand, the judgment matrix and qualitative indicators are expressed with trapezoidal fuzzy numbers to make decision-making more realistic. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by the application results on the real power system of Liaoning province of China.

Description: The small periodic elastic structures of composite materials with the multiscale asymptotic expansion and homogenized method are discussed. A nonconforming Crouzeix-Raviart finite element is applied to calculate every term of the asymptotic expansion on anisotropic meshes. The approximation scheme to the higher derivatives of the homogenized solution is also derived. Finally, the optimal error estimate in for displacement vector is obtained.

Description: Three-dimensional optical super-resolution imaging is capable of providing 3D visualization of cellular structures in nanoscale detail. The past decade has witnessed the blossoming of 3D super-resolution imaging technologies. In this review, we comprehensively discuss and compare the imaging depth, resolution enhancement, and imaging speed of the existing 3D super-resolution imaging techniques.

Description: This paper proposes a real mathematical constraint satisfaction model which defines the timetabling problem in the Faculty of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (FCSE) at the Autonomous University of Morelos State, Mexico. A Constructive Approach Algorithm (CAA) is used to obtain solutions in the proposed model. A comparison is made between the CAA’s results and the schedule generated by the FCSE administration. Using the constraint satisfaction model, it is possible to improve the allocation of class hours in the FCSE so that classroom use is more efficient.

Description: The Rosenzweig-MacArthur (1963) criterion is a graphical criterion that has been widely used for elucidating the local stability properties of the Gause (1934) type predator-prey systems. It has not been stated whether a similar criterion holds for models with explicit resource dynamics (Kooi et al. (1998)), like the chemostat model. In this paper we use the implicit function theorem and implicit derivatives for proving that a similar graphical criterion holds under chemostat conditions, too.

Description: Nowadays, it is anticipated that service sector companies will be inspired to follow mass customization trends of industrial sector. However, services are more abstract than products and therefore concepts for mass customization in manufacturing domain cannot be transformed without a methodical change. This paper is focused on the development of a methodological framework to support decisions in a selection of optimal platform of service variants when compatibility problems between service options occurred. The approach is based on mutual relations between waste and constrained design space entropy. For this purpose, software for quantification of constrained and waste design space is developed. Practicability of the methodology is presented on a realistic case.

Description: This paper considers the problem of building adaptive fuzzy-logic traffic control systems (AFLTCS) to deal with information fuzziness and uncertainty in case of heavy traffic streams. Methods of formal description of traffic control on the crossroads based on fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic are proposed. This paper also provides efficient algorithms for implementing AFLTCS and develops the appropriate simulation models to test the efficiency of suggested approach.

Description: We describe a new method for simultaneous image denoising and level set-based active contour segmentation using multidimensional features. We consider an image to be a surface embedded in a Riemannian manifold. By defining a metric in the embedded space, which in our case includes multidimensional image features as well as a level set-based active contour model, a minimization problem in the image space can be obtained through the Polyakov action framework. The resulting minimization problem is solved with a dual algorithm for efficiency. Benefits of this new method include the fact that it is independent of any artificial “running” parameters, and experiments using both synthetic and real images show that the method is robust with respect to noise and blurry object boundaries.

Description: A fault-tolerant control scheme for the autopilot of the small fixed-wing UAV is designed and tested by the actual flight experiments. The small fixed-wing UAV called Xiang Fei is developed independently by Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The flight control system is designed based on an open-source autopilot (Pixhawk). Real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS is introduced due to its high accuracy. Some modifications on the longitudinal and lateral guidance laws are achieved to improve the flight control performance. Moreover, a data fusion based fault-tolerant control scheme is integrated in altitude control and speed control for altitude sensor failure and airspeed sensor failure, which are the common problems for small fixed-wing UAV. Finally, the real flight experiments are implemented to test the fault-tolerant control based autopilot of UAV. Real flight test results are given and analyzed in detail, which show that the fixed-wing UAV can track the desired altitude and speed commands during the whole flight process including takeoff, climbing, cruising, gliding, landing, and wave-off by the fault-tolerant control based autopilot.

Description: To make the optimal design of the multilink transmission mechanism applied in mechanical press, the intelligent optimization techniques are explored in this paper. A preference polyhedron model and new domination relationships evaluation methodology are proposed for the purpose of reaching balance among kinematic performance, dynamic performance, and other performances of the multilink transmission mechanism during the conceptual design phase. Based on the traditional evaluation index of single target of multicriteria design optimization, the robust metrics of the mechanism system and preference metrics of decision-maker are taken into consideration in this preference polyhedron model and reflected by geometrical characteristic of the model. At last, two optimized multilink transmission mechanisms are designed based on the proposed preference polyhedron model with different evolutionary algorithms, and the result verifies the validity of the proposed optimization method.

Description: Robust disturbance rejection control methodology is proposed for Euler-Lagrange systems, and parameters optimization strategy for the observer is explored. First, the observer based disturbance rejection methodology is analyzed, based on which the disturbance rejection paradigm is proposed. Thus, a disturbance observer (DOB) with partial feedback linearization and a low-pass filter is proposed for nonlinear dynamic model under relaxed restrictions of the generalized disturbance. Then, the outer-loop backstepping controller is designed for desired tracking performance. Considering that the parameters of DOB cannot be obtained directly based on Lyapunov stability analysis, parameter of DOB is optimized under standard control framework. By analyzing the influence of outer-loop controller on the inner-loop observer parameter, robust stability constraint is proposed to guarantee the robust stability of the closed-loop system. Experiment on attitude tracking of an aircraft is carried out to show the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.

Description: Reversible photoswitching has been proposed as a way to identify molecules that are present in small numbers over a large, non-switching, background. This approach, called optical-lock-in-detection (OLID) requires the deterministic control of the fluorescence of a photochromic emitter through optical modulation between a bright (on) and a dark state (off). OLID yields a high-contrast map where the switching molecules are pinpointed, but the fractional intensities of the emitters are not returned. The present work presents a modified OLID approach (quantitative OLID or qOLID) that yields quantitative information of the switching (f SW ) and non-switching (f NS ) components. After the validation of the method with a sample dataset and image sequence, we apply qOLID to measurements in cells that transiently express the photochromic protein EYQ1. We show that qOLID is efficient in separating the modulated from the non-modulated signal, the latter deriving from background/autofluorescence or fluorophores emitting in the same spectral region. Finally, we apply qOLID to Förster (Fluorescence) Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) imaging. We here demonstrate that qOLID is able to highlight the distribution of FRET intensity in a sample by using a photochromic donor and a non-photochromic acceptor.

Description: Introduction Pregnancy-related deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is most common during the late phase of pregnancy and the first 6-weeks postpartum. Pregnancy-related DVT can have long-term complications, specifically post-thrombotic syndrome (PTS). Fibrin network ultrastructure is altered during pregnancy and post-partum. It is therefore essential to evaluate fibrin fiber diameter during and after pregnancy as this may provide insight into pregnancy-related DVT and subsequent PTS. Materials and methods The fibrin network ultrastructure of females during different phases of pregnancy was compared to that of non-pregnant females to assess possible changes to the fibrin network morphology and fibrin fiber diameter using scanning electron microscopy micrographs. Results The fibrin network arrangement was more densely packed during different phases of pregnancy, corresponding to earlier findings. Fibrin diameter decreased significantly during pregnancy, with the greatest decrease occurring during the late phase of pregnancy. The fractal dimensions of fibrin micrographs increased significantly during pregnancy compared to nonpregnant females. These changes are indicative of a simultaneous hypercoagulable and hypofibrinolytic state and correspond to the increased risk of DVT and subsequent development of PTS. Conclusion It is critical to identify “vulnerable” females with an inflammatory predisposition to prevent possible DVT and subsequent PTS. Modifiable risk factors like obesity and smoking should be addressed to alleviate the burden on the coagulation system. Morphological and viscoelastic techniques are crucial in assessing the coagulatory health of females during pregnancy.

Description: In the process of ultralow altitude airdrop, many factors such as actuator input dead-zone, backlash, uncertain external atmospheric disturbance, and model unknown nonlinearity affect the precision of trajectory tracking. In response, a robust adaptive neural network dynamic surface controller is developed. As a result, the aircraft longitudinal dynamics with actuator input nonlinearity is derived; the unknown nonlinear model functions are approximated by means of the RBF neural network. Also, an adaption strategy is used to achieve robustness against model uncertainties. Finally, it has been proved that all the signals in the closed-loop system are bounded and the tracking error converges to a small residual set asymptotically. Simulation results demonstrate the perfect tracking performance and strong robustness of the proposed method, which is not only applicable to the actuator with input dead-zone but also suitable for the backlash nonlinearity. At the same time, it can effectively overcome the effects of dead-zone and the atmospheric disturbance on the system and ensure the fast track of the desired flight path angle instruction, which overthrows the assumption that system functions must be known.

Description: We propose quasi-linear preequalization to be used for high speed visible light communication (VLC) system. Compared with zero-forcing preequalization, this kind of preequalization method is more suitable for a real VLC experimental system with peak power limitation. We carry out simulations and experiments to test the performance of quasi-linear preequalization. With this equalizer, the 3 dB bandwidth of the system can be extended from 17 MHz to 450 MHz. We implement 2.32 Gbit/s phosphorescent white light-emitting diode (LED) VLC transmission over 1 m distance with quasi-linear equalizer, bit and power loading OFDM, differential amplification positive intrinsic negative diode (PIN) receivers, and maximum ratio combining algorithm. To our knowledge, this is the highest transmission data rate based on a phosphorescent white LED VLC system.

Description: Under complicated situations, such as the low slippery road surface and split- road surface, traction control system is the key issue to improve the performance of vehicle acceleration and stability. In this paper, a novel control strategy with engine controller and active pressure controller is presented. First and foremost, an ideal vehicle model is proposed for simulation; then a method for the calculation of optimal slip ratio is also brought. Finally, the scheme of control method with engine controller and active brake controller is presented. From the results of simulation and road tests, it can be concluded that the acceleration performance and stability of a vehicle equipped with traction control system (TCS) can be improved.

Description: Objectives Chemotherapy targets rapidly dividing tissues in the body. It destroys the progenitor cells in gonads resulting in premature ovarian failure. Studies have suggested that bone marrow-derived stem cells can generate oocytes in chemotherapy treated female rats after transplantation. The present study aimed to assess mechanism of homing, the action of injected BM-MSCs on ovarian function after ovarian damage. Experimental design : Seventy two female albino rats were randomly allocated into Control and CTX group, The Experimental protocol was lasted for 12 weeks during which serum FSH and E2 were monitored twice at the end of the 2nd week (12 rats) and 8th week (6 rats). Stem cells identification and homing were evaluated by Flowcytometry and tagging of stem cells with iron oxide particles respectively. Also, histopathological examination was done to evaluate both degeneration (6 rats at 4th week) and regeneration (6 rats at 12th week) of ovarian tissue together with assessment of the levels of TNF-α in ovarian homogenate and IGF-I as a growth factor in ovarian tissue. Principal observations : Partial improvement of E2 and FSH levels as well as ovarian architecture. Elevation of ovarian TNF- α levels and of IGF-I immunohistochemical expressions in ovarian tissues of BM-MSCs injected rats were noticed following homing of BM- MSCs in the ovarian stroma in both control and chemotherapy groups. Conclusion : Injected BM- MSCs can home in the stroma of the injured ovaries. IGF-I and TNF- α may have a role in the attraction of stem cells in vivo.

Description: We define a new class of multivalent meromorphic functions using the generalised hypergeometric function. We derived this class related to conic domain. It is also shown that this new class of functions, under certain conditions, becomes a class of starlike functions. Some results on inclusion and closure properties are also derived.

Description: Babaçu (A. speciosa), Buriti (M. flexuosa), and Macaúba (A. aculeata) are palm trees typical of the ecotone area between Cerrado and the Amazon rainforest. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the antimicrobial potential of the extracts prepared from the leaves of those palms as well as determine their chemical compositions. The ethanol extracts were prepared in a Soxhlet apparatus and tested by disk diffusion and agar dilution technique against Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Candida albicans, and Candida parapsilosis. However, there was no significant activity at concentrations of 25, 50, and 100 mg·Ml−1. Moreover, the phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of tannins, flavonoids, catechins, steroids, triterpenes, and saponins. Gas chromatography (GC/MS) analysis also identified organic acids, such as capric (decanoic) acid, lauric (dodecanoic) acid, myristic (tetradecanoic) acid, phthalic (1,2-benzenedicarboxylic) acid, palmitic (hexadecanoic) acid, stearic (octadecanoic) acid, linoleic (9,12-octadecadienoic) acid (omega-6), linolenic (octadecatrienoic) acid (omega-3), and the terpenes citronellol and phytol. Based on the chemical composition in the palm leaf extracts, the palms have the potential to be useful in the food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical industries.

Description: This paper creatively proposes a cluster boundary sampling method based on density clustering to solve the problem of resampling in IDS classification and verify its effectiveness experimentally. We use the clustering density threshold and the boundary density threshold to determine the cluster boundaries, in order to guide the process of resampling more scientifically and accurately. Then, we adopt the penalty factor to regulate the data imbalance effect on SVM classification algorithm. The achievements and scientific significance of this paper do not propose the best classifier or solution of imbalanced data set and just verify the validity and stability of proposed IDS resampling method. Experiments show that our method acquires obvious promotion effect in various imbalanced data sets.

Description: This study considers a multilevel assembly system with several components in each sublevel. It is assumed that actual lead time for all components is probabilistic; and periodic order quantity (POQ) policy for ordering is utilized. If at a certain level a job is not received at the expected time, a delay is incurred at the delivery of production at this level and this may result in backorders of the finished product. It is assumed in this case that a fixed percentage of the shortage is backlogged and other sales are lost. In the real situation, some but not all customers will wait for backlogged components during a period of shortage, such as for fashionable commodities or high-tech products with the short product life cycle. The objective of this study is to find the planned lead time and periodicity for the total components in order to minimize the expected fixed ordering, holding, and partial backlogging costs for the finished product. In this study, it is assumed that a percentage of components at each level are scrap. A general mathematical model is suggested and the method developed can be used for optimization planned lead time and periodicity for such an MRP system under lead time uncertainties.

Description: The heat and mass transfer characteristics of a liquid film which contain thermosolutal capillarity and a variable magnetic field over an unsteady stretching sheet have been investigated. The governing equations for momentum, energy, and concentration are established and transformed to a set of coupled ordinary equations with the aid of similarity transformation. The analytical solutions are obtained using the double-parameter transformation perturbation expansion method. The effects of various relevant parameters such as unsteady parameter, Prandtl number, Schmidt number, thermocapillary number, and solutal capillary number on the velocity, temperature, and concentration fields are discussed and presented graphically. Results show that increasing values of thermocapillary number and solutal capillary number both lead to a decrease in the temperature and concentration fields. Furthermore, the influences of thermocapillary number on various fields are more remarkable in comparison to the solutal capillary number.

Description: This paper addresses the leader-follower consensus problem of networked systems by using a decentralized event-based control strategy. The event-based control strategy makes the controllers of agents update at aperiodic event instants. Two decentralized event functions are designed to generate these event instants. In particular, the second event function only uses its own information and the neighbors’ states at their latest event instants. By using this event function, no continuous communication among followers is required. As the followers only communicate at these discrete event instants, this strategy is able to save communication and to reduce channel occupation. It is analytically shown that the leader-follower networked system is able to reach consensus by utilizing the proposed control strategy. Simulation examples are shown to illustrate effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.

Description: Dictionary learning problem has become an active topic for decades. Most existing learning methods train the dictionary to adapt to a particular class of signals. But as the number of the dictionary atoms is increased to represent the signals much more sparsely, the coherence between the atoms becomes higher. According to the greedy and compressed sensing theories, this goes against the implementation of sparse coding. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed to learn the dictionary that minimizes the sparse representation error according to the training signals with the coherence taken into consideration. The coherence is constrained by making the Gram matrix of the desired dictionary approximate to an identity matrix of proper dimension. The method for handling the proposed model is mainly based on the alternating minimization procedure and, in each step, the closed-form solution is derived. A series of experiments on synthetic data and audio signals is executed to demonstrate the promising performance of the learnt incoherent dictionary and the superiority of the learning method to the existing ones.

Description: Aiming to estimate SEE soft error performance of complex electronic systems, a soft error propagation model based on cellular automaton is proposed and an estimation methodology based on circuit partitioning and error propagation is presented. Simulations indicate that different fault grade jamming and different coupling factors between cells are the main parameters influencing the vulnerability of the system. Accelerated radiation experiments have been developed to determine the main parameters for raw soft error vulnerability of the module and coupling factors. Results indicate that the proposed method is feasible.

Description: The Brazilian disc test is a simple and useful technique to determine the tensile strength of rock materials. By using FLAC3D, 63 numerical simulations in total were performed when flattened Brazilian disc coefficient and Poisson’s ratio were different. Based on Griffith theory, the corresponding FISH language was compiled to record the Griffith equivalent stress. Through analysis of numerical simulation results, it is indicated that fracture plane was not the plane going through center of the Brazilian disc, which was in good agreement with the references. In addition, the flattened Brazilian disc coefficients had greater influence on tensile strength than Poisson’s ratio. Based on cusp catastrophe theory, the flattened Brazilian disc coefficient should not exceed 0.035 for the flattened Brazilian disc tests. Consequently, a tensile strength empirical formula considering flattened Brazilian disc coefficient by utilizing the flattened Brazilian disc test was established, which was , .

Description: This paper develops a particle swarm optimization (PSO) based framework for constrained optimization problems (COPs). Aiming at enhancing the performance of PSO, a modified PSO algorithm, named SASPSO 2011, is proposed by adding a newly developed self-adaptive strategy to the standard particle swarm optimization 2011 (SPSO 2011) algorithm. Since the convergence of PSO is of great importance and significantly influences the performance of PSO, this paper first theoretically investigates the convergence of SASPSO 2011. Then, a parameter selection principle guaranteeing the convergence of SASPSO 2011 is provided. Subsequently, a SASPSO 2011-based framework is established to solve COPs. Attempting to increase the diversity of solutions and decrease optimization difficulties, the adaptive relaxation method, which is combined with the feasibility-based rule, is applied to handle constraints of COPs and evaluate candidate solutions in the developed framework. Finally, the proposed method is verified through 4 benchmark test functions and 2 real-world engineering problems against six PSO variants and some well-known methods proposed in the literature. Simulation results confirm that the proposed method is highly competitive in terms of the solution quality and can be considered as a vital alternative to solve COPs.

Description: In order to coordinate the complex relationship between supplies distribution and path selection, some influential factors must be taken into account such as the insufficient remaining capacity of the road and uncertainty of travel time during supplies distribution and transportation. After the structure of emergency logistics network is analyzed, the travel time Bayes risk function of path and the total loss Bayes risk function of the disaster area are proposed. With the emergency supplies total transportation unit loss as the goal, an emergency logistics network optimization model under crowded conditions is established by the Bayes decision theory and solved by the improved ant colony algorithm. Then, a case of the model is validated to prove that the emergency logistics network optimization model is effective in congested conditions.

Description: In order to analyze the stress and displacement of pavement, a new form of the general solution of the elastic space axisymmetric problem is proposed by the method of mathematics reasoning. Depending on the displacement function put forward by Southwell, displacement function is derived based on Hankel transform and inverse Hankel transform. A new form of the general solution of the elastic space axisymmetric problem has been set up according to a few basic equations as the geometric equations, constitutive equations, and equilibrium equations. The present solution applies to elastic half-space foundation and Winkler foundation; the stress and displacement of pavement are obtained by mathematical deduction. The example results show that the proposed method is practically feasible.

Description: This paper aims at the frequency-domain packet scheduling (FDPS) problem in orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) system. Under users’ data queue size constraints, a new swap-based FDPS algorithm is proposed to achieve further improvement in system throughput. In this algorithm, the swap of physical resource blocks (PRBs) between different users is introduced to give a comprehensive view of the overall scheduling process. Moreover, the proposed algorithm optimizes the choosing method of swap candidates and always tries to select the user who can maximize the throughput improvement. Simulation results demonstrate that this new algorithm can improve the system throughput significantly as well as reduce the resource waste effectively.

Description: In order to investigate the influence of the intermediate principal stress on the stress and displacement of surrounding rock, a novel approach based on 3D Hoek-Brown (H-B) failure criterion was proposed. Taking the strain-softening characteristic of rock mass into account, the potential plastic zone is subdivided into a finite number of concentric annulus and a numerical procedure for calculating the stress and displacement of each annulus was presented. Strains were obtained based on the nonassociated and associated flow rule and 3D plastic potential function. Stresses were achieved by the stress equilibrium equation and generalized Hoek-Brown failure criterion. Using the proposed approach, we can get the solutions of the stress and displacement of the surrounding rock considering the intermediate principal stress. Moreover, the proposed approach was validated with the published results. Compared with the results based on generalized Hoek-Brown failure criterion, it is shown that the plastic radius calculated by 3D Hoek-Brown failure criterion is smaller than those solved by generalized H-B failure criterion, and the influences of dilatancy effect on the results based on the generalized H-B failure criterion are greater than those based on 3D H-B failure criterion. The displacements considering the nonassociated flow rule are smaller than those considering associated flow rules.

Description: A new problem arises when an automated guided vehicle (AGV) is dispatched to visit a set of customers, which are usually located along a fixed wire transmitting signal to navigate the AGV. An optimal visiting sequence is desired with the objective of minimizing the total travelling distance (or time). When precedence constraints are restricted on customers, the problem is referred to as traveling salesman problem on path with precedence constraints (TSPP-PC). Whether or not it is NP-complete has no answer in the literature. In this paper, we design dynamic programming for the TSPP-PC, which is the first polynomial-time exact algorithm when the number of precedence constraints is a constant. For the problem with number of precedence constraints, part of the input can be arbitrarily large, so we provide an efficient heuristic based on the exact algorithm.

Description: To make up the defect of the existing model, an improved grey relational model based on radian perspective (RPGRA) is put forward. According to the similarity of the relative change trend of time series translating traditional grey relational degree into radian algorithm within different piecewise functions, it greatly improves the accuracy and validity of the research results by making full use of the poor information in time series. Meanwhile, the properties of the RPGRA were discussed. The relationship between China’s marine S&T and marine economy is researched using the new model, so the validity and creditability of RPGRA are illustrated. The empirical results show that marine scientific and technological research projects, marine scientific and technological patents granted, and research funds receipts of the marine scientific research institutions have greater relationship with GOP, which indicates that they have more impact on China’s marine economy.

Description: Currently, biometric identifiers have been used to identify or authenticate users in a biometric system to increase the security in access control systems. Nevertheless, there are several attacks on the biometric system to steal and recover the user’s biometric trait. One of the most powerful attacks is extracting the fingerprint pattern when it is transmitted over communication lines between modules. In this paper, we present a novel fingerprint image encryption scheme based on hyperchaotic Rössler map to provide high security and secrecy in user’s biometric trait, avoid identity theft, and increase the robustness of the biometric system. A complete security analysis is presented to justify the secrecy of the biometric trait by using our proposed scheme at statistical level with 100% of NPCR, low correlation, and uniform histograms. Therefore, it can be used in secure biometric access control systems.

Description: In recent years, the combination of fractional calculus (FC) and sliding-mode control (SMC) has been gaining more and more interests due to fusion characteristics of SMC and FC. This paper presents the fractional-order terminal sliding-mode control (FTSMC) which has a new fractional-order sliding surface and assures the finite time convergence of the output voltage error to the equilibrium point during the load changes. TSMC is a special case of FTSMC. Through mathematical analysis, the system can reach the sliding-mode surface in finite time. The theoretical considerations have been verified by numerical simulations. And a Buck DC/DC converter application is presented and compared to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. It is shown that the novel fractional terminal sliding-mode control exhibits considerable improvement in terms of a faster output voltage response during load changes.

Description: Soil-shallow foundation interaction models that are incorporated into most structural analysis programs generally lack accuracy and efficiency or neglect some aspects of foundation behavior. For instance, soil-shallow foundation systems have been observed to show both small and large loops under increasing amplitude load reversals. This paper presents a practical macroelement model for soil-shallow foundation system and its stability under simultaneous horizontal and vertical loads. The model comprises three spring elements: nonlinear horizontal, nonlinear rotational, and linear vertical springs. The proposed macroelement model was verified using experimental test results from large-scale model foundations subjected to small and large cyclic loading cases.

Description: Suspension bridge is a kind of bridge which uses cables as the main bearing structure. Suspension bridge has the characteristics of saving materials and weak stiffness. With the increase of the span of suspension bridge, wind induced vibration has resulted in injury of several suspension bridges, which leads to a significant loss. Thus, it is imperative to study the wind vibration mechanism of cables. As for this problem, this paper based on motion theory of mesoscopic particles performs flow simulation of cables by LBM which is different from traditional computing method of fluid mechanics. By calculating the distribution function of the distribution on the grid of uniform flow field, the macroscopic motion law of the flow field around cables can be obtained, which can provide reference for wind resistant design of suspension.

Description: Crowbar conduction has an impact on the transient characteristics of a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) in the short-circuit fault condition. But crowbar protection is seldom considered in the aggregation method for equivalent modeling of DFIG-based wind power plants (WPPs). In this paper, the relationship between the growth of postfault rotor current and the amplitude of the terminal voltage dip is studied by analyzing the rotor current characteristics of a DFIG during the fault process. Then, a terminal voltage dip criterion which can identify crowbar conduction is proposed. Considering the different grid connection structures for single DFIG and WPP, the criterion is revised and the crowbar conduction is judged depending on the revised criterion. Furthermore, an aggregation model of the WPP is established based on the division principle of crowbar conduction. Finally, the proposed equivalent WPP is simulated on a DIgSILENT PowerFactory platform and the results are compared with those of the traditional equivalent WPPs and the detailed WPP. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the method for equivalent modeling of DFIG-based WPP when crowbar protection is also taken into account.

Description: An adaptive disturbance rejection algorithm is proposed for carrier landing system in the final-approach. The carrier-based aircraft dynamics and the linearized longitudinal model under turbulence conditions in the final-approach are analyzed. A stable adaptive control scheme is developed based on LDU decomposition of the high-frequency gain matrix, which ensures closed-loop stability and asymptotic output tracking. Finally, simulation studies of a linearized longitudinal-directional dynamics model are conducted to demonstrate the performance of the adaptive scheme.

Description: Lasers and photodynamic therapy have been considered a convergence treatment for onychomycosis, which is a fungal infection on the nail bed and nail plate. Laser therapies have shown satisfactory results without significant complications for onychomycosis; however, the mechanism of clearing remains unknown. In this work, we investigated changes in the chemical structure of nail keratin induced by Nd:YAG laser using Raman spectroscopy. Toe nails with onychomycosis were treated with 1064 nm Nd:YAG laser. After laser treatment, the disulfide band (490–590 cm −1 ) of nail keratin was rarely observed or was reduced in intensity. The amide I band (1500–1700 cm −1 ) also showed changes induced by the laser. The α-helical (1652 cm −1 ) structures dominated the β-sheet (1673 cm −1 ) in nontreated nail, but the opposite phenomenon was observed after laser treatment.

Description: The present study was designed to investigate acute toxicity of dimethoate on juvenile Cyprinus carpio var. communis. Fishes weighing  gms were selected and mortality data was statistically evaluated by Finney’s Probit Method. The 96-hour LC50 value for Cyprinus carpio was found as 1.1 ppm in static bioassay system. Mean values of physicochemical parameters of aquarium waters determined during bioassay depicted slight variation indicating that the mortality in aquarium fishes occurred due to pesticide exposure and not suffocation. Lab. temperature ranged from 12 to 13°C; water temperature ranged from 11 to 12°C; dissolved oxygen ranged from 3.90 to 4.56 mg/L; pH ranged from 6.90 to 7.05; total dissolved solids ranged from 2.66 to 3.0 × 103 mg/L, while CO2 remained at a constant value of 2.0 mg/L. The fishes elicited various behavioural responses such as uncoordinated movements, convulsions, excessive mucus secretion, and imbalanced swimming which ended in a collapse to the bottom of the aquarium. Prior to death, the clinical signs like scale erosion, pale body colour, and hemorrhagic patches over the body were noticed which became more vivid up to the termination of experiments. Results of the study indicate potential toxicity of dimethoate in fingerlings of common carp for which the natural waterbodies must be continuously monitored to reduce its impact across food chains.

Description: Two financing modes can be considered for manufacturer’s production capital constrained: RPFM (retailer’s prepayment financing mode) and PCFM (procurement contract financing mode). Under the RPFM, the retailer places order in advance for a discount price and makes prepayment; manufacturer is able to finance from a bank as production quantity cannot satisfy the second-order quantity of retailer. By contrast, manufacturers make financing from commercial banks based on the procurement contract with upstream supplier under the PCFM. Taking into account the relation between production volumes with the manufacturer’s own capital and retailer’s order quantity, the optimal production and financing decision model for manufacturer under these two financing modes are built. Moreover, the profits of the manufacturer, the retailer, and the supply chain are compared and discussed. Results show that both of the two modes can create new value and profit for the supply chain with capital constraint and achieve optimal production under “newsvendor” mode; the supply chain has the better performance under the RPFM than that achieved under the PCFM. Also, under the RPFM, the manufacturer’s production and the profit of the whole supply chain would be increased when the manufacturer makes the second financing. Similar conclusion is reached under the PCFM. Finally, numerical study was given to demonstrate the conclusions.

Description: A dynamically changing road traffic model which occasionally suffers a disaster (traffic collision, wrecked vehicles, conflicting weather conditions, spilled cargo, and hazardous matter) resulting in loss of all the vehicles (diverted to other routes) has been discussed. Once the system gets repaired, it undergoes trial phases and finally reaches its full capacity phase n. We have obtained the explicit steady state probabilities of the system via Matrix Geometric Method. Probability Generating Function is used to evaluate the time spent by the system in each phase. Various performance measures like mean traffic, average waiting time of vehicles, and fraction of vehicles lost are calculated. Some special cases have also been discussed.

Description: Limit analysis is a practical and meaningful method to predict the stability of geomechanical properties. This work investigates the pore water effect on new collapse mechanisms and possible collapsing block shapes of shallow tunnels with considering the effects of surface settlement. The analysis is performed within the framework of upper bound theorem. Furthermore, the NL nonlinear failure criterion is used to examine the influence of different factors on the collapsing shape and the minimum supporting pressure in shallow tunnels. Analytical solutions derived by functional catastrophe theory for the two different shape curves which describe the distinct characteristics of falling blocks up and down the water level are obtained by virtual work equations under the variational principle. By considering that the mechanical properties of soil are not affected by the presence of underground water, the strength parameters in NL failure criterion can be taken to be the same under and above the water table. According to the numerical results in this work, the influences on the size of collapsing block different parameters have are presented in the tables and the upper bounds on the loads required to resist collapse are derived and illustrated in the form of supporting forces graphs that account for the variation of the embedded depth and other factors.

Description: This paper addresses the control strategy for the suppression of maglev vehicle-bridge interaction resonance, which worsens the ride comfort of vehicle and degrades the safety of the bridge. Firstly, a minimum model containing a flexible bridge and ten levitation units is presented. Based on the minimum model, we pointed out that magnetic flux feedback instead of the traditional current feedback is capable of simplifying the block diagram of the interaction system. Furthermore, considering the uncertainty of the bridge’s modal frequency, the stability of the interaction system is explored according to an improved root-locus technique. Motivated by the positive effects of the mechanical damping of bridges and the feedback channels’ difference between the levitation subsystem and the bridge subsystem, the increment of electrical damping by the additional feedback of vertical velocity of bridge is proposed and several related implementation issues are addressed. Finally, the numerical and experimental results illustrating the stability improvement are provided.

Description: This note reports on the proper correction of force data acquired with an atomic force microscope (AFM). The force–time representation is hereby used to obtain the correction factors for the overall offset and slope for a single force–time curve, as the initial force, F 0  =  F ( t 0 ), and the rate of change in the force per unit of time, dF/dt , respectively. The report shows that a complete set of force data, including the approach, delay and retraction regions, can be simultaneously corrected in the force–time representation by subtracting the line CL t = F 0  +  dF/dt·t to the experimental data. The method described here outperforms the one commonly employed in the correction of AFM force curves and highlights the convenience of using the force–time representation for force data processing wherein the artifactual behavior can be expressed as a single, differentiable function of time.

Description: To better understand the basis of urinary calculi formation, we studied the composition, microstructure, and element analysis of different types of urinary calculi. Sixty people with urinary stones in Shanxi province were selected randomly. The composition of urinary stones was analyzed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The microstructure of material components was observed by a scanning electron microscopy and the elemental distribution and composition were analyzed by an X-ray energy spectrometer. Furthermore, general information, BMI, history of medicine, chronic medical history, family history, and recurrence rates were collected. Female-to-male ratio was 1:2.5; median age was 43.2 years old. Of the patients, 13.3% were found definite family history and 46.6% of patients for recurrence history. It was found that mixed stones account for the largest proportion (65%), followed by calcium oxalate monohydrate calculi (26.67%). In mixed stones, the mixture of calcium oxalate monohydrate and hydroxyapatite had the largest proportion, accounting for 71.79%. Stones showed different microcosmic characteristics and element distribution. Stones varied widely in distribution, infrared spectrum, microstructure, and element composition, which provided an important basis for urinary calculi research regarding urinary stone formation.

Description: The spatial resolution of a stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscope is theoretically unlimited and practically determined by the signal-to-noise ratio. Typically, an increase of the STED beam's power leads to an improvement of the effective resolution. However, this improvement may vanish because an increased STED beam's power is often accompanied by an increased photobleaching, which worsen the effective resolution by reducing the signal strength. A way to lower the photobleaching in pulsed STED (P-STED) implementations is to reduce the peak intensity lengthening the pulses duration (for a given average STED beam's power). This also leads to a reduction of the fluorophores quenching, thus a reduction of the effective resolution, but the time-gated detection was proved to be successful in recovering these reductions. Here we demonstrated that a subnanosecond fiber laser beam (pulse width ∼600 ps) reduces the photobleaching with respect to a traditional stretched hundreds picosecond (∼200 ps) beam provided by a Ti:Sapphire laser, without any effective spatial resolution lost.

Description: This study describes the mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) in odontocetes from the Brazilian coast and freshwater systems. Seven species were evaluated and tissue samples were analyzed by light, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, and immunohistochemistry. Laryngeal tonsil was a palpable oval mass located in the larynx, composed of a lymphoepithelial complex. Dense collections of lymphocytes were found in the skin of male fetus and calf. Clusters of lymphoid tissue were found in the uterine cervix of a reproductively active juvenile female and along the pulmonary artery of an adult female. Lymphoid tissues associated with the gastrointestinal tract were characterized by diffusely arranged or organized lymphocytes. The anal tonsil was composed of an aggregate of lymphoid tissue occurring exclusively in the anal canal, being composed of squamous epithelium branches. MALT was present in different tissues and organic systems of cetaceans, providing constant protection against mucosal pathogens present in their environment.

Description: Power flow calculation and short circuit calculation are the basis of theoretical research for distribution network with inverter based distributed generation. The similarity of equivalent model for inverter based distributed generation during normal and fault conditions of distribution network and the differences between power flow and short circuit calculation are analyzed in this paper. Then an integrated power flow and short circuit calculation method for distribution network with inverter based distributed generation is proposed. The proposed method let the inverter based distributed generation be equivalent to bus, which makes it suitable to calculate the power flow of distribution network with a current limited inverter based distributed generation. And the low voltage ride through capability of inverter based distributed generation can be considered as well in this paper. Finally, some tests of power flow and short circuit current calculation are performed on a 33-bus distribution network. The calculated results from the proposed method in this paper are contrasted with those by the traditional method and the simulation method, whose results have verified the effectiveness of the integrated method suggested in this paper.

Description: In the era of big data, feature selection is an essential process in machine learning. Although the class imbalance problem has recently attracted a great deal of attention, little effort has been undertaken to develop feature selection techniques. In addition, most applications involving feature selection focus on classification accuracy but not cost, although costs are important. To cope with imbalance problems, we developed a cost-sensitive feature selection algorithm that adds the cost-based evaluation function of a filter feature selection using a chaos genetic algorithm, referred to as CSFSG. The evaluation function considers both feature-acquiring costs (test costs) and misclassification costs in the field of network security, thereby weakening the influence of many instances from the majority of classes in large-scale datasets. The CSFSG algorithm reduces the total cost of feature selection and trades off both factors. The behavior of the CSFSG algorithm is tested on a large-scale dataset of network security, using two kinds of classifiers: C4.5 and -nearest neighbor (KNN). The results of the experimental research show that the approach is efficient and able to effectively improve classification accuracy and to decrease classification time. In addition, the results of our method are more promising than the results of other cost-sensitive feature selection algorithms.

Description: We present a gesture recognition method derived from particle swarm movement for free-air hand gesture recognition. Online gesture recognition remains a difficult problem due to uncertainty in vision-based gesture boundary detection methods. We suggest an automated process of segmenting meaningful gesture trajectories based on particle swarm movement. A subgesture detection and reasoning method is incorporated in the proposed recognizer to avoid premature gesture spotting. Evaluation of the proposed method shows promising recognition results: 97.6% on preisolated gestures, 94.9% on stream gestures with assistive boundary indicators, and 94.2% for blind gesture spotting on digit gesture vocabulary. The proposed recognizer requires fewer computation resources; thus it is a good candidate for real-time applications.

Description: Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller is one of the most widely used controllers for its property of simplicity and practicability. In order to design high-quality performances PID controllers, an Advanced Fireworks (AFW) algorithm based on self-adaption principle and bimodal Gaussian function is proposed, which is built to optimize the PID controller by parameters tuning. Firstly, a compound index of optimization performance is formulated, and then the extremal optimization method of PID control system is proposed. Secondly, a PID parameters tuning model combined with AFW is built. At last, 5 typical transfer functions are simulated to obtain optimal parameters by AFW and contrast tuning method, such as Ziegler-Nichols method, Enhanced Fireworks (EFW) algorithm, and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). Simulation results show that AFW are effective and are easily implemented methods to solve PID control problems of different transfer functions.

Description: ABSTRACT With the development of spherical aberration (Cs) corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), high angle annular dark filed (HAADF) imaging technique has been widely applied in the microstructure characterization of various advanced materials with atomic resolution. However, current qualitative interpretation of the HAADF image is not enough to extract all the useful information. Here a modified peaks finding method was proposed to quantify the HAADF-STEM image to extract structural and chemical information. Firstly, an automatic segmentation technique including numerical filters and watershed algorithm was used to define the sub-areas for each atomic column. Then a 2D Gaussian fitting was carried out to determine the atomic column positions precisely, which provides the geometric information at the unit-cell scale. Furthermore, a self-adaptive integration based on the column position and the covariance of statistical Gaussian distribution were performed. The integrated intensities show very high sensitivity on the mean atomic number with improved signal-to-noise ( S/N ) ratio. Consequently, the polarization map and strain distributions were rebuilt from a HAADF-STEM image of the rhombohedral and tetragonal BiFeO 3 interface and a MnO 2 monolayer in LaAlO 3 /SrMnO 3 /SrTiO 3 heterostructure was discerned from its neighbor TiO 2 layers. Microsc. Res. Tech., 2016 . © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Description: ABSTRACT The ultrastructural study carried out on (a) oocytes of Armadillidium vulgare during vitellogenesis, (b) mature eggs taken from the ovaries during the parturial moult of the posterior half of the body, and (c) fertilized eggs collected within a few hours of their release into the brood pouch, has clearly demonstrated that before the fertilization the chorion is the only envelope present in the egg of oniscidean isopods. In the mature eggs, the chorion appears as a uniformly electron-dense lamina, about 0.4–0.5 µm thick, which does not show any specialized area. A second envelope, described by other authors as vitelline envelope, is formed above the oolemma only right after fertilization and appears separated from the chorion by a space full of liquid. The ways in which the genesis of this envelope is realized are not yet clear; it could be interpreted rather as a fertilization membrane. The investigations carried out with the aid of a battery of FITC-lectins have highlighted the presence at the chorion surface of unfertilized eggs of various saccharide residues distributed in uniform way. No significant change was observed in the pattern of lectins binding to the chorion of eggs taken from the brood pouch, thus demonstrating how, after the fertilization, no significant rearrangement in the distribution of saccharide residues present on the egg surface occurs in A. vulgare . The ways in which, therefore, the recognition, the binding and the entry of the peculiar sperm of oniscidean isopods into the egg occur, still remain all to be deciphered. Microsc. Res. Tech., 2016 . © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Description: ABSTRACT The opossum Monodelphis domestica presents movement of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) reflecting adaptation to eating habits similar to movement in humans, but the structure of the TMJ is not yet known. Thus, nine young M. domestica , of both sexes were weighed, anesthetized with xylazine (10 mg kg −1 ), and ketamine (70 mg kg −1 ) and processed for: 1. The analyses of the macroscopic angioarchitecture after latex injection, as well as the topography of the TMJ; 2. The analysis of microvascularization after injection of Mercox resin and corrosion of soft tissue with NaOH using scanning electron microscopy and; 3. The histological evaluation of the TMJ with an optical microscope. Macroscopic analysis of the latex injected vessels revealed the distribution of the arteries from the common carotid artery, receiving branches of the superficial temporal and maxillary arteries. The mandibular condyle has the long axis in the lateral–lateral direction, and is convex in the anterior–posterior direction. Its topography was determined in relation to the eye and external acoustic meatus. With scanning electron microscopy, microvascularization consists of arterioles of varying diameter (85–15 µm) of the meandering capillary network in the retrodiscal region, and a network of straight capillaries in the TMJ anterior region. Via light microscopy the TMJ has similar histological features to those of humans. These macroscopic, microscopic and ultrastructural data from TMJ of the M. domestica could be a suitable model for TMJ physiology and pathophysiology studies for then speculate on possible human studies. Microsc. Res. Tech., 2016 . © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Description: Modeling of vehicle behavior based on the identification method has received a renewed attention in recent years. In order to improve the linear time-invariant vehicle identification model, a more general identifiable vehicle model structure is proposed, in which time-varying characteristics of vehicle speed and cornering stiffness are taken into consideration. To identify the proposed linear time-varying vehicle model, a well-established data-driven method, named recursive optimized version of predictor-based subspace identification, is introduced. Before vehicle model identification, the influences of four parameters in the subspace algorithm are studied based on pulse input road test. And then a set of practical optimal parameters are chosen and used for the vehicle model identification. Through a series of standard road tests under different maneuvers, the linear time-varying vehicle model can be identified in real-time. It is demonstrated by comparison that the predicted outputs of the proposed vehicle model are much closer to the real vehicle outputs and the model has a wider range of application.

Description: The city of Curitiba, located at Southern Brazil, is recognized by its urban planning structured on three pillars: land use, collective transportation, and traffic. With 3.8 million people in its metropolitan area, the public transport system deals with approximately 2.5 million passengers daily. The structure and properties of such a transportation system have substantial implications for the urban planning and public politics for sustainable development of Curitiba. Therefore, this paper analyzes the structure of the public transportation system of Curitiba through the theory of complex networks in a static approach of network topology and presents a comparative analysis of the results from Curitiba, three cities from China (Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou), and three cities from Poland (GOP, Warszawa, and Łódź). The transportation network was modeled as a complex network with exact geographical coordinates of its bus stops. In all bus lines, the method used was the P-Space. The results show that this bus network has characteristics of both small-world and scale-free networks.

Description: By using the techniques of Manifold Embedding and Laplacian Eigenmaps, a novel strategy has been proposed in this paper to detect the chaos of Dow Jones Industrial Average. Firstly, the chaotic attractor of financial time series is assumed to lie on a low-dimensional manifold that is embedded into a high-dimensional Euclidean space. Then, an improved phase space reconstruction method and a nonlinear dimensionality reduction method are introduced to help reveal the structure of the chaotic attractor. Next, the empirical study on the financial time series of Dow Jones Industrial Average shows that there exists an attractor which lies on a manifold constructed by the time sequence of Moving average convergence divergence; finally, Determinism Test, Poincaré section, and translation analysis are used as test approaches to prove both whether it is a chaos and how it works.

Description: Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BC) are the earliest well-developed writing forms of the Chinese character system, and their carving techniques have not been studied by tool marks analysis with microscopy. In this study, a digital microscope with three-dimensional surface reconstruction based on extended depth of focus technology was used to investigate tool marks on the surface of four pieces of oracle bones excavated at the eastern area of Huayuanzhuang, Yinxu site(ca., 1319–1046 BC), the last capital of the Shang dynasty, Henan province, China. The results show that there were two procedures to carve the characters on the analyzed tortoise shells. The first procedure was direct carving. The second was “outlining design,” which means to engrave a formal character after engraving a draft with a pointed tool. Most of the strokes developed by an engraver do not overlap the smaller draft, which implies that the outlining design would be a sound way to avoid errors such as wrong and missing characters. The strokes of these characters have different shape at two ends and variations on width and depth of the grooves. Moreover, the bottom of the grooves is always rugged. Thus, the use of rotary wheel-cutting tools could be ruled out. In most cases, the starting points of the strokes are round or flat while the finishing points are always pointed. Moreover, the strokes should be engraved from top to bottom. When vertical or horizontal strokes had been engraved, the shell would be turned about 90 degrees to engrave the crossed strokes from top to bottom. There was no preferred order to engrave vertical or horizontal strokes. Since both sides of the grooves of the characters are neat and there exists no unorganized tool marks, then it is suggested that some sharp tools had been used for engraving characters on the shells. Microsc. Res. Tech., 2016 . © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.