Semantically enriched Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) platform

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are becoming an essential source of information for both students and teachers. Noticeably, MOOCs have to adapt to the fast development of new technologies; they also have to satisfy the current generation of online students. The current MOOCs’ Management Systems, such as Coursera, Udacity, edX, etc., use content management platforms where content are organized in a hierarchical structure. We envision a new generation of MOOCs that support interpretability with formal semantics by using the SemanticWeb and the online social networks. Semantic technologies support more flexible information management than that offered by the current MOOCs’ platforms. Annotated information about courses, video lectures, assignments, students, teachers, etc., can be composed from heterogeneous sources, including contributions from the communities in the forum space. These annotations, combined with legacy data, build foundations for more efficient information discovery in MOOCs’ platforms. In this article we review various Collaborative Semantic Filtering technologies for building Semantic MOOCs’ management system, then, we present a prototype of a semantic middle-sized platform implemented at Western Kentucky University that answers these aforementioned requirements.     

A synergistic strategy for combining thesaurus-based and corpus-based approaches in building ontology for multilingual search engines

In this article we illustrate a methodology for building cross-language search engine. A synergistic approach between thesaurus-based approach and corpus-based approach is proposed. First, a bilingual ontology thesaurus is designed with respect to two languages: English and Spanish, where a simple bilingual listing of terms, phrases, concepts, and subconcepts is built. Second, term vector translation is used – a statistical multilingual text retrieval techniques that maps statistical information about term use between languages (Ontology co-learning). These techniques map sets of t f id f term weights from one language to another. We also applied a query translation method to retrieve multilingual documents with an expansion technique for phrasal translation. Finally, we present our findings.     

An investigation into the cause of loss of containment from the supply of mini-bulk lubricants

An Intermediate Bulk Container (IBC) was punctured during its handling, releasing oil onto soil at an environmentally-sensitive region of Australia. The telehandler did not pierce the plastic of the IBC directly (as was expected) but rather one of the tynes had caught on the underside of the metal base plate, despite numerous controls being in place at time of spill, revealing a previously unreported mechanism for a fluid spill from handling of petroleum hydrocarbons. The diverse investigation team used a root cause analysis (RCA) technique to identify the underlying cause: the inspection process was inadequate with contributing factors of not using a spotter and design of IBC did not anticipate conditions. Engineering controls were put in place as part of the change management process to help prevent spills from occurring from piercing from telehandler tynes on the current project site.     

Enhanced graphitic domains of unreduced graphene oxide and the interplay of hydration behaviour and catalytic activity

Previous studies indicate that the properties of graphene oxide (GO) can be significantly improved by enhancing its graphitic domain size through thermal diffusion and clustering of functional groups. Remarkably, this transition takes place below the decomposition temperature of the functional groups and thus allows fine tuning of graphitic domains without compromising with the functionality of GO. By studying the transformation of GO under mild thermal treatment, we directly observe this size enhancement of graphitic domains from originally ≤40 nm² to >200 nm² through an extensive transmission electron microscopy (TEM) study. Additionally, we confirm the integrity of the functional groups during this process by a comprehensive chemical analysis. A closer look into the process confirms the theoretical predicted relevance for the room temperature stability of GO and the development of the composition of functional groups is explained with reaction pathways from theoretical calculations. We further investigate the influence of enlarged graphitic domains on the hydration behaviour of GO and the catalytic performance of single atom catalysts supported by GO. Additionally, we show that the sheet resistance of GO is reduced by several orders of magnitude during the mild thermal annealing process.     

Machine learning techniques for scheduling jobs with incompatible families and unequal ready times on parallel batch machines

This research is motivated by a scheduling problem found in the diffusion and oxidation areas of semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities, where the machines can be modeled as parallel batch processors. Total weighted tardiness on parallel batch machines with incompatible job families and unequal ready times of the jobs is attempt to minimize. Given that the problem is NP hard, a simple heuristic based on the Apparent Tardiness Cost (ATC) Dispatching Rule is suggested. Using this rule, a look-ahead parameter has to be chosen. Because of the appearance of unequal ready times and batch machines it is hard to develop a closed formula to estimate this parameter. The use of inductive decision trees and neural networks from machine learning is suggested to tackle the problem of parameter estimation. The results of computational experiments based on stochastically generated test data are presented. The results indicate that a successful choice of the look-ahead parameter is possible by using the machine learning techniques.     

Learning search keywords for construction procurement

Seeking information from websites has become an essential part of a contractor's procurement undertaking, as more and more procurement websites become available on the Internet. Websites host extremely large amounts of information; a keyword search, therefore, is often more efficient than browsing via an index. However, in order to find the desired information, it may be necessary to enter keywords using a trial-and-error process. This research recognizes that professional procurement experience can help users search website information more effectively, by using fewer keywords, and so proposes a learning model and suggestion model that can capture such experience, thus guiding inexperienced users in their search. Experiments, evaluating the performance of the system, were also conducted.     

Applying data mining to learn system dynamics in a biological model

Data mining consists of a set of powerful methods that have been successfully applied to many different application domains, including business, engineering, and bioinformatics. In this paper, we propose an innovative approach that uses genetic algorithms to mine a set of temporal behavior data output by a biological system in order to determine the kinetic parameters of the system. Analyzing the behavior of a biological network is a complicated task. In our approach, the machine learning method is integrated with the framework of system dynamics so that its findings are expressed in a form of system dynamics model. An application of the method to the cell division cycle model has shown that the method can discover approximate parametric values of the system and reproduce the input behavior.     

Alcohol consumption detection through behavioural analysis using intelligent systems

We describe in this paper a new methodology for blood alcohol content (BAC) estimation of a subject. Rather than using external devices to determine the BAC value of a subject, we perform a behaviour analysis of this subject using intelligent systems. We monitor the user’s actions in an ordinary task and label those data to various measured BAC values. The obtained data-set is then used to train learning systems to detect alcoholic consumption and perform BAC estimation. We obtain good results on a mono-user base, and lower results with multiple users. We improve the results by combining multiple classifiers and regression algorithms.     

基于状态聚类的多站点CSPS系统的协同控制方法

单站点传送带给料加工站（Conveyor-serviced production station,CSPS）系统中,可运用强化学习对状态——行动空间进行有效探索,以搜索近似最优的前视距离控制策略.但是多站点CSPS系统的协同控制问题中,系统状态空间的大小会随着站点个数的增加和缓存库容量的增加而成指数形式（或几何级数）增长,从而导致维数灾,影响学习算法的收敛速度和优化效果.为此,本文在站点局域信息交互机制的基础上引入状态聚类的方法,以减小每个站点学习空间的大小和复杂性.首先,将多个站点看作相对独立的学习主体,且各自仅考虑邻近下游站点的缓存库的状态并纳入其性能值学习过程;其次,将原状态空间划分成多个不相交的子集,每个子集用一个抽象状态表示,然后,建立基于状态聚类的多站点反馈式Q学习算法.通过该方法,可在抽象状态空间上对各站点的前视距离策略进行优化学习,以寻求整个系统的生产率最大.仿真实验结果说明,与一般的多站点反馈式Q学习方法相比,基于状态聚类的多站点反馈式Q学习方法不仅具有收敛速度快的优点,而且还在一定程度上提高了系统生产率.