Conditional mean- and median-based cumulative sum control charts for Weibull data

This article deals with the monitoring of censored data using the cumulative sum (CUSUM) control charts for Weibull lifetimes under type-I censoring. To develop an efficient CUSUM structure for censored data, we use the conditional expected value (CEV) and conditional median (CM) approaches. In particular, we focus on the detection of shifts in the mean of Weibull lifetimes assuming censored data. In addition to fixed/known parameter values, the effect of estimation is assessed on the detection power of control charts. The performance of the proposed charts is evaluated by the average run length (ARL). Furthermore, the ARL performance of CUSUM charts is compared with CEV- and CM-based exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts. Besides an extensive simulation study, the significance of the current work is illustrated by a data set on the response time of a thermostat experiment.     

On increasing the sensitivity of moving average control chart using auxiliary variable

In the statistical process control, the most useful tool to monitor the manufacturing processes in the industries is the control chart. Quality practitioners always desire the charting structure that identifies sustainable changes in the monitoring processes. The sensitivity of the control chart is improved when additional correlated auxiliary information about the study variable is introduced. The regression estimate in the form of auxiliary and supporting variables presents an unbiased and efficient statistic of the mean of the process variable. In this study, auxiliary information-based moving average (AB-MA) control chart is designed for efficient monitoring of shifts in the process location parameter. The performance of the AB-MA control chart is evaluated and compared with existing charts using average run length and other run length characteristics. The comparison reveals that the AB-MA control chart outperforms the competitors in detecting the small and medium changes in the process location parameter. The application of the proposal is also provided to implement it in real situation.     

An enhanced approach for the progressive mean control charts

To maintain and improve the quality of the processes, control charts play an important role for reduction of variation. To detect large shifts in the process parameters, Shewhart control charts are commonly applied but for small shifts, exponentially weighted moving averages (EWMA), cumulative sum (CUSUM), double exponentially weighted moving average (DEWMA), double CUSUM, moving average (MA), double moving average (DMA), and progressive mean (PM) control charts, are used. This study proposes double progressive mean (DPM) and optimal DPM control charts to enhance the performance of the PM chart. As the proposed DPM control charts use information sequentially, hence their performance is compared with natural competitors EWMA, CUSUM, DEWMA, double CUSUM, MA, DMA, and PM control charts. Run length and its different properties are evaluated to compare the performance of the proposed charts and counterparts. Results reveal that proposed optimal DPM outperforms the other charts. An example related to voltage on fixed capacitance level is also provided to illustrate the proposed charts.     

A WLAN band‐notched compact four element UWB MIMO antenna

A compact four‐element multiple‐input‐multiple‐output (MIMO) antenna for ultra‐wideband (UWB) applications with WLAN band‐notched characteristics is proposed here. The proposed antenna has been designed to operate from 2 to 12 GHz while reject the frequencies between 4.9 to 6.4 GHz. The four antenna elements are placed orthogonal to attain the polarization diversity and high isolation. A thin stub connected to the ground plane is deployed as a LC notch filter to accomplish the rejected WLAN band in each antenna element. The mutual coupling between the adjacent elements is at least 17 dB while it has low indoor and outdoor envelop correlation (<0.45) and high gain with compact size of two boards, each measuring 50 × 25 mm². To validate the concept, the prototype antenna is manufactured and measured. The comparison of the simulation results showed good agreement with the measured results. The low‐profile design and compact size of the proposed MIMO antenna make it a good candidate for diversity applications desired in portable devices operating in the UWB region.     

Visualising alignment to support students’ judgment of confidence in open learner models

User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction - Knowledge monitoring is a component of metacognition which can help students regulate their own learning. In adaptive learning software, the...     

An improved Urdu stemming algorithm for text mining based on multi-step hybrid approach

Stemming is the basic operation in Natural language processing (NLP) to remove derivational and inflectional affixes without performing a morphological analysis. This practice is essential to extract the root or stem. In NLP domains, the stemmer is used to improve the process of information retrieval (IR), text classifications (TC), text mining (TM) and related applications. In particular, Urdu stemmers utilize only uni-gram words from the input text by ignoring bigrams, trigrams, and n-gram words. To improve the process and efficiency of stemming, bigrams and trigram words must be included. Despite this fact, there are a few developed methods for Urdu stemmers in the past studies. Therefore, in this paper, we proposed an improved Urdu stemmer, using hybrid approach divided into multi-step operation, to deal with unigram, bigram, and trigram features as well. To evaluate the proposed Urdu stemming method, we have used two corpora; word corpus and text corpus. Moreover, two different evaluation metrics have been applied to measure the performance of the proposed algorithm. The proposed algorithm achieved an accuracy of 92.97% and compression rate of 55%. These experimental results indicate that the proposed system can be used to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the Urdu stemmer for better information retrieval and text mining applications.     

A fault‐tolerant workflow management system with Quality‐of‐Service‐aware scheduling for scientific workflows in cloud computing

Cloud computing provides solutions to many scientific and business applications. Large‐scale scientific applications, which are structured as scientific workflows, are evaluated through cloud computing. In this paper, we proposed a Quality‐of‐Service‐aware fault‐tolerant workflow management system (QFWMS) for scientific workflows in cloud computing. We have considered two real‐time scientific workflows, i.e., Montage and CyberShake, for an evaluation of the proposed QFWMS. The results of the proposed QFWMS scheduling were evaluated through simulation environment WorkflowSim and compared with three well‐known heuristic scheduling policies: (a) minimum completion time (MCT), (b) Maximum‐minimum (Max‐min), and (c) Minimum‐minimum (Min‐min). By considering Montage scientific workflow, the proposed QFWMS reduces the make‐span 8.86%, 8.94%, and 5.53% compared with existing three heuristic policies. Similarly, the proposed QFWMS reduces the cost 6.19%, 3.52%, and 3.60% compared with existing three heuristic policies. Likewise, by considering CyberShake scientific workflow, the proposed QFWMS reduces the make‐span 19.54%, 21.41%, and 25.71% compared with existing three heuristic policies. Similarly, the proposed QFWMS reduces the cost 8.78%, 8.40%, and 8.61% compared with existing three heuristic policies. More so, for QFWMS, SLA is neither violated for time constraints nor for cost constraints. While for MCT, Max‐min and Min‐min scheduling policies, SLA is violated 32, 37, and 23 times, respectively. Conclusively, the proposed QFWMS scheduling and management system is one of the significant workflow management systems for execution and management of scientific workflows in cloud computing.     

DLSA: Delay and Link Stability Aware Routing Protocol for Flying Ad-hoc Networks (FANETs)

Flying Ad-hoc Network (FANET) is a new class of Mobile Ad-hoc Network in which the nodes move in three-dimensional (3-D) ways in the air simultaneously. These nodes are known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that are operated live remotely or by the pre-defined mechanism which involves no human personnel. Due to the high mobility of nodes and dynamic topology, link stability is a research challenge in FANET. From this viewpoint, recent research has focused on link stability with the highest threshold value by maximizing Packet Delivery Ratio and minimizing End-to-End Delay. In this paper, a hybrid scheme named Delay and Link Stability Aware (DLSA) routing scheme has been proposed with the contrast of Distributed Priority Tree-based Routing and Link Stability Estimation-based Routing FANET’s existing routing schemes. Unlike existing schemes, the proposed scheme possesses the features of collaborative data forwarding and link stability. The simulation results have shown the improved performance of the proposed DLSA routing protocol in contrast to the selected existing ones DPTR and LEPR in terms of E2ED, PDR, Network Lifetime, and Transmission Loss. The Average E2ED in milliseconds of DLSA was measured 0.457 while DPTR was 1.492 and LEPR was 1.006. Similarly, the Average PDR in %age of DLSA measured 3.106 while DPTR was 2.303 and LEPR was 0.682. The average Network Lifetime of DLSA measured 62.141 while DPTR was 23.026 and LEPR was 27.298. At finally, the Average Transmission Loss in dBm of DLSA measured 0.975 while DPTR was 1.053 and LEPR was 1.227.

     

Job search website for illiterate users of Pakistan

Illiteracy is a major hurdle in socio-economic development of Pakistan. Research in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can help in tackling this issue by developing solutions tailored for illiterate population. The work presented within this paper proposes a job search website for illiterate population of KPK province of Pakistan. The designed website does not require any human assistance while searching a job. Moreover, the website uses culturally relevant graphical and audio content. The usability of the website is tested according to the ISO-9241-11 specification. Furthermore, we have studied the effect of the participants’ characteristics, i.e., their age, computer and mobile usage experience on the usability of the website. The results show that the participants found the website usable. Specifically, they could search suitable jobs with a minimal number of clicks and in less time as compared to the usual task completion rates reported throughout the literature. None of the participants’ characteristics were found to be affecting the usability of the website. These results suggest a promising potential of ICT solutions for providing services to illiterate population of Pakistan.     

Mechanical and thermal properties of hybrid carbon fibre–phenolic matrix composites containing graphene nanoplatelets and graphite powder

Carbon fibre–phenolic matrix (CF–P) composites containing graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) were manufactured for improved mechanical and thermal properties. For comparison, micrometer-size pyrolytic graphite powder (GP) was also incorporated in CF–P composites. The loading of carbon fibres was kept constant at 60?wt-% while the quantity of GNPs was varied from 0.1?wt-% to 0.3?wt-% and GP from 1.0?wt-% to 3.0?wt-%. Only GNPs were functionalised by ultraviolet-ozone treatment to improve their dispersion in the matrix while all the composites were manufactured by hand layup method and characterised by scanning electron microscopy, impact, flexural, thermogravimetry and ablation tests. The composite containing 0.3?wt-% GNPs showed considerable improvement in ablation, flexural and impact testing as compared to CF-P composites containing GP. Finally, the ablation mechanisms of post-ablated composites were discussed in the light of available data in the literature.