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.     

Some algebraic applications of soft sets

The paper presents an algebraic construction of the basic notions of soft set theory. Here we introduce the definition of bijective soft groups, dependent and independent soft groups. Some of their properties are investigated. Also we investigate the relationships between bijective soft groups and classical groups. In addition, we express some applications of bijective soft groups on coding theory.     

Continuous space maximal coverage: Insights,advances and challenges

Siting facilities in continuous space to maximize coverage of regional demand is an important planning problem. It is challenging to solve because demand is continuously distributed in a region and facilities may be sited anywhere in the region, suggesting that an infinite number of locations must be considered both as demand for service as well as a potential facility. An ingenious approach for solving continuous space coverage problems is abstracting continuously distributed demand as discrete spatial objects (points, lines or polygons), generating a finite dominating set from continuous space as candidate facility sites, and applying a discrete location coverage model. However, abstracting continuous demand and potential facility sites often introduces errors and uncertainties in coverage of regional demand, rendering findings (service and optimal facility locations) less than definitive. In this paper we examine the continuous space maximal coverage problem. Studies focused on locating antennas in Paradise Valley, Arizona and emergency warning sirens in Dublin, Ohio, are used to highlight issues and challenges in continuous space modeling. Potential paths forward are suggested based on empirical insights.     

A self-adaptive weighted affinity propagation clustering for key frames extraction on human action recognition

In this paper, we propose a novel approach for key frames extraction on human action recognition from 3D video sequences. To represent human actions, an Energy Feature (EF), combining kinetic energy and potential energy, is extracted from 3D video sequences. A Self-adaptive Weighted Affinity Propagation (SWAP) algorithm is then proposed to extract the key frames. Finally, we employ SVM to recognize human actions on the EFs of selected key frames. The experiments show the information including whole action course can be effectively extracted by our method, and we obtain good recognition performance without losing classification accuracy. Moreover, the recognition speed is greatly improved.     

Optimization of Sentiment Analysis Using Teaching-Learning Based Algorithm

Feature selection and sentiment analysis are two common studies that are currently being conducted; consistent with the advancements in computing and growing the use of social media. High dimensional or large feature sets is a key issue in sentiment analysis as it can decrease the accuracy of sentiment classification and make it difficult to obtain the optimal subset of the features. Furthermore, most reviews from social media carry a lot of noise and irrelevant information. Therefore, this study proposes a new text-feature selection method that uses a combination of rough set theory (RST) and teaching-learning based optimization (TLBO), which is known as RSTLBO. The framework to develop the proposed RSTLBO includes numerous stages: (1) acquiring the standard datasets (user reviews of six major U.S. airlines) which are used to validate search result feature selection methods, (2) pre-processing of the dataset using text processing methods. This involves applying text processing methods from natural language processing techniques, combined with linguistic processing techniques to produce high classification results, (3) employing the RSTLBO method, and (4) using the selected features from the previous process for sentiment classification using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) technique. Results show an improvement in sentiment analysis when combining natural language processing with linguistic processing for text processing. More importantly, the proposed RSTLBO feature selection algorithm is able to produce an improved sentiment analysis.     

Multislip and Soret–Dufour influence on nonlinear convection flow of MHD dissipative Casson fluid over a slendering stretching sheet with generalized heat flux phenomenon

In the present investigation, Soret–Dufour and multislip's impact on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) Casson fluid flow encompassing variable thermophysical features in the nonlinear convection process is analyzed. It is believed that to any effective heat and mass transfer enhancement, the relaxation of such fluid and material time along with the thermo-physical features, are well estimated. In this model, a magnetic field of nonuniform strength is applied perpendicular to the slendering sheet with variable thickness, and nonlinear convection flow is considered in this generalized heat flux examination. An appropriate similarity variable is implemented on the governing equations embedding the variable viscosity, thermal conductivity, and generalized Fourier's law to drive ordinary differential equations. Galerkin weighted residual approach is utilized to calculate the flow field among other flow characteristics. The novel flow features are discussed therein. Modified Fourier and multislip's parameters are seen to have downsized the velocity and temperature field greatly. Thermal and solutal buoyancy effects are more pronounced in nonlinear form compared to the linear model. Dufour number influences both velocity and energy fields positively but negates the concentration field, while the Soret number gives an opposing characterization.     

带权决策表的属性约简

属性约简是粗糙集理论的重要应用。考虑将决策表中的每行都作为一条决策规则时，若把表中出现相同决策规则的次数作为权，可得到带权决策表。提出了关于带权决策表的正域约简相应的辨识矩阵并给出了证明，从而得到了约简算法。相比于决策表中的正域约简时发现，通过将决策表转化为带权决策表后，再利用算法1进行约简时，其在一定程度上优于前者。提出了近似分类精度约简相应的辨识矩阵并给出了证明。对于2个算法，在选取的UCI数据集上进行了实验验证。通过实验进一步说明了所提出算法的可行性和有效性。     

基于卷积神经网络的单目深度估计

针对利用深度学习方法对街道图像进行深度估计，提出采用语义分割的方法解决深度图出现边界模糊等问题；估计深度通过左右视角图生成视差图进行无监督的训练。在网络模型中添加语义分割层，采取多个空洞卷积并行的结构增加感受野，同时减少了图像下采样的次数，降低了由于下采样带来的信息损失，使得的结果更加准确。这也是在深度估计中首次与空洞卷积相结合增加准确率。通过对KITTI街道数据集进行训练，与现有结果相比，除了增加检测准确性，降低错误率之外，使得效果图中的物体更加清晰，并且在效果图中还保留了一些原模型中被忽视掉的细节信息，将原始图像更加完整的表现出来。     

面向连续查询的敏感语义位置隐私保护方案

针对连续查询位置服务中构造匿名区域未考虑语义位置信息导致敏感隐私泄露问题，通过设计[(K,θ)]-隐私模型，提出一种路网环境下面向连续查询的敏感语义位置隐私保护方案。该方案利用Voronoi图将城市路网预先划分为独立的Voronoi单元，依据用户的移动路径和移动速度，选择具有相似特性的其他[K-1]个用户，构建匿名用户集；利用匿名用户集用户设定的敏感语义位置类型和语义安全阈值，以及用户所处语义位置的Voronoi单元，构建满足[(K,θ)]-隐私模型的语义安全匿名区域，可以同时防止连续查询追踪攻击和语义推断攻击。实验结果表明，与SCPA算法相比，该方案在隐私保护程度上提升约15%，系统开销上降低约20%。     

Experience-Based Cognition for Driving Behavioral Fingerprint Extraction

Abstract

With the rapid progress of information technologies, cars have been made increasingly intelligent. This allows cars to act as cognitive agents, i.e., to acquire knowledge and understanding of the driving habits and behavioral characteristics of drivers (i.e., driving behavioral fingerprint) through experience. Such knowledge can be then reused to facilitate the interaction between a car and its driver, and to develop better and safer car controls. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to extract the driver’s driving behavioral fingerprints based on our conceptual framework Experience-Oriented Intelligent Things (EOIT). EOIT is a learning system that has the potential to enable Internet of Cognitive Things (IoCT) where knowledge can be extracted from experience, stored, evolved, shared, and reused aiming for cognition and thus intelligent functionality of things. By catching driving data, this approach helps cars to collect the driver’s pedal and steering operations and store them as experience; eventually, it uses obtained experience for the driver’s driving behavioral fingerprint extraction. The initial experimental implementation is presented in the paper to demonstrate our idea, and the test results show that it outperforms the Deep Learning approaches (i.e., deep fully connected neural networks and recurrent neural networks/Long Short-Term Memory networks).