Structuring the peer assessment process: a multilevel approach for the impact on product improvement and peer feedback quality

In order to optimize students' peer feedback processes, this study investigates how an instructional intervention in the peer assessment process can have a beneficial effect on students' performance in a wiki environment in first‐year higher education. The main aim was to study the effect of integrating a peer feedback template with a varying structuring degree. The present study involved three conditions: a no structure, a basic structure and an elaborate structure condition. Due to a clear hierarchical structure, in which over time (level 1), 168 students (level 2) are nested within 37 groups (level 3), multilevel analysis was performed to examine the effect of time, student and group level influences on students' peer feedback quality and product scores. The results revealed that both peer feedback quality and product scores increase significantly for all conditions over time, after multiple practice occasions. In addition, after several practice occasions, significant differences were found between the conditions in both peer feedback (elaborate higher than no structure) and product scores (elaborate and basic higher than no structure). Building on this, limitations, directions for future research and practical implications are presented.     

A Hybrid Color Quantization Algorithm Incorporating a Human Visual Perception Model

Color quantization is a common image processing technique where full color images are to be displayed using a limited palette of colors. The choice of a good palette is crucial as it directly determines the quality of the resulting image. Standard quantization approaches aim to minimize the mean squared error (MSE) between the original and the quantized image, which does not correspond well to how humans perceive the image differences. In this article, we introduce a color quantization algorithm that hybridizes an optimization scheme based with an image quality metric that mimics the human visual system. Rather than minimizing the MSE, its objective is to maximize the image fidelity as evaluated by S‐CIELAB, an image quality metric that has been shown to work well for various image processing tasks. In particular, we employ a variant of simulated annealing with the objective function describing the S‐CIELAB image quality of the quantized image compared with its original. Experimental results based on a set of standard images demonstrate the superiority of our approach in terms of achieved image quality.     

The impact of global dispersion on coordination,team performance and software quality – A systematic literature review

ContextGlobal software development (GSD) contains different context setting dimensions, which are essential for effective teamwork and success of projects. Although considerable research effort has been made in this area, as yet, no agreement has been reached about the impact of these dispersion dimensions on team coordination and project outcomes.ObjectiveThis paper summarizes empirical evidence on the impact of global dispersion dimensions on coordination, team performance and project outcomes.MethodWe performed a systematic literature review of 46 publications from 25 journals and 19 conference and workshop proceedings, which were published between 2001 and 2013. Thematic analysis was used to identify global dimensions and their measures. Vote counting was used to decide on the impact trends of dispersion dimensions on team performance and software quality.ResultsGlobal dispersion dimensions are consistently conceptualized, but quantified in many different ways. Different dispersion dimensions are associated with a distinct set of coordination challenges. Overall, geographical dispersion tends to have a negative impact on team performance and software quality. Temporal dispersion tends to have a negative impact on software quality, but its impact on team performance is inconsistent and can be explained by type of performance.ConclusionFor researchers, we reveal several opportunities for future research, such as coordination challenges in inter-organizational software projects, impact of processes and practices mismatches on project outcomes, evolution of coordination needs and mechanism over time and impact of dispersion dimensions on open source project outcomes. For practitioners, they should consider the tradeoff between cost and benefits while dispersing tasks, alignment impact of dispersion dimensions with individual and organizational objectives, coordination mechanisms as situational approaches and collocation of development activities of high quality demand components in GSD projects.     

Two‐echelon manufacturer–retailer supply chain strategies with price,quality, and promotional effort sensitive demand

This study deals with the two‐layer supply chain model of one manufacturer and one retailer for a single commodity where market demand is assumed to be dependent on selling price, quality of the products, and promotional effort of the retailer. We investigate the behavior of the supply chain under centralized, manufacturer Stackelberg, conditional manufacturer Stackelberg, retailer Stackelberg, conditional retailer Stackelberg, and vertical Nash model structure. The nature of the above models provides great insights to a firm's manager for achieving optimal strategy in a competitive marketing system. Quite often, not all items produced in a firm are of perfect quality; some are perfect (conforming) quality and others are imperfect (nonconforming) quality. The nonconforming products are sold in a secondary shop or by other retailers. The procurement cost of finished products depends on the quality of the products due to more investment in advanced technology, better raw materials, and skilled labor, etc. The warranty policy for the products is also imposed to attract the customers to buy more. Here, both members (manufacturer and retailer) jointly share the cost of the warranty policy. The objective of this paper is to determine the optimal selling price and promotional effort of the retailer, while the optimal wholesale price and quality of the products are determined by the manufacturer so that the above strategies are maximized. Finally, numerical examples with sensitivity analysis of the key parameters are illustrated to investigate the proposed model.     

Economic selection of process mean and lot‐sizing decisions for multi‐newsvendor supply chain

Two related problems are integrated in this paper, the first is the targeting problem and another is production/inventory decisions in a supply chain. The supply chain under consideration consists of a supplier of raw material, a single producer, and multiple newsvendors. The producer can adjust the process mean before starting the production run. Once set to a certain target value, the process mean is not changed until the production lot is completed. At the end of a production run, the producer screens the lot and uses specification limits to evaluate the quality of the item. Nonconforming items are scrapped with no salvage value; however, conforming items are delivered to newsvendors who are subjected to random demand. If demand on a newsvendor in a season is lower than anticipated, surplus items will be returned to the producer at a certain transportation cost. We first develop a mathematical model that maximizes the expected total profit of the supply chain. Then, a table for two special functions is devised to simplify the solution method and is used to find the optimal solution of the proposed model. We also study the significance of this integration by comparing the performance of the proposed model with an independent model where the process mean selection and lot‐sizing decisions are found separately.     

Supervised Distance Preserving Projections: Applications in the quantitative analysis of diesel fuels and light cycle oils from NIR spectra

In this work, we discuss a recently proposed approach for supervised dimensionality reduction, the Supervised Distance Preserving Projection (SDPP) and, we investigate its applicability to monitoring material's properties from spectroscopic observations. Motivated by continuity preservation, the SDPP is a linear projection method where the proximity relations between points in the low-dimensional subspace mimic the proximity relations between points in the response space. Such a projection facilitates the design of efficient regression models and it may also uncover useful information for visualisation. An experimental evaluation is conducted to show the performance of the SDPP and compare it with a number of state-of-the-art approaches for unsupervised and supervised dimensionality reduction. The regression step after projection is performed using computationally light models with low maintenance cost like Multiple Linear Regression and Locally Linear Regression with k-NN neighbourhoods. For the evaluation, a benchmark and a full-scale calibration problem are discussed. The case studies pertain the estimation of a number of chemico-physical properties in diesel fuels and in light cycle oils, starting from near-infrared spectra. Based on the experimental results, we found that the SDPP leads to parsimonious projections that can be used to design light and yet accurate estimation models.     

考虑观点多样性的评论选择问题

在线用户评论向消费者提供了丰富的商品信息,帮助他们挑选从日常用品到娱乐活动相关的商品.然而,评论的数量之大让用户难以对商品有一个清晰的认识.现有解决电子商务网站中评论信息过载问题的方法包括评估评论质量以及总结评论观点等.但是,基于评论质量排序的方法可能信息冗余,而评论总结方法忽视上下文导致易读性较差.因此,需要实现有效的评论选择方法.设计了基于字典和规则以及基于主题模型LDA的观点获取算法来形式化地表示每条评论;提出一种基于贪心算法的评论选择方法,实现从商品评论集中选择一组高质量的评论,并最大化评论集的商品属性覆盖度和评论观点多样性.最后在真实数据集上对算法进行实验来验证该算法,实验结果表明了该算法的有效性.     

Ad Hoc网络中基于概率预测的拥塞控制算法

为缓解网络拥塞,提高网络服务质量,提出一种基于概率预测的拥塞控制算法(PPCC)。处理已有数据来构建贝叶斯网络,找出Ad Hoc网络中表示拥塞状态参数之间的关系;改进贝叶斯网络的推理过程,更好地利用所获网络实时参数预测拥塞状态的概率;根据预测得到的概率自适应地调整网络参数,有效地控制网络拥塞,一定程度上提高网络服务质量。仿真结果表明,PPCC算法能够控制网络拥塞,保证网络运行在具有较小时延、较高吞吐量的状态,更好地利用网络资源。     

一种视频流畅度优先的带宽自适应方法

由于现有基于平均接收质量的带宽自适应方法,在自适应过程中会出现视频质量振荡,且在可用带宽急剧恶化时会出现中断的问题,提出了一种流畅度优先的带宽自适应方法。该方法引入了图着色优先级算法,在带宽自适应过程中,在保证视频的流畅播放的前提下,通过判断是否振荡调整,改变平均质量范围,以达到减少视频振荡次数的效果。仿真结果表明,该方法在自适应调整传输速率、有效利用带宽的同时,保证了流畅度并减少视频质量振荡,符合预期目标。     

民航空管系统运行质量监督系统的分析与设计

民航空管系统运行质量监督是对空管系统实施风险管理、安全绩效监控和安全管理决策的基础。在分析国内外民航监督检查系统现状和质量监督管理职责基础上,通过对业务流程中的业务逻辑关系和接口信息数据路由的深入分析,研究和设计了系统的部署结构和主要的功能模块。该系统由监督检查工作准备,监督检查实施,监督检查结果跟踪,监督检查结果统计、法规标准查询和数据库管理6大功能模块组成,被分解成32个子板块。自2013年1月该系统在民航局空管局、7个地区空管局和37个空管分局(站)推广试用,极大地提高了监管效率和运行质量监督组织实施的规范化,降低了监管成本和工作量。