A multiple criteria evaluation of high-tech industries for the science-based industrial park in Taiwan

Science-based industrial parks have been recognized as an effective way of promoting technology development, urban renewal, and economic growth. However, little has been done in discussing the selection strategy of high-tech industries to locate in such a park. As the space availability in the new park in Taiwan is limited, the selection of firms with higher efficiency and growth potential has become an important issue for the Taiwan government. Accordingly, this study adopted the AHP method to obtain professional’s opinions on this issue. The effort resulted in seven evaluation criteria with one, the “market potential” having the highest weight, followed by “technology level” and “government policy”. Biotechnology and photo-electronics were the two most favorable high-tech industries chosen for the introduction and development in the new park. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to determine the critical factors that affected the priority of the alternatives.     

A fuzzy Full Consistency Method-Dombi-Bonferroni model for prioritizing transportation demand management measures

The selection and prioritization of appropriate Transportation Demand Management (TDM) measures is a common problem faced by transport planners and decision makers. The problem involves many uncertainties due to changing economic conditions, uncertainty in project success, changes in mobility and population characteristics etc. In this study, the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) based fuzzy Full Consistency Method-Dombi-Bonferroni (fuzzy FUCOM-D’Bonferroni) model is proposed for a case study in Istanbul’s urban mobility system. Istanbul’s historical peninsula is considered to be a pilot area for the implementation of TDM projects by the local government. The proposed model is compared with other well-known four MCDM methods in order to show its validity and consistency. The results show that public transport capacity improvements is the best alternative among the other TDM measures.     

Evaluation of freight villages: A GIS-based multi-criteria decision analysis

The development of freight villages in a given region is often viewed as a popular project in the development of a particular country's logistic plans. However, the evaluation of a freight village location among the various alternatives is a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem including both quantitative and qualitative criteria. Obtaining relevant geographic data is another problem for the evaluation of freight village locations. In this study, a geographic information system (GIS)-based MCDM model is proposed to evaluate potential locations for freight villages. The proposed model consists of four sequential phases. In the first phase, different geographic criteria are determined from existing literature, and data are gathered using GIS. By criteria weights equally, alternative locations are determined through GIS in the second phase. In the third phase, identified criteria are weighted using analytical network process (ANP) method by various stakeholders of potential freight villages. In the fourth phase, the “Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)” method is applied in order to determine the best alternative based on the weighted criteria. Using real data from the city of Ankara, Turkey, we test the applicability of our evaluation approach and compare the best alternative obtained by the proposed method with the current freight village (CFV) location in Ankara.     

“Damned if you do,damned if you don’t”: Media frames of responsibility and accountability in handling a wildfire

Previous research on media framing of wildfire has chiefly been concerned with the nature of wildfire in the context of climate change and with framing effects on policy and public opinion. Empirical studies on media content, hence what is mediated to crisis managers and the public concerning authorities’ and the public's response, seem to be largely missing. This is remarkable, given that the media represent main sources of information that may influence crisis management and shape public opinion. Thus, the aim of this study was to identify key media frames relating to portrayals of public and authority responses during and after a wildfire crisis. The study is based on media articles from two time periods: immediately after the fire and 1 year later. We used a thematic method of analysis (TA), thus an inductive, “bottom‐up” approach. A core frame, Responsibility/accountability is identified, underpinned by two sub‐themes. One sub‐theme relates to the causes of the fire and its escalation, revealing a number of different interrelated blame frames. The second sub‐theme refers to management of the crisis, reflecting both authorities’ and citizens’ responses. The deficiencies of the former are implicitly suggested to have forced citizens to act to compensate for their inadequacy. The main theoretical contribution is the identification of an interrelationship between frames in relation to different groups of individuals responding to a crisis, pointing to a more complex view of framing effects. In addition, results show how media tend to assess crisis management based on idealistic criteria, inevitably making the evaluation negative. This contributes to an understanding of how media blame frames, thus “blame games,” may unfold. Practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Fuzzy MCDM approach for selecting the best environment-watershed plan

In the real word, the decision-making problems are very vague and uncertain in a number of ways. Most of the criteria have interdependent and interactive features, so they cannot be evaluated by conventional measure method. Such as the feasibility, thus, to approximate the human subjective evaluation process, it would be more suitable to apply a fuzzy method in the environment-watershed plan topic. This paper describes the design of a fuzzy decision support system in multi-criteria analysis approach for selecting the best plan alternatives or strategies in environment watershed. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) method is used to determine the preference weightings of criteria for decision makers by subjective perception (natural language). A questionnaire was used to find out from three related groups comprising 15 experts, including 5 from the university of expert scholars (include Water Resources Engineering and Conservation, Landscape and Recreation, Urban Planning, Environment Engineering, Architectural Engineering, etc.), 5 from the government departments, and 5 from industry. Subjectivity and vagueness analysis is dealt with the criteria and alternatives for selection process and simulation results by using fuzzy numbers with linguistic terms. It incorporated the decision-makers’ attitude towards the preference; overall performance value of each alternative can be obtained based on the concept of fuzzy multiple-criteria decision-making (FMCDM). This research also gives an example of evaluation consisting of five alternatives, solicited from an environment-watershed plan work in Taiwan, is illustrated to demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed approach. The result is useful for destination planning and the sustainability of watershed tourism resources as well.     

Usefulness,localizability, humanness,and language-benefit: additional evaluation criteria for natural language dialogue systems

Human–computer dialogue systems interact with human users using natural language. We used the ALICE/AIML chatbot architecture as a platform to develop a range of chatbots covering different languages, genres, text-types, and user-groups, to illustrate qualitative aspects of natural language dialogue system evaluation. We present some of the different evaluation techniques used in natural language dialogue systems, including black box and glass box, comparative, quantitative, and qualitative evaluation. Four aspects of NLP dialogue system evaluation are often overlooked: “usefulness” in terms of a user’s qualitative needs, “localizability” to new genres and languages, “humanness” or “naturalness” compared to human–human dialogues, and “language benefit” compared to alternative interfaces. We illustrated these aspects with respect to our work on machine-learnt chatbot dialogue systems; we believe these aspects are worthwhile in impressing potential new users and customers.     

Classification algorithm based on pairwise comparison of features

We propose an alternative approach to classification that differs from known approaches in that instead of comparing the tuple of values of a test object’s features with similar tuples of features for objects in the training set, in this approach we make independent pairwise comparisons of every pair of feature values for the objects being compared. Here instead of using the notion of a “nearest neighbors” for test object, we introduce the notion of “admissible proximity” for each feature value in the test object. In this approach, we propose an alternative algorithm for classification that has a number of significant practical features. The algorithm’s quality was evaluated on sample problems taken from the well-known UCI repository and related to various aspects of human activity. The results show that the algorithm is competitive compared to known classification algorithms.     

Multicriteria decision making in energy planning using a modified fuzzy TOPSIS methodology

Energy planning is a complex issue which takes technical, economic, environmental and social attributes into account. Selection of the best energy technology requires the consideration of conflicting quantitative and qualitative evaluation criteria. When decision-makers’ judgments are under uncertainty, it is relatively difficult for them to provide exact numerical values. The fuzzy set theory is a strong tool which can deal with the uncertainty in case of subjective, incomplete, and vague information. It is easier for an energy planning expert to make an evaluation by using linguistic terms. In this paper, a modified fuzzy TOPSIS methodology is proposed for the selection of the best energy technology alternative. TOPSIS is a multicriteria decision making (MCDM) technique which determines the best alternative by calculating the distances from the positive and negative ideal solutions according to the evaluation scores of the experts. In the proposed methodology, the weights of the selection criteria are determined by fuzzy pairwise comparison matrices. The methodology is applied to an energy planning decision-making problem.     

非滥用合同签署协议的研究

非滥用性是合同签署协议提出的新的安全需求,人们对它的描述还模糊不明。利用交互式定理证明器Isabelle/HOL推导了“TTP的aborted仲裁”与“失败的合同签约”的不等价关系,提出了“合同签约失败”的形式定义,提出了一个新的非滥用性的形式化描述,验证了BW多方合同签署协议的非滥用性。     

Collaborative assessment in education: an application of a fuzzy GSS

Educators are increasingly pressed to deal effectively and efficiently with multiple criteria evaluation in a variety of circumstances as students become more actively involved in assessment. This paper demonstrates that a “fuzzy set” collaborative assessment approach implemented with a group support system (GSS) can be successfully applied in university classroom contexts. Student learning was significantly enhanced, as was satisfaction, when a collaborative assessment approach was taken. This approach has broad-based applicability in dealing with assessment complexity encountered in a wide variety of business and government contexts, as well as educational institutions.     

No Data Protection please,we are British — Privacy,Porn and Prurience in the Digital Economy Bill

Overshadowed in the public debate by the seismic shift in the legal and political landscape that the UK’s decision to leave the European Union brought with it, the Digital Economy Bill is currently quietly making its way through the legislative process. The paper discusses some of the data protection implications of the bill, with a focus on the proposed regulation of online adult content. It will argue that the bill is a paradigmatic example of the way in which data protection, or rather differential denial of data protection, can be leveraged to promote and enforce normative conceptions of sexuality, without having to explicitly commit the government to a “moral agenda”.     

基于区块链与国密SM9的抗恶意KGC无证书签名方案

无证书密码体制能同时解决证书管理和密钥托管问题,但其安全模型中总是假设TypeⅡ敌手（恶意密钥生成中心（KGC））不会发起公钥替换攻击,这一安全性假设在现实应用中具有一定的局限性。国密SM9签名方案是一种高效的标识密码方案,它采用了安全性好、运算速率高的R-ate双线性对,但需要KGC为用户生成和管理密钥,存在密钥托管问题。针对以上问题,基于区块链和国密SM9签名方案提出一种抗恶意KGC无证书签名方案。所提方案基于区块链的去中心化、不易篡改等特性,使用智能合约将用户秘密值对应的部分公钥记录在区块链上,在验签阶段,验证者通过调用智能合约查询用户公钥,从而保证用户公钥的真实性。用户私钥由KGC生成的部分私钥和用户自己随机选取的秘密值构成,用户仅在首次获取私钥时由KGC为其生成部分私钥来对其身份标识符背书。随后可以通过更改秘密值及其存证于区块链的部分公钥实现私钥的自主更新,在此过程中身份标识保持不变,为去中心化应用场景提供密钥管理解决方法。区块链依靠共识机制来保证分布式数据的一致性,用户部分公钥的变更日志存储在区块链中,基于区块链的可追溯性,可对恶意公钥替换攻击行为进行溯源,从而防止恶意KG...     

A fuzzy-based decision-making procedure for data warehouse system selection

The increase in the number of companies seeking data warehousing solutions, in order to gain significant business advantages, has created the need for a decision-aid approach in choosing appropriate data warehouse (DW) systems. Owing to the vague concepts frequently represented in decision environments, we have proposed a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making procedure, to facilitate data warehouse system selection, with consideration given to both technical and managerial criteria. The procedure can systematically construct the objectives of DW systems selection to support the business goals and requirements of an organization, and identify the appropriate attributes or criteria for evaluation. In the fuzzy-based method, the weight of each criterion and the rating of each alternative are described using linguistic terms, which can also be expressed as triangular fuzzy numbers. The fuzzy algorithm aggregated the decision-makers’ preference rating for criteria, and the suitability of data warehouse alternatives versus the selection criteria, to calculate fuzzy appropriateness indices, through which, the most suitable data warehouse system was determined. A case study of a Bar Code Implementation Project for Agricultural Products in Taiwan was conducted to illustrate this method’s effectiveness.     

Some insights of using common random numbers in selection procedures

Indifference-zone selection procedures have been widely studied and applied to determine the sample sizes for selecting a good system or a subset of good systems among k alternative systems. It is known that using common random numbers can increase efficiency of simulation procedures, but using common random numbers may also “backfire.” We show that it is generally safe to use common random numbers to increase the probability of correct selection with Dudewicz and Dalal’s procedure as well as its extension for subset selection when common random numbers are properly synchronized, even though these selection procedures are derived based on independent sampling. The result is derived with correlated order statistics in a concise manner, namely, the expected value of the first-order statistic becomes larger as the (positive) covariances become stronger. We perform simulation experiments to confirm this finding.     

Implementing a fuzzy inference system in a multi-objective EEG channel selection model for imagined speech classification

One of the main purposes of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) is to provide persons of an alternative communication channel. This objective was firstly focused on handicapped subjects but nowadays its scope has increased to healthy persons. Usually, BCIs record brain activity using electroencephalograms (EEG), according to four main neuro-paradigms (slow cortical potentials, motor imagery, P300 component and visual evoked potentials). These analytical paradigms are not intuitive and are difficult to implement. Accordingly, this work researches an alternative neuro-paradigm called imagined speech, which refers to the internal pronunciation of words without emitting sounds or doing facial movements. Specifically, the present research is focused on the recognition of five Spanish words corresponding to the English words “up,” “down,” “left,” “right” and “select”, with which a computer cursor could be controlled. We perform an offline computer automatic classification procedure of a dataset of EEG signals from 27 subjects. The method implements a channel selection composed of two stages; the first one obtains a Pareto front and is approached as a multi-objective optimization problem dealing with the error rate and the number of channels; the second stage selects a single solution (channel combination) from the front, applying a fuzzy inference system (FIS). We assess the method’s performance through a channel combination and a test set not used to generate the front. Several FIS configurations were explored to evaluate if a FIS is able to select channel combinations that improve or, at least, keep the obtained accuracies using all channels for each subject’s data. We found that a FIS configuration, FIS3×3 (three membership functions for both input variables: error rate and the number of channels), obtained the best trade-off between the number of fuzzy rules and its accuracy (68.18% using around 7 channels). Also, the FIS3×3 obtained a similar statistically accuracy compared to the use of all channels (70.33%). Results of our method demonstrate the feasibility of using a FIS to automatically select a solution from the Pareto front to select channels applied to a problem of imagined speech classification. The presented method outperforms previous works in accuracy and showed a dependence relationship between EEG data and imagined words.     

Contract as automaton: representing a simple financial agreement in computational form

We show that the fundamental legal structure of a well-written financial contract follows a state-transition logic that can be formalized mathematically as a finite-state machine (specifically, a deterministic finite automaton or DFA). The automaton defines the states that a financial relationship can be in, such as “default,” “delinquency,” “performing,” etc., and it defines an “alphabet” of events that can trigger state transitions, such as “payment arrives,” “due date passes,” etc. The core of a contract describes the rules by which different sequences of events trigger particular sequences of state transitions in the relationship between the counterparties. By conceptualizing and representing the legal structure of a contract in this way, we expose it to a range of powerful tools and results from the theory of computation. These allow, for example, automated reasoning to determine whether a contract is internally coherent and whether it is complete relative to a particular event alphabet. We illustrate the process by representing a simple loan agreement as an automaton.

     

Senate Panel Suggests Teams To Penetrate Private Sector Computers

At a 6 October 1999 hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Government Information, Senator Bob Bennett of Utah and the chair of the Senate’s Y2K Committee, suggested that Department of Defense penetration ‘Red Teams’ should be used to try to break into the computers of certain private industry areas. That suggestion prompted Michael Vatis, the director of the FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), to remark that some industry officials would welcome this but others would be averse because they “would not want to know the answer” to how weak their security really is. Vatis also said the idea of a Department of Defense Red Team penetrating civilian agencies of the government was a “good idea”.     

Supply chain management: a modular Fuzzy Inference System approach in supplier selection for new product development

The critical objectives of purchasing departments include obtaining the product requested, at the right cost, in the right quantity, with the best quality, at the right time, from the right supplier. These goals require effective decisions concerning supplier selection at the early stage of product development. This work provides an application of fuzzy set theory in supply chain management, specifically in supplier selection for new product development. Here, a Fuzzy Inference System is proposed as an alternative approach to handle effectively the impreciseness and uncertainty that are normally found in supplier selection processes. This paper also shows that the proposed decision-making model is applicable to any supply chain system.     

Cryptography and teleinformatics

Numerical networks completely transform the security problems about files and communications. Nowadays, in data processing, normalised tools are being put to use. Study of new services emphasizes preoccupations that were formerly of secondary interest, such as discretion, identification, signature… “Garantir” is the french word that covers up all these concepts. The link with teleinformatics will lead to forge a new word: “the garantics”.The increasing importance of data processing brings dangers for private life, individual and public freedom. The governmental preoccupations in this matter are expressed by new laws adapted to this new situation.Recent theoretical and technological developments in the field of public cryptology allow one to constitute the security software procedures and hardware devices necessary for the application of new legislative measures.But, taking into consideration the demands upon national security these recent developments arise also serious legal problems for the “garantics” clearly favor the enciphering party to the party who tries to break the code.Yet, in the face of the increasing investigation means of big firms both public and private, and in the face of the ever-increasing automation of files the “garantics” seem quite necessary to enforce the individual freedom and protect private life.     

Work or leisure? Designing a user-centered approach for researching activity “in the wild”

Mobile devices have conquered nearly all parts of the daily life. These devices support their owners in specific situations, both at work and in leisure contexts, and therefore make it increasingly difficult to keep work and private life separated. Examining the practices around the use of mobile technology has become a topic of some interest as issues around “work–life balance” emerge. Although the field of HCI provides different approaches for capturing people’s activities in situ, we will show that an additional value can be obtained from a consideration of the “situated” view of contextuality, one which incorporates concerns of privacy and which identifies the reasons people might have for long-term user participation in this kind of study. Despite the undoubted sophistication of existing platforms, the issue of how to provide for dynamic adjustment to meet emerging research questions over time remains challenging. In this paper, we examine how one might approach the design of an observation environment that includes methods for understanding the way of how users reason about research, based upon the context they find themselves in. We have developed a research framework called “PartS,” which captures in situ information about the individual as well as his/her (work/personal) context and offers functionality for collaborative discussions about the information collected. Based on its evaluation, we outline six lessons that need to be considered when designing a study for capturing the subjective context and related activities from an individual user’s as well as a researcher’s perspective.