Knowledge discovery using neural approach for SME’s credit risk analysis problem in Turkey

This study proposes a knowledge discovery method that uses multilayer perceptron (MLP) based neural rule extraction (NRE) approach for credit risk analysis (CRA) of real-life small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey. A feature selection and extraction stage is followed by neural classification that produces accurate rule sets. In the first stage, the feature selection is achieved by decision tree (DT), recursive feature extraction with support vector machines (RFE-SVM) methods and the feature extraction is performed by factor analysis (FA), principal component analysis (PCA) methods. It is observed that the RFE-SVM approach gave the best result in terms of classification accuracy and minimal input dimension. Among various classifiers k-NN, MLP and SVM are compared in classification experiments. Then, the Continuous/Discrete Rule Extractor via Decision Tree Induction (CRED) algorithm is used to extract rules from the hidden units of a MLP for knowledge discovery. Here, the MLP makes a decision for customers as being “good” or “bad” and reveals the rules obtained at the final decision. In the experiments, Turkish SME database has 512 samples. The proposed approach validates the claim that is a viable alternative to other methods for knowledge discovery.     

Performance, interdependence and coordination in business‐to‐business electronic commerce and supply chain management

After discovering the inadequacy of traditional relationships across the value‐chain, many organizations today are establishing new forms of interorganizational systems with their suppliers and customers in an effort to improve total channel performance. Electronic commerce linkages are being created between independent organizations in multiple industries, including manufacturing, financial services, transportation, and retailing. Efforts to improve channel efficiency using business‐to‐business electronic commerce systems generally require increased interdependence and expanded coordination between independent firms to capture the potential benefits enabled by tighter interorganizational integration of operations. Participating firms can gain dramatic benefits from establishing electronic linkage only when the system is used to increase interdependence and to expand coordination between firms involved in the new interorganizational relationship. Drawing on theoretical and empirical research on electronic communications and inter‐firm designs, we develop and test a model for the relationship between performance, interdependence and coordination of firms involved in interorganizational relations within the US grocery channel. The research design includes qualitative case study analysis and quantitative survey data analysis to validate the key case study findings. Both qualitative and quantitative findings indicate that channel performance, interdependence, and coordination are closely related for firms in interorganizational relationships. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Capturing the symptoms of malicious code in electronic documents by file’s entropy signal combined with machine learning

Email cyber-attacks based on malicious documents have become popular techniques in today’s sophisticated attacks. Persistent efforts have been made to detect such attacks, but there are still some common defects in the existing methods, including the inability to capture unknown attacks, high overhead of resource and time, and only can be used to detect specific formats of documents. This study proposes a new method named Entropy Signal Reflects the Malicious Document (ESRMD), which can identify malicious documents based on the entropy distribution of the file. ESRMD is a machine learning classifier, which differ from the traditional approaches in that ESRMD extracts both global and structural entropy features from the entropy sequence, enduring it the ability to deal with various formats documents and fight against the parser-confusion and obfuscated attacks. To assess the validity of the proposed model, we conducted extensive experiments on a collected dataset which contains 10,381 samples, including malware (51.47%) and benign (48.53%) samples. Through extensive experiments, ESRMD showed its superiority comparing with some leading anti-virus engines and prevalent tools, achieving good performance on the true positive rate and ROC with the value of 96.00% and 99.2% respectively.     

An integrated application of Kano’s model and AHP to Korean online open market services

With the advancement in wireless and mobile technologies, online open markets decrease intermediate distribution margins and play the key intermediary role between sellers and consumers. While offline store sales remain stagnant, online open market sales have been growing steadily. We investigated the service quality of Korean online open market providers such as “Gmarket”, “Auction”, and “11st”, based on an integrated application of Kano’s model and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The contributions of this study are as follows: (1) We conducted acritical review of previous literature to develop each analysis method. (2) We categorized the service quality factors of the Korean open market using Kano’s model and identified the most important service quality factor by AHP analysis. (3) Then, we conducted a comparison between the results from the Kano model and AHP analysis. (4) Lastly, based on the results of the integrated application of both Kano model and AHP analysis, this study provided specific implications for improving the service quality of the online open market in Korea.     

Satellite-based detection of water surface variation in China’s largest freshwater lake in response to hydro-climatic drought

Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake in China, is an important water resource and iconic ecosystem in a region that has been subjected to extreme drought in recent years. The lake’s inundation area is heavily influenced by basin rainfall and also by the Yangtze River’s water flows. Exploring the lake’s inundation variation in response to drought conditions is of great importance for developing effective management planning for local water resources and for mitigating future drought. Here we demonstrate how satellites can reflect the lake’s inundation changes and processes under typical hydro-climatic droughts. Using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) medium-resolution data collected between 2000 and 2011, we documented the tempo-spatial variation characteristics of water inundation areas and two typical droughts in 2006 and 2011. 2006 was a hydrologic drought year, which occurred due to an abnormal change in the Yangtze River’s water flows. A dramatic shrinkage of the inundation area mainly occurred in autumn and winter. In contrast, 2011 was a hydro-climatic drought year, which resulted from the complicated influence of both the Poyang Lake basin and Yangtze River. The lake shrinkage appeared more severe during spring–summer, when about 70% of the inundation area disappeared before July. The results should be valuable for ecological conservation and water resource management in the Poyang Lake region.     

The impact of mobility,risk, and cost on the users’ intention to adopt mobile payments

Information Systems and e-Business Management - With the development of mobile communication technology and the wide application of intelligent devices, mobile payments with great commercial...     

Utilizing transfer learning of pre-trained AlexNet and relevance vector machine for regression for predicting healthy older adult’s brain age from structural MRI

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Discrepancies between the estimated brain age from brain structural MRI and the chronological age have been associated with a broad spectrum of neurocognitive...     

Analysis over factors of innovation in China’s fast economic growth since its beginning of reform and opening up

The technological progress makes great contribution to the rapid economic growth of China during its past three decades of reform and opening up. An empirical analysis conducted over China’s total factor productivity certifies this conclusion but it also reveals that China’s TFP growth rate is not very high. We further explore the various stages of change of China’s total factor productivity and the causes of these changes and finally take an analytical calculation over the present flaws of China’s innovation system and offer some advices.     

Robust design of (s,S) inventory policy parameters in supply chains with demand and lead time uncertainties

Demand and lead time uncertainties have significant effects on supply chain behaviour. In this paper, we present a single-product three-level multi-period supply chain with uncertain demands and lead times by using robust techniques to study the managerial insights of the supply chain inventory system under uncertainty. We formulate this problem as a robust mixed-integer linear program with minimised expected cost and total cost variation to determine the optimal (s, S) values of the inventory parameters. Several numerical studies are performed to investigate the supply chain behaviour. Useful guidelines for the design of a robust supply chain are also provided. Results show that the order variance and the expected cost in a supply chain significantly increase when the manufacturer’s review period is an integer ratio of the distributor’s and the retailer’s review periods.     

A switched optimal control approach to reduce transferring time,energy consumption,and residual vibration of payload’s skew rotation in crane systems

In this paper, nonlinear optimal control schemes are proposed to reduce transferring time, energy consumption, and residual vibration for the payload’s skew rotation process of crane systems. The main contribution of this paper is to reduce the energy consumption without trading-off the sub-optimal transferring time. The novel idea is to use an electro-mechanical clutch to intelligently disengage the connection between the motor and the payload during the motion such that the payload can continue rotating only by its own momentum. As a result, a switched optimal control problem must be realized. Two solutions, namely particular and general schemes are proposed in the paper, where physical constraints of the actuator including bounded velocity and bounded acceleration are explicitly taken into account. Both simulation and experimental results are provided to prove the effectiveness of the proposed optimal control systems. The established schemes can be directly applied to transfer the payload to a desirable skew orientation without any residual oscillation, or can be utilized as a sub-optimal-time reference trajectory planner of the skewing control module in either overhead or rotary crane systems. Furthermore, the hybrid rotation process presented in this paper, which is driven by the engaging/disengaging event of the clutch, can be served as a theoretical benchmark for any newly established switched optimal control method.     

Resilience,Performance and Strategies in Firms’ Reactions to the Direct and Indirect Effects of a Natural Disaster

Networks and Spatial Economics - This work investigates the impacts of the 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake and looks at the capacity of the regional economic system to adapt to the shock generated...     

Harnessing the social web to enhance insights into people’s opinions in business,government and public administration

Transparency, participation, and collaboration are the core pillars of open government. For the systematic integration of citizens and other stakeholders into the policy and public value creation process, their opinions, wishes, and complaints first need to be received. In the future, including user-generated content from social media will become a main channel for the enrichment of this information base for public administrative bodies and commercial firms. However, the sheer speed of growth of this constantly updated data pool makes manual work infeasible. The automated gathering, combination, analysis, and visualization of user-generated content from various sources and multiple languages is therefore imperative.In this study, we present a design science research approach to develop a general framework (‘MarketMiner’) to handle large amounts of foreign-language user-generated content. As a first empirical application, we implement the framework in the automotive industry by analyzing Chinese automotive forums for the benefit of English-speaking users. At the same time, the ideas, methods, and insights are transferred to the public sector context, especially in light of the current challenges of a high number of political refugees from Arabic countries entering into the European Union.The results are promising in that MarketMiner can dramatically improve the utilization of multi-language, multi-source social media content. The modular set-up of the artifact allows an easy transfer to additional areas of application.     

Comparison of MODIS and Landsat TM5 images for mapping tempo–spatial dynamics of Secchi disk depths in Poyang Lake National Nature Reserve,China

Landsat has successfully been applied to map Secchi disk depth of inland water bodies. Operational use for monitoring a dynamic variable like Secchi disk depth is however limited by the 16‐day overpass cycle of the Landsat system and cloud cover. Low spatial resolution Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image captured twice a day could potentially overcome these problems. However, its potential for mapping Secchi disk depth of inland water bodies has so far rarely been explored. This study compared two image sources, MODIS and Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM), for mapping the tempo–spatial dynamics of Secchi disk depth in Poyang Lake National Nature Reserve, China. Secchi disk depths recorded at weekly intervals from April to October in 2004 and 2005 were related to 5 Landsat TM and 22 MODIS images respectively. Two multiple regression models including the blue and red bands of Landsat TM and MODIS respectively explained 83% and 88% of the variance of the natural logarithm of Secchi disk depth. The standard errors of the predictions were 0.20 and 0.37 m for Landsat TM and MODIS‐based models. A high correlation (r = 0.94) between the predicted Secchi disk depth derived from the two models was observed. A discussion of advantages and disadvantages of both sensors leads to the conclusion that MODIS offers the possibility to monitor water transparency more regularly and cheaply in relatively big and frequently cloud covered lakes as is with Poyang Lake.     

Comparison of pixel‐based and object‐oriented image classification approaches—a case study in a coal fire area,Wuda, Inner Mongolia,China

Pixel‐based and object‐oriented classifications were tested for land‐cover mapping in a coal fire area. In pixel‐based classification a supervised Maximum Likelihood Classification (MLC) algorithm was utilized; in object‐oriented classification, a region‐growing multi‐resolution segmentation and a soft nearest neighbour classifier were used. The classification data was an ASTER image and the typical area extent of most land‐cover classes was greater than the image pixels (15 m). Classification results were compared in order to evaluate the suitability of the two classification techniques. The comparison was undertaken in a statistically rigorous way to provide an objective basis for comment and interpretation. Considering consistency, the same set of ground data was used for both classification results for accuracy assessment. Using the object‐oriented classification, the overall accuracy was higher than the accuracy obtained using the pixel‐based classification by 36.77%, and the user’s and producer’s accuracy of almost all the classes were also improved. In particular, the accuracy of (potential) surface coal fire areas mapping showed a marked increase. The potential surface coal fire areas were defined as areas covered by coal piles and coal wastes (dust), which are prone to be on fire, and in this context, indicated by the two land‐cover types ‘coal’ and ‘coal dust’. Taking into account the same test sites utilized, McNemar’s test was used to evaluate the statistical significance of the difference between the two methods. The differences in accuracy expressed in terms of proportions of correctly allocated pixels were statistically significant at the 0.1% level, which means that the thematic mapping result using object‐oriented image analysis approach gave a much higher accuracy than that obtained using the pixel‐based approach..     

Best mix of primary energy resources by renewable energy and fossil fuel with CCS in view of security,stability and sustainability——A vision on hydrogen supply chain by organic chemical hydride method

The best mix scenario by renewable energy and fossil fuel with or without CCS(Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage) would be a solution to compromise Greenhouse Gases emission issue caused by carbon dioxide(CO2),and depletion of crude oil and natural gas reserves.As fossil fuel with pre-combustion CCS means hydrogen manufacturing and also hydrogen can be produced via electrolysis with renewable energy,it is desirable to establish transportation and storage systems of hydrogen as a clean energy.In this paper a...     

Vegetation cover changes and their relationship to climate variation in the source region of the Yellow River,China, 1990–2000

The change history of vegetation cover and its relations to growing season precipitation (GSP) and average growing season temperature (AGST) in the source region of the Yellow River (SRYR) during 1990–2000 was retrieved based on the 1 km Advanced Very High‐Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data and meteorological records. The results show an overall warming and drying trend of the climate and a common degradation tendency of the ecosystem, with a greening trend in higher rugged regions. The pixel‐by‐pixel correlations between NDVI and climate factors indicate that a decrease in GSP mainly affects ecosystems with low precipitation and worse vegetation condition, and superimposes on the effects of increasing AGST which further deteriorate the climate background of these ecosystems. However, the positive correlations between AGST and NDVI in some higher/rugged regions suggest that the raising temperature can ameliorate vegetation growth conditions in these areas. Comparison and combination of the results of three change detection algorithms, i.e. post‐classification comparison (PCC), principal components analysis (PCA) and a newly developed multi‐temporal image difference (MTID) method, show that the integration of different methods can give a more comprehensive understanding of vegetation changes than any single method.     

Performance Evaluation of Public Bus Transportation by Using DEA Models and Shannon’s Entropy:An Example From a Company in a Large City of China

The purpose of this paper is to assess the operational efficiency of a public bus transportation via a case study from a company in a large city of China by using data envelopment analysis(DEA)model and Shannon’s entropy.This company operates 37 main routes on the backbone roads.Thus,it plays a significant role in public transportation in the city.According to bus industry norms,an efficiency evaluation index system is constructed from the perspective of both company operations and passenger demands.For passenger satisfaction,passenger waiting time and passenger-crowding degree are considered,and they are undesirable indicators.To describe such indicators,a superefficient DEA model is constructed.With this model,by using actual data,efficiency is evaluated for each bus route.Results show that the DEA model with Shannon’s entropy being combined achieves more reasonable results.Also,sensitivity analysis is presented.Therefore,the results are meaningful for the company to improve its operations and management.     

The root and Bell’s disk iteration methods are of the same error propagation characteristics in the simultaneous determination of the zeros of a polynomial,Part II: Round-off error analysis by use of interval arithmetic

In Part I (Ikhile, 2008) [4], it was established that the root and Bell’s disk/point iteration methods with or without correction term are of the same asymptotic error propagation characteristics in the simultaneous determination of the zeros of a polynomial. This concluding part of the investigation is a study in round-offs, its propagation and its effects on convergence employing interval arithmetic means. The purpose is to consequently draw attention on the effects of round-off errors introduced from the point arithmetic part, on the rate of convergence of the generalized root and Bell’s simultaneous interval iteration algorithms and its enhanced modifications introduced in Part I for the numerical inclusion of all the zeros of a polynomial simultaneously. The motivation for studying the effects of round-off error propagation comes from the fact that the readily available computing devices at the moment are limited in precision, more so that accuracy expected from some programming or computing environments or from these numerical methods are or can be machine dependent. In fact, a part of the finding is that round-off propagation effects beyond a certain controllable order induces overwhelmingly delayed or even a severely retarded convergence speed which manifest glaringly as poor accuracy of these interval iteration methods in the computation of the zeros of a polynomial simultaneously. However, in this present consideration and even in the presence of overwhelming influence of round-offs, we give conditions under which convergence is still possible and derive the error/round-off relations along with the order/$R$-order of convergence of these methods with the results extended to similar interval iteration methods for computing the zeros of a polynomial simultaneously, especially to Bell’s interval methods for refinement of zeros that form a cluster. Our findings are instructive and quite revealing and supported by evidence from numerical experiments. The analysis is preferred in circular interval arithmetic.