Pyramid collaborative filtering technique for an intelligent autonomous guide agent

This article presents an autonomous guide agent that can observe a community of learners on the web, interpret the learners' inputs, and then assess their sharing. The goal of this agent is to find a reliable helper (tutor or other learner) to assist a learner in solving his task. Despite the growing number of Internet users, the ability to find helpers is still a challenging and important problem. Although helpers could have much useful information about courses to be taught, many learners fail to understand their presentations. For that, the agent must be able to deal autonomously with the following challenges: Do helpers have information that the learners need? Will helpers present information that learners can understand? And can we guarantee that these helpers will collaborate effectively with learners? We have developed a new filtering framework, called a pyramid collaborative filtering model, to whittle the number of helpers down to just one. We have proposed four levels for the pyramid. Moving from one level to another depends on three filtering techniques: domain model filtering, user model filtering, and credibility model filtering. A new technique is filtering according to helpers' credibilities. Our experiments show that this method greatly improves filtering effectiveness. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 1065–1082, 2007.     

CONTEXTUALIZING LEARNING OBJECTS USING ONTOLOGIES

Educational research over the past three years has intensified such that the context of learning resources needs to be properly modeled. Many researchers have described and even mandated the use of ontologies in the research being conducted, yet the process of actually connecting one or more ontologies to a learning object has not been extensively discussed. This paper describes a practical model for associating multiple ontologies with learning objects while making full use of the IEEE LOM specification. The model categorizes these ontologies according to five major categories of context based on the most popular fields of study actively being pursued by the educational research community: Thematic context, Pedagogical context, Learner context, Organizational context, and Historical/Statistical context.     

Effect of cooking on the chemical composition of lentils,rice and their blend (Koshary)

Lentils, rice and their blend (Koshary) were cooked by traditional Egyptian methods. Cooking resulted in slight changes in the total nitrogen, as well as in the non-protein nitrogen (NPN), ether extract and crude fibre of the three products, compared with raw grains. In contrast, significant decreases were found in the mineral elements, indicating losses through leaching, on washing and cooking. The mineral composition of lentils' cooking liquor confirmed this.     

Tensile Stress Relaxation of Alumina at High Temperature

The development of a tensile testing methodology for ceramics which enables a stress vs strain-rate response to be measured at high temperature is described. The test involves a carefully controled stress relaxation test at constant total strain using an experimental procedure and phenomenological analysis previously developed for metallic materials. It is demonstrated here with preliminary tests on alumina at 1050° and 1150°C. This offers, with further development, the possibility of establishing design stresses associated with low strain-rate behavior for structural applications. The results demonstrate that data covering four decades of strain rate may be generated in tests lasting a few hours. The inelastic strain consists of substantial anelastic recoverable strain in addition to a permanent creep strain.     

Formation of Nanocrystalline Calcia by the Decomposition of Calcite

Formation of nanocrystalline calcia from calcite has been studied in situ via transmission electron microscopy. The crystallographic transformation occurred via two mechanisms: the first is by distortion of the cleaved rhombohedron of calcite, formed by {104} planes in hexagonal coordinates, into a cube. This produced a microstructure of oriented, elongated nanocrystals of calcia with planar boundaries. In the second mechanism, the micrometer-sized parent calcite particles broke up into nano-sized grains as the decomposition began, leading to irregularly shaped, randomly oriented nanocrystals of calcia.     

Evaluation of the pollution load discharged at an upstream industry--Egypt--and methods for its reduction

Oil exploration in Egypt is a major contributor to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). With 50-65% of the oil resources located in the Gulf of Suez (GoS) region, the impact of such activity upon the region's water environment and its quality cannot be overlooked because of the volume of effluent generated. The objective of this study (September 2000-September 2001) was to assess the impact of a 650,000 barrels/day (bl/d) (100,000 m3/d) effluent arising from a major oil exploration site located south of GoS upon the local water environment. Another objective was to identify the pollutant contents amenable for reduction relative to the new Egyptian regulations. This was achieved by the characterization of the main contributing streams and the identification of the final effluent parameter constraints relative to the type of injection waters used. Subsequent investigations for the reduction of these contents were conducted on site and the results obtained are reviewed herewith.     

Thermodynamic studies on the complete phase diagram of aqueous two phase system containing polyethylene glycol dimethyl ether 2000 and di-potassium hydrogen phosphate at different temperatures

The liquid-liquid equilibrium of polyethylene glycol dimethyl ether 2000 (PEGDME₂₀₀₀)+K₂HPO₄+H₂O system has been determined experimentally at T=(298.15,303.15,308.15 and 318.15) K. The liquid-solid and complete phase diagram of this system was also obtained at T=(298.15 and 308.15) K. A nonlinear temperature dependent equation was successfully used for the correlation of the experimental binodal data. Furthermore, a temperature dependent Setschenow-type equation was successfully used for the correlation of the tie-lines of the studied system. Moreover, the effect of temperature on the binodal curves and the tie-lines for the investigated aqueous two-phase system have been studied. Also, the free energies of cloud points for this system and some previously studied systems containing PEGDME₂₀₀₀ were calculated from which it was concluded that the increase of the entropy is the driving force for formation of aqueous two-phase systems. Additionally, the calculated free energies for phase separation of the studied systems were used to investigate the salting-out ability of the salts having different anions. Furthermore, the complete phase diagram of the investigated system was compared with the corresponding phase diagrams of previously studied systems, in which the PEGDME₂₀₀₀ has been used, in order to obtain some information regarding the phase behavior of these PEGDME₂₀₀₀+salt+water systems.     

Continuous relaxation and local maxima selection: conditions for equivalence

Relaxation labeling processes are a class of iterative algorithms for using contextual information to reduce local ambiguities. This paper introduces a new perspective toward relaxation-that of considering it as a process for reordering labels attached to nodes in a graph. This new perspective is used to establish the formal equivalence between relaxation and another widely used algorithm, local maxima selection. The equivalence specifies conditions under which a family of cooperative relaxation algorithms, which generalize the well-known ones, decompose into purely local ones. Since these conditions are also sufficient for guaranteeing the convergence of relaxation processes, they serve as stopping criteria. We feel that equivalences such as these are necessary for the proper application of relaxation and maxima selection in complex speech and vision understanding systems.     

Characteristics of Metal Droplets in Slag Tapped from the Blast Furnace

Slag samples, hot‐metal samples and hot‐metal temperatures were obtained during tapping of two blast furnaces. Sampling was carried out at different time points during tapping of three separate heats. The size distribution and composition of metal droplets found in the slag were determined using scanning electron microscopy. Only metal droplets above 0.75 μm could be counted and analysed. All droplets were below 8 μm in diameter and the great majority of these droplets were found to be between 0.75 and 2 μm. The size distribution did not differ significantly for different slag samples. Iron was the main droplet component. Electron probe microanalysis showed that the droplets contained small amounts of carbon. The percentage of the area in a studied cross‐section that was covered with metal droplets varied between 0.01 and 0.07%. Calculations based on Stoke's law showed that the distance droplets travel in the slag is in the micron range. Slag samples taken in the beginning of slag tapping contained more droplets than those taken in the middle of slag tapping, an indication that most droplets can be found in the area near the furnace wall. Some droplets were determined to have magnesium enrichment at the external surface.