Experiencing Nature: Embodying Animals in Immersive Virtual Environments Increases Inclusion of Nature in Self and Involvement With Nature

Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) produce simulations that mimic unmediated sensory experiences. 3 experiments (N = 228) tested how different modalities increase environmental involvement by allowing users to inhabit the body of animals in IVEs or watch the experience on video. Embodying sensory‐rich experiences of animals in IVEs led to greater feeling of embodiment, perception of being present in the virtual world, and interconnection between the self and nature compared to video. Heightened interconnection with nature elicited greater perceptions of imminence of the environmental risk and involvement with nature, which persisted for 1 week. Although the effect sizes were small to moderate, findings suggest that embodied experiences in IVEs may be an effective tool to promote involvement with environmental issues.     

Predicting direction of stock price index movement using artificial neural networks and support vector machines: The sample of the Istanbul Stock Exchange

Prediction of stock price index movement is regarded as a challenging task of financial time series prediction. An accurate prediction of stock price movement may yield profits for investors. Due to the complexity of stock market data, development of efficient models for predicting is very difficult. This study attempted to develop two efficient models and compared their performances in predicting the direction of movement in the daily Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) National 100 Index. The models are based on two classification techniques, artificial neural networks (ANN) and support vector machines (SVM). Ten technical indicators were selected as inputs of the proposed models. Two comprehensive parameter setting experiments for both models were performed to improve their prediction performances. Experimental results showed that average performance of ANN model (75.74%) was found significantly better than that of SVM model (71.52%).     

Supplier selection with an integrated methodology in unknown environment

This paper proposes an integrated methodology and its solution for supplier selection problem. A two-stage stochastic programming model and fuzzy TOPSIS methods are consolidated in this methodology. After pre-research phase, in the second part of the methodology, fuzzy TOPSIS is used for ranking potential suppliers considering qualitative data under fuzzy environment. In the third part of the methodology a group of ranked potential suppliers are included in a two-stage stochastic programming model for evaluation. In the two-stage stochastic programming model demand is assumed as uncertain and different scenarios are generated for this parameter. With this methodology, supplier evaluation procedure can be done in unknown environment. Our methodology is interested with a problem in multi-product, multi-period and multi-sourcing environment.     

Comparison of different classifier algorithms for diagnosing macular and optic nerve diseases

Abstract: The aim of this research was to compare classifier algorithms including the C4.5 decision tree classifier, the least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM) and the artificial immune recognition system (AIRS) for diagnosing macular and optic nerve diseases from pattern electroretinography signals. The pattern electroretinography signals were obtained by electrophysiological testing devices from 106 subjects who were optic nerve and macular disease subjects. In order to show the test performance of the classifier algorithms, the classification accuracy, receiver operating characteristic curves, sensitivity and specificity values, confusion matrix and 10-fold cross-validation have been used. The classification results obtained are 85.9%, 100% and 81.82% for the C4.5 decision tree classifier, the LS-SVM classifier and the AIRS classifier respectively using 10-fold cross-validation. It is shown that the LS-SVM classifier is a robust and effective classifier system for the determination of macular and optic nerve diseases.     

A tabu-search based heuristic for the hub covering problem over incomplete hub networks

Hub location problems deal with finding the location of hub facilities and with the allocation of demand nodes to these located hub facilities. In this paper, we study the single allocation hub covering problem over incomplete hub networks and propose an integer programming formulation to this end. The aim of our model is to find the location of hubs, the hub links to be established between the located hubs, and the allocation of non-hub nodes to the located hub nodes such that the travel time between any origin–destination pair is within a given time bound. We present an efficient heuristic based on tabu search and test the performance of our heuristic on the CAB data set and on the Turkish network.     

Prediction of deflection of reinforced concrete shear walls

Reinforced concrete shear walls are used in tall buildings for efficiently resisting lateral loads. Due to the low tensile strength of concrete, reinforced concrete shear walls tend to behave in a nonlinear manner with a significant reduction in stiffness, even under service loads. To accurately assess the lateral deflection of shear walls, the prediction of flexural and shear stiffness of these members after cracking becomes important. In the present study, an iterative analytical procedure which considers the cracking in the reinforced concrete shear walls has been presented. The effect of concrete cracking on the stiffness and deflection of shear walls have also been investigated by the developed computer program based on the iterative procedure. In the program, the variation of the flexural stiffness of a cracked member has been evaluated by ACI and probability-based effective stiffness model. In the analysis, shear deformation which can be large and significant after development of cracks is also taken into account and the variation of shear stiffness in the cracked regions of members has been considered by using effective shear stiffness model available in the literature. Verification of the proposed procedure has been confirmed from series of reinforced concrete shear wall tests available in the literature. Comparison between the analytical and experimental results shows that the proposed analytical procedure can provide an accurate and efficient prediction of both the deflection and flexural stiffness reduction of shear walls with different height to width ratio and vertical load. The results of the analytical procedure also indicate that the percentage of shear deflection in the total deflection increases with decreasing height to width ratio of the shear wall.     

Analysis of the human immune response to vaccinia by use of a novel protein microarray suggests that antibodies recognize less than 10% of the total viral proteome

Control of smallpox by mass vaccination was one of the most effective public health measures ever employed for eradicating a devastating infectious disease. However, new methods are needed for monitoring smallpox immunity within current vulnerable populations, and for the development of replacement vaccines for use by immunocompromized or low-responding individuals. As a measure for achieving this goal, we developed a protein microarray of the vaccinia virus proteome by using high-throughput baculovirus expression and purification of individual elements. The array was validated with therapeutic-grade, human hyperimmune sera, and these data were compared to results obtained from individuals vaccinated against smallpox using Dryvax. A high level of reproducibility with a very low background were apparent in repetitive assays that confirmed previously reported antigens and identified new proteins that may be important for neutralizing viral infection. Our results suggest that proteins recognized by antibodies from all vaccinees constituted <10% of the total vaccinia proteome.     

A new supervised classification algorithm in artificial immune systems with its application to carotid artery Doppler signals to diagnose atherosclerosis

Because of its self-regulating nature, immune system has been an inspiration source for usually unsupervised learning methods in classification applications of Artificial Immune Systems (AIS). But classification with supervision can bring some advantages to AIS like other classification systems. Indeed, there have been some studies, which have obtained reasonable results and include supervision in this branch of AIS. In this study, we have proposed a new supervised AIS named as Supervised Affinity Maturation Algorithm (SAMA) and have presented its performance results through applying it to diagnose atherosclerosis using carotid artery Doppler signals as a real-world medical classification problem. We have employed the maximum envelope of the carotid artery Doppler sonograms derived from Autoregressive (AR) method as an input of proposed classification system and reached a maximum average classification accuracy of 98.93% with 10-fold cross-validation method used in training-test portioning. To evaluate this result, comparison was done with Artificial Neural Networks and Decision Trees. Our system was found to be comparable with those systems, which are used effectively in literature with respect to classification accuracy and classification time. Effects of system's parameters were also analyzed in performance evaluation applications. With this study and other possible contributions to AIS, classification algorithms with effective performances can be developed and potential of AIS in classification can be further revealed.     

Negotiating participation: understanding the "how" in an ergonomic change team

In participatory ergonomic (PE) interventions, "how" effective participation by workplace parties can be achieved remains unclear. We conducted a case study of the dynamics of an ergonomic change team (ECT) process in a medium-sized (175 employees) automotive foam manufacturing plant. We present analyses of observer field notes and post-intervention interviews from which key elements on the dynamics of the "how" emerged: (1) impacts of facilitators' involvement and interests; (2) tensions in delimiting the scope of ECT activities; issues around (3) managing meetings and (4) realizing labour and management participation; and (5) workplace ECT members' difficulties in juggling other job commitments and facing production pressures. We highlight the ongoing negotiated nature of responses to these challenges by labour, management and ergonomic facilitator members of the ECT. We argue for greater examination of the social dynamics of PE processes to identify additional ways of fostering participation in ergonomic project implementation.