Remarks on minimal solutions of a system of fuzzy relation equations over complete infinitely distributive lattices

In Section 3.6 of Fuzzy relation equations and their applications to knowledge engineering. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston (1989), Di Nola et al. presented a procedure to find a minimal solution from a fixed solution of a system of fuzzy relation equations over complete infinitely distributive lattices, and put the question: is the minimal solution found by the procedure unique or not? In this paper, we give a negative answer to the question and make some further remarks. We not only give a necessary and sufficient condition for the uniqueness of such minimal solutions, but also characterize the existence of the least solution and a unique solution of a system of fuzzy relation equations over complete infinitely distributive lattices.     

Experimental study of stable surfaces for anti-slug control in multi-phase flow

Severe slugging flow is always challenging in oil & gas production, especially for the current offshore based production. The slugging flow can cause a lot of problems, such as those relevant to production safety, fatigue as well as capability. As one typical phenomenon in multi-phase flow dynamics, the slug can be avoided or eliminated by proper facility design or control of operational conditions. Based on a testing facility which can emulate a pipeline-riser or a gas-lifted production well in a scaled-down manner, this paper experimentally studies the correlations of key operational parameters with severe slugging flows. These correlations are reflected through an obtained stable surface in the parameter space, which is a natural extension of the bifurcation plot. The maximal production opportunity without compromising the stability is also studied. Relevant studies have already showed that the capability, performance and efficiency of anti-slug control can be dramatically improved if these stable surfaces can be experimentally determined beforehand. The paper concludes that obtaining the stable surface on the new developed map can significantly improve the production rate in a control scheme. Even though the production rate can be further improved by moving the stable surface using advanced control strategies, the constant inputs can in some cases be preferable due to the easier implementation.     

What can possibly go wrong? Anticipatory work in space operations

This paper explores how different forms of anticipatory work contribute to reliability in high-risk space operations. It is based on ethnographic field work, participant observation and interviews supplemented with video recordings from a control room responsible for operating a microgravity greenhouse at the International Space Station (ISS). Drawing on examples from different stages of a biological experiment on the ISS, we demonstrate how engineers, researchers and technicians work to anticipate and proactively mitigate possible problems. Space research is expensive and risky. The experiments are planned over the course of many years by a globally distributed network of organizations. Owing to the inaccessibility of the ISS, every trivial detail that could possibly cause a problem is subject to scrutiny. We discuss what we label anticipatory work: practices constituted of an entanglement of cognitive, social and technical elements involved in anticipating and proactively mitigating everything that might go wrong. We show how the nature of anticipatory work changes between planning and the operational phases of an experiment. In the planning phase, operators inscribe their anticipation into technology and procedures. In the operational phase, we show how troubleshooting involves the ability to look ahead in the evolving temporal trajectory of the ISS operations and to juggle pre-planned fixes along these trajectories. A key objective of this paper is to illustrate how anticipation is shared between humans and different forms of technology. Moreover, it illustrates the importance of including considerations of temporality in safety and reliability research.     

Exploring factors related to users’ experience of public transport route choice: influence of context and users profiles

This exploratory study aims to achieve a better understanding of the users-related factors that affect the choice of routes in public transport (PT). We also look at what can motivate route and modes changes towards alternatives in a real situation. We investigated the experience of 19 users of PTs, using the critical incident technique (Flanagan in Psychol Bull 51(4):327, 1954). We asked participants to report incidents (i.e. situations) in cases they were very satisfied or dissatisfied with their choice. For both situations, the case of their usual route and case of an alternative were considered. A total of 91 incidents were collected and analysed using a multiple correspondences analysis. Additionally, users’ profiles were characterized and superposed to the analysis of incidents content. The main results are as follows. First, the user’s choice of PT route depends on the context (i.e. aim of the travel, time of day). Second, taking an alternative to the usual PT route or using a route combining different transport modes is determined by the context and by factors related to the pleasantness of the travel (e.g. to accompany a friend along the travel). Finally, depending on the user’s profile (i.e. combination of attitude towards PT and demographic variables), the factors taken into account to make the choice of a PT route are related to the efficiency or the pleasantness of the trip. These results show the importance of the contextual factors and the users’ profiles in route choice. They suggest that these factors should be further taken into account in new tools and services for mobility.     

SWGMM: a semi-wrapped Gaussian mixture model for clustering of circular–linear data

Finite mixture models are widely used to perform model-based clustering of multivariate data sets. Most of the existing mixture models work with linear data; whereas, real-life applications may involve multivariate data having both circular and linear characteristics. No existing mixture models can accommodate such correlated circular–linear data. In this paper, we consider designing a mixture model for multivariate data having one circular variable. In order to construct a circular–linear joint distribution with proper inclusion of correlation terms, we use the semi-wrapped Gaussian distribution. Further, we construct a mixture model (termed SWGMM) of such joint distributions. This mixture model is capable of approximating the distribution of multi-modal circular–linear data. An unsupervised learning of the mixture parameters is proposed based on expectation maximization method. Clustering is performed using maximum a posteriori criterion. To evaluate the performance of SWGMM, we choose the task of color image segmentation in LCH space. We present comprehensive results and compare SWGMM with existing methods. Our study reveals that the proposed mixture model outperforms the other methods in most cases.     

Statistical shape modelling for expression-invariant face analysis and recognition

Paper introduces a 3-D shape representation scheme for automatic face analysis and identification, and demonstrates its invariance to facial expression. The core of this scheme lies on the combination of statistical shape modelling and non-rigid deformation matching. While the former matches 3-D faces with facial expression, the latter provides a low-dimensional feature vector that controls the deformation of model for matching the shape of new input, thereby enabling robust identification of 3-D faces. The proposed scheme is also able to handle the pose variation without large part of missing data. To assist the establishment of dense point correspondences, a modified free-form-deformation based on B-spline warping is applied with the help of extracted landmarks. The hybrid iterative closest point method is introduced for matching the models and new data. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method was investigated using standard publicly available Gavab and BU-3DFE datasets, which contain faces with expression and pose changes. The performance of the system was compared with that of nine benchmark approaches. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme provides a competitive solution for face recognition.     

A Model of Green Acceptance and Intentions to Use Bike-Sharing: YouBike Users in Taiwan

With the emphasis on sustainability in transportation, bike-sharing systems are gaining popularity. This paper investigates the attitudes of users of a bike-sharing system with the aim of identifying their priorities, thus allowing local governments to focus their efforts most effectively on enhancing users’ intentions to use such systems. The relationships among green perceived usefulness (the extent to which individuals believe that a bike-sharing system will improve the environmental performance of some part of their life within a specific context), user attitude and perceived ease of use with green intentions, and the mediation effect of user attitude towards bike-sharing are explored. The focus of the study is on how to enhance green intentions via perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and user attitude of the green technology acceptance model (green TAM) (Davis 1989). The two-step approach of structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the empirical results, which indicated that green perceived usefulness and user attitude have positive influences on the green intentions of 262 users and 262 non-users from ten sampled bike-sharing sites around the central administrative districts of Taipei. However, user attitude has the highest mediation effect on green intentions, and perceived ease of use does not have a significant effect on intentions for either users or non-users. Therefore, governmental institutions can strive to improve the attitudes of bike-sharing users and non-users, their green perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use to strengthen their intentions to use this mode of sustainable transportation.     

Competition and Cooperation in a Bidding Model of Electrical Energy Trade

A cooperative game-theoretic framework is introduced to study the behavior of cooperating and competing electrical-energy providers in the wholesale market considering price-preference rational consumers. We study the physical and economic aspects of the power transmission system operation focussing on the incentives for group formation. We analyze the interactions of generators in an idealized environment described by a DC load flow model where the network is lossless and is operated by an independent network operator who ensures network stability and fulfillment of consumption needs while taking into account the preferences of consumers over generators. We show that cooperation of generators may be necessary to divert consumers from their previous providers. In the second part of the paper we assume an iterative process in which the generators publish their price offers simultaneously, based on which the consumers preferences are determined. We study the dynamics of the prices and profits as the system evolves in time while each coalition is trying to maximize its expected profit in each step. The model deals with network congestion and n ? 1 line-contingency reliability as not every generator-consumer matching is allowed to ensure the safe operation of the transmission system. The profit of the generators is determined as the difference between their income and their production cost, which is a quadratic concave function of the production amount. Any non-monopolistic proper subset of the generators may cooperate and harmonize their offered prices to increase their resulting profit. Since we allow the redistribution of profits among cooperating generators, a transferable-utility game-theoretic framework is used. Furthermore, as cooperation affects the outsiders as well, the resulting game is defined in partition function form. The model is able to demonstrate some interesting benefits of cooperation as well as the effect of market regulations and asymmetric information on the resulting profits and total social cost.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Melodie di pietra</Emphasis> by Adriana Rossi

In Melodie di pietre, Adriana Rossi has produced an in-depth analysis of the cloister of San Cugat on the basis of musical notions and symbolism. This provides us with an occasion for some brief reflections on the historic relationships between music and architecture.