A web-based high-performance multicriteria decision support system for medical diagnosis

Multicriteria decision making (MCDM) methods can be powerful aids for evaluating patients' medical information in medical diagnostic systems. Technique ordered preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) is one of the more widely used MCDM methods in decision support systems. For the purpose of this work, the TOPSIS method is modified into a more suitable form and used for the implementation of a web-based medical diagnostic system. In our modified TOPSIS method, we have utilized fuzzy logic so that users can more accurately describe their symptoms. The data given to the modified TOPSIS method are often massive in proportions and may take a considerable amount of time to generate a ranking of alternatives. TOPSIS lends itself to parallel computation because it is virtually a combination of matrix computations. Therefore, computer parallelism is implemented so that a large amount of input data can be handled simultaneously, hence decreasing overall execution time. In addition, to make our MCDM system more accessible, we have designed our system to be web based. The web-based medical diagnosis system includes a dynamically generated web-based user interface, while the parallel implementation of the modified TOPSIS component, in conjunction with the Common Gateway Interface, forms the back end of the system. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 1083–1099, 2007.     

The Staircase to Terrorism: A Psychological Exploration.

To foster a more in-depth understanding of the psychological processes leading to terrorism, the author conceptualizes the terrorist act as the final step on a narrowing staircase. Although the vast majority of people, even when feeling deprived and unfairly treated, remain on the ground floor, some individuals climb up and are eventually recruited into terrorist organizations. These individuals believe they have no effective voice in society, are encouraged by leaders to displace aggression onto out-groups, and become socialized to see terrorist organizations as legitimate and out-group members as evil. The current policy of focusing on individuals already at the top of the staircase brings only short-term gains. The best long-term policy against terrorism is prevention, which is made possible by nourishing contextualized democracy on the ground floor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A fuzzy approach for the earned value management

The Earned Value technique is a crucial technique in analyzing and controlling the performance of a project which allows a more accurate measurement of both the performance and the progress of a project. This paper presents a new fuzzy-based earned value model with the advantage of developing and analyzing the earned value indices, and the time and the cost estimates at completion under uncertainty. As the uncertainty is inherent in real-life activities, the developed model is very useful in evaluating the progress of a project where uncertainty arises. A small example illustrates how the new model can be implemented in reality.     

Low-Power Symmetrical Rectifier for Passive UHF RFID Transponder

Rectifier design is one of the challenging issues in passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems. Differential structures are good candidates as rectifiers to their high conversion efficiencies. In this paper, a novel structure is proposed to produce symmetrical power-supply utilizing differential circuit configuration simulated in 130nm CMOS technology. The proposed rectifier can provide 1.34 V DC power with 382% voltage conversion efficiency, thus demonstrated its higher performance over existing designs.     

Speed limit reduction in urban areas: A before–after study using Bayesian generalized mixed linear models

In fall 2009, a new speed limit of 40 km/h was introduced on local streets in Montreal (previous speed limit: 50 km/h). This paper proposes a methodology to efficiently estimate the effect of such reduction on speeding behaviors. We employ a full Bayes before–after approach, which overcomes the limitations of the empirical Bayes method. The proposed methodology allows for the analysis of speed data using hourly observations. Therefore, the entire daily profile of speed is considered. Furthermore, it accounts for the entire distribution of speed in contrast to the traditional approach of considering only a point estimate such as 85th percentile speed. Different reference speeds were used to examine variations in the treatment effectiveness in terms of speeding rate and frequency. In addition to comparing rates of vehicles exceeding reference speeds of 40 km/h and 50 km/h (speeding), we verified how the implemented treatment affected “excessive speeding” behaviors (exceeding 80 km/h). To model operating speeds, two Bayesian generalized mixed linear models were utilized. These models have the advantage of addressing the heterogeneity problem in observations and efficiently capturing potential intra-site correlations. A variety of site characteristics, temporal variables, and environmental factors were considered. The analyses indicated that variables such as lane width and night hour had an increasing effect on speeding. Conversely, roadside parking had a decreasing effect on speeding. One-way and lane width had an increasing effect on excessive speeding, whereas evening hour had a decreasing effect. This study concluded that although the treatment was effective with respect to speed references of 40 km/h and 50 km/h, its effectiveness was not significant with respect to excessive speeding-which carries a great risk to pedestrians and cyclists in urban areas. Therefore, caution must be taken in drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of speed limit reduction. This study also points out the importance of using a comparison group to capture underlying trends caused by unknown factors.     

Microstructural and mechanical properties of friction stir welded Cu–30Zn brass alloy at various feed speeds: Influence of stir bands

In this study, the effect of various feed speeds on microstructure and mechanical properties of friction stir welded Cu–30Zn brass alloy is investigated. Rotation speed was fixed at 950 rpm and feed speed varied in the range of 190–375 mm/min. Examination of the microstructure showed very fine grains with some deformed grains in the stirred zone and some coarser grains in the thermo-mechanically affected zone and base metal. A unique deformation pattern, namely “stir band” in the stirred zone region was identified and its density increased by increase in feed speed. Results showed that the grain size profile was independent of feed speed and the hardness values decreased by increase in feed speed. Increase in feed speed led to a slight improvement of yield strength and ultimate tensile strength, associated to continuous spring-like morphology of stir bands acting as a strengthening structure. However, ductility reduces considerably from 57 to 27%. Moreover, it is observed that during tensile test, fracture cracks originate exactly adjacent to the stir bands.     

Tensile behaviour of patch-repaired CFRP laminates

The present study examines the tensile behaviour of composite structures repaired by bonding external patches. Various patches of different stacking sequences placed on both sides of the parent plate were considered. Damage development and the failure process of the repaired plates were analyzed and a parent plate fracture model has been proposed. Optimised patch repairs were calculated by finite element modelling. It was found that high stress concentration along the longitudinal edges of circular patches and/or at the transverse edges of the hole leads to early damage initiation in the parent plate. However, the position of damage initiation and the process of damage progression depend particularly on the properties of repair patches. In order to optimise patch repairs, finite element modelling was used and it was founded possible to attain over 90% of the strength of an unnotched specimen. The optimised patch design can be characterised by an optimal strength ratio R^*, which should be minimized when selecting repair parameters.     

Highly efficient dye-sensitized solar cell prepared by electrophoretic deposition method: the effect of TiO<Subscript>2</Subscript> films thickness on the performance of cells

In this work, nanocrystalline P25 TiO₂ films with different thicknesses were deposited on FTO coated glass substrates by an electrophoretic deposition technique (EPD) and applied as the work electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) using cis-bis(isothiocyanato)(2,2'-bipyridyl-4,4'-dicarboxylato)(4,4'di-nonyl-2'-bipyridyl) ruthenium(II) (Z907, Dyesol) as sensitizing dye.The results showed that the increasing the thickness of TiO₂ films lead to increase the adsorption of the dye on the TiO₂ layers which in turns improved the short-circuit photocurrent (J_sc) and open-circuit voltage (V_oc), respectively. Furthermore, it was found that the effects of the surface states on the recombination of the photo-injected electrons (electron–hole pairs) in the TiO₂ films strongly depend on theTiO₂ electrode annealing temperature. Finally, a DSSC with a 32.82 μm thickness for TiO₂ film annealed at 600°C produced the highest conversion efficiency with an incident solar energy of 100 mW/cm² (η = 8.23%, J_sc = 15.98, V_oc = 0.73, FF = 0.7).     

Two-dimensional random projection

As an alternative to adaptive nonlinear schemes for dimensionality reduction, linear random projection has recently proved to be a reliable means for high-dimensional data processing. Widespread application of conventional random projection in the context of image analysis is, however, mainly impeded by excessive computational and memory requirements. In this paper, a two-dimensional random projection scheme is considered as a remedy to this problem, and the associated key notion of concentration of measure is closely studied. It is then applied in the contexts of image classification and sparse image reconstruction. Finally, theoretical results are validated within a comprehensive set of experiments with synthetic and real images.     

Stability problems in universal current-mode filters

Analog circuit designers have usually focused on the design of circuits employing a minimum number of components, occupying less area and dissipating less power. However, some important issues such as signal limitations and especially stability problems of the analog circuits have not received considerable attention in the literature. Hence, the work described in this paper deals with the stability problems of two new current-mode analog filters employing multiple output current controlled conveyors (MOCCCIIs). Toward that end, a single pole model is replaced for each non-ideal current gain of the MOCCCIIs. Both of the novel universal current-mode active-C filters can simultaneously realize low-pass, band-pass and high-pass/notch filter responses. SPICE and MATLAB simulation results are given to verify the theoretical analysis.