Developing an Interactive Spatial Multi-Attribute Decision Support System for Assessing Water Resources Allocation Scenarios

Water Resources Management - In water resource management, assessing water resource allocation scenarios (WRASs) is an important multi-attribute decision making (MADM) problem. It involves...     

Decoupled adaptive neuro-fuzzy (DANF) sliding mode control system for a Lorenz chaotic problem

This paper introduces a decoupled adaptive neuro-fuzzy (DANF) sliding mode control system for the chaos control problem in a system without precise system model information. It has on-line learning ability to deal with the parametric uncertainty and disturbance by adjusting the control parameters and no constrained conditions and prior knowledge of the controlled plant is required in the design process. Also, a decoupled adaptive sliding mode controller is developed to control the chaotic Lorenz system for comparison. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed decoupled adaptive sliding mode and DANF sliding mode controllers are demonstrated by some simulated results.     

Detection of Epstein-Barr virus in oral scrapes in HIV infection, in hairy leukoplakia, and in healthy non-HIV-infected people

Epstein Barr virus (EBV) has been implicated in the pathogenesis of oral hairy leukoplakia (OHL). EBV is normally detected by lesional biopsy. The objectives of this study were to examine oral scrapes containing squamous epithelial cells (squames) from HIV-infected people with and without clinical lesions of OHL, and from healthy non-HIV-infected controls, for EBV-DNA by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). EBV-DNA was detected in 65% of HIV-infected people and 20% of healthy HIV-negative controls but in HIV-infected individuals it was found as frequently in those without OHL as in those with. Moreover, EBV-DNA was not detected in all HIV-infected individuals, nor in all OHL. The results suggest that the presence or absence of detectable EBV-DNA in oral scrapes, though a guide, cannot be regarded as absolutely reliable in the diagnosis or exclusion of OHL.     

A Novel Approach to Detect Faults Occurring During Power Swings by Abrupt Change of Impedance Trajectory

The main purpose of power swing blocking is to distinguish faults from power swings. However, faults occurred during a power swing should still be detected and cleared promptly. This paper proposes an index based on detecting abrupt jump of impedance trajectory by utilization of the predicting capability of the Kalman Filter. The proposed index is calculated by assessing the difference between predicted and actual samples of impedance. The predicted impedance samples are obtained using the Kalman filter and Taylor expansion, which are used in this paper to track the phasor precisely. Second order of Taylor expansion is used to decrease the corrugation effect of impedance estimation and increase the reliability of the proposed method. Furthermore, in order to increase the selectivity of the proposed method, the proposed index is armed with phase comparison logic to detect internal faults. The instantaneous estimation and prediction capability of the Kalman filter are two reasons for proposing the use of Kalman filter. Intensive studies have been performed and the merit of the method is demonstrated by test simulations.     

Self-healing semi-IPN materials from epoxy resin by solvent-free furan–maleimide Diels–Alder polymerization

Novel self-healing Diels–Alder (DA) polymer and the corresponding semi-interpenetrated polymer networks (semi-IPNs) were synthesized and characterized. Initially, a furan-functionalized resin (FFR) was synthesized through the ring-opening reaction of a conventional epoxy resin [diglycidyl ether bisphenol A (DGEBA)] with furfuryl alcohol as a bio-based compound. Subsequently, semi-IPNs with different compositions were obtained through the blending of DGEBA, FFR, 4,4′-diaminodiphenylmethane, and 1,1′-(methylenedi-1,4-phenylene) bismaleimide in the molten state by following a predetermined time–temperature program. Fourier transform infrared and nuclear magnetic resonance analyses confirmed the successful synthesis of the materials. Thermoreversibility via retro-DA (rDA) reaction was evidenced by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and sol–gel transition tests. Repeated DSC cycle was successfully performed thrice on the DA polyadduct which corroborated repeatability of the DA/rDA association/dissociation. Self-healing and mechanical properties were preliminarily evaluated by scanning electronic microscopy and flexural testing analyses, respectively. The self-healing efficiencies were around 80 and 95% for semi-IPN and DA polyadduct, respectively, based on flexural strength. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136, 48015.     

Nitrogen balance in dryland agroecosystem in response to tillage,crop rotation,and cultural practice

Accounting of N inputs and outputs and N retention in the soil provides N balance that measures agroecosystem performance and environmental sustainability. Because of the complexity of measurements of some N inputs and outputs, studies on N balance in long-term experiments are scanty. We examined the effect of 8 years of tillage, crop rotation, and cultural practice on N balance based on N inputs and outputs and soil N sequestration rate under dryland cropping systems in the northern Great Plains, USA. Tillage systems were no-tillage (NT) and conventional tillage (CT) and crop rotations were continuous spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) (CW), spring wheat–pea (Pisum sativum L.) (W–P), spring wheat–barley (Hordeum vulgaris L.) hay–pea (W–B–P), and spring wheat–barley hay–corn (Zea mays L.)–pea (W–B–C–P). Cultural practices were traditional (conventional seed rates and plant spacing, conventional planting date, broadcast N fertilization, and reduced stubble height) and improved (variable seed rates and plant spacing, delayed planting, banded N fertilization, and increased stubble height). Total N input due to N fertilization, pea N fixation, atmospheric N deposition, crop seed N, and nonsymbiotic N fixation was greater with W–B–C–P than CW, regardless of tillage and cultural practices. Total N output due to aboveground biomass N removal and N losses due to denitrification, volatilization, plant senescence, N leaching, gaseous N (NO_x) emissions, and surface runoff were not different among treatments. Nitrogen sequestration rate at 0–20 cm from 2004 to 2011 varied from 29 kg N ha^?1 year^?1 in CT with W–P to 89 kg N ha^?1 year^?1 in NT with W–P. Nitrogen balance varied from ? 39 kg N ha^?1 year^?1 in NT with CW and the improved practice to 41 kg N ha^?1 year^?1 in CT with W–P and the traditional practice. Because of legume N fixation and increased soil N sequestration rate, diversified crop rotations reduced external N inputs and increased aboveground biomass N removal, N flow, and N balance compared with monocropping, especially in the CT system. As a result, diversified legume–nonlegume crop rotation not only reduced the cost of N fertilization by reducing N fertilization rate, but also can be productive by increasing N uptake and N surplus and environmentally sustainable by reducing N losses compared with nonlegume monocropping, regardless of cultural practices in dryland agroecosystems.     

Region-Based Active Contours with Exponential Family Observations

In this paper, we focus on statistical region-based active contour models where image features (e.g. intensity) are random variables whose distribution belongs to some parametric family (e.g. exponential) rather than confining ourselves to the special Gaussian case. In the framework developed in this paper, we consider the general case of region-based terms involving functions of parametric probability densities, for which the anti-log-likelihood function is a special case. Using shape derivative tools, our effort focuses on constructing a general expression for the derivative of the energy (with respect to a domain), and on deriving the corresponding evolution speed. More precisely, we first show by an example that the estimator of the distribution parameters is crucial for the derived speed expression. On the one hand, when using the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator for these parameters, the evolution speed has a closed-form expression that depends simply on the probability density function. On the other hand, complicating additive terms appear when using other estimators, e.g. method of moments. We then proceed by stating a general result within the framework of multi-parameter exponential family. This result is specialized to the case of the anti-log-likelihood function with the ML estimator and to the case of the relative entropy. Experimental results on simulated data confirm our expectations that using the appropriate noise model leads to the best segmentation performance. We also report preliminary experiments on real life Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images to demonstrate the potential applicability of our approach.     

Risk-constrained self-scheduling of a fuel and emission constrained power producer using rolling window procedure

This work addresses a relevant methodology for self-scheduling of a price-taker fuel and emission constrained power producer in day-ahead correlated energy, spinning reserve and fuel markets to achieve a trade-off between the expected profit and the risk versus different risk levels based on Markowitz’s seminal work in the area of portfolio selection. Here, a set of uncertainties including price forecasting errors and available fuel uncertainty are considered. The latter uncertainty arises because of uncertainties in being called for reserve deployment in the spinning reserve market and availability of power plant. To tackle the price forecasting errors, variances of energy, spinning reserve and fuel prices along with their covariances which are due to markets correlation are taken into account using relevant historical data. In order to tackle available fuel uncertainty, a framework for self-scheduling referred to as rolling window is proposed. This risk-constrained self-scheduling framework is therefore formulated and solved as a mixed-integer non-linear programming problem. Furthermore, numerical results for a case study are discussed.