Prediction of Engineering Performance: A Neurofuzzy Approach

Engineering and design professionals constitute a major driving force for a successful project undertaking. Although the industry has been active in addressing the performance of construction labor and methods to estimate or predict such performance, relatively fewer efforts have been conducted for the engineering profession. In an attempt to fill out this gap, the paper presents a study to utilize neurofuzzy intelligent systems for predicting the engineering performance in a construction project. First, neurofuzzy systems are introduced as integrated schemes of artificial neural networks and fuzzy control systems. The use of these neurofuzzy intelligent systems, particularly fuzzy neural networks, in predicting engineering performance is then demonstrated in the industrial construction sector. The development of the system is based on actual project data that was collected through questionnaire surveys. Statistical variable reduction techniques are further employed to develop linear regression models of the same engineering performance prediction scheme, and results are being compared between both techniques.     

6-MHz 2-N/m piezoresistive atomic-force microscope cantilevers withINCISIVE tips

Piezoresistive atomic force-microscope (AFM) cantilevers with lengths of 10 μm, displacement sensitivities of (ΔR/R)/A 1.1×10^-5, displacement resolutions of 2×10^-3 A/√Hz, mechanical response times of less than 90 ns, and stiffnesses of 2 N/m have been fabricated from a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer using a novel frontside-only release process. To reduce mass, the cantilevers utilize novel inplane crystallographically defined silicon variable aspect-ratio (INCISIVE) tips with radius of curvature of 40 A. The cantilevers have been used in an experimental AFM data-storage system to read back data with an areal density of 10 Gb/cm ². Four-legged cantilevers with both imaging and thermomechanical surface modification capabilities have been used to write 2-Gb/cm² data at 50 kb/s on a spinning polycarbonate sample and to subsequently read the data. AFM imaging has been successfully demonstrated with the cantilevers. Some cantilever designs have sufficient displacement resolution to detect their own mechanical-thermal noise in air. The INCISIVE tips also have applications to other types of sensors     

Asymptotically stable detection of a weak signal

To design highly efficient and robust detectors of a weak signal, an asymptotic approach to stable estimation exploiting redescending score functions is used. Two new indicators of robustness of detection, the detection error sensitivity and detection stability, are introduced. The optimal Neyman–Pearson rules maximizing detection efficiency under the guaranteed level of detection stability are written out. Under heavy‐tailed noise distributions, the proposed asymptotically stable detectors based on redescending score functions, namely, the minimum error sensitivity and the radical ones, outperform conventional linear bounded Huber's and redescending Hampel's detectors both on small and large samples. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Systemic principals of research of functional states of the gas-man operator while working in the desert

This work describes functional state of the gas-man operator while working in the desert. Under the functional state, one understands the state of the operator that is changing during the work shifts. The most important characteristics of the operator's functional state are work capacity and fatigue. These are two sides of the same coin. The more the fatigue is, the less is the work capacity. In spite of the broad interest to these phenomena, ther is still not a precise and reliable way to measure them. The present article focuses on some aspects of this important issue from the activity theory point of view.     

An interactive 3D video system for human facial reconstruction and expression modeling

A 3D facial reconstruction and expression modeling system which creates 3D video sequences of test subjects and facilitates interactive generation of novel facial expressions is described. Dynamic 3D video sequences are generated using computational binocular stereo matching with active illumination and are used for interactive expression modeling. An individual’s 3D video set is annotated with control points associated with face subregions. Dragging a control point updates texture and depth in only the associated subregion so that the user generates new composite expressions unseen in the original source video sequences. Such an interactive manipulation of dynamic 3D face reconstructions requires as little preparation on the test subject as possible. Dense depth data combined with video-based texture results in realistic and convincing facial animations, a feature lacking in conventional marker-based motion capture systems.     

Displacement of particles in microfluidics by laser-generated tandem bubbles

The dynamic interaction between laser-generated tandem bubble and individual polystyrene particles of 2 and 10 μm in diameter is studied in a microfluidic channel (25 μm height) by high-speed imaging and particle image velocimetry. The asymmetric collapse of the tandem bubble produces a pair of microjets and associated long-lasting vortices that can propel a single particle to a maximum velocity of 1.4 m∕s in 30 μs after the bubble collapse with a resultant directional displacement up to 60 μm in 150 μs. This method may be useful for high-throughput cell sorting in microfluidic devices.     

Thermally Activated Photoluminescence in Lead Selenide Colloidal Quantum Dots

The thermal activation processes in PbSe colloidal quantum dots and their influence on the ground‐state exciton emission are discussed. Activation of a dark exciton occurs at 1.4–7 K, assisted by an acoustic phonon coupling. Activation of a bright exciton occurs at 100–200 K, which appears as a sudden change in the photoluminescence band intensity, energy, and full width at half maximum. This activation overcomes the dark–bright‐state splitting, when the activation temperature increases with the decrease of the dots' size. The dark exciton lifetime is found to be ≈6–12 µs at 1.4 K, while the bright exciton lifetime at 300 K evaluated as 450 ns varies slightly with the change in the size of the dots. In addition, the emission quantum yield of these dots, measured at a variety of temperatures when dissolved in various solvents, reveals information about the influence of the environment on the recombination processes.     

Precise segmentation of multimodal images.

We propose new techniques for unsupervised segmentation of multimodal grayscale images such that each region-of-interest relates to a single dominant mode of the empirical marginal probability distribution of grey levels. We follow the most conventional approaches in that initial images and desired maps of regions are described by a joint Markov-Gibbs random field (MGRF) model of independent image signals and interdependent region labels. However, our focus is on more accurate model identification. To better specify region borders, each empirical distribution of image signals is precisely approximated by a linear combination of Gaussians (LCG) with positive and negative components. We modify an expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm to deal with the LCGs and also propose a novel EM-based sequential technique to get a close initial LCG approximation with which the modified EM algorithm should start. The proposed technique identifies individual LCG models in a mixed empirical distribution, including the number of positive and negative Gaussians. Initial segmentation based on the LCG models is then iteratively refined by using the MGRF with analytically estimated potentials. The convergence of the overall segmentation algorithm at each stage is discussed. Experiments show that the developed techniques segment different types of complex multimodal medical images more accurately than other known algorithms.     

Lanthanide imidodiphosphinate complexes: Synthesis,structure and new aspects of electroluminescent properties

The lanthanide imidodiphosphinate complexes Ln(pip)₃ (Ln = Ce, Nd, Tb, Ho) were prepared from the corresponding Ln[N(SiMe₃)₂]₃ with [Ph₂P(O)]₂NH in a quantitative yield. X-ray single structure analysis of Ce(pip)₃ has revealed that the lanthanide ion in these compounds coordinated by three bidentate [Ph₂P(O)NP(O)Ph₂]⁻ ligands and THF molecule. With respect to the organic light emitting diodes (OLED) application, the simple electroluminescent (EL) devices with a multilayer configuration ITO/TPD/Ln(pip)₃/Yb, ITO/CBP/Ln(pip)₃/Yb, ITO/TPD/Ln(pip)₃/Alq₃/Yb, ITO/TPD/Alq₃/Ln(pip)₃/Yb were fabricated. It was found that the lanthanide imidodiphosphinate complexes possess the hole-blocking and electron-transporting ability and it was also observed the exciplex emission between these complexes and TPD.