Intelligent process analytics for CRM

Many organisations use decision models in their processes such as tables or trees to provide decision support to their operational divisions. For example, in fault management, customer contact centre operators usually use a decision model in the form of prescribed interviews. Based on the answers given by customers, the operator navigates through the decision model to reach an assessment of the problem. In order to achieve customer satisfaction and operational excellence, it is very important to constantly monitor the performance of a decision model not only on an overall level, but also on the level of individual decisions. In this paper we present a configurable business process analytics tool, known as the intelligent Universal Service Management System, that constantly monitors decision data and is capable of optimising the decisions based on high-level business objectives. We explain the various features of the software and show how it can be used to optimise decision processes. We also show how we can easily provide a customised version to monitor the performance of provision processes.     

Learning in multiple model adaptive control switch

Including a learning mechanism in SMMAC (switched, multiple-model adaptive control) avoids the need for a priori knowledge of the model set of the plant to control and leads to a significant performance improvement with respect to the sole inclusion of an adaptive control channel in combination with switched fixed local controllers.     

Fault detection for control of wastewater treatment plants.

Interest in real-time model-based control is increasing as more and more facilities are being asked to meet stricter effluent requirements while at the same time minimizing costs. It has been identified that biological process models and automated process control technologies are being used at wastewater treatments plants throughout the world and that great potential for optimising biotreatment may exist with the integration of these two technology areas. According to our experience, wastewater treatment plants are indeed looking for ways to successfully integrate their modelling knowledge into their process control structure; however, there are practical aspects of this integration that must be addressed if the benefits of this integration are to be realised. This paper discusses the practical aspects of monitoring, filtering and analysing real sensor data with an aim to produce a reliable real-time data stream that might be used within a model-based control structure. Several real case study examples are briefly discussed in this paper.     

Comparison of total and faecal coliforms as faecal indicator in eutrophicated surface water.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of total coliforms (TC) and faecal coliforms (FC) using a membrane filtration method for precise monitoring of faecal pollution in Korean surface water. The samples were collected in Korea from both main rivers and their tributaries. Presumptive TC * FC were enumerated. The ratios of presumptive FC to TC were not constant, but varied widely, and TC were difficult to enumerate because of overgrowth by background colonies. For FC this was not the case. Seven hundred and three purified strains of presumptive TC * FC and their background colonies were biotyped using API 20E. Among 272 presumptive TC, non-faecal related species, Aeromonas hydrophila dominated (34.6%) and E. coli accounted for only 5.1%. In contrast, E. coli made up 89% of the 209 presumptive FC. Furthermore, of 164 background colonies on Endo Agar LES, 54.9% was A. hydrophila, while background colonies on m-FC Agar were few (58 strains), and despite their atypical colony appearance, most of them were biotyped as enteric bacteria. These results reveal that the detection of FC rather than TC using m-FC Agar is more appropriate for faecal pollution monitoring in eutrophicated surface water located in a temperate region.     

Profile-Driven Component Placement for Cluster-Based Online Services

The growth of the Internet and of various intranets has spawned a wealth of online services, most of which are implemented on local-area clusters using remote invocation (for example, remote procedure call/remote method invocation) among manually placed application components. Component placement can be a significant challenge for large-scale services, particularly when application resource needs are workload dependent. Automatic component placement has the potential to maximize overall system throughput. The key idea is to construct (offline) a mapping between input workload and individual-component resource consumption. Such mappings, called component profiles, then support high-performance placement. Preliminary results on an online auction benchmark based on J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) suggest that profile-driven tools can identify placements that achieve near-optimal overall throughput.     

Valorisation of waste fractions from autohydrolysis of selected lignocellulosic materials

Non‐isothermal processing of lignocellulosic materials in aqueous media (autohydrolysis reaction) under mild conditions leads to solutions containing valuable chemicals (oligosaccharides, sugars and acetic acid) and other, undesired, compounds (belonging to the extractive and acid‐soluble lignin fractions) which have to be removed in further purification treatments. Liquors obtained by non‐isothermal autohydrolysis of Eucalyptus globulus wood and corncobs under a variety of operational conditions were extracted with ethyl acetate in order to remove non‐saccharide components, and the suitability of the fraction dissolved in the organic phase was assayed for possible utilisation as an antioxidant. The yield and antioxidant activity of ethyl acetate extracts (measured by the α,α‐diphenyl‐β‐picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging capacity) showed a strong dependence on the autohydrolysis conditions. The antioxidant activity of extracts obtained under selected operational conditions compared well with synthetic antioxidants. © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry     

Minimax estimation of deterministic parameters in linear models with a random model matrix

We consider the problem of estimating an unknown deterministic parameter vector in a linear model with a random model matrix, with known second-order statistics. We first seek the linear estimator that minimizes the worst-case mean-squared error (MSE) across all parameter vectors whose (possibly weighted) norm is bounded above. We show that the minimax MSE estimator can be found by solving a semidefinite programming problem and develop necessary and sufficient optimality conditions on the minimax MSE estimator. Using these conditions, we derive closed-form expressions for the minimax MSE estimator in some special cases. We then demonstrate, through examples, that the minimax MSE estimator can improve the performance over both a Baysian approach and a least-squares method. We then consider the case in which the norm of the parameter vector is also bounded below. Since the minimax MSE approach cannot account for a nonzero lower bound, we consider, in this case, a minimax regret method in which we seek the estimator that minimizes the worst-case difference between the MSE attainable using a linear estimator that does not know the parameter vector, and the optimal MSE attained using a linear estimator that knows the parameter vector. For analytical tractability, we restrict our attention to the scalar case and develop a closed-form expression for the minimax regret estimator.     

Second harmonic generation from a ferroelectric film

We derive an expression for transmittivity (T_SHG) of second harmonic generation (SHG) signals from a ferroelectric (FE) film. Intensities of up and down fields in the medium are investigated in relation to T_SHG. The derivations are made based on undepletion of input fields and nonlinear wave equation derived from the Maxwell equations. We present two cases: film without mirrors and with partial mirrors. Expressions for the newly derived nonlinear susceptibility coefficients of SHG for real crystal symmetry [J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 19 (2002) 2007] are used to get more realistic results. Variations in T_SHG with respect to film thickness are illustrated.