An expert system using rough sets theory for aided conceptual design of ship’s engine room automation

More and more complicated conceptual design of ship’s engine room (CDSER) heavily depends on designers’ engineering knowledge and existing ship data. To achieve intelligent design at the initial ship design stage, many researchers have made much significant progress in this field, however, most of them only focused on how to find the similar constructed ships. At present, how to utilize these existing data remains an untouched topic. In order to make good use of the existing data and reduce the dependence on designers’ experience, a novel system named Expert System for Aided Conceptual Design of Ship’s Engine Room Automation (ESACD), is elaborated in this study. With the support of the constructed Ship Data Warehouse System, two core subsystems Configuration Selection Assistant (CSA) and Design Scheme Decision Assistant (DSDA) are included in ESACD. A promising approach integrating Fuzzy c-means algorithm (FCM) and Rough Sets Theory (RST) to extract configuration rules from the stored data is adopted in CSA. According to engineers’ proposals, RST is utilized to reason knowledge in incomplete scheme information systems for getting design scheme rules in DSDA, which are useful suggestions for engineers to get better schemes at this stage. Finally, the validity and necessity of this interactive expert system are demonstrated through the CDSER of a new 50,000 DWT Handymax bulk carrier. It is proved that ESACD can efficiently facilitate rapid and intelligent design in CDSER, and reduce the cost of a new ship design.     

Generalized predictive control of linear systems with actuator arrearage faults

Arrearage phenomenon commonly exists in actuators. With arrearages, the actuator cannot achieve the target suggested by the controller, so the control performance degrades. Deadzones and stuck faults can be considered to be two special classes of arrearages, which are studied widely; however, more general arrearage phenomenon cannot be described and treated by these forms. In this paper, a general formulation is introduced for this phenomenon, which is referred as actuator arrearage faults. Based on this formulation, an improved generalized predictive control scheme is proposed for a class of single-input single-output linear systems. With arrearage faults, the system becomes a stochastic process. Hence, a sufficient condition, which guarantees the output tracking error to be uniformly ultimately bounded in the mean-square sense, is presented in this paper. Simulations are given to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

Understanding online customer repurchasing intention and the mediating role of trust – an empirical investigation in two developed countries

Although e-commerce adoption and customers’ initial purchasing behavior have been well studied in the literature, repeat purchase intention and its antecedents remain understudied. This study proposes a model to understand the extent to which trust mediates the effects of vendor-specific factors on customers’ intention to repurchase from an online vendor. The model was tested and validated in two different country settings. We found that trust fully mediates the relationships between perceived reputation, perceived capability of order fulfillment, and repurchasing intention, and partially mediates the relationship between perceived website quality and repurchasing intention in both countries. Moreover, multi-group analysis reveals no significant between-country differences of the model with regards to the antecedents and outcomes of trust, except the effect of reputation on trust. Academic and practical implications and future research are discussed.     

插值边界的四边网格离散极小曲面建模方法

如何实现极小曲面的快速三维建模,是几何设计与计算领域中的难点和热点问题.给定一条封闭的边界离散折线,本文研究如何构造以其为边界的四边网格离散极小曲面.首先从曲面的内蕴微分几何度量出发,给出了离散四边网格极小曲面的数学定义;然后利用保长度边界投影、四边网格生成、径向基函数插值映射和非线性优化技术,提出了由给定边界离散折线快速构造离散四边网格极小曲面的一般技术框架.最后通过若干建模实例验证了本文方法的有效性.该方法可实现四边网格极小曲面的高质量建模,在建筑几何领域具有一定的应用价值.     

内容中心网络数据污染的快速检测机制

内容中心网络通过路由器缓存内容来提高网络的整体性能.为防止被污染的数据在网络中扩散,路由器需要对进入网络的内容进行验证.原始的验证机制需要对内容的数字签名进行非对称密钥解密操作,导致内容验证速度不能满足高速路由器的需求.提出了基于着色的快速内容验证机制,以减少内容验证的计算复杂度,加快内容的检测速度.该机制通过对第1次进入网络的正确内容进行着色操作以保证其正确性.被着色的内容再次进入网络时,路由器可以通过着色信息来快速验证内容的正确性,从而提高路由器的检测速度.     

深度随机森林在离网预测中的应用

在电信运营商领域,离网预测模型是企业决策者用来发现潜在离网用户(即停用运营商服务)的主要手段。目前离网预测模型都是基于逻辑回归、决策树、神经网络及随机森林等浅层机器学习算法,但是在大数据的背景下,这些浅层算法在预测问题上很难取得更高的精度。因此,提出了一种新型的深层结构模型——深度随机森林,通过将传统浅层随机森林堆积成深层结构模型,获得更高的预测精度。在运营商真实数据上进行了大量实验,结果证明深层随机森林模型比传统浅层机器学习算法在离网预测问题上可以得到更好的效果。同时,增大训练数据量可以进一步提升深层随机森林的预测能力,从而证明了在大数据环境下深层模型的潜力。     

基于滑动窗口的主题模型

LDA(Latent Dirichlet Allocation)是一个分层的概率主题模型,目前被广泛地应用于文本挖掘。这种模型既不考虑文档与文档之间的顺序关系,也不考虑同一篇文档中词与词之间的顺序关系,简化了问题的复杂性,同时也为模型的改进提供了契机。针对此问题提出了基于滑动窗口的主题模型,该模型的基本思想是文档中的一个单词的主题与其附近若干单词的主题关系越紧密,受附近单词主题的影响越大。根据窗口和滑动位移的大小,把文档切割为粒度更小的片段。同时,针对大数据集和数据流问题,提出了在线滑动窗口主题模型。在4个数据集上的实验表明,基于滑动窗口的主题模型训练出来的模型在数据集上有更好的泛化性能和精度。     

Multi-objective analysis for assessing simultaneous changes in regional spinal curvatures under backpack carriage in young adults

Change in sagittal spinal curvature from the neutral upright stance is an important measure of the heaviness and correctness of backpack use. As current recommendations, with respect to spinal profile, of backpack load thresholds were based on the significant curvature change in individual spinal region only, this study investigated the most critical backpack load by assessing simultaneously the spinal curvature changes along the whole spine. A motion analysis system was used to measure the curvature changes in cervical, upper thoracic, lower thoracic and lumbar regions with backpack load at 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20% of body weight. A multi-objective goal programming model was adopted to determine the global critical load of maximum curvature change of the whole spine in accordance with the maximum curvature changes of the four spinal regions. Results suggested that the most critical backpack load was 13% of body weight for healthy male college students.

Practitioner Summary: As current recommendations of backpack load thresholds were based on the significant curvature change in individual spinal region only, this study investigated the backpack load by considering simultaneously the spinal curvature changes along the whole spine. The recommendation, in terms of the global critical load, was 13% of body weight for healthy male college students.     

Robust admissibility and admissibilisation of uncertain discrete singular time-delay systems

This paper is concerned with the characterisation of robust admissibility and admissibilisation for uncertain discrete-time singular system with interval time-varying delay. Considering the norm-bounded uncertainty and the interval time-varying delay, a new comparison model is introduced to transform the original singular system into two connected subsystems. After this transformation, a singular system without uncertainty and delay can be handled by the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional method. By virtue of the scaled small gain theorem, an admissibility condition of the original singular system is proposed in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Moreover, the problem of robust admissibilisation of uncertain discrete singular time-varying system is also studied by iterative linear matrix inequality algorithm with initial condition optimisation. Several numerical examples are used to illustrate that the results are less conservative than existing ones.     

Adaptive ILC algorithms of nonlinear continuous systems with non-parametric uncertainties for non-repetitive trajectory tracking

In this article, two adaptive iterative learning control (ILC) algorithms are presented for nonlinear continuous systems with non-parametric uncertainties. Unlike general ILC techniques, the proposed adaptive ILC algorithms allow that both the initial error at each iteration and the reference trajectory are iteration-varying in the ILC process, and can achieve non-repetitive trajectory tracking beyond a small initial time interval. Compared to the neural network or fuzzy system-based adaptive ILC schemes and the classical ILC methods, in which the number of iterative variables is generally larger than or equal to the number of control inputs, the first adaptive ILC algorithm proposed in this paper uses just two iterative variables, while the second even uses a single iterative variable provided that some bound information on system dynamics is known. As a result, the memory space in real-time ILC implementations is greatly reduced.