Political Optimizer Based Feedforward Neural Network for Classification and Function Approximation

Neural Processing Letters - Political optimizer (PO) is a recently proposed human-behavior inspired meta-heuristic, which has shown tremendous performance on complex multimodal functions as well as...     

Using Automated Negotiation for Grid Services

The popularity of grid services has widened their application to numerous domains and increased the utilization of computational resources. In order to create more incentives for the resources owners to lease their resources and prevent users from wasting the resources, the introduction of a market-oriented grid is inevitable. However, the issues for the negotiation between service provider and consumer over the supply and demand of resources can be complex, with highly interdependent issues. In this research, a simulated automated negotiation mechanism including a co-evolutionary mechanism and a modified game theory approach is proposed, to assist them in reaching an agreement over the conflicting issues. In the proposed architecture, the co-evolution process is able to reduce the multiple dimensional search space into a two-dimension search space and identify the appropriate negotiation strategies for the negotiating agents to form a payoff matrix which can be used for the game theory related stage of their interaction. The multiple stage negotiation process is introduced to improve the negotiation result. In this paper, an application which requires a large amount of computational resources to process the data generated from mobile devises is used to demonstrate that the proposed system is able to resolve the conflicts and obtain a valid solution.     

Absence of tolerance to the aversive stimulus properties of ethanol following oral ethanol self-administration

Aluminum has been reported to inhibit long-term potentiation (LTP) following in vivo administration and decrease glutamate release following in vitro exposure. Because glutamate release is critical for synaptic transmission and the development and maintenance of LTP in the hippocampus, we examined the effects of aluminum chloride (AlCl3) on depolarization-induced glutamate release and LTP in rat hippocampal slices. The effects of AlCl3 on [14C]glutamate release were examined by incubation of slices in depolarizing (56 mM)K+ buffer solution in the absence or presence of 2 mM CaCl2. After 15 min depolarization, AlCl3 (100-1000 microM) did not significantly affect Ca(2+)-dependent [14C]glutamate release from slices, whereas a known Ca2+ channel blocker (100 microM CdCl2) decreased Ca(2+)-dependent [14C]glutamate release by approximately 50%. In contrast to a previous report, acute exposure to AlCl3 was without effect on depolarization-dependent glutamate release. LTP of the population spike (PS) in CA1 of hippocampus was induced by the delivery of stimulus trains to the stratum radiatum. LTP of the PS was observed in both control slices and slices bathed in solution containing 100 microM AlCl3. Neither the magnitude nor longevity (measured up to 1 h posttrain) of LTP distinguished control from aluminum-exposed slices. The lack of sensitivity in rat to the encephalopathic changes induced by aluminum, or methodological differences in exposure conditions may account for the lack of effect of aluminum on in vitro LTP in rat hippocampus.     

VPR-Bench: An Open-Source Visual Place Recognition Evaluation Framework with Quantifiable Viewpoint and Appearance Change

International Journal of Computer Vision - Visual place recognition (VPR) is the process of recognising a previously visited place using visual information, often under varying appearance...     

Lung nodules detection using semantic segmentation and classification with optimal features

Neural Computing and Applications - Lung cancer is a deadly disease if not diagnosed in its early stages. However, early detection of lung cancer is a challenging task due to the shape and size of...     

Synthesis and characterization of caprolactone based polyurethane with degradable and antifouling performance

In this work,a degradable polyurethane composed of caprolactone(CL)and L-Lactide(LLA)as soft seg-ments,and 4,4'-methylenebis(cyclohexyl isocyanate)(H12MDI)and polytetramethylene ether glycol(PTMEG)as hard segments,was prepared.Hydrolytic degradation experiment revealed that the degrad-able polyurethane(PU)could be degraded in artificial seawater.It also showed that caprolactone-co-polyurethane(CL-PU)copolymer with higher crystallinity degraded much slower in artificial seawater.However,the introduction of LLA resulted in an increase in the hydrophilicity and reduction in the crys-tallinity of degradable PU,as demonstrated by the contact angle analysis.The result of the scanning elec-tron microscope showed that the surface of degradable PU renewed under static condition.Moreover,degradable PU was able to be used as a carrier,and it controlled the release rate of 4,5-dichloro-2-octyl-isothiazolone(DCOIT).The anti-diatom(Navicula incerta)test demonstrated that the(caprolactone-co-L-lactide)-co-polyurethane 4(CL/LAx-PU4)with DCOIT contents prevented the adhe-sion of diatom Navicula incerta(88.37％reduction)due to their self-polishing and the release of antifou-lants.Therefore,the degradable PU consisted of CL,LLA,and DCOIT could be a durable resin with good antifouling activity for the application in the marine anti-biofouling field.     

A fatigue-life prediction methodology for notched aluminum-magnesium alloy in gulf seawater environment

Local-strain and linear-elastic fracture-mechanics (LEFM) methodologies have been investigated for prediction of the corrosion-fatigue life of notched components of specially developed Al-2.5Mg alloys exposed to Arabian Gulf seawater environment. Corrosion-fatigue crack initiation life estimates were obtained using strain-life relationships; corrosion-fatigue crack propagation life estimates were obtained using LEFM relationships. The total corrosion-fatigue life was considered to be the sum of the crack initiation and crack propagation lives. Estimated corrosion-fatigue lives were compared with experimentally obtained corrosion-fatigue life data using center-notched specimens of three types of Al-2.5Mg alloys (containing different amounts of chromium) exposed to Arabian Gulf seawater environment. Two notch geometries, a circular notch (K _t= 2.42) and an elliptical notch (K _t= 4.2), were investigated. Good corrosion-fatigue life predictions can be obtained using local-strain and LEFM methodologies by determining the relevant material constants via a few simple fatigue tests on smooth specimens and a few crack-growth-rate tests in the environment at the frequency of interest.     

Multilayer background modeling under occlusions

A multilayer background modeling technique is presented for video surveillance. Rather than simply classifying all features in a scene as either dynamically moving foreground or long-lasting, stationary background, a temporal model is used to place each scene object in time relative to each other. Foreground objects that become stationary are registered as layers on top of the background layer. In this process of layer formation, the algorithm deals with ”fake objects” created by moved background, and noise created by dynamic background and moving foreground objects. Objects that leave the scene are removed based on the occlusion reasoning among layers. The technique allows us to understand and visualize a scene with multiple objects entering, leaving, and occluding each other at different points in time. This scene understanding leads to a richer representation of temporal scene events than traditional foreground/background segmentation. The technique builds on a low-cost background modeling technique that makes it suitable for embedded, real-time platforms.     

对中国入世后洗涤剂工业形势及相关问题的分析 --国内外业界高层人士访谈

中国加入WTO后，中国洗涤用品行业面临着新的机遇与挑战，中国洗涤用品市场将面临更加激烈的竞争。由于环保的呼声越来越高，中国已开始在部分地区禁磷。中国洗涤用品工业将如何发展，其前景如何，专家的看法又如何，就这些问题本刊专访了有关人士。     

Multimedia framework to support eHealth applications

Limited bandwidth resources lead to a number of challenges especially for eHealth applications, which are communicated over IP and wireless networks. These multimedia services include high-resolution videos and have very large file sizes that require a high level of compression to overcome this limitation. Therefore, there is an acute demand for the research community to provide an efficient multimedia framework to encode medical videos with high quality specifically under the conditions of an error-prone environment. Both an affordable delivery framework and effective coding techniques are extremely desirable for the delivery of high-quality eHealth video applications for transmission over heterogeneous networks and devices. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a multimedia framework to support eHealth applications, which has an improved coding scheme that uses an SVC-scalable extension of MPEC-4 AVC/H.264. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves a significant improvement in terms of the PSNR-Y gain and reduces the picture quality degradation caused by artifacts and distortions, compared to the existing scheme.