Perspective:Societally connected multimedia across cultures

The advance of the Internet in the past decade has radically changed the way people communicate and col- laborate with each other. Physical distance is no more a barrier in online social networks, but cultural differences (at the individual, community, as well as societal levels) still govern human-human interactions and must be con- sidered and leveraged in the online world. The rapid de-ployment of high-speed Internet allows humans to interact using a rich set of multimedia data such as texts, pictures, and videos. This position paper proposes to define a new research area called ’connected multimedia’, which is the study of a collection of research issues of the super-area social media that receive little attention in the literature. By connected multimedia, we mean the study of the social and technical interactions among users, multimedia data, and devices across cultures and explicitly exploiting the cultural differences. We justify why it is necessary to bring attention to this new research area and what benefits of this new research area may bring to the broader scientific research community and the humanity.     

Experimental Studies on the Self-Shielding Effect in Fissile Fuel Breeding Measurement in Thorium Oxide Pellets Irradiated with 14 MeV Neutrons

The 14 MeV neutrons produced in the D-T fusion reactions have the potential of breeding Uranium-233 fissile fuel from fertile material Thorium-232. In order to estimate the amount of U-233 produced, experiments are carried out by irradiating thorium dioxide pellets with neutrons produced from a 14 MeV neutron generator. The objective of the present work is to measure the reaction rates of 232 Th + 1 n → 233 Th → 233 Pa → 233 U in different pellet thicknesses to study the self-shielding effects and adopt a procedure for correction. An appropriate assembly consisting of high-density polyethylene is designed and fabricated to slow down the high-energy neutrons, in which Thorium pellets are irradiated. The amount of fissile fuel ( 233 U) produced is estimated by measuring the 312 keV gammas emitted by Protactinium-233 (half-life of 27 days). A calibrated High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector is used to measure the gamma ray spectrum. The amount of 233 U produced by Th 232 (n, γ) is calculated using MCNP code. The self-shielding effect is evaluated by calculating the reaction rates for different foil thickness. MCNP calculation results are compared with the experimental values and appropriate correction factors are estimated for self-shielding of neutrons and absorption of gamma rays.     

An adaptive approach for the reduction of quantization errors†

This paper presents an adaptive quantization scheme for the reduction of the percentage error in the output of the quantizer. The improvement in the system performance is illustrated by simulating a uniform step and an adaptive quantizer on a digital computer and comparing their outputs. A significant improvement in the output is achieved by using the suggested scheme.     

Tolerance analysis using fuzzy sets

A method for the analysis of the effects of subjective and objective tolerances in networks and systems is presented in this paper. The imprecision of the components is represented using fuzzy sets and then the value of the desired attribute is computed. The resulting attribute is also fuzzy and is obtained in the form of a fuzzy set. This fuzzy set contains the extremal and other values of the desired attribute along with their grades of membership. Thus, apart from getting the extremel values, we get the overall picture of the attribute. Since this method is directly applicable for the analysis of subjective tolerances, networks representing humanistic systems may be analysed using this method.     

Strong separation of learning classes

Abstract

Suppose LC ₁ and LC ₂ are two machine learning classes each based on a criterion of success. Suppose, for every machine which learns a class of functions according to the LC ₂ criterion of success, there is a machine which learns this class according to the LC ₂ criterion. In the case where the converse does not hold LC, is said to be separated from LC ₂. It is shown that for many such separated learning classes from the literature a much stronger separation holds: (?𝒞∈LC ₁) (?𝒞' ∈LC ₂ - LC ₁(( [' ?𝒞] It is also shown that there is a pair of separated learning classes from the literature for which the stronger separation above does not hold. A philosophical heuristic toward the design of artificially intelligent learning programs is presented with each strong separation result.     

Effect of high pressure on the dielectric properties of relaxor compositions [Pb(Fe1/2Nb1/2)O3]1-x-y-[Pb(Zn1/3Nb2/3)O3]x- [BaTiO3]y

Abstracts are not published in this journal     

Ultraviolet sensing properties of polyvinyl alcohol-coated aluminium-doped zinc oxide nanorods

Undoped and aluminium (Al)-doped zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods have been synthesized by electrochemical route. The synthesized materials have been characterized by X-ray diffraction, UV–visible spectrometer and scanning electron microscope. The Al-doped ZnO nanorods have been coated with polyvinyl alcohol. Current–voltage characteristics have been investigated in dark and under UV-light illumination. Aluminium doping in ZnO increase its electrical conductivity and further polyvinyl alcohol coating on Al-doped ZnO increase UV sensitivity of the material. Response and recovery time of Al-doped ZnO and PVA-coated Al-doped ZnO nanorods have been recorded. PVA-coated Al-doped ZnO nanorods shows very fast response and recovery time of 10 s in comparison to uncoated ZnO (20 min) nanorods.     

An economic design model for X¯ charts with random sampling policies

Recent literature contains many papers on the study of variable (but deterministic) sampling interval (VSI) policies for X¯ control charts. VSI policies perform better than their corresponding classical fixed-sampling-interval (FSI) policies. Results are also available in the literature for an adaptive VSI policy, an enhancement of the VSI policy, where the sample size also changes with the sampling interval. However, for many industrial (especially continuous) processes where X¯ charts are used, maintaining deterministic time intervals between samples is not possible owing to inherent randomness of the processes. In this paper we propose a new variable sampling policy, named random sampling policy (RSP), for X¯ charts in which the sampling intervals and the sample sizes (considered a function of the sampling intervals) are treated as random variables. An economic modeling framework for design of RSP with run rules is developed. Within the proposed modeling framework, special cases of RSP, such as VSI and FSI policies with and without run rules, can also be evaluated. An application of the economic model is demonstrated through design of RSP parameters for two numerical example problems.