Choosing OWA operator weights in the field of Social Choice

One of the most important issues in the theory of OWA operators is the determination of associated weights. This matter is essential in order to use the best-suited OWA operator in each aggregation process. Given that some aggregation processes can be seen as extensions of majority rules to the field of gradual preferences, it is possible to determine the OWA operator weights by taking into account the class of majority rule that we want to obtain when individuals do not grade their pairwise preferences. However, a difficulty with this approach is that the same majority rule can be obtained through a wide variety of OWA operators. For this reason, a model for selecting the best-suited OWA operators is proposed in this paper.     

Automatically running experiments on checking multi-party contracts

Contracts play an important role in business management where relationships among different parties are dictated by legal rules. Electronic contracts have emerged mostly due to technological advances and electronic trading between companies and customers. New challenges have then arisen to guarantee reliability among the stakeholders in electronic negotiations. In this scenario, automatic verification of electronic contracts appeared as an imperative support, specially the conflict detection task of multi-party contracts. The problem of checking contracts has been largely addressed in the literature, but there are few, if any, methods and practical tools that can deal with multi-party contracts using a contract language with deontic and dynamic aspects as well as relativizations, over the same formalism. In this work we present an automatic checker for finding conflicts on multi-party contracts modeled by an extended contract language with deontic operators and relativizations. Moreover a well-known case study of sales contract is modeled and automatically verified by our tool. Further, we performed practical experiments in order to evaluate the efficiency of our method and the practical tool.

     

Computational intelligence tools for next generation quality of service management

In this paper we explore the interest of computational intelligence tools in the management of heterogeneous communication networks, specifically to predict congestion, failures and other anomalies in the network that may eventually lead to degradation of the quality of offered services. We show two different applications based on neural and neuro-fuzzy systems for quality of service (QoS) management in next generation networks for voice and video service over heterogeneous Internet protocol (V2oIP) services. The two examples explained in this paper attempt to predict the communication network resources for new incoming calls, and visualizing the QoS of a communication network by means of self-organizing maps.     

SUOWA operators: A review of the state of the art

SUOWA operators are a particular case of Choquet integral that simultaneously generalize weighted means and OWA operators. Because they are constructed by using normalized capacities, they possess properties such as continuity, monotonicity, idempotency, compensativeness, and homogeneity of degree 1. Besides these ones, some articles published in recent years have shown that SUOWA operators also exhibit other interesting properties. So, we think that the time has come to summarize existing knowledge of these operators. The aim of this paper is to collect the main results obtained so far on SUOWA operators. Moreover, we also introduce some new results and illustrate the usefulness of SUOWA operators by using an example given by Beliakov (2018).     

A Behavioral Analysis of WOWA and SUOWA Operators

Weighted ordered weighted averaging (WOWA) and semiuninorm‐based ordered weighted averaging (SUOWA) operators are two families of aggregation functions that simultaneously generalize weighted means and OWA operators. Both families can be obtained by using the Choquet integral with respect to normalized capacities. Therefore, they are continuous, monotonic, idempotent, compensative, and homogeneous of degree 1 functions. Although both families fulfill good properties, there are situations where their behavior is quite different. The aim of this paper is to analyze both families of functions regarding some simple cases of weighting vectors, the capacities from which they are building, the weights affecting the components of each vector, and the values they return.     

Robust dimensions of anxiety sensitivity: Development and initial validation of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-3.

Accumulating evidence suggests that anxiety sensitivity (fear of arousal-related sensations) plays an important role in many clinical conditions, particularly anxiety disorders. Research has increasingly focused on how the basic dimensions of anxiety sensitivity are related to various forms of psychopathology. Such work has been hampered because the original measure--the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI)--was not designed to be multidimensional. Subsequently developed multidimensional measures have unstable factor structures or measure only a subset of the most widely replicated factors. Therefore, the authors developed, via factor analysis of responses from U.S. and Canadian nonclinical participants (n = 2,361), an 18-item measure, the ASI-3, which assesses the 3 factors best replicated in previous research: Physical, Cognitive, and Social Concerns. Factorial validity of the ASI-3 was supported by confirmatory factor analyses of 6 replication samples, including nonclinical samples from the United States and Canada, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Spain (n = 4,494) and a clinical sample from the United States and Canada (n = 390). The ASI-3 displayed generally good performance on other indices of reliability and validity, along with evidence of improved psychometric properties over the original ASI. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Far Infrared Super Radiant FEL

The basic physics, results of 3–D simulations, and relevant parameters for the design of a far infrared FEL, which operates in the SASE superradiant short bunch regime, are presented. It is shown that a quite interesting device can be easily developed, with rather new features, producing coherent laser pulses with ～10 psec duration and around 7 MW peak power.     

Functionalized gold nanoparticles: a detailed in vivo multimodal microscopic brain distribution study

In the present study, the in vivo distribution of polyelectrolyte multilayer coated gold nanoparticles is shown, starting from the living animal down to cellular level. The coating was designed with functional moieties to serve as a potential nano drug for prion disease. With near infrared time-domain imaging we followed the biodistribution in mice up to 7 days after intravenous injection of the nanoparticles. The peak concentration in the head of mice was detected between 19 and 24 h. The precise particle distribution in the brain was studied ex vivo by X-ray microtomography, confocal laser and fluorescence microscopy. We found that the particles mainly accumulate in the hippocampus, thalamus, hypothalamus, and the cerebral cortex.