Multiple proportion case-basing driven CBRE and its application in the evaluation of possible failure of firms

Case-based reasoning (CBR) is a unique tool for the evaluation of possible failure of firms (EOPFOF) for its eases of interpretation and implementation. Ensemble computing, a variation of group decision in society, provides a potential means of improving predictive performance of CBR-based EOPFOF. This research aims to integrate bagging and proportion case-basing with CBR to generate a method of proportion bagging CBR for EOPFOF. Diverse multiple case bases are first produced by multiple case-basing, in which a volume parameter is introduced to control the size of each case base. Then, the classic case retrieval algorithm is implemented to generate diverse member CBR predictors. Majority voting, the most frequently used mechanism in ensemble computing, is finally used to aggregate outputs of member CBR predictors in order to produce final prediction of the CBR ensemble. In an empirical experiment, we statistically validated the results of the CBR ensemble from multiple case bases by comparing them with those of multivariate discriminant analysis, logistic regression, classic CBR, the best member CBR predictor and bagging CBR ensemble. The results from Chinese EOPFOF prior to 3 years indicate that the new CBR ensemble, which significantly improved CBRs predictive ability, outperformed all the comparative methods.

Bio-inspired FPGA Architecture for Self-Calibration of an Image Compression Core based on Wavelet Transforms in Embedded Systems

A generic bio-inspired adaptive architecture for image compression suitable to be implemented in embedded systems is presented. The architecture allows the system to be tuned during its calibration phase. An evolutionary algorithm is responsible of making the system evolve towards the required performance. A prototype has been implemented in a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA featuring an adaptive wavelet transform core directed at improving image compression for specific types of images. An Evolution Strategy has been chosen as the search algorithm and its typical genetic operators adapted to allow for a hardware friendly implementation. HW/SW partitioning issues are also considered after a high level description of the algorithm is profiled which validates the proposed resource allocation in the device fabric. To check the robustness of the system and its adaptation capabilities, different types of images have been selected as validation patterns. A direct application of such a system is its deployment in an unknown environment during design time, letting the calibration phase adjust the system parameters so that it performs efcient image compression. Also, this prototype implementation may serve as an accelerator for the automatic design of evolved transform coefficients which are later on synthesized and implemented in a non-adaptive system in the final implementation device, whether it is a HW or SW based computing device. The architecture has been built in a modular way so that it can be easily extended to adapt other types of image processing cores. Details on this pluggable component point of view are also given in the paper.

Transductive neurofuzzy-based torque control of a milling process: results of a case study

This paper presents the design and implementation of an intelligent control system based on local neurofuzzy models of the milling process relayed through an Ehternet-based application. Its purpose is to control the spindle torque of a milling process by using an internal model control paradigm to modify the feed rate in real time. The stabilization of cutting cutting torque is especially necessary in milling processes such as high-spedd roughing of steel moulds and dies tha present minor geometric uncertainties. Thus, maintenance of the curring torque increaes the material removal rate and reduces the risk of damage due to excessive spindle vibration, a very sensitive and expensive component in all high-speed milling machines. Torque control is therefore an interesting challenge from an industrial point of view.

A Semantic-Based Approach to Attain Reproducibility of Computational Environments in Scientic Work ows: A Case Study

Reproducible research in scientic work ows is often addressed by tracking the provenance of the produced results. While this approach allows inspecting intermediate and nal results, improves understanding, and permits replaying a work ow execution, it does not ensure that the computational environment is available for subsequent executions to reproduce the experiment. In this work, we propose describing the resources involved in the execution of an experiment using a set of semantic vocabularies, so as to conserve the computational environment. We dene a process for documenting the work ow application, management system, and their dependencies based on 4 domain ontologies. We then conduct an experimental evaluation sing a real work ow application on an academic and a public Cloud platform. Results show that our approach can reproduce an equivalent execution environment of a predened virtual machine image on both computing platforms.

A semantic-based approach to attain reproducibility of computational environments in scientific workflows: a case study

Reproducible research in scientific workflows is often addressed by tracking the provenance of the produced results. While this approach allows inspecting intermediate and final results, improves understanding, and permits replaying a workflow execution, it does not ensure that the computational environment is available for subsequent executions to reproduce the experiment. In this work, we propose describing the resources involved in the execution of an experiment using a set of semantic vocabularies, so as to conserve the computational environment. We define a process for documenting the workflow application, management system, and their dependencies based on 4 domain ontologies. We then conduct an experimental evaluation using a real workflow application on an academic and a public Cloud platform. Results show that our approach can reproduce an equivalent execution environment of a predefined virtual machine image on both computing platforms.

Patient-based Literature Retrieval and Integration: A Use Case for Diabetes and arterial Hypertension

Specialized search engines such as PubMed, MedScape or Cochrane have increased dramatically the visibility of biomedical scientific results. These web-based tools allow physicians to access scientific papers instantly. However, this decisive improvement had not a proportional impact in clinical practice due to the lack of advanced search methods. Even queries highly specified for a concrete pathology frequently retrieve too many information, with publications related to patients treated by the physician beyond the scope of the results examined. In this work we present a new method to improve scientific article search using patient information. Two pathologies have been used within the project to retrieve relevant literature to patient data and to be integrated with other sources. Promising results suggest the suitability of the approach, highlighting publications dealing with patient features and facilitating literature search to physicians.

Implementation of safety based incentives in Public Private Partnerships (PPPs): an empirical analysis for the case of Spain

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) are mostly implemented to circumvent budgetary constraints, and to encourage efficiency and quality in the provision of public infrastructure in order to reach social welfare. One of the ways of reaching the latter objective is by the introduction of performance based standards tied to bonuses and penalties to reward or punish the performance of the contractor. This paper focuses on the implementation of safety based incentives in PPPs in such a way that the better the safety outcome the greater larger will be the economic reward to the contractor. The main aim of this paper is to identify whether the incentives to improve road safety in PPPs are ultimately effective in improving safety ratios in Spain. To that end, Poisson and negative binomial regression models have been applied using information of motorways of the Spanish network of 2006. The findings indicate that even though road safety is highly influenced by variables that are not much controllable by the contractor such as the Average Annual Daily Traffic and the percentage of heavy vehicles, the implementation of safety incentives in PPPs has a positive influence in the reduction of fatalities, injuries and accidents.

Contribution to multiuser videoconferencing systems based on cloud computing

Multi-user videoconferencing systems offer communication between more than two users, who are able to interact through their webcams, microphones and other components. The use of these systems has been increased recently due to, on the one hand, improvements in Internet access, networks of companies, universities and houses, whose available bandwidth has been increased whilst the delay in sending and receiving packets has decreased. On the other hand, the advent of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) means that a large part of web application logic and control has started to be implemented on the web browsers. This has allowed developers to create web applications with a level of complexity comparable to traditional desktop applications, running on top of the Operating Systems. More recently the use of Cloud Computing systems has improved application scalability and involves a reduction in the price of backend systems. This offers the possibility of implementing web services on the Internet with no need to spend a lot of money when deploying infrastructures and resources, both hardware and software. Nevertheless there are not many initiatives that aim to implement videoconferencing systems taking advantage of Cloud systems. This dissertation proposes a set of techniques, interfaces and algorithms for the implementation of videoconferencing systems in public and private Cloud Computing infrastructures. The mechanisms proposed here are based on the implementation of a basic videoconferencing system that runs on the web browser without any previous installation requirements. To this end, the development of this thesis starts from a RIA application with current technologies that allow users to access their webcams and microphones from the browser, and to send captured data through their Internet connections. Furthermore interfaces have been implemented to allow end users to participate in videoconferencing rooms that are managed in different Cloud provider servers. To do so this dissertation starts from the results obtained from the previous techniques and backend resources were implemented in the Cloud. A traditional videoconferencing service which was implemented in the department was modified to meet typical Cloud Computing infrastructure requirements. This allowed us to validate whether Cloud Computing public infrastructures are suitable for the traffic generated by this kind of system. This analysis focused on the network level and processing capacity and stability of the Cloud Computing systems. In order to improve this validation several other general considerations were taken in order to cover more cases, such as multimedia data processing in the Cloud, as research activity has increased in this area in recent years. The last stage of this dissertation is the design of a new methodology to implement these kinds of applications in hybrid clouds reducing the cost of videoconferencing systems. Finally, this dissertation opens up a discussion about the conclusions obtained throughout this study, resulting in useful information from the different stages of the implementation of videoconferencing systems in Cloud Computing systems. RESUMEN Los sistemas de videoconferencia multiusuario permiten la comunicación entre más de dos usuarios que pueden interactuar a través de cámaras de video, micrófonos y otros elementos. En los últimos años el uso de estos sistemas se ha visto incrementado gracias, por un lado, a la mejora de las redes de acceso en las conexiones a Internet en empresas, universidades y viviendas, que han visto un aumento del ancho de banda disponible en dichas conexiones y una disminución en el retardo experimentado por los datos enviados y recibidos. Por otro lado también ayudó la aparación de las Aplicaciones Ricas de Internet (RIA) con las que gran parte de la lógica y del control de las aplicaciones web comenzó a ejecutarse en los mismos navegadores. Esto permitió a los desarrolladores la creación de aplicaciones web cuya complejidad podía compararse con la de las tradicionales aplicaciones de escritorio, ejecutadas directamente por los sistemas operativos. Más recientemente el uso de sistemas de Cloud Computing ha mejorado la escalabilidad y el abaratamiento de los costes para sistemas de backend, ofreciendo la posibilidad de implementar servicios Web en Internet sin la necesidad de grandes desembolsos iniciales en las áreas de infraestructuras y recursos tanto hardware como software. Sin embargo no existen aún muchas iniciativas con el objetivo de realizar sistemas de videoconferencia que aprovechen las ventajas del Cloud. Esta tesis doctoral propone un conjunto de técnicas, interfaces y algoritmos para la implentación de sistemas de videoconferencia en infraestructuras tanto públicas como privadas de Cloud Computing. Las técnicas propuestas en la tesis se basan en la realización de un servicio básico de videoconferencia que se ejecuta directamente en el navegador sin la necesidad de instalar ningún tipo de aplicación de escritorio. Para ello el desarrollo de esta tesis parte de una aplicación RIA con tecnologías que hoy en día permiten acceder a la cámara y al micrófono directamente desde el navegador, y enviar los datos que capturan a través de la conexión de Internet. Además se han implementado interfaces que permiten a usuarios finales la participación en salas de videoconferencia que se ejecutan en servidores de proveedores de Cloud. Para ello se partió de los resultados obtenidos en las técnicas anteriores de ejecución de aplicaciones en el navegador y se implementaron los recursos de backend en la nube. Además se modificó un servicio ya existente implementado en el departamento para adaptarlo a los requisitos típicos de las infraestructuras de Cloud Computing. Alcanzado este punto se procedió a analizar si las infraestructuras propias de los proveedores públicos de Cloud Computing podrían soportar el tráfico generado por los sistemas que se habían adaptado. Este análisis se centró tanto a nivel de red como a nivel de capacidad de procesamiento y estabilidad de los sistemas. Para los pasos de análisis y validación de los sistemas Cloud se tomaron consideraciones más generales para abarcar casos como el procesamiento de datos multimedia en la nube, campo en el que comienza a haber bastante investigación en los últimos años. Como último paso se ideó una metodología de implementación de este tipo de aplicaciones para que fuera posible abaratar los costes de los sistemas de videoconferencia haciendo uso de clouds híbridos. Finalmente en la tesis se abre una discusión sobre las conclusiones obtenidas a lo largo de este amplio estudio, obteniendo resultados útiles en las distintas etapas de implementación de los sistemas de videoconferencia en la nube.

Supporting eradication of maternal child malnutrition in developing countries: a case from Nicaragua scenario.

World Health Organization actively stresses the importance of health, nutrition and well-being of the mother to foster children development. This issue is critical in the rural areas of developing countries where monitoring of health status of children is hardly performed since population suffers from a lack of access to health care. The aim of this research is to design, implement and deploy an e-health information and communication system to support health care in 26 rural communities of Cusmapa, Nicaragua. The final solution consists of an hybrid WiMAX/WiFi architecture that provides good quality communications through VoIP taking advantage of low cost WiFi mobile devices. Thus, a WiMAX base station was installed in the health center to provide a radio link with the rural health post "El Carrizo" sited 7,4 km. in line of sight. This service makes possible personal broadband voice and data communication facilities with the health center based on WiFi enabled devices such as laptops and cellular phones without communications cost. A free software PBX was installed at "San José de Cusmapa" health care site to enable communications for physicians, nurses and a technician through mobile telephones with IEEE 802.11 b/g protocol and SIP provided by the project. Additionally, the rural health post staff (midwives, brigade) received two mobile phones with these same features. In a complementary way, the deployed health information system is ready to analyze the distribution of maternal-child population at risk and the distribution of diseases on a geographical baseline. The system works with four information layers: fertile women, children, people with disabilities and diseases. Thus, authorized staff can obtain reports about prenatal monitoring tasks, status of the communities, malnutrition, and immunization control. Data need to be updated by health care staff in order to timely detect the source of problem to implement measures addressed to alleviate and improve health status population permanently. Ongoing research is focused on a mobile platform that collects and automatically updates in the information system, the height and weight of the children locally gathered in the remote communities. This research is being granted by the program Millennium Rural Communities of the Technical University of Madrid.

Soft-computing based visual control for unmanned vehicles

El objetivo principal de esta Tesis es extender la utilización del “Soft- Computing” para el control de vehículos sin piloto utilizando visión. Este trabajo va más allá de los típicos sistemas de control utilizados en entornos altamente controlados, demonstrando la fuerza y versatilidad de la lógica difusa (Fuzzy Logic) para controlar vehículos aéreos y terrestres en un abanico de applicaciones diferentes. Para esta Tesis se ha realizado un gran número de pruebas reales en las cuales los controladores difusos han manejado una plataforma visual “pan-and-tilt”, un helicoptero, un coche comercial y hasta dos tipos de quadrirotores. El uso del método de optimización “Cross-Entropy” ha sido utilizado para mejorar el comportamiento de algunos de los controladores borrosos. Todos los controladores difusos presentados en ésta Tesis han sido implementados utilizando un código desarrollado por el candidato para tal efecto, llamado MOFS (Miguel Olivares’ Fuzzy Software). Diferentes algoritmos visuales han sido utilizados para adquirir la informaci´on visual del entorno, “Cmashift”, descomposición de la homografía y detección de marcas de realidad aumentada, entre otros. Dicha información visual ha sido utilizada como entrada de los controladores difusos para comandar los vehículos en las diferentes applicaciones autonomas. El volante de un vehículo comercial ha sido controlado para realizar pruebas de conducción autónoma en condiciones de tráfico similares a las de una ciudad. El sistema ha llegado a completar con éxito pruebas de más de 6 km sin ninguna interacción humana, mediante el seguimiento de una línea pintada en el suelo. El limitado campo visual del sistema no ha sido impedimento para alcanzar velocidades de hasta 48 km/h y ser guiado autonomamente en curvas de radio reducido. Objetos estáticos y móviles han sido seguidos desde un helicoptero no tripulado, mediante el control de una plataforma visual “pan-and-tilt”. ´Éste mismo helicoptero ha sido controlado completamente para su aterrizaje autonomo, mediante el control del movimiento lateral (roll), horizontal (pitch) y de altitud. El seguimiento de objetos volantes ha sido resulto mediante el control horizontal (pitch) y de orientación (heading) de un quadrirotor. Para tareas de evitación de obstáculos se ha implementado un controlador difuso para el manejo de la orientación (heading) de un quadrirotor. En el campo de la optimización de controladores se ha aportado al estado del arte una extensión del uso del método “Cross-Entropy”. Está Tesis presenta una novedosa implementación de dicho método para la optimización de las ganancias, la posición y medida de los conjuntos de las funciones de pertenecia y el peso de las reglas para mejorar el comportamiento de un controlador difuso. Dichos procesos de optimización se han realizado utilizando “ROS” y “Matlab Simulink” para obtener mejores resultados para la evitación de colisiones con vehículos aéreos no tripulados. Ésta Tesis demuestra que los controladores implementados con lógica difusa son altamente capaces de controlador sistemas sin tener en cuenta el modelo del vehículo a controlador en entornos altamente perturbables con un sensor de bajo coste como es una cámara. El ruido presentes causado por los cambios de iluminación en la adquisición de imágenes y la alta incertidumbre en la detección visual han sido manejados satisfactoriamente por ésta técnica de de “Soft-Computing” para distintas aplicaciones tanto con vehículos aéreos como terrestres.

Improving probabilistic flood forecasting through a data assimilation scheme based on genetic programming

Opportunities offered by high performance computing provide a significant degree of promise in the enhancement of the performance of real-time flood forecasting systems. In this paper, a real-time framework for probabilistic flood forecasting through data assimilation is presented. The distributed rainfall-runoff real-time interactive basin simulator (RIBS) model is selected to simulate the hydrological process in the basin. Although the RIBS model is deterministic, it is run in a probabilistic way through the results of calibration developed in a previous work performed by the authors that identifies the probability distribution functions that best characterise the most relevant model parameters. Adaptive techniques improve the result of flood forecasts because the model can be adapted to observations in real time as new information is available. The new adaptive forecast model based on genetic programming as a data assimilation technique is compared with the previously developed flood forecast model based on the calibration results. Both models are probabilistic as they generate an ensemble of hydrographs, taking the different uncertainties inherent in any forecast process into account. The Manzanares River basin was selected as a case study, with the process being computationally intensive as it requires simulation of many replicas of the ensemble in real time.

Edge Detection by Adaptive Splitting II. The Three-Dimensional Case

In Llanas and Lantarón, J. Sci. Comput. 46, 485–518 (2011) we proposed an algorithm (EDAS-d) to approximate the jump discontinuity set of functions defined on subsets of ℝ d . This procedure is based on adaptive splitting of the domain of the function guided by the value of an average integral. The above study was limited to the 1D and 2D versions of the algorithm. In this paper we address the three-dimensional problem. We prove an integral inequality (in the case d=3) which constitutes the basis of EDAS-3. We have performed detailed computational experiments demonstrating effective edge detection in 3D function models with different interface topologies. EDAS-1 and EDAS-2 appealing properties are extensible to the 3D case

Effectiveness of safety-based incentives in Public Private Partnerships: Evidence from the case of Spain

Many countries around the world are implementing Public?Private?Partnership (PPP) contacts to manage road infrastructure. In some of these contracts the public sector introduces economic incentives to the private operator to foster the accomplishment of social goals. One of the incentives that have been introduced in some PPP contracts is related to safety in such a way that the better the safety outcome the greater will be the economic reward to the contractor. The aim of this paper is at identify whether the incentives to improve road safety in highway PPPs are ultimately effective in improving safety ratios. To this end Poisson and negative binomial regression models have been applied using information from highway sections in Spain. The findings indicate that even though road safety is highly influenced by variables that are not much controllable by the contractor such as the Average Annual Daily Traffic and the percentage of heavy vehicles, the implementation of safety incentives in PPPs has a positive influence in the reduction of fatalities, injuries and accidents.

Analysis of irregular behaviour on an optical computing logic cell

A new methodology to study irregular behaviours in logic cells is reported. It is based on two types of diagrams, namely phase and working diagrams. Sets of four bits are grouped and represented by their hexadecimal equivalent. Some hexadecimal numbers correspond to certain logic functions. The influence of the internal and external tolerances, namely those appearing in the employed devices and in the working signals, may be analysed with this method. Its importance in the case of logic structures with chaotic behaviours is studied.

Analysis of safety-based incentives in public private partnerships. The case of Spain

OUTLINE: • Introduction • Experimental Setup • Experimental Procedure • Experimental Results - Surface Roughness - Residual Stresses - Friction - Wear - EDX • Conclusions