A fast method for fuzzy neural modeling and refinement

In the identification of complex dynamic systems using fuzzy neural networks, one of the main issues is the curse of dimensionality, which makes it difficult to retain a large number of system inputs or to consider a large number of fuzzy sets. Moreover, due to the correlations, not all possible network inputs or regression vectors in the network are necessary and adding them simply increases the model complexity and deteriorates the network generalisation performance. In this paper, the problem is solved by first proposing a fast algorithm for selection of network terms, and then introducing a refinement procedure to tackle the correlation issue. Simulation results show the efficacy of the method.

Strong erbium luminescence in the near-infrared telecommunication window

A new type of near-infrared emitting rare-earth complex has been synthesised, consisting of three bis(perfluoroalkylsulfonyl)imide ligands and one 1,10-phenanthroline molecule. The chelate rings formed by the rare-earth ion and the bidentate ligands do not contain any carbon atoms and can hence be considered as 'inorganic' chelate rings. The absence of C-H stretching vibration modes in the first coordination sphere of the rare-earth ion and the presence of a light-harvesting moiety (1,10-phenanthroline) bound to the rare-earth ion result in a complex that can be efficiently excited and exhibits intense near-infrared luminescence. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Measuring conflict and agreement between two prioritized knowledge bases in possibilistic logic.

In this paper we investigate the relationship between two prioritized knowledge bases by measuring both the conflict and the agreement between them.First of all, a quantity of conflict and two quantities of agreement are defined. The former is shown to be a generalization of the well-known Dalal distance which is the hamming distance between two interpretations. The latter are, respectively, a quantity of strong agreement which measures the amount ofinformation on which two belief bases “totally” agree, and a quantity of weak agreement which measures the amount of information that is believed by onesource but is unknown to the other. All three quantity measures are based on the weighted prime implicant, which represents beliefs in a prioritized belief base. We then define a degree of conflict and two degrees of agreement based on our quantity of conflict and quantities of agreement. We also consider the impact of these measures on belief merging and information source ordering.