ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Domestic open-end equity mutual fund performance evaluation using extended TOPSIS method with different distance approaches
Authors: Ching-Hui Chang, Jyh-Jiuan Lin, Jyh-Horng Lin, Miao-Chen Chiang
Venue: Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal (2010)

The most commonly used measures for evaluating the competing mutual funds are ''Treynor Ratio'', ''Sharpe Ratio'' and ''Jensen's Alpha''. One also uses another measure called the ''Information Ratio''. However, it is not clear which measure is the most robust. The purpose of our study is to evaluate the performance of mutual funds under the broad framework of multi-attribute decision analysis approach where each criterion can be taken into consideration in making a final ranking of the mutual funds. In this paper we adopt the concepts of ''Ideal'' and ''Anti-Ideal'' solutions as suggested by Hwang and Yoon (1981), and study the extended technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) method using two different ''distance'' ideas, namely - ''Minkowski's L"@l metric'' and ''Mahalanobis'' distances. The broad framework with the two aforementioned distances is then applied to evaluate the performance of 82 Taiwanese mutual funds for consecutive 34 months. The empirical results show that using TOPSIS methods incorporated Minkowski's distance measure to evaluate the mutual funds' performance perform well.
Note: Difference set constructions of DRADs and association schemes
Authors: James A. Davis, John Polhill
Venue: Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series A (2010)

Doubly Regular Asymmetric Digraphs (DRAD) with rank 4 automorphism groups were previously thought to be rare. We exhibit difference sets in Galois Rings that can be used to construct an infinite family of DRADs with rank 4 automorphism groups. In addition, we construct difference sets in groups Z"2"^"r^2 for all r>=2 that can be used to construct DRADs and nonsymmetric 3-class imprimitive association schemes. Finally, we prove a new product construction for difference sets so that the resulting difference sets can be used to build nonsymmetric 3-class imprimitive association schemes.
Rapid calculation of time deviation and modified Allan deviation for characterizing telecommunications clock stability
Authors: M. Li, C.-S. Liao, J.-K. Hwang
Venue: International Journal of Computers and Applications (2008)

Time and frequency characterization of precision clocks and oscillators is important in maintaining time and frequency standards. The recent preference has been for the time domain signal characterization of clocks, and several performance measures of clocks and oscillators are defined in ITU-T Recommendation G.810. The most frequently used of these measures are maximum time interval error (MTIE), time deviation (TDEV) and modified allan deviation (MDEV), especially in telecommunications measurement. However, the direct computation of MTIE, TDEV and MDEV, defined in ITU-T Recommendation G.810, tends to be unmanageable with a large number of samples. A fast computation approach for TDEV and MDEV is proposed herein. The proposed approach is based on an iterative algorithm and the computation conforms exactly to the ITU-T G.810 definition. Compared to the direct computation approach, the complexity of the proposed approach is reduced by a factor of N, or the number of samples. This characteristic reveals that real-time measurement or monitoring is feasible when the proposed computation approach is employed.
On the evaluation of Cauchy principal value integrals of oscillatory functions
Authors: Haiyong Wang, Shuhuang Xiang
Venue: Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics (2010)

The problem of the numerical evaluation of Cauchy principal value integrals of oscillatory functions @!"-"1^1e^i^@w^xf(x)x-@tdx, where -1
Short Communication: Using an improved measure function of vague sets for multicriteria fuzzy decision-making
Authors: Jun Ye
Venue: Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal (2010)

An improved accuracy function for vague sets is proposed by taking into account the effect of an unknown degree (hesitancy degree) of the vague values on the degree of suitability to which each alternative satisfies the decision-maker's requirement. The accuracy function is more reasonable than the existing accuracy functions that are not reasonable in some cases. Moreover, the improved decision-making method can improve existing techniques effectively and the process of decision-making needs not to be divided into several steps and needs not adding other rules and choosing parameters when we use the improved decision-making method. The improved method can be used to rank the decision alternative according to the decision criteria. Illustrative examples are given to verify the developed approach and to demonstrate its practicality and effectiveness.
Merging on PRAM
Authors: Hazem M. Bahig, Hatem M. Bahig
Venue: International Journal of Computers and Applications (2008)

Many data sets to be merged consist of (1) n distinct keys and (2) the keys are serial numbers. Merging such data can be represented as merging two sorted arrays A = (a0, a1, ..., an1--1) and B = (b0, b1, ..., bn2--1) of records such that (1) the keys are distinct; (2) 0 &le; ai &middot; key, bj &middot; key < n, &forall;0 &le; i < n1 and 0 &le;j < n2, where n = n1 + n2 and key is the primary key of the record. We present an optimal deterministic merging algorithm on EREW PRAM in O(n/p) time, where p is the number of processors and 1&le;p&le;n. The algorithm uses linear number of space. We also extend the algorithm to capture repeated keys such that the repetition of the key is at most constant.
A qualitative inquiry of ict based socio-economic development in developing countries: the case of pakistan
Authors: Prashant Palvia, Hamid Nemati
Venue:  (2009)

The role of information communication technologies (ICT) growth in citizens' political participation, socio-economic development, and poverty alleviation is an active area of study within information systems (IS) research in developing countries. This dissertation contributes in (1) developing an historical perspective of ICT growth, (2) identifying antecedents of ICT growth, (3) proposing extensions in 'design-actuality gaps framework' (for ICT policy analysis), (4) extending dimensions of ICT based socio-economic development, and (5) in integrating relationship between ICT growth and socio-economic development. The data collection was done in three phases from December 2006 to January 2009 in Pakistan. A total of 54 officials who made or influenced government's ICT policies and 46 citizens participated. The qualitative analysis shows that government's policies play an important role in ICT growth. However, political instability and lack of citizens' involvement in policy design leads to inconsistent policies which can impede realization of the benefits of ICT growth. The findings have practical implications for government's ICT policy design and evaluation, understanding of the antecedents of ICT growth, and ICT based socio-economic development. The recommendations for ICT policy design in this research can potentially benefit governments in increasing citizens' quality of life, socio-economic development, and poverty alleviation. The validity of this research is evaluated against a set of guidelines for grounded theory research. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player
MULTICOM
Authors: Zheng Wang, Jesse Eickholt, Jianlin Cheng
Venue: Bioinformatics (2010)

Motivation: Protein structure prediction is one of the most important problems in structural bioinformatics. Here we describe MULTICOM, a multi-level combination approach to improve the various steps in protein structure prediction. In contrast to those methods which look for the best templates, alignments and models, our approach tries to combine complementary and alternative templates, alignments and models to achieve on average better accuracy. Results: The multi-level combination approach was implemented via five automated protein structure prediction servers and one human predictor which participated in the eighth Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP8), 2008. The MULTICOM servers and human predictor were consistently ranked among the top predictors on the CASP8 benchmark. The methods can predict moderate-to high-resolution models for most template-based targets and low-resolution models for some template-free targets. The results show that the multi-level combination of complementary templates, alternative alignments and similar models aided by model quality assessment can systematically improve both template-based and template-free protein modeling. Availability: The MULTICOM server is freely available at http://casp.rnet.missouri.edu/multicom_3d.html Contact: chengji@missouri.edu The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player
Computational simulation of red blood cell motion in microvascular flows
Authors: Juan M. Restrepo, Timothy W. Secomb
Venue:  (2009)

Microvascular transport is strongly influenced by the nonuniform partitioning of red blood cells at diverging microvessel bifurcations, where blood flows from one mother vessel into two daughter vessels. In such bifurcations, the volume fractions of red blood cells in the blood entering each daughter vessel typically differ significantly from the volume fraction in the mother vessel. This phenomenon is caused, to a first approximation, by nonuniform distribution of red blood cells in the cross-section of the mother vessel and the tendency of red blood cells to follow background fluid streamlines. In smaller vessels, however, red blood cell trajectories can deviate significantly from fluid streamlines. In this dissertation, the mechanical reasons for these deviations and their contributions to nonuniform partitioning are analyzed. A two-dimensional model is used to simulate the motion and deformation of flexible particles as they travel alone through a diverging microvessel bifurcation. Deviations of particle trajectories from background fluid streamlines result from migration towards the mother vessel centerline upstream of the bifurcation and flow perturbations caused by cell obstruction in the bifurcation region. Cell migration, which arises because of flexibility, causes more nonuniform partitioning while cell obstruction causes more uniform partitioning. Bifurcations with differently sized daughter vessels experience, on average, a higher red blood cell flux into the smaller branch. Partitioning is unaffected by daughter branching angles. The motion of two interacting cells is also considered. In diverging bifurcations several types of interactions were found, in which the presence of a nearby cell causes a cell to enter a different branch than it would have otherwise. The net effect of these interactions is to cause more uniform partitioning. In wall-bounded linear shear flow, a two-dimensional swapping interaction was identified, in which two cells on different background fluid streamlines approach each other, slowly move onto their partner's streamline, and then move away from each other.The simulations produced by this two-dimensional model provide insight into the effects of red blood cell deformability, bifurcation geometry and volume fraction of red blood cells on red blood cell partitioning and on the resultant distribution and transport of materials in the microvasculature. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player
Partial eigenvalue assignment problem of high order control systems using orthogonality relations
Authors: Mohamed A. Ramadan, Ehab A. El-Sayed
Venue: Computers Mathematics with Applications (2010)

In this paper, we present an explicit solution to the partial eigenvalue assignment problem of high order control system using orthogonality relations between eigenvectors of the matrix polynomial. Our solution can be implemented with only a partial knowledge of the spectrum and the corresponding left eigenvectors of the matrix polynomial. We show that the number of eigenvalues and eigenvectors that need to remain unchanged will not affected by feedback. A numerical example is given to illustrate the applicability and the practical usefulness of the proposed method.
Applying multiobjective RBFNNs optimization and feature selection to a mineral reduction problem
Authors: A. Guillén, G. Rubio, I. Toda, A. Rivera, H. Pomares, I. Rojas
Venue: Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal (2010)

The Nickel reduction process is a complex task where many dynamic optimization problems arises that, nowadays, requires a human operator to take decisions based on his experience and intuition. In order to help the operator to optimize the reduction process in terms of maximum amount of mineral extracted and minimum energy consumption, a control system integrated by several modules is being designed. One of the modules has the task of predicting how much petroleum will be burned in the ovens where the raw material is processed. This paper proposes an algorithm to design Radial Basis Function Neural Networks that will be able to predict accurately the amount of petroleum given a set of input parameters. The algorithm is also able of identifying the most relevant input parameters for the network so the dimensionality reduction problem is ameliorated. Hence, this paper, as it will be shown in the experiments section is able to apply the synergy of different Soft Computing techniques to the industrial process obtaining satisfactory results.
A review of log-polar imaging for visual perception in robotics
Authors: V. Javier Traver, Alexandre Bernardino
Venue: Robotics and Autonomous Systems (2010)

Log-polar imaging consists of a type of methods that represent visual information with a space-variant resolution inspired by the visual system of mammals. It has been studied for about three decades and has surpassed conventional approaches in robotics applications, mainly the ones where real-time constraints make it necessary to utilize resource-economic image representations and processing methodologies. This paper surveys the application of log-polar imaging in robotic vision, particularly in visual attention, target tracking, egomotion estimation, and 3D perception. The concise yet comprehensive review offered in this paper is intended to provide novel and experienced roboticists with a quick and gentle overview of log-polar vision and to motivate vision researchers to investigate the many open problems that still need solving. To help readers identify promising research directions, a possible research agenda is outlined. Finally, since log-polar vision is not restricted to robotics, a couple of other areas of application are discussed.
Efficient algorithms for fitting bayesian mixture models
Authors: Mario Peruggia
Venue:  (2009)

Mixture distributions have been given considerable attention due to their flexible form and convenience of use. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods enable us to generate samples from a target distribution from which it is difficult to sample directly by simulating a Markov chain. However, practical difficulties arise when MCMC methods are implemented to fit mixture distributions with several isolated modes. Most MCMC sampling methods have difficulties transitioning between the isolated modal regions and the inferences based on the samples generated by these methods can be unreliable. This motivated us to develop efficient algorithms for fitting Bayesian mixture models. Our approach hinges on the premise that a preliminary understanding of some essential features of the posterior distribution is needed to make sampling more efficient. In this thesis we introduce two algorithms that rely on an initial identification of possible isolated modes of the mixture distribution. The algorithms are applied to fit four different models: a Bayesian univariate normal mixture model; a Bayesian univariate outlier accommodation model; a Bayesian linear regression model; and a hierarchical Bayesian regression model for repeated measures data. Their performance is compared to that of other methods including the Gibbs sampler and an MCMC tempering transition method by examining the accuracy of inferences and the ease of transition between isolated modal regions of the posterior distributions for the Bayesian models. The results show that the proposed algorithms outperform the Gibbs sampler and the tempering transition method. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player
Gene function prediction from synthetic lethality networks via ranking on demand
Authors: Christoph Lippert, Zoubin Ghahramani, Karsten M. Borgwardt
Venue: Bioinformatics (2010)

Motivation: Synthetic lethal interactions represent pairs of genes whose individual mutations are not lethal, while the double mutation of both genes does incur lethality. Several studies have shown a correlation between functional similarity of genes and their distances in networks based on synthetic lethal interactions. However, there is a lack of algorithms for predicting gene function from synthetic lethality interaction networks. Results: In this article, we present a novel technique called kernelROD for gene function prediction from synthetic lethal interaction networks based on kernel machines. We apply our novel algorithm to Gene Ontology functional annotation prediction in yeast. Our experiments show that our method leads to improved gene function prediction compared with state-of-the-art competitors and that combining genetic and congruence networks leads to a further improvement in prediction accuracy. Contact: christoph.lippert@tuebingen.mpg.de Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player
A design space exploration algorithm in compiling window operation onto reconfigurable hardware
Authors: Y. Dong, Y. Dou, M. Liu
Venue: International Journal of Computers and Applications (2008)

Window operations which are computationally intensive and data intensive are frequently used in image compression, pattern recognition and digital signal processing. Reconfigurable hardware boards provide a convenient and flexible solution to speed up these algorithms. In this paper, we design a three-level memory structure to realize inner-loop and outer-loop data reuse in window operations completely, and use shifted registers to make hardware design simpler. Then, we present a design space exploration algorithm to get a high-performance design without going through the time-consuming hardware design process for each different algorithm. By finding the three upper bounds according to area constraints, memory bandwidth constraints and on-chip memory constraints, the block structure of the design which can fully utilize the available resources on the board is determined.
A new measure of US residential broadband availability
Authors: Jed Kolko
Venue: Telecommunications Policy (2010)

The only comprehensive published indicator of residential broadband availability in the US is number of providers in each ZIP code, as reported by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This measure has been widely used in academic and policy research to assess availability and to identify under-served areas, but it is acknowledged to be flawed and is often misinterpreted. This paper develops an alternative measure of residential broadband availability. Using the December 2005 FCC data and individual broadband adoption data from Forrester Research, the paper estimates a relationship between the number of providers in a ZIP code and the level of residential broadband availability in the ZIP code. Broadband is estimated to be available to 53% of households in ZIP codes with 1-3 providers, rising to 100% in ZIP codes with 14 or more providers. Aggregating these estimates at the national level implies that broadband was available to 85% of households in December 2005. Availability was highest in southern and western metropolitan areas like Miami and San Jose. Using these estimates of availability, population density and average income both have positive and highly statistically significant effects on broadband supply. The results provide a user-friendly tool to help policymakers assess broadband availability. The estimates are also useful for future research about the effects of broadband availability.
Performance prediction for individual recognition by gait
Authors: Ju Han, Bir Bhanu
Venue: Pattern Recognition Letters (2005)

Existing gait recognition approaches do not give their theoretical or experimental performance predictions. Therefore, the discriminating power of gait as a feature for human recognition cannot be evaluated. In this paper, we first propose a kinematic-based approach to recognize human by gait. The proposed approach estimates 3D human walking parameters by performing a least squares fit of the 3D kinematic model to the 2D silhouette extracted from a monocular image sequence. Next, a Bayesian-based statistical analysis is performed to evaluate the discriminating power of extracted stationary gait features. Through probabilistic simulation, we not only predict the probability of correct recognition (PCR) with regard to different within-class feature variance, but also obtain the upper bound on PCR with regard to different human silhouette resolution. In addition, the maximum number of people in a database is obtained given the allowable error rate. This is extremely important for gait recognition in large databases.
Metaheuristics for assortment problems with multiple quality levels
Authors: Mark H. McElreath, Maria E. Mayorga, Mary E. Kurz
Venue: Computers and Operations Research (2010)

The assortment planning problem involves choosing an optimal product line, as defined by a set of products with specific attributes, to offer consumers. Under a locational choice model in which products are differentiated both horizontally (by variety attributes) and vertically (by quality attributes), an optimal assortment, whose attributes have only been partially characterized, may consist of multiple quality levels. Using previous analytical results, we approximate the optimal assortment for make-to-order and static substitution environments. We test the appropriateness and compare the performance of three metaheuristic methods. These metaheuristics can easily be modified to accommodate different consumer preference distribution assumptions.