Exploring the fitness landscape and the run-time behaviour of an iterated local search algorithm for cost-based abduction

Cost-based abduction (CBA) is an important problem in reasoning under uncertainty, and can be considered a generalization of belief revision. CBA is known to be NP-hard and has been a subject of considerable research over the past decade. In this paper, we investigate the fitness landscape for CBA, by looking at fitness–distance correlation for local minima and at landscape ruggedness. Our results indicate that stochastic local search techniques would be promising on this problem. We go on to present an iterated local search algorithm based on hill-climbing, tabu search, and simulated annealing. We compare the performance of our algorithm to simulated annealing, and to Santos' integer linear programming method for CBA.     

Automatic Quality Inspection of Bakery Products Based on Shape and Color Information

基于形状和颜色信息的烘焙产品的自动质量检测

Babar Khan,韩芳*,王直杰,Ather Iqbal

（东华大学 信息科学与技术学院,上海 201620）

创新点说明：

利用支持向量机和基于生物启发式HMAX模型的形状辨识器与RGB对抗颜色通道辨识器集成而形成一种有效的智能分类系统,并将其用于烘焙产品的质量检测。

研究目的：

本文要对烘焙产品进行更有效的质量检测,需要提出一种智能方法。

研究方法：

本文采用了支持向量机、基于生物启发式HMAX模型的形状辨识器与RGB对抗颜色通道辨识器集成,形成一种高级自动分类系统,对烘焙产品根据其形状和颜色（烘焙时间）进行对应分类。

结果：

利用本文方法对烘焙产品进行质量检测的结果与其它方法相比较,发现本文提出的基于生物启发的机器视觉系统运行更加精确和有效,同时发现采用One Versus One支持向量机和Directed Acyclic Graph支持向量机可以得到最大的分类精确率。本文方法对饼干形状和颜色的辨识分别达到了95%和100%的分类精确率。同时,算法稳定。

结论：

本文方法因其更加可靠和精确可用于代替现有的烘焙产品检测方法。

关键词：烘焙产品质量检测,计算机视觉,HMAX, 对抗颜色通道,RGB颜色辨识器,支持向量机

     

Role of Conducting Polymers in Enhancing TiO2-based Photocatalytic Dye Degradation: A Short Review

Research in the field of TiO₂-based photocatalysis has gained wide attention to address important energy and environmental problem. Lately, the use of conducting polymers as photosensitizers has proven to immensely enhance photodegradation by exhibiting excellent photocatalytic activity under both ultraviolet light and natural sunlight irradiation which is not possible using semiconductors alone. Considering the unique performance of conducting polymer-based nanocomposites in photocatalysis, the present review provides the recent advances in the development of ultraviolet and visible light-responsive conducting polymer-based TiO₂ nanocomposites for their potential application in environmental remediation. This review ends with a summary focusing on the challenges and new dimensions in this still emerging area of research.     

Rapid quantitative method for total brominated vegetable oil in soft drinks using ion chromatography

A simple, quantitative and rapid method for total brominated vegetable oil (BVO) using ion chromatography (IC) with suppressed conductivity detection was developed and successfully applied to soft drinks with results expressed as inorganic bromide anion. The procedure involves extraction of BVO with diethyl ether and treatment with zinc dust in a solution of acetic acid, giving recoveries ranging between 92.5 and 98.5%. The calibration curves obtained were linear with correlation coefficients (r (2)) of 0.998, a coefficient of variation (CV) of less than 5% and limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) of 250 and 750?μg?l(-1), respectively. The method was successfully applied to the determination of BVO in several commercial soft drinks which were found to contain BVO in the range 1.8-14.510?mg?l(-1). The method has less sources of error compared to previously published methods.     

Review of the main developments in the analytic hierarchy process

In this paper the authors review the developments of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) since its inception. The focus of this paper is a neutral review on the methodological developments rather than reporting its applications that have appeared since its introduction. In particular, we discuss problem modelling, pair-wise comparisons, judgement scales, derivation methods, consistency indices, incomplete matrix, synthesis of the weights, sensitivity analysis and group decisions. All have been important areas of research in AHP.     

Physico-chemical,morphological and thermal analysis for the combined pozzolanic activities of minerals additives

The research was aimed to evaluate the physico-chemical, morphological and thermal analysis of combined pozzolanic activities of minerals additives. Fly ash and ground granulated blast furnace slag were added, separately and collectively, as mineral replacement in ordinary Portland cement. Tests carried out on specimens cured at different ages were: compressive strength, ultrasonic pulse velocity, X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, scanning electron microscopic (SEM) studies, differential thermal analysis (DTA) and thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), etc. The results indicated that the compressive strength and ultrasonic pulse velocity development rate of concrete specimens were significantly influenced by the addition of mineral additives. SEM data showed that the fly ash particles were more embedded and surrounded by slag. XRD analysis and DTA/TGA investigation have revealed different reaction kinetics of paste. The peak intensity of calcium hydroxide was significantly retarded by the addition of fly ash and slag, especially in combination, attributed to the dilution effect and calcium hydroxide consumption by pozzolanic reaction.     

Vasculature Segmentation in MRA Images Using Gradient Compensated Geodesic Active Contours

Precise segmentation of vasculature from three-dimensional (3D) magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) images is playing an important role in image-guided neurosurgery, pre-operation planning and clinical analysis. Active Contour based evolution algorithms are being widely applied to MRA data sets, however existing approaches exhibit some difficulties in extracting tiny parts of the vessels. Our objective is to develop an automated segmentation scheme to accurately extract vasculature of the brain, especially tiny vessels. Inspired by the intrinsic properties of MRA, we have proposed a scheme called the gradient compensated geodesic active contours (GCGAC), which compensates for low gradients near edges of thin vessels. The GCGAC, which is implemented based on level set, has been tested on both synthetic volumetric image and real 3D MRA images. Our experiments show that the introduced gradient compensation can facilitate more accurate segmentation of tiny blood vessels.     

Influence of polymerization conditions on the template free synthesis of nanoparticles of poly (1-naphthylamine)

The present article highlights some preliminary investigations on the role of oxidant and medium on the nanostructured morphology of poly (1-naphthylamine) (PNA) prepared via chemical oxidative polymerization. Results revealed that the nano morphology can be controlled under appropriate preparative conditions. The particle sizes were obtained in the range of 5–50 nm exhibiting a much smaller range than polyaniline (PANI) nanoparticles synthesized under similar conditions.