Sequences of refinements of rough sets: logical and algebraic aspects

In this thesis, a generalization of the classical Rough set theory is developed considering the so-called sequences of orthopairs that we define as special sequences of rough sets. Mainly, our aim is to introduce some operations between sequences of orthopairs, and to discover how to generate them starting from the operations concerning standard rough sets. Also, we prove several representation theorems representing the class of finite centered Kleene algebras with the interpolation property, and some classes of finite residuated lattices (more precisely, we consider Nelson algebras, Nelson lattices, IUML-algebras and Kleene lattice with implication) as sequences of orthopairs. Moreover, as an application, we show that a sequence of orthopairs can be used to represent an examiner's opinion on a number of candidates applying for a job, and we show that opinions of two or more examiners can be combined using operations between sequences of orthopairs in order to get a final decision on each candidate. Finally, we provide the original modal logic SOn with semantics based on sequences of orthopairs, and we employ it to describe the knowledge of an agent that increases over time, as new information is provided. Modal logic Son is characterized by the sequences (\u25a11,\u2026, \u25a1n) and (O1,\u2026, On) of n modal operators corresponding to a sequence (t1,\u2026, tn) of consecutive times. Furthermore, the operator \u25a1i of (\u25a11,\u2026, \u25a1n) represents the knowledge of an agent at time ti, and it coincides with the necessity modal operator of S5 logic. On the other hand, the main innovative aspect of modal logic SOn is the presence of the sequence (O1,\u2026, On), since Oi establishes whether an agent is interested in knowing a given fact at time ti

Sequences of refinements of rough sets: logical and algebraic aspects

In this thesis, a generalization of the classical Rough set theory is developed considering the so-called sequences of orthopairs that we define as special sequences of rough sets. Mainly, our aim is to introduce some operations between sequences of orthopairs, and to discover how to generate them starting from the operations concerning standard rough sets. Also, we prove several representation theorems representing the class of finite centered Kleene algebras with the interpolation property, and some classes of finite residuated lattices (more precisely, we consider Nelson algebras, Nelson lattices, IUML-algebras and Kleene lattice with implication) as sequences of orthopairs. Moreover, as an application, we show that a sequence of orthopairs can be used to represent an examiner's opinion on a number of candidates applying for a job, and we show that opinions of two or more examiners can be combined using operations between sequences of orthopairs in order to get a final decision on each candidate. Finally, we provide the original modal logic SOn with semantics based on sequences of orthopairs, and we employ it to describe the knowledge of an agent that increases over time, as new information is provided. Modal logic Son is characterized by the sequences (□1,…, □n) and (O1,…, On) of n modal operators corresponding to a sequence (t1,…, tn) of consecutive times. Furthermore, the operator □i of (□1,…, □n) represents the knowledge of an agent at time ti, and it coincides with the necessity modal operator of S5 logic. On the other hand, the main innovative aspect of modal logic SOn is the presence of the sequence (O1,…, On), since Oi establishes whether an agent is interested in knowing a given fact at time ti

Vista: February 9, 2012

https://digital.sandiego.edu/vista/1660/thumbnail.jp

Development of an industrial marketing framework for SME’s: a game industry case study

This study provides a complete coverage of the current status of the video game business and digital distribution through explanation of business models, and a focus on Finnish market with one case example. Literature review was done completely to provide a foundation for the reader to understand the business environment of Finland and how different parts of the value chain function. In addition to that, a case study was completed through an interview with a SME to present a practical example of the firm’s approach in marketing their product. To initiate this study, video game business in today’s world was analyzed followed by market and industry trends globally. Value chain in different aspects of the industry were discussed with factors and influential elements. Small and medium sized businesses were discussed along with their characteristics, after that different business models for video games were elaborated. In the final chapter, Finnish game market was through analyzed and the roles of different players and stakeholders were described. Video game business has evolved drastically in all aspect from technical aspects to business aspects. Finland has a very special place in this multibillion business, introducing many titles which are household names right now. This has created the desire for many new comers to enter the market, their success in the market depends on the quality of their product as well as a fitting business model

Context-aware advertisment recommendation on twitter through rough sets

The main, if not the only, income for social networks is from advertising. Social media platforms like Twitter have become a main stream communication medium to disseminate information and capture the interest of potential customers. So, it is crucial that the policy implemented to decide which ads to show in proximity of which user's posts, is the most profitable one: the ads shown should be as much as possible targeted to the user's interests. In this paper, we propose a context-aware advertising recommendation system that, analyzing the users' tweets during the timeline, interpretes the personal interests of users through orthopairs (they are equivalent to rough sets) to meet ads and users' interests at the right time

Context-aware advertisment recommendation on twitter through rough sets

The main, if not the only, income for social networks is from advertising. Social media platforms like Twitter have become a main stream communication medium to disseminate information and capture the interest of potential customers. So, it is crucial that the policy implemented to decide which ads to show in proximity of which user's posts, is the most profitable one: the ads shown should be as much as possible targeted to the user's interests. In this paper, we propose a context-aware advertising recommendation system that, analyzing the users' tweets during the timeline, interpretes the personal interests of users through orthopairs (they are equivalent to rough sets) to meet ads and users' interests at the right time

Digital help service opportunities for communication service providers in the convergent digital home

Thesis (S.M. in Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, System Design and Management Program, February 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-100).Homes are becoming increasingly connected as new technologies allow users to access media and information from any-device at anytime. Notebooks, HDTVs, smartphones, media servers, photo cameras, and video cameras, all form part of this new digital ecosystem where - the vision says - information and content will flow easily across devices, enabled by simple and intuitive user interfaces. These new home technologies are, however, often too complex for most users. Only "digital-natives" or technology savvy groups have the necessary skills, knowledge or confidence to adopt them and to use them effectively. For the rest, trying them becomes painful and frustrating. Moreover, the ecosystem itself adds confusion, given the large number of players involved and the many different kinds of relationships. Unless a dominant player gains enough power to establish a dominant digital home architecture, or this happens in some other way, most companies will continue to innovate around device-specific features that don't address the overall complexity of the complete systems that users have to work with. Digital help services can assist users by simplifying the selection, installation, learning and troubleshooting of new services and devices; facilitating the adoption of new convergent technologies. There is a broad range of potential services, including, for example, 'over the top' (OTT) television integration, smartphone mentoring services, WiFi network configuration and desktop support services. Communication service providers should pay close attention to digital help services as an opportunity to differentiate their offer, strengthen their relationship with end-customers, reduce customer support costs and simplify the adoption of bandwidth-intensive technologies. Moreover, digital help services can speed up the adoption of OTT television services, and companies can use them strategically. The technology help space is evolving and communication service providers need to figure out how they want to participate: offer help services themselves; partner or acquire a existing technology support company; and/or create an open marketplace for technology help services.by Juan Spiniak.S.M.in Engineering and Managemen

An integrated semantic-based framework for intelligent similarity measurement and clustering of microblogging posts

Twitter, the most popular microblogging platform, is gaining rapid prominence as a source of information sharing and social awareness due to its popularity and massive user generated content. These include applications such as tailoring advertisement campaigns, event detection, trends analysis, and prediction of micro-populations. The aforementioned applications are generally conducted through cluster analysis of tweets to generate a more concise and organized representation of the massive raw tweets. However, current approaches perform traditional cluster analysis using conventional proximity measures, such as Euclidean distance. However, the sheer volume, noise, and dynamism of Twitter, impose challenges that hinder the efficacy of traditional clustering algorithms in detecting meaningful clusters within microblogging posts. The research presented in this thesis sets out to design and develop a novel short text semantic similarity (STSS) measure, named TREASURE, which captures the semantic and structural features of microblogging posts for intelligently predicting the similarities. TREASURE is utilised in the development of an innovative semantic-based cluster analysis algorithm (SBCA) that contributes in generating more accurate and meaningful granularities within microblogging posts. The integrated semantic-based framework incorporating TREASURE and the SBCA algorithm tackles both the problem of microblogging cluster analysis and contributes to the success of a variety of natural language processing (NLP) and computational intelligence research. TREASURE utilises word embedding neural network (NN) models to capture the semantic relationships between words based on their co-occurrences in a corpus. Moreover, TREASURE analyses the morphological and lexical structure of tweets to predict the syntactic similarities. An intrinsic evaluation of TREASURE was performed with reference to a reliable similarity benchmark generated through an experiment to gather human ratings on a Twitter political dataset. A further evaluation was performed with reference to the SemEval-2014 similarity benchmark in order to validate the generalizability of TREASURE. The intrinsic evaluation and statistical analysis demonstrated a strong positive linear correlation between TREASURE and human ratings for both benchmarks. Furthermore, TREASURE achieved a significantly higher correlation coefficient compared to existing state-of-the-art STSS measures. The SBCA algorithm incorporates TREASURE as the proximity measure. Unlike conventional partition-based clustering algorithms, the SBCA algorithm is fully unsupervised and dynamically determine the number of clusters beforehand. Subjective evaluation criteria were employed to evaluate the SBCA algorithm with reference to the SemEval-2014 similarity benchmark. Furthermore, an experiment was conducted to produce a reliable multi-class benchmark on the European Referendum political domain, which was also utilised to evaluate the SBCA algorithm. The evaluation results provide evidence that the SBCA algorithm undertakes highly accurate combining and separation decisions and can generate pure clusters from microblogging posts. The contributions of this thesis to knowledge are mainly demonstrated as: 1) Development of a novel STSS measure for microblogging posts (TREASURE). 2) Development of a new SBCA algorithm that incorporates TREASURE to detect semantic themes in microblogs. 3) Generating a word embedding pre-trained model learned from a large corpus of political tweets. 4) Production of a reliable similarity-annotated benchmark and a reliable multi-class benchmark in the domain of politics

Why the caged bird sings: cultural factors underlying the use of online social networks among Saudi Arabian and UK users

The 21st century has seen a dramatic rise in Internet access and connectivity across the world. To date, only a small amount of research has been published on the subject of culture and Internet usage. This thesis investigates whether, and how, individuals from two different cultures (Saudi Arabia and the UK) engage with online social networks (OSNs) differently, and what might be the underlying psychological factors explaining such differences. A first qualitative study used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA; Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009) to investigate motivations for using OSNs among Saudi and British participants. Both groups reported that they used OSNs to present a positive self-image, while desiring to maintain a sense of their ‘genuine’ self in online interactions. For Saudi participants, OSNs also provided opportunities for selfexpression that were otherwise unavailable. British participants reported using OSNs for relationship maintenance. A second qualitative study also looked at motivations, but narrowed the focus to identity motives, applying motivated identity construction theory (Vignoles, 2011) to a thematic analysis of tweets written by citizens of Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom. Motives for meaning, belonging, distinctiveness, continuity, efficacy, and self-esteem were all detectable in the tweets of both Saudi and British users. The manner in which these motives were pursued varied according to the cultural context of users within the affordances of the online context in which they were communicating. The research project then aimed to establish a way of measuring differences in online self-presentation strategies, by developing the online self-presentation strategies scale (OSPSS). Items were selected using exploratory structural equation modelling (ESEM). The scale was incorporated in a large-scale (N = 694) quantitative study of Saudi and British OSN users that measured self-presentation strategies, motivations of OSNs use and target audience. Mediation analyses were conducted to find out whether cultural differences in these dimensions were explained by two forms of cultural variation: relational mobility and Schwartz’ theory of basic values. Self-enhancement vs. self-transcendence values and relational mobility, more than openness to change vs. conservation values, accounted for mean differences between the groups in motives, targeted audiences and self-presentation strategies. Together the studies reveal observable differences in the ways in which people from Saudi Arabia and the UK engage with OSNs. These are partially explained by the affordances that social media provide, which compensate for the unavailability of certain modes of expression and communication within offline cultural contexts, and by cultural differences in value priorities

Saudi-Arab Emerging Video Game Cultures, Archetypes, Narratives, and User Experiences

Arab representation in media has been a major focus of many works of renowned scholars, such as Edward Said (1978), Shaheen (2000), Karim (2005) and others. Journalism, film, television, and ancient literature have all been studied in these works. A recent addition to the study of Arab representation is the medium of video games. This was first examined by Reichmuth and Werning (2006) and Machin and Suleiman (2006) and extended by many works that are discussed in this thesis. The vast majority of the literature on Arab representation in video games focuses on Western video games and the reaction of Arab developers to these representations. Lack of specificity is another characteristic of this field. Both characteristics manifest in repeated comparative studies, where scholars select one local culture as an archetype, then embark on a comparative study of the global gaming community. In so doing, there is an unfair generalisation of Arab identity across broad and diverse regions, in terms of ethnic, ideological, national, historical, and even linguistic components. The present investigation critiques the shortcomings of this previous literature, while testing some alternative methods and approaches needed to re-examine the lack of access, language barriers and the aforementioned generalisations that have limited this field until now. Rather than assuming a single archetype for Saudi culture, this thesis departs from previous scholarship by examining the various aspects of the transformation process leading to what could be called an emergent “Saudiness”. Specifically, this study examines the construction and depiction of Saudi-Arab identity through the narratives and audiovisual content of video games, paying close attention to recent developments in Saudi cultural and media policy and the mandates set forth by the Vision 2030 development plan (SCEDA, 2016). Using theories on participatory culture (Jenkins, 2009) and spreadable media (Jenkins, Ford, and Green, 2013) as well as a content analysis of previously understudied material shared by a cohort of Saudi gamers, this research investigates the particular markers and strategies used to distinguish the spectrum of cultural aspects and elements with which Saudi gamers identify. To achieve this, the analysis focuses on three distinct archetypes of Saudi Arabs in video games: (a) the Saudis in Western video games, as suggested by previous works; (b) the Saudi citizen archetype, as recommended by state policy; and (c) the Saudi culture, as represented by Saudi gamers and Saudi game producers -- who in many cases reject the idea of a single archetype. In sum, this research sheds new light on the interactions between centralised and decentralised media in Saudi Arabia, as well as the Saudi gamers\u27 sense of agency, demonstrating how Saudis perceive Saudi representations in video games as part of a complex spectrum of interactions within a larger global gaming community