Industrial process monitoring by means of recurrent neural networks and Self Organizing Maps

Industrial manufacturing plants often suffer from reliability problems during their day-to-day operations which have the potential for causing a great impact on the effectiveness and performance of the overall process and the sub-processes involved. Time-series forecasting of critical industrial signals presents itself as a way to reduce this impact by extracting knowledge regarding the internal dynamics of the process and advice any process deviations before it affects the productive process. In this paper, a novel industrial condition monitoring approach based on the combination of Self Organizing Maps for operating point codification and Recurrent Neural Networks for critical signal modeling is proposed. The combination of both methods presents a strong synergy, the information of the operating condition given by the interpretation of the maps helps the model to improve generalization, one of the drawbacks of recurrent networks, while assuring high accuracy and precision rates. Finally, the complete methodology, in terms of performance and effectiveness is validated experimentally with real data from a copper rod industrial plant.Postprint (published version

Reading Matters in the Academic Library: Taking the Lead from Public Librarians

With the increasing virtualization of resources, reference service, and instruction, college students have fewer reasons to visit the academic library, a place they believe lacks relevance in their lives. This article explores the idea of revitalizing academic libraries by reconsidering the place of pleasure reading in them. Considerable research has been conducted on reading in the last quarter century. Reading serves a host of essential functions, far more than we have ever guessed. The first part of this paper looks at the social, psychological, moral, emotional, and cognitive role it plays in our lives. The second half examines readers’ advisory services that we can borrow or adapt from public libraries, services that can attract new users, promote lifelong reading, and transform academic libraries to be more community, user, and reader focused

Organizing learning materials through hierarchical topic maps: an illustration through Chinese herb medication

[[abstract]]This research aims to use hierarchical topic maps to compile digital learning material and to discuss its design and application possibilities. The system renders tremendous original assets and then embeds a self-organizing map (SOM) in the material database to produce topical learning materials, as in this case, an illustration through Chinese herb medication. It helps to demonstrate robust professional information as well as knowledge structures, and provides a customized and interactive learning dynamic to support both progressive and constructive learning styles. The paper first gives a detailed procedural description of the material construction, explains how topic map techniques were applied, and observes the implications and potentials of the technology to education. Both the technical and educational evaluations of using SOM topic maps in compilation of learning materials have resulted in positive feedback. SOM allows users to review the complete databank in structural hierarchical order, which provides comprehensive understanding of the entire set of learning materials, and also brings opportunities to users to discover knowledge related to their study area.[[notice]]補正完

Harnessing Collaborative Technologies: Helping Funders Work Together Better

This report was produced through a joint research project of the Monitor Institute and the Foundation Center. The research included an extensive literature review on collaboration in philanthropy, detailed analysis of trends from a recent Foundation Center survey of the largest U.S. foundations, interviews with 37 leading philanthropy professionals and technology experts, and a review of over 170 online tools.The report is a story about how new tools are changing the way funders collaborate. It includes three primary sections: an introduction to emerging technologies and the changing context for philanthropic collaboration; an overview of collaborative needs and tools; and recommendations for improving the collaborative technology landscapeA "Key Findings" executive summary serves as a companion piece to this full report