Reasoning with Classification in Interactive Knowledge Elicitation

This paper describes METIS, a system based upon a Method of Elicitation of Taxonomies used to Identify conceptual Structures. METIS is an interactive tool using a minimal core of structured descriptions, in order to acquire objects and to discriminate them. This core is progressively extended through the acquisition and recognition of a lot of objects; it represents a generalization hierarchy. The knowledge acquisition. and therefore the building of the generalization hierarchy, is guided by the taxonomy of classes associated to objects. The knowledge acquisition principle is incremental and uses the formalism of cooceptual graphs. We have applied METIS to the ichthyological field (i.e., the part of zoology dealing with fishes) as partofa research conventiori with U.R.2.C (i.e., research unit on environmentand aquatic resources of topical river valleys) from ORSlOM (i.e., the French cooperative research institute for the purpose of development)

3D CFD model for the analysis of the flow field through a horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT)

With the world’s growing demand for energy, renewable energy production has become important in providing alternative sources of energy and in reducing the greenhouse effect. This study investigates the aerodynamics and performance of the WG/EV100 micro–Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The complexity of VAWT aerodynamics, which is inherently unsteady and three-dimensional, makes high-fidelity flow models extremely demanding in terms of computational cost, limiting the analysis to mainly 2D Computational Fluid-Dynamics (CFD) approaches. This article explains how to perform a full 3D unsteady CFD simulation of HAWT. All main parts of the WG/EV100 HAWT were designed in SOLIDWORKS. Only the blade design was reverse engineered due to the unavailability of the CAD model and the complexity of its geometric characteristics. The impeller blade is scanned using a Coordi-nate Measuring Machine (CMM), and the obtained 3D scan data are exported from the PC-DMIS software to GEOMAGIC design X to obtain a CAD model of the blade

Analiza utjecaja faktora rizika na pojavnost subkliničkog mastitisa na nekim farmama mliječnih krava na istoku Alžira

In order to study the effect of various risk factors on the prevalence of subclinical mastitis, we studied the prevalence of subclinical mastitis in 104 dairy cows (416 udders) from 18 bovine herds in three wilayas in eastern of Algeria using the California mastitis test (CMT) combined with bacteriological analysis. The aim of this research was to determine the effect of 27 risk factors related to the animal, its environment and milking practices on prevalence, as well as the effects of breed, age, stage of lactation, housing and litter type, hygiene level, season, mil production, vacuum level and elimination of first jets on subclinical mastitis frequency. A survey was carried out to collect data on cow numbers, breeds, type of breeding, housing, litter and the level of hygiene in farms, the method of milking and milking practices. The CMT combined with bacteriological examination was performed to detect subclinical mastitis, the Chi 2 test was used to test for difference between the means. Prevalence values were: 24% by CMT vs 17% by bacteriology analysis. Concerning udders, we recorded a rate of 10% vs. 8.7% respectively. The results of the survey show that the Holstein breed is the most exploited and affected (P<0.05). The number of dairy cows varied from 3 to 20 cows. In this study, 56% of cows were raised on farms built of cinder blocks, which had a lower rate compared to farms built of wood and reeds (P<0.001). Animal housing consisting of a concrete floor 33% vs. 36% raised with straw bedding and were more affected (P<0.001), litter is removed only once a day for 13% of cows, which is a factor that predisposes cows to this disease. The frequency is higher during early and late compared to mid-lactation phases (P<0.05); low udder conformation and the right side of udders also had an impact on this disease alongside animal hygiene (P<0.05), and cattle producing more than 12 litres per day were more susceptible (P<0.05). However, the frequency of mastitis was only slightly modified by the lactation number of cows. High and low vacuum level of milking machines and pulsation frequency predisposed cows more to this disease (P<0.05). In this study, cows milked manually were significantly more affected (P<0.05) particularly in summer and the winter, showing high rates (P<0.05).Da bismo uočili učinak različitih faktora rizika na prevalenciju subkliničkog mastitisa, ispitali smo prevalenciju subkliničkog mastitisa u 104 (416 vimena) mliječnih krava iz 18 stada goveda koja se uzgajaju u tri provincije (wilaya) u istočnom Alžiru. Ispitivanje smo proveli pomoću kalifornijskog testa za mastitis (CMT) u kombinaciji s bakteriološkom analizom. Cilj je ovog istraživanja bio utvrditi učinak 27 faktora rizika povezanih sa životinjama, njihovim okolišem i praksom mužnje na prevalenciju, kao i učinak pasmine, dobi, faze laktacije, vrste staje i stelje, razine higijene, godišnjeg doba, proizvodnje mlijeka, razine vakuuma i eliminacije prvih mlazova na učestalost subkliničkog mastitisa. Provedena je anketa u svrhu prikupljanja podataka o broju krava, eksploatiranim pasminama, vrsti uzgoja, staje, stelje i razini higijene na farmama, metodi mužnje i praksom mužnje. Proveden je CMT test u kombinaciji s bakteriološkim testiranjem za detekciju subkliničkog mastitisa. Chi 2 test je rabljen da bi se provjerila razlika između sredstava. Vrijednosti prevalencije bile su: 24 % prema CMT-u u usporedbi sa 17 % prema bakteriološkoj analizi. U svezi s vimenima, zabilježili smo stopu od 10 % u usporedbi s 8,7 %. Rezultati ankete pokazali su da je holstein pasmina najeksploatiranija i najviše zahvaćena (P<0,05); broj mliječnih krava varira od 3 do 20 krava. U ovoj studiji 56 % krava uzgajano je na farmama izgrađenima od opeke i one su imale najniže stope mastitisa u usporedbi s farmama izgrađenima od drva i trske (P<0,001). Staje za životinje imaju betonski pod za 33 % (životinja) u usporedbi s 36 % uzgajanih na podlozi od slame koje su bile više zahvaćene (P<0,001); stelja se podiže jednom na dan za 13 % krava, a to je uvjetovalo krave na ovu bolest. U usporedbi sa sredinom laktacije (P<0,05) učestalost je veća u ranoj i kasnoj laktaciji, niska morfologija vimena i desna strana vimena su utjecale su i na ovu bolest, uz higijenu životinja (P<0,05). Krave koje su proizvodile više od 12 L/dan bile su prijemčivije na bolest (P<0,05). Međutim, učestalost mastitisa malo je modificirana brojem laktacija krava. Visoki i niski vakuum strojeva za mužnju, učestalost impulsa više je uvjetovalo krave na ovu bolest (P<0,05). U ovoj studiji, krave koje su ručno mužene značajno su više bile pogođene ovom bolesti (P<0,05), posebice ljeti i zimi, pokazujući veće stope bolesti (P<0,05)

3D CFD model for the analysis of the flow field through a horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT)

With the world’s growing demand for energy, renewable energy production has become important in providing alternative sources of energy and in reducing the greenhouse effect. This study investigates the aerodynamics and performance of the WG/EV100 micro–Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The complexity of VAWT aerodynamics, which is inherently unsteady and three-dimensional, makes high-fidelity flow models extremely demanding in terms of computational cost, limiting the analysis to mainly 2D Computational Fluid-Dynamics (CFD) approaches. This article explains how to perform a full 3D unsteady CFD simulation of HAWT. All main parts of the WG/EV100 HAWT were designed in SOLIDWORKS. Only the blade design was reverse engineered due to the unavailability of the CAD model and the complexity of its geometric characteristics. The impeller blade is scanned using a Coordi-nate Measuring Machine (CMM), and the obtained 3D scan data are exported from the PC-DMIS software to GEOMAGIC design X to obtain a CAD model of the blade

Community detection for access-control decisions: Analysing the role of homophily and information diffusion in Online Social Networks

Access-Control Lists (ACLs) (a.k.a. “friend lists”) are one of the most important privacy features of Online Social Networks (OSNs) as they allow users to restrict the audience of their publications. Nevertheless, creating and maintaining custom ACLs can introduce a high cognitive burden on average OSNs users since it normally requires assessing the trustworthiness of a large number of contacts. In principle, community detection algorithms can be leveraged to support the generation of ACLs by mapping a set of examples (i.e. contacts labelled as “untrusted”) to the emerging communities inside the user’s ego-network. However, unlike users’ access-control preferences, traditional community-detection algorithms do not take the homophily characteristics of such communities into account (i.e. attributes shared among members). Consequently, this strategy may lead to inaccurate ACL configurations and privacy breaches under certain homophily scenarios. This work investigates the use of community-detection algorithms for the automatic generation of ACLs in OSNs. Particularly, it analyses the performance of the aforementioned approach under different homophily conditions through a simulation model. Furthermore, since private information may reach the scope of untrusted recipients through the re-sharing affordances of OSNs, information diffusion processes are also modelled and taken explicitly into account. Altogether, the removal of gatekeeper nodes is further explored as a strategy to counteract unwanted data dissemination

The speed of quantum and classical learning for performing the kth root of NOT

We consider quantum learning machines—quantum computers that modify themselves in order to improve their performance in some way—that are trained to perform certain classical task, i.e. to execute a function that takes classical bits as input and returns classical bits as output. This allows a fair comparison between learning efficiency of quantum and classical learning machines in terms of the number of iterations required for completion of learning. We find an explicit example of the task for which numerical simulations show that quantum learning is faster than its classical counterpart. The task is extraction of the kth root of NOT (NOT = logical negation), with k=2m and... The reason for this speed-up is that the classical machine requires memory of size log k=m to accomplish the learning, while the memory of a single qubit is sufficient for the quantum machine for any k.We acknowledge support from the EC Project QAP (no. 015848), the Austrian Science Foundation FWF within projects no. P19570-N16, SFB and CoQuS no. W1210-N16, the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Fellowship BES-2006-13234) and the Instituto Carlos I for the use of computational resources. The collaboration is a part of an ÖAD/MNiSW program

Privacy-preserving collaborative recommendations based on random perturbations

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd Collaborative recommender systems offer a solution to the information overload problem found in online environments such as e-commerce. The use of collaborative filtering, the most widely used recommendation method, gives rise to potential privacy issues. In addition, the user ratings utilized in collaborative filtering systems to recommend products or services must be protected. The purpose of this research is to provide a solution to the privacy concerns of collaborative filtering users, while maintaining high accuracy of recommendations. This paper proposes a multi-level privacy-preserving method for collaborative filtering systems by perturbing each rating before it is submitted to the server. The perturbation method is based on multiple levels and different ranges of random values for each level. Before the submission of each rating, the privacy level and the perturbation range are selected randomly from a fixed range of privacy levels. The proposed privacy method has been experimentally evaluated with the results showing that with a small decrease of utility, user privacy can be protected, while the proposed approach offers practical and effective results