A new and efficient intelligent collaboration scheme for fashion design

Technology-mediated collaboration process has been extensively studied for over a decade. Most applications with collaboration concepts reported in the literature focus on enhancing efficiency and effectiveness of the decision-making processes in objective and well-structured workflows. However, relatively few previous studies have investigated the applications of collaboration schemes to problems with subjective and unstructured nature. In this paper, we explore a new intelligent collaboration scheme for fashion design which, by nature, relies heavily on human judgment and creativity. Techniques such as multicriteria decision making, fuzzy logic, and artificial neural network (ANN) models are employed. Industrial data sets are used for the analysis. Our experimental results suggest that the proposed scheme exhibits significant improvement over the traditional method in terms of the time–cost effectiveness, and a company interview with design professionals has confirmed its effectiveness and significance

A Probabilistic Solution Generator of Good Enough Designs for Simulation

We build a probabilistic solution generator using the learning automata theory, which can generate a small set of "good enough" designs with a predetermined high probability. The main goal of our work is to reduce a large design population to a much smaller subset of good designs that can be analyzed thoroughly in a subsequent simulation study to identify the best design among them. In the process of building the solution generator, a rough-cut design evaluation method with a high noise error is employed in order to screen designs very rapidly _ may it be an approximate method, a heuristic approach, or short simulation runs. The solution generator has been applied successfully to several serious test problems with noisy objectives

The Need for Due Diligence and Financial Statement Analysis – The Bank of America-Merrill Lynch Case

Mr. Ken Lewis, Chief Executive of Bank of America (BOA), was harshly questioned regarding BOA’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch. This was driven by an earnings release on January 16, 2009 indicating Bank of America had massive losses for the 4th quarter of 2008 due to the Merrill Lynch acquisition. Bank of America’s stock fell to $7.18, its lowest level in 17 years following the release of the earnings announcement. Complicating the matter was that the market capitalization of Bank of America, including Merrill Lynch, was just$45 billion, and Bank of American had offered $50 billion to acquire Merrill. These events led both insiders and outsiders to question the acquisition. What due diligence should have been completed and were there were relevant accounting policies and valuation issues of concern? In this case, students are placed in a decision-making role to provide a financial analysis considering different options and assessing the benefits and detriments of the acquisition. It provides students an opportunity to apply acquisition principles in a real-life setting

Fidelity susceptibility in the two-dimensional transverse field Ising and XXZ models

We study the fidelity susceptibility in the two-dimensional(2D) transverse field Ising model and the 2D XXZ model numerically. It is found that in both models, the fidelity susceptibility as a function of the driving parameter diverges at the critical points. The validity of the fidelity susceptibility to signal for the quantum phase transition is thus verified in these two models. We also compare the scaling behavior of the extremum of the fidelity susceptibility to that of the second derivative of the ground state energy. From those results, the theoretical argument that fidelity susceptibility is a more sensitive seeker for a second order quantum phase transition is also testified in the two models.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

Option compensation and optimism bias in management earnings forecasts

We examine the link between the managers' option compensation and the optimism bias in management earnings forecasts. More particularly, we are interested in investigating the extent of self-serving optimism in the earnings forecasts made by managers with a high amount of option compensation. We hypothesize that managements' optimism (optimism bias in their earnings forecasts) increases with an increase in their stock option compensation. We provide evidence that managers issue optimistic forecasts since their compensation is a function of the stock price, and optimistic earnings forecasts usually result in a higher share price

Biological actions and molecular effects of resveratrol, pterostilbene, and 3′-hydroxypterostilbene

AbstractStilbenes are a class of polyphenolic compounds, naturally found in a wide variety of dietary sources such as grapes, berries, peanuts, red wine, and some medicinal plants. There are several well-known stilbenes including trans-resveratrol, pterostilbene, and 3′-hydroxypterostilbene. The core chemical structure of stilbene compounds is 1,2-diphenylethylene. Recently, stilbenes have attracted extensive attention and interest due to their wide range of health-beneficial effects such as anti-inflammation, -carcinogenic, -diabetes, and -dyslipidemia activities. Moreover, accumulating in vitro and in vivo studies have reported that stilbene compounds act as inducers of multiple cell-death pathways such as apoptosis, cell cycle arrest, and autophagy for chemopreventive and chemotherapeutic agents in several types of cancer cells. The aim of this review is to highlight recent molecular findings and biological actions of trans-resveratrol, pterostilbene, and 3′-hydroxypterostilbene