Event-Object Reasoning with Curated Knowledge Bases: Deriving Missing Information

The broader goal of our research is to formulate answers to why and how questions with respect to knowledge bases, such as AURA. One issue we face when reasoning with many available knowledge bases is that at times needed information is missing. Examples of this include partially missing information about next sub-event, first sub-event, last sub-event, result of an event, input to an event, destination of an event, and raw material involved in an event. In many cases one can recover part of the missing knowledge through reasoning. In this paper we give a formal definition about how such missing information can be recovered and then give an ASP implementation of it. We then discuss the implication of this with respect to answering why and how questions.Comment: 13 page

Vietnam\u27s Natural Hazards - 1999 Flood

Vietnam is one of the countries most affected by natural hazards such as flood. For instance, during the 1990s to the early 2000s, the country experienced numerous floods, particularly in its central and southern regions. Located in Southeast Asia, bordered by China in the north, Laos and Cambodia in the west, and the South China Sea in the east, the country has 2,860 small and large rivers with a total flow of about 867 billion cubic meters per year. The central region of Vietnam is narrow, mountainous, and close to the coastline. Many rivers pass through the region, which had a total population of 7.5 million in 1999. These rivers originate in the western mountain range and flow into the South China Sea. Moreover, Vietnam is tropical, and so the country’s northern and north central regions are influenced by a monsoon type of climate; thus, these regions receive heavy rainfall during the summer. Because of its unique topography and tropical climate, the country is prone to annual flooding. The impacts of flood relate to deforestation, education level, and household income; the lack of governmental policies also plays an important role in determining the impacts. “Resilience” and “adaptation” become the important keys to reduce the impacts of flood

Towards Building Curricula for Fostering Autonomous Vocabulary Learning: a Case of Vietnamese EFL Context

Adopting a problem-solving approach to curriculum design, this paper is an attempt to illustrate a case of a Vietnamese university where the vocabulary learning and teaching practices are not satisfactory. Drawing on relevant research literature in the field, it first identified the problems associated with the underachievement of learners in terms of vocabulary learning. Several suggestions would then be made towards integrating into the existing curricula elements of a learner autonomy strand where learners find ways to relate the public and private learning domains

On long memory behaviour and predictability of financial markets

An immediate consequence of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) is the absence of auto-correlation of the return series of the financial prices and the exclusion of excess profitability made by any (active) trading strategy. However, the precondition for the validity of EMH, which assumes that all market participants can promptly receive and rationally react to the relevant information affecting the prices, might be (approximately) true for a long time horizon, but not for a short time horizon. By examining local long-range dependence (measured by the rolling Rescaled Range estimates of the Hurst index) of an empirical example, the local market inefficiency is inferred, and excess profitability of a simple trend-following trading strategies implies the potential for constructing a more profitable trading system by incorporating the former into the latter

A Conceptualisation of innovative organisation of an ICT company: A focus on the impact of ‘innovative milieu’

Purpose: This paper investigates key elements for supporting strategic management behaviour with actionable implications for multinational corporations in the ICT business sector. Design/methodology/approach: Samsung was chosen as a research case. A qualitative approach was applied to this study to develop a discussion framework with key elements which support innovative organisational behaviour. Findings: From an analysis of secondary data of academic discussions relating with business behaviour of Samsung, five key themes were developed (e.g., Direction and driving force; Understanding the market; Management system; Organisational strategies; Review & evaluation). Further discussions were expanded from the framework with five key themes revealed a catalytic factor to foster an innovative behaviour of the organisation. Discussions: It has been found that close communications with stakeholders and the impact of innovative milieu should be a catalytic factor to enhance dynamic innovative actions within the organisation. Especially in the competitive ICT business sector, it has been suggested that the inter-organisational and internal learning attitudes covering both individuals and organisational proactiveness should be focused to sustain the businesses. Moreover, organisational innovation can be achieved from the collaborative ‘innovative milieu’ which enhances the proactive innovations

Precursor luminescence near the collapse of laser-induced bubbles in alkali-salt solutions

A precursor luminescence pulse consisting of atomic line emission is observed as much as 150 nanoseconds prior to the collapse point of laser-induced bubbles in alkali-metal solutions. The timing of the emission from neutral Na, Li, and K atoms is strongly dependent on the salt concentration, which appears to result from resonant radiation trapping by the alkali atoms in the bubble. The alkali emission ends at the onset of the blackbody luminescence pulse at the bubble collapse point, and the duration of the blackbody pulse is found to be reduced by up to 30% as the alkali salt concentration is increased.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/84214/1/CAV2009-final166.pd

A comprehensive stability indicator for banks

Stability indicators are essential to banks in order to identify instability caused by adverse economic circumstances or increasing risks such as customer defaults. This paper develops a novel comprehensive stability indicator (CSI) that can readily be used by individual banks, or by regulators to benchmark financial health across banks. The CSI incorporates the three key risk factors of Creditworthiness, Conditions and Capital (3Cs), using a traffic light system (green, orange and red) to classify bank risk. The CSI achieves similar outcomes in ranking the risk of 20 US banks to the much more complex US Federal Reserve Dodd–Frank stress tests

Isogeometric analysis for functionally graded microplates based on modified couple stress theory

Analysis of static bending, free vibration and buckling behaviours of functionally graded microplates is investigated in this study. The main idea is to use the isogeometric analysis in associated with novel four-variable refined plate theory and quasi-3D theory. More importantly, the modified couple stress theory with only one material length scale parameter is employed to effectively capture the size-dependent effects within the microplates. Meanwhile, the quasi-3D theory which is constructed from a novel seventh-order shear deformation refined plate theory with four unknowns is able to consider both shear deformations and thickness stretching effect without requiring shear correction factors. The NURBS-based isogeometric analysis is integrated to exactly describe the geometry and approximately calculate the unknown fields with higher-order derivative and continuity requirements. The convergence and verification show the validity and efficiency of this proposed computational approach in comparison with those existing in the literature. It is further applied to study the static bending, free vibration and buckling responses of rectangular and circular functionally graded microplates with various types of boundary conditions. A number of investigations are also conducted to illustrate the effects of the material length scale, material index, and length-to-thickness ratios on the responses of the microplates.Comment: 57 pages, 14 figures, 18 table