Treatment of imprecision in data repositories with the aid of KNOLAP

Traditional data repositories introduced for the needs of business processing, typically focus on the storage and querying of crisp domains of data. As a result, current commercial data repositories have no facilities for either storing or querying imprecise/ approximate data. No significant attempt has been made for a generic and applicationindependent representation of value imprecision mainly as a property of axes of analysis and also as part of dynamic environment, where potential users may wish to define their “own” axes of analysis for querying either precise or imprecise facts. In such cases, measured values and facts are characterised by descriptive values drawn from a number of dimensions, whereas values of a dimension are organised as hierarchical levels. A solution named H-IFS is presented that allows the representation of flexible hierarchies as part of the dimension structures. An extended multidimensional model named IF-Cube is put forward, which allows the representation of imprecision in facts and dimensions and answering of queries based on imprecise hierarchical preferences. Based on the H-IFS and IF-Cube concepts, a post relational OLAP environment is delivered, the implementation of which is DBMS independent and its performance solely dependent on the underlying DBMS engine

Managing regime stability: The 2018 presidential elections in authoritarian Russia

On 18 March 2018, Vladimir Putin was reelected for a fourth term as president of Russia, receiving 77 per cent of the votes. He will remain in office for another six years, up to 2024. While this result did not come as a surprise, political events in the run-up to the election require more attention. Not only did protests take place in cities all over Russia; liberal elites were also strikingly present in both political and economic discussions, occasionally openly challenging the existing system. At the same time, the regime demonstrated a high level of tolerance vis-à-vis such challengers. These observations appear surprising in the context of Russia’s authoritarian political system. The paper analyzes two cases of political confrontation in the context of the 2018 elections: Xenia Sobchak’s presidential campaign and the competition between the economic groupings around the liberal Kudrin and the statist “Stolypin Club”. It can be shown that in both cases, the roots of the seemingly independent political debates can be traced back to initiatives of the existing regime. On the basis of this observation, the paper comes to the following two conclusions: First, a certain level of political controversy is regarded as important for legitimizing the regime. This shows, secondly, that the “electoral authoritarian” regime in Russia has to respond to expectations of its citizens, which include the demand for political options. Overall, this paper suggests that despite its turn to increased authoritarianism and repression in the last years, the Russian government attempts to manage political stability by applying a mix of certain freedoms as well as restrictions

Optimization of the Pasture Resource in Boundary Environments as a Basis for Regional Nature Management

In spite of the globalization processes encompassing all spheres of human life and activity, land remains the main resource and provides the feeding source for population and the fodder base for livestock rearing. On the other hand, the activity of local communities can have important global consequences. The study area that includes Lake Baikal’s western shore (East Siberia) and the lake’s largest island exemplifies the traditional type of nature management, namely, grazing management which was originated by an indigenous population within the context of suitable natural climatic conditions. This investigation furnished an opportunity to make an assessment of the status of this sector and of the district’s ecological situation, as well as to propose an optimal nature management scheme

The notion of H-IFS in data modelling

In this paper we revise the context of "value imprecision", as part of an knowledge-based environment We present our approach for including value imprecision as pan of a non-rigid hierarchical structures of organization. This led us to introduce the concept of closure of an Intuitionistic fuzzy set over a universe that has a hierarchical structure. Intuitively, in the closure of this Intuitionistic fuzzy set, the "kind of" relation is taken into account by propagating the degree associated wit an element to its sub-elements in the hierarchy. We introduce the automatic analysis according to concepts defined as part of a knowledge hierarchy in order to guide the query answering as part of an integrated database environment with the aid of hierarchical intuitionistic fuzzy sets

Contextual Knowledge and Information Fusion for Maritime Piracy Surveillance

Proceedings of: NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on Prediction and Recognition of Piracy Efforts Using Collaborative Human-Centric Information Systems, Salamanca, 19-30 September, 2011Though piracy accounts for only a small fraction of the general losses of the maritime industry it creates a serious threat to the maritime security because of the connections between organized piracy and wider criminal networks and corruption on land. Fighting piracy requires monitoring the waterways, harbors,and criminal networks on the land to increase the ability of the decision makers to predict piracy attracts and manage operations to prevent or contain them. Piracy surveillance involves representing and processing huge amount heterogeneous information often uncertain, unreliable, and irrelevant within a specific context to detect and recognize suspicious activities to alert decision makers on vessel behaviors of interest with minimal false alarm. The paper discusses the role of information fusion, and context representation and utilization in building an piracy surveillance picture.This paper has utilized the results of the research activity supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC and CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485)Publicad

The notion of H-IFS -an approach for enhancing query capabilities in Oracle10g

Query answering requirements for a knowledge based treatment of user requests led us to introduce the concept of closure of an Intuitionistic fuzzy set over a universe that has a hierarchical structure. We introduce the automatic analysis of queries according to concepts defined as part of a knowledge based hierarchy in order to guide the query answering as part of an integrated database environment with the aid of hierarchical Intuitionistic fuzzy sets, H-IFS. In this paper based on the notion of H-IFS we propose an ad-hoc utility build on top of Oracle10g that allows us to enhance the query capabilities of by providing better and knowledgeable answers to user’s requests. The theoretical aspects as well the practical issues and achieved results are presented throughout the rest of the paper

The influence of punctural millimeter wave therapy on clinical presentation of patients with essential hypertention

Aim: to estimate the influence of punctural millimeter wave therapy on clinical presentation. Material and methods. This study includes 102 patients with essential hypertension the I and II stage. Patients were divided into three equal groups depending on the method of treatment: some of them received procedures of punctural millimeter wave therapy, some of them received these procedures as the "placebo" and those who had not received specified procedures. Dynamics of clinical symptomatology and condition of eye bottom vessels was estimated. It was shown that addition of punctural millimeter wave therapy in complex therapy of patients with essential hypertension promotes the expressed regress of clinical symptomatology and state normalization the retinal vessels at these patients. Results. Addition of punctural millimeter wave therapy into the complex therapy was shown to lead to pronounced regress of clinical symptoms. Conclusion. The received results allow to recommend this method to be used in clinical practice for treating patients with essential hypertension

Glandular odontogenic cyst—a review of characteristic features, treatment, and recurrence

INTRODUCTION: The glandular odontogenic cyst is classified as a developmental epithelial odontogenic cyst and defined as “arising in the tooth-bearing areas of the jaws and characterized by an epithelial lining with cuboidal or columnar cells both at the surface and lining crypts or cyst-like spaces within the thickness of the epithelium”. AIM: This review outlines the epidemiology, clinical and radiological presentation, histological characteristics, additional markers aiding in the correct diagnosis, treatment modalities, and recurrence rates of glandular odontogenic cysts. MATERIALS AND METHODS: For the purpose of this review, literature reviews and case reports with included literature reviews from the Scopus, PubMed, and ScienceDirect databases were used. The bibliography of the selected articles was additionally analyzed. RESULTS: The glandular odontogenic cyst is a relatively rare entity, clinically and radiographically non-specific. It is often misdiagnosed because of its overlapping histopathological features with other odontogenic cysts such as lateral periodontal or botryoid cyst, dentigerous and radicular cysts with mucous metaplasia, and central mucoepidermoid carcinoma. Regarding the treatment, both conservative and radical methods may be applied. These cysts have a high propensity for recurrence and display an aggressive behavior. CONCLUSION: Clinically and radiographically glandular odontogenic cysts can resemble several other lesions of the jaws, which denotes the importance of a precise histopathological diagnosis. The choice of treatment should be based on the degree of aggressive behavior of the cyst. Meticulous examination, appropriate treatment planning, and sufficient follow-up periods are key to a successful outcome