Predicting optimal facility location without customer locations

Deriving meaningful insights from location data helps businesses make better decisions. One critical decision made by a business is choosing a location for its new facility. Optimal location queries ask for a location to build a new facility that optimizes an objective function. Most of the existing works on optimal location queries propose solutions to return best location when the set of existing facilities and the set of customers are given. However, most businesses do not know the locations of their customers. In this paper, we introduce a new problem setting for optimal location queries by removing the assumption that the customer locations are known. We propose an optimal location predictor which accepts partial information about customer locations and returns a location for the new facility. The predictor generates synthetic customer locations by using given partial information and it runs optimal location queries with generated location data. Experiments with real data show that the predictor can find the optimal location when sufficient information is provided. © 2017 Copyright held by the owner/author(s)

The DREAM complex represses growth in response to DNA damage in Arabidopsis

The DNA of all organisms is constantly damaged by physiological processes and environmental conditions. Upon persistent damage, plant growth and cell proliferation are reduced. Based on previous findings that RBR1, the only Arabidopsis homolog of the mammalian tumor suppressor gene retinoblastoma, plays a key role in the DNA damage response in plants, we unravel here the network of RBR1 interactors under DNA stress conditions. This led to the identification of homologs of every DREAM component in Arabidopsis, including previously not recognized homologs of LIN52. Interestingly, we also discovered NAC044, a mediator of DNA damage response in plants and close homolog of the major DNA damage regulator SOG1, to directly interact with RBR1 and the DREAM component LIN37B. Consistently, not only mutants in NAC044 but also the double mutant of the two LIN37 homologs and mutants for the DREAM component E2FB showed reduced sensitivities to DNA-damaging conditions. Our work indicates the existence of multiple DREAM complexes that work in conjunction with NAC044 to mediate growth arrest after DNA damage. © 2021 Rockefeller University Press. All rights reserved

A bi-dimensional empirical mode decomposition based watermarking scheme

An invisible robust, non blind watermarking scheme for digital images is presented. The proposed algorithmcombines the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and the Bi-dimensional Empirical Mode Decomposition (BEMD). Unlikeprevious works where the watermark bits are embedded directly on the wavelet coefficients, the proposed scheme suggests rather the embedding of the wavelet coefficients of the mean trend results by performing the BEMD on the host image, using Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). The watermarked image has a very good perceptual transparency. The extraction algorithm is a non-blind process, which uses the original image as a reference for retrieving the watermark. The proposed algorithm is robust against rotation, translation, compression and noise addition. It has also a superior Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) for the watermarked image. The obtained results, tested on different images by various attacks, are satisfactory in terms of imperceptibility and robustness

A Semi-Blind Watermarking Scheme for Color Images

Abstract—A DWT-based semi-blind image watermarking scheme leaves out the low pass band, and embeds the watermark in the other three bands into the coefficients that are higher than a given threshold T 1. During watermark detection, all the high pass coefficients above another threshold T 2 (T 2> T 1) are used in correlation with the original watermark [1]. In our extension to the DWT-based approach, we embed the same watermark in two bands (LL and HH) using different scaling factors for each band in the luminance layer of color image. In the watermark detection algorithm, the watermarked RGB (and possibly attacked) image is converted to the YUV model. After computing the DWT of the luminance layer, all the DWT coefficients higher than a given threshold T 2 in the LL and HH bands are selected. The next step is to compute the sum Z, where i runs over all DWT coefficients higher than a given threshold T 2 in the LL and HH bands. In each band, if Z exceeds T z, the watermark is present. Experimental results indicate that detection in the LL band is robust for one group of attacks, and detection in the HH band is robust for another group of attacks. Index Terms — semi-blind image watermarking, discrete wavelet transform, LL band, HH band, attacks. I

Robust DWT Based MPEG-1 Watermarking in Four Bands

Abstract — In this paper, we generalize an idea in recent paper that embeds a binary pattern in the form of a binary image in the wavelet domain for images. Our generalization includes all four bands (LL, LH, HL and HH) in the DWT for MPEG video sequences. We tested the proposed algorithm against twelve attacks. Embedding the watermark in lower frequencies is robust to one group of attacks, and embedding the watermark in higher frequencies is robust to another group of attacks. Index Terms — non-blind video watermarking, discrete wavelet transform, visual watermark, MPEG, attacks. I

Benchmarking land use change impacts on direct runoff in ungauged urban watersheds

This paper describes the results of benchmark testing of land use change impact on direct runoff using Soil Conservation Service-Curve Number (SCS-CN) model in two ungauged neighbouring urban watersheds (Cinar and Kadiyakuplu) in Istanbul, Turkey. To examine this impact, the model was applied to daily rainfall data using three different dated (1982, 1996 and 2012) hydrological soil groups and land use of the two ungauged urban watersheds. Finally, the impact of land use change and model performance were evaluated with the rainfall-runoff regression, the coefficient of determination and the NSE test using benchmark runoff data based on 1982 land use conditions. The results of the analysis indicate that the changing of land use types from natural surfaces to impervious surfaces has a significant impact on surface runoff. Additionally, remarkable spatial variations of the land use changes and their impact on the runoff in 1996 and 2012 were more detected in the Cinar watershed compared with the Kadiyakuplu watershed. The planning decision on land use of the watersheds, has vital role in these differences. The results of this research also reveal that change to intensive land use in urban watersheds has a significantly larger impact on runoff generation than those rainfall. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Morphometric Analysis of the Marmara Sea River Basins

Geomorphometry, the science of land-surface analysis, is widely used in geomorphology studies to understand the sediment- and flood-producing potentials of river basins. In Turkey, fluvial geomorphology studies are generally based on qualitative information, and there have been a few geomorphometry studies regarding a single river basin or several sub-basins. In general, however, there is limited morphometric information about river basins in Turkey. This study represents the first regional geomorphometry study in Turkey, and our objective is to understand the morphometric characteristics of the Marmara Sea river basins. For this purpose, we divided the Marmara Sea basin into 632 sub-basins and identified morphometric parameters for analysis. Then, we determined the bifurcation ratio (Rb), length of overland flow (lo), drainage density (Dd), texture ratio (T), stream frequency (FS), Gravelius index (Kg), basin relief (BH), ruggedness number (Rn), hypsometric curve (Hc), and hypsometric integral (Hi) of the basins. Based on topographic maps, we produced a 10-m resolution digital elevation model with whichto define the parameters. Our study results reveal that basins located north of the Marmara Sea are tectonically younger, shallower, and longer in length, with lower drainage densities and higher hypsometric integral values than the southern basins