Intelligent Product Brokering for E-Commerce: An Incremental Approach to Unaccounted Attribute Detection

This research concentrates on designing generic product-brokering agent to understand user preference towards a product category and recommends a list of products to the user according to the preference captured by the agent. The proposed solution is able to detect both quantifiable and non-quantifiable attributes through a user feedback system. Unlike previous approaches, this research allows the detection of unaccounted attributes that are not within the ontology of the system. No tedious change of the algorithm, database, or ontology is required when a new product attribute is introduced. This approach only requires the attribute to be within the description field of the product. The system analyzes the general product descriptions field and creates a list of candidate attributes affecting the user’s preference. A genetic algorithm verifies these candidate attributes and excess attributes are identified and filtered off. A prototype has been created and our results show positive results in the detection of unaccounted attributes affecting a user

Sub-band common spatial pattern (SBCSP) for brain-computer interface

Brain-computer interface (BCI) is a system to translate humans thoughts into commands. For electroencephalography (EEG) based BCI, motor imagery is considered as one of the most effective ways. Different imagery activities can be classified based on the changes in mu and/or beta rhythms and their spatial distributions. However, the change in these rhythmic patterns varies from one subject to another. This causes an unavoidable time-consuming fine-tuning process in building a BCI for every subject. To address this issue, we propose a new method called sub-band common spatial pattern (SBCSP) to solve the problem. First, we decompose the EEG signals into sub-bands using a filter bank. Subsequently, we apply a discriminative analysis to extract SBCSP features. The SBCSP features are then fed into linear discriminant analyzers (LDA) to obtain scores which reflect the classification capability of each frequency band. Finally, the scores are fused to make decision. We evaluate two fusion methods: recursive band elimination (RBE) and meta-classifier (MC). We assess our approaches on a standard database from BCI Competition III. We also compare our method with two other approaches that address the same issue. The results show that our method outperforms the other two approaches and achieves similar result as compared to the best one in the literature which was obtained by a time-consuming fine-tuning process

The eruption characteristics of the Tarim flood basalt

Integration of field investigation, regional stratigraphic comparison, remote sensing and image interpretation allow us to divide the Tarim Permian flood basalt province into three eruptive cycles listed by decreasing age; Kupukuziman flood basalt (KP), Felsic pyroclastic rocks (FP), Kaipaizileike flood basalt (KZ). KP features flood basalt and tuff; in the outcrop in Keping and Yingmaili areas, it can be differentiated into two units containing three thick layers of basaltic lava flows. These three layers decrease to one layer of basaltic lava flow in the Halahatang area; however, felsic pyroclastic rocks and lava layer thicknesses increase in the Halahatang area. FP in the outcrop in Keping area consists of ash fall tuff, ignimbrite, resedimented pyroclastic rocks, and the tuff layer interbedded with the normal elastic rocks section from top to bottom. This section is comparable to the tuff layer in the Yingmaili and Halahatang area, thus reveals one layer of lava flow covering an extensive area clue to a unit of the eruption of the FP. KZ mainly features flood basalt in its Kaipaizileike section, identifications of 4 eruptive units, 8 layers of flood basalt, and I layer of andesitic basalt were made. Traces of elastic rocks were found between eruption units, but no FP interlayers were found. This characteristic is different from Yingmaili and Halahatang volcanic se.quences, but similar to the flood basalt in Tazhong area. The differentiation between these three volcanic cycles reveals that Tarim flood basalt underwent a "flood basalt-felsic pyroclastic rocks-flood basalt " transformation, and is similar to Afro-Arabian large igneous province; thus, a comparative study between these two regions is merited

Transmit antenna selection for multiple-input multiple-output spatial modulation systems

The benefits of transmit antenna selection (TAS) invoked for spatial modulation (SM) aided multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are investigated. Specifically, we commence with a brief review of the existing TAS algorithms and focus on the recently proposed Euclidean distance-based TAS (ED-TAS) schemes due to their high diversity gain. Then, a pair of novel ED-TAS algorithms, termed as the improved QR decomposition (QRD)-based TAS (QRD-TAS) and the error-vector magnitude-based TAS (EVM-TAS) are proposed, which exhibit an attractive system performance at low complexity. Moreover, the proposed ED-TAS algorithms are amalgamated with the low-complexity yet efficient power allocation (PA) technique, termed as TAS-PA, for the sake of further improving the system's performance. Our simulation results show that the proposed TAS-PA algorithms achieve signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gains of up to 9 dB over the conventional TAS algorithms and up to 6 dB over the TAS-PA algorithm designed for spatial multiplexing systems

Membrane-less microfiltration using inertial microfluidics

Microfiltration is a ubiquitous and often crucial part of many industrial processes, including biopharmaceutical manufacturing. Yet, all existing filtration systems suffer from the issue of membrane clogging, which fundamentally limits the efficiency and reliability of the filtration process. Herein, we report the development of a membrane-less microfiltration system by massively parallelizing inertial microfluidics to achieve a macroscopic volume processing rates (~ 500 mL/min). We demonstrated the systems engineered for CHO (10–20 μm) and yeast (3–5 μm) cells filtration, which are two main cell types used for large-scale bioreactors. Our proposed system can replace existing filtration membrane and provide passive (no external force fields), continuous filtration, thus eliminating the need for membrane replacement. This platform has the desirable combinations of high throughput, low-cost, and scalability, making it compatible for a myriad of microfiltration applications and industrial purposes.Singapore. National Research Foundation (Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology)United States. Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (Grant DE-AR0000294

Multiple Unpinned Dirac Points in Group-Va Single-layers with Phosphorene Structure

Emergent Dirac fermion states underlie many intriguing properties of graphene, and the search for them constitute one strong motivation to explore two-dimensional (2D) allotropes of other elements. Phosphorene, the ultrathin layers of black phosphorous, has been a subject of intense investigations recently, and it was found that other group-Va elements could also form 2D layers with similar puckered lattice structure. Here, by a close examination of their electronic band structure evolution, we discover two types of Dirac fermion states emerging in the low-energy spectrum. One pair of (type-I) Dirac points is sitting on high-symmetry lines, while two pairs of (type-II) Dirac points are located at generic $k$-points, with different anisotropic dispersions determined by the reduced symmetries at their locations. Such fully-unpinned (type-II) 2D Dirac points are discovered for the first time. In the absence of spin-orbit coupling, we find that each Dirac node is protected by the sublattice symmetry from gap opening, which is in turn ensured by any one of three point group symmetries. The spin-orbit coupling generally gaps the Dirac nodes, and for the type-I case, this drives the system into a quantum spin Hall insulator phase. We suggest possible ways to realize the unpinned Dirac points in strained phosphorene.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figure