Informatica

In this paper, we propose a framework for extracting translation memory from a corpus of fiction and non-fiction books. In recent years, there have been several proposals to align bilingual corpus and extract translation memory from legal and technical documents. Yet, when it comes to an alignment of the corpus of translated fiction and non-fiction books, the existing alignment algorithms give low precision results. In order to solve this low precision problem, we propose a new method that incorporates existing alignment algorithms with proactive learning approach. We define several feature functions that are used to build two classifiers for text filtering and alignment. We report results on English-Lithuanian language pair and on bilingual corpus from 200 books. We demonstrate a significant improvement in alignment accuracy over currently available alignment systems.

The main purpose of this article was to compare traditional binary logistic regression analysis with decision tree analysis for the evaluation of the risk of cardiovascular diseases in adult men living in the city. Patients and methods. In our study, we used data from the Multifactorial Ischemic Heart Disease Prevention Study (MIHDPS). In the MIHDPS study, a random sample of male inhabitants of Kaunas city (Lithuania) aged 40–59 years was examined between 1977 and 1980. We analysed a sample of 5626 men. Taking blood pressure lowering medicine, disability, intermittent claudication, regular smoking, a higher value of the body mass index, systolic blood pressure, age, total serum cholesterol, and walking in winter were associated with a higher probability of ischemic heart disease or cardiovascular diseases. Having more siblings and drinking alcohol were associated with a lower probability of these diseases. The binary logistic regression method showed a very slightly lower level of errors than the decision tree did (the difference between the two methods was 2.04% for ischemic heart disease (IHD) and 2.86% for cardiovascular disease (CVD), but for consumers, the decision tree is easier to understand and interpret the results. Both of these methods are appropriate to analyse cardiovascular disease data.

This paper suggests a new fast colour image cipher to meet the increasing demand for secure online image communication applications. Unlike most other existing approaches using a permutation-substitution network, the proposed algorithm consists of only a single substitution part. The keystream sequence is generated from a 4-D hyperchaotic system, whose initial conditions are determined by both the secret key and the SHA-224 cryptographic hash value of the plain-image. Favoured by the avalanche effect of hash functions, totally different keystream sequences will be generated for different images. Consequently, desired diffusion effect can be achieved after only a single round of substitution operation, whereas at least two encryption rounds are required by the state-of-the-art permutation-substitution type image ciphers. We also demonstrate the computational efficiency of the proposed algorithm by comparing it with the AES encryption algorithm. A thorough security analysis is carried out in detail, demonstrating the satisfactory security of the proposed algorithm.

In recent years, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) received great attention because of their important applications in many areas. Consequently, a need for improving their performance and efficiency, especially in energy awareness, is of a great interest. Therefore, in this paper, we proposed a lifetime improvement fixed clustering energy awareness routing protocol for WSNs named Load Balancing Cluster Head (LBCH) protocol. LBCH mainly aims at reducing the energy consumption in the network and balancing the workload over all nodes within the network. A novel method for selecting initial cluster heads (CHs) is proposed. In addition, the network nodes are evenly distributed into clusters to build balanced size clusters. Finally, a novel scheme is proposed to circulate the role of CHs depending on the energy and location information of each node in each cluster. Multihop technique is used to minimize the communication distance between CHs and the base station (BS) thus saving nodes energy. In order to evaluate the performance of LBCH, a thorough simulation has been conducted and the results are compared with other related protocols (i.e. ACBEC-WSNs-CD, Adaptive LEACH-F, LEACH-F, and RRCH). The simulations showed that LBCH overcomes other related protocols for both continuous data and event-based data models at different network densities. LBCH achieved an average improvement in the range of 2–172%, 18–145.5%, 10.18–62%, 63–82.5% over the compared protocols in terms of number of alive nodes, first node died (FND), network throughput, and load balancing, respectively.

This paper presents an optimization based mathematical modelling approach for a single source single destination crude oil facility location transshipment problem. We began by formulating a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model and use a rolling horizon heuristic to find an optimal location for a storage facility within a restricted continuous region. We next design a hybrid two-stage algorithm that combines judicious facility locations resulting from the proposed model into a previously developed column generation approach. The results indicate that improved overall operational costs can be achieved by strategically determining cost-effective locations of the transshipment facility.

The main contributions of this paper are shown as: (1) we define dual hesitant fuzzy t-norms and t-conorms; (2) based on dual hesitant fuzzy t-norms and t-conorms, we introduce a family of prioritized dual hesitant fuzzy operators to aggregate dual hesitant fuzzy information of alternatives with regard to the prioritized attributes; (3) we propose a method to handle the dual hesitant fuzzy multi-attribute decision making (MADM) problems with prioritized attributes; (4) we show that compared to other relevant studies, the developed prioritized aggregation operators take full advantage of the given decision information, avoid the loss of original information, and thus yield better final decision results.

In this paper, by unifying the dual roles of order-inducing variables, a PF weighted induced generalized weighted averaging (PFWIGOWA) operator is presented to facilitate the PF information. The key feature of the proposed operator is that it can improve the existing aggregation operators by the dual roles of its order-inducing variables. In addition, the PFWIGOWA’s desirable properties and different families are also discussed. Furthermore, an approach based on the developed operator is presented for solving multi-attribute group decision making (MAGDM) problems with PF information. Finally, the usefulness of the proposed method is illustrated in a research and development (R&D) projects selection problem.

For this article, we shall expand the TODIM model to the MADM with the picture fuzzy numbers (PFNs). Firstly, the concept, comparative method and distance of PFNs are introduced and the traditional TODIM model is presented. Then, the expanded TODIM model is developed to solve MADM problems with PFNs. Finally, a numerical example is given to verify the proposed approach.

This paper presents a simple differential speech signal coding algorithm, based on backward adaptation. The considered algorithm is executed in frame by frame manner, by implementing predictive and adaptive quantization techniques. Both prediction and adaptation are performed backward, based on the previously quantized input signal frame. This enables us to obtain high quality output signal, without increasing the bit rate. This research puts emphasis on the quantizer design, with the optimal support limit determination, and theoretical performance evaluation. Objective quality of the output signal is evaluated through signal to quantization noise ratio (SQNR). We perform theoretical and experimental analysis of the algorithm performance and provide comparative results of implementing speech signal coding techniques with similar complexity. Experimental results show that our simple differential speech coding algorithm satisfies the G.712 Recommendation for high-quality speech coding at the bit rate of 6 bits per sample. This indicates that the algorithm can be successfully implemented in high quality speech signal coding.

Quantitative and qualitative fuzzy information measures have been proposed to solve multi-attribute decision making (MADM) problems with interval–valued hesitant fuzzy information from different points. We analyse the existing fuzzy information measures of the interval-valued hesitant fuzzy sets (IVHFSs) in detail and classify them into two categories. One is based on the closeness of the data, such as the distance, and the other is based on the linear relationship or variation tendency, such as the correlation coefficient. These two kinds of information measures are actually partial measures which pay attention to only one factor of the data. Therefore, we construct a novel synthetic grey relational degree by considering both the closeness and the variation tendency factors of the data to improve the existing information measures and enhance the grey relational analysis (GRA) theory for IVHFSs. However, the notion of the synthetic grey relational degree is not only restricted to the IVHFSs but can be extended to other sets. Furthermore, we employ two practical MADM examples about emergency management evaluation and pattern recognition to validate and compare the proposed synthetic grey relational degree with other information measures, which demonstrate its superiorities in discrimination and accuracy.