Search

This paper is concerned with the stability of switched systems with unstable subsystems under a novel switching signal. By establishing the free-quasi-alternative switching signal where switches are admissible between any two subsystems, the global exponential stability of the switched system is discussed. Compared with stability criteria under the quasi-alternative switching signal, switches among unstable subsystems are allowable, and the restriction that all unstable subsystems should reside for short is relaxed. The stability results are more general and less conservative in this paper, which is illustrated with a numerical example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The initial information contribution of nodes is normalized by utilizing their degree and two network properties, and the size of the initial information contribution of nodes is adjusted with the help of a free parameter. • The average degree of the intermediate nodes between the source node and destination node is considered to achieve the global information transmission between them. • The size of the initial information contribution of nodes and three ways of information transmission are applied to construct the algorithm proposed in the paper. • The proposed algorithm has great advantage in the effectiveness, robustness, and practicability of link prediction compared with most benchmark algorithms. Many link prediction algorithms have originated from the process of information transmission between nodes in recent years. Despite these algorithms can obtain great prediction results, there may be also some limitations. For instance, the size of the initial information amount of nodes is ignored when these kinds of algorithms are constructed. Aiming at this issue, a link prediction algorithm based on the initial information contribution of nodes is proposed in this paper. First of all, the initial information contribution of nodes is quantified by utilizing some topological information around them and an adjustable parameter. In the next, three ways of bidirectional information transmission between nodes are analyzed. After that, the total information amount that received by two nodes through three ways of information transmission is applied to measure the structural similarity between them, to design the link prediction algorithm. At last, the experimental results on sixteen real-world networks demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has great advantages in effectiveness and robustness, compared with ten mainstream benchmark indices. More than that, in order to verify the application performance of the proposed algorithm in the practical scenario, our algorithm is also employed in some social domains, such as the Facebook and crime networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Film evaluation is of considerable significance to the development of the film and TV industry. A film evaluation is usually a qualitative evaluation. Existing research focuses on transforming qualitative evaluation into numerical values and analyzing numerical values. However, existing methods have a semantic loss in the quantization process, and performance degradation occurs in the mass data. In this paper, a graph convolutional network based on object relationships (OR-GCN) is proposed under linguistic environment and applied to film classification and ranking. First, the dominant matrix is obtained according to the evaluation between objects, and the object relationship is constructed by using the dominant matrix. Second, the graph convolutional network is used to extract the object relationships, deeply learned the relationship between objects, and classified and sorted the objects. Finally, on film review data of Douban (douban.com), the films are classified and sorted by the OR-GCN model, and the effectiveness and the non-randomness of this method are verified by the accurate analysis and ROC. At the same time, our method is applied to the public dataset to illustrate the performance and universality. In this paper, the proposed OR-GCN model can avoid linguistic quantization and only consider the relationship between objects, and provide a new perspective for solving language term set problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The security of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) against cyberattacks is essential in critical applications. Resilient control is an effective CPS security method that aims to mitigate cyberattacks in the physical domain of the CPSs. While resilient control has been investigated for different types of attacks, actuator saturation caused by cyberattacks has not been mentioned and addressed. To tackle this issue, a resilient control strategy is presented in this paper for CPSs under actuator saturation resulting from cyberattacks. It consists of an extended state observer and an anti-saturation resilient controller. The state observer estimates unknown system states and attacks, while the controller aims to resist the actuator saturation. The controller is designed by adopting Barrier Lyapunov function, Hyperbolic tangent sigmoid function, and the Nussbaum function. The CPSs with the resilient control strategy presented in this paper not only maintain their stability but also behave with enhanced resilience against cyberattacks, Case studies on a cyber-physical robotic arm system are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed resilient control strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an adaptive dynamic multiobjective optimization algorithm for handling dynamic multiobjective optimization problems with variable environmental change types. Most of the existing dynamic multiobjective optimization problems (DMOPs) only deal with a single change type in the environment. Therefore, we design a set of DMOPs that has variable and mixed change types. Next, this paper proposes an adaptive dynamic multiobjective optimization algorithm (DMOA) focusing on the change types, to solve DMOPs with variable change types. It can detect the different types of environmental changes. The main purpose of a DMOA is to find the Pareto-optimal set (PS) of each environment. Therefore, the change types of DMOPs mainly contain two categories: PS changes over time and PS remains constant. After detecting the change type, an adaptive response strategy is activated to react to environmental changes. If PS changes over time, a classification prediction (CP) strategy is active to respond to environmental changes. If PS remains constant, a dynamic mutation (DM) strategy works to react to environmental changes. The proposed algorithm is extensively studied through comparison with several advanced DMOAs, thereby demonstrating its effectiveness in working out complex DMOPs with variable change types and on the parameter-tuning problem of PID controllers for dynamic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Jointly consider the task dependency and edge cloud environment. • Combine deep reinforcement learning and genetic algorithm. • Generate the initial population of genetic algorithm by DQN. Edge computing can greatly decrease the delay between users and cloud servers, which can significantly improve system service performance. However, it remains challenging for more efficient scheduling and allocation of users' application demands with dependence constraints to edge cloud servers. Due to the randomness of the initial population, traditional intelligent optimization algorithms have poor convergence speed in addressing resource scheduling. Therefore, to minimize the execution time of the application, this paper proposes a hybrid algorithm to solve the resource scheduling problem with parallelism and subtask dependency. To improve the convergence speed of the algorithm, this paper makes full use of the features of deep Q networks (DQN) and genetic algorithms (GA). The initial population of GA is generated using DQN. Finally, to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm, this paper selects three real scientific workflows for experiments. The experimental results show that the hybrid algorithm can converge quickly and improve the optimization effect in a short time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Local and global self-attention mechanisms are used for character embedding. • CNN with multi-size filters are used to extract character information for NER. • A cross-attention method that fuses character and word embedding for NER is proposed • A modified Mogrifier LSTM is presented to improve the performance of NER. • Proposed methods integrated with a transformer-based model achieve good performance. Clinical and biomedical concept extraction is critical in medical analysis using clinical and biomedical documents from professional literature, EHRs and PHRs. Named entity recognition (NER) accurately marks essential information in the literature based on the characteristics of the target entity, providing a method for extracting clinical and biomedical concepts. The performance of NER is heavily embedding-dependent, so recent studies have proposed the method of generating word embedding from character-level information, which can strengthen the representation ability for word embedding. In this paper, we present a novel neural network model including an attention mechanism network and a convolutional neural network (CNN) to further improve character-level embedding. First, an attention mechanism is applied simultaneously to the local and global character embedding. Then, a CNN with multi-size filters is used to extract more information from the character level, which can capture more meaningful features from words with various lengths. In addition, a cross-attention method is used to leverage the interaction between word embedding and character embedding to generate the final word representation. Finally, we modified Mogrifier LSTM to make it suitable for NER tasks and integrated it into our model. Experimental results show that our method is effective and that the model performs better than the baseline models. We also apply our methods proposed in this paper to the transformer-based model and obtain a 90.36 F1-score on NCBI-Disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the basic principles and methods of information theory, the operation way of neural coding is studied and analyzed by using the minimum mutual information and the maximum entropy principle. This paper describes how the principles of minimum mutual information and maximum entropy are used to evaluate the amount of information in neural responses. Its main contribution is as follows: (1) that the expression of neural information is closely related to the utilization of neural energy, and it is found that the highly evolved nervous system strictly follows the two basic principles of economy and efficiency in energy consumption and utilization; (2) In order to verify the relationship between neural information processing and energy utilization, this paper uses the concept of energy-efficiency ratio to measure the economy and high efficiency of the nervous system in term of energy utilization by using the maximum entropy principle; (3) The numerical results show that the energy consumed by the nervous system reflects not only the internal law of neural information conduction and processing, but also the self-organization structure of neural information coding. The results suggest that energy neural coding, a novel neural information processing method, can be used to understand how brain activity works. Such a coding pattern can not only be extended to research the large-scale neuroscience field, but also unify brain models at all levels by use of the energy theory. This will provide a scientific theoretical basis for the exploration of how the brain works and the computational principles of brain-like artificial intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The paper proposes the TCP-BAST approach for traffic congestion prediction with bilateral alternation. • Spatial-temporal alternation (STA) module and temporal-spatial module (TSA) are proposed to capture both the correlation and the heterogeneity between the spatiality and temporality simultaneously. • A spatial-temporal fusion module is proposed to fuse the multi-grained spatial-temporal features derived from the STA module and the TSA module. Accurate traffic congestion prediction is crucial for efficient urban intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Though most existing methods attempt to characterize spatial correlation and temporal correlation in traffic congestion, few of them consider spatial heterogeneity and temporal heterogeneity: spatial correlation depends on temporality, and temporal correlation depends on spatiality in traffic congestion. To address this problem, this paper proposes a novel approach called TCP-BAST with bilateral alternation to simultaneously capture both the correlation and the heterogeneity between spatiality and temporality to improve traffic congestion prediction. First, to capture spatial correlation and spatial heterogeneity, we propose a spatial–temporal alternation (STA) module with multi-head graph attention networks and temporal embedding. Second, to capture temporal correlation and temporal heterogeneity, we propose a temporal-spatial alternation (TSA) module with multi-head masked attention networks and spatial embedding. Third, to predict the traffic congestion of multiple road sections in a traffic network, we propose a spatial–temporal fusion (STF) module to fuse the multi-grained spatial-temporal features derived from the STA and TSA modules. The experimental results on a real-world traffic dataset demonstrate that the proposed TCP-BAST approach outperforms the baseline methods in terms of both the mean absolute error (MAE) and the root mean squared error (RMSE). Both spatial-temporal alternation and temporal-spatial alternation are important for improving traffic congestion prediction, with the former being more critical than the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dempster-Shafer evidence theory is widely used in the field of information fusion since it satisfies weaker conditions than probability theory. Nevertheless, the description space of the current evidence theory is only real space, and it cannot effectively describe and process the uncertain information in the face of multidimensional characteristic data and periodic data with phase angle changes. Thus, in this paper, evidence theory is extended to the complex Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. The mass function that is used to describe the uncertain information extends from the real space to the complex space, named as complex mass function. The modulus of the complex mass function indicates the degree of support for the proposition. Moreover, other basic concepts that are used to describe uncertainty information are also defined and discussed. To perfect the complex evidence theory, the complex Dempster rule of combination is supplemented. The complex Dempster rule of combination is an extension of Dempster rule of combination, which satisfies the commutative and associative laws just as Dempster rule of combination does, and it can degenerate into Dempster rule of combination. This paper also proposes a method to generate complex mass function and apply it to target recognition. The recognized results show that compared with the mass function, the target recognition rate is larger by using the complex mass function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the simplicity of the learning strategy, the original particle swarm optimization (PSO) has various deficiencies, such as entrapment in local optima, rapid loss of diversity and a poor balance between exploration and exploitation, especially for many complex optimization problems. To overcome these shortcomings, this paper proposes a hybrid particle swarm optimizer with fitness-distance balance and individual self-exploitation strategies, namely, HPSO-FDB-ISE. First, to reduce the probability of becoming trapped in a local optimum for the population, fitness-distance balance is employed to construct an alternative learning exemplar to the global best position. Second, individual self-exploitation is introduced to achieve intelligent exploitation by learning from individual current information for particles. Finally, a nonlinear time-varying inertia weight is used to efficiently balance the exploitation and exploration in the search process. The proposed HPSO-FDB-ISE is evaluated on the CEC 2017 test suite against six state-of-the-art meta -heuristics and seven state-of-the-art PSO variants. Experimental results and statistical analysis reveal that the proposed HPSO-FDB-ISE algorithm yields excellent performances compared to other algorithms that are considered in this paper in the majority of cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a novel methodology to perform topological regularization in multivariate probabilistic modeling by using sparse, complex, networks which represent the system's dependency structure and are called information filtering networks (IFN). This methodology can be directly applied to covariance selection problem providing an instrument for sparse probabilistic modeling with both linear and non-linear multivariate probability distributions such as the elliptical and generalized hyperbolic families. It can also be directly implemented for topological regularization of multicollinear regression. In this paper, I describe in detail an application to sparse modeling with multivariate Student-t. A specific expectation–maximization likelihood maximization procedure over a sparse chordal network representation is proposed for this sparse Student-t case. Examples with real data from stock prices log-returns and from artificially generated data demonstrate applicability, performances, robustness and potentials of this methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop a novel multiattribute decision making (MADM) approach based on Fermatean hesitant fuzzy sets (FHFSs) and the modified VIKOR method. Firstly, we propose the definition of distance measures of FHFSs and present its properties. Further, taking the effectiveness of FHFSs for dealing with ambiguous and imprecise data in MADM problems, this paper proposes the remoteness index-based Fermatean hesitant fuzzy-VIKOR (FHF-VIKOR) MADM method. The generalized distance measure for FHFSs is subsequently employed to establish the notions of remoteness indices with the positive ideal and the negative ideal remoteness indices. The objective weighting procedure is developed using the maximum deviation principle and the generalized distance measure to obtain the attributes' weights. Some examples are discussed to reveal the performance of the proposed MADM method. Finally, the advantages of the proposed MADM method in terms of the robustness and the flexibility are shown by a comparative study. The proposed MADM method based on FHFSs and the modified VIKOR method can overcome the drawbacks of the existing MADM methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A novel random neighbor elite guided mutation strategy named "DE/current-to-rnbest/1", which is a general mutation framework. • Random neighbor region formed by several random individuals in the population. • Two special cases of "DE/current-to-rnbest/1": "DE/current-to-best/1" and "DE/current-to-pbest/1" • Adaptive neighbor size adjustment at the individual level based on the Cauchy distribution. • Exploring and exploiting the solution space appropriately to find global optima. Optimization problems not only become more and more ubiquitous in various fields, but also become more and more difficult to optimize nowadays, which seriously challenge the effectiveness of existing optimizers like different evolution (DE). To effectively solve this kind of problems, this paper proposes a random neighbor elite guided differential evolution (RNEGDE) algorithm. Specifically, to let individuals explore and exploit the solution space properly, a novel random neighbor elite guided mutation strategy named "DE/current-to-rnbest/1" is first proposed to mutate individuals. In this mutation strategy, several individuals randomly selected from the population for each individual to be updated along with the individual itself form a neighbor region, and then the best one in such a region is adopted as the guiding exemplar to mutate the individual. Due to the random selection of neighbors and the directional guidance of elites, this strategy is expected to direct individuals to promising areas fast without serious loss of diversity. Notably, it is found that two popular mutation strategies, namely "DE/current-to-best/1" and "DE/current-to-pbest/1", are two special cases of the proposed "DE/current-to-rnbest/1". Further, to alleviate the sensitivity of the proposed algorithm to the involved parameters, this paper utilizes the Gaussian distribution and the Cauchy distribution to adaptively generate parameter values for each individual with the mean value of the Gaussian distribution and the position value of the Cauchy distribution adaptively adjusted based on the evolutionary information of the population. With the above two techniques, the proposed algorithm is expected to effectively search the solution space. At last, extensive experiments conducted on one widely used benchmark function set with three different dimension sizes demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves highly competitive or even much better performance than several compared state-of-the-art peer methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a practical fixed-time bipartite consensus control framework for the uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems (MASs) via using a barrier Lyapunov function (BLF)-based approach. Distinguish from the most existing results, the unknown nonlinearities of MASs in this paper are tackled by utilizing the robustness of BLF instead of applying fuzzy logic systems/neural networks approximating. In order to avoid feasibility verification in the traditional BLF method, a piecewise and differentiable function named the shift function is skillfully inserted into the coordination transformation of the controller design process, allowing not only the initial value of MASs states to be chosen arbitrarily, but also the settling time of bipartite consensus errors can be pre-designated. According to the backstepping framework, an approximated-free control algorithm is developed by combining the shift function with BLF, which guarantees that for any initial state of MASs, the outputs of all the agents can achieve the practical fixed-time bipartite consensus tracking, and all the signals in closed-loop systems are bounded. Especially, the settling time and the tracking error accuracy can be appointed by the designer. Finally, simulation results are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed control method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An DBSCAN extension for online structural clustering is proposed. • Information granules are constructed to describe structures of shaped clusters. • Granular computing and rule-based modeling are applied for online clustering. • Good performances are achieve on accuracy and time in online structural clustering. In online structural clustering, general density-based clustering algorithms have problems of low scalability and high computation cost, especially in big data analysis, this paper proposed a DBSCAN extension algorithm with consideration of granule computing to handle these problems. This algorithm mainly makes use of advantages of DBSCAN and granular descriptors to realize effective and efficient structural online clustering. Frist, to extract structural clusters effectively, DBSCAN is considered as the basic clustering algorithm in this research. Second, since DBSCAN's results are not numerical for online testing, this paper proposes to apply granule computing (GrC) to construct information granules describing arbitrarily-shaped clusters from DBSCAN. Third, to realize an efficient online structural clustering, especially in big data analysis, a series of granular fuzzy models are built with consideration of structural information, then a rule-based model is formed for guiding online clustering of new testing data. Through the proposed method, the online clustering ability of DBSCAN is developed with reduced computation cost, meanwhile the structural clustering ability is also retained in online testing. Experiments on synthetic data, publicly available data and real-world data are discussed, online testing accuracy and computation time are evaluated to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The paper proposes two weighted c-medoid batch SOM for dissimilarity data. • The paper extends the batch SOM with C-medoids and multi-medoids algorithms. • The training of the new batch SOM algorithms are based on suitable cost functions. • The paper gives the cluster representatives and relevance weights of the c-medoids. • The paper provides the optimal assignment of the objects to the clusters. • The paper gives a meaningful evaluation of the proposed methods. This paper proposes two new batch SOM algorithms for dissimilarity data, namely RBSOM-CWMdd and RBSOM-ACWMdd, both designed to give a crisp partition aiming to preserve the topological properties of the data on the map. RBSOM-CWMdd is a batch SOM algorithm for dissimilarity data where each cluster representative is a set of weighted objects whose cardinality is fixed, being the same for all clusters. These weights are computed according to each object relevance to the referred cluster. Likewise, RBSOM-ACWMdd is a batch SOM algorithm for dissimilarity data where each cluster representative is a vector of weighted objects selected according to its relevance to the referred cluster. Therefore, the dimensionality of the cluster representatives self adapt to the particular dataset analysed, change at each algorithm iteration and can differ from one cluster to another. Experiments with 12 datasets from the UCI machine learning repository regarding the metrics of Normalized Mutual Information, Topological error, and Silhouette Coefficient showed that the proposed methods improved, respectively, the traditional set-medoids and multi-medoids SOM methods with a competitive temporal complexity. In addition, it was performed an application study on Ecoli dataset where the proposed RBSOM-ACWMdd algorithms produced a better mapping from a clustering point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given a finite set of alternatives, the ranking problem statement builds a preference pre-order (partial or complete) on this set. In this paper, we are interested in multiple criteria ranking problems with a hierarchical structure of criteria; more precisely, we are interested in the existing hierarchical E lectre III method. This method requires eliciting several preference parameters (namely, the weights and the veto thresholds). A direct elicitation of such parameters can be cognitively very demanding; thus, it is adequate to define the parameters in a way that requires much less cognitive effort from the decision-maker. The model parameters can be indirectly elicited by using holistic information provided by the decision-maker; this information can be given in the form of a ranking on a set of reference alternatives and some additional preference information. This paper proposes an aggregation-disaggregation approach for inferring the model parameters of the hierarchical E lectre III based on an evolutionary algorithm. To verify the applicability and validity of the proposed preference disaggregation methodology, an illustrative example is addressed regarding the ranking of a set of universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a gradient neural network (GNN) to solve the repetitive motion generation scheme of the omnidirectional four-wheel mobile manipulator. The overall kinematics model of the omnidirectional mobile platform and the manipulator fixed on omnidirectional platform are established. First, the analysis of the current repetitive movement generation (RMG) scheme for the kinematic control of the manipulator can find that the position error does not theoretically converge to zero and fluctuates. This paper analyzes the phenomenon from a theoretical viewpoint and reveals that the current RMG scheme has position errors associated with joint errors. Then, to solve the shortcomings of the current solution, an orthogonal projection repetitive motion generation (OPRMG) method is proposed, which theoretically eliminates position errors and decouples joint space and Cartesian space. Using the gradient descent method to establish the corresponding GNN aided with the speed compensation, and provide theoretical analysis to reflect the stability. Moreover, the joint speed limit in the RMG scheme is extended to nonconvex constraints. The advantages of the OPRMG scheme are demonstrated by the simulation results of the omnidirectional mobile manipulator (OMM) synthesized by the current GNNRMG and the proposed GNNOPRMG. In addition, by adjusting the feedback coefficient, the high performance of the OPRMG scheme can be verified by simulation and comparison of the position error (PE) and joint error (JE) of the OMM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the synchronization issue of multiweighted and directed coupled reaction-diffusion neural networks with hybrid coupling (MDCRDNNHC) based on boundary control. Spatial information is used for synchronization accompanied by state information, which is called hybrid coupling. By constructing appropriate controllers located in the boundary, synchronization matter for MDCRDNNHC with nonzero boundary values is solved. Inner coupling matrices (IMs) and outer coupling matrices (OMs) can be directed, competitive and even not connected in this paper. We propose a novel strategy to fuse current two technical routes for directed networks with multiweights. For MDCRDNNHC with diagonal IMs, we prove that if the weighted (added) combinations of multiple OMs for each dimension are strongly connected, and the Chebyshev distance among their normalized left eigenvectors of added OMs corresponding to zero eigenvalue for each dimension is less than a threshold, then synchronization can be attained. In addition, it is also applicable for positive definite but non-diagonal IMs under this fusion technique. Numerical examples are finally provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of these theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the distributed prescribed-time optimization problem of multi-agent systems (MASs). Considering the strongly convex function of time-invariant for each agent, the two-stage distributed prescribed-time optimization algorithm is designed based on the idea of zero-gradient-sum. Meanwhile, in order to save system resources, the event-triggered control mechanism is introduced into the algorithm in this paper. In the first stage, the distributed prescribed-time event-triggered algorithm is proposed to minimize the local objective functions of each agent at the prescribed-time interval. In the second stage, the algorithm is driven to optimize the global cost function while maintaining the gradient sum of all local cost functions to zero. The criteria for achieving the consensus and optimization of MASs are obtained by using Lyapunov stability theory and optimization theory. Moreover, it is proved in detail that using the two triggering functions will not result in Zeno behavior. The numerical example is given to demonstrate the correctness of the theoretical analysis and the effectiveness of the control algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a first attempt, the L 2 - L ∞ state estimation issue of the high-order inertial neural networks with time-varying delay is put forward in this paper. A more direct method, non-reduced order method, is adopted here rather than reducing the order of the original second-order dynamics via substitution of variables. Our main objective is to construct an appropriate state estimator, which can not only guarantee the global h-stability of the undisturbed error dynamics, but also ensure the peak value of the estimation error is kept within a certain range. Through utilizing Lyapunov theory and some simple matrix calculation, a delay-dependent criterion is presented to elaborate the state estimator conforms to the expectation. In the end, an illustrative simulation example shows the correctness of the estimation technique proposed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing a Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) is a complex task and requires expert knowledge to optimize the performance and network architecture. In this paper, a novel data-driven approach is proposed to determine the architecture of CNN models. The proposed Autonomous Convolutional Neural Networks (AutoCNNThe executable code and original numerical results can be downloaded from (https://tinyurl.com/AutoCNN)) algorithm introduces data driven strategies for addition of new convolutional layers, pruning of redundant filters and training cycle optimization. AutoCNN is evaluated using MNIST, MNIST-rot-back-image, Fashion MNIST and the ADHD200 datasets to measure the performance on small datasets with varied feature distributions. The results indicate that AutoCNN optimizes the CNN network architecture and helps maximise the classification performance. The data-driven network determination approach introduced in this paper was found to not only provides competitive performance similar to existing evolutionary computation based network determination algorithms in literature, but was found to be an effective optimization tool to improve the performance of existing CNN architectures. Further, the AutoCNN was found to highly immune to noise in the dataset and has proven to be effective method to transfer knowledge between related datasets. Therefore, the AutoCNN is a highly versatile CNN architecture determination tool that has a wide range of applications in the field of autonomous driving, medical image analysis, image enhancement, camera based security monitoring and image based fault detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop an improved linguistic interval-valued Atanassov intuitionistic fuzzy weighted averaging (ILIVAIFWA) aggregation operator (AO) of linguistic interval-valued Atanassov intuitionistic fuzzy numbers (LIVAIFNs). The ILIVAIFWA AO of LIVAIFNs presented in this paper can conquer the drawbacks of the linguistic interval-valued Atanassov intuitionistic fuzzy weighted averaging (LIVAIFWA) AO, the linguistic interval-valued Atanassov intuitionistic fuzzy ordered weighted averaging (LIVAIFOWA) AO, the linguistic interval-valued Atanassov intuitionistic fuzzy weighted geometric (LIVAIFWG) AO and the linguistic interval-valued Atanassov intuitionistic fuzzy ordered weighted geometric (LIVAIFOWG) AO of LIVAIFNs. We also develop a novel group decision making (GDM) method on the basis of the proposed ILIVAIFWA AO of LIVAIFNs. The GDM method presented in this paper can oconquer the drawbacks of the existing GDM methods in the context of LIVAIFNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimal alignments are the basis of conformance checking. For long, researchers have been devoted to the efficiency issue of computing optimal alignments. This paper focuses on the optimality issue. Specifically, we aim to find alignments with maximum synchronous moves and minimum deviations. This paper introduces a coordinate-plane search space, which allows enumerating all the possible alignments. The alignments with maximum synchronous moves are translated into the lowest-cost paths, such that heuristic strategies (such as the Dijkstra algorithm) can be applied. Both theoretical proof and experimental results show that 100% optimality can be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Difficult and expensive financing has always been a problem for domestic and foreign enterprises, and how to effectively improve financing efficiency and improve the financing environment is a key issue to be studied. LightGBM is an advanced machine learning algorithm, which uses histogram algorithm and Leaf-wise strategy with depth limitation to improve the accuracy of the model. However, there are almost no cases of applying this method to corporate financing risk prediction. Therefore, the paper establishes the LightGBM model to predict the financing risk profile of 186 enterprises. In order to compare the prediction performance of LightGBM for enterprise financing risk, the paper conducted comparison experiments using k-nearest-neighbors algorithm, decision tree algorithm, and random forest algorithm on the same data set. The experiments show that LightGBM has better prediction results than the other three algorithms for several metrics in corporate financing risk prediction. Therefore, we believe that the LightGBM algorithm can be used as an effective tool to predict the financing risk of enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Research about the intuitionistic fuzzy set theory is analyzed systematically with quantitative analysis. • The evolution of hot topics and knowledge diffusion path are investigated. • The self-citations phenomenon is deeply discussed when performing main path analysis. • The application of the intuitionistic fuzzy set in the domain of decision making is becoming more and more dominant. Since the intuitionistic fuzzy set theory was proposed, it has received widespread attention. To get a deeper understand of this field, this paper analyzes a total of 2913 papers downloaded from the Web of Science (WoS) from 1984 to 2019 from different perspectives. On the one hand, this research identifies important themes and their interrelationships, showing the thematic evolution of this field vividly. On the other hand, this research digs out the knowledge diffusion paths of this domain with the help of global and key-route main paths. From the perspective of the thematic evolution, five thematic area are detected including Intuitionistic fuzzy relation , IVIFS-Similarity , MCDM/MADM-GDM , Aggregation operator and Extensions of IFS. Among them, MCDM/MADM-GDM has evolved from an emerging theme to a motor theme being the most important topic and GDM integrating themes MADM 、 MCDM and Aggregation operator shows continuous growth. From the perspective of knowledge diffusion paths, research topic has gradually translated from theorical construction to practical application, and several factors such as self-citation, indirect citation, hierarchy and references that may influence the result of the main path are discussed. In general, this research systematically provides scholars with the development process in this domain, which is conductive to them to fully grasp the state-of-the-art research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paper, a class of unknown fractional-order nonlinear systems suffering from actuator faults are investigated. Meanwhile, an adaptive finite-time sliding mode control (SMC) approach based on approximation principle of fuzzy logic system (FLS) and backstepping layout is proposed. It is well known that the standard backstepping control has inherent computational complexity. Therefore, a type of fractional-order command filter (CF) is introduced to overcome such a shortcoming, that is, by means of fractional-order CF, the virtual input signal and its fractional derivative can be estimated properly as anticipated. Fractional-order sliding mode surfaces are constructed to diminish the filtering errors such that more better performance is guaranteed. Besides, compared to the conventional backstepping control, the CF-based fuzzy backstepping SMC approach presented in the paper not only shows the superior robustness, but also facilitates to accomplish the desired tracking control objective in finite time. The finite-time stability analysis is established on the basis of fractional-order Lyapunov method. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed methodology is identified by numerical simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most previous opinion dynamics research, the opinion evolution is usually defaulted to evolving over a single topic; however, in more general scenarios, agents often discuss several topics at the same time. This paper adopts a multidimensional opinion dynamics model in which the opinions are represented by vectors to reveal the multi-topic opinion pattern. To be more in line with reality, this paper employs a multidimensional version of the Friedkin-Johnsen (FJ) model, where each stubborn agent has a time-evolving stubbornness level. The theoretical analysis finds that the proposed model is convergent if the interpersonal influence matrix is stochastic indecomposable and aperiodic. To achieve unified consensus, opinion leaders are introduced, after which the consensus conditions for the proposed model are given. The theoretical conclusions suggest that in the proposed model, the stubborn agents are as prominent as the opinion leaders in the opinion formation process. Simulations are then conducted in two types of artificial networks, from which it is found that compared with the scalar version of the proposed model and standard multidimensional FJ models in which agents' stubbornness levels remain unchanged, the proposed model produce a more compact final opinion space. The results show that to generate smaller opinion distance and higher opinion correctness degree, it is necessary to ensure a lower proportion of stubborn agents and higher network connectivity. This is consistent with people's intuition. The population size is found to have little effect on the results, but larger number of topics result in larger opinion distances. These findings are enlightening and helpful to opinion managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Fuzzy knowledge graph is a more general description of classical knowledge graph. • The fuzzy semantic scalability between multiple associative predicates is analyzed. • The mathematical model of semantic relationship in fuzzy knowledge graph is designed. • Some fuzzy reasoning rules are presented to realize fuzzy semantic extension. • Performance of the strategy discovers more implicit valid knowledge with fuzzy semantic. As the latest achievement of the development in semiotics, knowledge graph has been recognized and widely used by more and more researchers for its rich semantic information and clear logical structure. How to discovery the deep relevant knowledge from the massive graph-structured data has become a hot spot of artificial intelligence. Considering that some predicates in knowledge graph express fuzzy relationships whose semantics are not certain, the basic schema of classical knowledge graph in the form of RDF triple cannot describe the fuzzy semantic information effectively. To counter above problems, in this paper, we present a new semantic representation and reasoning model for multiple associative predicates by introducing fuzzy theory. Concretely, the presented method defines a new fuzzy annotating strategy to represent the fuzzy semantics between associative predicates in different RDF triples. On this basis, some fuzzy reasoning rules are presented to realize fuzzy semantic extension for classical knowledge graph. Lastly, the experimental results show that our proposal can discover more implicit valid knowledge with fuzzy semantic and have a good consistency with the intuition of human judgments. Overall, the methods proposed in this paper constitute some effective ways of knowledge discovery of structured semantic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genesis and geometrical properties of fuzzy line are explored in this study. The existing studies on fuzzy geometry suggest that fuzzy lines can be characterized as a union of crisp lines with varying membership values but this characterization is not capable to identify the nature of the fuzzy point situated on the fuzzy line. Expressing fuzzy line as a collection of fuzzy points in the geometrical plane is an intended goal of this paper. In the first part, a fuzzy line has been interpreted as a fuzzification function that produces a collection of fuzzy numbers. The equivalency between the union of lines with different membership grades and collection of fuzzy numbers is also shown. In the next part, the possible nature of a fuzzy points situated on a generic fuzzy line is explored. Analogous to the concept of a line in classical geometry, this paper constructs and approximates a fuzzy line as a collection of fuzzy points. All the proposals and results are illustrated numerically and geometrically in a fuzzy geometrical plane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the fully distributed event-triggered time-varying formation control of heterogeneous linear multiagent systems is studied. To make the reference trajectory controllable and flexible, the bounded input is introduced to leader agent. The intention of this paper is to decrease the unnecessary information transmission of agents via communication topology by designing the intermittent transmission control protocol. Firstly, the adaptive state compensator is designed to evaluate the state information of leader agent based on the estimation value of leader state and two kinds of event-triggered mechanisms. Then, two types of output-feedback time-varying formation controllers are presented based on different formation feasible conditions. By theoretical analysis, the estimation error of event-triggered state compensator is proved to be uniformly ultimately bounded and the event-triggered mechanisms prevent Zeno behavior, and the formation tracking errors converge to the small region of zero. Finally, some simulation experiments are provided to support the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• To handle the uncertainty decision problems in incomplete hybrid data, a generalized three-way neighborhood decision model is proposed by distributing the interval-valued loss function to each object and averaging the interval-valued loss functions of all objects in the data-driven neighborhood class. • A matrix-based approach for representing three-way regions in the generalized three-way neighborhood decision model is presented by introducing the matrix forms of related concepts and the matrix operators. • An efficient framework for dynamically updating the three-way regions is provided when objects and attributes increase simultaneously. • An incremental algorithm based on matrix is designed for maintaining the three-way regions. • Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed incremental algorithm has an advantage in improving the computational performance. The theory of three-way decisions, as a powerful methodology of granular computing, has been widely used in making decision under uncertainty environments. Decision tasks in incomplete hybrid data including heterogeneous and missing features are of abundance in realistic situations. To deal with these tasks, some work based on three-way decisions has been investigated. However, the losses used for evaluating objects are precise real numbers, which makes these decision models have some limitations in applications when there exist missing values in incomplete hybrid data. Thus, this paper constructs a generalized three-way neighborhood decision model by assigning the interval-valued loss function to each object and further adopting an average strategy to integrate the interval-valued loss functions of objects in each data-driven neighborhood class. Moreover, considering that the objects and attributes of incomplete hybrid data will simultaneously change over time, this paper also provides an efficient framework to dynamically maintain three-way regions of the proposed model. An approach based on matrix to compute the three-way regions is first presented by introducing the matrix operations and the matrix forms of related concepts. Then, with the simultaneous variation of objects and attributes, the matrix-based incremental mechanism and algorithm are proposed for updating the three-way regions, respectively. Experimental results on nine datasets indicate that the proposed incremental algorithm can effectively improve the computational performance for evolving data in comparison with the static algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with finite-time stabilization (FTS) of linear systems by bounded event-triggered control (ETC) and self-triggered control (STC). A bounded linear ETC is firstly designed, where the time-varying control gain is only scheduled on a specified time determined by an event-triggered mechanism, such that the FTS of the closed-loop system is achieved and the communication resources are saved. Moreover, the corresponding STC, in which the updates of control law are determined by a self-triggered mechanism that only needs to monitor the previous triggered states, is designed. Specially, by exploring the properties of the parametric Lyapunov equation, the designable minimal inter-event time of the established ETC and STC is obtained, such that the Zeno phenomenon is avoided. In addition, the finite-time semi-global stabilization and the fixed-time (prescribed finite-time) stabilization of linear systems are achieved by bounded ETC and STC. What needs to be emphasized is that the finite-time stabilization in this paper can be called as the practical finite-time stabilization since the state converges to zero exponentially with a fast convergence rate after a designable time. Finally, the established algorithms are used to the design of the spacecraft rendezvous control system and their effectiveness is verified by simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-way decision, an outstanding method to handle decision-making uncertainties, relies on essentially the loss functions derived from the Bayesian risk decision process. Actually, there are plentiful loss functions that depend on the subjective judgment of decision-makers under different decision scenarios, lacking uniform and objective measurement frameworks. This study pays attention to the real clinical diagnosis, and constructs a weighted probability kernel multi-granularity three-way decision method (WKMG-TWD) integrating gray relation analysis (GRA) over a multi-source heterogeneous decision information system (MHDIS). The method establishes a standardized data-driven calculation framework of loss functions. Foremost, the multi-kernel probabilistic similarity is defined and granularity's weights with knowledge consistency are explored. Subsequently, a weighted probability kernel multi-granularity rough set (WKMGRS) is constructed in this paper. Secondly, to introduce the three-way decision, this study proposes the cost-sensitive individual loss functions considering the correlation determined by GRA between decision objects and different decision classes. Ultimately, this study establishes and applies a three-way iterative classification model to hypertension diagnosis. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness and superiority of the model. The main contribution of this paper is twofold. One is to offer a uniform calculation framework for loss functions and granularity's weights. The other is to furnish invaluable guidance for solving complex medical decision-making problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of e-commerce, more and more people are willing to post their reviews and opinions about the products they buy online. Therefore, the use of online review data for decision-making appears to be more practical and universal, and how to effectively use this kind of data to support large-scale group decision-making (LSGDM) is a worthy research direction. In this paper, we firstly use sentiment analysis to analyze online review data to derive the decision maker's (DM's) sentiment value, and apply the sentiment value to construct a social network based on a dual trust relationship, which considers both familiarity-based trust and similarity-based trust. Secondly, a directed Louvain clustering algorithm in light of dual trust relationships and a method for solving the DM's intra-group weights and the group's weights are proposed based on this network. A two-stage clustering based consensus model in light of dual trust relationships is then proposed, in which the DMs in the agreement cluster can communicate with other DMs outside of such a cluster and dynamically update the grouping using the clustering algorithm. Finally, the practicality and effectiveness of the LSGDM method proposed in this paper are verified through a real case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simplicial map neural networks (SMNNs) are topology-based neural networks with interesting properties such as universal approximation ability and robustness to adversarial examples under appropriate conditions. However, SMNNs present some bottlenecks for their possible application in high-dimensional datasets. First, SMNNs have precomputed fixed weight and no SMNN training process has been defined so far, so they lack generalization ability. Second, SMNNs require the construction of a convex polytope surrounding the input dataset. In this paper, we overcome these issues by proposing an SMNN training procedure based on a support subset of the given dataset and replacing the construction of the convex polytope by a method based on projections to a hypersphere. In addition, the explainability capacity of SMNNs and effective implementation are also newly introduced in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robust deadlock supervisory control techniques for automated manufacturing systems under resource failures that need additional central buffers may lead to supererogatory cost in control implementation. To mitigate this issue, this paper reports a Petri net-based low-cost adaptive supervisory control policy that does not require extra buffers. If an unreliable resource fails, three classes of buffer spaces can be temporarily used to store parts that require the failed resource in their impending processing routes. The proposed adaptive supervisory control comprises of control places and switch controllers. If an unreliable resource fails, the switch controllers are activated to move the part types that require the failed resource in their subsequent processing stages into borrowed buffer spaces. After the failed resource is recovered, the system returns to its normal operating mode. The part types in the borrowed buffer spaces will be returned to their last processing stages before the occurrence of the failure and continued along their processing route. We propose criteria for selecting buffer space borrowers and buffer space lenders. Furthermore, redundant control places are removed by a new technique proposed in the paper in order to reduce the complexity of the supervisory control structure. We demonstrate the proposed method using examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of the Internet and social media, rumors can spread not only through word-of-mouth but also rapidly through the network. In this paper, a dynamic model of rumor propagation with time delay is proposed separately for non-network and network scenarios. Additionally, we analyze the equilibrium points and their existence conditions for rumor propagation. After the linear approximation of the model, the necessary conditions for Turing instability are derived. Furthermore, the amplitude equation corresponding to the model in this paper is derived. Finally, through numerical simulations in the non-network model, we validate the aforementioned theories and find that changing the removed coefficient and cross-diffusion coefficient have a significant impact on Turing patterns, while time delay and periodic diffusion have a smaller impact. In the network model, we compare the effects of two network structures, the WS network and the BA network, through numerical simulations, verifying the feasibility of the Monte Carlo simulation method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selecting discriminative features to build effective learning models is a significant research work in machine learning. In practical applications, the data distribution characteristics are diverse, and the uncertainties pose challenges for building learning models with robustness and generalization capabilities. Since one-hot encoding is good at representing independent labels, the label matrix of regression-based feature selection (FS) methods is usually encoded with one-hot encoding. However, it's not well adapted to the different data distributions. This paper proposes a sparse orthogonal supervised FS model with global redundancy minimization, label scaling, and robustness (GRMLSRSOFS) to address the above problems. This model uses the label scaling technique proposed in this paper to better adapt to different data distributions. An iterative optimization method is given, and its convergence is demonstrated theoretically and experimentally. Further, experimental results on 12 public datasets show that 1) The GRMLSRSOFS can achieve higher classification accuracy with fewer features in most cases than several state-of-the-art FS methods. For example, the GRMLSRSOFS achieves 100% classification accuracy using only 20 features on the warpPIE10P dataset and obtains nearly 6% improvement over other methods on the Yale dataset. 2) The convergence speed of the GRMLSRSOFS will be faster after label scaling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-commerce order fulfillment service (E-COFS) plays a pivotal role in shaping consumer behavior in online marketplaces. The strategic outsourcing of the service allows e-commerce sellers to prioritize their core business areas, enhance customer satisfaction, and minimize fulfillment costs. However, a critical challenge lies in appraising the potential quality of E-COFS provided by third parties, especially when lacking historical information. To address this, this paper first designs a generalized framework for guiding the construction of the quantitative model for evaluating the potential quality of E-COFS. The proposed framework unfolds in three stages: (1) evaluating potential effectiveness of an E-COFS through quantifying stakeholders' potential satisfaction from the E-COFS plan tailored by its provider, (2) evaluating its potential feasibility by quantifying the potential performance of the E-COFS quality management system (E-COFS-QMS) built by the provider on supporting the plan, and (3) integrating the above two parts to gauge the potential quality of the E-COFS. Building upon this framework, this paper then designs a novel quantitative model. Specifically, this model adopts the linguistic subjective judgment representation method and introduces basic uncertain linguistic information to achieve computing with words. Multiple stakeholders within e-commerce sellers are tasked with articulating their requirements, their preferences and expectations, and consensus reaching process is conducted to obtain the acceptable consensus among these stakeholders. Multiple experts from various domains are tasked with giving their subjective judgements on the performances of E-COFS and E-COFS-QMS, and a method of weighting individual judgments, which respects the reliabilities of individual judgements and the overall similarity in knowledge structures among the experts, is adopted to effectively tap into collective intelligence. Finally, a case study is conducted to validate the validity and feasibility of the proposed quantitative model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new intuitionistic fuzzy best-worst method (IFBWM) for group decision making (GDM) with intuitionistic fuzzy (IF) preference relations (IFPRs). IF values (IFVs) are used to express reference comparisons of criteria. Based on the additive consistency of IFPRs, this paper proposes the definition of additive consistency of IF reference comparisons (IFRCs). Based on the deviation minimization, a linear goal programming model is established to calculate the optimal IF priority weights. By the additive consistency, the consistency index in the closed form is computed by the score function of IFVs. A new approach is devised to enhance the additive consistency of IFRCs. Thus, an IFBWM with the additive consistency of IFRCs is proposed. For GDM with IFPRs, the best criterion and the worst criterion are identified for each decision maker by constructing the score matrix of the IFPR. The individual ranking order of the criteria is obtained by using the proposed IFBWM. Then, the collective ranking order of the criteria is obtained via building a 0–1 integer programming model. Therefore, a GDM method based on the developed IFBWM with IFPRs is proposed. Four examples are analyzed to demonstrate the effectiveness and the advantages of the proposed IFBWM for GDM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sequential databases have wide applications, such as market basket analysis, medical prediction, and sign language recognition. Most prior research is based on pointed-based sequential databases, which assume each item/event occurs instantaneously. However, in many real-world scenarios, events persist over intervals of varying durations, such as varying time intervals of a symptom or a gesture of sign language. Assigning the same weight to different times of events and neglecting the duration of events can hinder the recognition of interesting patterns, such as concurrent symptoms preceding a disease. To address these issues, this paper integrates duration with temporal patterns in interval-based sequential databases, introduces the concept of temporal duration-based patterns (TDPs), and designs two algorithms called FTDPMiner-EP (Frequent TDPMiner based on endpoint representation) and FTDPMiner-TM (Frequent TDPMiner based on triangular matrix representation) by using different extension methods to mine frequent TDPs. Due to the complex relationships between events, temporal pattern mining is more challenging than sequential pattern mining. Strategies are used in this paper to accelerate the algorithms' search process. Experiments are conducted on both real and synthetic databases, which show good performance of the two algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Solve the imbalance problem in cardiovascular disease data. • A novel method named ADWGKFO is proposed to transform the unbalanced data sets. • A more targeted sampling weight determination method is proposed. • A sample testing method based on Gaussian kernel is proposed to filter new samples. • Empirical analysis shows the proposed method performs better than similar methods. In risk assessment of cardiovascular disease (CVD), the classification error caused by unbalanced data is a significant challenge, which has sparked widespread concern and research upsurge in the field of data mining. Therefore, in view of the imbalance of CVD data sets, an oversampling method via adaptive double weights and Gaussian kernel function (ADWGKFO) is proposed, which converts the unbalanced data sets into balanced data sets. Firstly, clustering algorithm is utilized to cluster minority samples, boundary samples are identified by Borderline-Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (Borderline-SMOTE), K nearest neighbor and support vector machine algorithms, and the number of samples synthesized in each group is calculated based on the double weights of boundary points and majority distribution. Secondly, in order to clearly define the classification boundary, the mutual class potential of new samples in each cluster is calculated by Gaussian kernel function, and new samples are filtered according to the mutual class potential until the data set is balanced. Finally, taking the data sets from Kaggle platform as the research samples, the proposed method is empirically analyzed. In order to validate the efficacy and universality of the proposed method, this paper selects CatBoost that is a new integrated algorithm to test the effect of the ADWGKFO method, and compares it with different sampling methods and different classifiers using performance evaluation indexes such as accuracy, F1-score and area under the curve (AUC). Compared with the combinations of other methods, the accuracy, F1-score and AUC are significantly improved. It is concluded that the ADWGKFO method described in this paper can successfully improve the data quality, and increases the reliability of CVD risk assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the subjective evaluation process, the hesitant fuzzy set (HFS), as a convenient and robust presentation tool, cannot only suitably address the decision makers' (DMs') or experts' hesitant and uncertain issues but also can arise the dimension curse puzzle. Furthermore, the decision-making result is just derived according to the given objective and subjective information, without considering the DM's subjective evaluation and the environment's dynamic influence. Unlike the previous studies, this paper tries to address them from the deep learning viewpoint. To this end, we first define the non-equidimensional HFS (NHFS) and then introduce the equidimensional and classification characters into the NHFS to further develop the equidimensional HFS (EHFS) and the EHFS with the optimal classification result. Then, the equidimensional hesitant fuzzy-generative adversarial network (EHF-GAN) model is proposed to transform the hesitant fuzzy information from the non-equidimensional to the equidimensional form. The generalization and the convergence of the new model are proven to show the models' reasonability. In addition, the double-learning algorithm of the EHF-GAN model is designed, which can fuse the DMs' dynamic judgments and derive the optimal decision-making results. Lastly, this paper applies the proposed model and algorithm to an illustrative example of the new smart city enterprises and then shows their feasibility and effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been limited research on considering decision-makers psychological factors and risk attitudes in the early three-way decision theory and methods. Behavioral three-way decision models can better describe and analyze decision-makers risk preferences and behaviors, with prospect theory being prominent. This paper introduces a third-generation prospect theory-based three-way decision model. It characterizes uncertain reference points for decision-maker preferences through positive/negative ideal points and medians. Due to nonlinear weighting functions in prospect theory, closed-form solutions for three-way decision thresholds are absent. The paper introduces α -model and β -model optimizations for numerical threshold solutions, simplifying three-way decision rules. Additionally, the proposed optimized three-way decision model is applied to conflict analysis, considering multi-scale and Z-number information's impact on conflict evaluation. Effective methods for deriving three-way conflict analysis rules and outcomes from multi-scale Z-number information systems are studied. Audit team conflict analysis examples validate the validity and feasibility of the proposed models and methods. Finally, several experimental results with data sets confirm overall performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the containment control problem is investigated for a class of non-strict feedback nonlinear multi-agent systems with arbitrary initial states. The state observation disturbance, defined as the deviation between the observed and true values of the state, is taken into account in the addressed system. Fuzzy logic systems and adaptive techniques are accordingly introduced to handle the unknown nonlinear terms and unknown disturbances. Based on a transformation function and a new Lyapunov function, an improved fuzzy adaptive control protocol is developed, which ensures that the output tracking error of each follower converges to a predefined region within a predefined settling time and allows the initial states of the agents to be arbitrarily bounded. Moreover, the error (between the input and output of the filter inherent to the dynamic surface control) can be accurately compensated under the newly designed Lyapunov function. The simultaneous consideration of the asymmetric input saturation and unknown time-varying control gain coefficients in the model makes the results established in this paper more general. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control protocol is verified by two simulation experiments. • Agent's system is the more general non-strict feedback system. • The initial value of the agent's state can be arbitrary. • State observation disturbance is considered. • This paper employs adaptive control techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Z-numbers are efficient tools to represent uncertain information through restriction and reliability measurement. Z-numbers and their variants have been integrated with diverse decision-analysis methods to solve practical decision-making problems. To make researchers understand the research status and challenges in this area, this paper provides an overview of publications related to Z-number-based decision analysis methods and applications. Firstly, a bibliometric analysis is conducted to present the trends and hotspots in this research domain. To uncover theoretical developments of Z-numbers, concepts and operation rules of Z-numbers and their variants are then recalled. Furthermore, decision analysis methods regarding multiple criteria decision analysis, optimization, prediction, and reasoning within the context of Z-numbers are summarized. Applications of Z-number-based decision analysis methods are categorized into six different fields including business and financial management, industrial engineering and management, energy management, medical and healthcare management, environment and sustainable development, and others. Findings, challenges, and future research directions are further discussed. It is hoped that this paper can provide insights for scholars and practitioners in the fields of Z-number-based decision analysis and applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss a rough set approach to missing attribute values. Among many ways of interpreting missing values, in this paper we focus on two interpretations, lost values and "do not care" conditions. Using these interpretations, global and saturated probabilistic approximations are constructed with two types of granules: characteristic sets and maximal consistent blocks. We compare eight approaches, combining two interpretations of missing attribute values, two types of probabilistic approximations with two types of granules using an error rate that is computed as a result of ten-fold cross-validation. Using a 5% level of statistical significance, we present the experimental results for these eight approaches, showing statistically significant differences between all approaches to mining incomplete data. The results also show that no one method and approach is the best for every data set and that all eight approaches should be attempted. The final section of the paper presents the idea of concept-compatible data sets. We show that for these types of data sets, global and saturated probabilistic approximations for a concept are identical to the concept. We also show that for an incomplete data set with no duplicate rows using the lost interpretation of missing attribute values, the data set is concept-compatible. • Two interpretations of missing attribute values: lost values and "do not care" conditions are considered • Global and saturated probabilistic approximations are constructed from characteristic sets and maximal consistent blocks • Eight approaches to mining incomplete data sets are compared and significant differences between them are indicated • A novel idea of the concept-compatible data sets is introduced [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human behavior may be one of the most challenging phenomena to model and validate. This paper proposes a method for automatically extracting and compiling evidence on human behavior determinants into a knowledge graph. The method (1) extracts associations of behavior determinants and choice options in relation to study groups and moderators from published studies using Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning, (2) synthesizes the extracted evidence into a knowledge graph, and (3) sub-selects the model components and relationships that are relevant and robust. The method can be used to either (4a) construct a structurally valid simulation model before proceeding with calibration or (4b) to validate the structure of existing simulation models. To demonstrate the feasibility of the method, we discuss an example implementation with mode of transport as behavior choice. We find that including non-frequently studied significant behavior determinants drastically improves the model's explanatory power in comparison to only including frequently studied variables. The paper serves as a proof-of-concept which can be reused, extended or adapted for various purposes. • The structure of behavior models should be validated using existing evidence. • Deep Learning can help automatize behavior evidence extraction and synthesis. • Infrequently studied significant variables improve model performance drastically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]