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Perforation is used in multilayer tissue products, such as toilet and kitchen papers, as part of the converting process. Perforation facilitates the detachment of consecutive sheets by the user. The compromise between the strength required to detach a perforated sheet and the strength required to break a sheet affects the perforation efficiency. In this work, the mechanical behaviors of 15 commercial papers from different European producers were studied. A morphological analysis of the materials was performed, followed by the determination of their perforation efficiency (through tensile tests). A qualitative analysis of the cuts quality, along with a quantitative analysis of the same cuts dimensions was performed through an optical system. Finally, the stress concentration in the holes and the influence of the cuts distance were analyzed using a finite element model implemented in Abaqus/Standard finite element software. The results showed that a cut distance of 2.0 mm should not be used in these types of papers, and the perforation efficiency increased with the cut distance, regardless of the number of plies in the toilet paper. The stress concentration factor was also determined to have a limit value of 0.11. Papers above this limit value tear at the perforation line, as desired.

Our dependency towards wood has reduced the number of forests especially in Indonesia. Hence, many people tried to use another material as a replacement of wood. One of them is composite. Department of Industrial Engineering Universitas Sebelas Maret has developed paper-based composite using newspaper waste in Praktikum Perancangan Teknik Industri (PPTI) II. Unfortunately, the quality of composite is not so good. This paper tried to understand the effect of factors to responses and discover the best combination of factors to obtain the best responses. The responses of this experiment are tensile strength, bending strength and impact value. The factors of this experiment are paper pulp, PVAc glue and water. Taguchi method is used to find the appropriate orthogonal array and Particle Swarm Optimization method to find the optimum combination of the factors. Orthogonal array used in this experiment is L9 (34). Through analysis, all of the factors are significant to tensile and bending strength, but they are not significant to impact value. The best combination of factors is 175 grams paper pulp, 130 grams PVAc glue and 175 ml water. Optimum results obtained for tensile strength is 0.7595 N/mm2, bending strength is 4.873 N/mm2 and impact value is 0.0138 J/mm2.

Objectives: The objective of the study was to study the compressive strength of the partially replaced paper mill waste in cement. Methods/ Statistical analysis: The concrete cube specimen were prepared for compressive strength test. In this study, the cement has been replaced with 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% of hypo sludge. The specimens were cured for two different ages (7 days and 28 days) and tested for compressive strength. The quadratic polynomial prediction equation was proposed using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). The prediction model was developed using the experimental output results. Thus, the prediction model facilitates the further research work to be conducted by researchers on paper mill waste replacement. The rate analysis was also further carried out to show the cost effectiveness of using the waste replacement in cement. Findings: The test was conducted on the compressive strength (7 days and 28 days) of control specimen (0%) and partial replacement of 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% of cement using the hypo sludge. Thus, 20% replacement of cement using hypo sludge has shown good compressive strength than the control specimen. The cost of 20% paper mill waste was less when compared to the cost of control specimen. Novelty/ Applications: The compressive strength of 20% partial replacement of paper mill waste in cement can be used in further construction. The prediction model can be used to predict the future compressive strength of partially replaced paper mill waste concrete. Keywords: Ordinary Portland cement; Paper mill waste; Hypo sludge; Partial replacement; RSM

Based on publications related to the use of micro- and nanofibrillated cellulose (MNFC) in papermaking applications, three sets of parameters (intrinsic and extrinsic variables, furnish composition, and degree of dispersion) were proposed. This holistic approach intends to facilitate understanding and manipulation of the main factors describing the colloidal behavior in systems comprising of MNFC, pulp fibers, and additives, which directly impact paper product performance. A preliminary techno-economic assessment showed that cost reductions driven by the addition of MNFC in paper furnishes could be as high as USD 149 per ton of fiber (up to 20% fiber reduction without adverse effects on paper’s strength) depending on the cost of papermaking fibers. It was also determined that better performance in terms of strength development associated with a higher degree of MNFC fibrillation offset its high manufacturing cost. However, there is a limit from which additional fibrillation does not seem to contribute to further strength gains that can justify the increasing production cost. Further research is needed regarding raw materials, degree of fibrillation, and combination with polyelectrolytes to further explore the potential of MNFC for the reduction of weight of paper products.

Paper waste in the mockups design with regular, irregular, and amorphous patterns is a critical problem in digital printing presses. Paper waste reduction directly impacts production costs, generating business and environmental benefits. This problem can be mapped to the two-dimensional irregular bin-packing problem. In this paper, an iterated local search algorithm using a novel neighborhood structure to detect overlaps between amorphous shapes is introduced. This algorithm is used to solve the paper waste problem, modeled as one 2D irregular bin-packing problem. The experimental results show that this approach works efficiently and effectively to detect and correct the overlaps between regular, irregular, and amorphous figures.

In many manufacturing industries, the production process involves the production of objects and the cutting of such objects into smaller pieces in order to meet a specific demand. In the optimization of these processes, one can identify the lot sizing and the cutting stock problems. In the literature, these problems are mostly separately dealt. However, treating these two problems in an integrated approach can decrease overall costs. In this research, we deal with the coupled lot sizing and cutting stock problem. It is proposed a mathematical formulation for the production and cutting of paper based on a real case, which considers setup costs and limited machine capacity in the production process of the objects. For the solution of the proposed model, we used a column generation approach and a relax-and-fix heuristic. Computational tests were carried out in order to analyze the methodology used in the resolution of the model. The results showed to be competitive in a reasonable computational time.

Objectives: Paper/plastic pouches are widely used packaging materials for autoclaving medical and dental equipment. Although these pouches are recommended for single use, they are generally reused in Thailand. This study aimed to determine the ability of paper/plastic pouches to maintain sterility after multiple sterilization processes and stored in a closed environment for up to 6 months. Materials and Methods: A total of 6720 paper/plastic pouches were divided into four experimental groups: new pouches, 1 time, 3 times, and 5 times resterilized pouches. A piece of filter paper was placed inside each pouch, and the pouch was sealed, sterilized, and stored for up to 6 months. At the end of each storage period, the pouch was opened, and the filter paper was transferred to culture broth for microbial cultivation to determine sterility. Negative and positive controls were also used to validate the procedures. Results: All filter papers in the experimental groups, as well as the negative control group, remained sterile for up to 6 months of storage in a closed environment. On the contrary, all filter papers in the positive control group showed microbial contamination. Conclusions: In a closed storage condition, the paper/plastic pouches that passed multiple sterilization processes (up to 5 times resterilization) still maintained good barrier efficacy and remained sterile for up to 6 months.

Using standardized tests such as paper-based TOEFL with three subtests for classroom assessment is restricted by the length of the test, which is usually longer than the class duration. Therefore, it is significant to be able to predict other subtests by conducting only one subtest. Therefore, the current study aimed to calculate prediction coefficients, enabling teachers to predict scores in paper-based TOEFL by conducting only one subtest. The data to create the prediction models were obtained from 2,030 scores of Institutional TOEFL, i.e. paper-based TOEFL without writing subtest. The prediction coefficient was calculated by using linear regression analysis. The result shows that the listening comprehension sub-score predicts the TOEFL score more accurately (MSE of 520) than other sub-scores (MSE of 553 and 587). The intercept for listening comprehension sub-score was 373.07, 357.14 for structure & written expression, and 364.19 for reading comprehension. In addition, the slope for each sub-score was 4.07, 5.96, and 4.63, respectively. Therefore, a listening test should be used in predicting the overall TOEFL scores for an accurate prediction.

Precise assessment of harvest yield is a difficult field of work. The equipment and programming stage to foresee the harvest yield relies on different components like climate, soil fruitfulness, genotype, and different collaborating wards. The assignment is unpredictable inferable from the information that should be gathered in volumes to comprehend crop yield through remote sensor organizations and distant detecting. This paper audits the previous 15 years of exploration work in the improvement of assessing crop yield utilizing profound learning calculations. The meaning of examining progressions utilizing profound learning methods will help in dynamic for foreseeing the harvest yield. The cross breed mix of profound learning with distant detecting and remote sensor organizations can give accuracy agribusiness later on.

Depending on the different types of raw materials used to produce hanji, a Korean traditional handmade paper, there can be significant differences in the durability and mechanical properties of the final product. In this study, near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) combined with multivariate statistical methods were used to confirm the classification possibility of hanji based on the various type of raw materials. The hanji papers were prepared from paper mulberry trees, cooking agents, and mucilage. Altogether, a total of 60 hanji spectra were collected by NIR. Then, the 60 spectra were grouped into four categories: the control, paper mulberry, cooking agent, and mucilage type based on each of the types of raw materials contained in the hanji. Three different classification algorithms – partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), support vector machines (SVM), and random forest (RF) – were used to classify the hanji types. The best hanji material classification performance was obtained when the hanji samples were classified according to paper mulberry type, wherein the prediction accuracies of PLS-DA, SVM, and RF were 100%, 100%, and 98%, respectively. These results suggested that NIR in combination with multivariate statistical methods can be used for hanji material classification.

The present contribution evaluates the methods of degradation and stabilization of alum-containing paper with a focus on the alkaline environment achieved by deacidification procedures. In terms of reviewed subjects, the contribution focuses on alum-rosin sized paper, which is still used as a carrier of knowledge and information; however, it also mentions cellulose itself and other brands of paper. The contribution summarizes the results on the homogeneity of the distribution of alum and rosin in the paper mass and on the paper surface. It provides the knowledge gained in the field of alkaline hydrolysis and oxidation with special regard to transition metal species. It shows the values of alkaline reserves achieved in the main mass-deacidification processes. On the basis of the acquired knowledge, the contribution emphasizes the procedures of paper stabilization. Criteria of “increased mechanical permanence and lifetime prolongation” adopted to evaluate and compare the efficacy of individual mass-deacidification processes were applied and corresponding data are introduced. The contribution also draws attention to the existence of open issues in the area of paper degradation and stabilization.

Paper is the most widely used print media, made with cellulose fibers derived from tree wood and non-fiber. The existence of paper is a tool that is quite important in human civilization and its needs continue to increase from year to year. The tear resistance of paper greatly affects the printing process. The value of tear resistance is influenced by several factors, namely the size of the fiber, besides that it is also influenced by the number of bonds between the fibers, grammar, humidity, moisture content, fiber direction, adhesive on the paper. The purpose of this final project is to determine the value of paper tear resistance which is better between two types of 120 gram Mattpaper paper products, namely New Victory Luxe and Nevia products and also to determine the effect of paper tear resistance on the printing process. The writing method used is descriptive method with data collection / observation, testing and literature techniques. Based on the results of the tear resistance test with the Elmendorf test method, which is to test the tear resistance of a paper, the tear resistance value of Nevia paper products is better than New Victory Luxe paper products.Keywords—Resistance, Paper, Mattpaper

We give an overview of our critiques of "proofs" of security and a guide to our papers on the subject that have appeared over the past decade and a half. We also provide numerous additional examples and a few updates and errata.

Many complex physical systems exhibit a rich variety of discrete behavioural modes. Often, the system complexity limits the applicability of standard modelling tools. Hence, understanding the underlying physics of different behaviours and distinguishing between them is challenging. Although traditional machine learning techniques could predict and classify behaviour well, typically they do not provide any meaningful insight into the underlying physics of the system. In this paper we present a novel method for extracting physically meaningful clusters of discrete behaviour from limited experimental observations. This method obtains a set of physically plausible functions that both facilitate behavioural clustering and aid in system understanding. We demonstrate the approach on the V-shaped falling paper system, a new falling paper type system that exhibits four distinct behavioural modes depending on a few morphological parameters. Using just 49 experimental observations, the method discovered a set of candidate functions that distinguish behaviours with an error of 2.04%, while also aiding insight into the physical phenomena driving each behaviour. © 2019 Howison et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Investigations were done to characterize the paper mill sludge (PMS) as a soil amendment for the production of crops. Laboratory analysis was done at Anbil Dharmalingam Agricultural College and Research Institute, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu during 2014–15. PMS samples were collected from the Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Ltd (TNPL), Kagithapuarm, Karur district, Tamil Nadu, dried and stored for analysis. PMS was characterized and analysed for its important physico-chemical properties. It was dark brown in colour with unpleasant odour. Important basic characteristics of PMS samples were studied. The physical parameters like bulk density, particle density, porosity and moisture content were 1.37 (Mg/m3), 1.89 (Mg/m3), 39 per cent and 12.19 per cent respectively. The PMS was found to be neutral in reaction having pH 7.26 and the EC was 2.19 dS/m. Among the major nutrients, sulphate (18.21%) was found in higher quantity followed by calcium (2.26%), nitrogen (1.74%), potassium (1.73%) and phosphorus (0.97%). The organic carbon content (OC) was 9.3 per cent. The exchangeable cations like Ca, Mg, Na and K were also present in the same order. The DTPA micronutrients were present in the order of Mn >Fe >Zn >Cu.

The success of a scientist depends on their production of scientific papers and the impact factor of the journal in which they publish. Because most major scientific journals are published in English, success is related to publishing in this language. Currently, 98% of publications in science are written in English, including researchers from English as a Foreign Language (EFL) countries. Colombia is among the countries with the lowest English proficiency in the world. Thus, understanding the disadvantages that Colombians face in publishing is crucial to reducing global inequality in science. This paper quantifies the disadvantages that result from the language hegemony in scientific publishing by examining the additional costs that communicating in English creates in the production of articles. It was identified that more than 90% of the scientific articles published by Colombian researchers are in English, and that publishing in a second language creates additional financial costs to Colombian doctoral students and results in problems with reading comprehension, writing ease and time, and anxiety. Rejection or revision of their articles because of the English grammar was reported by 43.5% of the doctoral students, and 33% elected not to attend international conferences and meetings due to the mandatory use of English in oral presentations. Finally, among the translation/editing services reviewed, the cost per article is between one-quarter and one-half of a doctoral monthly salary in Colombia. Of particular note, we identified a positive correlation between English proficiency and higher socioeconomic origin of the researcher. Overall, this study exhibits the negative consequences of hegemony of English that preserves the global gap in science. Although having a common language is important for science communication, generating multilinguistic alternatives would promote diversity while conserving a communication channel. Such an effort should come from different actors and should not fall solely on EFL researchers.

Thomas L. Saaty, a world-renowned scholar and our beloved Advisory Editor, passed away on August 14, 2017 at the age of 91.  He has made many fundamental contributions to operations research, analytics, business and mathematics. Despite his heavy illness for 14 months, as passionate about science, he has also enthusiastically published his research. We review his final works published in 2017 and 2018. We are also honored to reveal and publish his final statements on neural firing and synthesis in making comparisons & life satisfaction, respectively, in his final two papers; the previous one submitted by him just before his passing and the other one submitted by his co-authors after his death to European Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics (EJPAM).We just would like to remember and honor Saaty’s memory by publishing his final papers at EJPAM and this humble remarks dedicated to the memory of Thomas L. Saaty on the occasion of the first anniversary of his passing, August 14, 2018.

We introduce our efforts within the project ‘The science of deep specification’ to work out the key formal underpinnings of industrial-scale formal specifications of software and hardware components, anticipating a world where large verified systems are routinely built out of smaller verified components that are also used by many other projects. We identify an important class of specification that has already been used in a few experiments that connect strong component-correctness theorems across the work of different teams. To help popularize the unique advantages of that style, we dub itdeep specification, and we say that it encompasses specifications that arerich,two-sided,formalandlive(terms that we define in the article). Our core team is developing a proof-of-concept system (based on the Coq proof assistant) whose specification and verification work is divided across largely decoupled subteams at our four institutions, encompassing hardware microarchitecture, compilers, operating systems and applications, along with cross-cutting principles and tools for effective specification. We also aim to catalyse interest in the approach, not just by basic researchers but also by users in industry.This article is part of the themed issue ‘Verified trustworthy software systems’.

This study investigated the effects of bending curvature of simulated e-paper displays (−10 cm, plane and 10 cm) and ambient illuminance (50, 500, 6000 and 12,000 lx) on the visual performance of young and elderly users for simulated electronic-paper displays. In total, 24 people comprising 12 young and 12 elderly users participated in this study. Young users demonstrated significantly enhanced visual performance using the simulated electrophoretic ink (E ink) e-paper display with ambient illuminance set at 50 and 500 lx; however, participants did not demonstrate significantly different visual performance using the 2 simulated e-paper displays with ambient illuminance set at 6000 and 12,000 lx. The bending curvature did not exhibit significant effects on the visual performance of young participants under various ambient illuminances. The elderly participants exhibited significantly enhanced visual performance using the simulated E ink e-paper display only when ambient illuminance was set at 50 lx; however, participants did not exhibit significantly different visual performance using the two simulated e-paper displays with ambient illuminance set at other levels. Elderly users exhibited significantly enhanced visual performance when the bending curvature was set at 10 cm, with ambient illuminance set at 50 lx. Elderly users also demonstrated significantly enhanced visual performance under bending curvature settings of 10 cm and plane, with ambient illuminance set at 500 lx. However, the bending curvature of the simulated e-paper did not exhibit significant effects on the visual performance of elderly participants under ambient illuminance settings of 6000 and 12,000 lx.

Effects of character size under ambient illuminances and light sources on legibility of electronic paper displays (electrophoretic display and cholesteric liquid crystal display) were studied and compared with paper. Sixty subjects participated in a letter-search task in the experiment. The results showed that search speed depends on the illuminance but not light source. Search speed increased as the illuminance increase from 300, 700 to 1500 lx. Search speed also increased with the increase of character size, from character height of 1.4 mm (9.6 min visual angle), 2.2 mm (15.1 min visual angle) to 3.3 mm (22.7 min visual angle), and the increase leveled off at 4.3 mm (29.6 min visual angle). The effect of character size on accuracy was also significant. Accuracy increased with the increase of character size. However, the effect of illuminance and light source on accuracy was not statistically significant. Based on the results of this study, it seems that E-paper displays may need greater illumination (700 lx or higher), greater character size (3.3 mm or 22 min of visual angle).

Parallel test paper generation is a biobjective distributed resource optimization problem, which aims to generate multiple similarly optimal test papers automatically according to multiple user-specified assessment criteria. Generating high-quality parallel test papers is challenging due to its NP-hardness in both of the collective objective functions. In this paper, we propose a submodular memetic approximation algorithm for solving this problem. The proposed algorithm is an adaptive memetic algorithm (MA), which exploits the submodular property of the collective objective functions to design greedy-based approximation algorithms for enhancing steps of the multiobjective MA. Synergizing the intensification of submodular local search mechanism with the diversification of the population-based submodular crossover operator, our algorithm can jointly optimize the total quality maximization objective and the fairness quality maximization objective. Our MA can achieve provable near-optimal solutions in a huge search space of large datasets in efficient polynomial runtime. Performance results on various datasets have shown that our algorithm has drastically outperformed the current techniques in terms of paper quality and runtime efficiency.

International audience; This paper investigates the classification of photographic paper tex-tures using visual descriptors. Such classification is called fine grain due to the very low inter-class variability. We propose a novel image representation for photographic paper texture categorization, relying on the incorporation of a powerful local descriptor into an efficient higher-order model deviation where texture is represented by com-puting statistics on the occurrences of specific local visual patterns. We perform an evaluation on two different challenging datasets of photographic paper textures and show such advanced methods in-deed outperforms existing descriptors.

A new method is reported for measuring the short span stress-strain curve of paper using a zero/short span tester with additional instrumentation to measure load and displacement during a test. The method is to subtract the zero-span displacement-load curve from the short-span displacement-load curve, so as to obtain the displacement-load curve of the free span. An analysis of the short span test shows that if the sample is well-bonded and the free span is small compared to the fibre length, then the stress-strain behaviour of the free span is independent of span. The new method was used to examine the effect of refining on the short span stress-strain curve of a paper made from an unbleached, never-dried commercial Scandinavian softwood kraft. The breaking strain increased from 12% for sheets made from the unrefined pulp to 23% for sheets made from pulp refined to 6,000 PFI revolutions.

We compare the capacity of dirty-paper coding (DPC) to that of time-division multiple access (TDMA) for a multiple-antenna (multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)) Gaussian broadcast channel (BC). We find that the sum-rate capacity (achievable using DPC) of the multiple-antenna BC is at most min(M,K) times the largest single-user capacity (i.e., the TDMA sum-rate) in the system, where M is the number of transmit antennas and K is the number of receivers. This result is independent of the number of receive antennas and the channel gain matrix, and is valid at all signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). We investigate the tightness of this bound in a time-varying channel (assuming perfect channel knowledge at receivers and transmitters) where the channel experiences uncorrelated Rayleigh fading and in some situations we find that the dirty paper gain is upper-bounded by the ratio of transmit-to-receive antennas. We also show that min(M,K) upper-bounds the sum-rate gain of successive decoding over TDMA for the uplink channel, where M is the number of receive antennas at the base station and K is the number of transmitters.

Paper pulper machines a capacity of 83 litres/process must have a low-cost material, robust and safe to operate. Paper pulper machine components analysed are tubes, frames, helical screw shaft and the shaft holder. The method uses a static structural analysis to obtain von mises stress and displacement. Static structural analysis uses finite element analysis with the help of CATIA® Software. The safe component size and lowest cost (safety factor more than 2.5) were selected in this study. Calculation of costs by multiplying the size of the material needs by material prices. Tube components use SUS 304 with thickness variations of 0.5, 0.6, 0.8, 1, 1.5, and 2mm. Frame and shaft holder using L shape ASTM A36 size 40x40mm and 50 x50 mm with thickness variations of 3, 4, and 5 mm respectively. Variations in material size are determined based on standard material sizes available on the market. The simulation result of each component shows the thicker the material, the lower the von mises stress, the lower the displacement and the higher safety factor. Tubes with a thickness of 0.5mm have a von mises stress of 4.43 MPa, a displacement of 4.7 x 104 mm with SF 56.4 is safe and were chosen because of the lowest material costs (IDR 360,009). The frame size was chosen 40x40x3 mm based on the SF frame value (26) with the lowest material cost (IDR 197,800). The shaft holder is also chosen for the size of 40x40x3mm where the SF value (3834) and the lowest material cost (IDR 14,400). Helical screw shaft size is chosen at 0.5mm thickness where SF is 304 and material costs IDR 100,968. The overall results of the static structural analysis on various sizes of the paper pulper machine components showed ovon under Oyield, small displacement, and SF is safe.

This study designed to compare responses from an internet-based survey to those from a paper-and-pencil survey in terms of measurement reliability, validity, and equivalence using homogeneous demographic profiles of the undergraduates studying in Taiwan. Several similarities and differences were found between two types of survey in this study. For examples, contents of the survey items (i.e., internet-related vs. behavior-related) and survey environments significantly influence the distribution of responses. The normal distribution, internal consistency, in addition to construct, and convergent validity for individual construct are quite similar. However, the homological validity evidence was demonstrated through structural equation modeling across two survey modes. Implications and future research are also discussed.

BackgroundThe psychometric properties of an online test are not necessarily identical to its paper and pencil original. The aim of this study is to test whether the factor structure of the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences (CAPE) is measurement invariant with respect to online vs. paper and pencil assessment.MethodThe factor structure of CAPE items assessed by paper and pencil (N = 796) was compared with the factor structure of CAPE items assessed by the Internet (N = 21,590) using formal tests for Measurement Invariance (MI). The effect size was calculated by estimating the Signed Item Difference in the Sample (SIDS) index and the Signed Test Difference in the Sample (STDS) for a hypothetical subject who scores 2 standard deviations above average on the latent dimensions.ResultsThe more restricted Metric Invariance model showed a significantly worse fit compared to the less restricted Configural Invariance model (χ(2)(23) = 152.75, pConclusionsOur findings did not support measurement invariance with respect to assessment method. Because of the small effect sizes, the measurement differences between the online assessed CAPE and its paper and pencil original can be neglected without major consequences for research purposes. However, a person with a high vulnerability for psychotic symptoms would score 4.80 points lower on the total scale if the CAPE is assessed online compared to paper and pencil assessment. Therefore, for clinical purposes, one should be cautious with online assessment of the CAPE.

Multi-sensor object detection and tracking on a highway scene with radar measurements is presented. The estimation algorithm is the random finite set based Bernoulli filter, working in the Bayesian framework. The recursion for calculating the Bayes estimation is implemented as a particle filter. A method is presented for calculating the likelihoods, suitable for particle filtering performed with moving sensors, assuming additive Gaussian measurement noise. In our approach, for calculating the posterior estimate of the object state, the measurement likelihoods are computed in the state space, instead of the measurement space, by mapping each measurement to the global coordinate system. The map consists of a nonlinear and an affine part. While the affine transformation trivially preserves the Gaussian nature, the nonlinear is well-proven to be approximated as affine too. This approach allows the particles to be drawn directly from the state space, hence the evaluation of the measurement model is not needed, which saves computational power.

In the last 30 years, several distinguished researchers have proposed and discussed different fuzzy versions of well-known Saaty's Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The paper recently published by K. Zhü in the European Journal of Operational Research heavily criticizes the fuzzy approaches to AHP, claiming the fallacy of all of them. Therefore, it seems to be necessary to clarify whether the criticisms are well-founded or not. The present paper aims to rebut Zhü's claims by showing that the evidences and the reasonings in his paper are very poor and far from proving the fallacy of fuzzy AHP.

Background There is widespread evidence that statistical methods play an important role in original research articles, especially in medical research. The evaluation of statistical methods and reporting in journals suffers from a lack of standardized methods for assessing the use of statistics. The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate an instrument to assess the statistical intensity in research articles in a standardized way. Methods A checklist-type measure scale was developed by selecting and refining items from previous reports about the statistical contents of medical journal articles and from published guidelines for statistical reporting. A total of 840 original medical research articles that were published between 2007–2015 in 16 journals were evaluated to test the scoring instrument. The total sum of all items was used to assess the intensity between sub-fields and journals. Inter-rater agreement was examined using a random sample of 40 articles. Four raters read and evaluated the selected articles using the developed instrument. Results The scale consisted of 66 items. The total summary score adequately discriminated between research articles according to their study design characteristics. The new instrument could also discriminate between journals according to their statistical intensity. The inter-observer agreement measured by the ICC was 0.88 between all four raters. Individual item analysis showed very high agreement between the rater pairs, the percentage agreement ranged from 91.7% to 95.2%. Conclusions A reliable and applicable instrument for evaluating the statistical intensity in research papers was developed. It is a helpful tool for comparing the statistical intensity between sub-fields and journals. The novel instrument may be applied in manuscript peer review to identify papers in need of additional statistical review.

The purpose of this study is to develop a descriptive paper test item which can evaluate elementary school students’ HGA (scientific Hypothesis Generating Ability) and to propose a counting formula that can easily assess student’s HGA objectively and quantitatively. To make the test item can possibly evaluate all the students from 6th graders to 3rd graders, the ‘rabbit’s ear’ item is developed. Developed test item was distributed to four different elementary schools in Seoul. Total 280 students who were in the 6th grade solved the item. All the students’ reponses to the item were analyzed. Based on the analyzed data evaluation factors and evaluation criteria are extracted to design a Hypothesis Generating ability Quotient (HGQ). As the result ‘Explican’s Degree of Likeness’ and ‘Hypothesis’ Degree of Explanation’ are chosen as evaluation factors. Also precedent evaluation criteria were renewed. At first, Explican’s Degree of Likeness evaluation criterion was turned four levels into three levels and each content of evaluation criterion is also modified. Secondly, new evaluation factor ‘Hypothesis’ Degree of Explanation’ was developed as combined three different evaluation criteria, ‘level of explican’, ‘number of explican’ and ‘structure of explican’. This evaluation factor was designed to assess how the suggested hypothesis can elaborately explain the cause of one phenomenon. Newly designed evaluation factors and evaluation criteria can assess HGA more in detail and reduce the scoring discordant through the markers. Lastly, Developed counting formula is much more simple than precedent Kwon’s equation for evaluating the Hypothesis Explanation Quotient. So it could help easily distinguish one student’s scientific hypothesis generating ability.Key words : scientific hypothesis generating ability, evaluation factor, evaluation criteria, hypothesis generating ability quotient, counting formula

Appropriate organic amendment management is essential in potato production to increase soil productivity and potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) quality. The objectives of this two-year field study (2004–2005) were to evaluate the effects of organic amendment applications with or without mineral N fertilizer addition on potato yield, N uptake, N use efficiency (NUE), and on disease incidence. The experimental design was a split-plot, which included nine treatments with four different organic amendments applied in fall 2003 or in spring 2004 at a rate of 40 Mg ha−1 (wet basis) and an unamended control in main plots, and N fertilizer rates (0 and 90 kg N ha−1) in sub-plots. Organic amendments consisted of fresh cattle manure (FCM), composted cattle manure (CCM), paper mill sludge with C/N ratio 15 (PMS2) applied alone (0 kg N ha−1) or supplemented with mineral fertilizer at a rate 90 kg N ha−1. The N fertilizer rate in the unamended control consisted of 0 and 150 kg N ha−1. No organic amendments were applied in 2005 to evaluate residual effects. Fall and spring applications of FCM, CCM and PMS alone significantly increased N uptake and potato marketable yields by 2.5 to 16.4 Mg ha−1, compared to the unfertilized control. Combining organic amendments with N fertilizer at 90 kg N ha−1 increased potato yields, N uptake, and specific gravity, which were comparable to those obtained in mineral N fertilizer treatments (150 kg N ha−1). Residual effects of organic amendments alone had no significant effects on potato yields or on N uptake compared to the unfertilized control. Potato NUE for FCM, CCM and PMS ranged from 6% to 25% in the first year and from 2% to 8% in the residual year. The NUE values were higher for PMS with lower C/N ratio compared to FCM and CCM. This study did not show any difference between organic amendment applied in spring or fall on potato yield and quality. It was also demonstrated that mineral N fertilizer needed to be combined with organic amendments to sustain potato yield and N nutrition. This study showed that appropriate organic amendment management could increase potato yield and quality and reduce N fertilizer requirement.

Dirty paper codes are a powerful tool for combating known interference. However, there is a significant difference between knowing the transmitted interference sequence and knowing the received interference sequence, especially when the channel modifying the interference is uncertain. We present an upper bound on the capacity of a compound vector dirty paper channel where although an additive Gaussian sequence is known to the transmitter, the channel matrix between the interferer and receiver is uncertain but known to lie within a bounded set. Our bound is tighter than previous bounds in the low-SIR regime for the scalar version of the compound dirty paper channel and employs a construction that focuses on the relationship between the dimension of the message-bearing signal and the dimension of the additive state sequence. Additionally, a bound on the high-SNR behavior of the system is established., Comment: to be presented at ISIT 2013

(Invited Paper) Abstract—This paper describes a novel technique which has the potential to make a significant impact on the mapping of the human brain. This technique has been designed for 3D full-wave electromagnetic simulation of waves at very low frequencies and has been applied to the problem of modeling of brain waves which can be modeled as electromagnetic waves lying in the frequency range of 0.1-100 Hz. The use of this technique to model the brain waves inside the head enables one to solve the problem on a regular PC within 24 hrs, and requires just 1 GB of memory, as opposed to a few years of run time and nearly 200 Terabyte (200,000 GB) needed by the conventional FDTD (Finite Difference Time Domain) methods. The proposed technique is based on scaling the material parameters inside the head and solving the problem at a higher frequency (few tens of MHz) and then obtaining the actual fields at the frequency of interest (0.1-100 Hz) by using the fields computed at the higher frequency. The technique has been validated analytically by using the Mie Series solution for a homogeneous sphere, as well as numerically for a sphere, a finite lossy dielectric slab and the human head using the conventional Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) Method. The presented technique is universal and can be used to obtain full-wave solution to low-frequency problems in electromagnetics by using any numerical technique.

The problem of Dirty Paper Coding (DPC) over the Fading Dirty Paper Channel (FDPC) Y = H(X + S)+Z, a more general version of Costa's channel, is studied for the case in which there is partial and perfect knowledge of the fading process H at the transmitter (CSIT) and the receiver (CSIR), respectively. A key step in this problem is to determine the optimal inflation factor (under Costa's choice of auxiliary random variable) when there is only partial CSIT. Towards this end, two iterative numerical algorithms are proposed. Both of these algorithms are seen to yield a good choice for the inflation factor. Finally, the high-SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) behavior of the achievable rate over the FDPC is dealt with. It is proved that FDPC (with t transmit and r receive antennas) achieves the largest possible scaling factor of min(t,r) log SNR even with no CSIT. Furthermore, in the high SNR regime, the optimality of Costa's choice of auxiliary random variable is established even when there is partial (or no) CSIT in the special case of FDPC with t, 5 pages with 2 figures, presented at 42nd Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Pacific Grove, USA, Oct. 2008

This article proposes an Enhanced Memetic Differential Evolution (EMDE) for designing digital filters which aim at detecting defects of the paper produced during an industrial process. Defect detection is handled by means of two Gabor filters and their design is performed by the EMDE. The EMDE is a novel adaptive evolutionary algorithm which combines the powerful explorative features of Differential Evolution with the exploitative features of three local search algorithms employing different pivot rules and neighborhood generating functions. These local search algorithms are the Hooke Jeeves Algorithm, a Stochastic Local Search, and Simulated Annealing. The local search algorithms are adaptively coordinated by means of a control parameter that measures fitness distribution among individuals of the population and a novel probabilistic scheme. Numerical results confirm that Differential Evolution is an efficient evolutionary framework for the image processing problem under investigation and show that the EMDE performs well. As a matter of fact, the application of the EMDE leads to a design of an efficiently tailored filter. A comparison with various popular metaheuristics proves the effectiveness of the EMDE in terms of convergence speed, stagnation prevention, and capability in detecting solutions having high performance.

With the rapid development of information technology, scientific social networks (SSNs) have become the fastest and most convenient way for researchers to communicate with each other. Many published papers are shared via SSNs every day, resulting in the problem of information overload. How to appropriately recommend personalized and highly valuable papers for researchers is becoming more urgent. However, when recommending papers in SSNs, only a small amount of positive instances are available, leaving a vast amount of unlabelled data, in which negative instances and potential unseen positive instances are mixed together, which naturally belongs to One-Class Collaborative Filtering (OCCF) problem. Therefore, considering the extreme data imbalance and data sparsity of this OCCF problem, a hybrid approach of Social and Content aware One-class Recommendation of Papers in SSNs, termed SCORP, is proposed in this study. Unlike previous approaches recommended to address the OCCF problem, social information, which has been proved playing a significant role in performing recommendations in many domains, is applied in both the profiling of content-based filtering and the collaborative filtering to achieve superior recommendations. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed SCORP approach, a real-life dataset from CiteULike was employed. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is superior to all of the compared approaches, thus providing a more effective method for recommending papers in SSNs.

Paper is widely used as a substrate for inkjet printing, where the paper feature heavily impacts the print quality, especially the color reproduction. The unprinted area on paper is visible and applied as a background reflectance for the toner layer. Hence, it is worthwhile to understand the effects of paper whiteness on print color reproduction. In this study, the tested papers were treated with different dyes, which resulted in the change of the paper’s optical properties, but not surface roughness. The print density was impacted by the paper whiteness and ISO brightness. The effect of the paper whiteness on the print density is a stronger linear correlation compared to the ISO brightness. Paper whiteness has a positive correlation with the ISO brightness. The print colorimetric values (lightness and chroma values) increased with increasing paper whiteness up to a certain level, after which the paper whiteness did not have a noticeable impact on its print lightness and chroma values. The print color (a* and b* values) was affected by its corresponding paper color.

The "Carbon Copy onto Dirty Paper" (CCDP) channel is the compound "writing on dirty paper" channel in which the channel output is obtained as the sum of the channel input, white Gaussian noise and a Gaussian state sequence randomly selected among a set possible realizations. The transmitter has non-causal knowledge of the set of possible state sequences but does not know which sequence is selected to produce the channel output. We study the capacity of the CCDP channel for two scenarios: (i) the state sequences are independent and identically distributed, and (ii) the state sequences are scaled versions of the same sequence. In the first scenario, we show that a combination of superposition coding, time-sharing and Gel'fand-Pinsker binning is sufficient to approach the capacity to within three bits per channel use for any number of possible state realizations. In the second scenario, we derive capacity to within four bits-per-channel-use for the case of two possible state sequences. This result is extended to the CCDP channel with any number of possible state sequences under certain conditions on the scaling parameters which we denote as "strong fading" regime. We conclude by providing some remarks on the capacity of the CCDP channel in which the state sequences have any jointly Gaussian distribution.

Dirty paper coding (DPC) is a promising preceding technique for canceling arbitrary interference known only at the transmitter. The interference-free rate is thus achieved. However, this result relies on the perfectly known channel coefficients at the transmitter when being applied to the fading channel. We thus consider the fading paper problem where only the channel statistics information is available at the transmitter. In general, the optimal transmission strategies to achieve the capacity of this channel is still unknown. We confine ourselves to the linear-assignment Gel'fand-Pinsker coding which has been proved to have good, sometimes even optimal, performance in the a variety of fast and slow fading channels. However, lack of structured codebook so far limited the practical applications of this coding. In this paper, we present a lattice-based coding structure for the vector fading paper channel. It can achieve the rate performance of the linear-assignment strategies previously proved by the random Gaussian codebook. Moreover, the lattice codebook has an algebraic structure and is possible to be implemented in practice. The results can be applied to the emerging fields such as fading multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Gaussian broadcast channels or fading MIMO cognitive channels.

“Predatory journals” are profit-oriented journals which ignore academic quality. In 2014 Jeffrey Beall, a librarian from the University of Colorado Denver, compiled two lists in order to highlight this issue: one which listed questionable publishers and another which listed questionable standalone journals. He insisted that these publishers and journals were “corrupt” and that they “exist only to make money off the author processing charges that are billed to authors upon acceptance of their scientific manuscripts” (Beall 2014). In his study of “bogus journals”, Renandya (2014, pp. 4–7) identified the key characteristics of predatory journals as: (1) publication fees; (2) high frequency publication; (3) an extremely high acceptance rate; (4) quick turnaround times; (5) a rapid review process; and (6) low or extremely uneven quality of published articles. While Beall’s (2014) and Renandya’s (2014) contributions to the detection of predatory publishers are very important, there is currently a lack of available information on the generic structure of the predatory publishers’ call for papers. As the first point of contact for many academic writers, the call for papers plays a vital part in early detection of predatory publishers. This chapter addresses this issue by analysing the generic structure of 25 calls for papers using Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The chapter draws from Martin’s work on genre as “…staged, goal oriented” and “purposeful activity” (2009, p. 13) and Halliday’s features of field, tenor and mode that exist within the context of situation in SFL (Halliday 1978; Halliday and Hasan 1985/1989), to interpret the social context of the predatory call for papers. Further analyses of the appraisal devices (Martin and White 2005) and lexico-grammatical choices within the texts were conducted and are outlined in this chapter (Halliday and Matthiesen 2014; Sardinha 2013), with some analysis of the spoken and written forms of text emerging in the email (Halliday 1989). Beall’s (2014) and Renandya’s (2014) concepts were used to identify the 25 predatory emails used in this study. Understanding the generic structure and the lexico-grammatical construction is beneficial to writers seeking to publish their work in reputable circles.

In papermaking process the base paper is formed by starting from low concentration suspension. Depending on process stage different models can be utilized for better understanding and performance of the process. A short general overview of fluid dynamics related to papermaking process is given as well as new approaches including fiber network modeling and continuum mechanical fracture simulations. The fluid dynamical results presented illustrated some paper machine wet end phenomena while the solid state modeling approaches can be exploited from drying section of a paper machine to the several converting processes.

In this paper, we improve the peak to average power ratio (PAPR) reduction scheme for multicarrier systems proposed by Collings and Clarkson by applying dirty paper coding with peak power constraint. We compare the bit error rate (BER) performance among conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), Collings and Clarkson’s method, and our proposed scheme with bit loading. From simulation we find that when channel coding is considered, Collings and Clarkson’s method is the worst independent of the number of bits loaded. The proposed method performs the best when the number of bits is large and hence is suitable for high speed transmission.

The research examines the effectiveness of utilization of practicing materials using ICT and classical study support – printed material in teaching Mathematics. The research was held as a pedagogical experiment at the Faculty of Chemical Technology, University of Pardubice in academic year 2012-13. In the research group there were included 559 students in their first semester of study. Students were subjected to pretest and posttest, between these tests they were encouraged to practice through a material on basic calculus of functions of one variable. The practicing material was prepared both in classical (paper) form, both with an application of ICT. We registered results in pretest and posttest (in points), used practicing materials, successfulness in exam and continuing in studies after the first semester. The experiment looks for statistic relations among these variables. We present part of these statistic results. Further quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the project is planned to be a component of dissertation.

Selection of the most significant variables, i.e. the wavenumber, from an infrared (IR) spectrum is always difficult to be achieved. In this preliminary paper, the feasibility of genetic algorithms (GA) in identifying most informative wavenumbers from 150 IR spectra of papers was investigated. The list of selected wavenumbers was then employed in Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). GA procedure was repeated 30 times to get different lists of variables. Then the performances of LDA models were estimated via leave-one-out cross-validation. A total of six to eight wavenumbers were identified to be valuable variables in the GA procedures. All the 30 LDA models achieve correct classification rates between 97.3% to 100.0%. Therefore the GA-LDA model could be a suitable tool for differentiating white papers that appeared to be highly similar in their IR fingerprints.

In many sports games, we would use a coin or the game of scissors-paper-stone to decide which side will begin first. We consider the game of scissors-paper-stone when two teams are composed of N respectively. We continue the game of scissors-paper-stone until the winner of the two team is decided. Using sample spaces and enumerating the elements we calculated the mean number of the game when N = 1, N = 2 and N = 3. In case of N = 1 and N = 2, we simulate the game and find the mean and variance when the repetition number n = 20; 30; 50; 100; 150; 200.

In this paper, we discuss issues in verification, validation, and uncertainty prediction in computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Mesh adaptation is used to perform the systematic grid refinement studies required for code and simulation verification. We demonstrate the method of manufactured solutions (MMS) for code verification. Examples of successful and failed validation show that reliable prediction can only occur with an appropriate mathematical model of physics along with accurate numerical solution of the differential equations. The paper emphasizes good CFD practices to achieve systematic verification and put validation studies on solid grounds. Finally, the sensitivity equation method (SEM) is used to cascade input data uncertainty through the CFD code for estimating the uncertainty of the flow response.

A thermal aging experiment was conducted for oil-paper insulation to evaluate the insulation's response under thermal stress. Oil-papers at different aging stages were used to create oil-paper bound gas cavity specimens, which were used to collect data on degrees of polymerization (DP) and partial discharge (PD). Evaluation of oil-paper aging was based on statistical operators of PD and factor analysis was used to extract the principle parameters of PD. Three types of fuzzy clustering approaches were used to classify PD of aged oil-paper: the fuzzy c-means, the kernel fuzzy c-means, and the possibilistic fuzzy c-means. The clustering results showed that the possibilistic fuzzy c-means clustering was capable of classifying PD of oil-paper bound gas cavity specimens. The factor analysis method was also verified to be helpful in fuzzy clustering of PD data samples by reducing number of parameters.

Research paper recommenders emerged over the last decade to ease finding publications relating to researchers' area of interest. The challenge was not just to provide researchers with very rich publications at any time, any place and in any form but to also offer the right publication to the right researcher in the right way. Several approaches exist in handling paper recommender systems. However, these approaches assumed the availability of the whole contents of the recommending papers to be freely accessible, which is not always true due to factors such as copyright restrictions. This paper presents a collaborative approach for research paper recommender system. By leveraging the advantages of collaborative filtering approach, we utilize the publicly available contextual metadata to infer the hidden associations that exist between research papers in order to personalize recommendations. The novelty of our proposed approach is that it provides personalized recommendations regardless of the research field and regardless of the user's expertise. Using a publicly available dataset, our proposed approach has recorded a significant improvement over other baseline methods in measuring both the overall performance and the ability to return relevant and useful publications at the top of the recommendation list.