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This article considered the problem of determining the creditworthiness of an enterprise operating in the field of trade and services. The assessment of the creditworthiness of borrowers, particularly small businesses, needs to be more careful: the level of development of small enterprises and their specific activities must be considered, as well as the uncertainty in obtaining any financial result. A method for assessing the creditworthiness of enterprises (trade and services) is proposed, based on the use of the mathematical apparatus of the theory of fuzzy sets. This article analyzes the indicators of industry and regional specifics, indicators of the activity of a small enterprise, and financial and economic indicators typical for the service sector and trade. The rules on the basis of which decisions are made are formed in the form of logical formulas containing parameters. In its most general form, one parameter is predicted, called the creditworthiness index, which varies from 0 to 1 and has a natural interpretation. On the basis of the proposed method, examples of calculating the assessment of the creditworthiness of enterprises operating in the field of trade and services are given. The proposed scientific approach can be used as a basis for creating expert decision support systems for lending to small businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considered the problem of determining the creditworthiness of an enterprise operating in the field of trade and services. The assessment of the creditworthiness of borrowers, particularly small businesses, needs to be more careful: the level of development of small enterprises and their specific activities must be considered, as well as the uncertainty in obtaining any financial result. A method for assessing the creditworthiness of enterprises (trade and services) is proposed, based on the use of the mathematical apparatus of the theory of fuzzy sets. This article analyzes the indicators of industry and regional specifics, indicators of the activity of a small enterprise, and financial and economic indicators typical for the service sector and trade. The rules on the basis of which decisions are made are formed in the form of logical formulas containing parameters. In its most general form, one parameter is predicted, called the creditworthiness index, which varies from 0 to 1 and has a natural interpretation. On the basis of the proposed method, examples of calculating the assessment of the creditworthiness of enterprises operating in the field of trade and services are given. The proposed scientific approach can be used as a basis for creating expert decision support systems for lending to small businesses.

The current work addresses the unification of Electronic Health Records related to cervical cancer into a single medical knowledge source, in the context of the EU-funded ASSIST research project. The project aims to facilitate the research for cervical precancer and cancer through a system that virtually unifies multiple patient record repositories, physically located in different medical centers/hospitals, thus, increasing flexibility by allowing the formation of study groups “on demand” and by recycling patient records in new studies. To this end, ASSIST uses semantic technologies to translate all medical entities (such as patient examination results, history, habits, genetic profile) and represent them in a common form, encoded in the ASSIST Cervical Cancer Ontology. The current paper presents the knowledge elicitation approach followed, towards the definition and representation of the disease’s medical concepts and rules that constitute the basis for the ASSIST Cervical Cancer Ontology. The proposed approach constitutes a paradigm for semantic integration of heterogeneous clinical data that may be applicable to other biomedical application domains.

Novel health monitoring devices and applications allow consumers easy and ubiquitous ways to monitor their health status. However, technologies from different providers lack both technical and semantic interoperability and hence the resulting health data are often deeply tied to a specific service, which is limiting its reusability and utilization in different services. We have designed a Wellness Warehouse Engine (W2E) that bridges this gap and enables seamless exchange of data between different services. W2E provides interfaces to various data sources and makes data available via unified representational state transfer application programming interface to other services. Importantly, it includes Unifier–-an engine that allows transforming input data into generic units reusable by other services, and Analyzer–-an engine that allows advanced analysis of input data, such as combining different data sources into new output parameters. In this paper, we describe the architecture of W2E and demonstrate its applicability by using it for unifying data from four consumer activity trackers, using a test base of 20 subjects each carrying out three different tracking sessions. Finally, we discuss challenges of building a scalable Unifier engine for the ever-enlarging number of new devices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents the subject of European Union Classified Information (EUCI) exchange and handling within the realization of international research and technology projects. The acts and definition covering the legal framework for security information system in the EU are described in the first part. As a case study, the authors presented the SIRAMIS (Signature Response Analysis on Multi Influences Mines) European Defence Agency project, during which a wide range of the membership countries are required to create one common database for the exchange of information between each other. Post processed data unification should be based not only on common algorithms approved by all participants, but also strict rules for classified and sensitive information must be ensured. Furthermore, rules for personal security, facility security, risk level valuation and implementation of organizational matters are presented in this article, together with the physical security measures applied. All information was obtained from the data and dissemination process from the SIRAMIS research and the technology project progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author explores two databases that report collective holdings of shared print and shared digital collections to better understand the nature of the data available, the tools required to access and analyze this data, and the collection management questions that can be asked through data analysis. The author concludes with suggested next steps for tool development and data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the current economic, sociological, and environmental context, the durable performance of civil engineering works is a keystone of risk management. The data available for assessing performance are often numerous, heterogeneous, and imperfect. To cope with these difficulties, a four-phase method is proposed, comprised of (1) performance assessment modeling, (2) the formalization of heterogeneous information from different sources, (3) the propagation of imperfections in performance assessment models, and (4) the expression of outputs of these models in suitable formats to facilitate decision making and improve communication. Two applications of this methodology have been developed for buildings and dams and are used as illustrations. This methodology is supported by various methods that must be selected as a function of the case studied. Systemic approaches, knowledge-based methods, evidence theory, and fuzzy logic were used in the applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic effectiveness of universities is measured with the number of publications and citations. However, accessing all the publications of a university reveals a challenge related to the mistakes and standardization problems in citation indexes. The main aim of this study is to seek a solution for the unstandardized addresses and publication loss of universities with regard to this problem. To achieve this, all Turkey-addressed publications published between 1928 and 2009 were analyzed and evaluated deeply. The results show that the main mistakes are based on character or spelling, indexing and translation errors. Mentioned errors effect international visibility of universities negatively, make bibliometric studies based on affiliations unreliable and reveal incorrect university rankings. To inhibit these negative effects, an algorithm was created with finite state technique by using Nooj Transducer. Frequently used 47 different affiliation variations for Hacettepe University apart from 'Hacettepe Univ' and 'Univ Hacettepe' were determined by the help of finite state grammar graphs. In conclusion, this study presents some reasons of the inconsistencies for university rankings. It is suggested that, mistakes and standardization issues should be considered by librarians, authors, editors, policy makers and managers to be able to solve these problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current work addresses the unification of Electronic Health Records related to cervical cancer into a single medical knowledge source, in the context of the EU-funded ASSIST research project. The project aims to facilitate the research for cervical precancer and cancer through a system that virtually unifies multiple patient record repositories, physically located in different medical centers/hospitals, thus, increasing flexibility by allowing the formation of study groups "on demand" and by recycling patient records in new studies. To this end, ASSIST uses semantic technologies to translate all medical entities (such as patient examination results, history, habits, genetic profile) and represent them in a common form, encoded in the ASSIST Cervical Cancer Ontology. The current paper presents the knowledge elicitation approach followed, towards the definition and representation of the disease's medical concepts and rules that constitute the basis for the ASSIST Cervical Cancer Ontology. The proposed approach constitutes a paradigm for semantic integration of heterogeneous clinical data that may be applicable to other biomedical application domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Kinetic parameters of coal activation with oxidizing gases are depended of coal characters. In this work, activation of Iranian coal char with steam and CO2 is studied to find kinetic parameters of the reactions. These parameters are determined by unification of thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) data. Mathematical modeling of the reaction with random pore model also is investigated in this study to predict carbon conversion. Formulation of this model in the mixed controlling regime gives coupled partial differential equations, which has no analytical solution. In this work, a new and simple analytical–numerical solution method is presented to solve these complex equations with a good accuracy. The results show good agreement of this solution with the experimental data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper deals with the assessment of the service life of in-service building components subjected to known environmental and usage conditions. This assessment is complex because of two primary features. First, the assessment has to be carried within a multiscale context: a geometric scale that ranges from the material or elemental to building scale; a range in the complexity of the degradation (phenomena that varies from a single phenomenon to the consideration of several degradation scenarios); a range of possible performance requirements, from one function to several; and consideration, as well, to the time over which the process is carried out that may span from the design stage to that of management and repair. Second, this assessment must also take into consideration the availability and features of service-life data that by nature is heterogeneous, imprecise, uncertain, and incomplete. In this context, a comprehensive methodology is developed using all available data on service life derived from existing methods of service-life assessment of materials, elements or building components. Such data may, for example, be extracted from fundamental studies on durability, accelerated short-term exposure tests, statistical methods, factorial methods, feedback from practice, or expert opinion or other sources. The main stages of this methodology are: (i) identification of all possible degradation scenarios provided by failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA); (ii) collection of all available service-life data (SL-data) associated with these degradation scenarios, transformation of this data into a fuzzy-set format, and assessment of its quality; (iii) processing of unification of data and aggregation of data; and (iv) assessment of the service life of building components. The case study of a window unit allows for: (i) service-life assessment of a building component to be processed by unification of data and aggregation of data and (ii) a conclusion to be deduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of sustainability has been a prime concern as a continued surging amount of construction and demolition waste (CDW) is being generated while natural resources are consumed and contaminated at an alarming rate. However, CDW utilization involves a range of options based on combinations of different crushing options and manufacture of various recycled products, which is confusing for practitioners to decide the optimal CDW utilization scheme from a comprehensive perspective. To assist decision making among CDW utilization schemes, a heterogeneous multi-criteria evaluation framework is proposed where interval numbers, triangular fuzzy numbers (TFNs) and trapezoidal fuzzy numbers (TrFNs) are used for comprehensive evaluation, enabling experts to present assessment information flexibly based on their preferences, knowledge and nature of different data forms. Firstly, a comprehensive index system is constructed from social, environmental, financial and technical dimensions for the evaluation of CDW utilization schemes. Afterwards, a novel method is proposed to unify heterogeneous evaluation values into rough numbers. Thirdly, to fully reflect both inner and outer dependencies among criteria, the analytic network process (ANP) method is utilized to derive weights of criteria and sub-criteria, before the fuzzy multi-attributive border approximation area comparison (MABAC) method is applied to obtain the final ranking. Finally, a case study of CDW utilization schemes selection problem is illustrated where the scheme of on-site crushing combined with production of recycled bricks and aggregates is selected as the best option with the sum of the distance S k between alternatives and the border approximation areas obtained as [0.0037, 0.0544], and a comparative analysis is conducted to verify its effectiveness and validity of the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]