Consistent Rules Research Articles

A RELIABILITY EVALUATION SYSTEM OF ASSOCIATION RULES

Abstract. In mining association rules, the evaluation of the rules is a highly important work because it directly affects the usability and applicability of the output results of mining. In this paper, the concept of reliability was imported into the association rule evaluation. The reliability of association rules was defined as the accordance degree that reflects the rules of the mining data set. Such degree contains three levels of measurement, namely, accuracy, completeness, and consistency of rules. To show its effectiveness, the "accuracy-completeness-consistency" reliability evaluation system was applied to two extremely different data sets, namely, a basket simulation data set and a multi-source lightning data fusion. Results show that the reliability evaluation system works well in both simulation data set and the actual problem. The three-dimensional reliability evaluation can effectively detect the useless rules to be screened out and add the missing rules thereby improving the reliability of mining results. Furthermore, the proposed reliability evaluation system is applicable to many research fields; using the system in the analysis can facilitate obtainment of more accurate, complete, and consistent association rules.

A RELIABILITY EVALUATION SYSTEM OF ASSOCIATION RULES

In mining association rules, the evaluation of the rules is a highly important work because it directly affects the usability and applicability of the output results of mining. In this paper, the concept of reliability was imported into the association rule evaluation. The reliability of association rules was defined as the accordance degree that reflects the rules of the mining data set. Such degree contains three levels of measurement, namely, accuracy, completeness, and consistency of rules. To show its effectiveness, the "accuracy-completeness-consistency" reliability evaluation system was applied to two extremely different data sets, namely, a basket simulation data set and a multi-source lightning data fusion. Results show that the reliability evaluation system works well in both simulation data set and the actual problem. The three-dimensional reliability evaluation can effectively detect the useless rules to be screened out and add the missing rules thereby improving the reliability of mining results. Furthermore, the proposed reliability evaluation system is applicable to many research fields; using the system in the analysis can facilitate obtainment of more accurate, complete, and consistent association rules.

A two-level topological model for 3D features in CityGML

CityGML, as the standard for the representation and exchange of 3D city models, contains rich information in terms of geometry, semantics, topology and appearance. With respect to topology, CityGML adopts the XLink approach to represent topological relationships between different geometric aggregates or thematic features; however, it is limited to shared objects. This paper proposes a two-level model for representing 3D topological relationships in CityGML: high-level (semantic-level) topology between semantic features and low-level (geometric-level) topology between geometric primitives. Five topological relationships are adopted in this model: touch, in, equal, overlap and disjoint. The semantic-level topology is derived from the geometric-level topology on the basis of the shared geometric primitives. To maintain the 3D topology, topological consistency rules are presented. An Application Domain Extension, called TopoADE, is proposed for the implementation of the topological model. The TopoADE consists of three modules: Topology, Feature and Geometry. Finally, 3D city models with LoD1 to LoD4 are used to test this model. Experimentation on those data sets indicates a validation of the proposed topological model in CityGML.

1st International Workshop on UML Consistency Rules (WUCOR 2015)

The Unified Modeling Language (UML), with its 14 different diagram types, is the de-facto standard modeling language for object-oriented software modeling and documentation. Since the various UML diagrams describe different views of one, and only one, software system under development, they strongly depend on each other in many ways. In other words, the UML diagrams describing a software system must be consistent. Inconsistencies among these diagrams may be a source of faults during software development and analysis. It is therefore paramount that these inconsistencies be detected, analyzed and -- hopefully -- fixed. The goal of this workshop was to gather input and feedbacks on UML consistency rules from the community. This workshop provided an opportunity for researchers who have been working in the area of UML consistency to interact with each other at a highly interactive venue, improve the body of knowledge on UML consistency rules and discuss ideas for further research in this area. This report summarizes details of the workshop and the results obtained that day.

When Do Noisy Votes Reveal the Truth?

A well-studied approach to the design of voting rules views them as maximum likelihood estimators; given votes that are seen as noisy estimates of a true ranking of the alternatives, the rule must reconstruct the most likely true ranking. We argue that this is too stringent a requirement and instead ask: how many votes does a voting rule need to reconstruct the true ranking? We define the family of pairwise-majority consistent rules and show that for all rules in this family, the number of samples required from Mallows’s noise model is logarithmic in the number of alternatives, and that no rule can do asymptotically better (while some rules like plurality do much worse). Taking a more normative point of view, we consider voting rules that surely return the true ranking as the number of samples tends to infinity (we call this property accuracy in the limit ); this allows us to move to a higher level of abstraction. We study families of noise models that are parameterized by distance functions and find voting rules that are accurate in the limit for all noise models in such general families. We characterize the distance functions that induce noise models for which pairwise-majority consistent rules are accurate in the limit and provide a similar result for another novel family of position-dominance consistent rules. These characterizations capture three well-known distance functions.

As dimensões do acesso aos serviços de saúde bucal na mídia impressa

Resumo As informações divulgadas pela mídia contribuem para construir a representação populacional sobre o Siste ma Único de Saúde. Este estudo objetivou analisar a veiculação do tema "acesso aos serviços de saúde bucal" na mídia impressa do Espírito Santo (ES), Brasil. Uma pesquisa de abordagem qualitativa e documental foi realizada, com análise das matérias relacionadas ao acesso aos serviços de saúde bucal veiculadas entre março de 2004 e junho de 2009 nos dois principais jornais do Espírito Santo (A Gazeta e A Tribuna). Para a seleção das matérias utilizamos as palavras-chave: "Dentista", "Odontologia" e "Saúde Bucal". Foram en contradas 392 notícias, sendo 121 delas sobre o tema "acesso aos serviços de saúde bucal". Foram selecio nadas 41 matérias para esta análise, segundo as regras de exaustividade, representatividade, homogeneidade e pertinência. A análise de conteúdo temática dos dados foi realizada seguindo as categorias "disponibilidade", "capacidade de pagar" e "aceitabilidade". A maioria das matérias divulgou serviços odontológicos disponibili zados gratuitamente por prefeituras, faculdades, igre jas e ações maçônicas. Percebeu-se maior divulgação sobre políticas públicas de saúde bucal em 2004, que abordavam o acesso ao tratamento odontológico e à água fluoretada. Constatou-se frequente divulgação sobre a disponibilidade dos serviços de saúde bucal, incisiva sinalização dos problemas do setor público e apresentação da saúde suplementar como alternativa para suprir suas ineficiências. Também se verificou poucas matérias que abordaram a dimensão da acei tabilidade. Considera-se que, apesar da considerável disseminação de informações pelos veículos de comu nicação no período estudado, torna-se fundamental que a imprensa problematize o acesso aos serviços de saúde bucal em suas dimensões.

On time-consistent policy rules for heterogeneous discounting programs

This article considers a new concept of social optimum for an economy populated by agents with heterogeneous discount factors. It is based upon an approach that constrains decision rules to be temporally consistent: these are stationary and unequivocally ruled by the state variable. For agents who differ only in their discount factors and have equal weights in the planner’s objective, the temporally-consistent optimal solution produces identical consumption for the agents at all time periods. In the long run, the capital stock is determined by a modified golden rule that corresponds to an average-like summation of all discount factors. The general argument is illustrated by various two-agent examples that allow for an explicit determination of the temporally consistent decision rules. Interestingly, this temporally consistent solution can be simply recovered from the characterization of a social planner’s problem with variable discounting and can also be decentralized as a competitive equilibrium through the use of various instruments.

Targeted Cooperative Actions Shape Social Networks.

Individual acts of cooperation give rise to dynamic social networks. Traditionally, models for cooperation in structured populations are based on a separation of individual strategies and of population structure. Individuals adopt a strategy—typically cooperation or defection, which determines their behaviour toward their neighbours as defined by an interaction network. Here, we report a behavioural experiment that amalgamates strategies and structure to empirically investigate the dynamics of social networks. The action of paying a cost c to provide a benefit b is represented as a directed link point from the donor to the recipient. Participants can add and/or remove links to up to two recipients in each round. First, we show that dense networks emerge, where individuals are characterized by fairness: they receive to the same extent they provide. More specifically, we investigate how participants use information about the generosity and payoff of others to update their links. It turns out that aversion to payoff inequity was the most consistent update rule: adding links to individuals that are worse off and removing links to individuals that are better off. We then investigate the effect of direct reciprocation, showing that the possibility of direct reciprocation does not increase cooperation as compared to the treatment where participants are totally unaware of who is providing benefits to them.

Assessing exemptions under the ballast water management convention: preclude the Trojan horse

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) Ballast Water Management Convention (BWMC) is a powerful instrument aimed at reducing spread of harmful aquatic organisms and pathogens (HAOPs). As BWMC is expected to enter into force soon, shipping companies will start seeking exemptions for ballast water management in accordance with BWMC Regulation A-4. However, without scientifically robust risk assessment (RA) and consistent rules, the exemptions may introduce a new form of risk within a convention generally designed to reduce risks. This paper describes an adaptive system for granting exemptions, consisting of six major components: target species selection procedure, port-to-port RA, monitoring, information support, administrative decision and review process. The system is based on key principles defined in the IMO guidelines for RA and is designed to continuously accumulate evolving experience on granting exemptions. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the control of the spread of HAOPs, without placing an unnecessary burden on the shipping industry.

Metric characteristics of a new test for the evaluation of dynamic balance

The aim of the study was to determine psychometric characteristics of a new test for the evaluation of dynamic balance in healthy individuals. The research was conducted on a sample of 60 female students (21.18±.86 years). The participants performed three trials of the new test for each of the two different ways of walking. The results of reliability have shown high values of factor loadings (.91-.97) and standardized Cronbach’s alpha values (.87-.98), as well as the average inter-item correlation values (full feet walking, tip toe walking and the number of steps) (.78-.94). High values of factor loadings (.88-.97) and the fact that the total explained variance was very high (93.3%), with a relatively small variability between the attempts, suggests that all the rules for consistency of testing have been satisfied and that the new test is reliable enough for its application in practice.

Schattenbankwesen – Anstrengungen einer Regulierung

With the beginning of the financial crisis the discussion of the lack of detection of non-banking financial market participants that may create systemic risks, again flared up. Paul McCulley, former managing director of investment company PIMCO, coined for these phenomena the slogan „shadow banking system“ and understood it „the whole alphabet soup of levered up non-bank investment conduits, vehicles, and structures.“ The activities of the shadow banking system are varied and can be performed by various financial market players. Shadow banks are not like regular banks regulated, but nevertheless exercise bank-like activities. Because of the diffuse nature of the shadow banking system also the respective supervision is very complex. Therefore a single shadow banking law cannot be issued. Also, the EU Commission considered in its Green Paper on Shadow Banking that any kind of company and / or activity requires a special procedure. In recent years, increasingly regulations have been developed that directly or indirectly affect activities that are associated with the shadow banking system and that can be seen as important building blocks for greater stability in the financial sector. However, a systematic recording of all shadow banking activities in Europe as well as clear and consistent rules applicable to all stakeholders are still pending. This contribution brings an overview of the latest developments and efforts to regulate the shadow banking system.

Fordítsam vagy ne?

The paper attempts to list the dilemmas proper names present to literary translators based on the author’s own and others’ literary translations. There is no consistent rule governing whether or not to translate proper names in Hungarian. Generally names embedded in the text are dealt with according to the client’s requirements, the context and the literary translator’s resources. This is the case even if a name does not simply serve as an identifier, to separate an entity unambiguously, but has significant meaning, refers to something important or contributes to the overall ambience. There are arguments for and against the translation of proper names; using the originals is time-saving, cost-efficient and makes reference to the original easier, while translation provides the reader with extra information, to say nothing of the ’magical vibes’ of the name, the evoked feeling of unfamiliarity or familiarity, the atmosphere produced by it. As every case differs, a translator must take all significant factors into consideration and make a decision that will greatly influence the reception of a literary work. Although it may seem logical to expect consistency within a work, series or oeuvre, the paper attempts to show why consistency in dealing with proper names is something a literary translator aspires to, but never fully achieves.

Qualitative evaluation of a novel contingency management‐related intervention for patients receiving supervised injectable opioid treatment

To evaluate a novel contingency management (CM)-related intervention for people experiencing complex drug problems, thereby increasing understanding of CM implementation in real-world settings. Objectives are to provide new insights into (i) how context influences intervention delivery; (ii) aspects of intervention delivery that influence outcomes; and (iii) intervention outcomes. Qualitative realist evaluation of a novel CM-related intervention: conditional budgets (CB). Supervised injectable opioid treatment (IOT) clinic in England (May 2014-March 2015). Twenty IOT clinic patients (14 men; six women); 10 IOT clinic staff (seven men; three women). Semi-structured interviews systematically coded relating to knowledge and views of the intervention, experiences of delivering/receiving the intervention, and effectiveness of the intervention. Personal budgets provided to patients who reduced their supervised IOT while demonstrating ongoing stability. (i) Contextual factors influencing intervention delivery included patient motivation; clarity of intervention information; prior trust in the treatment system; patient and staff involvement in intervention design; stability of the treatment setting. (ii) Aspects of delivery influencing outcomes included transparency of the eligibility criteria, rules and operating processes; rule enforcement; continued verbal information about the intervention; speed of incentive processing and receipt. (iii) Reduced drug use was difficult to attribute to CBs, as patients who did well were those most motivated to change before the intervention started. Unintended outcomes were positive (improved patient psychological wellbeing, staff job satisfaction, staff/patient relationships) and negative (patient relapse, increased staff work-load, tensions in clinic relationships). A 'qualitative realist' evaluation of a contingency management intervention to help address complex substance use disorder problems suggests that the programmes need to have stakeholder input, implement consistent eligibility criteria, rules and processes and be introduced into stable treatment settings where relationships are trusting and patients and staff feel secure.

Knowing Verb From Object: Retagging With Transfer Learning on Verb-Object Concept Images

Image retagging is significant and essential for tag-based applications, such as search and browsing. However, most existing image retagging approaches are typically based on enriching-and-removing and/or reranking strategies, which lead to two drawbacks: 1) since the object and/or human appeared in the images are tagged as individuals, the meanings represented by the mutual context of object and human are ignored and not tagged, and 2) some images which are visually dissimilar but semantically similar could be filtered incorrectly, as they are conflict with the content consistency rule. These two defects are distinct especially when images with human-object interactions are retagged. To tackle these defects, in this paper we propose a Bayesian approach to jointly consider the human and object in an image and retag it properly. In our approach, human and objects in images are detected and their interrelationships are taken into account. Tags which represent the mutual context of human and objects are then mapped to those interrelationships by a probabilistic graphical model. For a new image which lacks the tag representing the interaction between human and object, our model can correctly retag it for the interaction. In this paper, those images involving human-object interactions are called verb-object concept images, and experiments on a 60-class dataset demonstrate the capacity of our Bayesian retagging approach of verb-object concept images (BRVOI).

On volatility smile and an investment strategy with out-of-the-money calls

A motivating question in this paper is whether a sensible investment strategy may systematically contain long positions in out-of-the-money European calls with a short expiry. Here we consider a very simple trading strategy for calls. The main points of this paper are the following. First, the presented trading strategy appears very lucrative in the Black–Scholes–Merton (BSM) framework. In fact, to such an extent that the BSM model turns out to be, in a sense, incompatible with the CAPM. Second, if one wishes to adapt these models together, then the adjustment of the consistent pricing rule (i.e. modifying state price densities) inevitably leads to some form of volatility smile, which is the main point of the paper. Moreover, these observations arise from purely structural considerations and only one hypothetical equity or equity index with many European options on it (such as S&P500) is required.

Topography and Data Mining Based Methods for Improving Satellite Precipitation in Mountainous Areas of China

Topography is a significant factor influencing the spatial distribution of precipitation. This study developed a new methodology to evaluate and calibrate the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) products by merging geographic and topographic information. In the proposed method, firstly, the consistency rule was introduced to evaluate the fitness of satellite rainfall with measurements on the grids with and without ground gauges. Secondly, in order to improve the consistency rate of satellite rainfall, genetic programming was introduced to mine the relationship between the gauge rainfall and location, elevation and TMPA rainfall. The proof experiment and analysis for the mean annual satellite precipitation from 2001–2012, 3B43 (V7) of TMPA rainfall product, was carried out in eight mountainous areas of China. The result shows that the proposed method is significant and efficient both for the assessment and improvement of satellite precipitation. It is found that the satellite rainfall consistency rates in the gauged and ungauged grids are different in the study area. In addition, the mined correlation of location-elevation-TMPA rainfall can noticeably improve the satellite precipitation, both in the context of the new criterion of the consistency rate and the existing criteria such as Bias and RMSD. The proposed method is also efficient for correcting the monthly and mean monthly rainfall of 3B43 and 3B42RT.

‘It is a dilemma’: perspectives of nurse practitioners on health screening of newly arrived migrants

BackgroundScreening newly arrived migrants from countries with high burden of communicable diseases of public health significance is part of the Swedish national strategy against the spread of these diseases. However, little is known about its implementation.ObjectiveThis study aimed at exploring caregivers’ experiences in screening newly arrived migrants to generate knowledge that could inform policy and clinical practice.DesignUsing an interpretive description framework, we conducted semistructured interviews between November and December 2011 in four Swedish counties, with 15 purposively selected nurses with experience in screening migrants. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultsParticipants described a range of challenges including discordant views between migrants and the nurses about medical screening, inconsistencies in rules and practices, and conflicting policies. Participants indicated that sociocultural differences resulted in divergent expectations with migrants viewing the participants as agents of migration authorities. They also expressed concern over being given a new assignment without training and being expected to share responsibilities with staff from other agencies without adequate coordination. Finally, they indicated that existing policies can be confusing and raise ethical issues. All these were compounded by language barriers, making their work environment extremely complex and stressful.ConclusionsThese findings illuminate complex challenges that could limit access to, uptake, and delivery of health screening and undermine public health goals, and highlight the need for a multilevel approach. This entails avoiding the conflation of migration with health issues, harmonizing existing policies to make health care services more accessible and acceptable to migrants, and facilitating health professionals’ work in promoting public health, improving interagency collaboration and the skills of all staff involved in understanding and effectively responding to migrants’ needs, and improving migrants’ health literacy through community outreach interventions.

Analysis on the Initial Cracking Parameters of Cross-Measure Hydraulic Fracture in Underground Coal Mines

Initial cracking pressure and locations are important parameters in conducting cross-measure hydraulic fracturing to enhance coal seam permeability in underground coalmines, which are significantly influenced by in-situ stress and occurrence of coal seam. In this study, stress state around cross-measure fracturing boreholes was analyzed using in-situ stress coordinate transformation, then a mathematical model was developed to evaluate initial cracking parameters of borehole assuming the maximum tensile stress criterion. Subsequently, the influences of in-situ stress and occurrence of coal seams on initial cracking pressure and locations in underground coalmines were analyzed using the proposed model. Finally, the proposed model was verified with field test data. The results suggest that the initial cracking pressure increases with the depth cover and coal seam dip angle. However, it decreases with the increase in azimuth of major principle stress. The results also indicate that the initial cracking locations concentrated in the second and fourth quadrant in polar coordinate, and shifted direction to the strike of coal seam as coal seam dip angle and azimuth of maximum principle stress increase. Field investigation revealed consistent rule with the developed model that the initial cracking pressure increases with the coal seam dip angle. Therefore, the proposed mathematical model provides theoretical insight to analyze the initial cracking parameters during cross-measure hydraulic fracturing for underground coalmines.

Development of a Bayesian Belief Network Model Framework for Analyzing Farmers’ Irrigation Behavior

Canal operators need information to manage water deliveries to irrigators, especially in the case of on-demand irrigation supply systems. Short-term irrigation demand forecasts can provide potentially valuable information for a canal operator who must manage such a system, especially if these forecasts could be generated by using readily available information about bio-physical conditions of the irrigated area and the decision-making processes of irrigators. Additionally, Bayesian models of irrigation behavior can provide insight into the likely criteria which farmers use to make irrigation decisions. This paper develops a Bayesian belief network (BBN) to infer irrigation decision-making behavior of farmers based on factor interaction and posterior probabilities. The model discussed here was built from a combination of data about biotic, climatic, and edaphic conditions under which observed irrigation decisions were made. From all the possible initial trials, the model which was built from data comprising of conditions on days the irrigation decision was made, and a day before it, was found to be the best and is presented and discussed here. The paper includes a case study using data collected from the Canal B region of the Sevier River, near Delta, Utah. Alfalfa, barley and corn are the main crops in the Canal B area. The model has been tested with a portion of the data to affirm the model predictive capabilities. It was found that most of the farmers used consistent rules throughout all years and across different types of crops. Soil moisture stress, was found to be the most likely, significant predictive variable of the irrigation decision. Irrigation decisions appeared to be triggered by a farmer’s perception of soil stress (or a surrogate thereof), or by a perception of combined factors such as information about a neighbor irrigating or an apparent preference to irrigate on a weekend. Soil stress resulted in irrigation probabilities (chance that the farmer will irrigate) of 94.4% for alfalfa. Prediction accuracy of the timing for irrigations of alfalfa was observed to be 81.0%, and 61.0% for barley and corn. The study shows that BBNs can be a prospective tool to analyse likely decisions about irrigation in an on-demand system with good accuracy.

Detection of Firewall Policy Anomalies in Real-time Distributed Network Security Appliances

With the advent of emerging technologies like cloud computing, the security of confidential data is of prime importance. Firewalls are widely used as the most basic security device used to protect a network from unauthorized access and network intrusions. Network Administrators define some rules to filter incoming and outgoing packets which form the security policy of the firewall. The large size of firewall policies create complex interactions between policies of the same firewall as well as between multiple firewalls. In this paper, we extend the currently known classification for firewall policy anomalies. Further, we propose a tool which obtains these rules from security devices in real-time environment, detects the anomalies present in them according to the underlying network topology and propagates the consistent rules with the consent of administrator. Currently, the tool can only be used with Cisco security devices; however, it can be extended to incorporate the syntax of other vendor’s devices as well.