Use Of Partial Information Research Articles

OUTSOURCING LABORATORY SERVICES FROM A COLOMBIAN AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH COMPANY USING THE FITRADEOFF METHOD UNDER MULTIPLE STAKEHOLDERS ANALYSIS

Since most of the studies about outsourcing are focused on mathematical models, this paper seeks to support from theoretical bases the use of partial information to ease the decision-making process; the practical contribution is to apply the FITradeoff method for solving a multicriteria problem of an agricultural research company that seeks to decide about the need to outsource the operation in case to overhead the limited capacity of the analysis services. After the FITradeoff method was applied to elicit preferences from each decision-maker (DM), the results show whether or not it would be feasible to outsource a given service, and what the most promising options are. The method required the DMs to answer in less time only a few questions, which avoided placing an unnecessary cognitive burden on them and proved to be useful in assisting DMs in the decision-making.

Use of partial information to learn to read Chinese characters in non-native Chinese learners

The ability to decode new words of varying degrees of orthographic-phonological mapping is an important word recognition skill across languages. Chinese characters represent three types of phonetic regularity: regular, semi-regular, and irregular depending on the degree of reliability of the pronunciation information provided by the phonetic component. This study investigated whether adult non-native Chinese learners can use partial phonological information encoded in semi-regular characters to learn the pronunciations of new characters. A total of 55 college students, enrolled in an intensive Chinese program with varying proficiency levels, were taught the pronunciations of 18 novel compound characters of three phonetic regularity types over three trials. Non-native Chinese learners of advanced and intermediate levels learned the pronunciations of regular characters (initial-same and final-same), which contain full information about pronunciation, and semi-regular characters (initial-different, final-same), which contain partial information about pronunciation, significantly better than irregular characters (initial-different and final-different), which contain misleading pronunciation information. The performance difference between semi-regular and irregular characters decreased over trials. Novice students demonstrated limited ability in using partial information to learn to pronounce characters compared to intermediate and advanced students. These results provide implications for effective character instruction for adult learners of Chinese with varying Chinese proficiency levels.

Refining the Typical Scenarios by Additional Factors

The problems in the quality assessment modeling scenarios collecting information flow on an extensive network of the example of the problem of building and further optimization scenarios to analyze the budget process on an extensive network. Shown use structured approach to the ontology as considered most appropriate to the task of presenting the structure as a graph. Moved assessment of the effect of the use of partial information previously obtained by constructing scenarios collecting information flow on the network, described the count, with further refinement information. An formalized description of the hierarchical structure of the system. An example of the structure of the interaction of ontology elements for the problem of budget analysis is presented.The use of an integrated approach based on finding the shortest path in the graph and model ontology as a graph that realizes the possibility of using algorithms based on traversing vertices in layers of hierarchy.An approach to building breadth-first search algorithm that significantly reduces the time to find ways of building scenarios collect information on streaming extensive network. Described in the article approach to building quality assessment algorithm simulation scenarios collect information on flow tested an extensive network in the development of pilot systems, financial analysis of regional budgets. The algorithm allows to develop a set of software tools that provides plenty full and holistic problem solving refinement and optimization scenarios searching and collecting information flow on an extensive network. One of the promising areas of application of this approach to assessing the quality of the simulation scenarios are used to build its capacity information and analytical systems. This will significantly reduce the time and improve the quality of finding the necessary flow of information.

Coupling Implicit and Explicit Knowledge for Customer Volume Prediction

Customer volume prediction, which predicts the volume from a customer source to a service place, is a very important technique for location selection, market investigation, and other related applications. Most of traditional methods only make use of partial information for either supervised or unsupervised modeling, which cannot well integrate overall available knowledge. In this paper, we propose a method titled GR-NMF for jointly modeling both implicit correlations hidden inside customer volumes and explicit geographical knowledge via an integrated probabilistic framework. The effectiveness of GR-NMF in coupling all-round knowledge is verified over a real-life outpatient dataset under different scenarios. GR-NMF shows particularly evident advantages to all baselines in location selection with the cold-start challenge.

Bounds on skyline probability for databases with uncertain preferences

For determining skyline objects for an uncertain database with uncertain preferences, it is necessary to compute the skyline probability of a given object with respect to other objects. The problem boils down to computing the probability of the union of events from the probabilities of all possible joint probabilities. Linear Bonferroni bound is concerned with computing the bounds on the probability of the union of events with partial information. We use this technique to estimate the skyline probability of an object and propose a polynomial-time algorithm for computing sharp upper bound. We show that the use of partial information does not affect the quality of solution but helps in improving the efficiency. We formulate the problem as a Linear Programming Problem (LPP) and characterize a set of feasible points that is believed to contain all extreme points of the LPP. The maximization of the objective function over this set of points is equivalent to a bi-polar quadratic optimization problem. We use a spectral relaxation technique to solve the bi-polar quadratic optimization problem. The proposed algorithm is of O(n3) time complexity and is the first ever polynomial-time algorithm to determine skyline probability. We show that the bounds computed by our proposed algorithm determine almost the same set of skyline objects as that with the deterministic algorithm. Experimental results are presented to corroborate this claim.

Reduced-Reference Quality Assessment Based on the Entropy of DWT Coefficients of Locally Weighted Gradient Magnitudes.

Perceptual image quality assessment (IQA) attempts to use computational models to estimate the image quality in accordance with subjective evaluations. Reduced-reference (RR) image quality assessment (IQA) methods make use of partial information or features extracted from the reference image for estimating the quality of distorted images. Finding a balance between the number of RR features and accuracy of the estimated image quality is essential and important in IQA. In this paper we propose a training-free low-cost RRIQA method that requires a very small number of RR features (6 RR features). The proposed RRIQA algorithm is based on the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) of locally weighted gradient magnitudes.We apply human visual system's contrast sensitivity and neighborhood gradient information to weight the gradient magnitudes in a locally adaptive manner. The RR features are computed by measuring the entropy of each DWT subband, for each scale, and pooling the subband entropies along all orientations, resulting in L RR features (one average entropy per scale) for an L-level DWT. Extensive experiments performed on seven large-scale benchmark databases demonstrate that the proposed RRIQA method delivers highly competitive performance as compared to the state-of-the-art RRIQA models as well as full reference ones for both natural and texture images. The MATLAB source code of REDLOG and the evaluation results are publicly available online at https://http://lab.engineering.asu.edu/ivulab/software/redlog/.

Reconstructing Wholes From Parts

In this study, the effects of age, hearing loss, and modality on the ability to integrate partial information in degraded stimuli, either speech or text, were examined using isolated words. It was hypothesized that the ability to make use of partial information in speech diminishes with age. It was also hypothesized that additional contributions of cochlear pathology underlying hearing loss would be manifest as a further decrement in performance for older adults with hearing loss, relative to older adults with normal hearing. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that, if the ability to integrate partial information in speech is amodal, then recognition performance for degraded speech would be associated with recognition performance for parallel measures of degraded text. Last, it was hypothesized that, if the nature of the amodal ability to integrate partial information is cognitive, then the performance on auditory and visual measures of word recognition would be correlated with performance on measures of working memory. Twenty-five young adults with normal hearing, 20 older adults with normal hearing, and 21 older adults with hearing loss participated in this study. All participants completed three auditory and two parallel visual tasks consisting of listening to or reading degraded words or text. Older participants also completed a working-memory test battery. Group effects were examined for each of the auditory and visual measures. Performance of older participants on cognitive measures was compared with available data from a younger group participating in a different study in our laboratory (with similar protocol). Correlations between auditory and visual measures of speech recognition were examined for all participants. In addition, correlations between perceptual and cognitive measures were computed for the older participants. Finally, the relationship between dependent auditory measures and other independent measures in older adults were further examined using stepwise linear regression analyses. Of the 10 possible comparisons between the young and the two older groups for the five primary dependent measures, the young performed significantly better than the elderly did, 8 of the 10 times. The two older groups performed similarly for most tasks. In young adults, performance among the auditory tasks and between the two visual tasks was significantly and moderately to strongly correlated. In addition, performance on one of the visual tasks was weakly to moderately significantly correlated with performance on each of the three auditory tasks. Similar moderate to strong correlations were found within the auditory and visual modalities in older adults. However, none of the between-modality correlations were significant in the elderly. In summary, the results of this study suggest that the ability to integrate partial information in degraded words diminishes with age. Once audibility is accounted for, this ability does not seem to diminish with cochlear pathology. In young adults, both modality-specific factors and amodal cognitive factors seem to contribute to this ability. In older adults, although modality-specific factors continue to be important, it seems that the perceptual mechanisms that underlie the processing of degraded speech and text are separate, at least for isolated words. Our results suggest that, when peripheral factors are accounted for, some higher-level, yet-to-be identified, age-related factors contribute to speech-communication difficulties in the elderly.

Accelerating the convergence of value iteration by using partial transition functions

This work proposes an algorithm that makes use of partial information to improve the convergence properties of the value iteration algorithm in terms of the overall computational complexity. The algorithm iterates on a series of increasingly refined approximate models that converges to the true model according to an optimal linear rate, which coincides with the convergence rate of the original value iteration algorithm. The paper investigates the properties of the proposed algorithm and features a series of switchover queue examples which illustrates the efficacy of the method.

Establishing length-at-age references in the red mullet, Mullus barbatus L. 1758 (Pisces, Mullidae), a case study for growth assessments in the Mediterranean Geographical Sub-Areas (GSA)

Length at age data are a fundamental tool for the assessment of exploited fish populations, their use requiring the identification of the ‘unit stock’. At the present, however, the spatial reference for stock assessment in the Mediterranean Sea is based on a grid of 30 arbitrary Geographical Sub Areas (GSA). Since older data rarely respect the GSA borders, the authors propose to reconstruct the historical data within a common frame and to assess a single reference length at age, together with the corresponding von Bertalanffy growth parameters, to be used as a broad benchmark for analyses inter and intra GSAs. This approach was tested using, as a case study, the red mullet (Mullus barbatus L. 1758), one of the most investigated fish of the whole Mediterranean basin. Published and grey literature was browsed, to get direct and/or indirect length at age estimations. To establish a common baseline and maximize the use of partial information, a vBGF (L∞, total length in mm, and Ky-1) was fitted to length at age data whenever possible. 56 Mediterranean sets were utilized; an overall reference growth line was estimated by sex, discussing its adequacy to the life traits of the species.

WE-B-BRA-05: Minimizing Radiation Dose in Stereoscopic X-Ray-Based Monitoring of Tumor Motion with the Effective Use of Partial Information

Purpose: A number of stereoscopic X‐ray imaging techniques based on kV, hybrid kV/MV X‐ray systems (with or without other auxiliary external surrogate devices such as RPM) have been proposed for real‐time therapeutic guidance. The patient radiation exposure during the X‐ray image guided procedure is a major concern. We propose a general strategy of minimizing the patient imagingdose by effective use of the partial system information and demonstrate its potential clinical utility. Methods: While the nature of partial information depends on the specific stereoscopic imagingsystem and application, in this work we use the information from the primary imagers to estimate the tumor position during IMRT and/or VMAT and switch on the second imager only when an over‐threshold abnormal motion is observed. For a kV/MV system for example, the intrafraction tumor motion is monitored by two separate but related steps: (i) detect potential target motion beyond a pre‐defined threshold by using MV images and (ii) confirm the displacement and determine whether an intervention is needed through combined MV‐kV imaging. A Trilogy IX and a newly available Varian Trilogy MX linac with onboard kV imager were used to evaluate the performance of the strategy. The performance of the algorithm was evaluated for the case of prostate motion using computer simulation and 4D phantom measurements for 536 Calypso‐measured tracks from 17 patients, and for the case of thoracic motion using Cyberknife lung data from 5 patients. Mean position tracking algorithms were used on the latter case. Results: Over‐threshold displacement was detected for more than 98% of the time. The use of kV imaging was significantly reduced compared to continuous or periodic stereoscopic x‐ray imaging.Conclusions: A “failure” detection strategy for prostrate and thoracic motion has been presented that achieves high targeting accuracy while minimizing radiationdose.

Intelligibility of interrupted and interleaved speech for normal-hearing listeners and cochlear implantees

Speech intelligibility is degraded in the presence of a competing talker for cochlear implantees, presumably because of impaired tracking and integration of speech segments glimpsed in the masker valleys. This hypothesis was tested by assessing the intelligibility of periodically-interrupted bisyllables produced by a male and female talker, for normal-hearing listeners and implantees. A 4-Hz square-wave modulator with random phase was used to interrupt bisyllables from each talker. Stimuli were either presented alone (Experiment I) or interleaved (Experiment II: the two talkers were alternated). In Experiment I, the mean identification score for each voice was 88% for normal-hearing listeners and 35% for implantees. In Experiment II, the mean score corresponding to correct identification of both voices was 50% for normal-hearing listeners and 5% for implantees. Implantees identified at least one bisyllable among the two well above chance level but showed difficulties assigning it to the correct talker. This suggests that implantees can make use of partial information, but cannot track and integrate the non-adjacent components of interleaved speech as well as normal-hearing listeners. Additional results obtained with normal-hearing listeners tested with tone-vocoded syllables suggest that impaired tracking/integration for implantees stems from limited reception of spectral and temporal fine structure cues.

Use of partial information in learning to read Chinese characters.

Use of partial information in learning to read Chinese characters.

Use of partial information in learning to read Chinese characters.

This study investigated whether children can use partial information to learn the pronunciations of Chinese characters. Participants were 49 2nd graders and 56 4th graders whose home language was Mandarin and 75 2nd graders and 93 4th graders whose home language was Cantonese. Children had 2 trials to learn the Mandarin pronunciations of 28 unfamiliar compound characters of 4 types. Children learned to pronounce more regular characters, which contain full information about pronunciation, and more tone-different and onset-different characters, which contain partial information about pronunciation, than characters with unknown phonetic components, which contain no information about pronunciation. Mandarin-speaking children learned more pronunciations than Cantonese-speaking children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Use of partial stimulus information in spoken word recognition without auditory stimulation

The identification of isolated words in speech-reading environments is extremely prone to error. Many of these errors are due to the impoverished nature of spoken stimuli when the only perceptual information available is visual; some estimates place the number of visually discriminable segments at just over 25% of the number discriminable in auditory-only environments. Previous research has shown that the confusion of lipreaders is patterned with respect to the perceptual discriminability of phonetic segments in visual-only environments. In addition, other sources of information such as phonotactic, lexical, and semantic constraints can play a role in speech-reading performance. The current study examined the speech-reading responses generated by 200 normal hearing participants observing 300 isolated English words spoken by 10 talkers each. The responses were analyzed to determine if errors were random or patterned in a way that belies the use of partial information and lexical constraints during the process of visual-only spoken word recognition.

The usefulness of partial information: effects of go probability in the choice/Nogo task.

In the present study, we examined whether the use of partial information for response preparation depends on the utility of that partial information for meeting task demands. Using a choice/Nogo task, the utility of the partial information was varied by manipulating the proportion of Go relative to Nogo signals, and preliminary response preparation was indexed by the degree of lateralized readiness potential (LRP) activity on Nogo trials. The Nogo LRP was clearly present when Go probability was high (67% Go) and, to a lesser extent, when Go and Nogo signals were equiprobable. However, the Nogo LRP disappeared when the probability of a Go signal was low (25% Go). This pattern of results supports the hypothesis that response preparation will be based on partial stimulus information only when the information has significant utility in the context of the overall task requirements.

The use of partial information on weights in multicriteria decision problems

This paper addresses multicriteria decision problems in which only partial information is given in the decision-making process. We generalize existing results about preference relations induced by nonnegative inverse matrices, allowing linear relations on weights with upper and lower bounds. In addition we develop conditions for additional information that preserve the special properties studied and show how to incorporate the new information to the model. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The use of partial information on weights in multicriteria decision problems

The use of partial information on weights in multicriteria decision problems

The availability versus the use of partial information: Multiple levels of selective processing between perception and action

Temporal overlap of cognitive processes occurs when partial information about a stimulus activates associated responses before the stimulus has been fully identified. Recent evidence obtained with psychophysiological measures suggests that such overlap sometimes does, and sometimes does not occur. In this contribution, we argue that in order to understand why, we have to distinguish between selection of partial information for perception and selection of partial information for control over activation of responses. We discuss several mechanisms and factors that may modulate the temporal overlap of mental processes because they selectively influence the perceptual availability or the use of partial information.

Multiattribute Choice for the Lazy Decision Maker: Let the Alternatives Decide!

In this article we present a method of multi-attribute choice, based on an application of linear programming called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The first part of the method, which is straightforward DEA, can be thought of as an idealized process of self-evaluation in which each alternative weights the attributes in order to maximize its own desirability relative to the other alternatives. These weights are taken as defining the preferences of a fragment of the market. The second step is to use each alternative′s optimal weights to reconstruct the entire market and thus to infer the preferences of an average decision maker (DM) who needs to choose from among these alternatives. We show how this process is equivalent to an idealized peer evaluation; each alternative applies its own DEA-derived best weights to each of the other alternatives (alternative cross-evaluation, or AXE), then the average of the cross-evaluations that get placed on an alternative is taken as an index of its overall desirability (i.e., we are "letting the alternatives decide"). We use a large data set to examine the workings of the method and to compare our results with the published results of the data set′s compiler. AXE is also able to make use of partial information about the ordering of importance of the attributes specific to a particular DM. Taking an ecological perspective we argue that the method is sensitive to cues already in the data and uses them to amplify helpful bias and attenuate unhelpful bias. We also show how different kinds sensitivity analysis may be performed to check the robustness of the results.

Maximum entropy in the Hamburger moments problem

The maximum-entropy approach to the solution of the Hamburger inverse problem of moments, in which one seeks to recover a positive density function p(x) [where x∈(−∞,+∞)] from the values of a finite N+1 of its moments, is considered. The obtained results show that unexpected upper bounds for the moments do not exist in the general Hamburger finite moment problem, unlike in the symmetric case previously considered. Some physical examples, illustrating the use of partial information to determine the approximate function, are presented.