Digital Commons Network^™

Smart Green Communication Protocols Based On Several-Fold Messages Extracted From Common Sequential Patterns In Uavs, Iván García-Magariño, Geraldine Gray, Raquel Lacuesta, Jaime Lloret

Articles

Green communications can be crucial for saving energy in UAVs and enhancing their autonomy. The current work proposes to extract common sequential patterns of communications to gather each common pattern into a single several- fold message with a high-level compression. Since the messages of a pattern are elapsed from each other in time, the current approach performs a machine learning approach for estimating the elapsed times using off-line training. The learned predictive model is applied by each UAV during flight when receiving a several-fold compressed message. We have explored neural networks, linear regression and correlation analyses among others. The current …

Blockchain And Insurance: A Review For Operations And Regulation, Richard Brophy

Articles

The purpose of this paper is to examine the operational and regulatory positions of the employment of Blockchain in the insurance industry. Blockchain technology has attracted wide interest from various stakeholders. Many theorists are predicting that this technology will disrupt financial services, including insurance. As stated that the development of blockchain is dependent on regulatory acceptance of this technology, it is essential to establish the current state of play with regard to the application and use of blockchain from a commercial and regulatory standpoints.

A Brief History Of Whiskey Adulteration And The Role Of Spectroscopy Combined With Chemometrics In The Detection Of Modern Whiskey Fraud, Mary Deasy, Aoife C. Power, Sinead Currivan, Sive Geoghegan, Daniel Cozzolino

Articles

Food fraud and adulteration is a major concern in terms of economic and public health. Multivariate methods combined with spectroscopic techniques have shown promise as novel an analytical strategy for addressing issues related to food fraud that cannot be solved by the analysis of one variable, particularly in complex matrices such distilled beverages. This review describes and discusses different aspects of whisky production, and recent developments of laboratory, in field and high throughput analysis. In particular, recent applications detailing the use of vibrational spectroscopy techniques combined with data analytical methods used to distinguish between brand and origin of whisky to …

A Catalogue Of Locus Algorithm Pointings For Optimal Differential Photometry For 23,779 Quasars, Oisın Creaner, Kevin Nolan, David Grennan, Niall Smith, Eugene Hickey

Articles

This paper presents a catalogue of optimised pointings for differential photometry of23,779 quasars extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Catalogue and ascore for each indicating the quality of the Field of View (FoV) associated with thatpointing. Observation of millimagnitude variability on a timescale of minutes typicallyrequires differential observations with reference to an ensemble of reference stars. Foroptimal performance, these reference stars should have similar colour and magnitudeto the target quasar. In addition, the greatest quantity and quality of suitable refer-ence stars may be found by using a telescope pointing which offsets the target objectfrom the centre of the …

Comparing Tagging Suggestion Models On Discrete Corpora, Bojan Bozic, Andre Rios, Sarah Jane Delany

Articles

This paper aims to investigate the methods for the prediction of tags on a textual corpus that describes diverse data sets based on short messages; as an example, the authors demonstrate the usage of methods based on hotel staff inputs in a ticketing system as well as the publicly available StackOverflow corpus. The aim is to improve the tagging process and find the most suitable method for suggesting tags for a new text entry.

Importance Of Data Distribution On Hive-Based Systems For Query Performance: An Experimental Study, Hilmi Egemen Ciritoglu, John Murphy, Christina Thorpe

Articles

SQL-on-Hadoop systems have been gaining popularity in recent years. One popular example of SQL-on-Hadoop systems is Apache Hive; the pioneer of SQL-on-Hadoop systems. Hive is located on the top of big data stack as an application layer. Besides the application layer, the Hadoop Ecosystem is composed of 3 different main layers: storage, the resource manager and processing engine. The demand from industry has led to the development of new efficient components for each layer. As the ecosystem evolves over time, Hive employed different execution engines too. Understanding the strengths of components is very important in order to exploit the full …

Analysis Of Automatic Annotations Of Real Video Surveillance Images, Diana Guevara Flores, Fernando Pérez Téllez, David Pinto Avendaño

Articles

The results of the analysis of the automatic annotations of real video surveillance sequences are presented. The annotations of the frames of surveillance sequences of the parking lot of a university campus are generated. The purpose of the analysis is to evaluate the quality of the descriptions and analyze the correspondence between the semantic content of the images and the corresponding annotation. To perform the tests, a fixed camera was placed in the campus parking lot and video sequences of about 20 minutes were obtained, later each frame was annotated individually and a text repository with all the annotations was …

An Univariable Approach For Forecasting Workload In The Maintenance Industry, Paulo Silva, Fernando Pérez Téllez, John Cardiff

Articles

The forecasting of the workload in the maintenance industry is of great value to improve human resources allocation and reduce overwork. In this paper, we discuss the problem and the challenges it pertains. We analyze data from a company operating in the industry and present the results of several forecasting models.

Cu(Ii) Phenanthroline-Phenazine Complexes Dysregulate Mitochondrial Function And Stimulate Apoptosis, Garret Rochford, Zara Molphy, Kevin Kavanagh, Malachy Mccann, Michael Devereux, Andrew Kellett, Orla L. Howe

Articles

Herein we report an in-depth study on the cytotoxic mechanism of action of four developmental cytotoxic copper(II) complexes: [Cu(phen)2]2+ (Cu-Phen); [Cu(DPQ)(Phen)]2+ (Cu-DPQ-Phen); [Cu(DPPZ)(Phen)]2+; and [Cu(DPPN)(Phen)]2+ (where Phen = 1,10-phenanthroline, DPQ = dipyrido[3,2-f:20,30-h]quinoxaline, DPPZ = dipyrido[3,2-a:20,30-c]phenazine, and DPPN = benzo[i]dipyrido[3,2-a:20,30-c]phenazine). This complex class is known for its DNA intercalative properties and recent evidence—derived from an in vivo proteomic study—supports the potential targeting of mitochondrial function. Therefore, we focused on mitochondrial-mediated apoptosis related to cytotoxic activity and the potential impact these agents have on mitochondrial function. The Cu(II) complexes demonstrated superior activity regardless of aromatic extension within the phenazine ligand to the …

Birefringent Optofluidic Gratings, Sergio Calixto, Jose L. Garcia-Cordero, Diana F. Cedillo-Alcantar, Izabela Naydenova, Guillermo Garnica

Articles

A set of parallel microfluidic channels behaving as a diffraction grating operating in the Raman-Nath regime has been fabricated and studied. The diffraction efficiency of such structure can be tuned by selecting a liquid with a particular refractive index and/or optical anisotropy. Alternatively the optical properties of the liquid can be characterised by measuring the diffraction efficiency and the state of polarization of the diffracted beam. In this work, the microfluidic channels under study have been filled with penicillin molecules dissolved in water. Due to the chirality of the penicillin, the liquid has been found to have circular birefringence of …

Self-Reported Data For Mental Workload Modelling In Human-Computer Interaction And Third-Level Education, Lucas Rizzo, Luca Longo

Articles

Mental workload (MWL) is an imprecise construct, with distinct definitions and no predominant measurement technique. It can be intuitively seen as the amount of mental activity devoted to a certain task over time. Several approaches have been proposed in the literature for the modelling and assessment of MWL. In this paper, data related to two sets of tasks performed by participants under different conditions is reported. This data was gathered from different sets of questionnaires answered by these participants. These questionnaires were aimed at assessing the features believed by domain experts to influence overall mental workload. In total, 872 records …

An Empirical Evaluation Of The Inferential Capacity Of Defeasible Argumentation, Non-Monotonic Fuzzy Reasoning And Expert Systems, Lucas Rizzo, Luca Longo

Articles

Several non-monotonic formalisms exist in the field of Artificial Intelligence for reasoning under uncertainty. Many of these are deductive and knowledge-driven, and also employ procedural and semi-declarative techniques for inferential purposes. Nonetheless, limited work exist for the comparison across distinct techniques and in particular the examination of their inferential capacity. Thus, this paper focuses on a comparison of three knowledge-driven approaches employed for non-monotonic reasoning, namely expert systems, fuzzy reasoning and defeasible argumentation. A knowledge-representation and reasoning problem has been selected: modelling and assessing mental workload. This is an ill-defined construct, and its formalisation can be seen as a reasoning …

A-Step 2030 – New Research Project Presents A Picture Of The Skills Needed For Engineers To Solve The Sustainable Development Goals (Sdgs)., Una Beagon

Articles

Communication and Technical Skills will still be the most important attributes required of engineers in the future, according to a new study by the A-STEP 2030 Erasmus+ funded project. The project which is led by ENSTA Bretagne, France and has academic partners in TU Dublin, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Finland and Aalborg University in Denmark aims to develop innovative teaching approaches for engineering students which will attract a more diverse student body to the engineering profession.

A Hidden Technological Assumption In Patent Law: The Case Of Gene Patents And The Disclosure Requirement, Or Cohen Sasson

Articles

The disclosure requirement in patent law is designed to reveal knowledge regarding a patented invention to allow proper understanding and utilization of that invention. The contention offered here is the presence of an inherent incompatibility between the disclosure requirement and genetic inventions. Genetic inventions are highly contingent on genetic statistical data (GSD), which is gathered during the commercial phase of a genetic invention. GSD are essential for various purposes, which at least some should be satisfied by the disclosure. However, since GSD can be gathered only at the postapplication period, GSD are not disclosed through the disclosure requirement. Therefore, there …

Thermal Energy Refurbishment Status Of The Irish Housing Stock, Ciara Ahern, Brian Norton

Articles

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are issued for buildings constructed, sold or leased across the EU. Using a generalizable methodology this work exploits Ireland's EPC national dwelling stock database to determine the thermal refurbishment status of Ireland's housing stock. It is estimated in 2014 that; i) 58% of walls were insulated at a mean overall heat loss coefficient or U-value of 0.66 W/m²K, ii) 67% of roofs were insulated at a mean U-value 0.37 W/m²K, iii) 97% of windows were double-glazed, and iv) 53% of floors were insulated to a mean U-value of 0.59 W/m²K. …

Assessing The Quality Of Mobile Graphical User Interfaces Using Multi-Objective Optimization, Soui, Makram, Mabrouka Chouchane, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Marouane Kessentini, Khaled Ghedira

Articles

Aesthetic defects are a violation of quality attributes that are symptoms of bad interface design programming decisions. They lead to deteriorating the perceived usability of mobile user interfaces and negatively impact the Users eXperience (UX) with the mobile app. Most existing studies relied on a subjective evaluation of aesthetic defects depending on end-users feedback, which makes the manual evaluation of mobile user interfaces human-centric, time-consuming, and error-prone. Therefore, recent studies have dedicated their effort to focus on the definition of mathematical formulas that each targets a specific structural quality of the interface. As the UX is tightly dependent on the …

Nonprofit College Crash: Enforcing Board Fiduciaries Through Increased Accountability And Transparency In The Irs Form 990 Procedure, Kaleb Paul Byars

Articles

Since 1997, the United States has experienced a steady increase in college closings. Private, nonprofit colleges are the most prevalent among these affected institutions. A 2017 study confirmed that 177 colleges failed a U.S. Education Department test for “financial responsibility.” Of these 177 colleges, well over half are private nonprofits. Further, several colleges have closed since the study was completed. It is reasonable to conclude the financial irresponsibility of these schools contributes to their closures. ...

Part I describes fiduciary duties of nonprofit board members and instances of their failure. Part II discusses inadequate nonprofit oversight and provides information regarding …

Thermal Refurbishment Status Of The Irish Housing Stock, Ciara Ahern, Brian Norton

Articles

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are issued for buildings constructed, sold or leased across the EU. Using a generalizable methodology this work exploits Ireland’s EPC national dwelling stock database to determine the thermal refurbishment status of Ireland’s housing stock. It is estimated in 2014 that; i) 58% of walls were insulated at a mean overall heat loss coefficient or U-value of 0.66 W/m 2 K, ii) 67% of roofs were insulated at a mean U-value 0.37 W/m 2 K, iii) 97% of windows were double-glazed, and iv) 53% of floors were insulated to a mean U-value of 0.59 W/m 2 K. …

Operationalizing Learning From Rare Events: Framework For Middle Humanitarian Operations Managers, Amr Mahfouz, Ashraf Labib, Sara Hadleigh-Dunn, Marco Gentile

Articles

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the learning from rare events and the knowledge management processinvolved, which presents a significant challenge to many organizations. This is primarily attributed to the inability tointerpret these events in a systematic and “rich” manner, which this paper seeks to address. We start by summarizing therelevant literature on humanitarian operations management (HOM), outlining the evolution of the socio-technical disasterlifecycle and its relationship with humanitarian operations, using a supply chain resilience theoretical lens. We then out-line theories of organizational learning (and unlearning) from disasters and the impact on humanitarian operations. Subse-quently, we theorize the …

Association Of Total Zinc Intake With Myopia In U.S. Children And Adolescents, Niamh Burke, John Butler, Daniel Ian Flitcroft, Daniel Mccartney, James Loughman

Articles

Significance: This present study advances our knowledge on the role of lifestyle factors in myopia (short-sightedness), specifically dietary factors. It has been suggested in previous studies that lower zinc status is associated with myopia; however, this article shows no relationship between dietary zinc intake and myopia in U.S. adolescents. Purpose: It has been suggested that low zinc levels may contribute to the development of myopia. The aim of the present study is to examine, for the first time in a Western population, the association of total dietary and supplement zinc intake with myopia. Methods: A total of 1095 children/adolescents aged …

A Techno-Economic Analysis Of Current Cooling Techniques In Irish Data Centres, Lee Gibbons, Bryan Coyne, David Kennedy, Sajad Alimohammadi

Articles

This research is part of a comprehensive study to determine reformative actions for cooling regimes within the Irish data centre market. To achieve this goal, preliminary Exergy, Entropy change and operational cost analyses are used. It is determined that there is no clear advantage for using one cooling method over another without knowing the data centres secondary function (e.g. district heating, energy generation). Air cooling technology is a good candidate for a highly reliable system due to the low exhaust temperatures of 30°C. Two-phase immersion is a possibility for economically viable data centres where operational costs are to be minimised, …

On A Diagonal Conjecturefor Classical Ramsey Numbers, Meilian Liang, Stanislaw Radziszowski, Xiaodong Xu

Articles

Let R(k1, · · · , kr) denote the classical r-color Ramsey number for integers ki ≥ 2. The Diagonal Conjecture (DC) for classical Ramsey numbers poses that if k1, · · · , kr are integers no smaller than 3 and kr−1 ≤ kr, then R(k1, · · · , kr−2, kr−1 − 1, kr + 1) ≤ R(k1, · · · , kr). We obtain some implications of this conjecture, present evidence for its validity, and discuss related problems. Let Rr(k) stand for the r-color Ramsey number R(k, · · · , k). It is known that limr→∞ …

Runge–Kutta–Gegenbauer Explicit Methods For Advection-Diffusion Problems, Stephen O'Sullivan

Articles

In this paper, Runge-Kutta-Gegenbauer (RKG) stability polynomials of arbitrarily high order of accuracy are introduced in closed form. The stability domain of RKG polynomials extends in the the real direction with the square of polynomial degree, and in the imaginary direction as an increasing function of Gegenbauer parameter. Consequently, the polynomials are naturally suited to the construction of high order stabilized Runge-Kutta (SRK) explicit methods for systems of PDEs of mixed hyperbolic-parabolic type.

We present SRK methods composed of L ordered forward Euler stages, with complex-valued stepsizes derived from the roots of RKG stability polynomials of degree $L$. Internal stability …

Quantifying Entanglement In A 68-Billion Dimensional Quantum State Space, James Schneeloch, Christopher C. Tison, Michael L. Fanto, Paul M. Alsing, Gregory A. Howland

Articles

Entanglement is the powerful and enigmatic resource central to quantum information processing, which promises capabilities in computing, simulation, secure communication, and metrology beyond what is possible for classical devices. Exactly quantifying the entanglement of an unknown system requires completely determining its quantum state, a task which demands an intractable number of measurements even for modestly-sized systems. Here we demonstrate a method for rigorously quantifying high-dimensional entanglement from extremely limited data. We improve an entropic, quantitative entanglement witness to operate directly on compressed experimental data acquired via an adaptive, multilevel sampling procedure. Only 6,456 measurements are needed to certify an entanglement-of-formation …

Social Clustering In Epidemic Spread On Coevolving Networks, Hsuan-Wei Lee, Nishant Malik, Feng Shi, Peter J. Mucha

Articles

Even though transitivity is a central structural feature of social networks, its influence on epidemic spread on coevolving networks has remained relatively unexplored. Here we introduce and study an adaptive susceptible- infected-susceptible (SIS) epidemic model wherein the infection and network coevolve with nontrivial proba- bility to close triangles during edge rewiring, leading to substantial reinforcement of network transitivity. This model provides an opportunity to study the role of transitivity in altering the SIS dynamics on a coevolving network. Using numerical simulations and approximate master equations (AMEs), we identify and examine a rich set of dynamical features in the model. In …

An Agent-Based Model Of Financial Benchmark Manipulation, Gabriel Virgil Rauterberg, Megan Shearer, Michael Wellman

Articles

Financial benchmarks estimate market values or reference rates used in a wide variety of contexts, but are often calculated from data generated by parties who have incentives to manipulate these benchmarks. Since the the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) scandal in 2011, market participants, scholars, and regulators have scrutinized financial benchmarks and the ability of traders to manipulate them. We study the impact on market quality and microstructure of manipulating transaction-based benchmarks in a simulated market environment. Our market consists of a single benchmark manipulator with external holdings dependent on the benchmark, and numerous background traders unaffected by the benchmark. …

On Some Edge Folkman Numbers Small And Large, Jenny M. Kaufmann, Henry J. Wickus, Stanislaw Radziszowski

Articles

Edge Folkman numbers Fe(G1, G2; k) can be viewed as a generalization of more commonly studied Ramsey numbers. Fe(G1, G2; k) is defined as the smallest order of any Kk -free graph F such that any red-blue coloring of the edges of F contains either a red G1 or a blue G2. In this note, first we discuss edge Folkman numbers involving graphs Js = Ks − e, including the results Fe(J3, Kn; n + 1) = 2n − 1, Fe(J3, Jn; n) = 2n − 1, and Fe(J3, Jn; n + 1) = 2n − 3. Our modification of …

Scrutinizing Anticompetitive State Regulations Through Constitutional And Antitrust Lenses, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

State and local regulations that anticompetitively favor certain producers to the detriment of consumers are a pervasive problem in our economy. Their existence is explicable by a variety of structural features—including asymmetry between consumer and producer interests, cost externalization, and institutional and political factors entrenching incumbent technologies. Formulating legal tools to combat such economic parochialism is challenging in the post-Lochner world, where any move toward heightened judicial review of economic regulation poses the perceived threat of a return to economic substantive due process. This Article considers and compares two potential tools for reviewing such regulations—a constitutional principle against anticompetitive parochialism …

Can Refactoring Be Self-Affirmed? An Exploratory Study On How Developers Document Their Refactoring Activities In Commit Messages, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Ali Ouni

Articles

Refactoring is a critical task in software maintenance and is usually performed to enforce best design practices, or to cope with design defects. Previous studies heavily rely on defining a set of keywords to identify refactoring commits from a list of general commits extracted from a small set of software
systems. All approaches thus far consider all commits without checking whether refactorings had actually happened or not. In this paper, we aim at exploring how developers document their refactoring activities during the software life cycle. We call such activity Self-Affirmed Refactoring, which is an indication of
the developer-related refactoring events …

On The Impact Of Refactoring On The Relationship Between Quality Attributes And Design Metrics, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Ali Ouni, Marouane Kessentini

Articles

Refactoring is a critical task in software maintenance and is generally performed to enforce the best design and implementation practices or to cope with design defects. Several studies attempted to detect refactoring activities through mining software repositories allowing to collect, analyze and get actionable data-driven insights about refactoring practices within software projects. Aim: We aim at identifying, among the various quality models presented in the literature, the ones that are more in-line with the developer’s vision of quality optimization, when they explicitly mention that they are refactoring to improve them. Method: We extract a large corpus of design-related refactoring activities …