The impact of diversity on the accuracy of evidential classifier ensembles

Diversity being inherent in classifiers is widely acknowledged as an important issue in constructing successful classifier ensembles. Although many statistics have been employed in measuring diversity among classifiers to ascertain whether it correlates with ensemble performance in the literature, most of these measures are incorporated and explained in a non-evidential context. In this paper, we provide a modelling for formulating classifier outputs as triplet mass functions and a uniform notation for defining diversity measures. We then assess the relationship between diversity obtained by four pairwise and non-pairwise diversity measures and the improvement in accuracy of classifiers combined in different orders by Demspter’s rule of combination, Smets’ conjunctive rule, the Proportion and Yager’s rules in the framework of belief functions. Our experimental results demonstrate that the accuracy of classifiers combined by Dempster’s rule is not strongly correlated with the diversity obtained by the four measures, and the correlation between the diversity and the ensemble accuracy made by Proportion and Yager’s rules is negative, which is not in favor of the claim that increasing diversity could lead to reduction of generalization error of classifier ensembles.     

A residual-type a posteriori error estimate of finite volume element method for a quasi-linear elliptic problem

In this paper, we analyze a residual-type a posteriori error estimator of the finite volume element method for a quasi-linear elliptic problem of nonmonotone type and derive computable upper and lower bounds on the error in the H ¹-norm. Numerical experiments are provided to illustrate the performance of the proposed estimator.     

Two-grid methods for finite volume element approximations of nonlinear parabolic equations

Two-grid methods are studied for solving a two dimensional nonlinear parabolic equation using finite volume element method. The methods are based on one coarse-grid space and one fine-grid space. The nonsymmetric and nonlinear iterations are only executed on the coarse grid and the fine-grid solution can be obtained in a single symmetric and linear step. It is proved that the coarse grid can be much coarser than the fine grid. The two-grid methods achieve asymptotically optimal approximation as long as the mesh sizes satisfy h=O(H³|lnH|)$h=O\left(H^3|lnH|\right)$. As a result, solving such a large class of nonlinear parabolic equations will not be much more difficult than solving one single linearized equation.     

An improved NSGA-III algorithm based on elimination operator for many-objective optimization

Due to the low selection pressure of the Pareto-dominance relation and the ineffectivity of diversity maintenance schemes in the environmental selection, the classical Pareto-dominance based multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) fail to handle many-objective optimization problems. The recently presented non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm III (NSGA-III) employs the uniformly distributed reference points to significantly promote population diversity, but the convergence based on the Pareto-dominance relation could still be enhanced. For this purpose, an improved NSGA-III algorithm based on elimination operator (NSGA-III-EO) is proposed. In the proposed algorithm, the elimination operator first identifies the reference point with maximum niche count and then employs the penalty-based boundary intersection distance to rank the individuals associated with it. To this end, the selection scheme is used to remove the worse individuals rather than to select the superior individuals. The proposed NSGA-III-EO is tested on a number of well-known benchmark problems with up to fifteen objectives and shows the competitive performance compared with five state-of-the-art MOEAs. Additionally, it is also tested on constrained problems having a large number of objectives and shows good performance.     

Composition-ratio determination of Chrome Azurol S (CAS) with Cu(2+) and research on dynamic reaction process of CAS with EDTA

The composition-ratio of Chrome Azurol S (CAS) with Cu(2+) and dynamic reaction process of CAS with EDTA were studied by spectrophotometry. The composition-ratio of Cu(2+) with CAS (2:1) was successfully determined using the method of lines and EDTA complexing substitution. The effects of temperature, time, pH, concentration of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTMAB), and concentration of Cu(2+) on the absorption spectrum were also discussed. By optimizing experimental conditions, the dynamic process of displacement of CAS, which forms the ternary compound Cu-CAS-CTMAB, by EDTA were determined. The test results indicated that EDTA can replace 99.6% of the CAS quickly when heated. The system reached equilibrium finally. This research method can be applied to the qualitative and quantitative analysis of related Cu complexes.     

Determination of pyrethroid pesticide residues in vegetables by solvent sublation followed by high-performance liquid chromatography

A novel method is developed for separating and enriching pyrethroid pesticides from vegetables by solvent sublation, and determination of the pyrethroids is performed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The effects of organic solvent, pH of the solution, nitrogen flow rate, and sublation time on the sublation efficiency of pyrethroids are investigated in detail, and the optimal conditions of the solvent sublation are selected. The floated product of vegetables in the optimal conditions is determined by HPLC. The limit of detection values range from 1.4 microg/kg (for bifenthrin) to 4.2 microg/kg (for fenpropathin). The recoveries of spiked vegetable samples are from 85.7% to 110.4%, and relative standard deviation values are from 1.70% to 6.19%. The results are satisfactory.     

trans‐(dl‐Isoleucinato‐N,O)[tris(2‐aminoethyl)amine‐κ4N]cobalt(III) diperchlorate

The racemic title compound, trans‐[N,N‐bis(2‐amino­ethyl)‐1,2‐ethanediamine‐κ⁴N]­(dl ‐isoleucinato‐N,O)­cobalt(III) di­per­chlor­ate, [Co(C₆H₁₈N₄)(C₆H₁₂NO₂)](ClO₄)₂, crystallizes in the enantiomorphous space group P2₁2₁2₁ with Z = 12 (Z′ = 3). Each of the three cations in the asymmetric unit represents a different chirality of the isoleucine ligand; two of them are R (or d ) and the third is the S (or l ) enantiomer. The mixture crystallizes in a so‐called unbalanced crystallization, in which the cations adopt a chiral array of composition RRS or SSR, depending on the crystal selected for data collection.     

Dissolution of cellulose in aqueous NaOH/urea solution: role of urea

Urea can improve the solubility and stability of cellulose in aqueous alkali solution, while its role has not come to a conclusion. To reveal the role of urea in solution, NMR was introduced to investigate the interaction between urea and the other components in solution. Results from chemical shifts and longitudinal relaxation times show that: (1) urea has no strong direct interaction with cellulose as well as NaOH; (2) urea does not have much influence on the structural dynamics of water. Urea may play its role through van der Waals force. It may accumulate on the cellulose hydrophobic region to prevent dissolved cellulose molecules from re-gathering. The driving force for the self-assembly of cellulose and urea molecules might be hydrophobic interaction. In the process of cellulose dissolution, OH^? breaks the hydrogen bonds, Na⁺ hydrations stabilize the hydrophilic hydroxyl groups and urea stabilizes the hydrophobic part of cellulose.