Target training with soft computing tools

The personal capabilities and intentions of employees indicate their performance within their organization. It is important for the organization to capture this kind of tacit knowledge since the workforce are the true experts in perceiving the organization's current reality and evaluating which assets require development – including themselves as knowledge assets. The collective inner voice of the workforce helps the organization's management to steer the company and its assets in a sustainable direction.This article presents how the collective inner voice of the workforce can be captured and how it can be used for the benefit of the organization and its employees. The objective is to support individuals’ personal aspirations, as well as to save the money, time and resources that an organization spends on personnel training.The focus of this article is on demonstrating a possible soft-computing method used for competency simulation. The process starts with a linguistic self-evaluation conducted by employees, where individuals’ own perception of current and target competence levels is captured. The self-evaluation is conducted with the help of fuzzy logic. Clusters are formed from the result dataset using an unsupervised neural network clustering method: self-organizing maps. A demonstrator tool is then used to perform a “what-if” type of analysis/simulation on the clusters in the results. With the demonstrator tool, employees can roughly test the impact of alternative training scenarios for themselves. For individuals this may open up new directions for self-development, and for organizations this may allow the efficient use of training resources. We tested the approach with a dataset from a real human resource development project among nuclear power plant operators.The case study reveals the potential of soft-computing based collective competency simulation as one part of personnel development projects in the future. Yet the techniques and the demonstrator tool used in this experiment are far from being products that employees could easily use as part of their training project. Possible benefits of the proposed approach are demonstrated in this article.     

JADE for Tensor-Valued Observations

Independent component analysis is a standard tool in modern data analysis and numerous different techniques for applying it exist. The standard methods however quickly lose their effectiveness when the data are made up of structures of higher order than vectors, namely, matrices or tensors (e.g., images or videos), being unable to handle the high amounts of noise. Recently, an extension of the classic fourth-order blind identification (FOBI) specially suited for tensor-valued observations was proposed and showed to outperform its vector version for tensor data. In this article, we extend another popular independent component analysis method, the joint approximate diagonalization of eigen-matrices (JADE), for tensor observations. In addition to the theoretical background, we also provide the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator and use both simulations and real data to show its usefulness and superiority over its competitors. Supplementary material including the proofs of the theorems and the codes for running the simulations and the real data example are available online.     

Mass Spectroscopy of the Antileukemic Drug MGBG and Related Bis(Amidinohydrazones) [‘Bis(Guanylhydrazones)’]

The first study on the mass spectroscopy of various bis(amidinohydrazones) is reported. The compounds studied included the investigational antileukemic drugs methylglyoxal bis(amidino-hydrazone) [‘methylglyoxal bis(guanylhydrazone)’, MGBG] and glyoxal bis(amidinohydrazone), as well as seven mono- and dialkylglyoxal analogs thereof. The results indicate that the free bases of these high-melting compounds are volatilized well enough to allow a facile detection of the molecular ions and to make mass spectroscopy of the underivatized compounds a suitable method for the verification of the identity of the substances. This result is of importance considering the development of novel analogs and derivatives. A compilation of electron-impact mass spectra is reported and possible fragmentation routes are outlined. The fragmentation of the various congeners appears to occur essentially similarly, the main paths involving breakage of the carbon-carbon single bond in the glyoxal moiety or breakage of either one of the nitrogen-nitrogen single bonds.     

On- and off-resonance spin-lock MR imaging of normal human brain at 0.1 T: possibilities to modify image contrast

The aim of the present investigation was to determine spin lock (SL) relaxation parameters for the normal brain tissues and thus, to provide basis for optimizing the imaging contrast at 0.1 T. 68 healthy volunteers were included. On-resonance spin lock relaxation time (T_1ρ) and off-resonance spin lock relaxation parameters (T_1ρ^off, M_e/M_o), MT parameters (T_1sat, M_s/M_o), and T₁, T₂ were determined for the cortical gray matter, and for the frontal and parietal white matters. The T_1ρ for the frontal and parietal white matters ranged from 110 to 133 ms and from 122 to 155 ms with locking field strengths from 50 μT to 250 μT, respectively. Accordingly, the values for the gray matter ranged from 127 to 155 ms. With a locking field strength of 50 μT, T_1ρ^off for the frontal and parietal white matters were from 114 to 217 ms and from 126 to 219 ms, and for the gray matter from 136 to 267 ms with the angle between the effective magnetic field (B_eff) and the z-axis (θ) ranging from 60° to 15°, respectively. The T_1ρ of the white and gray matters increased significantly with increasing locking field amplitude (p < 0.001). The T_1ρ^off decreased significantly with increasing θ (p < 0.001). T_1ρ and T_1ρ^off with θ ≥ 30° were statistically significantly shorter in the frontal than in the parietal white matters (p < 0.05). The duration, amplitude and θ of the locking pulse provide additional parameters to optimize contrast in brain SL imaging.     

Minimum norm solutions for cooperative games

A solution f for cooperative games is a minimum norm solution, if the space of games has a norm such that f(v) minimizes the distance (induced by the norm) between the game v and the set of additive games. We show that each linear solution having the inessential game property is a minimum norm solution. Conversely, if the space of games has a norm, then the minimum norm solution w.r.t. this norm is linear and has the inessential game property. Both claims remain valid also if solutions are required to be efficient. A minimum norm solution, the least square solution, is given an axiomatic characterization.      

Modeling,design, growth and characterization of red wavelength range microcavity emitters for plastic optic fiber applications

Resonant cavity light emitting diodes (RC-LEDs) and vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) for the red wavelength range are presented in the paper. A wide variety of simulation tools were employed in the device design and optimization and the good agreement between simulations and measurements enabled effective device development. Our red wavelength range RC-LEDs were mainly intended for short-haul communication systems based on polymethyl methacrylate plastic optical fiber and were optimized accordingly. They are achieving, under different structure and working regime variants, high output power (15 mW), high external efficiency (9.5%), record small-signal modulation bandwidth (f _-3dB up to 350 MHz), error-free back-to-back transmission rates beyond 622 Mbits/s, adjustable far-field pattern and good POF coupling efficiency with reasonably wide tolerances and without using auxiliary optics. In view of the possible use of graded-index POFs, free-space transmission and other high bandwidth or high spectral purity applications, VCSELs in the red wavelength range were also realized. They have achieved sub-milliamp room-temperature (RT) continuous-wave (CW) lasing for an 8 m diameter emission window and exhibited an external quantum efficiency of 6.65% for 10 m devices in RT CW operation. The VCSEL structures were far from optimal – not even incorporating all the RC-LED structure refinements – and significant improvement in performance characteristics are predicted for the optimized layer structure.     

A heuristic approximation of the worst case of Shellsort

A heuristic algorithm is presented to construct permutations which require as many moves in sorting by Shellsort as possible. The approximations obtained are compared with those found by other known methods. Experiments were performed with up ton=2047 elements to be sorted, and the results show the distinct superiority of the heuristic approximations. The actual times needed by Shellsort to sort the worst permutations achieved were determined and compared with the corresponding times of Shellsort in the average case, as well as with the times of quicksort and heapsort in their worst cases.     

Conformational analysis: XIV—A 1H n.m.r. conformational study of methyl substituted 2-oxo-1,3,2-dioxathians to confirm the predominance of chair forms in the trimethylene sulphite series

Seven isomeric 4,5,6-trimethyl-2-oxo-1,3,2-dioxathians, cis-4-trans-6-dimethyl-r-2-oxo-1,3,2-dioxathian and two isomeric 4,5,5,6-tetramethyl-2-oxo-1,3,2-dioxathians were prepared and their ¹H n.m.r. spectra analysed. The values of the vicinal coupling constants reported earlier for the cis-4-trans-6 compound were shown to be erroneous. In all cases the values of the vicinal coupling constants (and those of the chemical shifts) are indicative of a single chair conformation or a chair-chair equilibrium, in contrast to earlier reports on the significant contribution of twist forms but in agreement with an electron diffraction study. The chair form is ? 31 kJ mol^?1 thermochemically more stable than the twist form.