In the past 50 years nurse scheduling has received considerable attention in the research community. There are two cases regarding the nurse scheduling problem : the static and dynamic. Dynamic NSP, is often called nurse rerostering problem, which presents reconstruction or modification of the predetermined roster for the current scheduling horizon. The aim of this paper is to present new hybrid strategy for nurse NRRP problem. The proposed methodology is based on efficient cooperation between fuzzy logic, ordered weighted averaging and (...) variable neighbourhood descent search. Complete system is tested, and experimental results are based on real-world dataset obtained from the Oncology Institute of Vojvodina in Serbia. (shrink)

Detecting intrusions in large networks is a highly demanding task. In order to reduce the computation demand of analysing every single packet travelling along one of such networks, some years ago flows were proposed as a way of summarizing traffic information. Very few research works have addressed intrusion detection in flows from a visualizations perspective. In order to bridge this gap, the present paper proposes the application of a novel projection method (Beta Hebbian Learning) under this framework. With the aim (...) to validate this method, 8 traffic segments, containing many flows, have been analysed by means of this projection method. The promising results obtained for these segments, extracted from the University of Twente dataset, validate the proposed application. (shrink)

As it is well known, mobile phones have become a basic gadget for any individual that usually stores sensitive information. This mainly motivates the increase in the number of attacks aimed at jeopardizing smartphones, being an extreme concern above all on Android OS, which is the most popular platform in the market. Consequently, a strong effort has been devoted for mitigating mentioned incidents in recent years, even though few researchers have addressed the application of visualization techniques for the analysis of (...) malware. Within this field, the present work proposes the extension of a new technique called Hybrid Unsupervised Exploratory Plots to visualize Android malware datasets. More precisely, the novel Beta-Hebbian Learning (BHL) method is applied for the first time and validated under the frame of Hybrid Unsupervised Exploratory Plots, in conjunction with clustering methods. The informative visualization achieved provides a picture of the structure of the malware families, allowing subsequent analysis of their organization. To validate the Hybrid Unsupervised Exploratory Plot extension and its tuning, the popular Android Malware Genome dataset has been used in the experimental setting. Promising results have been obtained, suggesting that BHL applied in combination with clustering techniques in Hybrid Unsupervised Exploratory Plots are a viable resource for the visualization of malware families. (shrink)

Student performance and its evaluation remain a serious challenge for education systems. Frequently, the recording and processing of students’ scores in a specific curriculum have several flaws for various reasons. In this context, the absence of data from some of the student scores undermines the efficiency of any future analysis carried out in order to reach conclusions. When this is the case, missing data imputation algorithms are needed. These algorithms are capable of substituting, with a high level of accuracy, the (...) missing data for predicted values. This research presents the hybridization of an algorithm previously proposed by the authors called adaptive assignation algorithm, with a well-known technique called multivariate imputation by chained equations. The results show how the suggested methodology outperforms both algorithms. (shrink)

Nowadays, batteries play an important role in a lot of different applications like energy storage, electro-mobility, consumer electronic and so on. All the battery types have a common factor that is their complexity, independently of its nature. Usually, the batteries have an electrochemical nature. Several different test are accomplished to check the batteries performance, and commonly, it is predictable how they work depending of their technology. The present research describes the hybrid intelligent system created to accomplish fault detection over a (...) Lithium Iron Phosphate—LiFePO4 power cell type, commonly used in electro-mobility applications. The approach is based on the cell temperatures behaviour for voltage and current specific values. Taken into account the operating range of a real system based on a LiFePO4 cell, a large set of points of operation have been used to achieve the dataset. The different behaviour zones have been obtained by clustering as a first step. Then, different regression techniques have been used over each cluster. Polynomial regression, artificial neural networks and support vector regression were the combined techniques to develop the hybrid intelligent model proposed. The intelligent system gives very good results over the operating range, detecting all the faults tested during the validation. (shrink)

Ozone is one of the pollutants with most negative effects on human health and in general on the biosphere. Many data-acquisition networks collect data about ozone values in both urban and background areas. Usually, these data are incomplete or corrupt and the imputation of the missing values is a priority in order to obtain complete datasets, solving the uncertainty and vagueness of existing problems to manage complexity. In the present paper, multiple-regression techniques and Artificial Neural Network models are applied to (...) approximate the absent ozone values from five explanatory variables containing air-quality information. To compare the different imputation methods, real-life data from six data-acquisition stations from the region of Castilla y León are gathered in different ways and then analyzed. The results obtained in the estimation of the missing values by applying these techniques and models are compared, analyzing the possible causes of the given response. (shrink)

This study presents the application of self-organizing maps to air-quality data in order to analyze episodes of high pollution in Madrid. The goal of this work is to explore the dataset and then compare several scenarios with similar atmospheric conditions : some of them when no actions were taken and some when traffic restrictions were imposed. The levels of main pollutants, recorded at these stations for eleven days at four different times from 2015 to 2018, are analyzed in order to (...) determine the effectiveness of the anti-pollution measures. The visualization of trajectories on the self-organizing map let us clearly see the evolution of pollution levels and consequently evaluate the effectiveness of the taken measures, after and during the protocol activation time. (shrink)

In order to present the incidence of the dynamic turn in the logic of scientific research, we begin with a section, in this article, that deals with logical games as triggers of this dynamic turn in contemporary logic, together with the program of logical dynamics of information and interaction. We briefly introduce the main characteristics of the logic favorable to independence and the game-theoretical semantics, of dialogical logic, as well as the essential elements of this program. Although from any of (...) these points of view we have a list of logical tools to deal with more clearly epistemological issues, we highlight the role of dynamic epistemic logic, to which we dedicate the following section. There follows another one in which we enter the logical studies of abduction as one of the fundamental problems of contemporary epistemology and, in a new section, in terms of the theoretical constructs of the preceding sections, we present and explain a phenomenon that emerged in the field of linguistics, the case of the discovery of the Amazonian language pirahã, which should be considered an anomaly within the framework of the Chomskian theory. (shrink)

In order to present the incidence of the dynamic turn in the logic of scientific research, we begin with a section, in this article, that deals with logical games as triggers of this dynamic turn in contemporary logic, together with the program of logical dynamics of information and interaction. We briefly introduce the main characteristics of the logic favorable to independence and the game-theoretical semantics, of dialogical logic, as well as the essential elements of this program. Although from any of (...) these points of view we have a list of logical tools to deal with more clearly epistemological issues, we highlight the role of dynamic epistemic logic, to which we dedicate the following section. There follows another one in which we enter the logical studies of abduction as one of the fundamental problems of contemporary epistemology and, in a new section, in terms of the theoretical constructs of the preceding sections, we present and explain a phenomenon that emerged in the field of linguistics, the case of the discovery of the Amazonian language pirahã, which should be considered an anomaly within the framework of the Chomskian theory. (shrink)

Hailed by the Journal of the History of Astronomy as "charming and witty," this chronicle by a renowned physicist traces the development of scientific thought from the works of the "founding fathers" — Galileo, Huygens, and Newton — to the more recent discoveries of Maxwell, Boltzmann, and Gibbs. 1984 edition.

We present a preliminary high-level formal theory, grounded on knowledge representation techniques and foundational ontologies, for the uniform and integrated representation of the different kinds of (quali- tative and quantitative) knowledge involved in the designing process. We discuss the conceptual nature of engineering design by individuating and analyzing the involved notions. These notions are then formally charac- terized by extending the DOLCE foundational ontology. Our ultimate purpose is twofold: (i) to contribute to foundational issues of design; and (ii) to support (...) the development of advanced modelling systems for (qualitative and quantitative) representation of design knowledge. (shrink)

Product structures are represented in engineering models by depicting and linking components, features and assemblies. Their understanding requires knowledge of both design and manufacturing practices, and yet further contextual reasoning is needed to read them correctly. Since these representations are essen- tial to the engineering activities, the lack of a clear and explicit semantics of these models hampers the use of information systems for their assessment and exploita- tion. We study this problem by identifying different interpretations of structure rep- resentations, (...) and then discuss the formal properties that a suitable language needs for representing components, features and combinations of these. We show that the representation of components and features require a non-standard mereology. (shrink)

Enseñar el Holocausto en la Educación Secundaria es una tarea irrenunciable al tiempo que compleja, por su condición de acontecimiento extremo y casi inefable. El tratamiento de la Historia desde el punto de vista de los vencidos y la memoria como herramienta movilizadora, ofrecen posibilidades educativas muy valiosas para afrontar la enseñanza del Holocausto. Lo mismo ocurre con la educación en valores democráticos, que se presenta como una tarea necesaria en un contexto, el actual, de renacimiento de los movimientos neofascistas (...) y de extrema derecha, y de banalización y negación del genocidio judío. Para este cometido, la fotografía se presenta como una fuente de información primaria útil para llevar el método histórico al aula y como un recurso didáctico motivador en una sociedad híper saturada de imágenes. (shrink)