We introduce mCP nets, an extension of the CP net formalism to model and handle the qualitative and conditional preferences of multiple agents. We give a number of different semantics for reasoning with mCP nets. The semantics are all based on the idea of individual agents voting. We describe how to test optimality and preference ordering within a mCP net, and we give complexity results for suc...

In extreme value statistics, the extreme value index is a well-known parameter to measure the tail heaviness of a distribution. Pareto-type distributions, with strictly positive extreme value index (or tail index) are considered. The most prominent extreme value methods are constructed on efficient maximum likelihood estimators based on specific parametric models which are fitted to excesses ov...

In the design of chemical/energy production systems, a major challenge is to identify the bottleneck issues and improve its sustainability effectively. Due to the multi-dimensional feature of sustainability, how to account for the impacts of various design factors and the cause-and-effect relationships can be very difficult. This paper will present a sustainability root cause analysis method ba...

Word-of-Mouth plays its great important role on the base of social network in affecting consumers’ shopping behaviour. However, it is little known how firms make a self-suitable marketing strategy according to both online and offline WOM effect in their product diffusion. This article investigates a new product diffusion process taking both offline WOM and online WOM effect into consideration. ...

Airline mergers and acquisitions (MAs) are on the rise across the globe and have been a growing trend in the U.S. aviation industry in the last few years. MAs are taking several factors into consideration, such as cost efficiency, competition, and geographic coverage. For airlines, these transactions can eliminate overlapping routes and help reduce competition, leading airlines to achieve highe...

W study the problem of (re)designing the regional network by which cadaveric livers are allocated. Whereas prior research focused mainly on maximizing a measure of efficiency of the network that was based on aggregate patient survival, we explicitly account for the trade-off between efficiency and a measure of geographical equity in the allocation process. To this end, we extend earlier optimiz...

One of the dramatic developments in bandwidth-efficient communications over the past few years is the introduction and rapid applications of combined coding and bandwidth efficient modulation, known as coded modulation, for error control. Using coded modulation, reliable data transmission can be attained without compromising bandwidth efficiency. In this report, we present the basic concepts of...

Effective traffic management in urban areas is done by adapting traffic signal times to current traffic conditions. At isolated intersections this task is usually realised by fixed time or by conventional vehicle actuated signal controllers. The fixed time signals use predefined green times, they are reliable and cost-efficient but offer no opportunity to adapt on-line. Especially with rapidly ...

We present here a formal foundation for an iterative and incremental approach to constructing and evaluating preference queries. Our main focus is on query modification: a query transformation approach which works by revising the preference relation in the query. We provide a detailed analysis of the cases where the order-theoretic properties of the preference relation are preserved by the revi...

A new, fast method for verifying human faces using geometric invariants is proposed. The proposed method takes advantage of the properties of geometric invariants to deal with background changes and solve illumination, translation, scaling, and rotating problems. The method includes locating and segmenting the facial image, extracting the facial features, and implementing recognition processes....