Traditionally, the Method of (Shannon-Kullback’s) Relative Entropy Maximization (REM) is considered with linear moment constraints. In this work, the method is studied under frequency moment constraints which are non-linear in probabilities. The constraints challenge some justifications of REM since a) axiomatic systems are developed for classical linear moment constraints, b) the feasible set ...

fragility curves represent the probabilities that structural damages, under various levels of seismic excitation, will exceed the specified damage states by means of earthquake intensity damage relations. conceptual aspects related to seismic vulnerability, damage and risk evaluation are discussed first, together with a short review of the most widely used possibilities for the seismic evaluati...

We consider the variance of the reward until absorption in a Markov chain. This variance is usually calculated from the second moment (expectation of the square). We present a direct system of equations for the variance, involving the first moment (expectation) but not the second moment. This method is numerically superior to the calculation from the second moment.

by using the trigonometric uniform splines of order 3 with a real tension factor, a numericalmethod is developed for solving a linear second order boundary value problems (2vbp) withdirichlet, neumann and cauchy types boundary conditions. the moment at the knots isapproximated by central finite-difference method. the order of convergence of the methodand the theory is illustrated by solving tes...

A method for fingerprint matching using invariant moment featuresis proposed. The fingerprint image is first preprocessed to enhance the original image by the Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) analysis. Then, a set of seven invariant moment features is extracted to represent the fingerprint image from a cirque of Interest (COI) based on the reference point of the enhanced fingerprint image. T...

The maximum entropy approach is a ,exible and powerful tool for density approximation. This paper proposes a sequential updating method to calculate the maximum entropy density subject to known moment constraints. Instead of imposing the moment constraints simultaneously, the sequential updating method incorporates the moment constraints into the calculation from lower to higher moments and upd...

A new method for elliptical shape detection based on the principle of gray and mass moment preserving is proposed. For each elliptical region in a gray-scale image, automatic bilevel thresholding based on gray moment preserving is used first to transform the blurred image in the region into a binary picture. The five parameters of the elliptical shape are then computed using the mass moment pre...

In this paper, we studied the effects of wrapping surfaces on muscle paths and moment arms of the neck muscle, semispinalis capitis. Sensitivities to wrapping surface size and the kinematic linkage to vertebral segments were evaluated. Kinematic linkage, but not radius, significantly affected the accuracy of model muscle paths compared to centroid paths from images. Both radius and linkage affe...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First to present a brief survey of some of the basic results related to the univariate moment problem, including Prékopa's dual approach for solving the discrete moment problem. Second we propose a new method for solving the continuous power moment problem when some higher order divided differences of the objective function are nonnegative. The proposed met...

Moment arms represent a muscle's ability to generate a moment about a joint for a given muscle force. The goal of this study was to develop a method to measure muscle moment arms in vivo over a large range of motion using real-time magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Rectus femoris muscle-tendon lengths and knee joint angles of healthy subjects (N = 4) were measured during dynamic knee joint flexi...