We consider global stability of a flow network model for vehicular traffic. Standard approaches which rely on monotonicity of flow networks for stability analysis do not immediately apply to traffic networks with diverging junctions. In this paper, we show that the network model nonetheless exhibits a mixed monotonicity property. Mixed monotonicity allows us to prove global asymptotic stability...

On purpose to extract trend and cycle from a time series many competing techniques have been developed. The probably most prevalent is the Hodrick Prescott filter. However this filter suffers from diverse shortcomings, especially the subjective choice of its penalization parameter. To this point penalized splines within a mixed model framework offer the advantage of a data driven derivation of ...

In this paper a mixed-model assembly-line sequencing problem with the goal of minimizing work overload is addressed. We consider time windows in work stations of the assembly line (closed stations). Different versions of a product to be assembled in the line (e.g. automotive industry), which require different processing time according to the work required in each work station are considered. In...

This study investigates how acoustic and lexical properties of spontaneous speech in dialogs affect perceived social attractiveness in terms of speaker likeability, friendliness, competence, and self-confidence. We analyze a database of longer spontaneous dialogs between German female speakers and the mutual ratings that dialog partners assigned to one another after every conversation. Thus the...

The present study investigated how learners’ knowledge of a second language (L2) can influence the processing of their first language (L1). The study recorded the eye movements of 47 L1 Chinese participants with different L2 English proficiency levels as they read and judged the grammaticality of 240 Chinese sentences (60 anglicized ungrammatical relative clauses, 90 non-anglicized ungrammatica...

Fixed and Mixed Effects Models in Meta-Analysis The last three decades the accumulation of quantitative research evidence has led to the development of systematic methods for combining information across samples of related studies. Although a few methods have been described for accumulating research evidence over time, meta-analysis is widely considered as the most appropriate statistical metho...

Most assessments, like the math subtest of the SAT or the GRE, are unidimensional, in that they treat all questions on the test as sampling a single underlying “skill”. Can we predict state tests scores better if we tag the questions with fine-grained models the skills needed? Psychometricians don’t do this presumably because they don’t get better fitting model, for a variety of reasons. We are...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2014.07.008 0360-8352/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. q This manuscript was processed by Area Editor Surendra M. Gupta. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Politeknik Sultan Azlan Shah, 35950 Behrang, Perak, Malaysia. Tel.: +60 3 8921 7022; fax: +60 3 8925 9629. E-mail address: [email protected] (S.M. Jainury). Suhartini ...

Evaluation is critical to understanding how participatory processes work and how they can be structured to maximize the benefits of stakeholder and decision maker collaboration. This presentation provides a framework for evaluating stakeholder involvement in decision making in science and technology. Specifically, the following topics are covered: 1) the importance of incorporating program eval...

We describe an approach to incorporating Bayesian priors in the MAXQ framework for hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL). We define priors on the primitive environment model and on task pseudo-rewards. Since models for composite tasks can be complex, we use a mixed model-based/model-free learning approach to find an optimal hierarchical policy. We show empirically that (i) our approach resu...