With the increasing concern about product quality, attention has shifted to the monitoring of production processes to be assured of good quality. Achieving good quality is a challenging task in the ...garment industry due to the great complexity of garment products. This paper presents an intelligent system, using fuzzy association rule mining with a recursive process mining algorithm, to find the relationships between production process parameters and product quality. The goal is to derive a set of decision rules for fuzzy logic that will determine the quantitative values of the process parameters. Learnt process parameters used in production form new inputs of the initial step of the mining algorithm so that new sets of rules can be obtained recursively. Radio frequency identification technology is deployed to increase the efficiency of the system. With the recursive characteristics of the system, process parameters can be continually refined for the purpose of achieving quality assurance. A case study is described in which the system is applied in a garment manufacturing company. After a six-month pilot run of the system, the numbers of critical defects, major defects and minor defects were reduced by 7, 20 and 24%, respectively while production time and rework cost improved by 26 and 30%, respectively. Results demonstrate the practical viability of the system to provide decision support for garment manufacturers who may not be able to determine the appropriate process settings for achieving the desired product quality.
The electroglottogram (EGG) is a signal used for measuring the change of the relative contact area in the vocal cord during the throat production. In the recent years, the low cost and the ...non-invasive applications have been derived. Hence, the EGG has been applied in various science, engineering and medical fields such as in the basic voice science including the phonetics, the singing and the hearing as well as in the speech and the language therapy and the related clinical works including the voice production physiology, the swallowing and the psychology. However, the pathological classifications using the EGGs usually yield the poor performances. This is because the EGGs are required to decompose into the various components for extracting the features for performing the classifications. Nevertheless, the total numbers of the components decomposed by some time frequency representation such as the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) for different EGGs are different. Hence, the dimension of the feature vectors extracted from different EGGs is different. This introduces to the difficulty for building a machine learning model for performing the classification. This paper is to address this issue.
This paper proposes a method for grouping the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) and the residue obtained by applying the EMD to the EGGs for classifying between the healthy subjects and the pathological subjects. More precisely, this paper proposes a clustering based method to group the IMFs and the residue so that the total numbers of the grouped IMFs of different EGGs are the same. First, the IMFs and the residue of the EGGs are categorized into a desired number of groups based on their correlation coefficients. Second, the IMFs or the residue in each group are summed together to obtain the grouped IMF. Third, the mean frequency and the first formant of each grouped IMF are computed. Finally, a random forest is employed for performing the classification. To our best knowledge, this joint EMD and clustering based method is firstly proposed to preform the pathological voice detection. The computer numerical simulations are conducted using the online available Saarbrücken voice database.
Here, five cross validations have been performed. The mean accuracy, the mean specificity and the mean sensitivity among these five validations are 86.98, 79.92 and 91.57, respectively. The standard deviation of the accuracy, the specificity and the sensitivity among these five validations are ±2.00%, ±3.71% and ±2.13%, respectively. The simulation results show that our proposed method outperforms the common EGG or speech processing based methods.
This paper proposes a clustering based method for grouping the IMFs and the residue for performing the pathological classifications via the EGGs. The grouping criterion is based on the correlation coefficients. It is found that our proposed method can achieve the highest classifications for the majority signal to noise ratios compared to the state of the arts methods.
•This paper proposes a clustering based method for grouping the IMFs and the residue.•It applies to classify between the healthy and the pathological subjects.•The total numbers of the grouped IMFs of different EGGs are the same.•The mean frequency and the first formant of each grouped IMF are computed.•A random forest is employed for performing the classification.
An experiment was performed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's 88-in. Cyclotron to determine the mass number of a superheavy element. The measurement resulted in the observation of two ...α-decay chains, produced via the ^{243}Am(^{48}Ca,xn)^{291-x}Mc reaction, that were separated by mass-to-charge ratio (A/q) and identified by the combined BGS+FIONA apparatus. One event occurred at A/q=284 and was assigned to ^{284}Nh (Z=113), the α-decay daughter of ^{288}Mc (Z=115), while the second occurred at A/q=288 and was assigned to ^{288}Mc. This experiment represents the first direct measurements of the mass numbers of superheavy elements, confirming previous (indirect) mass-number assignments.
We report the observation of gravitational waves from a binary-black-hole coalescence during the first two weeks of LIGO’s and Virgo’s third observing run. The signal was recorded on April 12, 2019 ...at05∶30∶44 UTC with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 19. The binary is different from observations during the first two observing runs most notably due to its asymmetric masses: a∼30M⊙black hole merged with a ∼8M⊙black hole companion. The more massive black hole rotated with a dimensionless spin magnitude between 0.22 and 0.60 (90% probability). Asymmetric systems are predicted to emit gravitational waves with stronger contributions from higher multipoles, and indeed we find strong evidence for gravitational radiation beyond the leading quadrupolar order in the observed signal. A suite of tests performed onGW190412 indicates consistency with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. While the mass ratio of this system differs from all previous detections, we show that it is consistent with the population model of stellar binary black holes inferred from the first two observing runs.
A noninvasive investigation with high spatial resolution and without metal artifacts is necessary for long-term imaging follow-up after flow-diverter implantation. We aimed to evaluate the diagnostic ...value of conebeam CT angiography with intravenous contrast enhancement in the assessment of vascular status following implantation of the Pipeline Embolization Device and to analyze the preliminary results of vascular status following long-term Pipeline Embolization Device implantation.
This was an ongoing prospective study of consecutive patients with intracranial aneurysms treated with the Pipeline Embolization Device. Patients with a modified Rankin Scale score of 4-5 were excluded. The median and interquartile range of the time interval of Pipeline Embolization Device implantation to conebeam CT angiography with intravenous contrast enhancement were 56.6 and 42.9-62.4 months, respectively. Conebeam CT angiography with intravenous contrast enhancement was performed with the patient fully conscious, by using a C-arm CT with a flat panel detector.
There were 34 patients and 34 vascular segments. In all 34 cases, contrast effect and image quality were good and not substantially different from those of intra-arterial conebeam CTA. Metal artifacts occurred in all 14 cases with coil masses; the Pipeline Embolization Device was obscured in 3 cases. In all 34 cases, there was no residual aneurysm, no vascular occlusion, 1 vascular stenosis (50%), good Pipeline Embolization Device apposition to the vessel, and no Pipeline Embolization Device-induced calcification. All 28 Pipeline Embolization Device-covered side branches were patent.
Conebeam CT angiography with intravenous contrast enhancement is potentially promising and useful for effective evaluation of the vascular status following intracranial flow diverters. The Pipeline Embolization Device for intracranial aneurysms is probably safe and promising for long-term placement, with favorable morphologic outcome and without delayed complications.
Purpose
Quality of life concerns in patients with advanced diseases might be different from other patients and are shaped by sociocultural context. The objective of this qualitative study was to ...identify domains and themes of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) that Chinese patients with advanced cancer in Singapore considered relevant and important.
Methods
English- and Chinese-speaking patients with advanced solid cancer were recruited from a tertiary cancer center and a community-based hospice for in-depth interview or focused group discussion. Thematic analysis was used to identify subthemes, themes, and domains from the transcripts.
Results
Forty-six ethnic Chinese (aged 26–86, 48 % male) participated in the study. Six domains of HRQoL concerns were identified: pain and suffering, physical health, social health, mental health, financial well-being, and spiritual health. Pain and suffering are not limited to the physical domain, reflecting the multidimensional nature of this concept. Pain and suffering must also be understood within the cultural context. Healthcare relations (i.e., social health), existential well-being and religious well-being (i.e., spiritual health), and suffering (i.e., pain and suffering) are not fully captured in the existing HRQoL instruments. In addition, financial issues and the practice of secrecy in interpersonal relationships emerged as unique features possibly arising from our sociocultural context and healthcare financing landscape.
Conclusion
Socioculturally specific issues not measured by the existing HRQoL instruments for use in patients with advanced cancers or terminal diseases were found in our study. These are non-physical pain and suffering, meaning of illness, meaning of death, financial issues, and practice of secrecy in interpersonal relationships.
PDF
