this paper investigates the performances of artificial neural networks approximation, the translog and the fourier flexible functional forms for the cost function, when different production technologies are used. using simulated data bases, the author provides a comparison in terms of capability to reproduce input demands and in terms of the corresponding input elasticities of substitution esti...

in recent decades artificial neural networks (anns) have shown great ability in modeling and forecasting non-linear and non-stationary time series and in most of the cases especially in prediction of phenomena have showed very good performance. this paper presents the application of artificial neural networks to predict drought in yazd meteorological station. in this research, different archite...

this article is a comparative study of estimation power of artificial neural networks and autoregressive time series models in inflation forecasting. using 37 years iran’s inflation data, neural networks performs better on average for short horizons than autoregressive models. this study shows usefulness of early stopping technique in learning stage of neural networks for estimating time series...

runoff estimation is one of the main challenges encountered in water and watershed management. spatial and temporal changes of factors which influence runoff due to het-erogeneity of the basins explain the complicacy of relations. artificial neural network (ann) is one of the intelligence techniques which is flexible and doesn’t call for any much physically complex processes. these networks can...

lithofacies identification can provide qualitative information about rocks. it can also explain rock textures which are importantcomponents for hydrocarbon reservoir description sarvak formation is an important reservoir which is being studied in the marun oilfield, in the dezful embayment (zagros basin). this study establishes quantitative relationships between digital well logs data androutin...

objective(s): chitosan, a biodegradable and cationic polysaccharide with increasing applications in biomedicine, possesses many advantages including mucoadhesivity, biocompatibility, and low-immunogenicity. the aim of this study, was investigating the influence of ph, ratio of azelaic acid/chitosan and molecular weight of chitosan on loading efficiency of azelaic acid in chitosan particles. mat...

this research intends to develop a method based on the artificial neural network (ann) to predict permanent earthquake-induced deformation of the earth dams and embankments. for this purpose, data sets of observations from 152 published case histories on the performance of the earth dams and embankments, during the past earthquakes, was used. in order to predict earthquake-induced deformation o...

this paper deals with volume fraction optimization of functionally graded (fg) beams resting on elastic foundation for maximizing the first natural frequency. the two-constituent functionally graded beam consists of ceramic and metal. these constituents are graded through the thickness of beam according to a generalized power-law distribution. one of the advantages of using generalized power- l...