This paper presents a genetic algorithm-based approach that integrates a radial basis function kernel support vector machine applied to pattern recognition. The proposed approach performs feature selection on handwritten digits from historical document images and model design on the adopted support vector machine in order to obtain the best possible recognition performance with the minimum poss...

The rising fuel costs is disallowing random cruising strategies for passenger finding. Hereby, a recommendation model to suggest the most passengerprofitable urban area/stand is presented. This framework is able to combine the 1) underlying historical patterns on passenger demand and the 2) current network status to decide which is the best zone to head to in each moment. The major contribution...

Executive summary Future investment returns are uncertain; no reliable means to foresee them exists. However, institutions and individuals making financial decisions need an approach to model the range of possible future returns. Any approach requires two fundamental ingredients: • First, long-term historical returns must be examined to determine the attributes and interrelationships that chara...

Short-term traffic flow is difficult to predict because of high uncertainty. This paper proposes a short-term traffic forecast algorithm based on cloud similarity. By taking advantage of quantitative and qualitative cloud model mutual conversion function and traffic flow predictability, the historical traffic data can be processed with cloud transformation. Set the current traffic cloud as a st...

Market Year Average (MYA) prices enter into payment calculations for Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC), two commodity program alternatives available in the 2013 Farm Bill (see here for more details). The distribution of MYA prices will influence payment levels under both programs. Hence, quantifying the potential MYA price distributions is important for evaluating c...

When correcting for biases in general circulation model (GCM) output, for example when statistically downscaling for regional and local impacts studies, a common assumption is that the GCM biases can be characterized by comparing model simulations and observations for a historical period. We demonstrate some complications in this assumption, with GCM biases varying between mean and extreme valu...

While the use of ancestry, ethnicity or race in contemporary medical and scientific research is controversial and the subject of debate in the United States, a hypothesis of ‘racial’ differentials in susceptibilities to disease has utility in the American historical context. This study employs a dataset of 542 residents of Marion County, South Carolina, collected in 1922 by medical teams to inv...