Credit ratings and accounting-based Altman Z-scores are two important sources of information for assessing the creditworthiness of firms. In this paper we build a model based on a double Hidden Markov Model, (DHMM), to extract information about the “true” credit qualities of firms from both the Z-scores evaluated from the accounting ratios of the firms and their posted credit ratings. The evolu...

The human amygdala robustly activates to fear faces. Heightened response to fear faces is thought to reflect the amygdala's adaptive function as an early warning mechanism. Although culture shapes several facets of emotional and social experience, including how fear is perceived and expressed to others, very little is known about how culture influences neural responses to fear stimuli. Here we ...

This paper describes a completely digitally controlled high-performance low-harmonic rectifier. It is shown that the dynamics of the outer voltage loop can be significantly improved using a self-tuning digital comb filter. Low input current harmonics and fast voltage transient responses are experimentally verified on a 200W universal-input boost rectifier operating at the switching frequency of...

For the multisensor multi-channel autoregressive moving average (ARMA) signals with white measurement noises and an ARMA colored measurement noise as a common disturbance noise, a multi-stage information fusion identification method is presented when model parameters and noise variances are partially unknown. The local estimators of model parameters and noise variances are obtained by the multi...

One of the key component of an Adaptive Optics system is the deformable mirror. This mirror can correct the atmospheric turbulence effects by changing its shape. In the last years Adaptive Secondary Mirrors (ASM) have been developed and the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) will be soon equipped with two ASMs. Each LBT ASM unit has 672 voice-coil force actuators to change the shape of the mirror ...

In the context of fuzzy control, antecedent parameters are used to provide a segmentation of the state space so that different regions can be modeled appropriately. In Adaptive Critic methodologies, two modules (the critic and the controller) must properly segment the state space to insure good performance. In this paper, we explore the effects of tuning antecedent parameters that are shared be...

Active control of thermoacoustic instabilities in continuous premixed combustion processes is being increasingly investigated for operating at lean low NOX conditions. Recently, we have developed a model-based approach for active control design which accounts for the underlying acoustics, heat release dynamics, and sensor and actuator dynamics. While this model captures a number of the dominant...

We argue about the importance of embedding the successful mechanism of Inflation in the context of a fundamental theory. We review some of the attempts in this direction made in the framework of String Theory. In particular we report on recent developments in Brane Inflation with emphasis on the fine tuning issue.