An Interactive Displaced Tolerant Value Procedure (IDTV)

The purpose of this research is to reduce requirements for decision maker (DM)to supply preference information during the interactive multiojective decisionmaking process. By introducing a concept of displaced tolerant value, a newalsorithm (called IDTV) is presented. It allows the DM to choose convenientways and contents of supplying necessary information according to differentconditions. A detailed dexseription of the algorithm is provided and a numericalexample is also given to illustrate the procedure described.

EXISTENCE OF SOLUTION FOR A BOUNDARY VALUE PROBLEM OF FRACTIONAL ORDER

This article considers the existence of solution for a boundary value problem of fractional order, involving Caputo＇s derivative{C0D^δtu（t）=g（t,u（t））,0〈t〈1,1〈δ〈2,u（0）α≠0,u（1）=β≠0.

Measuring Recreational Value of World Heritage Sites Based on Contingent Valuation Method:A Case Study of Jiuzhaigou

World heritage possesses various kinds of use value and non-use value. Measuring the recreational value of world heritage sites is a key issue in the heritage tourism. This paper employs Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), which is an evaluation instrument on the basis of tourists′ attitude and preference, to measure the recreational value of Jiuzhaigou, one of the World Natural Heritage sites in China, and analyzes the biases in the survey. The results show that: 1) In 2009, Jiuzhaigou′s recreational value was 3.46×108 yuan (RMB), and the per capita Willingness to Pay (WTP) was 137.31 yuan by CVM. Compared with the results of other methods, this result is significantly low. 2) Among the factors that influence Jiuzhaigou tourists′ WTP, psychological perception factors have the greatest effect while demographic and socio-economic characteristics have a small effect on WTP. 3) The virtuality in CVM creates biases both from CVM itself and in the procedures that CVM was implemented. The former includes hypothetical bias, information bias, protest response bias, and strategic bias; and the latter includes the questionnaire design, population and sample definition, sampling and data processing. The paper analyses those biases and illustrates their potential in-fluences on the accuracy of CVM measurement. 4) Although there are various defects in CVM measurement, it is still an effective valuation method.

Genetic diversity and association mapping for salinity tolerance in Bangladeshi rice landraces

Breeding for salinity tolerance using Bangladeshi rice landraces and understand genetic diversity has been limited by the complex and polygenic nature of salt tolerance in rice genotypes. A genetic diversity and association mapping analysis was conducted using 96 germplasm accessions with variable response to salt stress at the seedling stage. These included86 landraces and 10 indica varieties and lines including Nona Bokra, from southern Bangladesh. A total of 220 alleles were detected at 58 Simple Sequence Repeat(SSR) marker loci randomly distributed on all 12 rice chromosomes and 8 Sequence Tagged Site(STS) markers developed for genes SKC1, DST, and SalT. The average gene diversity was 0.5075 and polymorphism information content value was 0.4426, respectively. Cluster analysis revealed that 68 and 21 accessions were clustered into 2 distinct groups, possibly corresponding to indica and japonica groups, respectively and the remaining 7 landraces were classified as an admixed group. In addition to Wn11463, the STS marker for SKC1, RM22418 on Chr. 8 was significantly associated with salinity tolerance, at the location of a QTL detected in previous studies. Our findings of favorable alleles associated with salinity tolerance in Bangladeshi rice landraces, as well as the development of STS markers for salt tolerance genes, will be helpful in future efforts to breed salinity tolerance in rice.

EXISTENCE OF SOLUTION FOR BOUNDARY VALUE PROBLEM OF NONLINEAR FRACTIONAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION

This paper is concerned with the boundary value problem of a nonlinear fractional differential equation. By means of Schauder fixed-point theorem, an existence result of solution is obtained.

Determination of drought tolerance using root activities in Robinia pseudoacada 'Idaho' transformed with mtl-D gene

Idaho locust （Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Idaho＇） is an exotic multi-purpose tree used in landscaping, soil and water conserva- tion, fodder sources and others. To improve its drought tolerance for reclaiming arid land, five lines of transformed mtl-D gene, as osmotic regulator in plant cells, have been selected and managed to determine their drought tolerance under experimental conditions. Qualitative and quantitative variables of transformed plants were studied. The critical value of drought tolerance was determined by detecting the 2,3,5-triphenyl tetrazolium chloride （TTC） reductants in roots and soil water content （SWC）. The critical value for drought tolerance was SWC 6% while for the control plants the critical SWC was 8%; a moderate level of SWC is 13% and the highest SWC for plant endurance was 18%. The method proved to be reliable and sensitive in the evaluation of drought tolerance for forest trees.

Optimal b value of diffusion-weighted imaging on a 3.0T magnetic resonance scanner in Crohn's disease

AIM: To determine the optimal b value of diffusion-weighted imaging for detecting active inflammation in Crohn’s disease.

Assessment of self- and cross-absorbed SAF values for HDRK-man using GEANT4 code: internal photon and electron emitters

The ultimate need to account for the partial amount of energy deposited in target tissue/organ resulting from internal inhalation,ingestion,and injection intakes of radionuclides,defined by the Medical Internal Radiation Dosimetry committee as the specific absorbed fraction(SAF),has become obvious.In this study,we assessed the SAF values for self-and cross-absorption,which were calculated for a uniform distribution of monoenergetic photon and electron emitters with energies ranging from 15 keV to 3 MeV.The voxelized human phantom‘‘High-Definition Reference Korean-man’’(HDRK-man),which was implemented using the Monte Carlo simulation code GEANT4(version 10.1),was used for several combinations of target–source organs.The results were compared to those of the International Commission on Radiological Protection Reference(ICRP133)and Zubal phantoms.It was found that the SAF values of the three models have a similar trend.However,the SAF values for the HDRK-man phantom were higher than those of the other two models,with a relatively good agreement with those for the ICRP133 phantom(differences of 13.9±2.8 and 12.1±3.2 for photon and electron emitters,respectively).To analyze the differences in SAF values,we calculated the chord length distributions(CLDs)for selected target–source combinations.The parameters of organ mass(or volume)and CLDs,in addition to the adopted computational procedures,mainly cause such discrepancies.For realistic radionuclide emission spectra,an overall overestimation was observed when computing the S values for three radiopharmaceuticals studied(I-131,In-111,and Lu-177)and for liver–spleen intra-and inter-organ absorption when compared with published data.The new arrangement of S and SAF values is expected to add value for multidisciplinary research and clinical communities.

Davis's Inequalities for Two-Parameter Banach Space Valued Strong Martingales and Geometrical Properties of Banach Spaces

In this paper we investigated theL 1 norm inequalities of theP square and the maximal functions of two-parameterB-valued strong martingales, which can be applied to characterizep-smoothness andq-convexity of Banach spaces.

Protein tolerance to standard and high protein meals in patients with liver cirrhosis

To investigate the plasma amino acid response and tolerance to normal or high protein meals in patients with cirrhosis. METHODSThe plasma amino acid response to a 20 g mixed protein meal was compared in 8 biopsy-proven compensated cirrhotic patients and 6 healthy subjects. In addition the response to a high protein meal (1 g/kg body weight) was studied in 6 decompensated biopsy-proven cirrhotics in order to evaluate their protein tolerance and the likelihood of developing hepatic encephalopathy (HE) following a porto-caval shunt procedure. To test for covert HE, the “number connection test” (NCT) was done on all patients, and an electroencephalogram was recorded in patients considered to be at Child-Pugh C stage. RESULTSThe changes in plasma amino acids after a 20 g protein meal were similar in healthy subjects and in cirrhotics except for a significantly greater increase (P < 0.05) in isoleucine, leucine and tyrosine concentrations in the cirrhotics. The baseline branched chain amino acids/aromatic amino acids (BCAA/AAA) ratio was higher in the healthy persons and remained stable-but it decreased significantly after the meal in the cirrhotic group. After the high protein meal there was a marked increase in the levels of most amino acids, but only small changes occurred in the levels of taurine, citrulline, cysteine and histidine.The BCAA/AAA ratio was significantly higher 180 and 240 min after the meal. Slightly elevated basal plasma ammonia levels showed no particular pattern. Overt HE was not observed in any patients. CONCLUSIONPatients with stable liver disease tolerate natural mixed meals with a standard protein content. The response to a high protein meal in decompensated cirrhotics suggests accumulation of some amino acids but it did not precipitate HE. These results support current nutritional guidelines that recommend a protein intake of 1.2-1.5 g/kg body weight/day for patients with cirrhosis.

Q value of anelastic S-wave attenuation in Yunnan region

The study of seismic attenuation property is a major subject in seismology. Seismic waves recorded by seismic stations （seismographs） contain source effect, seismic wave propagation effect, site response of seismic stations and instrumental response. The path effect of seismic wave propagation, site response of seismic stations and instrumental response must be taken out in the study of source property with seismic data. The path effect of seismic wave propagation （seismic attenuation） involves an important influential factor, the anelastic attenuation of medium, which is measured with quality factor Q, apart from geometric attenuation with the distance. As a basic physical parameter of the Earth medium, Q value is essential for quantitative study of earthquakes and source property （e.g. determination of source parameters）, which is widely used in earthquake source physics and engineering seismology.

On Accelerated Singular Value Thresholding Algorithm for Matrix Completion

An accelerated singular value thresholding (SVT) algorithm was introduced for matrix completion in a recent paper [1], which applies an adaptive line search scheme and improves the convergence rate from O(1/N) for SVT to O(1/N2), where N is the number of iterations. In this paper, we show that it is the same as the Nemirovski’s approach, and then modify it to obtain an accelerate Nemirovski’s technique and prove the convergence. Our preliminary computational results are very favorable.

Probabilistic Tolerance Method for Omitting Small Fatigue Loads

The simplification of fatigue load spectrum,which can effectively reduce experimental cost,is of great importance for structural fatigue tests.By introducing random variables,the probabilistic tolerance method of removing small amplitude cycles proposed in this paper takes into account the randomness of both load and fatigue limit.The probability of the damage occurrence caused by the removed small loads is calculated to ensure that it cannot exceed the given probabilistic tolerance.Accordingly,the omission level is obtained and the truncated spectrum is formed.The unnotched aluminum sheet specimens are used to perform the fatigue test on the original fatigue spectrum and truncated fatigue spectrum of a transporter.The test results show that there is no statistical difference between the test life of the truncated spectrum and that of the original spectrum,which demonstrates the validity of the small-load-omitting method that considers randomness.

Nonlinear constrained optimization using the flexible tolerance method hybridized with different unconstrained methods

This paper proposes the use of the flexible tolerance method(FTM) modified with scaling of variables and hybridized with different unconstrained optimization methods to solve real constrained optimization problems.The benchmark problems used to analyze the performance of the methods were taken from G-Suite functions.The original method(FTM) and other four proposed methods:(i) FTM with scaling of variables(FTMS),(ii) FTMS hybridized with BFGS(FTMS-BFGS),(iii) FTMS hybridized with modified Powell's method(FTMS-Powell)and(iv) FTMS hybridized with PSO(FTMS-PSO), were implemented. The success rates of the methods were 80%,100%, 75%, 95% and 85%, for FTM, FTMS, FTMS-BFGS, FTMS-Powell and FTMS-PSO, respectively. Numerical experiments including real constrained problems indicated that FTMS gave the best performance, followed by FTMSPowell and FTMS-PSO. Despite the inferior performance compared to FTMS and FTMS-Powell, the FTMS-PSO method presented some advantages since good different initial points could be obtained, which allow exploring different routes through the solution space and to escape from local optima. The proposed methods proved to be an effective way of improving the performance of the original FTM.

BOREL'S DIRECTIONS AND SHARED VALUES

In this article, we study the problems of Borel＇s directions of meromorphic func- tions concerning shared values and prove that if two meromorphie functions of infinite order share three distinct values, their Borel＇s directions are same.

Existence of Positive Solutions for a Third-Order Multi-Point Boundary Value Problem

By using Leray-Schauder nonlinear alternative, Banach contraction theorem and Guo-Krasnosel’skii theorem, we discuss the existence, uniqueness and positivity of solution to the third-order multi-point nonhomogeneous boundary value problem (BVP1): where for The interesting point lies in the fact that the nonlinear term is allowed to depend on the first order derivative .

Resolution of Grandi’s Paradox as Extended to Complex Valued Functions

Grandi’s paradox, which was posed for a real function of the form 1/(1+ x), has been resolved and extended to complex valued functions. Resolution of this approximately three-hundred-year-old paradox is accomplished by the use of a consistent truncation approach that can be applied to all the series expansions of Grandi-type functions. Furthermore, a new technique for improving the convergence characteristics of power series with alternating signs is introduced. The technique works by successively averaging a series at different orders of truncation. A sound theoretical justification of the successive averaging method is demonstrated by two different series expansions of the function 1/(1+ ex ) . Grandi-type complex valued functions such as 1/(i + x) are expressed as consistently-truncated and convergence-improved forms and Fagnano’s formula is established from the series expansions of these functions. A Grandi-type general complex valued function is introduced and expanded to a consistently truncated and successively averaged series. Finally, an unorthodox application of the successive averaging method to polynomials is presented.

Existence of Positive Solutions of Three-point Boundary Value Problem for Higher Order Nonlinear Fractional Differential Equations

In this paper, we consider the positive solutions of fractional three-point boundary value problem of the form Dο^α＋u（t）＋f（t,u（t）,u＇（t）,…,u^（n-3）（5）,u^（n-2）（t））=0,u^（i）（0）=0,0≤i≤n-2,u^（n-2）（1）-βu^（n-2）（ξ）=0,where 0〈t〈1,n-1〈α≤n,n≥2,ξ Е（0,1）,βξ^a-n〈1. We first transform it into another equivalent boundary value problem. Then, we derive the Green＇s function for the equivalent boundary value problem and show that it satisfies certain properties. At last, by using some fixed-point theorems, we obtain the existence of positive solution for this problem. Example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of our result.

The Value of Saudi Arabia Industrial Firms Between the Modigliani-Miller＇s and Gordon＇s Models： An Empirical Study on Cement Companies in Saudi Arabia

The most important target of the financial management is to develop the values of the foundation and develop the wealth of shareholders （wealth of the owners）, which is the primary target of the qualified and successful financial management. This target, developing the value of the foundation, depends on the total profit that could be achieved by the company and counting the profit per share, but undoubtedly, the financial management should consider the other targets such as social responsibility and exchange between risk and revenue and others. This research, with its both theoretical and practical aspects, aims at illuminating the value of some foundations in Saudi Arabia, which are already registered in the stock market, by comparing the value of each foundation using two models namely the model of Modigliani-Miller （M＆M） and the model of Gordon. In spite of the difficulties found in the usage of both models, especially Gordon＇s model, we will use both of them to explain the aspects of imperfection in each model. This research will depend on a sample of Sandi industrial companies by getting financial data of these companies over a past decade and the usage of these data, in other words, to measure the value of Saudi companies against the market.

Unified Equation of Fundamental Forces’ Coupling Values, and the Existence of Subsequent, Fifth and Other, Forces

This paper provides an equation to entangle all known fundamental forces by employing their coupling constants, i.e., strong (αs), electromagnetic (α), weak (αw), and gravitational (αg) interaction coupling values. The constant coupling formulation is further indicative of many other fundamental forces with significantly weaker coupling values. As an example, the fifth fundamental force, Kashi’s Force, is found to have a coupling constant of 10-1446, which is significantly smaller than the smallest known fundamental force, gravitational force, with an approximate coupling constant value of 10-38. Additionally, the paper finds the sum of all fundamental forces based on the equation proposed is equal to 0.118065, which is within the range of effective world value of the strong coupling constant αs(M2z).