Sharif Digital Repository

Bayesian inference has traditionally been conceived as the proper framework for the formal incorporation of expert knowledge in parameter estimation of groundwater models. However, conventional Bayesian inference is incapable of taking into account the imprecision essentially embedded in expert provided information. In order to solve this problem, a number of extensions to conventional Bayesian inference have been introduced in recent years. One of these extensions is 'fuzzy Bayesian inference' which is the result of integrating fuzzy techniques into Bayesian statistics. Fuzzy Bayesian inference has a number of desirable features which makes it an attractive approach for incorporating expert... 

A new time-domain hierarchical Bayesian framework is proposed to improve the performance of Bayesian methods in terms of reliability and robustness of estimates particularly for uncertainty quantification and propagation in structural dynamics. The proposed framework provides a reliable approach to account for the variability of the inference results observed when using different data sets. The proposed formulation is compared with a state-of-the-art Bayesian approach using numerical and experimental examples. The results indicate that the hierarchical Bayesian framework provides a more realistic account of the uncertainties, whereas the non-hierarchical Bayesian approach severely... 

In this research, we employ Bayesian inference and stochastic dynamic programming approaches to select the binomial population with the largest probability of success from n independent Bernoulli populations based upon the sample information. To do this, we first define a probability measure called belief for the event of selecting the best population. Second, we explain the way to model the selection problem using Bayesian inference. Third, we clarify the model by which we improve the beliefs and prove that it converges to select the best population. In this iterative approach, we update the beliefs by taking new observations on the populations under study. This is performed using Bayesian... 

In this paper, we propose a Bayesian Pursuit algorithm for sparse representation. It uses both the simplicity of the pursuit algorithms and optimal Bayesian framework to determine active atoms in sparse representation of a signal. We show that using Bayesian Hypothesis testing to determine the active atoms from the correlations leads to an efficient activity measure. Simulation results show that our suggested algorithm has better performance among the algorithms which have been implemented in our simulations in most of the cases. ©2009 IEEE  

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a new efficient method for the tolerance–reliability analysis and quality control of complex nonlinear assemblies where explicit assembly functions are difficult or impossible to extract based on Bayesian modeling. Design/methodology/approach: In the proposed method, first, tolerances are modelled as the random uncertain variables. Then, based on the assembly data, the explicit assembly function can be expressed by the Bayesian model in terms of manufacturing and assembly tolerances. According to the obtained assembly tolerance, reliability of the mechanical assembly to meet the assembly requirement can be estimated by a proper first-order... 

A new time-domain hierarchical Bayesian framework is proposed to improve the performance of Bayesian methods in terms of reliability and robustness of estimates particularly for uncertainty quantification and propagation in structural dynamics. The proposed framework provides a reliable approach to account for the variability of the inference results observed when using different data sets. The proposed formulation is compared with a state-of-the-art Bayesian approach using numerical and experimental examples. The results indicate that the hierarchical Bayesian framework provides a more realistic account of the uncertainties, whereas the non-hierarchical Bayesian approach severely... 

A statistical algorithm is introduced to improve the false inference of active loci, in the population in which members are admixture. The algorithm uses an advanced clustering algorithm based on a Bayesian approach. The proposed algorithm simultaneously infers the hidden structure of the population. In this regard, the Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) algorithm has been used to evaluate the posterior probability distribution of the model parameters. The proposed algorithm is implemented in a bundle, and then its performance is widely evaluated in a number of artificial databases. The accuracy of the clustering algorithm is compared with the STRUCTURE method based on certain criterion. © 2019... 

Automated measurement of the intensity of spontaneous facial Action Units (AU) defined by the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) in video sequences is a challenging problem. This paper proposes a person-adaptive methodology for the intensity estimation of spontaneous AUs. We formulate this problem as a source separation problem where we consider the observed AUs as the source signals to be separated from each other and other information given by a sequence of facial images. We first compute an initial estimation of the sources, called observations, using sparse linear regression functions. We then develop and apply a Bayesian source separation method that recruits the prior information of... 

Here, we investigate the influence of elevated temperatures with negligible ambient oxygen on mechanical properties of various embedded glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) profiles, as well as the application of a predictive Bayesian model for predicting these properties. Both the flexural and compressive properties of FRP profiles were investigated through the tests of I-shaped and box-shaped profiles. To determine the impact of low and high elevated temperature, the profiles were exposed to a wide range of temperatures (i.e., 25–550 °C); effects of the exposure time were also investigated. Experiments showed that specimens exposed to higher elevated temperatures for longer time periods... 

In this study, a hybrid stochastic model (BScA model) using Bayesian approach and scenario analysis to forecast long term energy demand is developed. The main objective of this study is to design and develop a model for energy analysis in demand side and describe the energy saving and GHG reduction potential on the other. For this, total energy demand is selected as the response variable and primary energy production, population, GDP and natural gas and gasoline prices are chosen as covariates. Also, Political drivers, economic drivers, social-environmental and technological drivers are the key driving forces for scenario development. After interview and ranking the drivers, we have built... 

In this paper, we consider the problem of scheduling the power of a sensor when transmitting over an unknown Gilbert-Elliott (GE) channel for remote state estimation. The sensor supports two power modes, namely low power and high power, which are to be selected for transmission over the channel in order to minimize a cost on the error covariance, while satisfying the energy constraints. The remote estimator provides error-free acknowledgement/negative-acknowledgement (ACK/NACK) messages to the sensor only when low power is utilized. We first consider the Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) problem for the case of known GE channels and derive conditions for optimality of a... 

First stage nozzles are considered as one of the most critical components in the heavy-duty gas turbines because of their operational in-service condition in the hot gas path. In the present research, the failure analysis of a first stage nozzle in a 159 MW gas turbine is investigated in order to specify the modes and mechanisms of the failure and their root causes. Various examinations including macroscopic and visual inspection of the nozzle outer surface, the micro examination of the fracture surface, chemical analysis and metallographic analysis were carried out to complete the investigation. The micro and macro examinations revealed cracks, erosion and oxidation damages in the nozzle... 

In the presence of modeling errors, the mainstream Bayesian methods seldom give a realistic account of uncertainties as they commonly underestimate the inherent variability of parameters. This problem is not due to any misconceptions in the Bayesian framework since it is robust with respect to the modeling assumptions and the observed data. Rather, this issue has deep roots in users’ inability to develop an appropriate class of probabilistic models. This paper bridges this significant gap, introducing a novel Bayesian hierarchical setting, which breaks time-history vibration responses into several segments so as to capture and identify the variability of inferred parameters over the... 

The main goal in many fields in the empirical sciences is to discover causal relationships among a set of variables from observational data. PC algorithm is one of the promising solutions to learn underlying causal structure by performing a number of conditional independence tests. In this paper, we propose a novel GPU-based parallel algorithm, called cuPC, to execute an order-independent version of PC. The proposed solution has two variants, cuPC-E and cuPC-S, which parallelize PC in two different ways for multivariate normal distribution. Experimental results show the scalability of the proposed algorithms with respect to the number of variables, the number of samples, and different graph... 

Skin detection has different applications in computer vision such as face detection, human tracking and adult content filtering. One of the major approaches in pixel based skin detection is using Bayesian classifiers. Bayesian classifiers performance is highly related to their training set. In this paper, we introduce a new Bayesian classifier skin detection method. The main contribution of this paper is creating a huge database to create color probability tables and new method for creating skin pixels data set. Our database consists of about 80000 images containing more than 5 billions pixels. Our tests shows that the performance of Bayesian classifier trained on our data set is better than... 

In order to design a decision-making framework in production environments, in this study, we use both the stochastic dynamic programming and Bayesian inference concepts. Using the posterior probability of the production process to be in state λ (the hazard rate of defective products), first we formulate the problem into a stochastic dynamic programming model. Next, we derive some properties for the optimal value of the objective function. Then, we propose a solution algorithm. At the end, the applications and the performances of the proposed methodology are demonstrated by two numerical examples. © 2007 Asian Network for Scientific Information  

Clustering is one of the most important approaches for mining and extracting knowledge from the web. In this paper a method for clustering the web data is presented which using a Bayesian network, finds appropriate representatives for each of the clusters. Having those representatives, we can create more accurate clusters. Also the contents of the web pages are converted into vectors which firstly, the number of dimensions is reduced, and secondly the orthogonality problem is solved. Experimental results show about the high quality of the resultant clusters. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007  

In some recent works, model-based filtering approaches have been proved as effective methods for extracting ECG signals from single channel noisy recordings. The previously developed methods, use a highly realistic nonlinear ECG model for the construction of Bayesian filters. In this work, a multi-channel extension of the previous approach is developed, by using a three dimensional model of the cardiac dipole vector. The results have considerable improvement compared with the single channel approach. The method is hence believed to be applicable to low SNR multi-channel recordings  

Direct marketing identifies customers who buy, more probable, a specific product to reduce the cost and increase the response rate of a marketing campaign. The advancement of technology in the current era makes the data collection process easy. Hence, a large number of customer data can be stored in companies where they can be employed to solve the direct marketing problem. In this paper, a novel Bayesian method titled correlation-augment naïve Bayes (CAN) is proposed to improve the conventional naïve Bayes (NB) classifier. The performance of the proposed method in terms of the response rate is evaluated and compared to several well-known Bayesian networks and other well-known classifiers... 

Traffic collisions are one of the most important challenges threatening the general health of the world. Iran's crash statistics demonstrate that approximately 16,500 people lose their lives every year due to road collisions. According to the traffic police of Iran, heavy vehicles (including trailers, trucks, and panel trucks) contributed to 20.5% of the fatal road traffic collisions in the year 2013. This highlights the need for devoting special attention to heavy vehicle drivers to further explore their driving characteristics. In this research, the effect of heavy vehicle drivers' behavior on at-fault collisions over three years has been investigated with an innovative approach of...