Estimating normalizing constants using stochastic simulation

The computation of normalizing constants often brings (higher-dimensional) integrals, which could not be computed analytically or are computationally expensive. Stochastic methods will be explored to find an estimate for normalizing constants. These stochastic methods will be used to estimate the Bayes factor. With this Bayes factor can be...

Mood Measurement on Smartphones: Which Measure, Which Design?

Mood, often studied using smartphones, influences human perception, judgment, thought, and behavior. Mood measurements on smartphones face challenges concerning the selection of a proper mood measure and its transfer, or translation, into a digital application (app) that is user-engaging. Addressing these challenges, researchers sometimes end up...

A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach to Configuration Sampling Problem

Configurable software systems have become increasingly popular as they enable customized software variants. The main challenge in dealing with configuration problems is that the number of possible configurations grows exponentially as the number of features increases. Therefore, algorithms for testing customized software have to deal with the...

Safety Performance Boundary Identification of Highly Automated Vehicles: A Surrogate Model-Based Gradient Descent Searching Approach

Highly automated vehicles (HAVs) have been introduced to the transportation system for the purpose of providing safer mobility. Considering the expected long co-existence period of HAVs and human-driven vehicles (HDVs), the safety operation of HAVs interacting with HDVs needs to be verified. To achieve this, HAVs' Operational Design Domain ...

An Effective and Efficient Method for Identification of Contamination Sources in Water Distribution Systems Based on Manual Grab-Sampling

Most of the contamination source localization methods for water distribution systems (WDSs) assume the availability of accurate water quality models and multi-parameter online sensors, which are often out of reach of many water utilities. To address this, a novel manual grab-sampling method (MGSM) is developed to effectively and efficiently...

Passive Sampling of SARS-CoV-2 for Wastewater Surveillance

The shedding of pathogens by infected humans enables the use of sewage monitoring to conduct wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE). Although most WBE studies use data from large sewage treatment plants, timely data from smaller catchments are needed for targeted public health action. Traditional sampling methods, like autosamplers or grab...

Core testing method to assess nonlinear shear-sliding behaviour of brick-mortar interfaces: A comparative experimental study

In this study, tests on cores and companion tests on triplets are compared with respect to the evaluation of the nonlinear shear-sliding behaviour of masonry, including the determination of post-peak softening response. Due to its slightly-destructive sampling nature and its good agreement with triplet results, the core testing method is...

A Multi-Level Path Analysis of the Relationships between the Momentary Experience Characteristics, Satisfaction with Urban Public Spaces, and Momentary- and Long-Term Subjective Wellbeing

Previous research has shown that the urban environment could influence people's behavior and wellbeing. However, little is still known about how the objective and subjective measures of the momentary experience of urban public spaces could contribute to the satisfaction with the urban environment of cities, which eventually could influence...

THR patient’s emotional and physical assessment after early hospital discharge

Shorter hospitalisation is a strategy that healthcare services have adopted to solve the problem of high demand for hospitalisation under conditions of insufficient resources. Early discharge demands patients to self-manage their recovery at home, while recovery is still perceived a clinician’s responsibility. This often results in an extra...

A Linear Method for Shape Reconstruction based on the Generalized Multiple Measurement Vectors Model

In this paper, a novel linear method for shape reconstruction is proposed based on the generalized multiple measurement vectors (GMMV) model. Finite difference frequency domain (FDFD) is applied to discretized Maxwell’s equations, and the contrast sources are solved iteratively by exploiting the joint sparsity as a regularized...

Probabilistic Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis of Reinforced Concrete Beams without Shear Reinforcement

A fast sampling method for estimating the domain of attraction

Most stabilizing controllers designed for nonlinear systems are valid only within a specific region of the state space, called the domain of attraction (DoA). Computation of the DoA is usually costly and time-consuming. This paper proposes a computationally effective sampling approach to estimate the DoAs of nonlinear systems in real time....