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  <front>
    <journal-meta>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">109</journal-id>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="index">urn:lsid:arphahub.com:pub:3dc5f44e-8666-58db-bc76-a455210e8891</journal-id>
      <journal-title-group>
        <journal-title xml:lang="en">JUCS - Journal of Universal Computer Science</journal-title>
        <abbrev-journal-title xml:lang="en">jucs</abbrev-journal-title>
      </journal-title-group>
      <issn pub-type="ppub">0948-695X</issn>
      <issn pub-type="epub">0948-6968</issn>
      <publisher>
        <publisher-name>Journal of Universal Computer Science</publisher-name>
      </publisher>
    </journal-meta>
    <article-meta>
      <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.3217/jucs-016-01-0140</article-id>
      <article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">29579</article-id>
      <article-categories>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="heading">
          <subject>Research Article</subject>
        </subj-group>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="scientific_subject">
          <subject>H.3.1 - Content Analysis and Indexing</subject>
          <subject>H.3.2 - Information Storage</subject>
          <subject>H.3.3 - Information Search and Retrieval</subject>
          <subject>H.3.7 - Digital Libraries</subject>
          <subject>H.5.1 - Multimedia Information Systems</subject>
        </subj-group>
      </article-categories>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>An Approach to Generation of Decision Rules</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group content-type="authors">
        <contrib contrib-type="author" corresp="yes">
          <name name-style="western">
            <surname>Mingyi</surname>
            <given-names>Zhang</given-names>
          </name>
          <email xlink:type="simple">zhangmingyi045@yahoo.com.cn</email>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="A1">1</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author" corresp="no">
          <name name-style="western">
            <surname>Danning</surname>
            <given-names>Li</given-names>
          </name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="A2">2</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author" corresp="no">
          <name name-style="western">
            <surname>Ying</surname>
            <given-names>Zhang</given-names>
          </name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="A2">2</xref>
        </contrib>
      </contrib-group>
      <aff id="A1">
        <label>1</label>
        <addr-line content-type="verbatim">Southwest University, Chongqing, China</addr-line>
        <institution>Southwest University</institution>
        <addr-line content-type="city">Chongqing</addr-line>
        <country>China</country>
      </aff>
      <aff id="A2">
        <label>2</label>
        <addr-line content-type="verbatim">Guizhou Academy of Sciences, Guiyang, China</addr-line>
        <institution>Guizhou Academy of Sciences</institution>
        <addr-line content-type="city">Guiyang</addr-line>
        <country>China</country>
      </aff>
      <author-notes>
        <fn fn-type="corresp">
          <p>Corresponding author: Zhang Mingyi (<email xlink:type="simple">zhangmingyi045@yahoo.com.cn</email>).</p>
        </fn>
        <fn fn-type="edited-by">
          <p>Academic editor: </p>
        </fn>
      </author-notes>
      <pub-date pub-type="collection">
        <year>2010</year>
      </pub-date>
      <pub-date pub-type="epub">
        <day>01</day>
        <month>01</month>
        <year>2010</year>
      </pub-date>
      <volume>16</volume>
      <issue>1</issue>
      <fpage>140</fpage>
      <lpage>158</lpage>
      <uri content-type="arpha" xlink:href="http://openbiodiv.net/AB8FB86F-2499-5B8C-996E-CC1D1633578F">AB8FB86F-2499-5B8C-996E-CC1D1633578F</uri>
      <uri content-type="zenodo_dep_id" xlink:href="https://zenodo.org/record/7001053">7001053</uri>
      <permissions>
        <copyright-statement>Zhang Mingyi, Li Danning, Zhang Ying</copyright-statement>
        <license license-type="creative-commons-attribution" xlink:href="" xlink:type="simple">
          <license-p>This article is freely available under the J.UCS Open Content License.</license-p>
        </license>
      </permissions>
      <abstract>
        <label>Abstract</label>
        <p>Classical classification and clustering based on equivalence relations are very important tools in decision-making. An equivalence relation is usually determined by properties of objects in a given domain. When making decision, anything that can be spoken about in the subject position of a natural sentence is an object, properties of which are fundamental elements of the knowledge of the given domain. This gives the possibility of representing the concept related to a given domain. In general, the information about a set of the objects is uncertain or incomplete. Various approaches representing uncertainty of a concept were proposed. In particular, Zadeh?s fuzzy set theory and Pawlak?s rough set theory have been most influential on this research field. Zadeh characterizes uncertainty of a concept by introducing a membership function and a similarity (fuzzy equivalence) relation of a set of objects. Pawlak then characterizes uncertainty of a concept by union of some equivalence classes of an equivalence relation. As one of particular important and widely used binary relations, equivalence relation plays a fundamental role in classification, clustering, pattern recognition, polling, automata, learning, control inference and natural language understanding, etc.  An equivalence relation is a binary relation with reflexivity, symmetry and transitivity. However, in many real situations, it is not sufficient to consider equivalence relations only. In fact, a lot of relations determined by the attributes of objects do not satisfy transitivity. In particular, information obtained from a domain of objects is not transitive, when we make decision based on properties of objects. Moreover, the information about symmetry of a relation is mostly uncertain. So, it is needed to approximately make decision and reasoning by indistinct concepts. This provokes us to explore a new class of relations, so-called class of fuzzy semi-equivalence relations. In this paper we introduce the notion of fuzzy semi-equivalence relations and study its properties. In particular, a constructive method of fuzzy semi-equivalence classes is presented. Applying it we present approaches to the fuzzyfication of indistinct concepts approximated by fuzzy relative and semi-equivalence classes, respectively. And an application of the fuzzy semi-equivalence relation theory to generate decision rules is outlined.</p>
      </abstract>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
</article>
