August 2004 Newsletter

In this issue:

I. Woody Biomass

II. End of the surfer season and of the Granny Surfer Sale

III. Brazilian company IntelliSearch develops ATM fraud detector

IV. CCI-Stochastic Indicator

V. AI College back in session

VI. Make sure you continue to get the news

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I. Woody Biomass

No, this is not a medical project – we think it is about trees. Scientists at the State University of New York have used the NeuroShell Predictor to develop a High-Resolution Thermogravimetric Analysis method to estimate the moisture, hemicellulose, cellulose, lignin and ash content of woody biomass. A novel aspect of this work which significantly improves the sensitivity of this technique is that thermal degradation experiments are conducted in an atmosphere of air rather than nitrogen or other inert gas. This minimizes the occurrence of “char” which complicates component resolution especially for the lignin fraction which degrades at relatively high temperatures. An algorithm based on NeuroShell Predictor 2.0 is used to predict the % hemicellulose, % cellulose and % lignin content of woody materials from HR-TGA data and, in most cases, each compositional parameter can be determined within +/- 2% of its “published” value.

Jacob Goodrich, Arthur J. Stipanovic*, and Patrick Hennessy
State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry,
Faculty of Chemistry and Cellulose Research Institute, 123 Jahn Laboratory,
Syracuse, New York, 13210

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II. End of the surfer season and of the Granny Surfer Sale

Our last sale of the summer is about the end – the Granny Surfer Sale.

We wanted to make sure you don’t wipe out on the Wall Street, so we made it easier for you to stay on TOP of the market waves! Until midnight August 31, 2004, take 15% off the list prices of the entire NeuroShell Trader Series, including add-ons (only those that we develop. Discount does not apply to third party add-ons such as those developed by Bowfort, Cornice Research, Emmetropia, Jurik and MESA) and upgrades. Remember the old market wisdom “Buy your straw hats in the fall” to which we add “Buy your NeuroShell Trader software in the summer!”

For our business, science and educational users, take 15% off of the list prices of full version purchases of the NeuroShell Classifier, NeuroShell Predictor, NeuroShell Run-time Server, GeneHunter, and even the NeuroShell Engine.

For more details and restrictions, visit www.neuroShell.com or www.wardsystems.com.

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III. Brazilian company IntelliSearch develops ATM fraud detector

When it comes to ATM networks in Brazil, there are two different scenarios. In the first scenario the players are the 8 major banks, which are wealthy enough to afford their own ATM network infrastructure. They handle fraud detection using internally developed applications or expensive off the shelf ones.

In the second scenario, the players are midsize and small banks, including the local branches of international institutions such as Citibank, BankBoston, LoydsBank, etc. Unlike the big banks, the smaller ones can’t justify large investments in fraud detection solutions, so they rely on their ATM providers to do it for them. Nevertheless, even working on a larger scale, most existing solutions are beyond the budget of most ATM providers. Moreover, existing solutions take for granted that customer info is available as inputs, which is true for the banks but not for the ATM providers, which can build history based only on card numbers and ATM transactions. They don’t have access to customer profiles or even internet transactions, for example. Finally, even the best existing market packages are biased to reduce false-positives only, while Brazilian market behavior requires reduction of both false-positives and false-negatives.

IntelliSearch saw an opportunity in this arena, and built a solution based entirely upon the NeuroShell Classifier, which fits both the needs and the budget of ATM providers. Its mainline model uses inputs that are explicit and/or buried in ATM transaction records only. Preliminary tests are very promising, and potential clients are very impressed by the results.

For more information contact:

Carlos Antonio Nogueira
Diretor, IntelliSearch
Phone/Fax: +55 11 5505 8365
Cell: +55 11 9225 4003
www.intellisearch.com.br

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IV. CCI-Stochastic Indicator

Barbara Star’s September 2004 article “The CCI Stochastic” in Active Trader magazine describes a version of the Commodity Channel Index (CCI) indicator that fits within the range of 0 to 100. She states that when this new indicator is used in conjunction with the regular CCI indicator the result is more consistent signals of market turning points.

We’ve built the CCI Stochastic indicator she describes, along with her generic Stochastic indicator, and included them both in a chart that is available from www.ward.net. After you log into the NeuroShell Trader section, look for the “Tips from Active Trader and Other Sources” section. Note that we’ve mapped like parameters together so they wouldn’t optimize independently (saving time) but you can modify the indicators and deconstruct them to their original components if you wish.

Trader Pro users may also optimize the time period parameters to customize the indicators for specific markets and issues, as well as potential stop-loss and profit levels as described by Star.

Note: NeuroShell Trader users who purchased John Ehlers’ Cybernetic Analysis Add-on will note that Ehlers applies Stochastics to his Center of Gravity, Cycle, and Relative Vigor Index in the indicators from Chapter 8 of his book, “Cybernetic Analysis of Stocks and Futures.” He takes the concept one step further by applying the Fisher Transform to the Stochastic versions to get razor sharp trading signals.

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V. AI College back in session

If you are a user of NeuroShell Trader Professional or NeuroShell DayTrader Professional, you will now be able to get some advanced training on your own time in your own home or office. Our online course is $670 + shipping of the AI College CD and is taught by our CEO Steve Ward. Visit www.aicollege.com for more details.

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VI. Make sure you continue to get the news

We are still surprised that, many months after we sent out our June 2003 newsletter announcing release 4.0, users are still calling or emailing to ask when release 4.0 will be available. Seems they all changed their email addresses and never notified us of that. They could have been making money with the new features all of this time. There are many others, no doubt, who still don’t know about release 4.0.

After all these years we are also still getting tech support calls from NeuroShell 2 users who don’t know about the AI Trilogy and its components. So they’re stuck trying to impress their bosses with older technology.

Don’t be left behind – tell us when you change email addresses.

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