Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Dynamic Three-Bit Image Steganography Algorithm for Medical and e-Healthcare Systems

Massive advances in internet infrastructure are impacting e-healthcare services compared to conventional means. Therefore, extra care and protection is needed for extremely confidential patient medical records. With this intention, we have proposed an enhanced image steganography method, to improve imperceptibility and data hiding capacity of stego images. The proposed Image Region Decomposition (IRD) method, embeds more secret information with better imperceptibility, in patient’s medical images. The algorithm decomposes the grayscale magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images into three unique regions: low-intensity, medium-intensity, and high-intensity. Each region is made up of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$ </tex-math></inline-formula> number of pixels, and in each pixel we operate the block of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$ </tex-math></inline-formula> least significant bits (LSBs), where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1 \leq n \leq 3$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. Four classes of MRI images of different dimensions are used for embedding. Data with different volumes are used to test the images for imperceptibility and verified with quality factors. The proposed IRD algorithm is tested for performance, on the set of brain MRI images using peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), mean square error (MSE) and structural similarity (SSIM) index. The results elucidated that the MRI stego image is imperceptible, like the original cover image by adjusting <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2^{nd}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1^{st}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> LSBs in the low-intensity region. Our proposed steganography technique provides a better average PSNR (49.27), than other similar methods. The empirical results show that the proposed IRD algorithm, significantly improves the imperceptibility and data embedding capacity, compared to the existing state-of-the-art methods.
Bidding Zones of the European Power System: Benefits of a Multi-Dimensional Approach to the Evaluation of Possible Delineations

As the coupling of wholesale electricity markets is emerging as a major challenge for energy transition, reviewing bidding zone delineation is considered a serious avenue to address congestion in the European transmission grid. Scenarios have emerged in both the industry and the academia to propose amendments in the current configuration, without reaching a consensus on the need for reform. In this paper, we discuss the benefits of a more holistic approach to zone configuration assessments. Through a literature review and international examples, we discuss the interrelation of system operation, market efficiency, and investment dynamics.
Average Age of Information in Short Packet Based Machine Type Communication

It is crucial to consider timely status updates for machine type communications (MTC) in some scenarios, where a controller continuously obtains state information of targets from a sender to complete control or monitoring tasks, such as vehicular networking and environmental detection. In this work, we measure the timeliness of the status by the recently proposed age of information (AoI) metric. Different from the previous works about AoI, we consider the short packet feature of MTC in our system, where status packets will suffer from a significant packet error rate. Considering that the status packets may not be decoded by the receiver correctly, this work investigates the performance of MTC under traditional protocol (the sender discards the error status packets directly) and automatic repeat-request (ARQ) protocol (the sender retransmits the error status packets), and obtains the approximated closed-form expressions of the average AoI, respectively. Based on the closed-form expressions of the average AoI, we design two suboptimal blocklengths to minimize the average AoI under the two protocols. Numerical results verify the correctness of theoretical analysis, and show that the proposed scheme can achieve almost the same optimization performance as the exhaustive search method. Moreover, in the case of different packet generation rates, we find that the ARQ/traditional protocol can achieve better performance in low/high packet generation rate scenarios, respectively.
Exploring the Drivers Predicting Behavioral Intention to Use m-Learning Management System: Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model

This study aimed at reporting the drivers predicting Pre-Service English Teachers’ (PSETs) behavioral intention to use m-learning Management Systems (m-LMS) in their learning activities. To achieve the purpose of the study, an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was administered. Seven variables were included to examine 11 paths of the framework. The instrument was adapted from previous studies and validated through content validity. Further, it was piloted to 76 PSETs for reliability. Two hundred and ten responses were analyzed for the main study. The results of the study were obtained by implementing the procedures of Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The extended TAM-based drivers are reported to be valid and reliable in the measurement model stage. In the assessment of the structural model, nine out of eleven hypotheses are significant. The strongest significant relationship is reported to emerge between perceived usefulness and attitude toward m-LMS, while the weakest significant relationship is reported between self-efficacy and perceived usefulness. On the other hand, the two paths that are not positively correlated are between; 1) supporting condition and perceived usefulness; 2) subjective norm and behavioral intention to use m-LMS. Recommendations for future research regarding the use of m-LMS in developing countries are provided.
"Oh no, my instructions were wrong!" An Exploratory Pilot Towards Children’s Trust in Social Robots

Whilst there has been growing interest in the use of social robots in educational settings, the majority of this research focuses on learning outcomes, with less emphasis on the social processes surrounding these interactions. One such understudied factor is children’s trust in the robot as a teacher. Trust is a relevant domain in that if and how children trust a robot could influence their subsequent learning outcomes. The extent to which the robot’s behaviour (including making errors) influences trust is yet to be fully explored. Consequently, the goal of this research is to determine the role of trust in children’s learning from social robots. We report a pilot study investigating the conceptualisation and measurement of chil-dren’s trust in robots. 33 children aged between 4-9 completed a computational thinking learning task with a NAO robot at a Science Festival. Observations of the interactions in terms of developing tasks and measurements for child robot interaction are discussed. The findings tentatively suggest children’s trust in the robot can be divided into two parts: social affiliation towards the robot, and perceived competence/reliability of the robot.
Model-based Calibration of a Magnetic Induction Spectroscopy System for Absolute Conductivity Measurement

Magnetic induction spectroscopy (MIS) is a measurement technique where the impedance spectra of an object can be determined by inducing eddy-currents in that object, then detecting the resultant magnetic field. It is an entirely non-contact method, but suffers the drawback of only being able to return relative impedance contingent on the shape of the test object, rather than independent and physically meaningful absolute measurements.In this paper, we address this shortfall by demonstrating a simulation-derived procedure to obtain true conductivities from MIS measurements. We determine calibration constants by using saline solutions of different sizes and conductivities and find an approximate accuracy of +/- 65 mS/m. We further employ this procedure to find approximate absolute conductivities of a baking potato, braeburn apple and conference pear over part of their beta-dispersion region between 100 kHz and 10 MHz.
Don’t overthink: fast decision making combined with behavior variability perceived as more human-like

Understanding the human cognitive processes involved in the interaction with artificial agents is crucial for designing socially capable robots. During social interactions, humans tend to explain and predict others’ behavior adopting the intentional stance, that is, assuming that mental states drive behavior. However, the question of whether humans would adopt the same strategy with artificial agents remains unanswered. The present study aimed at identifying whether the type of behavior exhibited by the robot has an impact on the attribution of mentalistic explanations of behavior. We employed the Instance Questionnaire (ISQ) pre and post-observation of two types of behavior (decisive or hesitant). The ISQ probes participants’ stance towards a humanoid robot by requiring them to choose the likelihood of an explanation (mentalistic vs. mechanistic) of iCub depicted in sequences of photographs. We found that decisive behavior, with rare and unexpected "hesitant" behaviors, lead to more mentalistic attributions relative to primarily hesitant behavior. Findings suggest that higher expectations regarding the robots’ capabilities and unexpected actions might lead to more mentalistic descriptions.
25.6 Tbps Capacity and Sub-µsec Latency Switching for DataCenters Using >1000-Port Optical Packet Switch Architectures

We discuss the challenges and limitations of current electrical DataCenter switches towards scaling beyond the 25.6 Tb/s capacity-era while meeting a low-latency and high-radix envelope. With the high-power SerDes and required DSP interfaces forming critical scaling factors, we discuss the perspectives and challenges of migrating to Optical Packet Switch (OPS) technologies for avoiding the electronically-induced bottlenecks, while exploiting reliable and practical techniques for overcoming well-known OPS problems, like buffering and high-port connectivity. We demonstrate the feasibility of OPS schemes by reporting experimental results of our Hipoλaos architecture towards extending its line-rate to 25 Gb/s per port and enabling 25.6 Tb/s switch capacities through a 1024-radix layout, while still preserving sub-μs latency metrics. Experimental results are presented for both unicast and multicast packets, employing the 1024-radix Hipoλaos architecture in a fully-fledged FPGA-controlled switching Plane, along with a 32 × 32 Arrayed Waveguide Grating Router (AWGR) device. The unicast performance is validated through BER measurements, while optical multicasting to 5 nodes is also experimentally evaluated at 25 Gb/s, along with an evaluation of the broadband multicast capabilities of the switch. Moreover, a mixed-traffic scenario involving both unicast and multicast traffic is demonstrated. Finally, a discussion about the perspectives and challenges of bringing OPS in DC networks is presented.
Coarse Trajectory Design for Energy Minimization in UAV-Enabled

In this paper, we design the UAV trajectory to minimize the total energy consumption while satisfying the requested timeout (RT) requirement and energy budget, which is accomplished via jointly optimizing the path and UAV's velocities along subsequent hops. The corresponding optimization problem is difficult to solve due to its non-convexity and combinatorial nature. To overcome this difficulty, we solve the original problem via two consecutive steps. Firstly, we propose two algorithms, namely heuristic search, and dynamic programming (DP) to obtain a feasible set of paths without violating the GU's RT requirements based on the traveling salesman problem with time window (TSPTW). Then, they are compared with exhaustive search and traveling salesman problem (TSP) used as reference methods. While the exhaustive algorithm achieves the best performance at a high computation cost, the heuristic algorithm exhibits poorer performance with low complexity. As a result, the DP is proposed as a practical trade-off between the exhaustive and heuristic algorithms. Specifically, the DP algorithm results in near-optimal performance at a much lower complexity. Secondly, for given feasible paths, we propose an energy minimization problem via a joint optimization of the UAV's velocities along subsequent hops. Finally, numerical results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms. The results show that the DP-based algorithm approaches the exhaustive search's performance with a significantly reduced complexity. It is also shown that the proposed solutions outperform the state-of-the-art benchmarks in terms of both energy consumption and outage performance.
Four-Wave Mixing-Based Wavelength Conversion and Parametric Amplification in Submicron Silicon Core Fibers

Silicon core fibers represent a versatile platform for all-fiber integrated nonlinear optical applications. This paper describes the state of the art in four-wave mixing-based parametric amplification, and wavelength conversion in silicon fibers that have been tapered to improve the material quality, and engineer the dispersion profile. Fibers with submicron core dimensions have been fabricated, and used to demonstrate high gain parametric amplification in the C-Band, and broadband wavelength conversion extending out to the S-, and L-bands. The potential to use these fibers for all-optical signal processing of $20\,$Gbit/s data signals has also been demonstrated, with a robust all-fiber coupling scheme presented to improve the efficiency, and practicality of these devices. These results highlight the potential of silicon core fibers for use in nonlinear signal processing within future telecommunication systems.
OQAM-OFDM Radar Approximated IRCI-Free Pulse Compression

This paper proposes a pulse compression method by using the offset quadrature amplitude modulation based orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OQAM-OFDM) signal without inserting any cyclic prefix (CP). A modified interference approximation-based pulse compression method (MIA-based PCM) is proposed, by exploiting the demodulated real weights of the OQAM-OFDM signal, the inter-symbol and inter-subcarrier interferences to enhance the performance. The MIA-based PCM achieves approximated inter-range-cell interference (IRCI)-free pulse compression and perfect Doppler estimation, which has both the benefits of power efficiency and good Doppler tolerance. Finally, numerical simulation results are provided and discussed.
A Highly Reliable Arbiter PUF With Improved Uniqueness in FPGA Implementation Using Bit-Self-Test

Physically unclonable functions (PUFs) promise to be a critical hardware primitive for billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The arbiter PUF (A-PUF) is one of the most well-known PUF circuits. However, its FPGA implementation has a poor reliability, and error correction codes (ECCs) are usually needed to eliminate the noise in the responses, which incur additional high hardware overhead and require NVM for helper data storage. In this paper, we present a highly reliable arbiter PUF with improved uniqueness using the bit-self-test (BST) strategy. A delay detection circuit is added into a classical arbiter PUF to test the delay deviation that produces each bit of the PUF response in real-time and mark the response as reliable using a reliability flag when the delay deviation is significantly more than a predefined threshold. Then, the robust responses can be used. We implemented the BST-arbiter PUF on a Xilinx Artix 7 FPGA. The test results show that the selected responses achieve outstanding performance where the bit error rate is less than 10−9, the bias is 50.3%, and the uniqueness is 49.1%. Thus, the BST-APUF, which drastically reduced the ECC overhead, can be applied to lightweight cryptography applications.
Energy-Efficient Power Allocation and User Selection for mmWave-NOMA Transmission in M2M Communications Underlaying Cellular Heterogeneous Networks

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication are two important technologies considered for the fifth generation (5G) of mobile networks. In this paper, we propose a machine-to-machine (M2M) communication underlaying heterogeneous network (HetNet) with mmWave-NOMA transmission, where small cell users (SCUs) and machine type communication (MTC) devices share the same resource block (RB) to increase the network capacity. We formulate an optimization problem to select efficient users and allocate transmission powers to SCUs and MTC devices. The object of optimization is to maximize the energy efficiency (EE) subject to the minimum spectral efficiency (SE) requirements and maximum transmission powers. We present a low computational complexity sub-optimum solution based on the non-cooperative game. An iterative algorithm with fast convergence speed and a reduced complexity search-based algorithm are respectively presented to solve the power control and user selection problems. The comparison between the proposed solution and optimum solution for different number of transmit antennas indicate that there is a small gap between SEs and EEs of the proposed and optimum solutions. Further, the results of user selection scheme demonstrate that the location of strong user affects the performance. We also derive analytical expressions for the outage probability which confirm Monte Carlo simulations.
Gamification, mHealth and user adherence

MyDiabetes is a mobile application targeted for the management of type I diabetes. A considerable challenge faced by diabetes’ management applications is user adherence and motivation. In this article we will describe the different gamification techniques implemented in the MyDiabetes mobile application in order to tackle the mentioned challenges and increase the number of daily user records. To evaluate the success of the implemented gamification techniques, a survey was conducted at the endocrinology service of S. João’s Hospital. Twenty three participants, diabetics type I, participated in the survey. Different types of users’ motivations resulted in contrasting opinions about particular gamification elements. Nonetheless, the implemented gamification was, in general, well accepted. The gamification elements with the lowest classification were streaks and social comparison of points. Even so, these elements obtained an acceptance rate of 83%. There was a common preference for elements that promote better glycaemic management. Classic gamification elements that promote points, levels and objective completion were not disregarded by the inquired patients, but were given a secondary roll in usage motivation. Although promising, it was not possible to determine the long-term effectiveness of the implemented gamification. Further trials are planned to verify the impact of gamification on long-term user adherence.
ESAC: An Efficient and Secure Access Control Scheme in Vehicular Named Data Networking

In Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), the mobility of vehicles and urban obstacles may make the traditional IP-based content delivery mechanisms; work sluggishly. To address this problem, we adopt the Vehicular Named Data Networking (V-NDN) architecture to enable efficient content delivery. However, secure access control and incentive design are rarely taken into account in existing solutions. In this paper, we propose an efficient and secure access control (ESAC) scheme for content delivery in V-NDN. Specifically, we construct the proxy re-encryption method to achieve access control and data confidentiality, while using pseudonyms and the identity-based signature to ensure anonymous authentication and content integrity. Furthermore, the revocation of illegal vehicles and updating operations are performed by the constructed proxy re-encryption method, which significantly reduces communication overhead. Finally, an incentive scheme is designed to improve the utility of NDN in VANETs. The security analysis shows that ESAC can meet the security requirements of the content delivery in VANETs while significantly lowering the overhead.
Using a Personalised Socially Assistive Robot for Cardiac Rehabilitation: A Long-Term Case Study

This paper presents a longitudinal case study of Robot Assisted Therapy for cardiac rehabilitation. The patient, who is a 60-year old male that suffered a myocardial infarction and received angioplasty surgery, successfully recovered after 35 sessions of rehabilitation with a social robot, lasting 18 weeks. The sessions took place directly at the clinic and relied on an exercise regime which was designed by the clinicians and delivered with the support of a social robot and a sensor suite. The robot monitored the patient’s progress, and provided personalised encouragement and feedback. We discuss the recovery of the patient and illustrate how the use of a social robot, its sensory systems and its personalised interaction was instrumental to maintain engagement with the programme and to the patient’s recovery. Of note is a critical event that was promptly detected by the robot, which allowed fast intervention measures to be taken by the medical staff for the referral of the patient for further surgery.
Characteristic Mode Analysis of a Conformal Patch Mounted on the Stratified Cylinder

Recently conformal microstrip antennas with arbitrarily shaped surfaces mounted on the stratified cylinder can be efficiently simulated by mixed potential integral equation with stratified cylindrical Green's function. To clearly understand the physical insight of such structures, theory of characteristic modes (TCM) is applied to analyze a conformal patch mounted on the stratified cylinder. The resonant frequencies are compared to demonstrate the feasibility and accuracy of the approach.
Preliminary Evaluation on Nutritional Value for Ramie [Boehmeria nivea( L.) Gaud.] Zhongzhu No.1 and Zhongzhu No.2

The main purpose of this paper was to evaluate the nutritional value of two ramie varieties Zhongzhu No. 1 and Zhongzhu No. 2 and provide a reference for ramie as a forage crop. The results showed that the nutritional quality of ramie [Boehmeria nivea( L.) Gaud. ] was better than that of perennial ryegrass( Lolium perenne L.) and Pennisetum purpureum Schum. Besides,the nutritional quality of ramie was comparable to that found in alfalfa( Medicago sativa L.). The crude protein content and leaf- stem ratio of ramie at 80 cm reaping height were significantly higher( P 0. 05) than 100 cm and120 cm. The crude fiber content at 80 cm reaping height was significantly lower( P 0. 05) than 100 cm and 120 cm. DM yield and gross protein yield at 80 cm were obviously higher than 60 cm( P 0. 05). The growth period at 80 cm height was 8 and 13 days less than 100 cm and 120 cm respectively,In addition,the daily growth rate of crude protein of Zhongzhu No. 1 at 80cm reaping height was significantly higher( P 0. 05) than other reaping heights. Based on the results,Zhongzhu No. 1 and Zhongzhu No. 2could be used as forage crop,and in their second growth season,ramie should be reaped at about 80 cm height as ruminant feed.