Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Slow Fading and Adaptive Modulation on TCP/UDP Performance of High-Speed Packet Wireless Networks

Abstract : High speed data wireless networks in multipath environments suffer channel impairment from many sources such as thermal noise, path loss, shadowing, and fading. In particular, short-term fading caused by mobility imposes irreducible error floor bounds on system performance. We study the effect of fading on the performance of the widely used TCP/UDP protocol, and investigate how to improve TCP performance over fading channels. Our solutions target upcoming mobile wireless systems such as IEEE 802.16e wireless MANs "Metropolitan Area Networks" where adaptive modulation is enabled and the underlying medium access scheme is On-Demand Time Division Multiple Access "On-Demand TDMA". Adaptive modulation is used in the new generation of wireless systems to increase the system throughput and significantly improve spectral effciency by matching parameters of the physical layer to the time-varying fading channels. Most high-rate applications for such wireless systems rely on the reliable service provided by TCP protocol. The effect of adaptive modulation on TCP throughput is investigated. A semi-Markov chain model for TCP congestion/flow control behavior and a multi-state Markov chain model for Rayleigh fading channels are used together to derive the steady state throughput of TCP Tahoe and Reno. The theoretical prediction based on our analysis is consistent with simulation results using the network simulator NS2. The analytical and simulation results triggered the idea of cross-layer TCP protocol design for single-user scenarios. The fading parameters of wireless channels detected in the physical layer can be used to dynamically tune the parameters "such as packet length and advertised receiver window size" of the TCP protocol in the transport layer so that TCP throughput is improved. For multi-user scenarios, we study how multi-user diversity can be used to improve th
Trust in the Bangladeshi Health System During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-Methods Exploration

BackgroundLack of trust in public health institutions hinders care-seeking and limits community support for contact tracing, information and communication uptake, and multi-sectoral or multi-stakeholder engagement. In light of these understandings, our aim was to determine levels of impersonal and interpersonal trust in the context of COVID-19 pandemic response in Bangladesh.MethodsAs this mixed-methods research was conducted during the pandemic, data was gathered via an online survey involving 508 respondents, along with seven online focus group discussions in which 50 purposively selected male and female clinicians and non-clinicians took part. Quantitative data was subjected to descriptive and comparative analysis, whereas content analysis was applied to the qualitative data.ResultsSurvey respondents have less trust in the health system (a mean score of 3.77/10) than in the service providers (4.95/10). In the context of impersonal trust, the lowest level of trust is observed in the Fairness domain (3.12/10), followed by the Confidence domain (3.38/10). In the context of interpersonal trust, the lowest level of trust is observed in the Fairness domain (3.81/10), followed by the Communication domain (4.83/10). While some non-clinical participants blamed doctors for shying away from caregiving during the early days of the pandemic, most praised them for providing care, risking their life due to the shortage of PPE, and even sacrificing their life in the process. Several participants also cited lack of fairness in pandemic management, such as imposing lockdown in periphery areas of the country without arranging transport for those requiring medical help to the centrally located modern health facilities, and visible attempts by the political decision-makers to protect the business interests without consideration for the safety of the poor. However, both clinicians and non-clinicians concurred on the need for the service providers to improve communication related to COVID-19 management.ConclusionsHealth sector stewards in Bangladesh should learn the lessons from other countries, ensure multi-sectoral engagement involving the community and political forces, and empower public health experts to organize and consolidate a concerted health system effort in gaining trust in the short term while striving to build a resilient and responsive health system in the long term.
Storytelling as a tool for knowledge transfer in the IT industry

Pre-investment evaluation of information system project proposals persists in being problematic and highly risky in practice. Numerous evaluation approaches and methodologies, offered in the literature, have not contributed to major improvements in practice. As the literature review shows, these methodologies have assumed an ideal of objective and scientific evaluation and taken the view of methodology as science. In this paper we aim to revisit the notion of IS evaluation methodology in practice and specifically explore the methodology as both the ‘science’ and the ‘art’. We achieve these aims by conducting an Actor Network Theory (ANT) study of IS evaluation in a large financial services company. The ANT study allowed us to investigate the methodology as it is enacted in IS project evaluations in practice without making any a priori decision of what methodology is or should do. By defining a series of processes, inscription aids and mandated checkpoints we found that the evaluation methodology engenders the evaluation process as ‘science’; and by allowing a degree of freedom in conducting the evaluation processes, the methodology is also enabling the evaluation processes to emerge as ‘art’ and by doing so stimulating creativity and innovation. Thus the ANT approach assisted in our discovery of the dual nature of methodology as simultaneously science and
Efficient DWT-based SVD Watermarked 3D Video Transmission over MC-CDMA Wireless Channel

Abstract Three-Dimensional Video (3DV) communication through wireless channels suffers from bit-streams losses. Therefore, the efficient performance of 3DV transmission techniques over wireless networks is a considerable hot research topic. A high compression ratio must be introduced to meet future bandwidth restriction for optimized 3DV transmission. Unfortunately, the compressed 3DV bit-streams are more sensitive and vulnerable to packet losses. In this paper, we propose the application of chaotic Baker interleaving with equalization and convolution coding for efficient Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT)-based Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) watermarked 3DV transmission over a Multi-Carrier Code Division Multiple Accesses (MC-CDMA) wireless channel. Firstly, the compressed 3DV frames are watermarking using the DWT+SVD watermarking process. After that, chaotic interleaving is applied to minimize the channel effects on the transported bit-streams and it also adds an encryption to the transported 3DV frames. To test the performance of the proposed hybrid techniques; several experiments on different (DWT+SVD) watermarked 3DV frames have been tested. The experimental results confirm that the received watermarked 3DV frames still have high Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratios (PSNRs) and efficient watermark extraction is possible.
Development and modelling of a versatile active micro-electrode array for high density in-vivo and in-vitro neural signal investigation

The electrophysiological observation of neurological cells has allowed much knowledge to be gathered regarding how living organisms are believed to acquire and process sensation. Although much has been learned about neurons in isolation, there is much more to be discovered in how these neurons communicate within large networks. The challenges of measuring neurological networks at the scale, density and chronic level of non invasiveness required to observe neurological processing and decision making are manifold, however methods have been suggested that have allowed small scale networks to be observed using arrays of micro-fabricated electrodes. These arrays transduce ionic perturbations local to the cell membrane in the extracellular fluid into small electrical signals within the metal that may be measured. A device was designed for optimal electrical matching to the electrode interface and maximal signal preservation of the received extracellular neural signals. Design parameters were developed from electrophysiological computer simulations and experimentally obtained empirical models of the electrode-electrolyte interface. From this information, a novel interface based signal filtering method was developed that enabled high density amplifier interface circuitry to be realised. A novel prototype monolithic active electrode was developed using CMOS microfabrication technology. The device uses the top metallization of a selected process to form the electrode substrate and compact amplification circuitry fabricated directly beneath the electrode to amplify and separate the neural signal from the baseline offsets and noise of the electrode interface. The signal is then buffered for high speed sampling and switched signal routing. Prototype 16 and 256 active electrode array with custom support circuitry is presented at the layout stage for a 20 μm diameter 100 μm pitch electrode array. Each device consumes 26.4 μW of power and contributes 4.509 μV (rms) of noise to the received signal over a controlled bandwidth of 10 Hz - 5 kHz. The research has provided a fundamental insight into the challenges of high density neural network observation, both in the passive and the active manner. The thesis concludes that power consumption is the fundamental limiting factor of high density integrated MEA circuitry; low power dissipation being crucial for the existence of the surface adhered cells under measurement. With transistor sizing, noise and signal slewing each being inversely proportional to the dc supply current and the large power requirements of desirable ancillary circuitry such as analogue-to-digital converters, a situation of compromise is approached that must be carefully considered for specific application design.
Array and Phased Array Antenna Basics

Preface. References. Acknowledgments. Acronyms. 1 Radiation. 1.1 The Early History of Electricity and Magnetism. 1.2 James Clerk Maxwell, The Union of Electricity and Magnetism. 1.3 Radiation by Accelerated Charge. 1.4 Reactive and Radiating Electromagnetic Fields. 2 Antennas. 2.1 The Early History of Antennas. 2.2 Antenna Developments During the First World War. 2.3 Antenna Developments in Between the Wars. 2.4 Antenna Developments During the Second World War. 2.5 Post-War Antenna Developments. 3 Antenna Parameters. 3.1 Radiation Pattern. 3.2 Antenna Impedance and Bandwidth. 3.3 Polarisation. 3.4 Antenna Effective Area and Vector Effective Length. 3.5 Radio Equation. 3.6 Radar Equation. 4 The Linear Broadside Array Antenna. 4.1 A Linear Array of Non-Isotropic Point-Source Radiators. 4.2 Plane Waves. 4.3 Received Signal. 4.4 Array Factor. 4.5 Side Lobes and Grating Lobes. 4.6 Amplitude Taper. 5 Design of a 4-Element, Linear, Broadside, Microstrip Patch Array Antenna. 5.1 Introduction. 5.2 Rectangular Microstrip Patch Antenna. 5.3 Split-T Power Divider. 5.4 Transmission and Reflection Coefficients for a Corporate Fed Array Antenna. 5.5 Simulation, Realisation and Measurement. 6 The Linear Endfire Array Antenna. 6.1 Introduction. 6.2 Phase Differences. 6.3 Hansen-Woodyard Endfire Array Antenna. 6.4 Mutual Coupling. 6.5 Yagi-Uda Array Antenna. 7 The Linear Phased Array Antenna. 7.1 Linear Phase Taper. 7.2 Beam Broadening. 7.3 Grating Lobes and Visible Space. 7.4 Means of Phase Shifting. 8 A Frequency Scanned Slotted Waveguide Array Antenna. 8.1 Slotted Waveguide Array Antenna. 8.2 Antenna Design. 8.3 Validation. 9 The Planar Array and Phased Array Antenna. 9.1 Geometry. 9.2 Planar Array Antenna. 9.3 Planar Phased Array Antenna. 10 Special Array Antenna Configurations. 10.1 Conformal Array and Phased Array Antennas. 10.2 Volume Array and Phased Array Antennas. 10.3 Sequential Rotation and Phasing. 10.4 Reactive Loading. 11 Array and Phased Array Antenna Measurement. 11.1 Input Impedance, Self-Coupling and Mutual Coupling. 11.2 Radiation Pattern Measurement. 11.3 Scan Element Pattern. 11.4 Waveguide Simulator. Appendix A: Complex Analysis. A.1 Complex Numbers. A.2 Use of Complex Variables. Appendix B: Vector Analysis. B.1 Notation. B.2 Addition and Subtraction. B.3 Products. B.4 Derivatives. Appendix C: Effective Aperture and Directivity. Appendix D: Transmission Line Theory. D.1 Distributed Parameters. D.2 Guided Waves. D.3 Input Impedance of a Transmission Line. D.4 Terminated Lossless Transmission Lines. D.5 Quarter Wavelength Impedance Transformer. Appendix E: Scattering Matrix. E.1 Normalised Scattering Matrix. E.2 Unnormalised Scattering Matrix. Appendix F: Voltage Incident at a Transmission Line. Appendix :G Cascaded Scattering Matrices. Index.
Renal toxic disease in a cat

Clinical History: This 8-month-old, male, mixed breed domestic shorthaired cat had a recent history of acute apathy and anorexia. It remained under hospital care for two days, during which it did not produce any urine. On the second day of hospitalization, another cat from the same household was brought in with similar clinical signs. These cats did not have any history of recent ingestion of antibiotics or other medication. Furthermore, they did not have any street or yard access since they were kept in an apartment. Both cats died spontaneously after a brief hospitalization period. Laboratory Findings: Marked increase of urea and creatinine in both cats was reported (values not informed). On abdominal ultrasound, both cats had perirenal edema, and small amount of free abdominal effusion was observed in this cat. Necropsy Findings: There was moderate amount of translucent, slightly yellowish fluid within the abdominal cavity, thoracic cavity and pericardial sac. There was moderate diffuse pulmonary edema. Moderate perirenal edema was observed bilaterally. The kidneys were diffusely swollen and pale (Fig. 1). On histopathologic exam, the cortical tubular epithelial cells were swollen, with hypereosinophilic cytoplasm and nuclear changes (karyolysis, pyknosis and karyorrhexis). These cells were frequently detached from the basement membrane. Some other tubular epithelial cells were swollen and markedly vacuolated. Accompanying these changes, multiple granular casts filled the tubular lumens in the cortical and medullar regions (Fig. 2).
A Model for Optimal Mass Screening and the Case of Perfect Test Reliability.

Abstract : This paper considers a population (composed, for example, of people, machines, or livestock) subject to a randomly occurring defect or disease. If there exist testing procedures capable of detecting the defect before it would otherwise become known, and if such early detection provides benefit, the periodic administration of such as test procedure to the members of the population, i.e., a mass screening program, may be advisable. An analytical model of a mass screening program is developed and analyzed. In the development of the model, the defect arrival process is Poisson and the ability of the test to recognize a defect is not, in general, assumed perfect. The model focuses on the time since incidence of a defect as the factor which determines the reliability of a test administration and the value of a detection. The objective is to minimize an arbitrary increasing function of the detection delay which represents the disutility from the occurrence of the defect and its detection. This disutility is also represented as a function of the type of test applied, the probability of success of the test, the testing intervals and the arrival rates of the defects over Q subpopulations. A relatively simple expression is derived for the objective function and a comprehensive mathematical program is presented. The case of perfect test reliablity is then considered and, from the class of 'cyclic' schedules, the optimum schedules are shown to be equally spaced. For a polynomial disutility function, properties of the optimal schedules are presented. Finally, a method for determining the disutility function from experimental data is suggested. (Author)
The role of mid‐tropospheric moistening and land‐surface wetting in the progression of the 2016 Indian monsoon

Accurately predicting the Indian monsoon is limited by inadequate understanding of the underlying processes, which feed into systematic model biases. Here we aim to understand the dynamic and thermodynamic features associated with the progression of the monsoon, using 2016 as a representative year, with the help of convection‐permitting simulations of the Met Office Unified Model. Simulations are carried out in a 4 km resolution limited‐area model, nested within a coarser global model. Two major processes thought to influence the northwestward progression of the monsoon are: (a) the interaction between the low‐level monsoon flow and a mid‐tropospheric dry‐air intrusion from the northwest, and (b) land–atmosphere interactions. We find that the 4 km limited‐area model simulates the mid‐tropospheric moistening that erodes the northwesterly dry intrusion, pushing the northern limit of moist convection northwestwards. The surface soil moisture also plays a major role at the leading edge of the monsoon progression. The heavy rains associated with the local onset wet the soil, reducing the sensitivity of surface fluxes to soil moisture and weakening the land influence on further progression of monsoon rains. The 4 km model is tested with an alternative land‐surface configuration to explore its sensitivity to land‐surface processes. We find that the choice of soil and vegetation ancillaries affects the time‐scales of soil moisture–precipitation feedback and the timing of diurnal convection, thereby affecting the local onset. We further compare these simulations with a parametrized convection run at 17 km resolution to isolate the effects of convective parametrization and resolution. The model with explicit convection better simulates the dynamic and thermodynamic features associated with the progression of the monsoon.
Optimal design for a hydraulic regeneration propel system of the hydraulic hybrid bus

Hydraulic regeneration propel system (HRPS) has been proven to be able to enhance the fuel economy and reduce the emission by regenerating the braking energy when it is installed in the existing conventional bus. The rebuilt bus is normally termed as the Hydraulic Hybrid Bus (HHB). This paper aims at exploiting full potential of the HRPS, so that the HHB is able to acquire minimum fuel consumption and maximum dynamic performance with minimum cost. The ideal point and weight square sum method is used to construct the evaluate function so as to consider the tradeoff among the objectives. The generation algorithm (GA) is used to solve the multi-objective optimization. The results of the optimization show that the improving of the dynamic performance combined with reduced cost and equivalent fuel-saving is possible. The optimal designing approach presented by this paper provides the theoretical directions for the design of HRPS for a HHB.
Detection and Classification of Legitimate and Spam Emails using K-Nearest Neighbor Augmented with Quadratic Sieve Algorithm

Spam in emails is a major challenge that is inherent in today’s internet as it endangers financial institutions and poses a threat to individual users. Various techniques have been proposed by different studies to prevent spam in emails; however, classification and filtering technique using machine intelligence methods are the most efficient among the several methods. This study employed a K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) augmented with the Quadratic Sieve algorithm to detect and classify legitimate emails and spam. The sieve algorithm revealed all the prime numbers for all the dataset used, starting from the input dataset to reduce the errors that may cause an imbalance in the classification. The result from this study shows that implementation of KNN augmented with Quadratic Sieve algorithm detects and properly classifies legitimate e-mail as well as spam much better.
CONDITION OF THE NATION'S HIGHWAY BRIDGES: A LOOK AT THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

This article looks at the past, present, and future of bridge engineering, and reaches the following conclusion: The bottom line is that the U.S. highway bridge network is one of the safest in the world. Failures in the 1960s, and occasional failures since then, have reminded the bridge engineering community of the need to be vigilant with respect to constantly evaluating the condition of the nation's bridges and improving the way these valuable assets are managed. The use of comprehensive condition data, the application of new technologies, and the ability to project future conditions and needs are all part of an inventory asset management approach that is now under development. When fully implemented, this approach will incorporate the use of higher technology while optimizing the application of financial resources to provide a safe, durable, and efficient highway system.
RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF A FAULT-TOLERANT FPGA-BASED SEQUENCER FOR CUBESAT LAUNCHING APPLICATIONS

Abstract : This thesis concerns various means of implementing fault tolerance in logic for use in a general payload processor design. The first specific application of this research is a sequencer developed for deploying CubeSats. The sequencer shall be capable of the timing and accurate deployment of multiple CubeSats from a host spacecraft and shall have the capability for quick reconfiguration prior to launch. This research considers a variety of hardware for suitability toward sequencer construction; field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are chosen as the primary device. The design further evolves to selection of the Actel ProASIC3 series of FPGAs. Initial logic test configurations are implemented on a development kit with analysis of results provided. Fault-tolerant techniques are compared with a set of experiments to determine optimum resource utilization and timing schemes. Triple modular redundancy (TMR) is selected as the technique for fault-tolerant logic implementation in the sequencer. Preliminary test boards are built via schematic design and printed circuit board layout. The manufacturing, integration and testing of the ProASIC3 Test Board is fully discussed. A follow-on flight prototype board is designed with more extensive hardware allowing for implementation of fault-tolerant techniques and future growth capability. Recommendations for future work are discussed.
Business Media

Based on an overview of previous literature on business media, which shows a substantial degree of fragmentation, this chapter proposes an integrative theoretical framework using the concept of media logic defined as the technological, cultural, and organizational features that influence how management ideas are produced, distributed, and consumed. Considering the recent technological changes brought on by social media, the role of business media cannot be understood without considering the effects of transmediality and multimodality. Defined respectively as the movement of content through different types of media, these elements have an important impact on the nature of management ideas. The authors question the predominance of well-bounded ideas in a new technological convergence context with increasing loss of gatekeeping control to user-generated content. They propose that a renewed set of theoretical frameworks and methodological tools will allow business media research to understand the contemporary evolution of management ideas.