Query: Big Data Perspective and Challenges in Next Generation Networks

Relevant passages:
The Big-Data-Driven Intelligent Wireless Network: Architecture, Use Cases, Solutions, and Future Trends <=SEP=> The concept of using big data (BD) for wireless communication network optimization is no longer new. However, previous work has primarily focused on long-term policies in the network, such as network planning and management. Apart from this, the source of the data collected for analysis/model training is mostly limited to the core network (CN). In this article, we introduce a novel data-driven intelligent radio access network (RAN) architecture that is hierarchical and distributed and operates in real time. We also identify the required data and respective workflows that facilitate intelligent network optimizations. It is our strong belief that the wireless BD (WBD) and machine-learning/artificial-intelligence (AI)-based methodology applies to all layers of the communication system. To demonstrate the superior performance gains of our proposed methodology, two use cases are analyzed with system-level simulations; one is the neural-network-aided optimization for Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and the other is prediction-based proactive mobility management.

Can machine learning aid in delivering new use cases and scenarios in 5G? <=SEP=> 5G represents the next generation of communication networks and services, and will bring a new set of use cases and scenarios. These in turn will address a new set of challenges from the network and service management perspective, such as network traffic and resource management, big data management and energy efficiency. Consequently, novel techniques and strategies are required to address these challenges in a smarter way. In this paper, we present the limitations of the current network and service management and describe in detail the challenges that 5G is expected to face from a management perspective. The main contribution of this paper is presenting a set of use cases and scenarios of 5G in which machine learning can aid in addressing their management challenges. It is expected that machine learning can provide a higher and more intelligent level of monitoring and management of networks and applications, improve operational efficiencies and facilitate the requirements of the future 5G network.

A deep reinforcement learning based framework for power-efficient resource allocation in cloud RANs <=SEP=> Cloud Radio Access Networks (RANs) have become a key enabling technique for the next generation (5G) wireless communications, which can meet requirements of massively growing wireless data traffic. However, resource allocation in cloud RANs still needs to be further improved in order to reach the objective of minimizing power consumption and meeting demands of wireless users over a long operational period. Inspired by the success of Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) on solving complicated control problems, we present a novel DRL-based framework for power-efficient resource allocation in cloud RANs. Specifically, we define the state space, action space and reward function for the DRL agent, apply a Deep Neural Network (DNN) to approximate the action-value function, and formally formulate the resource allocation problem (in each decision epoch) as a convex optimization problem. We evaluate the performance of the proposed framework by comparing it with two widely-used baselines via simulation. The simulation results show it can achieve significant power savings while meeting user demands, and it can well handle highly dynamic cases.

Joint Resource Partitioning and Offloading in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks <=SEP=> In heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs), it is desirable to offload mobile users to small cells, which are typically significantly less congested than the macrocells. To achieve sufficient load balancing, the offloaded users often have much lower SINR than they would on the macrocell. This SINR degradation can be partially alleviated through interference avoidance, for example time or frequency resource partitioning, whereby the macrocell turns off in some fraction of such resources. Naturally, the optimal offloading strategy is tightly coupled with resource partitioning; the optimal amount of which in turn depends on how many users have been offloaded. In this paper, we propose a general and tractable framework for modeling and analyzing joint resource partitioning and offloading in a two-tier cellular network. With it, we are able to derive the downlink rate distribution over the entire network, and an optimal strategy for joint resource partitioning and offloading. We show that load balancing, by itself, is insufficient, and resource partitioning is required in conjunction with offloading to improve the rate of cell edge users in co-channel heterogeneous networks.

Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing <=SEP=> Cloud Computing, the long-held dream of computing as a utility, has the potential to transform a large part of the IT industry, making software even more attractive as a service and shaping the way IT hardware is designed and purchased. Developers with innovative ideas for new Internet services no longer require the large capital outlays in hardware to deploy their service or the human expense to operate it. They need not be concerned about overprovisioning for a service whose popularity does not meet their predictions, thus wasting costly resources, or underprovisioning for one that becomes wildly popular, thus missing potential customers and revenue. Moreover, companies with large batch-oriented tasks can get results as quickly as their programs can scale, since using 1000 servers for one hour costs no more than using one server for 1000 hours. This elasticity of resources, without paying a premium for large scale, is unprecedented in the history of IT. Cloud Computing refers to both the applications delivered as services over the Internet and the hardware and systems software in the datacenters that provide those services. The services themselves have long been referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS). The datacenter hardware and software is what we will call a Cloud. When a Cloud is made available in a pay-as-you-go manner to the general public, we call it a Public Cloud; the service being sold is Utility Computing. We use the term Private Cloud to refer to internal datacenters of a business or other organization, not made available to the general public. Thus, Cloud Computing is the sum of SaaS and Utility Computing, but does not include Private Clouds. People can be users or providers of SaaS, or users or providers of Utility Computing. We focus on SaaS Providers (Cloud Users) and Cloud Providers, which have received less attention than SaaS Users. From a hardware point of view, three aspects are new in Cloud Computing.

Ternary CAM Power and Delay Model: Extensions and Uses <=SEP=> Applications in computer networks often require high throughput access to large data structures for lookup and classification. While advanced algorithms exist to speed these search primitives on network processors and even custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), achieving tight bounds on worst case performance with standard memories often requires a very careful analysis of all possible access patterns. An alternative, and often times more simple solution, is possible if a ternary CAM (TCAM) is used to perform a fully parallel search across the entire data set. Unfortunately, this parallelism means that large portions of the chip are switching during each cycle, causing large amounts of power to be consumed. While researchers at all levels of design (from algorithms to circuits) have begun to explore new ways of managing the power consumption, quantifying design alternatives is difficult due to a lack of available models. In this paper, we examine the structure of a modern TCAM and present a simple, yet accurate, power and delay model. We present techniques to estimate the dynamic power consumption and leakage power of a TCAM structure and validate the model using a combination of industrial TCAM datasheets and prior published works. Such a model is a critical first step in bridging the intellectual divide between circuit-level and algorithm-level optimizations. To demonstrate the utility of our model, we present an extensive analysis of the model by varying various architectural parameters and describe how our model can be easily extended to handle several circuit optimizations in the TCAM structure. In addition, we present a comparative study of SRAM and TCAM energy consumption to directly quantify the many design options which will be very useful for network designers to explore various power management schemes.

User Experience Design and Agile Development : From Theory to Practice <=SEP=> We used existing studies on the integration of user experience design and agile methods as a basis to develop a framework for integrating UX and Agile. We performed a field study in an ongoing project of a medium-sized company in order to check if the proposed framework fits in the real world, and how some aspects of the integration of UX and Agile work in a real project. This led us to some conclusions situating contributions from practice to theory and back again. The framework is briefly described in this paper and consists of a set of practices, artifacts, and techniques derived from the literature. By combining theory and practice we were able to confirm some thoughts and identify some gaps—both in the company process and in our proposed framework—and drive our attention to new issues that need to be addressed. We believe that the most important issues in our case study are: UX designers cannot collaborate closely with developers because UX designers are working on multiple projects and that UX designers cannot work up front because they are too busy with too many projects at the same time.

Socially compliant mobile robot navigation via inverse reinforcement learning <=SEP=> Mobile robots are increasingly populating our human environments. To interact with humans in a socially compliant way, these robots need to understand and comply with mutually accepted rules. In this paper, we present a novel approach to model the cooperative navigation behavior of humans. We model their behavior in terms of a mixture distribution that captures both the discrete navigation decisions, such as going left or going right, as well as the natural variance of human trajectories. Our approach learns the model parameters of this distribution that match, in expectation, the observed behavior in terms of user-defined features. To compute the feature expectations over the resulting high-dimensional continuous distributions, we use Hamiltonian Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling. Furthermore, we rely on a Voronoi graph of the environment to efficiently explore the space of trajectories from the robot’s current position to its target position. Using the proposed model, our method is able to imitate the behavior of pedestrians or, alternatively, to replicate a specific behavior that was taught by tele-operation in the target environment of the robot. We implemented our approach on a real mobile robot and demonstrate that it is able to successfully navigate in an office environment in the presence of humans. An extensive set of experiments suggests that our technique outperforms state-of-the-art methods to model the behavior of pedestrians, which makes it also applicable to fields such as behavioral science or computer graphics.

A Differential Equation for Modeling Nesterov's Accelerated Gradient Method: Theory and Insights <=SEP=> We derive a second-order ordinary differential equation (ODE), which is the limit of Nesterov’s accelerated gradient method. This ODE exhibits approximate equivalence to Nesterov’s scheme and thus can serve as a tool for analysis. We show that the continuous time ODE allows for a better understanding of Nesterov’s scheme. As a byproduct, we obtain a family of schemes with similar convergence rates. The ODE interpretation also suggests restarting Nesterov’s scheme leading to an algorithm, which can be rigorously proven to converge at a linear rate whenever the objective is strongly convex.

Global Aesthetics Consensus: Avoidance and Management of Complications from Hyaluronic Acid Fillers—Evidence- and Opinion-Based Review and Consensus Recommendations <=SEP=> BACKGROUND
Although the safety profile of hyaluronic acid fillers is favorable, adverse reactions can occur. Clinicians and patients can benefit from ongoing guidance on adverse reactions to hyaluronic acid fillers and their management.


METHODS
A multinational, multidisciplinary group of experts in cosmetic medicine convened the Global Aesthetics Consensus Group to review the properties and clinical uses of Hylacross and Vycross hyaluronic acid products and develop updated consensus recommendations for early and late complications associated with hyaluronic acid fillers.


RESULTS
The consensus panel provided specific recommendations focusing on early and late complications of hyaluronic acid fillers and their management. The impact of patient-, product-, and technique-related factors on such reactions was described. Most of these were noted to be mild and transient. Serious adverse events are rare. Early adverse reactions to hyaluronic acid fillers include vascular infarction and compromise; inflammatory reactions; injection-related events; and inappropriate placement of filler material. Among late reactions are nodules, granulomas, and skin discoloration. Most adverse events can be avoided with proper planning and technique. Detailed understanding of facial anatomy, proper patient and product selection, and appropriate technique can further reduce the risks. Should adverse reactions occur, the clinician must be prepared and have tools available for effective treatment.


CONCLUSIONS
Adverse reactions with hyaluronic acid fillers are uncommon. Clinicians should take steps to further reduce the risk and be prepared to treat any complications that arise.

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom? An Early Look at Large Numbers of Software App Developers and Patterns of Innovation <=SEP=> It is often presumed that bringing more members on board a multi-sided platform will stimulate value creation. Here I study the thousands of software producers building applications (“apps”) on leading handheld computer platforms (1999-2004). Consistent with past theory, I find a lock-step link between numbers of producers and varieties of software titles. The narrow, unchanging scope of producers and a series of other patterns are consistent with a pronounced role of specialization and heterogeneity of producers. I also find that while adding producers making different types of software stimulated investment incentives, consistent with network effects, adding producers making similar software crowdedout innovation incentives. The latter of these two effects dominates in this context. The patterns also indicate nonrandom generation and sorting of producers onto platforms, with later cohorts generating systematically less compelling software than earlier cohorts of entrants. Overall, added producers led innovation to become more dependent on population-level diversity, variation and experimentation—while drawing less on the heroic efforts and investments of any one individual innovator.

Detecting stealth software with Strider GhostBuster <=SEP=> Stealth malware programs that silently infect enterprise and consumer machines are becoming a major threat to the future of the Internet. Resource hiding is a powerful stealth technique commonly used by malware to evade detection by computer users and anti-malware scanners. In this paper, we focus on a subclass of malware, termed "ghostware", which hide files, configuration settings, processes, and loaded modules from the operating system's query and enumeration application programming interfaces (APIs). Instead of targeting individual stealth implementations, we describe a systematic framework for detecting multiple types of hidden resources by leveraging the hiding behavior as a detection mechanism. Specifically, we adopt a cross-view diff-based approach to ghostware detection by comparing a high-level infected scan with a low-level clean scan and alternatively comparing an inside-the-box infected scan with an outside-the-box clean scan. We describe the design and implementation of the Strider GhostBuster tool and demonstrate its efficiency and effectiveness in detecting resources hidden by real-world malware such as rootkits, Trojans, and key-loggers.

Simultaneous video defogging and stereo reconstruction <=SEP=> We present a method to jointly estimate scene depth and recover the clear latent image from a foggy video sequence. In our formulation, the depth cues from stereo matching and fog information reinforce each other, and produce superior results than conventional stereo or defogging algorithms. We first improve the photo-consistency term to explicitly model the appearance change due to the scattering effects. The prior matting Laplacian constraint on fog transmission imposes a detail-preserving smoothness constraint on the scene depth. We further enforce the ordering consistency between scene depth and fog transmission at neighboring points. These novel constraints are formulated together in an MRF framework, which is optimized iteratively by introducing auxiliary variables. The experiment results on real videos demonstrate the strength of our method.

UFMC system performance analysis for discrete narrow-band private networks <=SEP=> In this paper, the performance of universal-filtered multi-carrier (UFMC) system is analyzed. Specifically, the UFMC signals are generated with Dolph-Chebyshev, Hamming and Hanning filtering. The characteristics of UFMC signals are also compared with OFDM signal, in both software and hardware-in-the-loop simulations. Experimental results show that UFMC signals have better performance than OFDM signal, by means of side-lobe attenuation, bit-error-ratio (BER) and Error Vector Magnitude (EVM). The results indicate that the UFMC signal is more suitable than OFDM signal for discrete narrow-band private networks. The results can provide useful information on the design of multi-carrier radio systems.

MICA - A new generation of versatile instruments in robotic surgery <=SEP=> Robotic surgery systems are highly complex and expensive pieces of equipment. Demands for lower cost of care can be met if these systems are employable in a flexible manner for a large variety of procedures. To protect the initial investment the capabilities of a robotic system need to be expandable as new tasks arise.

Xbase: implementing domain-specific languages for Java <=SEP=> Xtext is an open-source framework for implementing external, textual domain-specific languages (DSLs). So far, most DSLs implemented with Xtext and similar tools focus on structural aspects such as service specifications and entities. Because behavioral aspects are significantly more complicated to implement, they are often delegated to general-purpose programming languages. This approach introduces complex integration patterns and the DSL's high level of abstraction is compromised.
 We present Xbase as part of Xtext, an expression language that can be reused via language inheritance in any DSL implementation based on Xtext. Xbase expressions provide both control structures and program expressions in a uniform way. Xbase is statically typed and tightly integrated with the Java type system. Languages extending Xbase inherit the syntax of a Java-like expression language as well as language infrastructure components, including a parser, an unparser, a linker, a compiler and an interpreter. Furthermore, the framework provides integration into the Eclipse IDE including debug and refactoring support.
 The application of Xbase is presented by means of a domain model language which serves as a tutorial example and by the implementation of the programming language Xtend. Xtend is a functional and object-oriented general purpose language for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). It is built on top of Xbase which is the reusable expression language that is the foundation of Xtend.

Impulsive corporal punishment by mothers and antisocial behavior and impulsiveness of children. <=SEP=> This study tested the hypothesis that corporal punishment (CP), such as spanking or slapping a child for purposes of correcting misbehavior, is associated with antisocial behavior (ASB) and impulsiveness by the child. The data were obtained through interviews with a probability sample of 933 mothers of children age 2-14 in two small American cities. Analyses of variance found that the more CP experienced by the child, the greater the tendency for the child to engage in ASB and to act impulsively. These relationships hold even after controlling for family socioeconomic status, the age and sex of the child, nurturance by the mother, and the level of noncorporal interventions by the mother. There were also significant interaction effects of CP with impulsiveness by the mother. When CP was carried out impulsively, it was most strongly related to child impulsiveness and ASB; when CP was done when the mother was under control, the relationship to child behavior problems was reduced but still present. In view of the fact that there is a high risk of losing control when engaged in CP, even by parents who are not usually impulsive, and the fact that impulsive CP is so strongly associated with child behavior problems, the results of this study suggest that CP is an important risk factor for children developing a pattern of impulsive and antisocial behavior which, in turn, may contribute to the level of violence and other crime in society.

Extraction and classification texture of inflammatory cells and nuclei in normal pap smear images <=SEP=> The presence of inflammatory cells complicates the process of identifying the nuclei in the early detection of cervical cancer. Inflammatory cells need to be eliminated to assist pathologists in reading Pap smear slides. The texture of Grey-Level Run-Length Matrix (GLRLM) for inflammatory cells and nuclei types are investigated. The inflammatory cells and nuclei have different texture, and it can be used to differentiate them. To extract all of the features, firstly manual cropping of inflammatory cells and nuclei needs to be done. All of extracted features have been analyzed and selected by Decision Tree classifier (J48). Originally there have been eleven features in the direction of 135° which are extracted to classify cropping cells into inflammatory cells and nuclei. Then the eleven features are reduced into eight, namely low gray level run emphasis, gray level non uniformity, run length non-uniformity, long run low gray-level emphasis, short run high gray-level emphasis, short run low gray-level emphasis, long run high gray-level emphasis and run percentage based on the rule of classification. This experiment is applied into 957 cells which were from 50 images. The compositions of these cells were 122 cells of nuclei and 837 cells of inflammatory. The proposed algorithm applied to all of the cells and the result of classification by using these eight texture features obtains the sensitivity rates which show that there are still nuclei of cells that were considered as inflammatory cells. It was in accordance with the conditions of the difficulties faced by the pathologist while the specificity rate suggests that inflammatory cells detected properly and few inflammatory cells are considered as nucleus.

Design and simulation of self-tuning PID-type fuzzy adaptive control for an expert HVAC system <=SEP=> The modelling, numerical simulation and intelligent control of an expert HVAC (heating, ventilating and air-conditioning) system having two different zones with variable flow-rate were performed by considering the ambient temperature in this study. The sub-models of the system were obtained by deriving heat transfer equations of heat loss of two zones by conduction and convection, cooling unit and fan. All models of the variable flow-rate HVAC system were generated by using MATLAB/SIMULINK, and proportional-integral-derivative (PID) parameters were obtained by using Fuzzy sets. For comfortable of people the temperatures of the two different zones were decreased to 5 C from the ambient temperature. The successful results were obtained by applying self-tuning proportional-integral-derivative (PID)-type fuzzy adaptive controller if comparing with the fuzzy PD-type and the classical PID controller. The obtained results were presented in a graphical form. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Procedure for Measuring Microplastics using Pressurized Fluid Extraction. <=SEP=> A method based on pressurized fluid extraction (PFE) was developed for measuring microplastics in environmental samples. This method can address some limitations of the current microplastic methods and provide laboratories with a simple analytical method for quantifying common microplastics in a range of environmental samples. The method was initially developed by recovering 101% to 111% of spiked plastics on glass beads and was then applied to a composted municipal waste sample with spike recoveries ranging from 85% to 94%. The results from municipal waste samples and soil samples collected from an industrial area demonstrated that the method is a promising alternative for determining the concentration and identity of microplastics in environmental samples.

Research Advances in Cloud Computing <=SEP=> Serverless computing has emerged as a new compelling paradigm for the deployment of applications and services. It represents an evolution of cloud programmingmodels, abstractions, and platforms, and is a testament to the maturity and wide adoption of cloud technologies. In this chapter, we survey existing serverless platforms from industry, academia, and open-source projects, identify key characteristics and use cases, and describe technical challenges and open problems. I. Baldini · P. Castro (B) · K. Chang · P. Cheng · S. Fink · N. Mitchell · V. Muthusamy · R. Rabbah · A. Slominski IBM Research, New York, USA e-mail: ioana@us.ibm.com P. Castro e-mail: castrop@us.ibm.com K. Chang e-mail: Kerry.Chang@ibm.com P. Cheng e-mail: perry@us.ibm.com S. Fink e-mail: sjfink@us.ibm.com N. Mitchell e-mail: nickm@us.ibm.com V. Muthusamy (B) e-mail: vmuthus@us.ibm.com R. Rabbah e-mail: rabbah@us.ibm.com A. Slominski (B) e-mail: aslom@us.ibm.com V. Ishakian (B) Bentley University, Waltham, USA e-mail: vishakian@bentley.edu P. Suter Two Sigma, New York, USA © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 S. Chaudhary et al. (eds.), Research Advances in Cloud Computing, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5026-8_1 1

DCFont: an end-to-end deep chinese font generation system <=SEP=> Building a complete personalized Chinese font library for an ordinary person is a tough task due to the existence of huge amounts of characters with complicated structures. Yet, existing automatic font generation methods still have many drawbacks. To address the problem, this paper proposes an end-to-end learning system, DCFont, to automatically generate the whole GB2312 font library that consists of 6763 Chinese characters from a small number (e.g., 775) of characters written by the user. Our system has two major advantages. On the one hand, the system works in an end-to-end manner, which means that human interventions during offline training and online generating periods are not required. On the other hand, a novel deep neural network architecture is designed to solve the font feature reconstruction and handwriting synthesis problems through adversarial training, which requires fewer input data but obtains more realistic and high-quality synthesis results compared to other deep learning based approaches. Experimental results verify the superiority of our method against the state of the art.

Cyber Security Resource Allocation: A Markov Decision Process Approach <=SEP=> An effective defense-in-depth in cyber security applies multiple layers of defense throughout a system. The goalis to defend a system against cyber-attack using severalindependent methods. Therefore, a cyber-attack that is able to penetrate one layer of defense may be unsuccessful in other layers. Common layers of cyber defense include: attack avoidance, prevention, detection, survivability and recovery. It follows that in security-conscious organizations, the cyber security investment portfolio is divided into different layers of defense. For instance, a two-way division is agility and recovery. Cyber agility pursues attack avoidance techniques such that cyber-attacks are rendered as ineffective, whereas cyber recovery seeks to fight-through successful attacks. We show that even when the primary focus is on the agility of a system, recovery should be an essential point during implementation because the frequency of attacks will degrade the system and a quick and fast recovery is necessary. However, there is not yet an optimum mechanism to allocate limited cyber security resourcesinto the different layers. We propose an approach using theMarkov Decision Process (MDP) framework for resourcesallocation between the two end layers: agility and recovery.

Impact Analysis of Flow Shaping in Ethernet-AVB/TSN and AFDX from Network Calculus and Simulation Perspective <=SEP=> Ethernet-AVB/TSN (Audio Video Bridging/Time-Sensitive Networking) and AFDX (Avionics Full DupleX switched Ethernet) are switched Ethernet technologies, which are both candidates for real-time communication in the context of transportation systems. AFDX implements a fixed priority scheduling strategy with two priority levels. Ethernet-AVB/TSN supports a similar fixed priority scheduling with an additional Credit-Based Shaper (CBS) mechanism. Besides, TSN can support time-triggered scheduling strategy. One direct effect of CBS mechanism is to increase the delay of its flows while decreasing the delay of other priority ones. The former effect can be seen as the shaping restriction and the latter effect can be seen as the shaping benefit from CBS. The goal of this paper is to investigate the impact of CBS on different priority flows, especially on the intermediate priority ones, as well as the effect of CBS bandwidth allocation. It is based on a performance comparison of AVB/TSN and AFDX by simulation in an automotive case study. Furthermore, the shaping benefit is modeled based on integral operation from network calculus perspective. Combing with the analysis of shaping restriction and shaping benefit, some configuration suggestions on the setting of CBS bandwidth are given. Results show that the effect of CBS depends on flow loads and CBS configurations. A larger load of high priority flows in AVB tends to a better performance for the intermediate priority flows when compared with AFDX. Shaping benefit can be explained and calculated according to the changing from the permitted maximum burst.

Optimization of 6Slots-7Poles & 12Slots-14Poles flux-switching permanent magnet machines for plug-in HEV <=SEP=> Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is independent of the internal combustion engine but acts as the auxiliary unit mostly on the electric drive system. Main while, the Flux-switching permanent magnet machine (FSPMM) has been studied in terms of structure with its operation principle been analyzed. To achieve a higher torque with a corresponding high power density and lower torque ripple, FSPMM with 6Slots-7Poles and 12Slots-14Poles, according investigations, are optimized based on their objective functions. Moreover, it analyzes several typical performance curves, such as cogging torque, flux linkage and back-EMF. Finally, the torque and corresponding power, efficiency and rotor mechanical strength analysis of optimized designed are obtained. The results indicate that FSPMM is a viable candidate for PHEV and also has good mechanical robustness with strong flux-weakening ability.

Protein folding and misfolding <=SEP=> The manner in which a newly synthesized chain of amino acids transforms itself into a perfectly folded protein depends both on the intrinsic properties of the amino-acid sequence and on multiple contributing influences from the crowded cellular milieu. Folding and unfolding are crucial ways of regulating biological activity and targeting proteins to different cellular locations. Aggregation of misfolded proteins that escape the cellular quality-control mechanisms is a common feature of a wide range of highly debilitating and increasingly prevalent diseases.

Machine Translation Approaches: Issues and Challenges <=SEP=> In the modern world, there is an increased need for language translations owing to the fact that language is an effective medium of communication. The demand for translation has become more in recent years due to increase in the exchange of information between various regions using different regional languages. Accessibility to web document in other languages, for instance, has been a concern for information Professionals. Machine translation (MT), a subfield under Artificial Intelligence, is the application of computers to the task of translating texts from one natural (human) language to another. Many approaches have been used in the recent times to develop an MT system. Each of these approaches has its own advantages and challenges. This paper takes a look at these approaches with the few of identifying their individual features, challenges and the best domain they are best suited to.

Gay and bisexual identity development among female-to-male transsexuals in North America: emergence of a transgender sexuality. <=SEP=> We studied a North American sample of female-to-male (FtM) transsexuals sexually attracted to men, aiming to understand their identity and sexuality in the context of a culture of transgender empowerment. Sex-reassigned FtM transsexuals, 18 years or older and attracted to men, were recruited via an FtM community conference and listserv. Participants (N = 25) responded to open-ended questions about identity development, sexual behavior, and social support. Data were analyzed by content analysis. Scores for sexual identity, self esteem, sexual functioning, and psychological adjustment were compared to those of a comparison group (N = 76 nontransgender gay and bisexual men). Of the 25 FtMs, 15 (60%) identified as gay, 8 (32%) as bisexual, and 2 (8%) as queer. All were comfortable with their gender identity and sexual orientation. The FtM group was more bisexual than the nontransgender gay and bisexual controls. No significant group differences were found in self esteem, sexual satisfaction, or psychological adjustment. For some FtMs, sexual attractions and experiences with men affirmed their gender identity; for others, self-acceptance of a transgender identity facilitated actualization of their attractions toward men. Most were "out" as transgender among friends and family, but not on the job or within the gay community. Disclosure and acceptance of their homosexuality was limited. The sexual identity of gay and bisexual FtMs appears to mirror the developmental process for nontransgender homosexual men and women in several ways; however, participants also had experiences unique to being both transgender and gay/bisexual. This signals the emergence of a transgender sexuality.

Autonomous Vehicle-target Assignment: a Game-theoretical Formulation <=SEP=> We consider an autonomous vehicle-target assignment problem where a group of vehicles are expected to optimally assign themselves to a set of targets. We introduce a gametheoretical formulation of the problem in which the vehicles are viewed as self-interested decision makers. Thus, we seek the optimization of a global utility function through autonomous vehicles that are capable of making individually rational decisions to optimize their own utility functions. The first important aspect of the problem is to choose the utility functions of the vehicles in such a way that the objectives of the vehicles are localized to each vehicle yet aligned with a global utility function. The second important aspect of the problem is to equip the vehicles with an appropriate negotiation mechanism by which each vehicle pursues the optimization of its own utility function. We present several design procedures and accompanying caveats for vehicle utility design. We present two new negotiation mechanisms, namely, “generalized regret monitoring with fading memory and inertia” and “selective spatial adaptive play,” and provide accompanying proofs of their convergence. Finally, we present simulations that illustrate how vehicle negotiations can consistently lead to near-optimal assignments provided that the utilities of the vehicles are designed appropriately. DOI: 10.1115/1.2766722

Information Systems and Healthcare XVI: Physician Adoption of Electronic Medical Records: Applying the UTAUT Model in a Healthcare Context <=SEP=> This study applies the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to the phenomenon of physician adoption of electronic medical records (EMR) technology. UTAUT integrates eight theories of individual acceptance into one comprehensive model designed to assist in understanding what factors either enable or hinder technology adoption and use. As such, it provides a useful lens through which to view what is currently taking place in the healthcare industry regarding EMR adoption. This is mutually beneficial to both the healthcare and MIS communities, as UTAUT offers valuable practical insight to the healthcare industry in explaining why EMR technology has not been more widely adopted as well as what prescriptions may facilitate future adoption, while offering the MIS community the opportunity to strengthen existing theory through an illustration of its application.