615 research outputs found

    Automated computation of materials properties

    Full text link
    Materials informatics offers a promising pathway towards rational materials design, replacing the current trial-and-error approach and accelerating the development of new functional materials. Through the use of sophisticated data analysis techniques, underlying property trends can be identified, facilitating the formulation of new design rules. Such methods require large sets of consistently generated, programmatically accessible materials data. Computational materials design frameworks using standardized parameter sets are the ideal tools for producing such data. This work reviews the state-of-the-art in computational materials design, with a focus on these automated ab-initio\textit{ab-initio} frameworks. Features such as structural prototyping and automated error correction that enable rapid generation of large datasets are discussed, and the way in which integrated workflows can simplify the calculation of complex properties, such as thermal conductivity and mechanical stability, is demonstrated. The organization of large datasets composed of ab-initio\textit{ab-initio} calculations, and the tools that render them programmatically accessible for use in statistical learning applications, are also described. Finally, recent advances in leveraging existing data to predict novel functional materials, such as entropy stabilized ceramics, bulk metallic glasses, thermoelectrics, superalloys, and magnets, are surveyed.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures, chapter in a boo

    The Telecommunications and Data Acquisition Report

    Get PDF
    Developments in space communications, radio navigation, radio science, ground-base radio astronomy, reports on the Deep Space Network (DSN) and its Ground Communications Facility (GCF), and applications of radio interferometry at microwave frequencies are discussed

    Coding for Privacy in Distributed Computing

    Get PDF
    I et distribuert datanettverk samarbeider flere enheter for å løse et problem. Slik kan vi oppnå mer enn summen av delene: samarbeid gjør at problemet kan løses mer effektivt, og samtidig blir det mulig å løse problemer som hver enkelt enhet ikke kan løse på egen hånd. På den annen side kan enheter som bruker veldig lang tid på å fullføre sin oppgave øke den totale beregningstiden betydelig. Denne såkalte straggler-effekten kan oppstå som følge av tilfeldige hendelser som minnetilgang og oppgaver som kjører i bakgrunnen på de ulike enhetene. Straggler-problemet blokkerer vanligvis hele beregningen siden alle enhetene må vente på at de treigeste enhetene blir ferdige. Videre kan deling av data og delberegninger mellom de ulike enhetene belaste kommunikasjonsnettverket betydelig. Spesielt i et trådløst nettverk hvor enhetene må dele en enkelt kommunikasjonskanal, for eksempel ved beregninger langs kanten av et nettverk (såkalte kantberegninger) og ved føderert læring, blir kommunikasjonen ofte flaskehalsen. Sist men ikke minst gir deling av data med upålitelige enheter økt bekymring for personvernet. En som ønsker å bruke et distribuert datanettverk kan være skeptisk til å dele personlige data med andre enheter uten å beskytte sensitiv informasjon tilstrekkelig. Denne avhandlingen studerer hvordan ideer fra kodeteori kan dempe straggler-problemet, øke effektiviteten til kommunikasjonen og garantere datavern i distribuert databehandling. Spesielt gir del A en innføring i kantberegning og føderert læring, to populære instanser av distribuert databehandling, lineær regresjon, et vanlig problem som kan løses ved distribuert databehandling, og relevante ideer fra kodeteori. Del B består av forskningsartikler skrevet innenfor rammen av denne avhandlingen. Artiklene presenterer metoder som utnytter ideer fra kodeteori for å redusere beregningstiden samtidig som datavernet ivaretas ved kantberegninger og ved føderert læring. De foreslåtte metodene gir betydelige forbedringer sammenlignet med tidligere metoder i litteraturen. For eksempel oppnår en metode fra artikkel I en 8%-hastighetsforbedring for kantberegninger sammenlignet med en nylig foreslått metode. Samtidig ivaretar vår metode datavernet, mens den metoden som vi sammenligner med ikke gjør det. Artikkel II presenterer en metode som for noen brukstilfeller er opp til 18 ganger raskere for føderert læring sammenlignet med tidligere metoder i litteraturen.In a distributed computing network, multiple devices combine their resources to solve a problem. Thereby the network can achieve more than the sum of its parts: cooperation of the devices can enable the devices to compute more efficiently than each device on its own could and even enable the devices to solve a problem neither of them could solve on its own. However, devices taking exceptionally long to finish their tasks can exacerbate the overall latency of the computation. This so-called straggler effect can arise from random effects such as memory access and tasks running in the background of the devices. The effect typically stalls the whole network because most devices must wait for the stragglers to finish. Furthermore, sharing data and results among devices can severely strain the communication network. Especially in a wireless network where devices have to share a common channel, e.g., in edge computing and federated learning, the communication links often become the bottleneck. Last but not least, offloading data to untrusted devices raises privacy concerns. A participant in the distributed computing network might be weary of sharing personal data with other devices without adequately protecting sensitive information. This thesis analyses how ideas from coding theory can mitigate the straggler effect, reduce the communication load, and guarantee data privacy in distributed computing. In particular, Part A gives background on edge computing and federated learning, two popular instances of distributed computing, linear regression, a common problem to be solved by distributed computing, and the specific ideas from coding theory that are proposed to tackle the problems arising in distributed computing. Part B contains papers on the research performed in the framework of this thesis. The papers propose schemes that combine the introduced coding theory ideas to minimize the overall latency while preserving data privacy in edge computing and federated learning. The proposed schemes significantly outperform state-of-the-art schemes. For example, a scheme from Paper I achieves an 8% speed-up for edge computing compared to a recently proposed non-private scheme while guaranteeing data privacy, whereas the schemes from Paper II achieve a speed-up factor of up to 18 for federated learning compared to current schemes in the literature for considered scenarios.Doktorgradsavhandlin

    Particle Shielding for Human Spaceflight: Electrostatic Potential Effects on the Störmer Magnetic Dipole Exclusion Region

    Get PDF
    A basic hybrid radiation shield concept, consisting of both a monopole positive electrostatic potential barrier and a current-carrying superconducting solenoid, was predicted to provide a more effective method of shielding a habitable torus region than a solenoid acting alone. A randomized position and velocity vector simulation of equal-energy iron ions using a Lagrangian reference frame was performed on the exact magnetic field integral for the solenoid and a discrete summation electrostatic field for a toroidal monopole array approximating a potential surface. Each particle is injected at a specific energy (100, 150 MeV and 1 GeV). Two cases were evaluated at each particle energy modeling 2x104 particles. The first case studied effects from only the magnetic dipole field (1.1x1013 A m2); the second case evaluated phenomena from a combined magnetic dipole field and electrostatic potential (20 MV). The toroidal electrostatic potential’s influence on the size and shape of the Störmer magnetic dipole exclusion region was examined as the main evaluating criterion against the pure magnetic field results. It was shown that the electrostatic potential influences the size of the Störmer dipole exclusion region, and the ratio of particle energy to electrostatic potential is significant in determining the amount increased. It was found that a low particle energy to electrostatic potential ratio of 5:1 increases Störmer area approximately by a factor of 2

    Addressing Insider Threats from Smart Devices

    Get PDF
    Smart devices have unique security challenges and are becoming increasingly common. They have been used in the past to launch cyber attacks such as the Mirai attack. This work is focused on solving the threats posed to and by smart devices inside a network. The size of the problem is quantified; the initial compromise is prevented where possible, and compromised devices are identified. To gain insight into the size of the problem, campus Domain Name System (DNS) measurements were taken that allow for wireless traffic to be separated from wired traffic. Two-thirds of the DNS traffic measured came from wireless hosts, implying that mobile devices are playing a bigger role in networks. Also, port scans and service discovery protocols were used to identify Internet of Things (IoT) devices on the campus network and follow-up work was done to assess the state of the IoT devices. Motivated by these findings, three solutions were developed. To handle the scenario when compromised mobile devices are connected to the network, a new strategy for steppingstone detection was developed with both an application layer and a transport layer solution. The proposed solution is effective even when the mobile device cellular connection is used. Also, malicious or vulnerable applications make it through the mobile app store vetting process. A user space tool was developed that identifies apps contacting malicious domains in real time and collects data for research purposes. Malicious app behavior can then be identified on the user’s device, catching malicious apps that were overlooked by software vetting. Last, the variety of IoT device types and manufacturers makes the job of keeping them secure difficult. A generic framework was developed to lighten the management burden of securing IoT devices, serve as a middle box to secure legacy devices, and also use DNS queries as a way to identify misbehaving devices

    Human Mobility and Application Usage Prediction Algorithms for Mobile Devices

    Get PDF
    Mobile devices such as smartphones and smart watches are ubiquitous companions of humans’ daily life. Since 2014, there are more mobile devices on Earth than humans. Mobile applications utilize sensors and actuators of these devices to support individuals in their daily life. In particular, 24% of the Android applications leverage users’ mobility data. For instance, this data allows applications to understand which places an individual typically visits. This allows providing her with transportation information, location-based advertisements, or to enable smart home heating systems. These and similar scenarios require the possibility to access the Internet from everywhere and at any time. To realize these scenarios 83% of the applications available in the Android Play Store require the Internet to operate properly and therefore access it from everywhere and at any time. Mobile applications such as Google Now or Apple Siri utilize human mobility data to anticipate where a user will go next or which information she is likely to access en route to her destination. However, predicting human mobility is a challenging task. Existing mobility prediction solutions are typically optimized a priori for a particular application scenario and mobility prediction task. There is no approach that allows for automatically composing a mobility prediction solution depending on the underlying prediction task and other parameters. This approach is required to allow mobile devices to support a plethora of mobile applications running on them, while each of the applications support its users by leveraging mobility predictions in a distinct application scenario. Mobile applications rely strongly on the availability of the Internet to work properly. However, mobile cellular network providers are struggling to provide necessary cellular resources. Mobile applications generate a monthly average mobile traffic volume that ranged between 1 GB in Asia and 3.7 GB in North America in 2015. The Ericsson Mobility Report Q1 2016 predicts that by the end of 2021 this mobile traffic volume will experience a 12-fold increase. The consequences are higher costs for both providers and consumers and a reduced quality of service due to congested mobile cellular networks. Several countermeasures can be applied to cope with these problems. For instance, mobile applications apply caching strategies to prefetch application content by predicting which applications will be used next. However, existing solutions suffer from two major shortcomings. They either (1) do not incorporate traffic volume information into their prefetching decisions and thus generate a substantial amount of cellular traffic or (2) require a modification of mobile application code. In this thesis, we present novel human mobility and application usage prediction algorithms for mobile devices. These two major contributions address the aforementioned problems of (1) selecting a human mobility prediction model and (2) prefetching of mobile application content to reduce cellular traffic. First, we address the selection of human mobility prediction models. We report on an extensive analysis of the influence of temporal, spatial, and phone context data on the performance of mobility prediction algorithms. Building upon our analysis results, we present (1) SELECTOR – a novel algorithm for selecting individual human mobility prediction models and (2) MAJOR – an ensemble learning approach for human mobility prediction. Furthermore, we introduce population mobility models and demonstrate their practical applicability. In particular, we analyze techniques that focus on detection of wrong human mobility predictions. Among these techniques, an ensemble learning algorithm, called LOTUS, is designed and evaluated. Second, we present EBC – a novel algorithm for prefetching mobile application content. EBC’s goal is to reduce cellular traffic consumption to improve application content freshness. With respect to existing solutions, EBC presents novel techniques (1) to incorporate different strategies for prefetching mobile applications depending on the available network type and (2) to incorporate application traffic volume predictions into the prefetching decisions. EBC also achieves a reduction in application launch time to the cost of a negligible increase in energy consumption. Developing human mobility and application usage prediction algorithms requires access to human mobility and application usage data. To this end, we leverage in this thesis three publicly available data set. Furthermore, we address the shortcomings of these data sets, namely, (1) the lack of ground-truth mobility data and (2) the lack of human mobility data at short-term events like conferences. We contribute with JK2013 and UbiComp Data Collection Campaign (UbiDCC) two human mobility data sets that address these shortcomings. We also develop and make publicly available a mobile application called LOCATOR, which was used to collect our data sets. In summary, the contributions of this thesis provide a step further towards supporting mobile applications and their users. With SELECTOR, we contribute an algorithm that allows optimizing the quality of human mobility predictions by appropriately selecting parameters. To reduce the cellular traffic footprint of mobile applications, we contribute with EBC a novel approach for prefetching of mobile application content by leveraging application usage predictions. Furthermore, we provide insights about how and to what extent wrong and uncertain human mobility predictions can be detected. Lastly, with our mobile application LOCATOR and two human mobility data sets, we contribute practical tools for researchers in the human mobility prediction domain

    Traffic Management and Congestion Control in the ATM Network Model.

    Get PDF
    Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networking technology has been chosen by the International Telegraph and Telephony Consultative Committee (CCITT) for use on future local as well as wide area networks to handle traffic types of a wide range. It is a cell based network architecture that resembles circuit switched networks, providing Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees not normally found on data networks. Although the specifications for the architecture have been continuously evolving, traffic congestion management techniques for ATM networks have not been very well defined yet. This thesis studies the traffic management problem in detail, provides some theoretical understanding and presents a collection of techniques to handle the problem under various operating conditions. A detailed simulation of various ATM traffic types is carried out and the collected data is analyzed to gain an insight into congestion formation patterns. Problems that may arise during migration planning from legacy LANs to ATM technology are also considered. We present an algorithm to identify certain portions of the network that should be upgraded to ATM first. The concept of adaptive burn-in is introduced to help ease the computational costs involved in virtual circuit setup and tear down operations

    The 1991 3rd NASA Symposium on VLSI Design

    Get PDF
    Papers from the symposium are presented from the following sessions: (1) featured presentations 1; (2) very large scale integration (VLSI) circuit design; (3) VLSI architecture 1; (4) featured presentations 2; (5) neural networks; (6) VLSI architectures 2; (7) featured presentations 3; (8) verification 1; (9) analog design; (10) verification 2; (11) design innovations 1; (12) asynchronous design; and (13) design innovations 2

    Securing the Internet of Things Communication Using Named Data Networking Approaches

    Get PDF
    The rapid advancement in sensors and their use in devices has led to the drastic increase of Internet-of-Things (IoT) device applications and usage. A fundamental requirement of an IoT-enabled ecosystem is the device’s ability to communicate with other devices, humans etc. IoT devices are usually highly resource constrained and come with varying capabilities and features. Hence, a host-based communication approach defined by the TCP/IP architecture relying on securing the communication channel between the hosts displays drawbacks especially when working in a highly chaotic environment (common with IoT applications). The discrepancies between requirements of the application and the network supporting the communication demands for a fundamental change in securing the communication in IoT applications. This research along with identifying the fundamental security problems in IoT device lifecycle in the context of secure communication also explores the use of a data-centric approach advocated by a modern architecture called Named Data Networking (NDN). The use of NDN modifies the basis of communication and security by defining data-centric security where the data chunks are secured directly and retrieved using specialized requests in a pull-based approach. This work also identifies the advantages of using semantically-rich names as the basis for IoT communication in the current client-driven environment and reinforces it with best-practices from the existing host-based approaches for such networks. We present in this thesis a number of solutions built to automate and securely onboard IoT devices; encryption, decryption and access control solutions based on semantically rich names and attribute-based schemes. We also provide the design details of solutions to sup- port trustworthy and conditionally private communication among highly resource constrained devices through specialized signing techniques and automated certificate generation and distribution with minimal use of the network resources. We also explore the design solutions for rapid trust establishment and vertically securing communication in applications including smart-grid operations and vehicular communication along with automated and lightweight certificate generation and management techniques. Through all these design details and exploration, we identify the applicability of the data-centric security techniques presented by NDN in securing IoT communication and address the shortcoming of the existing approaches in this area

    Multi-Agent Systems

    Get PDF
    This Special Issue ""Multi-Agent Systems"" gathers original research articles reporting results on the steadily growing area of agent-oriented computing and multi-agent systems technologies. After more than 20 years of academic research on multi-agent systems (MASs), in fact, agent-oriented models and technologies have been promoted as the most suitable candidates for the design and development of distributed and intelligent applications in complex and dynamic environments. With respect to both their quality and range, the papers in this Special Issue already represent a meaningful sample of the most recent advancements in the field of agent-oriented models and technologies. In particular, the 17 contributions cover agent-based modeling and simulation, situated multi-agent systems, socio-technical multi-agent systems, and semantic technologies applied to multi-agent systems. In fact, it is surprising to witness how such a limited portion of MAS research already highlights the most relevant usage of agent-based models and technologies, as well as their most appreciated characteristics. We are thus confident that the readers of Applied Sciences will be able to appreciate the growing role that MASs will play in the design and development of the next generation of complex intelligent systems. This Special Issue has been converted into a yearly series, for which a new call for papers is already available at the Applied Sciences journal’s website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci/special_issues/Multi-Agent_Systems_2019
    • …
    corecore