12,326 research outputs found
Reinterpreting the transport protocol stack to embrace ossification
Ubiquitous deployment of middleboxes has resulted in ossification of the transport layer, with TCP and UDP becoming part of the narrow waist of the Internet. This is a necessary stage in the evolution of the network, caused by its progression from research, to production, to increasingly critical infrastructure. New transport layer protocols will be needed in future, but since we are working with essential infrastructure, we cannot expect to have scope to make wholesale rapid changes. Future development must be done using the existing protocols as substrates, always maintaining on-the-wire compatibility. To advance, we must embrace the ossification of the network, and learn to reinterpret and extend the existing protocols
Stochastic Dynamic Cache Partitioning for Encrypted Content Delivery
In-network caching is an appealing solution to cope with the increasing
bandwidth demand of video, audio and data transfer over the Internet.
Nonetheless, an increasing share of content delivery services adopt encryption
through HTTPS, which is not compatible with traditional ISP-managed approaches
like transparent and proxy caching. This raises the need for solutions
involving both Internet Service Providers (ISP) and Content Providers (CP): by
design, the solution should preserve business-critical CP information (e.g.,
content popularity, user preferences) on the one hand, while allowing for a
deeper integration of caches in the ISP architecture (e.g., in 5G femto-cells)
on the other hand.
In this paper we address this issue by considering a content-oblivious
ISP-operated cache. The ISP allocates the cache storage to various content
providers so as to maximize the bandwidth savings provided by the cache: the
main novelty lies in the fact that, to protect business-critical information,
ISPs only need to measure the aggregated miss rates of the individual CPs and
do not need to be aware of the objects that are requested, as in classic
caching. We propose a cache allocation algorithm based on a perturbed
stochastic subgradient method, and prove that the algorithm converges close to
the allocation that maximizes the overall cache hit rate. We use extensive
simulations to validate the algorithm and to assess its convergence rate under
stationary and non-stationary content popularity. Our results (i) testify the
feasibility of content-oblivious caches and (ii) show that the proposed
algorithm can achieve within 10\% from the global optimum in our evaluation
H2B: Heartbeat-based Secret Key Generation Using Piezo Vibration Sensors
We present Heartbeats-2-Bits (H2B), which is a system for securely pairing
wearable devices by generating a shared secret key from the skin vibrations
caused by heartbeat. This work is motivated by potential power saving
opportunity arising from the fact that heartbeat intervals can be detected
energy-efficiently using inexpensive and power-efficient piezo sensors, which
obviates the need to employ complex heartbeat monitors such as
Electrocardiogram or Photoplethysmogram. Indeed, our experiments show that
piezo sensors can measure heartbeat intervals on many different body locations
including chest, wrist, waist, neck and ankle. Unfortunately, we also discover
that the heartbeat interval signal captured by piezo vibration sensors has low
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) because they are not designed as precision
heartbeat monitors, which becomes the key challenge for H2B. To overcome this
problem, we first apply a quantile function-based quantization method to fully
extract the useful entropy from the noisy piezo measurements. We then propose a
novel Compressive Sensing-based reconciliation method to correct the high bit
mismatch rates between the two independently generated keys caused by low SNR.
We prototype H2B using off-the-shelf piezo sensors and evaluate its performance
on a dataset collected from different body positions of 23 participants. Our
results show that H2B has an overwhelming pairing success rate of 95.6%. We
also analyze and demonstrate H2B's robustness against three types of attacks.
Finally, our power measurements show that H2B is very power-efficient
Overview of methods used in cross-culturalcomparisons of menopausal symptoms and their determinants: Guidelines for Strengthening the Reporting of Menopause and Aging (STROMA) studies
This paper reviews the methods used in cross-cultural studies of menopausal symptoms with the goal of formulating recommendations to facilitate comparisons of menopausal symptoms across cultures. It provides an overview of existing approaches and serves to introduce four separate reviews of vasomotor, psychological, somatic, and sexual symptoms at midlife. Building on an earlier review of cross-cultural studies of menopause covering time periods until 2004, these reviews are based on searches of Medline, PsycINFO, CINAHL and Google Scholar for English-language articles published from 2004 to 2010 using the terms “cross cultural comparison” and “menopause.” Two major criteria were used: a study had to include more than one culture, country, or ethnic group and to have asked about actual menopausal symptom experience. We found considerable variation across studies in age ranges, symptom lists, reference period for symptom recall, variables included in multivariate analyses, and the measurement of factors (e.g., menopausal status and hormonal factors, demographic, anthropometric, mental/physical health, and lifestyle measures) that influence vasomotor, psychological, somatic and sexual symptoms. Based on these reviews, we make recommendations for future research regarding age range, symptom lists, reference/recall periods, and measurement of menopausal status. Recommendations specific to the cross-cultural study of vasomotor, psychological, somatic, and sexual symptoms are found in the four reviews that follow this introduction
Optical Nanofibers: a new platform for quantum optics
The development of optical nanofibers (ONF) and the study and control of
their optical properties when coupling atoms to their electromagnetic modes has
opened new possibilities for their use in quantum optics and quantum
information science. These ONFs offer tight optical mode confinement (less than
the wavelength of light) and diffraction-free propagation. The small cross
section of the transverse field allows probing of linear and non-linear
spectroscopic features of atoms with exquisitely low power. The cooperativity
-- the figure of merit in many quantum optics and quantum information systems
-- tends to be large even for a single atom in the mode of an ONF, as it is
proportional to the ratio of the atomic cross section to the electromagnetic
mode cross section. ONFs offer a natural bus for information and for
inter-atomic coupling through the tightly-confined modes, which opens the
possibility of one-dimensional many-body physics and interesting quantum
interconnection applications. The presence of the ONF modifies the vacuum
field, affecting the spontaneous emission rates of atoms in its vicinity. The
high gradients in the radial intensity naturally provide the potential for
trapping atoms around the ONF, allowing the creation of one-dimensional arrays
of atoms. The same radial gradient in the transverse direction of the field is
responsible for the existence of a large longitudinal component that introduces
the possibility of spin-orbit coupling of the light and the atom, enabling the
exploration of chiral quantum optics.Comment: 65 pages, to appear in Advances in Atomic, Molecular and Optical
Physic
Variability in heart rate recovery measurements over 1 year in healthy, middle-aged adults.
This study assessed the longer-term (12-month) variability in post-exercise heart rate recovery following a submaximal exercise test. Longitudinal data was analysed for 97 healthy middle-aged adults (74 male, 23 female) from 2 occasions, 12 months apart. Participants were retrospectively selected if they had stable physical activity habits, submaximal treadmill fitness and anthropometric measurements between the 2 assessment visits. A submaximal Bruce treadmill test was performed to at least 85% age-predicted maximum heart rate. Absolute heart rate and Δ heart rate recovery (change from peak exercise heart rate) were recorded for 1 and 2 min post-exercise in an immediate supine position. Heart rate recovery at both time-points was shown to be reliable with intra-class correlation coefficient values ≥ 0.714. Absolute heart rate 1-min post-exercise showed the strongest agreement between repeat tests (r = 0.867, P < 0.001). Lower coefficient of variation (≤ 10.2%) and narrower limits of agreement were found for actual heart rate values rather than Δ heart rate recovery, and for 1-min rather than 2-min post-exercise recovery time points. Log-transformed values generated better variability with acceptable coefficient of variation for all measures (2.2-10%). Overall, 1 min post-exercise heart rate recovery data had least variability over the 12-month period in apparently healthy middle-aged adults
- …