IEEE Access special section editorial: Mission critical public-safety communications: architectures, enabling technologies, and future applications

Disaster management organizations such as fire brigades, rescue teams, and emergency medical service providers have a high priority demand to communicate with each other and with the victims by using mission-critical voice and data communications [item 1) in the Appendix]. In recent years, public safety agencies and organizations have started planning to evolve their existing land mobile radio system (LMRS) with long-term evolution (LTE)-based public safety solutions which provides broadband, ubiquitous, and mission-critical voice and data services. LTE provides high bandwidth and low latency services to the customers using internet protocol-based LTE network. Since mission critical communication services have different demands and priorities for dynamically varying situations for disaster-hit areas, the architecture and the communication technologies of the existing LTE networks need to be upgraded with a system that has the capability to respond efficiently and in a timely manner during critical situations

Tough Mining: The challenges of searching the scientific literature

With more than 400,000 new research articles listed each year in PubMed alone, more sophisticated tools are being developed to extract relevant informatio

Flexible Wi-Fi communication among mobile robots in Indoor industrial environments

In order to speed up industrial processes and to improve logistics, mobile robots are getting important in industry. In this paper, we propose a flexible and configurable architecture for the mobile node that is able to operate in different network topology scenarios. The proposed solution is able to operate in presence of network infrastructure, in ad hoc mode only, or to use both possibilities. In case of mixed architecture, mesh capabilities will enable coverage problem detection and overcoming. The solution is based on real requirements from an automated guided vehicle producer. First, we evaluate the overhead introduced by our solution. Since the mobile robot communication relies in broadcast traffic, the broadcast scalability in mesh network is evaluated too. Finally, through experiments on a wireless testbed for a variety of scenarios, we analyze the impact of roaming, mobility and traffic separation, and demonstrate the advantage of our approach in handling coverage problems

Simons Foundation 2020 Annual Report

The Simons Foundation is pleased to present this copy of our 2020 annual report. Staying connected through Zoom, emails and conference calls, our grantees and scientists made groundbreaking advancements over the last year

The role of artificial intelligence driven 5G networks in COVID-19 outbreak: opportunities, challenges, and future outlook

There is no doubt that the world is currently experiencing a global pandemic that is reshaping our daily lives as well as the way business activities are being conducted. With the emphasis on social distancing as an effective means of curbing the rapid spread of the infection, many individuals, institutions, and industries have had to rely on telecommunications as a means of ensuring service continuity in order to prevent complete shutdown of their operations. This has put enormous pressure on both fixed and mobile networks. Though fifth generation mobile networks (5G) is at its infancy in terms of deployment, it possesses a broad category of services including enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), and massive machine-type communications (mMTC), that can help in tackling pandemic-related challenges. Therefore, in this paper, we identify the challenges facing existing networks due to the surge in traffic demand as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and emphasize the role of 5G empowered by artificial intelligence in tackling these problems. In addition, we also provide a brief insight on the use of artificial intelligence driven 5G networks in predicting future pandemic outbreaks, and the development a pandemic-resilient society in case of future outbreaks

GROWING A WATER AND FOOD SECURE FUTURE: ANNUAL REPORT FY2019 (JULY 1, 2018 TO JUNE 30, 2019)

Ensuring water and food security for our growing world is an audacious goal – exactly what Bob Daugherty sought to achieve by creating the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute (DWFI) at the University of Nebraska nearly 10 years ago. He, along with leaders and supporters within the University of Nebraska, the state and well beyond, understood that a collective and committed effort on wise water management was essential to producing enough food to feed the world while sustaining our valuable and limited water resources. For decades, many dedicated people around the world have striven to overcome the challenges of ensuring water and food security. There isn’t a “silver bullet” that will quickly address the complex, interconnected and evolving issues, including climate change, rising demand for more water-intensive foods, soil and water degradation, conflict over and competition for water resources, and, in many developing countries, the low levels of investment in supporting facilities and services. In collaboration with our dedicated partners, DWFI is making valuable contributions to meeting these challenges. As you’ll read in this year’s annual report, the institute is conducting innovative research, informing policy, convening stakeholders, sharing knowledge, cultivating new leaders and communicating our work to millions of stakeholders across the U.S. and around the world. Most importantly, our work is advancing our mission to ensure food and water security for nearly 10 billion people by 2050. The progress towards these outcomes was fittingly demonstrated at the 2019 Water for Food Global Conference, which focused on innovation in water and food security. More than 400 partners – including farmers, scientists, companies, philanthropists, investors, government agencies and nonprofit organizations – convened to explore practical actions to help stakeholders build more resilient, water-smart and productive agricultural and food systems. New partnerships and ideas generated during the conference sessions and networking are now under development. Here in Nebraska and neighboring states, it has been a year of far too much water, dominated by historic floods and a wetter-than-usual planting season that left many acres fallow. The impacts on people and communities, infrastructure, and crops and livestock have been enormous. Much has been done to restore the affected communities, though full recovery will take much longer. Stakeholders across the state are reflecting on lessons learned and exploring ways to strengthen the resilience of communities, including bolstering water and food systems. The results from the recently completed Nebraska Water Productivity report reflect remarkable improvements in yield per drop of water used (water productivity or WP) for crops, livestock and biofuels over the past three decades. This underscores the importance of long-term investments in crop and livestock breeding, enhanced management systems and new technologies. The challenge is how to sustainably achieve similar water productivity advancements in other agricultural landscapes. With our friends at the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources (IANR) and a number of Faculty Fellows and partners, we have catalyzed our efforts to better understand and address water quality challenges here in Nebraska and further afield. A notable example is the Bazile Groundwater Management Area (BGMA) in Northeast Nebraska, where we are working with four Natural Resources Districts (NRDs) to mitigate and manage nitrate contamination. DWFI is part of a strong alliance of international partners working to expand development of local solutions for irrigated agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and other emerging regions of the world. These collaborations amplify our individual strengths and create powerful new approaches to achieving water and food security. Directly contributing to this ambitious initiative, the institute and IANR are assessing existing irrigated agriculture business models in Rwanda. The results from this research are expected to inform new investments in sustainably scaling intensive agriculture in other sub-Saharan countries. While it will still take time to fully achieve our vision of a world without hunger or water scarcity, we are witnessing accelerated progress. As we close in on the institute’s 10th anniversary in 2020, we are pleased to share the impacts we’ve made. We greatly appreciate the support of our Board of Directors, staff, University of Nebraska leadership, Faculty Fellows, Global Fellows, International Advisory Panel, donors and friends who help make these important breakthroughs possible

Genomic Methods for Bacterial Infection Identification

Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) have high mortality rates around the world and are a challenge to medical science due to rapid mutation rates in their pathogens. A new methodology is proposed to identify bacterial species causing HAIs based on sets of universal biomarkers for next-generation microarray designs (i.e., nxh chips), rather than a priori selections of biomarkers. This method allows arbitrary organisms to be classified based on readouts of their DNA sequences, including whole genomes. The underlying models are based on the biochemistry of DNA, unlike traditional edit-distance based alignments. Furthermore, the methodology is fairly robust to genetic mutations, which are likely to reduce accuracy. Standard machine learning methods (neural networks, self-organizing maps, and random forests) produce results to identify HAIs on nxh chips that are very competitive, if not superior, to current standards in the field. The potential feasibility of translating these techniques to a clinical test is also discussed