Joint Source-Channel Coding for Broadcast Channel with Cooperating Receivers

It is known that, as opposed to point-to-point channel, separate source and channel coding is not optimal in general for sending correlated sources over multiuser channels. In some works joint source-channel coding has been investigated for some certain multiuser channels; i.g., multiple access channel (MAC) and broadcast channel (BC). In this paper, we obtain a sufficient condition for transmitting arbitrarily correlated sources over a discrete memoryless BC with cooperating receivers, where the receivers are allowed to exchange messages via a pair of noisy cooperative links. It is seen that our results is a general form of previous ones and includes them as its special cases.Comment: to appear in Proceedings of IEEE Information Theory Workshop - Fall (ITW'2015

KARTIRANJE LISKUNASTE ŽELJEZNE RUDE I IZRADA PRIMJENJIVIH INDUSTRIJSKIH STANDARDA

The purpose of this study is to determine the appropriate method for micaceous iron ore processing and production per-industrial application standards. After identifying the characteristics of the samples (with XRF, XRD, mineralogical analyzes), gravity and magnetic separation tests were carried out. Quartz and hematite are the main minerals of micaceous hematite ores. Silica grade as the major impurity varies from 10% to 68%. The total iron content of the samples also varies from 15% to 62%. A jig and shaking table did not provide a good result in micaceous hematite beneficiation to achieve the standard of its specific applications. Gravity concentration by the spiral in the size range of -200 and -300 μm has led to the production of iron concentrates with a grade of 62.34% and 64.84%, respectively. The recovery values for the two experiments are 13.50% and 12.60%, respectively. Therefore, the spiral did not provide a good result in the micaceous iron ore beneficiation. High-intensity magnetic separation (1.2 T) has resulted in a product with a grade and recovery of 65.98% and 88.35%, respectively. The experimental design utilizing the Taguchi method considering the increasing of grade or recovery priority indicated that for micaceous iron beneficiation with a priority of recovery increasing, the feeder frequency, roll speed, and adjustable gate angle should be at 6.5 Hz, 95 rpm, and 20°, respectively. However, for micaceous iron beneficiation with a priority of grade increasing, the feeder frequency, roll speed, and adjustable gate angle should be at 2.5 Hz, 135 rpm, and 60°, respectively.Svrha je ovoga istraživanja odrediti prikladnu metodu za oplemenjivanje liskunaste željezne rude te izrada standarda primjenjivih u industriji. Nakon utvrđivanja karakteristika uzoraka (s XRF, XRD, mineraloškim analizama) provedena su ispitivanja gravitacijskom i magnetskom separacijom. Kvarc i hematit glavni su minerali liskunastih hematitnih ruda. Udio silicija kao glavne nečistoće varira od 10 % do 68 %. Ukupni sadržaj željeza u uzorcima također varira od 15 % do 62 %. Plakalica i koncentracijski stol nisu dali dobre rezultate u obogaćivanju liskunastoga hematita za postizanje standar-da njegove specifične primjene. No, gravitacijska koncentracija spiralom veličine zrna -200 i -300 μm rezultirala je kvali-tetom koncentrata željeza od 62,34 odnosno 64,84 %. Vrijednosti iskorištenja bile su 13,50 odnosno 12,60 %. Stoga ni spirala nije dala dobar rezultat u obogaćivanju liskunaste željezne rude. Visokointenzivna magnetska separacija (1,2 T) rezultirala je kvalitetom koncentrata od 65,98 % i iskorištenjem od 88,35 %. Eksperimentalni dizajn prema Taguchiju s obzirom na povećanje kvalitete ili iskorištenja pokazao je da za povećanje iskorištenja frekvencija dodavača, brzina bub-nja i kut separacijskoga noža trebaju biti na 6,5 Hz, 95 o/min i 20°. Međutim, za obogaćivanje liskunaste željezne rude s prioritetom povećanja kvalitete koncentrata frekvencija dodavača, brzina bubnja i kut separacijskoga noža trebaju biti 2,5 Hz, 135 o/min, odnosno 60°

Mapping local patterns of childhood overweight and wasting in low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2017

A double burden of malnutrition occurs when individuals, household members or communities experience both undernutrition and overweight. Here, we show geospatial estimates of overweight and wasting prevalence among children under 5 years of age in 105 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) from 2000 to 2017 and aggregate these to policy-relevant administrative units. Wasting decreased overall across LMICs between 2000 and 2017, from 8.4% (62.3 (55.1–70.8) million) to 6.4% (58.3 (47.6–70.7) million), but is predicted to remain above the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025. Prevalence of overweight increased from 5.2% (30 (22.8–38.5) million) in 2000 to 6.0% (55.5 (44.8–67.9) million) children aged under 5 years in 2017. Areas most affected by double burden of malnutrition were located in Indonesia, Thailand, southeastern China, Botswana, Cameroon and central Nigeria. Our estimates provide a new perspective to researchers, policy makers and public health agencies in their efforts to address this global childhood syndemic

Robust Online Learning Enabled by Information Theory

In this thesis, we incorporate information theory into statistical signal processing and machine learning in order to achieve&nbsp;robust learning&nbsp;in presence of outliers (or generally in environments with non-Gaussian structure). In other words, by incorporating information theory especially when structure of environment is non-Gaussian, the efficiency of information extraction from data and consequently precision of the learning are increased. Note that, although the well-known central limit theorem creates the expectations that we should see the Gaussian distribution everywhere in the real world, this is not necessarily true. Indeed central limit theorem is concluded under some assumptions that do not hold in many real scenarios. For instance, in many real scenarios heavy-tailed distributions arise which result in outliers. The problem of learning a system affected by these types of distributions is of great importance inasmuch as conventional learning approaches that are mostly based on Gaussian assumption are not effective anymore. In this thesis, we address this problem by means of information theory. Our work finds broad applications from communication channel estimation, adaptive equalization, adaptive echo noise cancellation, system identification, underwater and satellite communications, blind source separation to physics, biology, computer science, the social sciences, and beyond where real-world environments may change in time and are conducive to non-Gaussian probability density functions. In such environments higher order statistics of data is needed, therefore conventional methodologies are not efficient anymore. Specifically, the problem of online linear regression (or interchangeably linear adaptive filtering) in environments corrupted by non-Gaussian noise is addressed in this thesis. In such environments, the error between system outputs and labels (or desired responses) does not follow a Gaussian distribution and there might exist abnormally large error samples (or outliers). The main challenge we face here is how to keep our supervised learning problem least affected by these unwanted and misleading outliers. Information theory helps us with correntropy and entropy as two robust information-theoretic criteria. Error correntropy is a similarity measure between system output and label and consequently should be maximized while error entropy denotes the uncertainty about a system and should be minimized. Although each of these two criteria has an advantage over the other one, both of them show superior performance compared to conventional mean square error in aforementioned non-Gaussian environments. In this thesis, we discuss the shortcomings of these algorithms and compare them. Moreover, we improve the algorithms based on error correntropy and error entropy by excluding major outliers from the learning process after detecting them in each iteration. Note that major outliers may occur frequently due to the nature of non-Gaussian environments and the system parameters should not be updated based on them. We use a filter to detect major outliers whose width is updated in each learning iteration based on running quartiles of the error samples. More precisely, quartiles of a data set are robust quantities of data against outliers and we use them to define boundaries by which we determine if an error sample is an outlier or not. These quartiles are functions of time and should be updated once a new error sample is available. This means that we need to deal with a running quartile problem. We propose an efficient technique for running quantile estimation based on the non-uniform quantization of error samples. This method does not need to store and sort all error samples in each iteration. Using this method alongside algorithms based on correntropy and entropy, we reject major outliers and achieve improved convergence speed and/or steady-state misalignment in the learning curves of both algorithms.&nbsp

UČINAK MIKROVALNOGA OZRAČIVANJA NA FLOTABILNOST MJEŠAVINE RUDA SULFIDA I OKSIDA BAKRA

Pre-treatment of copper sulphide and oxide ores using microwave radiation causes a difference in their floatability through change in the surface properties of the minerals. The aim of this study is to investigate the behaviour of Sungun porphyry copper ore under the influence of microwave radiation. In this regard, the feed sample of Sungun copper flotation circuit has been subjected to microwave irradiation for 0-120 s and a radiation power of 0-600 W. The prepared samples were then subjected to flotation experiments. According to the results, the grade of sulphide and oxide Cu minerals, as well as the grade of Fe, increased by microwave irradiation in all experiments compared to the non-irradiated samples. At the same time, recovery rate has a reversed trend and decreased in all cases. Variations in the recovery rates of copper oxides and sulphides due to microwave irradiation are different. Increasing the power of irradiation resulted in a greater reduction in the recovery of copper oxides than of sulphides. On the other hand, increasing the power of microwave irradiation reduced the amount of iron recovery in the copper concentrate and with an increase in the duration of microwave irradiation, the reduction of iron recovery values is even more pronounced. Changes in the power and duration of microwave radiation have not had a significant effect on variations in oxide copper grade in flotation tailings. While the grade of sulphides in tailing is affected by the parameters of microwave irradiation and with an increase in power and duration of microwave irradiation, the grade of copper in tailing increases.Predobradba ruda bakrenoga sulfida i oksida uporabom mikrovalnoga ozračivanja uzrokuje razliku u njihovoj flotabilnosti zbog promjene površinskih svojstava minerala. Istraženo je ponašanje bakrene rude iz porfirita Sunguna nakon takva ozračivanja. Uzorak iz navedenoga rudnika bio je izložen mikrovalnomu procesu tijekom 0 – 120 sekundi, uz zračenje snage 0 – 600 W. Zatim su uzroci podvrgnuti flotaciji. Nakon toga je koncentracija minerala bakrenih sulfida i oksida, ali i željeza, bila povećana. Nasuprot tomu pridobivanje je opadalo u svim slučajevima. Promjene u iznosima pridobivanja oksida i sulfida bakra zbog ozračivanja bile su različite. Povećanje snage rezultiralo je većom redukcijom pridobivanja oksida nego sulfida, ali je reduciralo i iznos željeza u koncentratu bakra, i to usporedno s vremenom ozračivanja. Promjene snage i vremena mikrovalnoga ozračivanja nisu imale znatnoga utjecaja u koncentraciji oksida bakra u preostalome materijalu nakon flotacije. Međutim koncentracija sulfida bakra ovisila je o tome procesu i bila je korelativna s vremenom i snagom ozračivanja

Energy use and sensitivity analysis of energy with economical models for rice production in Iran semi-mechanized system

The aims of this study were to investigate influences of energy inputs and energy forms on output levels and evaluation of inputs sensitivity for rice production in Mazandaran province, Iran. The sensitivity of energy inputs was estimated using the marginal physical productivity (MPP) method and partial regression coefficients on rice yield. Data were collected from 72 rice farms in September 2016. The sample volume was determined by random sampling method. Total energy input was found to be 61.23 GJ ha−1 and total energy output was calculated as 139.11 GJ ha−1. The highest average energy consumption of inputs was for Irrigation canal (40.51 GJ ha−1) which was accounted for about 66% of the total energy input. Econometric model evaluation showed that the machinery energy was the most significant input affecting the output level. Sensitivity analysis results indicate that with an additional use of 1 MJ of each machinery and Toxin energy, would lead to an additional increase in yield by 0.903 and 0.511 kg, respectively. The MPP of human labor and seeds was negative. It can be because of applying the inputs more than required or improperly applying.Uso de energía y análisis de sensibilidad de la energía con modelos económicos para la producción de arroz en el sistema semi-mecanizado de IránResumenLos objetivos de este estudio fueron investigar las influencias de los insumos energéticos y las formas de energía en los niveles de producción y la evaluación para la producción de arroz en la provincia de Mazandaran, Irán. La sensibilidad de los insumos de energía se estimó utilizando el método de productividad física marginal y los coeficientes de regresión parcial en el rendimiento del arroz. Los datos se recolectaron de 72 granjas de arroz en septiembre de 2016. El volumen de la muestra se determinó mediante un método de muestreo aleatorio. Se encontró que la entrada de energía total era de 61.23 GJ ha − 1 y la salida de energía total se calculó como 139.11 GJ ha − 1. El consumo de energía promedio más alto de los insumos fue para el canal de riego (40.51 GJ ha − 1), que representó aproximadamente el 66% del aporte energético total. La evaluación del modelo econométrico mostró que la energía de la maquinaria fue la entrada más importante que afectó el nivel de salida. Los resultados del análisis de sensibilidad indican que con un uso adicional de 1 MJ de cada maquinaria, se produciría un aumento adicional en el rendimiento en 0.903 y 0.511 kg, respectivamente. La  productividad física marginal del trabajo humano y las semillas fue negativa, ésto puede ser debido a la aplicación constante de las entradas.

Examination of the Reasons for the Formation of Red Oil in Spent Caustic from Olefin Plant

Due to the complexity of olefinic plants, various environmental pollutants exist such as NOx, CO2, Tar Water, and most importantly Spent Caustic. In this paper, instead of investigating ways of treating this pollutant, we evaluated the production in relation to plant’s variable items. We primarily discussed the factors affecting the quality of the output spent caustic such as impurities in the feed of olefin plant, the amount of injected dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) in furnaces, variation in feed composition, differences among gas temperatures and the concentration of caustic solution at the bottom of the tower. The results of the laboratory proved that in the formation of Red Oil, 1,3butadiene and acetaldehyde followed free radical and aldol condensation mechanism respectively. By increasing the injection rate of DMDS, Mercaptide amount increases in the effluent. In addition, pyrolysis gasoline accumulation is directly related to caustic concentration in the tower. Increasing naphtenes in the liquid feed augments the amount of 1,3butadiene, as one of the sources of Red Oil formation. By increasing the oxygenated compound in the feed, the rate of acetaldehyde formation, as the main source of Red Oil formation, increases