Congestion Control for Network-Aware Telehaptic Communication

Telehaptic applications involve delay-sensitive multimedia communication between remote locations with distinct Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for different media components. These QoS constraints pose a variety of challenges, especially when the communication occurs over a shared network, with unknown and time-varying cross-traffic. In this work, we propose a transport layer congestion control protocol for telehaptic applications operating over shared networks, termed as dynamic packetization module (DPM). DPM is a lossless, network-aware protocol which tunes the telehaptic packetization rate based on the level of congestion in the network. To monitor the network congestion, we devise a novel network feedback module, which communicates the end-to-end delays encountered by the telehaptic packets to the respective transmitters with negligible overhead. Via extensive simulations, we show that DPM meets the QoS requirements of telehaptic applications over a wide range of network cross-traffic conditions. We also report qualitative results of a real-time telepottery experiment with several human subjects, which reveal that DPM preserves the quality of telehaptic activity even under heavily congested network scenarios. Finally, we compare the performance of DPM with several previously proposed telehaptic communication protocols and demonstrate that DPM outperforms these protocols.Comment: 25 pages, 19 figure

Benchmarking Spatial Relationships in Text-to-Image Generation

Spatial understanding is a fundamental aspect of computer vision and integral for human-level reasoning about images, making it an important component for grounded language understanding. While recent text-to-image synthesis (T2I) models have shown unprecedented improvements in photorealism, it is unclear whether they have reliable spatial understanding capabilities. We investigate the ability of T2I models to generate correct spatial relationships among objects and present VISOR, an evaluation metric that captures how accurately the spatial relationship described in text is generated in the image. To benchmark existing models, we introduce a dataset, $\mathrm{SR}_{2D}$, that contains sentences describing two or more objects and the spatial relationships between them. We construct an automated evaluation pipeline to recognize objects and their spatial relationships, and employ it in a large-scale evaluation of T2I models. Our experiments reveal a surprising finding that, although state-of-the-art T2I models exhibit high image quality, they are severely limited in their ability to generate multiple objects or the specified spatial relations between them. Our analyses demonstrate several biases and artifacts of T2I models such as the difficulty with generating multiple objects, a bias towards generating the first object mentioned, spatially inconsistent outputs for equivalent relationships, and a correlation between object co-occurrence and spatial understanding capabilities. We conduct a human study that shows the alignment between VISOR and human judgement about spatial understanding. We offer the $\mathrm{SR}_{2D}$ dataset and the VISOR metric to the community in support of T2I reasoning research.Comment: preprint; Code and Data at https://github.com/microsoft/VISOR and https://huggingface.co/datasets/tgokhale/sr2d_viso

Marker assisted backcross selection for genetic removal of lipoxygenase-2 from popular soybean (Glycine max) variety JS 97-52: Parental polymorphism survey and hybridity validation

Lipoxygenase-2 is the prime contributor to the off- flavour associated with the soy products. With the aim to introgress null allele of lipoxygenase-2 into popular soybean variety JS 97-52 through marker assisted backcross selection (MABC), parental polymorphism was surveyed for JS 97- 52 (recipient parent) and PI 596540 (the donor of null allele of lipoxygenase-2). A total of 264 SSR markers dispersed across 20 linkage groups were screened. Of these, 130 SSR markers showed polymorphism. SSR markers Satt522 and Satt656 reported to be in the vicinity of Lox2 locus were found to be polymorphic for JS 97-52 and PI 596540 and were used for confirming true F1 and BC1F1 plants. The polymorphic SSR markers identified in the study would be utilized for retrieving the genetic background of JS 97-52 in the backcross generations

Endomembrane targeting of human OAS1 p46 augments antiviral activity

Many host RNA sensors are positioned in the cytosol to detect viral RNA during infection. However, most positive-strand RNA viruses replicate within a modified organelle co-opted from intracellular membranes of the endomembrane system, which shields viral products from cellular innate immune sensors. Targeting innate RNA sensors to the endomembrane system may enhance their ability to sense RNA generated by viruses that use these compartments for replication. Here, we reveal that an isoform of oligoadenylate synthetase 1, OAS1 p46, is prenylated and targeted to the endomembrane system. Membrane localization of OAS1 p46 confers enhanced access to viral replication sites and results in increased antiviral activity against a subset of RNA viruses including flaviviruses, picornaviruses, and SARS-CoV-2. Finally, our human genetic analysis shows that the OAS1 splice-site SNP responsible for production of the OAS1 p46 isoform correlates with protection from severe COVID-19. This study highlights the importance of endomembrane targeting for the antiviral specificity of OAS1 and suggests that early control of SARS-CoV-2 replication through OAS1 p46 is an important determinant of COVID-19 severity

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Not AvailableLipoxygenase-2 present in soybean seeds is the prime contributor to off-flavour generated during the processing of soy products. Genetic elimination of this undesirable component is important as the heat inactivation not only incurs extra cost but also affects the protein solubility. The present study was aimed at eliminating lipoxygenase-2 from cultivar ‘JS97-52’ through marker assisted introgression of null allele of Lox2 from PI596540 (lox2lox2). Foreground selection in BC1F1, BC2F1 and BC3F1 of the cross ‘JS97-52’ × PI596540 was carried out using lox2 specific marker, while lox2 specific marker in combination with SSR marker Satt656 tightly linked with Lox2 locus was employed for identification of homozygous recessive plants (lox2lox2) in BC2F2 and BC3F2. Background selection performed using 150 polymorphic markers resulted in development of 12 Lox2-free soybean lines (BC3F2:3seeds) exhibiting recurrent parent genome content in the range of 97.66-98.66%. Qualitative and quantitative assays confirmed the absence of Lox2 in introgressed lines (ILs). The ILs were at par in days-to-flowering, days-to-maturity,100-seeds weight, yield and protein content with the recurrent parent but showed significant improvement in seed longevity over the latter.Not Availabl

ETVO : effectively measuring tactile internet with experimental validation

The next frontier in communications is teleoperation – manipulation and control of remote environments with haptic feedback. Compared to conventional networked applications, teleoperation poses widely different requirements, ultra-low latency (ULL) is primary. Realizing ULL communication demands significant redesign of conventional networking techniques, and the network infrastructure envisioned for achieving this is termed as Tactile Internet (TI). The design of meaningful performance metrics is crucial for seamless TI communication. However, existing performance metrics fall severely short of comprehensively characterizing TI performance due to their inability to capture how well sensed signals are reproduced. We take Dynamic Time Warping(DTW) as the basis of our work and identify necessary changes for characterizing TI performance. Through substantial refinements to DTW, we design Effective Time- and Value-Offset (ETVO) – a new method for measuring the fine-grained performance of TI systems. Through an in-depth objective analysis, we demonstrate the improvements of ETVO over DTW. Through subjective experiments, we demonstrate that existing QoS and QoE methods fall short of estimating the TI session performance accurately. Using subjective experiments, we demonstrate the behavior of the proposed metrics, their ability to match theoretically derived performance, and finally, their ability to reflect user satisfaction in a practical setting

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TIXT : an extensible testbed for tactile internet communication

The field of teleoperation coupled with force-feedback will undergo a paradigm shift in the forthcoming years with the advent of Tactile Internet (TI). Through TI, humankind will enjoy the ability to control and manipulate remote environments in real time by creating a perception of physical collocation for the human operator. While research and development in TI have seen a surge in the past few years, the overall progress is constrained by two major barriers. First, lack of a TI testbed has made it difficult to establish a performance benchmark. Second, asynchronous efforts led by sub-groups belonging to different research disciplines have severely impeded the overall progress of TI. In this work, we take the first step toward addressing these open issues by developing a common testbed for TI applications -- Tactile Internet eXtensible Testbed (TIXT). We begin by presenting a classification of the diverse range of TI applications. This helps in making TIXT generic, modular, and extensible. We then present the design principles of TIXT and shed light on its implementation guidelines. Finally, we present the proof of concept of TIXT through demonstration of two realistic use cases of TI