Using organization knowledge to improve routing performance in wireless multi-agent networks

ABSTRACT Multi-agent systems benefit greatly from an organization design that guides agents in determining when to communicate, how often, with whom, with what priority, and so on. However, this same organization knowledge is not utilized by general-purpose wireless network routing algorithms normally used to support agent communication. We show that incorporating organization knowledge (otherwise available only to the application layer) in the network-layer routing algorithm increases bandwidth available at the application layer by as much as 35 percent. This increased bandwidth is especially important in communication-intensive application settings, such as agent-based sensor networks, where node failures and link dynamics make providing sufficient inter-agent communication especially challenging

Towards Development of a Simple Technique Based on Wavelength Specific Absorption for Quality Measurement of Flowing Water

Water quality assessment has undeniable value for humanity's well-being. Despite that, most of the existing techniques struggle to measure the quality of running water due to costly infrastructure or large evaluation time. Recently, quality measurement has been demonstrated using spectrum analysis. However, these modern systems need complicated signal processing algorithms and high processor capabilities for decision making, have elaborate optical assemblies and sizable power requirement making them bulky and expensive to operate. Thus, a refined technique with simplified implementation, low cost, and reliable long-time operation is essential to address this challenge. We present, for the first time to our knowledge, a holistic approach towards a simple and rapid method for determination of water quality parameters in flowing water. This is based on the selection of characteristic wavelengths for the parameters considered and usage of narrowband LEDs as the inspection light source. Thereby incorporating the benefits of optical sensing such as electromagnetic immunity, selectivity, sensitivity, etc. The specific wavelengths of 560nm, 860nm, and 635nm have been demonstrated to have a dominant effect due to pH, turbidity, and total dissolved solids (TDS) respectively, from regression analysis. Using only these wavelengths, an evaluation system capable of determining the light absorption after passing through water has been designed and developed. The obtained optical responses are subsequently related to water parameters, specifically pH, TDS, and turbidity. Experiments were performed to evaluate samples and then validate this technique against standard instruments for both flowing and sampled water setups. It is shown from the measurement results that pH, turbidity, and TDS have linear regression coefficients of 0.9773, 0.9617, 0.8271 and 0.9691, 0.9729, 0.76 for flowing and sampled water arrangements, respectively

Toward Intelligent Drawing Constraints

Diagrammatic problem solving in domains such as architecture and design often involves continual redrawing of existing figures. Drawing programs, such as Visio and CorelDraw, accommodate redrawing using secondary correction techniques. These techniques act when a visual element is moved or changed, making additional changes to the drawing that maintain key preexisting visual relationships. These techniques include low-level constraints, such as snap and glue, and domain-specific glyphs with built-in constraints. As useful as these secondary correction techniques are, they sometimes operate in unintuitive ways, interfering with the flow of problem-solving. Here, we describe our plans to increase the effectiveness of secondary correction by making such constraints congruent with the place vocabulary of the domain in question. We introduce the idea of place vocabulary constraints (PVCs) that translate a particular place vocabulary into a set of geometric constraints. We argue that PVCs may provide a better mechanism for secondary correction during redrawing because multiple geometric constraints can be handled by a single place vocabulary constraint, because place vocabulary constraints are more congruent with users ’ expectations, and because they provide a better mechanism for explaining such constraints to the user