Enabling Extreme Low Power Mode Based on Bluetooth Quality Reports

Unchecked power consumption at low battery levels can hasten the shutdown of a device, causing inconvenience to the user. This disclosure describes an extreme low power mode for devices that have Bluetooth capabilities. At low battery levels, statistics of recent activities and current consumption of the Bluetooth controller, as obtained from Bluetooth quality reports (BQR), are used to adaptively select energy appropriate Bluetooth modes. In the extreme low power mode, the audio codec can be switched to one that minimizes current consumption; the frequency of Bluetooth/BLE advertising and scanning can be reduced; the frequency of BLE advertising reports can be limited; the radio-frequency transmission power can be reduced; etc. BQR, used traditionally for debugging and performance optimization, is repurposed to enhance user experience

Quick and convenient establishment of wireless communication

Communication between paired Bluetooth devices is not always immediate. This is because there are often several devices in the vicinity that are paired with a user’s device, and the user may need to go through a process of selecting one of the paired devices to route communications. This device selection procedure can be further complicated by the sometimes cryptic names assigned to the devices. Per the techniques of this disclosure, images of a Bluetooth accessory are captured at the time of pairing with a Bluetooth device. The user points a camera to the Bluetooth accessory to establish a communication path

Quantum state tomography via non-convex Riemannian gradient descent

The recovery of an unknown density matrix of large size requires huge computational resources. The recent Factored Gradient Descent (FGD) algorithm and its variants achieved state-of-the-art performance since they could mitigate the dimensionality barrier by utilizing some of the underlying structures of the density matrix. Despite their theoretical guarantee of a linear convergence rate, the convergence in practical scenarios is still slow because the contracting factor of the FGD algorithms depends on the condition number $\kappa$ of the ground truth state. Consequently, the total number of iterations can be as large as $O(\sqrt{\kappa}\ln(\frac{1}{\varepsilon}))$ to achieve the estimation error $\varepsilon$. In this work, we derive a quantum state tomography scheme that improves the dependence on $\kappa$ to the logarithmic scale; namely, our algorithm could achieve the approximation error $\varepsilon$ in $O(\ln(\frac{1}{\kappa\varepsilon}))$ steps. The improvement comes from the application of the non-convex Riemannian gradient descent (RGD). The contracting factor in our approach is thus a universal constant that is independent of the given state. Our theoretical results of extremely fast convergence and nearly optimal error bounds are corroborated by numerical results.Comment: Comments are welcome

Assessing a hierarchical sustainable solid waste management structure with qualitative information:policy and regulations drive social impacts and stakeholder participation

This study contributes to building a valid hierarchical sustainable solid waste management (SSWM) attribute set with qualitative information, which is a complicated and ambiguous problem with uncertainties. Few studies have provided qualitative information and have addressed the interrelationships and interdependencies among the hierarchical SSWM attributes. SSWM has recently become a difficult problem to solve due to urbanization, inequality, and economic growth. This study aims to propose an SSWM attribute set and identify a causal model through linguistic preferences by using a fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory approach to simultaneously handle the uncertainty and the interrelationships. The analytic network process is used to develop the hierarchical structure to weigh the aspects and criteria. Qualitative information is transformed into crisp and comparable values to examine the causal relationships between attributes and confirm the consistency between the theoretical structure and industry phenomena. The results indicate that policy and regulations, stakeholder participation, and social impacts play essential roles in these causal interrelationships. Political leadership in SSWM is required to drive stakeholder participation and achieve social impacts. Population growth and migration, institutional settings, waste recycling and energy recovery, households, and private contractors are the main aspects involved in improving SSWM in Vietnam

Construct the destination image formation model of Macao: the case of Taiwan tourists to Macao

The investigation based on the vigorous tourism industry and open up the gaming industry in the future to promote and construct the nation competition strength in Taiwan. Tourism destination image is an important factor which tourist chooses and plans their tourism schedule. But the concept of image includes inner psychology motivation, external environment factor or these two factors interaction to develop and integrate model. Therefore, this investigation aimed to construct the destination image formation model of Macao and take the Taiwan visitors to Macao for example. According to the findings, Taiwan tourists who actually visited Macao generally report positive tourist image in overall. Furthermore, the overall image of tourists visiting Macao can be enhanced if consumers’ return on investment and service superiority are conducted through experiential value perspective in terms of value/environment variables of Taiwan tourists’ perception or cognition perspective. Finally, a tourism image of Macao perceived by Taiwan tourists is built upon an experience in integrated industry surrounded by luxury atmosphere. To feel about the casino culture of mirage among Asian cities, and a national image of sense and sensibility after combining Eastern and Western culture are primary tourism motives of the study

Clonal spread of multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii in eastern Taiwan

Background and PurposeThis study was conducted to investigate the molecular epidemiology and antimicrobial susceptibility of multidrug-resistant (MDR) Acinetobacter baumannii to three types of antibiotics.MethodsOne hundred and thirty-four specimens of MDR A baumannii were collected from three branches (Taipei, Dalin, and Hualien branches) of Buddhist Tzu Chi Hospital, which are located in northern, southern, and eastern Taiwan, during 2007. Genotyping was performed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. Antibiotic susceptibilities to colistin, rifampicin, and tigecycline were determined. The synergistic effects of rifampin and colistin were also evaluated.ResultsAntibiotic susceptibility testing showed that 10.4%, 47.8% and 45.5% of the MDR A baumannii isolates are resistant to colistin, rifampicin, and tigecycline, respectively. A majority of the rifampicin-resistant isolates (62.7%) were found in the Haulien branch, whereas 62.2% of tigecycline-resistant isolates were found in the Taipei branch. The combination of colistin and rifampicin had a synergistic effect on all of the isolates. Genotyping by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis identified 17, 23, and 11 pulsotypes in the Taipei, Dalin, and Haulien branches, respectively. Furthermore, 74.5% of isolates in the Haulien branch were identified as one of three pulsotypes. Among 37 rifampicin-resistant and 22 tigecycline-resistant MDR A baumannii isolates found in the Haulien branch, 51.3% (19/37) and 50% (11/22) of the isolates belonged to the same clone, respectively.ConclusionThis study confirms the high prevalence of resistance to rifampicin and tigecycline in MDR A baumannii in the three hospitals that were studied, and the high proportion of identical strains that exist in eastern Taiwan

Sarcocrassocolides M–O, Bioactive Cembranoids from the Dongsha Atoll Soft Coral Sarcophyton crassocaule

Three new cembranoids, sarcocrassocolides M–O (1–3), have been isolated from the soft coral Sarcophyton crassocaule. The structures of the metabolites were determined by extensive spectroscopic analysis. Compounds 1–3 were shown to exhibit moderate cytotoxicity toward a limited panel of cancer cell lines and display significant in vitro anti-inflammatory activity in LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 macrophage cells by inhibiting the expression of the iNOS protein

Lobocrassins A–E: New Cembrane-Type Diterpenoids from the Soft Coral Lobophytum crassum

Five new cembrane-type diterpenoids, lobocrassins A–E (1–5), were isolated from the soft coral Lobophytum crassum. The structures of cembranes 1–5 were established by spectroscopic and chemical methods and by comparison of the spectral data with those of known cembrane analogues. Lobocrassin A (1) is the first cembranoid possessing an α-chloromethyl-α-hydroxy-γ-lactone functionality and is the first chlorinated cembranoid from soft corals belonging to the genus Lobophytum. Lobocrassins B (2) and C (3) were found to be the stereoisomers of the known cembranes, 14-deoxycrassin (6) and pseudoplexaurol (7), respectively. Lobocrassin B (2) exhibited modest cytotoxicity toward K562, CCRF-CEM, Molt4, and HepG2 tumor cells and displayed significant inhibitory effects on the generation of superoxide anion and the release of elastase by human neutrophils

Natural Product Chemistry of Gorgonian Corals of Genus Junceella—Part II

The structures, names, bioactivities, and references of 81 new secondary metabolites obtained from gorgonian corals belonging to the genus Junceella are described in this review. All compounds mentioned in this review were obtained from sea whip gorgonian corals Junceella fragilis and Junceella juncea, collected from the tropical and subtropical Indo-Pacific Ocean