Secure & trusted communication in emergency situations

In this paper we propose SETS, a protocol with main aim to provide secure and private communication during emergency situations. SETS achieves security of the exchanged information, attack resilience and user’s privacy. In addition, SETS can be easily adapted for mobile devices, since field experimental results show the effectiveness of the protocol on actual smart-phone platforms

Individual and Domain Adaptation in Sentence Planning for Dialogue

One of the biggest challenges in the development and deployment of spoken dialogue systems is the design of the spoken language generation module. This challenge arises from the need for the generator to adapt to many features of the dialogue domain, user population, and dialogue context. A promising approach is trainable generation, which uses general-purpose linguistic knowledge that is automatically adapted to the features of interest, such as the application domain, individual user, or user group. In this paper we present and evaluate a trainable sentence planner for providing restaurant information in the MATCH dialogue system. We show that trainable sentence planning can produce complex information presentations whose quality is comparable to the output of a template-based generator tuned to this domain. We also show that our method easily supports adapting the sentence planner to individuals, and that the individualized sentence planners generally perform better than models trained and tested on a population of individuals. Previous work has documented and utilized individual preferences for content selection, but to our knowledge, these results provide the first demonstration of individual preferences for sentence planning operations, affecting the content order, discourse structure and sentence structure of system responses. Finally, we evaluate the contribution of different feature sets, and show that, in our application, n-gram features often do as well as features based on higher-level linguistic representations

CogCell: Cognitive Interplay between 60GHz Picocells and 2.4/5GHz Hotspots in the 5G Era

Rapid proliferation of wireless communication devices and the emergence of a variety of new applications have triggered investigations into next-generation mobile broadband systems, i.e., 5G. Legacy 2G--4G systems covering large areas were envisioned to serve both indoor and outdoor environments. However, in the 5G-era, 80\% of overall traffic is expected to be generated in indoors. Hence, the current approach of macro-cell mobile network, where there is no differentiation between indoors and outdoors, needs to be reconsidered. We envision 60\,GHz mmWave picocell architecture to support high-speed indoor and hotspot communications. We envisage the 5G indoor network as a combination of-, and interplay between, 2.4/5\,GHz having robust coverage and 60\,GHz links offering high datarate. This requires an intelligent coordination and cooperation. We propose 60\,GHz picocellular network architecture, called CogCell, leveraging the ubiquitous WiFi. We propose to use 60\,GHz for the data plane and 2.4/5GHz for the control plane. The hybrid network architecture considers an opportunistic fall-back to 2.4/5\,GHz in case of poor connectivity in the 60\,GHz domain. Further, to avoid the frequent re-beamforming in 60\,GHz directional links due to mobility, we propose a cognitive module -- a sensor-assisted intelligent beam switching procedure -- which reduces the communication overhead. We believe that the CogCell concept will help future indoor communications and possibly outdoor hotspots, where mobile stations and access points collaborate with each other to improve the user experience.Comment: 14 PAGES in IEEE Communications Magazine, Special issue on Emerging Applications, Services and Engineering for Cognitive Cellular Systems (EASE4CCS), July 201

Navigate Symbol Assisted Channel Estimation Algorithms under Various Channel Distribution

In order to reduce the effect of elements of noise, navigate symbol assisted (NSA) channel estimation (CE) algorithms based on the transform domain such as discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and discrete cosine transform (DCT)seemenchanting owing to their capacity. Here, an improved algorithm for a better channel estimation has been proposed based on expurgated discrete cosine transform (E-DCT) with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), Rayleigh distribution (RD) and Rician distribution (RcD) to obviate the leakage of energy using the property of symmetric and also compared with the conventional channel estimation algorithms such as Least Square (LS), DFT and mirror weighted DCT even that of E-DCT with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) distribution. Simulation results demonstrate that the E-DCT-RD can reduce the energy leakage more efficiently, and performed far better than the existing CE algorithms

Post-coital agents and menses inducing drugs

The importance of developing of drugs which could be taken post-coitally or used once-a-month in the case of a delay in the onset of the menses is well recognized. The availability of such technology would limit exposure to fertility regulating agents to such occasions where there is coital exposure or possibility of pregnancy. Methods of post-coital contraception used so far include IUD's inserted post-coitally, estrogens, and combinations of estrogens and gestagens. These are reserved primarily for emergency situations to protect women from unwanted pregnancy resulting from rape or unprotected coitus. Levonorgestrel has shown satisfactory results in terms of contraceptive efficacy and is being further evaluated clinically. A number of problems inherent in the development of post-coital contraception are discussed. Menstrual regulation could be achieved by a number of approaches: (a) block progesterone receptors and interfere with the preparation of the endometrium for implantation; (b) luteolysis leading to decreased progesterone levels and interruption of implantation; and (c) termination of early pregnancy by prostaglandins. A number of progesterone antagonists have been evaluated. One of the compounds, RU38486 is being evaluated clinically for termination of very early pregnancy. Deglycosylated derivatives of human chorionic gonadotropin have been shown to antagonize the action of human chorionic gonadotropin and interfere with established pregnancy in rats. Appropriate methods of delivery, immunogenicity and alternate methods for production of human chorionic gonadotropin need to be considered before evaluation of the derivatives for clinical use. In vitro and invivo models need to be developed for evaluation of the teratogenicity and embryotoxicity of post-coital and menses inducing agents. There are a number of gaps in the knowledge of the processes regulating implantation which should be investigated in rodents and in different non-human primate species

Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope observations of an M2.8 flare: insights into the initiation of a flare-coronal mass ejection event

We present the first observations of a solar flare with the GMRT. An M2.8 flare observed at 1060 MHz with the GMRT on Nov 17 2001 was associated with a prominence eruption observed at 17 GHz by the Nobeyama radioheliograph and the initiation of a fast partial halo CME observed with the LASCO C2 coronograph. Towards the start of the eruption, we find evidence for reconnection above the prominence. Subsequently, we find evidence for rapid growth of a vertical current sheet below the erupting arcade, which is accompanied by the flare and prominence eruption.Comment: Accepted for publication in Solar Physic