Location-aware mechanism for efficient video delivery over wireless mesh networks

Due to their flexibility, ease of use, low-cost and fast deployment, wireless Mesh Networks have been widely accepted as an alternative to wired network for last-mile connectivity. When used in conjunction with Peer-to-Peer data transfer solutions, many innovative applications and services such as distributed storage, resource sharing, live TV broadcasting or Video on Demand can be supported without any centralized administration. However, in order to achieve a good quality of service in such variable, error-prone and resource-constrained wireless multi-hop environments, it is important that the associated Peer-to-Peer overlay is not only aware of the availability, but also of the location and available path link quality of its peers and services. This thesis proposes a wireless location-aware Chord-based overlay mechanism for Wireless Mesh Networks (WILCO) based on a novel geographical multi-level ID mapping and an improved finger table. The proposed scheme exploits the location information of mesh routers to decrease the number of hops the overlay messages traverse in the physical topology. Analytical and simulation results demonstrate that in comparison to the original Chord, WILCO has significant benefits: it reduces the number of lookup messages, has symmetric lookup on keys in both the forward and backward direction of the Chord ring and achieves a stretch factor of O(1). On top of this location-aware overlay, a WILCO-based novel video segment seeking algorithm is proposed to make use of the multi-level WILCO ID location-awareness to locate and retrieve requested video segments from the nearest peer in order to improve video quality. An enhanced version of WILCO segment seeking algorithm (WILCO+) is proposed to mitigate the sometimes suboptimal selection of the WILCO video segment seeking algorithm by extracting coordinates from WILCO ID to enable location-awareness. Analytical and simulation results illustrate that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing state-of-the-art solutions in terms of PSNR and packet loss with different background traffic loads. While hop count is frequently strongly correlated to Quality of Service, the link quality of the underlying network will also have a strong influence on content retrieval quality. As a result, a Cross-layer Wireless Link Quality-aware Overlay peer selection mechanism (WLO) is proposed. The proposed cross-layer mechanism uses a Multiplication Selector Metric (MSM) to select the best overlay peer. The proposed MSM overcomes the two issues facing the traditional summation-based metric, namely, the difficulty of bottleneck link identification and the influence of hop count on behavior. Simulation results show that WLO outperforms the existing state-of-the-art solutions in terms of video quality at different background loads and levels of topology incompleteness. Real life emulation-based tests and subjective video quality assessments are also performed to show that the simulation results are closely matched by the real-life emulation-based results and to illustrate the significant impact of overlay peer selection on the user perceived video quality

Improved mitochondrial amino acid substitution models for metazoan evolutionary studies

Abstract Background Amino acid substitution models play an essential role in inferring phylogenies from mitochondrial protein data. However, only few empirical models have been estimated from restricted mitochondrial protein data of a hundred species. The existing models are unlikely to represent appropriately the amino acid substitutions from hundred thousands metazoan mitochondrial protein sequences. Results We selected 125,935 mitochondrial protein sequences from 34,448 species in the metazoan kingdom to estimate new amino acid substitution models targeting metazoa, vertebrates and invertebrate groups. The new models help to find significantly better likelihood phylogenies in comparison with the existing models. We noted remarkable distances from phylogenies with the existing models to the maximum likelihood phylogenies that indicate a considerable number of incorrect bipartitions in phylogenies with the existing models. Finally, we used the new models and mitochondrial protein data to certify that Testudines, Aves, and Crocodylia form one separated clade within amniotes. Conclusions We introduced new mitochondrial amino acid substitution models for metazoan mitochondrial proteins. The new models outperform the existing models in inferring phylogenies from metazoan mitochondrial protein data. We strongly recommend researchers to use the new models in analysing metazoan mitochondrial protein data

FLU, an amino acid substitution model for influenza proteins

Abstract Background The amino acid substitution model is the core component of many protein analysis systems such as sequence similarity search, sequence alignment, and phylogenetic inference. Although several general amino acid substitution models have been estimated from large and diverse protein databases, they remain inappropriate for analyzing specific species, e.g., viruses. Emerging epidemics of influenza viruses raise the need for comprehensive studies of these dangerous viruses. We propose an influenza-specific amino acid substitution model to enhance the understanding of the evolution of influenza viruses. Results A maximum likelihood approach was applied to estimate an amino acid substitution model (FLU) from ~113, 000 influenza protein sequences, consisting of ~20 million residues. FLU outperforms 14 widely used models in constructing maximum likelihood phylogenetic trees for the majority of influenza protein alignments. On average, FLU gains ~42 log likelihood points with an alignment of 300 sites. Moreover, topologies of trees constructed using FLU and other models are frequently different. FLU does indeed have an impact on likelihood improvement as well as tree topologies. It was implemented in PhyML and can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.sanger.ac.uk/pub/1000genomes/lsq/FLU or included in PhyML 3.0 server at http://www.atgc-montpellier.fr/phyml/. Conclusions FLU should be useful for any influenza protein analysis system which requires an accurate description of amino acid substitutions.</p

CURRENT SITUATION OF STUDENTS’ PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE BEFORE PRACTICAL COURSES’ FINAL EXAMS

The article aimed to determine the factors influencing students’ psychological state before the final exam of practical courses. The article used conventional scientific research methods in sports and physical training combined with psychological tests studied on fifty students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Physical Education and Sports (UPES). After reviewing related studies and consulting with experts, four tests were employed to assess the psychological state before the test of the research subjects. The results showed that students with a good psychological state to take the exam had good test results. Conversely, students with a feverish or lethargic state will have poor test results. The research results serve as the basis for proposing measures to adjust the psychological state before the exam, contributing to improving the learning results of students.  Article visualizations

Extractive spectrophotometric methods for determination of ciprofloxacin in pharmaceutical formulations using sulfonephthalein acid dyes

Three simple, rapid, sensitive and accurate extractive-spectrophotometric method for the determination of ciprofloxacin in pharmaceutical preparation has been developed. These methods are based on the formation of yellow ion-pair complexes between the examined drug and three sulfonephthalein  acid dyes, namely; bromophenol blue (BPB), bromocresol green (BCG),  and bromothymol blue (BTB) in  acidic medium. The formed complexes were extracted with chloroform and measured at 420, the colored chromogen was stable for twenty four hours. The effect of optimum conditions via pH, dye concentration, time and solvent are studied. Beer’s law is obeyed in the concentration ranges 0.50-25.0 μg/mL with  molar absorptivity of 1.46´104, 1.83´104 and 2.07´104 L. mol-1. cm-1 and limit of detection (LOD) of 0.105, 0.101, 0.084 for BPB, BCG and BTB methods, respectively. No interference was observed from common excipients present in pharmaceutical formulations. The proposed method has been applied successfully to determine ciprofloxacin in pharmaceutical preparation (tablets, infusion and eye drops). Keywords. Ciprofloxacin, extraction-spectrophotometry, ion pair complex; sulfonephthalein  dyes

Adaptive fuzzy-neural network effectively disturbance compensate in sliding mode control for dual arm robot

In this study, an Adaptive Backstepping Sliding Mode Controller (ABSMC) is introduced based on the Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural network and a fuzzy logic modifier. The proposed method is used to control a Dual-Arm Robot (DAR) – a nonlinear structure with unstable parameters and external disturbances. The control aims to track the motion trajectory of both arms in the flat surface coordinate within a short time, maintaining stability, and ensuring that the tracking error converges in finite time, especially when influenced by unforeseen external disturbances. The nonlinear Backstepping Sliding Mode Control (BSMC) is effective in trajectory tracking control; however, undesired phenomena may occur if there are uncertain disturbances affecting the system or model parameters change. It is proposed to use a neural network to estimate a nonlinear function to handle unknown uncertainties of the system. The neural network parameters can be adaptively adjusted to optimal values through adaptation rules derived from Lyapunov's theorem. Additionally, fuzzy logic theory is also employed to adjust the controller parameters to accommodate changes or unexpected impacts. The performance of the Fuzzy Neural Network Backstepping Sliding Mode Control (FNN-BSMC) is evaluated through simulation results using Matlab/Simulink software. Two simulation cases are conducted: the first case assumes stable model parameters without uncertain disturbances affecting the joints, while the second case considers a model with changing parameters and disturbances. Simulation results demonstrate the effective adaptability of the proposed method when the system model is affected by various types of uncertainties from the environmen

Toward global fits using Higgs STXS data with Lilith

In this talk, we present the program Lilith, a python package for constraining new physics from Higgs measurements. We discuss the usage of signal strength results in the latest published version of Lilith, which allows for constraining deviations from SM Higgs couplings through coupling modifiers. Moreover, we discuss the on-going development to include Higgs STXS data and SMEFT parametrizations in Lilith with the aim of performing global fits of the ATLAS and CMS data. As we point out, detailed information on Standard Model uncertainties and their correlations is important to enable the proper reuse of the experimental results.Comment: content unchanged, citation and references made more explici

Isolation and identification of phenolic compounds from the leaf extract of Cassia alata L.

Cassia alata is one of the most important species of the genus Cassia which is rich in anthraquinones and polyphenols. This plant is used as a medicinal material of which the leaves are known to have laxative and antibiotic properties. In our study, the methanol leaf extract of C. alata showed a significant antibacterial activity against human pathogenic bacteria strains Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus cereus. The organic layers such as n-hexane, ethyl acetate, and aqueous layers, were prepared by partitioning the methanol extract with n-hexane and ethyl acetate successively.  We successfully isolated and identified the structures of five compounds from C. alata leaves. Their structures were elucidated by MS and NMR spectroscopic methods as well as comparison with literature data. These compounds were determined to be methyl 2,4,6-trihydroxybenzoate (1), kaempferol (2), (-)epiafzelechin (3), kaempferol-3-O-glucoside (4) and kaempferol-3-O-gentiobioside (5). Keywords. Cassia alata L., epiafzelechin, kaempferol, kaempferol-3-O-glucoside, kaempferol-3-O-gentiobioside