Media Query Processing for the Internet-of-Things: Coupling of Device Energy Consumption and Cloud Infrastructure Billing

Audio/visual recognition and retrieval applications have recently garnered significant attention within Internet-of-Things (IoT) oriented services, given that video cameras and audio processing chipsets are now ubiquitous even in low-end embedded systems. In the most typical scenario for such services, each device extracts audio/visual features and compacts them into feature descriptors, which comprise media queries. These queries are uploaded to a remote cloud computing service that performs content matching for classification or retrieval applications. Two of the most crucial aspects for such services are: $(i)$ controlling the device energy consumption when using the service; $(ii)$ reducing the billing cost incurred from the cloud infrastructure provider. In this paper we derive analytic conditions for the optimal coupling between the device energy consumption and the incurred cloud infrastructure billing. Our framework encapsulates: the energy consumption to produce and transmit audio/visual queries, the billing rates of the cloud infrastructure, the number of devices concurrently connected to the same cloud server, the query volume constraint of each cluster of devices, and the statistics of the query data production volume per device. Our analytic results are validated via a deployment with: $(i)$ the device side comprising compact image descriptors (queries) computed on Beaglebone Linux embedded platforms and transmitted to Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service; $(ii)$ the cloud side carrying out image similarity detection via AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances, with the AWS Auto Scaling being used to control the number of instances according to the demand.This work was supported in part by the European Union (Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant 655282 – F. Renna), in part by EPSRC under Grant EP/M00113X/1 and Grant EP/K033166/1, and in part by Innovate U.K. (project ACAME under Grant 131983)

Initial soil carbon losses may offset decades of biomass carbon accumulation in Mediterranean afforestation

Afforestation of degraded areas was suggested as CO2 sink, contributing to climate change mitigation. Yet, few studies have assessed this sink by combining measurements on carbon (C) in the biomass and the soil, despite it being crucial to properly estimate the mitigation potential. Here, we assessed the combined C stocks of afforestation plots of different ages on former cropland in a Cambisol landscape in Extremadura, Spain. The plots were afforested with two native tree species (Quercus ilex L. and Quercus suber L. in a density ratio of 3:1), planted at several occasions between 1998 and 2011. Stocks of afforested areas in 2022 were compared to non-afforested negative controls on arable land, to a closeby olive grove and a forest with signs of degradation. Tree biomass was estimated from allometric equations, soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks were measured to 30 cm depth, based on equivalent soil mass. The biomass C accumulation rate in afforested plots increased with tree density and elevation (p <0.05; range: 25 to 75 g C m2 yr 1). SOC stocks, in contrast, were not significantly different in afforested and non-afforested plots at any depth and in tendency even lower in afforested plots younger than 20 years. Consequently, total (biomass plus soil) C stocks in afforested plots were not significantly higher than in non-afforested ones. Nevertheless, SOC stocks and contents between the tree rows were significantly lower compared to soil next to the trees in the olive grove (about 1200 vs. 2200 g C m2 in the top 30 cm) and in tendency in the afforested plots (about 1200 vs. 1500 g C m2 in the top 30 cm; p <0.1). The fact that the degraded forest (about 6800 g C m2) and the olive grove (about 5300 g C m2) did have significantly higher total C stocks than the afforested and non-afforested sites (about 2300 and 1800 g C m2) could indicate that afforestation could soon become a C sink. However, our study clearly shows that afforestation is not automatically a C sink. Timing of different C pools` losses and gains affect net ecosystem carbon sequestration. While improved soil management in afforestation may reduce SOC losses, afforestation with Mediterranean Quercus trees under current management practices may require decades before being a C sink. This finding should temper expectations that afforestation with such tree species is a rapid solution to combat climate change

Flexible and conformable strain gauges for smart pressure sensors systems: Static and dynamic characterization

An innovative segment of the semiconductor and electronics industry in the last years is driven by new sensors embedded in smart devices and systems with thin form factor, connected to existing infrastructures via standard communication interfaces. The increased maturity of industrial sensor technologies and associated readout electronics enabled new products penetrating multiple market sectors. Among the different classes of smart sensing systems that can be realized with thin and truly flexible form factor, thin film strain gauges are ideally suited for the implementation of pressure sensing membranes. In this work we will focus on the development of static and dynamic testing methods of a strain gauge module whose applications are intended as a flexible and conformable strain/pressure sensor, adaptable for wireless communications

Species Differences in Platelet Protease-Activated Receptors

Protease-activated receptors (PARs) are a class of integral membrane proteins that are cleaved by a variety of proteases, most notably thrombin, to reveal a tethered ligand and promote activation. PARs are critical mediators of platelet function in hemostasis and thrombosis, and therefore are attractive targets for anti-platelet therapies. Animal models studying platelet PAR physiology have relied heavily on genetically modified mouse strains, which have provided ample insight but have some inherent limitations. The current review aims to summarize the notable PAR expression and functional differences between the mouse and human, in addition to highlighting some recently developed tools to further study human physiology in mouse models