Decentralized Clustering and Linking by Networked Agents

We consider the problem of decentralized clustering and estimation over multi-task networks, where agents infer and track different models of interest. The agents do not know beforehand which model is generating their own data. They also do not know which agents in their neighborhood belong to the same cluster. We propose a decentralized clustering algorithm aimed at identifying and forming clusters of agents of similar objectives, and at guiding cooperation to enhance the inference performance. One key feature of the proposed technique is the integration of the learning and clustering tasks into a single strategy. We analyze the performance of the procedure and show that the error probabilities of types I and II decay exponentially to zero with the step-size parameter. While links between agents following different objectives are ignored in the clustering process, we nevertheless show how to exploit these links to relay critical information across the network for enhanced performance. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the proposed method in comparison to other useful techniques

Multicast-Based Mobile Ipv6 Join/Leave Mechanism Software

Increasing demand for mobility in the Internet has created the need for a routing protocol that allows a host to roam in the network. Mobile IP is a solution that enables an IP host to leave its home link while transparently maintaining all of its present connections and remaining reachable to the rest of the Internet. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has standardized Mobile IPv4. Mobile IPv6 is a work in progress in the IETF, offering support for IPv6 mobile nodes. Although it is not yet standardized, every IPv6 node is required to implement Mobile IPv6, which means that mobility must be widely supported. IP-multicast provides efficient algorithms for multiple packet delivery. It also provides location-independent group addressing. The receiver-initiated approach for IP-multicast enables new receivers to join to a nearby branch of an already established multicast tree. Hence, IP-multicast provides a scalable infrastructure for efficient, location-independent, packet delivery.The recent advances in wireless communication technology and the growth of the Internet have paved the way for wireless networking and IP mobility. Unlike conventional wired networks, wireless networks possess different channel characteristics and mobility dynamics that render network design and analysis more cha1lenging. Performance during handoff where the mobile moves from one cell, or coverage area, to another is a significant factor in evaluating wireless networks

Functional and Phenotypic Analysis of B- and T-Helper Cells in Rhesus Macaques and African Green Monkeys

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is one of the most challenging infectious agents at the current time. To date, many vaccine trials have been conducted. However, there has not been a fully successful trial. This is due, in part, to the gap in knowledge of the protective immune response against HIV. African green monkeys (AGMs) serve as an interesting model to study immune protection in primate immunodeficiency virus infections due to their resistance to AIDS. Experimental SIV infection in rhesus macaques (RMs) resembles HIV infection in humans with chronic immune activation and progression to AIDS well characterized in both. Understanding the immune systems of AGMs and RMs and how they differ is likely to advance our knowledge of immune protection and immunopathogenesis in SIV/HIV disease. B cells are responsible for the humoral arm of acquired immunity, which results in the production of specific antibodies. In lentiviral infections, neutralizing antibodies block viral entry and are, therefore, essential for protective immunity. Other antibody-mediated functions, such as antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity, have gained increased interest after the recent demonstration of enhanced antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) in vaccinees in a vaccine trial commonly known as the Thai trial. T helper cells provide co-stimulatory signals that are essential for B cell activation and antibody production. Blocking CD40/CD40L interactions impairs antiviral humoral response, which emphasizes the importance of B and T helper interaction for protective humoral response. The current study aims to identify key B-cell and T-cell-related differences that separate African green monkeys and rhesus macaques in term of constitutive function (i.e. in the absence of infection) and in vitro, SIV-induced dysfunction. In this study, multiparametric flow cytometry approaches were used to identify any differences in the distribution of B and T cell subsets. B cells were stimulated with anti-IgM/G and T cells with phorbol myristate acetate and ionomycin (PMA/I) to assess the expression of their activation markers. These are unspecific stimuli that give an idea about the potential responses of the cells following specific stimulus. Also, B cells were evaluated for the expression and phosphorylation of intracellular signaling proteins. In addition, T cells were evaluated for the production of IFNɣ, TNFα, IL-2, expression of CD107a, and their ability to have more than one function. The results showed that AGMs have lower frequencies and absolute numbers of B and CD4+ T cells than RMs. Moreover, B cells of AGMs showed higher expression levels of CD40 than RMs, a molecule that plays an essential role in antibody production and Ig class switching. Furthermore, the analyses of B cell signaling proteins showed that AGMs express higher levels of these proteins and they get phosphorylated in higher levels than RMs. This may indicate a more robust signaling activity of AGMs’ B cells as compared to RMs, which may play a role in an early antibody response that controls the infection. T cells data analyses revealed that CD4 T cells of AGMs produce less IFNɣ, TNFα, and IL-2 than RM, which may indicate another immediate response, anti-inflammatory, rather than pro-inflammatory response. Also, this may explain the lack of chronic immune activation in AGM. DN T cells of AGM showed higher expression levels of CD107a than the DN T cells of RM. This may indicate the cytotoxic function of these cells in addition to their helper functions. DN T cells are resistant to SIV infection, and their multifunctionality give insights into new cellular therapeutic approaches

The UAE English Pre- Service Teachers Field experience Challenges Coping to teach within a Major Curricular reform

The purpose of this study was to investigate the challenges the UAE University (UAEU) English pre-service teachers faced during their field experience within a major curricular reform. The study focused on five UAEU English pre-service teachers enrolled in a practicum course during their field experience and their five cooperative teachers. A semi-structured interview, a questionnaire and an observation checklist were employed to explore the field experience challenges that the UAEU English pre-service teachers encountered. The use of multiple resources helped to create a general profile and in turn helped to improve the trustworthiness of the research findings. The implication derived from this study indicated that the UAEU English pre-service teachers viewed themselves as unprepared to meet the curriculum reform requirements. The findings revealed that although the UAEU English pre-service teachers were well prepared to teach English Language, the discrepancy between their university coursework and their field experience was apparent. Finally, the study findings revealed that most of the UAEU English pre-service teachers’ challenges were centered around knowledge of subject matter of mathematics and science and knowledge of curricular

Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Areas Vulnerable to Urban Flooding: A Case Study of Lahore, Pakistan

Identification of existing hotspots is one of the principal steps for evolving strategy to mitigate urbanflooding, an emerging problem in mega cities of developing countries. Therefore, this paper aims to provide aframework of assessing the spatio-temporal hotspots of urban flooding incidents in Lahore district, Punjab, Pakistan.For this purpose, a database was created by gathering information of sore points by a governmental body, Water andSanitation Agency (WASA) to execute spatio-temporal analysis of urban flooding through hotspot analysis in spatialanalyst tool box in Arc GIS. Results show that urban flooding occurs in each town of Lahore excluding Wahga town.Among all affected towns of Lahore, Data Gunj Bakhsh town is noted as a highly affected area accounting 27 percentof urban flooding incidents during monsoon period from 2012-2017. Temporal study also shows an overall increasingtrend for incidents of urban flooding during 2012-2017. Moreover, detailed study shows that month of August isnoteworthy for urban flooding which is consistently increasing

Scalability Improvement Of Multicast Source Movement Over Mobile Ipv6 Using Clustering Technique

Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) describes how a mobile node can change its point of attachment to the Internet. While MIPv6 focuses on unicast communications, it also proposes two basic mechanisms, known as bi-directional tunnelling and remote subscription, to handle multicast communications with mobile members. In the mean time, the deployment of Source-Specific Multicast (SSM) is of great interest, using the Protocol Independent Multicast-Sparse Mode (PIM-SM) and Multicast Listener Discovery (MLDv2) protocols. In the particular case of mobile IPv6 SSM sources, the mechanism proposed in MIPv6 to support multicast communications introduced a number of problems that need to be addressed. First, in most scenarios the MIPv6 solution leads to suboptimal routing by setting up a tunnel to forward packets between the home agent in its home network and the current location in the foreign network. The use of a third party when roaming which is the home agent leads to suboptimal routing. Second, it introduces a central point of failure (i.e. the Home Agent (HA)) that is not to be neglected. The proposed MIPv6 solution also induces a great traffic concentration around this central point. Third, the processing task of the central point increases with the number of mobile sources it serves, thus reducing the efficiency of multicast delivery. The objective of this thesis is to remove some of the obstacles encountered in the way of multicast deployment in the Internet, thereby making Mobile IPv6 better equipped to support mobile SSM sources. Recent proposals to provide multicasting over mobile IP focuses mainly on recipient mobility but little attention has been given to the case of source mobility. This thesis attempts to address this problem. The basic essence of the problem is that while the effect of receiver movement on the multicast tree is local, the effect of source movement may be global and it may affect the complete multicast delivery tree. The initial design was motivated by the need to support one-to-many and many-to-many applications in a scalable fashion. Such applications cannot be serviced efficiently with unicast delivery. As the overall problem statement of “Scalability Improvement of Multicast Source Movement over IPv6 Using Clustering Technique” is extremely complex, we divide the problem into the following components: build the multicast delivery tree for source specific multicast which is a routing issue; clustering receivers based on their IPv6 addresses; improve the state scalability of these clusters which is a deployment issue; find an efficient way for service distribution which is a deployment issue as well; and finally, the seamless integration of the work with Mobile IPv6 allowing it to support multicast efficiently for mobile nodes. The combined solution provides a comprehensive procedure for planning and managing a multicast-based IPv6 network. The outcome of this thesis are: a software to represent an architecture of a multicast delivery tree for one-to-many type of group communication, a group management scheme that could handle the end nodes subscription/un-subscription process with the required updates, an average subscription delay of between 0.255 ms-0.530 ms and un-subscription delay of between 0.0456 ms-0.087 ms for up to 50000 nodes, an approach to multicast forwarding state reduction that could support small-size groups as well as large-size groups, and finally the integration of the work with Mobile IPv6 to handle the multicast source movement

The Effects of Vitamin D on the Renin-Angiotensin System

Implication for health policy/practice/research/medical education: The current literature indicates that maintaining adequate vitamin D levels may be an important consideration in the treatment of hypertension, especially in individuals with vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency

Background of Individual Education Plans (IEPs) Policy in Some Countries: A Review

This paper seeks to provide a cogent outline of the current policies that six separate countries have on Individual Education Plans (IEPs), identifying the key features in each system. The chosen countries are Australia (Queen Island), Canada (British Columbia), New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Saudi Arabia. The aim of the paper was to have greater insights of the globalisation of IEPs at public schools in these above countries. It looked into a set of factors closely associated with each other; such as, to enable the exploration of how IEP policy is implemented at public schools in the same countries. The findings from the literature review showed a number of gaps in the current frameworks. Therefore, this has led the researcher to work further on these frameworks for the purpose of this paper. Keywords: IEPs in Australia, IEPs in Canada, IEPs in New Zealand, IEPs in United Kingdom, IEPs in United States of America, and IEPs in Saudi Arabia