MultiUAV2 Agent Swarming for Distributed ATR Simulation

Traditional automatic target recognition (ATR) is performed by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) depending on a central control tower to provide the high level organization of the system. The UAVs fly through a region of interest to identify targets and relay all communication through a central control tower. The centralized approach to ATR has limited fault-tolerance, scalability with regards to the number of UAVs, and susceptibility to malicious attacks on the central tower [2]. A swarm-driven alternative [1] is extended with a communication control scheme to address fault-tolerance and scalability while utilizing the higher onboard processing power now available for UAVs [2]. The purpose of this paper is to compare the organization systems, centrally controlled versus distributed swarm, and extend on swarm research in the area of communication to aid in the comparison. A swarm communication algorithm is proposed and simulated during search and destroy missions in the MultiUAV2 simulation framework. Highlighted algorithm properties will be time to message completion, bandwidth costs of each configuration, scalability, and quality of service

Family History Of Alcohol Use Disorder As A Predictor Of Endogenous Pain Modulatory Function

Family history of alcohol use disorder (AUD) is frequently endorsed by chronic pain patients. Although individuals with a family history of AUD have demonstrated enhanced sensitivity to painful stimulation, we are not aware of any previous research that has examined clinically-relevant endogenous pain modulation (i.e., capacity to inhibit or facilitate pain) in this population. The goal of this study was to test family history of AUD as a predictor of conditioned pain modulation, offset analgesia, and temporal summation among a sample of moderate-to-heavy drinkers. Participants (N = 235; 58.3% male; Mage = 34.3, SD = 12.3) were evaluated for family history of AUD at baseline (family history positive: n = 54; 59.3% white) and pain modulatory outcomes were assessed via quantitative sensory testing. Results indicated that participants with a family history of AUD (relative to those without) evinced a pro-nociceptive pain modulation profile in response to experimental pain. Specifically, family history of AUD was associated with deficits in pain-inhibitory processes, which may help to explain the observed high rates of familial AUD in chronic pain patients. Exploratory analyses further suggested these effects may be driven by paternal AUD. The current findings suggest a family history of AUD may confer risk for AUD and chronic pain. Clinically, these data may inform treatment decisions for acute pain among individuals with a family history of AUD

Family History of Alcohol Use Disorder As a Predictor of Endogenous Pain Modulatory Function

Family history of alcohol use disorder (AUD) is frequently endorsed by chronic pain patients. Although individuals with a family history of AUD have demonstrated enhanced sensitivity to painful stimulation, we are not aware of any previous research that has examined clinically-relevant endogenous pain modulation (i.e., capacity to inhibit or facilitate pain) in this population. The goal of this study was to test family history of AUD as a predictor of conditioned pain modulation, offset analgesia, and temporal summation among a sample of moderate-to-heavy drinkers. Participants (N = 235; 58.3% male; Mage = 34.3, SD = 12.3) were evaluated for family history of AUD at baseline (family history positive: n = 54; 59.3% white) and pain modulatory outcomes were assessed via quantitative sensory testing. Results indicated that participants with a family history of AUD (relative to those without) evinced a pro-nociceptive pain modulation profile in response to experimental pain. Specifically, family history of AUD was associated with deficits in pain-inhibitory processes, which may help to explain the observed high rates of familial AUD in chronic pain patients. Exploratory analyses further suggested these effects may be driven by paternal AUD. The current findings suggest a family history of AUD may confer risk for AUD and chronic pain. Clinically, these data may inform treatment decisions for acute pain among individuals with a family history of AUD

Principles for increased resilience in critical networked infrastructures

We propose a framework for deploying stronger, intelligent resilience mechanisms in mission-critical ATM networks over and above that offered by physical n-fold redundancy. We compare the challenges facing power and data network resilience and discuss disruptive threats to real-world operations. Using recorded live data from an ATM data network we argue our proposed architecture with deployable, distributed on-demand anomaly detection and monitoring modules provides enhanced fail-secure versus current fail-safe resilience

Container-based network function virtualization for software-defined networks

Today's enterprise networks almost ubiquitously deploy middlebox services to improve in-network security and performance. Although virtualization of middleboxes attracts a significant attention, studies show that such implementations are still proprietary and deployed in a static manner at the boundaries of organisations, hindering open innovation. In this paper, we present an open framework to create, deploy and manage virtual network functions (NF)s in OpenFlow-enabled networks. We exploit container-based NFs to achieve low performance overhead, fast deployment and high reusability missing from today's NFV deployments. Through an SDN northbound API, NFs can be instantiated, traffic can be steered through the desired policy chain and applications can raise notifications. We demonstrate the systems operation through the development of exemplar NFs from common Operating System utility binaries, and we show that container-based NFV improves function instantiation time by up to 68% over existing hypervisor-based alternatives, and scales to one hundred co-located NFs while incurring sub-millisecond latency

Masking Away Our Emotions

The use of face masks has the potential to greatly reduce the efficacy and ability of nonverbal communication during in-person social interactions. The purpose of this study is to determine the consequences and implications that face masks have on nonverbal communication, as well as the effect that the use of face masks has on an individual\u27s ability to perceive emotions based on facial expressions. It is believed that an individual would be statistically successful matching an unmasked facial expression to a pictured emotion, but not as statistically successful matching a masked facial expression to a pictured emotion. This study will be carried out via the use of a survey containing pictures of a person displaying various emotions, both with and without face masks, in which participants would be asked to match listed emotions with what they believe the acted emotion portray

Mechanical Parts

A collection of poems related to cancer, boxing, and a fictionalized Rochester, Minnesota (renamed Medicine City)