The Design and Implementation of a Wireless Video Surveillance System.

Internet-enabled cameras pervade daily life, generating a huge amount of data, but most of the video they generate is transmitted over wires and analyzed offline with a human in the loop. The ubiquity of cameras limits the amount of video that can be sent to the cloud, especially on wireless networks where capacity is at a premium. In this paper, we present Vigil, a real-time distributed wireless surveillance system that leverages edge computing to support real-time tracking and surveillance in enterprise campuses, retail stores, and across smart cities. Vigil intelligently partitions video processing between edge computing nodes co-located with cameras and the cloud to save wireless capacity, which can then be dedicated to Wi-Fi hotspots, offsetting their cost. Novel video frame prioritization and traffic scheduling algorithms further optimize Vigil's bandwidth utilization. We have deployed Vigil across three sites in both whitespace and Wi-Fi networks. Depending on the level of activity in the scene, experimental results show that Vigil allows a video surveillance system to support a geographical area of coverage between five and 200 times greater than an approach that simply streams video over the wireless network. For a fixed region of coverage and bandwidth, Vigil outperforms the default equal throughput allocation strategy of Wi-Fi by delivering up to 25% more objects relevant to a user's query

Traditional use of medicinal plants among the tribal communities of Chhota Bhangal, Western Himalaya

The importance of medicinal plants in traditional healthcare practices, providing clues to new areas of research and in biodiversity conservation is now well recognized. However, information on the uses for plants for medicine is lacking from many interior areas of Himalaya. Keeping this in view the present study was initiated in a tribal dominated hinterland of western Himalaya. The study aimed to look into the diversity of plant resources that are used by local people for curing various ailments. Questionnaire surveys, participatory observations and field visits were planned to illicit information on the uses of various plants. It was found that 35 plant species are commonly used by local people for curing various diseases. In most of the cases (45%) under ground part of the plant was used. New medicinal uses of Ranunculus hirtellus and Anemone rupicola are reported from this area. Similarly, preparation of "sik" a traditional recipe served as a nutritious diet to pregnant women is also not documented elsewhere. Implication of developmental activities and changing socio-economic conditions on the traditional knowledge are also discussed

Cell Cycle Gene Networks Are Associated with Melanoma Prognosis

BACKGROUND: Our understanding of the molecular pathways that underlie melanoma remains incomplete. Although several published microarray studies of clinical melanomas have provided valuable information, we found only limited concordance between these studies. Therefore, we took an in vitro functional genomics approach to understand melanoma molecular pathways. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Affymetrix microarray data were generated from A375 melanoma cells treated in vitro with siRNAs against 45 transcription factors and signaling molecules. Analysis of this data using unsupervised hierarchical clustering and Bayesian gene networks identified proliferation-association RNA clusters, which were co-ordinately expressed across the A375 cells and also across melanomas from patients. The abundance in metastatic melanomas of these cellular proliferation clusters and their putative upstream regulators was significantly associated with patient prognosis. An 8-gene classifier derived from gene network hub genes correctly classified the prognosis of 23/26 metastatic melanoma patients in a cross-validation study. Unlike the RNA clusters associated with cellular proliferation described above, co-ordinately expressed RNA clusters associated with immune response were clearly identified across melanoma tumours from patients but not across the siRNA-treated A375 cells, in which immune responses are not active. Three uncharacterised genes, which the gene networks predicted to be upstream of apoptosis- or cellular proliferation-associated RNAs, were found to significantly alter apoptosis and cell number when over-expressed in vitro. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This analysis identified co-expression of RNAs that encode functionally-related proteins, in particular, proliferation-associated RNA clusters that are linked to melanoma patient prognosis. Our analysis suggests that A375 cells in vitro may be valid models in which to study the gene expression modules that underlie some melanoma biological processes (e.g., proliferation) but not others (e.g., immune response). The gene expression modules identified here, and the RNAs predicted by Bayesian network inference to be upstream of these modules, are potential prognostic biomarkers and drug targets

PaLM 2 Technical Report

We introduce PaLM 2, a new state-of-the-art language model that has better multilingual and reasoning capabilities and is more compute-efficient than its predecessor PaLM. PaLM 2 is a Transformer-based model trained using a mixture of objectives. Through extensive evaluations on English and multilingual language, and reasoning tasks, we demonstrate that PaLM 2 has significantly improved quality on downstream tasks across different model sizes, while simultaneously exhibiting faster and more efficient inference compared to PaLM. This improved efficiency enables broader deployment while also allowing the model to respond faster, for a more natural pace of interaction. PaLM 2 demonstrates robust reasoning capabilities exemplified by large improvements over PaLM on BIG-Bench and other reasoning tasks. PaLM 2 exhibits stable performance on a suite of responsible AI evaluations, and enables inference-time control over toxicity without additional overhead or impact on other capabilities. Overall, PaLM 2 achieves state-of-the-art performance across a diverse set of tasks and capabilities. When discussing the PaLM 2 family, it is important to distinguish between pre-trained models (of various sizes), fine-tuned variants of these models, and the user-facing products that use these models. In particular, user-facing products typically include additional pre- and post-processing steps. Additionally, the underlying models may evolve over time. Therefore, one should not expect the performance of user-facing products to exactly match the results reported in this report

Linear detection for the nonorthogonal amplify and forward protocol

In this paper, we present three new detection schemes for the nonorthogonal amplify and forward (NAF) protocol in a cooperative diversity system based on a multiuser detection approach, namely, a channel inversion type detector, a maximal-ratio combining (MRC) type detector, and a biased maximum likelihood (ML) detector. The decision variables in these schemes are linear functionals of the transmitted symbol vector and therefore they are termed as ldquolinearrdquo detectors. A cooperative relay network using the NAF protocol with N-1 relays is considered where the source transmits symbols in N-1 blocks of two time slots in a Rayleigh fading environment. For the case of a general linear space-time block coding scheme using K symbols, we present the performance of this protocol in terms of the code symbol error probability when the symbols come from an M-ary phase-shift keying constellation. The approach is further extended to the transmission in N-1 blocks of L time slots. Numerical results show that the performance of the MRC type detector is superior to that of the channel inversion type detector, while the biased ML detector has the best performance. However, the MRC type detector has the lowest complexity while the biased ML detector the highest

Occurrence of fungi in rhizosphere, rhizoplane and non-rhizosphere zones of some mangroves

138-142From the Sunderban mangrove swamps, West Bengal, a good number of fungi were isolated from rhizosphere, rhizoplane and non-rhizosphere zones of mangroves, viz. Avicennia officinalis L., Carapa moluccensis Lam., Heritiera minor Lam. and Rhizophora mucronata Lam. pH and salinity of rhizosphere mud were lower than non-rhizosphere while, the organic matter and moisture content were higher in the rhizosphere mud of all the plants. Highest number of fungi were isolated from rhizosphere zone. Ascomycetes were frequent in rhizoplane and Zygomycetes in rhizosphere; while, Basidiomycetes were conspicuous by their absence

Race and gender differences in awareness of colorectal cancer screening tests and guidelines among recently diagnosed colon cancer patients in an urban setting

The purpose of this study was to first characterize the prevalence of recall, recognition, and knowledge of colon cancer screening tests and guidelines (collectively, awareness ) among non-Hispanic black (NHB) and NH white (NHW) urban colon cancer patients. Second, we sought to examine whether awareness was associated with mode of cancer detection. Low awareness regarding colon cancer screening tests and guidelines may explain low screening rates and high prevalence of symptomatic detection. We examined recall, recognition, and knowledge of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening tests and guidelines and their associations with mode of cancer detection (symptomatic versus screen-detected) in 374 newly diagnosed NHB and NHW patients aged 45-79. Patients were asked to name or describe any test to screen for colon cancer (recall); next, they were given descriptions of stool testing and colonoscopy and asked if they recognized each test (recognition). Lastly, patients were asked if they knew the screening guidelines (knowledge). Overall, awareness of CRC screening guidelines was low; just 20% and 13% of patients knew colonoscopy and fecal test guidelines, respectively. Awareness of CRC screening tests and guidelines was especially low among NHB males, socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals, and those diagnosed at public healthcare facilities. Inability to name or recall a single test was associated with reduced screen-detected cancer compared with recall of at least one test (36% vs. 22%, p = 0.01). Low awareness of CRC screening tests is a risk factor for symptomatic detection of colon cancer