Alert-BDI: BDI Model with Adaptive Alertness through Situational Awareness

In this paper, we address the problems faced by a group of agents that possess situational awareness, but lack a security mechanism, by the introduction of a adaptive risk management system. The Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) architecture lacks a framework that would facilitate an adaptive risk management system that uses the situational awareness of the agents. We extend the BDI architecture with the concept of adaptive alertness. Agents can modify their level of alertness by monitoring the risks faced by them and by their peers. Alert-BDI enables the agents to detect and assess the risks faced by them in an efficient manner, thereby increasing operational efficiency and resistance against attacks.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to ICACCI 2013, Mysore, Indi

Breeding chickpea for water limited environments: selection indices and strategies

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is the one of the most important pulse crops in the world and its production is limited by terminal drought. Unlike conventional breeding for yield, it is more challenging and requires to be measured in terms of its manifestation towards changing performance of a genotype under stress. An evaluation of a panel developed for drought and breeding studies has clearly identified the presence of large variability for drought tolerance. A large number of traits have been screened and it has been inferred that drought susceptibility index is the best way to identify genotypes that have resilience to terminal drought. However, different genotypes possessed various physiological mechanisms to cope with the effects of drought and, hence, provide ample opportunities to breeders to combine them to develop drought-tolerant genotypes. The chickpea genotypes L550, PG112 and ICC92944 have shown higher mean values for yield traits under stress and have desirable terminal drought-tolerant mechanisms for yield and other associated characters such as lower DSI, higher HI, higher BY and higher grain yield. They have, thus, emerged as stable genotypes for yield under stress situations. Though MABC for root traits has been identified, rapid screening techniques using CTD and identification of markers for MSI and RWC to be used for screening segregating generations appears to be promising in north Indian conditions. This is because unlike in south India, drought in the north India develops abruptly after a cold period, giving little time for the root system to respond. Thus, breeding for terminal drought tolerance would require concentrating on these traits too

Genome-wide identification and phenotypic characterization of seizure-associated copy number variations in 741,075 individuals

Copy number variants (CNV) are established risk factors for neurodevelopmental disorders with seizures or epilepsy. With the hypothesis that seizure disorders share genetic risk factors, we pooled CNV data from 10,590 individuals with seizure disorders, 16,109 individuals with clinically validated epilepsy, and 492,324 population controls and identified 25 genome-wide significant loci, 22 of which are novel for seizure disorders, such as deletions at 1p36.33, 1q44, 2p21-p16.3, 3q29, 8p23.3-p23.2, 9p24.3, 10q26.3, 15q11.2, 15q12-q13.1, 16p12.2, 17q21.31, duplications at 2q13, 9q34.3, 16p13.3, 17q12, 19p13.3, 20q13.33, and reciprocal CNVs at 16p11.2, and 22q11.21. Using genetic data from additional 248,751 individuals with 23 neuropsychiatric phenotypes, we explored the pleiotropy of these 25 loci. Finally, in a subset of individuals with epilepsy and detailed clinical data available, we performed phenome-wide association analyses between individual CNVs and clinical annotations categorized through the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO). For six CNVs, we identified 19 significant associations with specific HPO terms and generated, for all CNVs, phenotype signatures across 17 clinical categories relevant for epileptologists. This is the most comprehensive investigation of CNVs in epilepsy and related seizure disorders, with potential implications for clinical practice

GWAS meta-analysis of over 29,000 people with epilepsy identifies 26 risk loci and subtype-specific genetic architecture

Epilepsy is a highly heritable disorder affecting over 50 million people worldwide, of which about one-third are resistant to current treatments. Here we report a multi-ancestry genome-wide association study including 29,944 cases, stratified into three broad categories and seven subtypes of epilepsy, and 52,538 controls. We identify 26 genome-wide significant loci, 19 of which are specific to genetic generalized epilepsy (GGE). We implicate 29 likely causal genes underlying these 26 loci. SNP-based heritability analyses show that common variants explain between 39.6% and 90% of genetic risk for GGE and its subtypes. Subtype analysis revealed markedly different genetic architectures between focal and generalized epilepsies. Gene-set analyses of GGE signals implicate synaptic processes in both excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the brain. Prioritized candidate genes overlap with monogenic epilepsy genes and with targets of current antiseizure medications. Finally, we leverage our results to identify alternate drugs with predicted efficacy if repurposed for epilepsy treatment

MODELLING AND VERIFICATION OF EXTENSIBLE AUTHENTICATION PROTOCOL USING SPIN MODEL CHECKER

ABSTRAC

Secure authentication using image processing and visual cryptography for banking applications

Core banking is a set of services provided by a group of networked bank branches. Bank customers may access their funds and perform other simple transactions from any of the member branch offices. The major issue in core banking is the authenticity of the customer. Due to unavoidable hacking of the databases on the internet, it is always quite difficult to trust the information on the internet. To solve this problem of authentication, we are proposing an algorithm based on image processing and visual cryptography. This paper proposes a technique of processing the signature of a customer and then dividing it into shares. Total number of shares to be created is depending on the scheme chosen by the bank. When two shares are created, one is stored in the Bank database and the other is kept by the customer. The customer has to present the share during all of his transactions. This share is stacked with the first share to get the original signature. The Correlation method is used to take the decision on acceptance or rejection of the output and authenticate the customer. © 2008 IEEE

Influence of the Host Lattice Electronic Structure on Dilute Magnetic Interactions in Polymorphic Cr(III)-Doped In₂O₃ Nanocrystals

The effect of the host lattice structure on the spectroscopic and magnetic properties of Cr³⁺-doped In₂O₃ nanocrystals is reported. The influence of the dopant ions on the nanocrystal growth allows for the solution-phase stabilization and separation of doped colloidal In₂O₃ nanocrystals having different crystal structures – stable cubic phase (bcc-In₂O₃) and metastable rhombohedral (rh-In₂O₃) phase – and comparative study of the electronic structure and magnetic properties of Cr³⁺ in both polymorphs. Investigations by a range of complementary spectroscopic techniques, including Raman, X-ray absorption and magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopies, revealed that the change in the In₂O₃ phase leads to distinctly different electronic structure of Cr³⁺ dopants, associated with a different nature of the substitutional doping sites and different electronic structure of the nanocrystal host lattice. Nanocrystalline films prepared from colloidal nanocrystals exhibit ferromagnetism at room temperature, although the average magnetic moment of Cr³⁺ in rh-In₂O₃ is an order of magnitude smaller than that in bcc-In₂O₃ samples. This difference in magnetization is associated with wider band gap of rh-In₂O₃ nanocrystals, which prevents effective hybridization of the defect donor band, as a mediator of the Cr³⁺ magnetic exchange interactions, and the Cr³⁺ 3d states at the Fermi level. The results of this work demonstrate that a change in the defect and electronic structures of the same semiconductor host lattice by nanocrystal phase control in solution allows for tuning of the magnetic properties of diluted magnetic semiconducting oxides

Probing the Role of Dopant Oxidation State in the Magnetism of Diluted Magnetic Oxides Using Fe-Doped In₂O₃ and SnO₂ Nanocrystals

Investigation of the origin of high-Curie temperature ferromagnetism in diluted magnetic oxides has become one of the focal points of research on solid-state magnetism. While several possible mechanisms have been proposed theoretically, broader experimental evidence is still lacking. Here we report a comparative study of the electronic structure and magnetic properties of colloidal Fe-doped In₂O₃ and SnO₂ nanocrystals, as building blocks for grain-boundary-rich diluted magnetic oxide films. The dopant ions in both nanocrystal host lattices are principally in 3+ oxidation state, with possibly a minor presence of Fe²⁺ in In₂O₃, and no conclusive evidence of the presence of Fe²⁺ in SnO₂ nanocrystals. Subsequently, we found that Fe-doped In₂O₃ nanocrystalline films exhibit only minor ferromagnetic ordering (with a magnetic moment of less than ca. 0.1 μ_B/Fe) and decreasing saturation magnetization with increasing doping concentration at room temperature. The saturation magnetic moment of Fe-doped SnO₂ nanocrystalline films is insignificant or below the detection limit. These results contrast previous findings for analogous Mn-doped nanocrystals, which contain mixed oxidation states (Mn²⁺ and Mn³⁺) and exhibit a robust ferromagnetism at room temperature. The correlation between the mixed dopant oxidation states and the observed magnetic properties implies that ferromagnetism in these systems is of a Stoner type, enabled by electron transfer between dopant ions and the local defect states arising from the grain boundaries within a nanocrystalline film. These results suggest the prospect of probing and manipulating ferromagnetism in nonmagnetic oxides by simultaneous control of the transition metal dopant oxidation states and extended structural defects

Evidence of Charge-Transfer Ferromagnetism in Transparent Diluted Magnetic Oxide Nanocrystals: Switching the Mechanism of Magnetic Interactions

We report the experimental evidence of a new form of room-temperature ferromagnetism in high surface area nanocrystalline manganese-doped In₂O₃, prepared from colloidal nanocrystals as building blocks. The nanocrystal structure (bixbyite or corundum) and assembly were controlled by their size, and the type and concentration of dopant precursors. The existence of substitutional paramagnetic Mn dopant ions in mixed valence states (Mn²⁺ and Mn³⁺) was confirmed and quantified by different spectroscopic methods, including X-ray absorption and magnetic circular dichroism. The presence of different oxidation states is the basis of ferromagnetism induced by Stoner splitting of the local density of states associated with extended structural defects, due to charge transfer from the Mn dopants. The extent of this charge transfer can be controlled by the relationship between the electronic structures of the nanocrystal host lattice and dopant ions, rendering a higher magnetic moment in bixbyite relative to corundum Mn-doped In₂O₃. Charge-transfer ferromagnetism assumes no essential role of dopant as a carrier of the magnetic moment, which was directly confirmed by X-ray magnetic circular dichroism, as an element-specific probe of the origin of ferromagnetism. At doping concentrations approaching the percolation limit, charge-transfer ferromagnetism can switch to a double exchange mechanism, given the mixed oxidation states of Mn dopants. The results of this work enable the investigations of the new mechanisms of magnetic ordering in solid state and contribute to the design of new unconventional magnetic and multifunctional materials