Portable clouds for provisioning of computing services in networks with very limited connectivity

In this paper, portable clouds are devised after observing similarities between providing the Internet access to users onboard vehicles and to users in remote resources-constrained communities. In both cases, a gateway connection to the core network is bandwidth-limited and unreliable. Portable clouds are intended to provide applications and services in scenarios even when the gateway link is not available at all for extended periods of time. Portable clouds exploit cache to store contents and provide computing resources locally while the applications are modified to facilitate acceptable QoE. The cache is updated infrequently and only when a fast connection becomes available, or when the contents are physically delivered to the cache using a memory medium

A Query-Response Causal Analysis of Reaction Events in Biochemical Reaction Networks

The stochastic kinetics of BRN are described by a chemical master equation (CME) and the underlying laws of mass action. The CME must be usually solved numerically by generating enough traces of random reaction events. The resulting event-time series can be evaluated statistically to identify, for example, the reaction clusters, rare reaction events, and the periods of increased or steady-state activity. The aim of this paper is to newly exploit the empirical statistics of the reaction events in order to obtain causally and anti-causally related sub-sequences of reactions. This allows discovering some of the causal dynamics of the reaction networks as well as uncovering their more deterministic behaviors. In particular, it is proposed that the reaction sub-sequences that are conditionally nearly certain or nearly uncertain can be considered as being causally related or unrelated, respectively. Moreover, since time-ordering of reactions is locally irrelevant, the reaction sub-sequences can be transformed into the reaction event sets or multi-sets. The appropriately defined distance metrics can be then used to define equivalences between the reaction sub-sequences. The proposed framework for identifying causally associated reaction sub-sequences has been implemented as a computationally efficient query-response mechanism. The framework was evaluated assuming five selected models of genetic reaction networks in seven defined numerical experiments. The models were simulated in BioNetGen using NFsim, which had to be modified to allow recording of the traces of reaction events. The generated event time-series were analyzed by Python and Matlab scripts. The whole process of data generation, analysis and visualization has been nearly fully automated using shell scripts.Comment: 7 figures and supplementary file include

Mitigating the current energy crisis in Nepal with renewable energy sources

Nepal has been suffering from a serious energy crisis for decades. It has severely affected its economic, social and political developments. Owing to the continuously evolving energy situation in Nepal, and the recent progress in renewable energy technologies, this study aims to provide an up to date perspective on the current energy crisis in Nepal. In particular, the current energy production and consumption profiles are reviewed, and the main factors contributing to a widening gap between the energy supply and demand are identified. These factors concern delayed and overpriced hydropower projects, outdated and insufficient energy infrastructure, transmission and distribution losses, energy theft, deficient energy management, lack of energy conservation, low efficiency of equipment, unsustainable energy pricing strategies and unsatisfying energy market regulations. Other essential factors worsening the energy crisis can be attributed to specific geographical and geopolitical problems, the strong dependence on energy imports, and inadequate exploitation of the vast amounts of renewable energy resources. The status of existing and planned large hydropower projects is summarized. The recent policies and investment initiatives of the Nepalese government to support green and sustainable energy are discussed. Furthermore, a long-term outlook on the energy situation in Nepal is outlined using the energy modeling software LEAP in order to show how to exploit the tremendous renewable energy resources in Nepal. Our findings suggest that renewable resources are crucial not only for mitigating the present energy crisis, but also to ultimately provide energy independence for Nepal by establishing reliable and secure sources of energy

Understanding energy crisis in nepal: Assessment of the country's energy demand and supply in 2016

The world is facing an enormous challenge to provide sufficient quantity of clean energy to its burgeoning population. Energy is a fundamental asset for enabling socio-economic development and poverty eradication in any country. Nepal has been suffering from the chaotic energy crisis for about a decade now despite having a potential for generating 43,000 MW of hydroelectricity, 2,100 MW of solar power, and 3,000 MW of wind power. A normal life of its citizens is being crippled with long hours of load shedding and never ending queues in front of the gas stations reflecting the state of the energy-hungry country. This paper gives a perspective on the energy crisis in Nepal in order to point out how serious the problem is and also presents some ways how to obtain an immediate relieve through the use of green energy commodities. In addition, the strategic advantages to potential investors are explored that encourage investments into national priority projects facilitated by the progressive policies of the Government of Nepal

Order Statistics Based List Decoding Techniques for Linear Binary Block Codes

The order statistics based list decoding techniques for linear binary block codes of small to medium block length are investigated. The construction of the list of the test error patterns is considered. The original order statistics decoding is generalized by assuming segmentation of the most reliable independent positions of the received bits. The segmentation is shown to overcome several drawbacks of the original order statistics decoding. The complexity of the order statistics based decoding is further reduced by assuming a partial ordering of the received bits in order to avoid the complex Gauss elimination. The probability of the test error patterns in the decoding list is derived. The bit error rate performance and the decoding complexity trade-off of the proposed decoding algorithms is studied by computer simulations. Numerical examples show that, in some cases, the proposed decoding schemes are superior to the original order statistics decoding in terms of both the bit error rate performance as well as the decoding complexity.Comment: 17 pages, 2 tables, 6 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Polynomial Distributions and Transformations

Polynomials are common algebraic structures, which are often used to approximate functions including probability distributions. This paper proposes to directly define polynomial distributions in order to describe stochastic properties of systems rather than to assume polynomials for only approximating known or empirically estimated distributions. Polynomial distributions offer a great modeling flexibility, and often, also mathematical tractability. However, unlike canonical distributions, polynomial functions may have non-negative values in the interval of support for some parameter values, the number of their parameters is usually much larger than for canonical distributions, and the interval of support must be finite. In particular, polynomial distributions are defined here assuming three forms of polynomial function. The transformation of polynomial distributions and fitting a histogram to a polynomial distribution are considered. The key properties of polynomial distributions are derived in closed-form. A piecewise polynomial distribution construction is devised to ensure that it is non-negative over the support interval. Finally, the problems of estimating parameters of polynomial distributions and generating polynomially distributed samples are also studied.Comment: 21 pages, no figure

Towards Taxonomy of Telecommunication Network Metrics

The metrics and measurements play a crucial role in the whole lifecycle of telecommunication networks. The number of metrics being considered for modern telecommunication systems supporting digital or computing infrastructures has grown exponentially. It requires sophisticated systems for the metrics management which are under development by the industry consortia. For many research tasks, it would be sufficient to identify a relatively small number of recommended metrics to achieve more consistent evaluations of the system performance. There are still many unsolved problems in this area including defining the optimum modeling strategies and the metrics optimality. This paper explores a landscape of the most commonly used telecommunication and computing metrics to illuminate what metrics are available