Reconfigurable optical spectra from perturbations on elliptical whispering gallery resonances

Elastic strain, electrical bias, and localized geometric deformations were applied to elliptical whispering-gallery-mode resonators fabricated with lithium niobate. The resultant perturbation of the mode spectrum is highly dependant on the modal indices, resulting in a discretely reconfigurable optical spectrum. Breaking of the spatial degeneracy of the whispering-gallery modes due to perturbation is also observed

MIMO CDMA-based Optical SATCOMs: A New Solution

A new scheme for MIMO CDMA-based optical satellite communications (OSATCOMs) is presented. Three independent problems are described for up-link and down- link in terms of two distinguished optimization problems. At first, in up-link, Pulse-width optimization is proposed to reduce dispersions over fibers as the terrestrial part. This is performed for return-to-zero (RZ) modulation that is supposed to be used as an example in here. This is carried out by solving the first optimization problem, while minimizing the probability of overlapping for the Gaussian pulses that are used to produce RZ. Some constraints are assumed such as a threshold for the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). In down-link, the second and the third problems are discussed as follows, jointly as a closed-form solution. Solving the second optimization problem, an objective function is obtained, namely the MIMO CDMA-based satellite weight-matrix as a conventional adaptive beam-former. The Satellite link is stablished over flat un-correlated Nakagami-m/Suzuki fading channels as the second problem. On the other hand, the mentioned optimization problem is robustly solved as the third important problem, while considering inter-cell interferences in the multi-cell scenario. Robust solution is performed due to the partial knowledge of each cell from the others in which the link capacity is maximized. Analytical results are conducted to investigate the merit of system.Comment: IEEE PCITC 2015 (15-17 Oct, India

Personalized Degrees: Effects on Link Formation in Dynamic Networks from an Egocentric Perspective

Understanding mechanisms driving link formation in dynamic social networks is a long-standing problem that has implications to understanding social structure as well as link prediction and recommendation. Social networks exhibit a high degree of transitivity, which explains the successes of common neighbor-based methods for link prediction. In this paper, we examine mechanisms behind link formation from the perspective of an ego node. We introduce the notion of personalized degree for each neighbor node of the ego, which is the number of other neighbors a particular neighbor is connected to. From empirical analyses on four on-line social network datasets, we find that neighbors with higher personalized degree are more likely to lead to new link formations when they serve as common neighbors with other nodes, both in undirected and directed settings. This is complementary to the finding of Adamic and Adar that neighbor nodes with higher (global) degree are less likely to lead to new link formations. Furthermore, on directed networks, we find that personalized out-degree has a stronger effect on link formation than personalized in-degree, whereas global in-degree has a stronger effect than global out-degree. We validate our empirical findings through several link recommendation experiments and observe that incorporating both personalized and global degree into link recommendation greatly improves accuracy.Comment: To appear at the 10th International Workshop on Modeling Social Media co-located with the Web Conference 201

Sex in the city : an ethnography of the lives of sex workers in two clubs in Johannesburg.

This is an ethnography of the lives of sex workers in two clubs in Johannesburg. It aimed to explore the intimate lives of sex workers, focusing on how sex workers maintain boundaries between their work and their private lives. Difficulties and issues of time and access meant the research increasingly became one of illuminating the rich texture and social worlds of the two clubs. As it turns out, these women’s private lives are intricately linked to their work. The ethnographic research method uncovered the complex and otherwise hidden processes in the clubs, from the regimes of work, to the surveillance, drugs and money. The research revealed the exploitative nature of sex work at the clubs, but also the agency and choice that these women exercised in their work and private lives, challenging the notion of sex workers as mere victims

Design of Optimal Sparse Feedback Gains via the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers

We design sparse and block sparse feedback gains that minimize the variance amplification (i.e., the $H_2$ norm) of distributed systems. Our approach consists of two steps. First, we identify sparsity patterns of feedback gains by incorporating sparsity-promoting penalty functions into the optimal control problem, where the added terms penalize the number of communication links in the distributed controller. Second, we optimize feedback gains subject to structural constraints determined by the identified sparsity patterns. In the first step, the sparsity structure of feedback gains is identified using the alternating direction method of multipliers, which is a powerful algorithm well-suited to large optimization problems. This method alternates between promoting the sparsity of the controller and optimizing the closed-loop performance, which allows us to exploit the structure of the corresponding objective functions. In particular, we take advantage of the separability of the sparsity-promoting penalty functions to decompose the minimization problem into sub-problems that can be solved analytically. Several examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the developed approach.Comment: To appear in IEEE Trans. Automat. Contro