An Energy-conscious Transport Protocol for Multi-hop Wireless Networks

We present a transport protocol whose goal is to reduce power consumption without compromising delivery requirements of applications. To meet its goal of energy efficiency, our transport protocol (1) contains mechanisms to balance end-to-end vs. local retransmissions; (2) minimizes acknowledgment traffic using receiver regulated rate-based flow control combined with selected acknowledgements and in-network caching of packets; and (3) aggressively seeks to avoid any congestion-based packet loss. Within a recently developed ultra low-power multi-hop wireless network system, extensive simulations and experimental results demonstrate that our transport protocol meets its goal of preserving the energy efficiency of the underlying network.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (NBCHC050053

A Two-step Statistical Approach for Inferring Network Traffic Demands (Revises Technical Report BUCS-2003-003)

Accurate knowledge of traffic demands in a communication network enables or enhances a variety of traffic engineering and network management tasks of paramount importance for operational networks. Directly measuring a complete set of these demands is prohibitively expensive because of the huge amounts of data that must be collected and the performance impact that such measurements would impose on the regular behavior of the network. As a consequence, we must rely on statistical techniques to produce estimates of actual traffic demands from partial information. The performance of such techniques is however limited due to their reliance on limited information and the high amount of computations they incur, which limits their convergence behavior. In this paper we study a two-step approach for inferring network traffic demands. First we elaborate and evaluate a modeling approach for generating good starting points to be fed to iterative statistical inference techniques. We call these starting points informed priors since they are obtained using actual network information such as packet traces and SNMP link counts. Second we provide a very fast variant of the EM algorithm which extends its computation range, increasing its accuracy and decreasing its dependence on the quality of the starting point. Finally, we evaluate and compare alternative mechanisms for generating starting points and the convergence characteristics of our EM algorithm against a recently proposed Weighted Least Squares approach.National Science Foundation (ANI-0095988, EIA-0202067, ITR ANI-0205294

Effects of heavy metals on seed protein fractions in chickpea, Cicer arietinum (L.)

Worldwide, different abiotic stresses, such as drought, salinity, and heavy metals, harm crop productivity. Legumes, compared to cereals, are more susceptible to these stresses. The current work aimed to provide more insights into the effects of Cd and Pb on various seed protein characteristics of two cultivars of chickpea (Cicer arietinum), HC1 and HC5. At the highest concentrations of Cd, the total seed proteins decreased from 25.2% (control) to 7.1% (30 mg/kg soil), while in the case of the maximum concentration of Pb, 300 mg/kg soil, the protein content decreased to 16.1% from 25.2%. The content of each of the four seed protein fractions viz. albumins, globulins, glutelins and prolamins decreased with an increase in the concentration levels of both heavy metals. The dominating protein fraction, globulins, was reduced by 21.7% in HC1 under Cd stress, while it was reduced by 11.9% in Pb-treated genotype HC5. Electrophoretic analysis of four seed protein fractions on SDS-gels showed only quantitative changes in the polypeptide patterns under varying concentrations of Pb with few qualitative alterations under Cd treatment. The contents of the amino acids tryptophan, cysteine and methionine also decreased with increasing concentrations of heavy metals. Compared to Pb, Cd was found to be more detrimental concerning its influence on seed protein quality. Thus, our analysis revealed how heavy metals impact the quality of chickpea seed proteins by decreasing the content of essential amino acids

Deep Learning Frameworks for Cardiovascular Arrhythmia Classification

Arrhythmia classification is a prominent research problem due to the computational complexities of learning the morphology of various ECG patterns and its wide prevalence in the medical field, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we used Empirical Mode Decomposition and Discrete Wavelet Transform for preprocessing and then the modified signal is classified using various classifiers such as Decision Tree, Logistic Regression, Gaussian Naïve Bayes, Random Forest, Linear  SVM, Polynomial SVM, RBF SVM, Sigmoid SVM and Convolutional Neural Networks. The proposed method classify the data into five classes N (Normal), S (Supraventricular premature) beat, (V) Premature ventricular contraction, F (Fusion of ventricular and normal), and Q, (Unclassifiable Beat) using softmax regressor at the end of the network. The proposed approach performs well in terms of classification accuracy when tested using ECG signals acquired from the MIT-BIH database. In comparison to existing classifiers, the Accuracy, Precision, Recall, and F1 score values of the proposed technique are 98.5%, 96.9%, 94.3%, and 91.32%, respectively.  &nbsp

Obtenção de camu-camu em pó com elevado teor de compostos bioativos.

bitstream/item/75027/1/pub-156.pd

Testing the Mutually Enhanced Magicity Effect in Nuclear Incompressibility via the Giant Monopole Resonance in the 204,206,208^{204,206,208}Pb Isotopes

Using inelastic $\alpha$-scattering at extremely forward angles, including $0^\circ$, the strength distributions of the isoscalar giant monopole resonance (ISGMR) have been measured in the $^{204,206,208}$Pb isotopes in order to examine the proposed mutually enhanced magicity (MEM) effect on the nuclear incompressibility. The MEM effect had been suggested as a likely explanation of the "softness" of nuclear incompressibility observed in the ISGMR measurements in the Sn and Cd isotopes. Our experimental results rule out any manifestation of the MEM effect in nuclear incompressibility and leave the question of the softness of the open-shell nuclei unresolved still.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physics Letters B. Very minor changes in tex