Semantically enriched Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) platform

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are becoming an essential source of information for both students and teachers. Noticeably, MOOCs have to adapt to the fast development of new technologies; they also have to satisfy the current generation of online students. The current MOOCs’ Management Systems, such as Coursera, Udacity, edX, etc., use content management platforms where content are organized in a hierarchical structure. We envision a new generation of MOOCs that support interpretability with formal semantics by using the SemanticWeb and the online social networks. Semantic technologies support more flexible information management than that offered by the current MOOCs’ platforms. Annotated information about courses, video lectures, assignments, students, teachers, etc., can be composed from heterogeneous sources, including contributions from the communities in the forum space. These annotations, combined with legacy data, build foundations for more efficient information discovery in MOOCs’ platforms. In this article we review various Collaborative Semantic Filtering technologies for building Semantic MOOCs’ management system, then, we present a prototype of a semantic middle-sized platform implemented at Western Kentucky University that answers these aforementioned requirements.     

Fault handling in large water networks with online dictionary learning

Fault detection and isolation in water distribution networks is an active topic due to the nonlinearities of flow propagation and recent increases in data availability due to sensor deployment. Here, we propose an efficient two-step data driven alternative: first, we perform sensor placement taking the network topology into account; second, we use incoming sensor data to build a network model through online dictionary learning. Online learning is fast and allows tackling large networks as it processes small batches of signals at a time. This brings the benefit of continuous integration of new data into the existing network model, either in the beginning for training or in production when new data samples are gathered. The proposed algorithms show good performance in our simulations on both small and large-scale networks.     

Distributed wireless power transfer in sensor networks with multiple Mobile Chargers

We investigate the problem of efficient wireless power transfer in wireless sensor networks. In our approach, special mobile entities (called the Mobile Chargers) traverse the network and wirelessly replenish the energy of sensor nodes. In contrast to most current approaches, we envision methods that are distributed and use limited network information. We propose four new protocols for efficient charging, addressing key issues which we identify, most notably (i) what are good coordination procedures for the Mobile Chargers and (ii) what are good trajectories for the Mobile Chargers. Two of our protocols (DC, DCLK) perform distributed, limited network knowledge coordination and charging, while two others (CC, CCGK) perform centralized, global network knowledge coordination and charging. As detailed simulations demonstrate, one of our distributed protocols outperforms a known state of the art method, while its performance gets quite close to the performance of the powerful centralized global knowledge method.     

结合公钥加密和关键字可搜索加密的加密方案

带关键字搜索的公钥加密(PEKS)是一种有用的加密原语，它允许用户将在加密数据上搜索的功能委托给不可信的第三方服务器，而不影响原始数据的安全性和隐私性。但是，由于缺乏对于数据的加密以及解密能力，PEKS方案不能单独进行使用，必须与标准的公钥加密方案(PKE)相结合。因此，Baek等人在2006年引入了一种新的加密原语，称为结合PKE和PEKS的加密方案(PKE+PEKS)，它同时提供了PKE和PEKS的功能。目前，已有文献提出了几种PKE+PEKS方案。然而，他们都没有考虑关键字猜测攻击的问题。本文提出一个新的高效且能够抵抗关键字猜测攻击的PKE+PEKS方案，与已有方案相比，该方案在性能上有很大的提升，并且在生成关键字和数据密文时，不需要使用双线性对，极大地降低了计算和存储成本。安全性分析表明，本文中所提出的方案能够满足密文隐私安全性、陷门不可区分性和抗关键字猜测攻击的安全性。效率分析表明，本分提出的方案更加高效。     

改进HSR-FCN的服装图像识别分类算法研究

目前网络上的服装图像数量增长迅猛，对于大量服装图像实现智能分类的需求日益增加。将基于区域的全卷积网络（Region-Based Fully Convolutional Networks，R-FCN）引入到服装图像识别中，针对服装图像分类中网络训练时间长、形变服装图像识别率低的问题，提出一种新颖的改进框架HSR-FCN。新框架将R-FCN中的区域建议网络和HyperNet网络相融合，改变图片特征学习方式，使得HSR-FCN可以在更短的训练时间内达到更高的准确率。在模型中引入了空间转换网络，对输入服装图像和特征图进行了空间变换及对齐，加强了对多角度服装和形变服装的特征学习。实验结果表明，改进后的HSR-FCN模型有效地加强了对形变服装图像的学习，且在训练时间更短的情况下，比原来的网络模型R-FCN平均准确率提高了大约3个百分点，达到96.69%。     

Energy-optimal base station density in cellular access networks with sleep modes

Sleep modes are widely accepted as an effective technique for energy-efficient networking: by adequately putting to sleep and waking up network resources according to traffic demands, a proportionality between energy consumption and network utilization can be approached, with important reductions in energy consumption. Previous studies have investigated and evaluated sleep modes for wireless access networks, computing variable percentages of energy savings. In this paper we characterize the maximum energy saving that can be achieved in a cellular wireless access network under a given performance constraint. In particular, our approach allows the derivation of realistic estimates of the energy-optimal density of base stations corresponding to a given user density, under a fixed performance constraint. Our results allow different sleep mode proposals to be measured against the maximum theoretically achievable improvement. We show, through numerical evaluation, the possible energy savings in today’s networks, and we further demonstrate that even with the development of highly energy-efficient hardware, a holistic approach incorporating system level techniques is essential to achieving maximum energy efficiency.     

Developing social impact assessment guidelines in a pre-existing policy context

Few jurisdictions have translated internationally agreed social impact assessment (SIA) principles into statutory provisions. Governments and regulatory bodies tend to provide developers with high-level frameworks, or require that social impacts be ‘considered’, without specifying how this is to be done. In Australia, this lack of clarity leaves all parties uncertain about requirements for SIA. The New South Wales (NSW) Government’s 2017 release of the SIA guideline for State-significant mining, petroleum and extractive industry development represents an attempt to clarify requirements and provide guidance. In this paper, we describe the process of bringing this guideline to fruition from the perspective of being directly involved in its development, and highlight the challenges involved in integrating leading-practice principles into the state’s pre-existing policy framework. While the guideline represents a significant advance in policy-based SIA guidance, some aspects leave room for improvement. The real test of the guideline’s impact will lie in its influence on SIA practice in NSW, and ultimately in social outcomes for communities affected by resources projects.     

A precise sensor fault detection technique using statistical techniques for wireless body area networks

One of the major challenges in wireless body area networks (WBANs) is sensor fault detection. This paper reports a method for the precise identification of faulty sensors, which should help users identify true medical conditions and reduce the rate of false alarms, thereby improving the quality of services offered by WBANs. The proposed sensor fault detection (SFD) algorithm is based on Pearson correlation coefficients and simple statistical methods. The proposed method identifies strongly correlated parameters using Pearson correlation coefficients, and the proposed SFD algorithm detects faulty sensors. We validated the proposed SFD algorithm using two datasets from the Multiparameter Intelligent Monitoring in Intensive Care database and compared the results to those of existing methods. The time complexity of the proposed algorithm was also compared to that of existing methods. The proposed algorithm achieved high detection rates and low false alarm rates with accuracies of 97.23% and 93.99% for Dataset 1 and Dataset 2, respectively.     

Specific emitter identification for satellite communication using probabilistic neural networks

Electromagnetic signal emitted by satellite communication (satcom) transmitters are used to identify specific individual uplink satcom terminals sharing the common transponder in real environment, which is known as specific emitter identification (SEI) that allows for early indications and warning (I&W) of the targets carrying satcom furnishment and furthermore the real time electromagnetic situation awareness in military operations. In this paper, the authors are the first to propose the identification of specific transmitters of satcom by using probabilistic neural networks (PNN) to reach the goal of target recognition. We have been devoted to the examination by exploring the feasibility of utilizing the Hilbert transform to signal preprocessing, applying the discrete wavelet transform to feature extraction, and employing the PNN to perform the classification of stationary signals. There are a total of 1000 sampling time series with binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation originated by five types of satcom transmitters in the test. The established PNNs classifier implements the data testing and finally yields satisfactory accuracy at 8 dB(±1 dB) carrier to noise ratio, which indicates the feasibility of our method, and even the keen insight of its application in military.