Fixed collision rate back-off scheme for collision resolution in wireless networks

This investigation proposes a fixed collision rate (FCR) back-off algorithm for wireless networks. The proposed scheme takes advantage of the central unit (CU) in a wireless network to broadcast a common back-off window size to all the users, significantly alleviating the unfairness of bandwidth utilization in conventional binary exponential back-off (BEB) algorithms. It is shown that, when maximum throughput is achieved, collision rate is almost a constant for any traffic load. In the operation of the FCR, the CU dynamically adjusts the back-off window size to keep the collision rate at a constant level for maximum throughput. Simulation results demonstrate that the unfairness of bandwidth utilization in the BEB is significantly lessened and the throughput can be maintained at e^-1≈0.368 when the number of users approaches infinity. The capture effect even further improves system performance.     

Templated titania films with meso- and macroporosities

Porous TiO₂ films with both mesoporosity and macroporosity were fabricated by a templated sol–gel method for applications, such as dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC), photocatalysis and catalysis. With the incorporation of differently sized pores, the resultant structures exhibit high surface areas and possess interpenetrating aligned pore channels, which are believed to be beneficial for applications where diffusion of reactants to interior surface can be rate limiting. Both liquid and solid TiO₂ precursors can be applied for large area coating in this process. Almost crack-free films were produced by templated coating of pre-synthesized TiO₂ nanoparticles. The measured specific surface area and porosity of synthesized films were in the range of 33–137 m²/g and 61–80%, respectively, depending on the size of the selected template.     

Characterization of Al-doped n-type ZnSe prepared under a zinc-rich growth condition by low-pressure organometallic chemical vapor deposition

High conductivity n-type ZnSe with = 0.01 ωcm and n = 2.4 × 10¹⁸ cm⁻³ is obtained on (100) GaAs substrates by low pressure organometallic chemical vapor deposition. The 14 meV full width at half maximum of the 77 K photoluminescence near-band-edge emission shows a high quality of as-grown Al-doped ZnSe epilayers. With a suitable Al doping level, a strong photoluminescence intensity of near-band-edge emission is obtained. The behavior of near-band-edge emission and of self-activated emission related to the incorporation of aluminum are discussed in this paper.     

Synthesis and two-photon absorption property of new π-conjugated dendritic fluorophores containing styrylpyridyl moieties

Four new multi-branched two-photon absorption chromophores, namely 1-(4-bromobenzal)-3,5-bis(4-((E)-2-(pyridin-4-yl)vinyl)phenyl)benzene (4), tris(4-((E)-2-(pyridin-4-yl)vinyl)phenyl)-benzene (5), 6-chloro-N²,N⁴-bis(4-((E)-2-(pyridin-4-yl)vinyl)phenyl)-1,3,5-triazine-2,4-diamine (6), tris-[4-(2-pyridin-4-yl-vinyl)-phenyl]-amine (7), have been synthesized and characterized. One-photon fluorescence, fluorescent quantum yields and two-photon fluorescence have been investigated. The experimental two-photon absorption cross-sections of 4–7 in DMF are 6, 11, 13 GM (pumped by 740 nm laser) and 19 GM (pumped by 800 nm laser), respectively. The calculated two-photon absorption cross-sections of 4–7 are 5.41, 7.67, 9.57 and 76.14 GM, respectively. The two-photon induced fluorescent peak wavelengths of 4–7 in DMF are 421, 425, 474 and 534 nm pumped by 680, 680, 740 and 800 nm laser, respectively. The results show that molecule 7 is a good two-photon absorption fluorophore possessing long two-photon fluorescent lifetime, good fluorescent quantum yield and large two-photon absorption cross-section. The two-photon absorption peak wavelength of molecule 7 is at 800 nm, which is favourable for initiating two-photon photopolymerization.     

Self-stabilizing depth-first token circulation on networks

Summary This paper proposes a self-stabilizing protocol which circulates a token on a connected network in nondeterministic depth-first-search order, rooted at a special node. Starting with any initial state in which the network may have no token at all or more than one token, the protocol eventually makes the system stabilize in states having exactly one circulating token. With a slight modification to the protocol —by removing nondeterminism in the search — a depth-first-search tree on the network can be constructed. The proposed protocol runs on systems that allow parallel operations. Shing-Tsaan Huang was born in Taiwan on September 4, 1949. He got his Ph.D. degree in 1985 from Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland at College Park. Before he pursued his Ph.D. degree, he had worked several years in the computer industry in Taiwan. Professor Huang is currently the chairman of the Department of Computer Science, Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, Republic of China. His research interests include interconnection networks, operating systems and distributed computing. He is a senior member of the IEEE Computer Society and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery. Nian-Shing Chen was born in Taiwan on October 21, 1961. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from National Tsing Hua University in 1990. Dr. Chen is currently an associate professor with the Department of Information Management at Sun Yat-Sen University of Taiwan. His research interests include distributed systems, computer networks, computer viruses and expert systems. He is a member of IEEE and Phi Tau Phi honorary society.This research is supported by National Science Council of the Republic of China under the contract NSC81-0408-E-007-05 and NSC82-0408-E-007-027     

Negotiation support systems: roots, progress and needs

Abstract. This paper identifies game theories and social behavior science as important roots for negotiation support systems (NSS) research. As these are not typically cited in the NSS literature, summary reviews of them are provided with indications of their relevance to NSS study. On the other hand, neither offers a sufficiently general-purpose formal model of negotiation that could serve as a backbone for NSS research. A survey of that research is provided, indicating that prugress to date has been somewhat eclectic and devoid of such a model. Our central contention is that a theoretical foundation for NSS study is much needed. Desirable characteristics of a suitable negotiation model are identified as guidance for future research that will aim to devise (and subsequently apply and test) such a model.     

Identifying epidemic spreading dynamics of COVID-19 by pseudocoevolutionary simulated annealing optimizers

Neural Computing and Applications - At the end of 2019, a new coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic has triggered global public health concern. Here, a model integrating the daily intercity migration...     

An SVD-based image watermarking in wavelet domain using SVR and PSO

The paper presents a novel blind watermarking scheme for image copyright protection, which is developed in the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and is based on the singular value decomposition (SVD) and the support vector regression (SVR). Its embedding algorithm hides a watermark bit in the low–low (LL) subband of a target non-overlap block of the host image by modifying a coefficient of U component on SVD version of the block. A blind watermark-extraction is designed using a trained SVR to estimate original coefficients. Subsequently, the watermark bit can be computed using the watermarked coefficient and its corresponding estimate coefficient. Additionally, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) is further utilized to optimize the proposed scheme. Experimental results show the proposed scheme possesses significant improvements in both transparency and robustness, and is superior to existing methods under consideration here.     

Genome-Wide Analysis Identified a Set of Conserved lncRNAs Associated with Domestication-Related Traits in Rice

Crop domestication, which gives rise to a number of desirable agronomic traits, represents a typical model system of plant evolution. Numerous genomic evidence has proven that noncoding RNAs such as microRNAs and phasiRNAs, as well as protein-coding genes, are selected during crop domestication. However, limited data shows plant long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are also involved in this biological process. In this study, we performed strand-specific RNA sequencing of cultivated rice Oryza sativa ssp. japonica and O. sativa ssp. indica, and their wild progenitor O. rufipogon. We identified a total of 8528 lncRNAs, including 4072 lncRNAs in O. rufipogon, 2091 lncRNAs in japonica rice, and 2365 lncRNAs in indica rice. The lncRNAs expressed in wild rice were revealed to be shorter in length and had fewer exon numbers when compared with lncRNAs from cultivated rice. We also identified a number of conserved lncRNAs in the wild and cultivated rice. The functional study demonstrated that several of these conserved lncRNAs are associated with domestication-related traits in rice. Our findings revealed the feature and conservation of lncRNAs during rice domestication and will further promote functional studies of lncRNAs in rice.