Intelligent Resource Allocation for Massive Internet of Things Traffic

The Internet of Things (IoT) is considered a major trend in computing and in specific areas such as Smart Cities, Smart Grid, Industry 4.0, and mobile applications based on 5G. Typically, this set of technologies requires the orchestration of heterogeneous resources that are allocated over distinct infrastructures such as Cloud Computing, Cloud of Things, Datacenters, and network backbones. Consistent with this demand, the PSIoT-Orch framework was designed to orchestrate massive IoT traffic and to allocate network resources between Aggregators and Consumers in a Publish / Subscribe strategy. This dissertation aims to build an intelligent module for PSIoT-Orch that is capable of handling data types with different transmission requirements, aiming at the efficient use of a limited communication link. The proposed component uses Reinforcement Learning, more specifically, the SARSA algorithm to dynamically adjust the available bandwidth according to transmission priority. This solution, named PSIoT-SARSA, is validated in a simulation environment under the statistical methods of Analysis of Variance and Response Surface Analysis and, at the end of the study, it is observed that it obtained promising results. The contributions are focused on gathering an approach that allows allocating bandwidth in an intelligent way, allowing efficient scheduling of the IoT flow, in the scenario of the Smart Grid.

"Recalling-ls-Greatest": Personal Memory and Lyricism in Toyin Falola's A Mouth Sweeter than Salt and Counting the Tiger's Teeth

The reflective disclosure of the past is a major trend in African literature as indicated in writers like Wale Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and Ngugi Wa Thi­ong'o. Personal memory is also often employed aesthetically to mirror what is embedded in the past. Toyin Faiola the author of A Mouth Sweeter than Salt and Counting the Tiger's Teeth presents his childhood and teenage years, fam­ily history and the social and historical events of Ibadan, Ilorin and Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He also details his personal experiences as a witness to the Agbekoya rebellion of 1968-70. In presenting actions in the two self-narratives, Toyin Faiola exploits the resources of indigenous and contemporary African songs, incantatory chants and transliterated version of many lyrics. He uses the lyrics to also investigate the symbolic meaning of words used in the past and reiter­ates the prevalence of songs in Yoruba culture. The lyrics link together many themes as well as serving as an avenue for community and individual expres­sion. We have memorial songs, songs of rebellion, songs of sexuality and sa­tirical songs which mock teachers, the police and government officials. Faiola presents an inseparable relationship of mutual exchange between the oral and written traditions. However, our point of emphasis is to evaluate the context and usage of the lyrics and panegyrics in the two texts.

Exploring Social Media Data to Understand How Stakeholders Value Local Food: A Canadian Study Using Twitter

The consumption of local food, a major trend in industrialized countries around the world has experienced an unprecedented craze in the pandemic context that we are experiencing. Since the beginning of the crisis and in various media, communication about local food seems inconsistent. However, companies would have every interest in better communicating the multifaceted areas of the locality that customers value or adopting the same language if they wish to collaborate with each other. This research aims to identify and evaluate the “fit” or the “gap” of the different local food’ meanings of Canadian agri-food stakeholders through data mining of one of their communication media: Twitter. Using tweets by over 1300 Twitter accounts from Canadian agri-food companies and a popular hashtag, we analyze a sample of their tweets in 2019 and 2020 by creating and using a local food’ keyword dictionary based on the concept of proximity. Term frequency and multivariate analysis of variance of 16,585 tweets about local food show significant differences in dimensions of proximity used in communications. This study shows the interest of using the concept of proximity to better define and understand the valuation of local food products. In addition, it offers a methodology capable of distinguishing the nuances of meaning of the locality of products using natural data that is accessible via social media.

Soteriological aspects of the School of Amidism

The subject of this research is the soteriology of Amidism as a single formative force that contributed to the spread and acquisition of new features of the doctrine. The object of this research is the theory of salvation and rebirth in the Pure Land, which undergoes modification and adopts the elements of other schools and denominations. This article examines soteriology of the School of Amidism as a driving force that develops and promotes the doctrine of the Pure Land in the Far Eastern region during the Middle Ages. Comprehensive approach towards studying the system of soteriological aspects of Amidism allows comprehending the patterns of the process of establishment and strengthening of the doctrine in new sociocultural realms. An attempt is made to trace the peculiarities of the impact of other schools of Buddhism upon soteriology of Amidaist doctrine. The scientific novelty lies in the original approach towards examining the soteriological representations of the Buddhist direction. The soteriological aspects of Amidism are viewed as a single substrate, linking element, foundation for the doctrine of the Pure Land, which promotes its development and distribution on the Asian continent and neighboring states. Amidaist teaching has walked a long path, since conception of the idea of Pure Land to development of the complex doctrinal system. In the spatial context, Amidism transcends the boundaries, growing from the local belief to a major trend of Mahayana Buddhism. Soteriology of the doctrine has become the foundation, formative force, which contributed to strengthening and development of doctrine.

National and subnational short-term forecasting of COVID-19 in Germany and Poland, early 2021

We report on the second and final part of a pre-registered forecasting study on COVID-19 cases and deaths in Germany and Poland. Fifteen independent research teams provided forecasts at lead times of one through four weeks from January through mid-April 2021. Compared to the first part (October--December 2020), the number of participating teams increased, and a number of teams started providing subnational-level forecasts. The addressed time period is characterized by rather stable non-pharmaceutical interventions in both countries, making short-term predictions more straightforward than in the first part of our study. In both countries, case counts declined initially, before rebounding due to the rise of the B.1.1.7 variant. Deaths declined through most of the study period in Germany while in Poland they increased after a prolonged plateau. Many, though not all, models outperformed a simple baseline model up to four weeks ahead, with ensemble methods showing very good relative performance. Major trend changes in reported cases, however, remained challenging to predict.

Reevaluating Scorpion Ecomorphs using a Naïve Approach

BackgroundEcomorphs create the opportunity to investigate ecological adaptation because they encompass organisms that evolved characteristic morphologies under similar ecological demands. For over 50 years, scorpions have been empirically assigned to ecomorphs based on the characteristic morphologies that rock, sand, vegetation, underground, and surface dwellers assume. This study aims to independently test the existence of scorpion ecomorphs by quantifying the association between their morphology and ecology across 61 species, representing 14 families of the Scorpiones order.ResultsWithout a priori categorization of species into ecomorphs, we identified four groups based on microhabitat descriptors, which reflect how scorpion ecospace is clustered. Moreover, these microhabitat groups, i.e. ecotypes, have significantly divergent morphologies; therefore, they represent ecomorphs. These ecomorphs largely correspond with the ones previously described in the literature. Therefore, we retained the names Lithophilous, Psammophilous, and Pelophilous, and proposed the name Phytophilous for vegetation dwellers. Finally, we sought to map the morphology-ecology association in scorpions. We provide evidence that the morphological regions most tightly associated with ecology are the walking legs and pedipalps. Moreover, the major trend in ecomorphological covariation is that longer walking legs and relatively slender pedipalps (pincers) are associated with sandy microhabitats, while the inverse morphological proportions are associated with rocky microhabitats. ConclusionsScorpion ecomorphs are validated in a naïve approach, from ecological descriptors and whole body anatomy. This places them on a more solid quantitative footing for future studies of ecological adaptation in scorpions. Our results verify some of the previously defined ecomorphotypes and can be used as a starting point to understand the adaptive significance of ecological morphology.

Diagnostic self-tests

At a time when patient empowerment is being talked about as a major trend, diagnostic self-tests might seem like a good option for both the population and healthcare institutions seeking to influence health policies. Such tests enable individuals to assess their own medical condition in an autonomous way, and they could also help control healthcare budgets by providing earlier diagnoses. In France, the market for self-tests has recently expanded with a battery of new tests available for a variety of health conditions. However, these tests are still at an early stage of adoption and have stirred controversy in the medical community with regard to the usability of the information delivered to patients. The present study’s objective is to explore whether the general population between 30 and 50 years of age is ready to adopt these self-tests. A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews was conducted to investigate the thinking of 22 participants living in or around Paris with regard to medical self-testing in general and the latest types of self-tests in particular. The study’s findings highlight the participants’ low awareness of self-tests and their double-edged attitude toward them. The results suggest there is a discrepancy between patients’ stated willingness to emancipate themselves from medical professionals and their level of dependency when it comes to receiving a diagnosis. This finding calls patients’ willingness to be empowered into question and emphasizes a strong need for guidance by the medical community.

Modelling COVID-19 Scenarios for the States and Federal Territories of Malaysia

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes COVID-19 disease, which has become pandemic since December 2019. In the recent months, among five countries in the Southeast Asia, Malaysia has the highest per-capita daily new cases and daily new deaths. A mathematical modelling approach using a Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) technique was used to generate data-driven 30-days ahead forecasts for the number of daily cases in the states and federal territories in Malaysia at four consecutive time points between 27 July 2021 and 26 August 2021. Each forecast was produced using SSA prediction model of the current major trend at each time point. The objective is to understand the transition dynamics of COVID-19 in each state by analysing the direction of change of the major trends during the period of study. The states and federal territories in Malaysia were grouped in four categories based on the nature of the transition. Overall, it was found that the COVID-19 spread has progressed unevenly across states and federal territories. Major regions like Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Negeri Sembilan were in Group 3 (fast decrease in infectivity) and Labuan was in Group 4 (possible eradication of infectivity). Other states e.g. Pulau Pinang, Sabah, Sarawak, Kelantan and Johor were categorised in Group 1 (very high infectivity levels) with Perak, Kedah, Pahang, Terengganu and Melaka were classified in Group 2 (high infectivity levels). It is also cautioned that SSA provides a promising avenue for forecasting the transition dynamics of COVID-19; however, the reliability of this technique depends on the availability of good quality data.

Translating linguistic time

If Sartre is right and the tense of a text holds the key to its special strangeness (1947), how does this strangeness fare in translation? What can we learn from looking at the translation of grammatical tense and aspect in narrative texts in different languages? It is often simply assumed that translating grammatical cate gories of time in languages - because it has to do with what is considered the hard core of language, i.e. the grammar as opposed to the lexicon of the language - mainly involves mere linguistic constraints. Jakobson ’s famous motto (1987: 433) - “languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they can convey”- would therefore suffice to tell the whole story about the way in which linguistic time is translated. This paper argues, however, that this is not the whole story: it argues that the choice of tense in translation is more than just a grammatical agenda, and may actually reflect a number of different commitments. Section 2 examines some intriguing tense changes in the translation of children ’s literature: it discusses the motivations behind these changes and shows that by changing the ‘how’ of the original story through the tense choice the entire subjective perspective of the text is altered. Section 3 identifies a few patterns in the translation of past distinctions in Modern Hebrew. It suggests that in contrast to the more diversified means of translating aspectual meanings in previous decades, a major trend in the last decade or so has been to reduce all past sphere distinctions essentially to one single form, i.e. the simple past tense. Finally section 4 deals with the classical problem regarding the Biblical Hebrew tenses and their translation; it shows that the translation of the biblical verbs may be strongly determined by the different linguistic ideas (and even systematic theories) the translators adopt regarding the Biblical Hebrew tenses. In all these cases then, we observe that the translation of temporal meanings involves not only a commitment to specific temporal interpretations but also a commitment to more subtle conceptions of subjectivity in translation, of literary conventions and linguistic ideas.

Induction, identification, and characterization of autoallo-dodecaploid barnyard grass (Echinochloa crus-galli L.) using in vitro colchicine treatment

Polyploidization is a major trend in plant evolution that has many advantages over diploid. Barnyard grass (Echinochloa crusgalli L.) has many good characteristics, but has not been fully utilized until now. In this study, we report for the first time the in vitro induction of autoallo-dodecaploid E. crus-galli by colchicine treatment. Calli derived from young panicles were transferred to liquid medium containing different concentrations of colchicine (0.01, 0.05, or 0.1% w/v) and incubated for 24, 48, or 72 h. Treatment with 0.05% colchicine for 48 h was the most effective condition for producing polyploid plants, yielding 42.9% dodecaploids. The relative DNA content of the induced dodecaploids was twice that of wild-type hexaploids. The chromosome number of dodecaploids was 2n = 12x = 108, whereas that of hexaploids was 2n = 6x = 54. Compared with the hexaploids, the dodecaploids had larger individual stomata, but a lower stomatal density. There were significant differences between dodecaploid and hexaploid plants in terms of morphological variables, such as plant height, leaf length, panicle length, and grain size. Dodecaploid plants showed the obvious “gigas” effects of polyploid organs, as well as significantly reduced seed set. The nutritional concentrations of crude protein, crude fat, crude ash, and nitrogen-free extract in the dodecaploid were higher than those in the hexaploid, whereas the concentration of crude fiber in the dodecaploid was lower. Compared with the hexaploid, the concentrations of calcium, iron and some free amino acids in dodecaploid plants were significantly higher than in hexaploids. The dodecaploid E. crus-galli had been obtained successfully by treating calli with colchicine. And E. crus-galli has the potential to be developed as a new type of high quality forage crop for cultivation under stress conditions, especially the dodecaploid with its greater nutritional value.