Tethered Connectivity? The Spatial Distribution of Wireless Infrastructure

The Internet of Things, abbreviated as IoT, is a new networking paradigm composed of wireless and wired networks, geographically distributed and interconnected by a “secured” backbone, essentially, the Internet. It connects billions of heterogeneous devices, called Things, using different communication technologies and provides end-users, all over the world, with a variety of smart applications. IoT constitutes a new evolution for the Internet in terms of diversity, size, and applications. It also invites cybercriminals who exploit IoT infrastructures to conduct large scale, distributed, and devastating cyberattacks that may have serious consequences. The security of IoT infrastructures strongly depends on the security of its wired and wireless infrastructures. Still, the wireless infrastructures are thought to be the most outspread, important, and vulnerable part of IoT. To achieve the security goals in the wireless infrastructures of IoT, it is crucial to have a comprehensive understanding of IoT attacks, their classification, and security solutions in such infrastructures. In this paper, we provide a survey of attacks related to the wireless infrastructures of IoT in general, and to the most used short-range wireless communication technologies in the resource-constrained part of IoT in particular. Namely, we consider Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, and RFID wireless communication technologies. The paper also provides a taxonomy of these attacks based on a security service-based attack classification and discusses existing security defenses and mechanisms that mitigate certain attacks as well as the limitations of these security mechanisms.

With an increasingly mobile society and the worldwide deployment of mobile and wireless networks, wireless infrastructure can support many current and emerging healthcare applications. However, before wireless infrastructure can be used in a wide scale, there are several challenges that must be overcome. These include how to best utilise the capabilities of diverse wireless technologies and how to effectively manage the complexity of wireless and mobile networks in healthcare applications. In this paper, we discuss how wireless technologies can be applied in the healthcare environment. Additionally, some open issues and challenges are also discussed.

Due to recent advancements in wireless communication and on body sensing technologies, real time on body health monitoring systems are now becoming more feasible. This paper presents an overview of such newly evolving real time on body health monitoring technologies. A broad overview is provided on the modern wireless mobile communication infrastructure that is relevant to these real time wireless technologies. Conversely, examples of specific newly published work on wearable health monitoring sensing technologies are briefly described such as a non-invasive blood glucose monitoring system for diabetes, a dietary monitoring system for weight control, and a Wireless Electrocardiograph (WECG) monitoring system for heart disease management. In addition, this paper also shows that today's modern wireless infrastructure as provided by the current advanced mobile device and cellular industries such as iPhone, tablets, AT&T, and Verizon are really the cornerstone support for such real time health monitoring systems. These mobile phones or PDA like devices provide a very affordable and convenient solution to enhance the aforementioned wireless sensing for real time on body health monitoring. In conclusion, the upcoming mobile 5G performance standards with significantly higher data rate, spectral and power efficiencies can easily make this revolutionary real time on body health monitoring technology within reach of becoming a reality. This is a remarkable example of how wireless RF sensor and antenna technologies in concert with medical industry can provide effective and yet affordable solutions to the challenging chronic medical problems.

An unprecedented transformation in the design, deployment, and application of short-range wireless devices and services is in progress today. This trend is in line with the imminent transition from third- to fourth-generation radio systems, where heterogeneous environments are expected to prevail eventually. A key driver in this transition is the steep growth in both demand and deployment of WLANs/WPANs based on the wireless standards within the IEEE 802 suite. Today, these short-range devices and networks operate mainly standalone in indoor home and office environments or large enclosed public areas, while their integration into the wireless wide-area infrastructure is still nearly nonexistent and far from trivial. This status quo in the short-range wireless application space is about to be disrupted by novel devices and systems based on the emerging UWB radio technology with the potential to provide solutions for many of today's problems in the areas of spectrum management and radio system engineering. The approach employed by UWB radio devices is based on sharing already occupied spectrum resources by means of the overlay principle, rather than looking for still available but possibly unsuitable new bands. This novel radio technology has received legal adoption by the regulatory authorities in the United States, and efforts to achieve this status in Europe and Asia are underway. This article discusses both the application potential and technical challenges presented by UWB radio as an unconventional but promising new wireless technology.

Changing demographics and the trend to chronic disease management is driving the need for patient centric healthcare in the hospital and the community. In the hospital, wireless technologies will be found everywhere tracking people, assets, and patient flow. Wifi tags will capture patient flow data in a 100% wireless infrastructure allowing business & clinical decisions on diagnosis to be made in real-time. Multiple healthcare information technologies will be integrated. Clinicians will have access to vital signs and alarm history events as the patient is transferred between hospital departments, enabling them to make confident decisions at any stage. Remote Patient Monitoring and Body Sensor Networks will allow to manage patients in the community.

In order to answer the question raised in the article's title, a comprehensive study of Russia's transition process was conducted. With respect to the current growth rates in Russia, one may ask whether they indicate (1) success of transition or (2) favourable external circumstances such as rising prices for oil, gas etc. Analytically, progress in transition has been approximated by productivity and efficiency estimates, which are generally expected to rise during transition. In general, little evidence of such rising trends was found. Instead, notable ups, downs and divergences among regions were uncovered. According to this analysis, Russia's current growth rates can be attributed neither to general success of transition nor to Putin's reforms. Hence, the question mark of the article's title remains.

The municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in Hong Kong (HK) is increasing at a rapid pace, resulting in health and environmental issues for the public. Compared with Singapore and Shanghai, HK has a higher MSW generation rate due to less effective measures and government policies. To forecast the MSW generation and recycling in HK, system dynamics modelling was conducted using Vensim 6.0, based on the data collected from semi-structured interviews and official reports in the Environmental Protection Department of HK, the National Environmental Agency Singapore and Shanghai Environmental Protection Agency that regularly provide statistics on waste outputs. The simulation results show that shortly the MSW in HK will increase based on the current growth rates, and along with that, recycling will also increase. The recycling rates will offset that of the MSW generation due to the closure of landfills, and MSW will be effectively recycled due to more advanced disposal techniques. The strategies developed by the HK government will be able to manage the MSW disposal, but the city will experience more severe MSW conditions in the future as its landfills are expected to close earlier than planned. Recommendations for HK to deal with MSW generation were derived from the experiences in Singapore and Shanghai.

The article presents the results from numerical simulation and experimental investigation of the throughput capacity of Type 0PN-TP-3.0/4-UKhL 3 metal-oxide surge arresters (MOSA) used as part of a high-speed automatic DC vacuum circuit breaker for the maximal voltage equal to 4.1 kV. The vacuum circuit breaker operation principle isbased on forced lymaking the disconnected current to pass through zero by means of arranging opposite discharge of a pre-charged capacitor. A numerical model is proposed, whichhas been implemented in the Matlab 6.5 software package using the Sim Power Systems library. The applicability of the model has been experimentally confirmed in disconnecting a current by a vacuum circuit breaker through simulating a short-circuit fault current with different current growth rates. The investig a tions were carrie doutata heavy-current high-voltage test bench realizing an oscillatory circuit involving a capacitor bank for the maximal voltage of up to 6 kV and the total energy storage capacity of up to 1.8 MJ. The numerical model satisfactorily describes the processes in disconnecting acurrentina DC vacuum circuit breaker with forcedly making the current to cross zero. The model also make sit possible to estimate the amount of energy dissipated in the MOSA unit in disconnecting a short-circuit fault current. Byusing the proposed model itis also possible to estimate the number of parallel-connected MOSAs in disconnecting emergency currents in traction DC power supply networks with an inductance ranging from 5 to 15 mH.

The Information Age is fully upon us. A recent article noted that there are perhaps 50 million people using the Internet on a regular basis, and That “the current growth rate is about 15% per month (!) and this could well continue until almost all of those in the ‘developed world’ are connected” [FM94, p. 30]. In addition, the digital domain consists not only of text but increasingly of other media representations, from graphics images to audio to motion video. As the amount of information and number of users exponentially escalate, more attention focuses on the basic problems of information management: How do you digitize information? How can you then visualize it and find what you need? How do you use and manipulate it effectively? How is it stored and managed? The proliferation of technical articles and special issues addressing these questions underscore their importance; see for example the special issue on Content-based retrieval [Nar95] or digital libraries [F+95]. This chapter will survey some of that work, especially that which relates to the treatment of video and the use of digital video libraries For education.

At current growth rates, Internet traffic will increase by a factor of one thousand in roughly 20 years. It will be challenging for transmission and routing/switching systems to keep pace with this level of growth without requiring prohibitively large increases in network cost and power consumption. We present a high-level vision for addressing these challenges based on both technological and architectural advancements.

A 300-ps breakdown was registered in the experiments in the high-voltage open discharge with counter-propagating electron-beams with applying voltage pulses with rise times in 10–20 ns range. Discharge operates between two cathodes and grid-anode in the midplane at 10–35 Torr in helium at voltage 5–13 kV. It is shown in Particle-in-cell Monte Carlo collision (PIC MCC) simulations that the contributions of electrons, ions and energetic atoms in ionization and excitation processes are important for current development. The influence of different emissive cathode materials (titanium, silicon carbide, and CuAlMg-alloy) on evolution of discharge current is studied in the experiment and in kinetic PIC MCC simulations. The secondary electron emission from the cathodes is found to be a dominant process at the final stage of the breakdown. The current growth rate is larger (up to 700 A/cm2ns) for the cathode with a higher secondary electron emission yield. By choosing the cathode material, applied voltage amplitude and gas pressure, the characteristic time of the gas breakdown can be reduced.

Since 1972, there has been rapid growth in the end-stage renal disease (ESRD) program with the current growth rate between 5 and 7% per year. A recent report from the United States Renal Data System (USRDS) has indicated that there are over 410,000 maintenance dialysis patients, with Medicare expenditures of over 30 billion dollars to support the ESRD program in the year 2010 1. Approximately 30% of this total cost is due to hospitalization, which averages 14 days per patient year. Moreover, despite the many technical advances that have occurred in the delivery of dialysis therapy, the mortality rate of patients with ESRD remains high at over 20% per year.

Concentrations of P, N, K, Ca, and Mg in above-ground tissues ofP. caribaea were sampled in the species'native savanna habitat. Concentrations were relatively low, but some evidence of higher consumption of K and Ca was found in trees grown on more fertile soils. Regressions were developed to predict the quantities of nutrients sequestered in above-ground tree tissues, and estimates made of the quantities stored in above-ground stands of this species in its native habitat and in several plantations elsewhere. Estimates were also made of the nutrient removals to be expected by harvesting these stands in different ways. Nutrient quantities stored in stands generally exceed those extractable from savanna surface soils, and it is suggested that inputs from the atmosphere are the most probable alternate nutrient source. A comparison of these inputs for tropical areas with the quantities required for stand growth in the savanna, and harvesting removals, suggests that an adequate supply of all elements except P exists, provided that capture by pine is effective. However, atmospheric inputs generally fall below the storage and harvest removal rates for fast growing exotic plantations of this species suggesting that multiple rotations of these plantations at current growth rates may not be feasible without artifical fertilization.

Large-Scale CCS Constructability and Operational Challenges Assessment: A Decision Tool for New Users

Traffic externalities are growing continuously in cities due to increasing dependence of people on private motor vehicles (PMVs) for regular commute. While PMVs have some advantages such as privacy, flexibility, faster commute, comfort, and convenience, their use alone at the current growth rate is not sustainable. A well-planned and efficient public transport (PT) system will have the potential to efficiently and sustainably overcome these issues. This may not currently be the case in many cities, but can be, after appropriate user-centric improvements. This paper aims to review the existing literature to get a better understanding of: (1) service assessment attributes that can inhibit the use of PT, and (2) the possible improvement strategies that can effectively address the concerns related to each attribute. We developed cause and effect (Ishikawa) diagrams to connect service assessment attributes to corresponding interventions and improvement strategies.