Access Scheduling Research Articles

Exposure to sucrose during periods of withdrawal does not reduce cocaine-seeking behavior in rats.

Concomitant access to drugs of abuse and alternative rewards such as sucrose has been shown to decrease addiction-related behaviors in animals. Here we investigated whether access to sucrose during abstinence in contexts that are temporally and physically distinct from drug-related contexts could reduce subsequent drug seeking. In addition, we investigated whether a history of cocaine self-administration would alter the rewarding effects of sucrose. Rats self-administered cocaine for ten sessions, while yoked-saline rats received only saline injections, and then we subjected them to a 30-day withdrawal period during which they had access to water and sucrose continuously or intermittently according to a schedule that induces binge-drinking behavior. At the end of the withdrawal period, rats were tested for cocaine seeking behavior during a single 6 h session. We found that exposure to cocaine increased sucrose consumption only when rats had intermittent access to sucrose, but exposure to sucrose did not alter drug seeking regardless of the schedule of access. These results suggest that exposure to cocaine cross-sensitizes to the rewarding effects of sucrose, but exposure to sucrose during abstinence, temporally and physically distinct from drug-related environments, does not to reduce drug seeking.

Throughput enhancement of IEEE 802.11ad through space‐time division multiple access scheduling of multiple co‐channel networks

60-GHz millimetre-wave (mm-wave) communication is gradually becoming a promising candidate for the next generation wireless system to meet the demands of mobile applications. To compensate for high path loss, directional links are established in mm-wave communication system, which adds opportunity for spatial reuse. As one of its most promising protocols for commercial production, IEEE 802.11ad standard provides a mechanism to support space-time division multiple access (STDMA) within a single network. However, the interference level among different co-channel networks is much lower than that inside a network, which provides greater potential for spatial reuse. In this study, based on the architecture and timing structure of IEEE 802.11ad, the authors propose a spatial reuse strategy among multiple co-channel networks. They formulate the problem as a mixed-integer non-linear programming problem, and then propose an inter-network STDMA scheduling algorithm, which considers clustering frame structure in IEEE 802.11ad, and combines greedy principle and mutual interference avoidance strategy. Extensive simulation results have shown that the proposed scheme enlarges total throughput in comparison with STDMA inside each network, as well as non-STDMA scheme. Meanwhile, it achieves the lowest packet loss rate under heavy traffic load.

Can ASEAN+1 FTAs Be a Pathway towards Negotiating and Designing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement?

This article undertakes a comparative analysis of five ASEAN 1 Free Trade Agreements and the ASEAN Economic Community to analyse the ease or difficulties in negotiating and developing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement by 2015 and beyond. The analysis suggests that the ASEAN Economic Community and the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement are the most comprehensive agreements and have deeper commitments as compared to the other ASEAN regional Free Trade Agreements (FTA). Despite some broad commonalities, there are significant differences across them in terms of the negotiating framework, coverage of issues, deadlines and depth of commitments. This lack of coherence across the ASEAN 1 Free Trade Agreements and varying domestic interests of negotiating countries would be a difficult task to harmonize under the RCEP agreement. Adding to this complexity are the geopolitics in the Asian region and the emergence of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which involves seven of the RCEP members. The article concludes that the potential success of the RCEP negotiation would depend on the extent to which countries that are part of this partnership can reach a consensus on – substantial tariff elimination coverage, a common market access schedule, comprehensive coverage of WTO-plus issues and behind-the-border integration measures that enable both physical and institutional connectivity.

Memory Access Scheduling for a Smart TV

A smart TV system-on-chip (SoC) has very heavy computation and memory demands that must be met with low-cost components. As a result, there is potentially an extremely high utilization of the channel between the SoC and its memory chip. This paper presents the design of a new memory access scheduler customized for the type of memory traffic typically encountered with smart TVs. This includes special accumulated hard real-time graphics requirements, user response-sensitive soft real-time requirements, and the need to provide high memory throughput and priority-handling capabilities even under extremely heavy memory traffic conditions. The simulation results show that the proposed memory access scheduler is able to achieve up to 98% of the ideal upper bound memory throughput when faced with extremely heavy memory traffic—this is a significant improvement over previous schedulers. Novel future prediction and light-handed priority handling methods are used to achieve these results while satisfying the unique real-time requirements of smart TVs.

Game theoretical method for sum-rate maximization in full-duplex Massive MIMO Heterogeneous Networks

In this paper, we consider Massive MIMO in two-layer Heterogeneous Networks. The system has a large self-interference and co-channel interference due to operation in full-duplex mode. By using Game Theory, an optimized sum-rate is achieved. We investigate the potential sum-rate before and after the optimization under the power constraints. It is shown that the game theoretical method performed a very good access scheduling. Compared to non-optimized model, game theoretical method can achieve higher sum-rate.

A CSMA/CA-Based Media Access Protocol Using the Registered Backoff Time Vector (RBTv) Mechanism for M2M Communications

This paper proposes an enhanced IEEE 802.11 CSMA/CA media access scheme designated as CSMA/CA-RBTv, in which RBT denotes the Registered Backoff Time and v denotes vector for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication. In the proposed CSMA/CA-RBTv, when a mobile node transmits data to the AP, it attaches a random number called the RBT, which denotes the next time slot the mobile node would like to transmit its next data packet, to the packet. Once the AP receives the packet, it extracts the RBT and adds it to a Registered-Time-Slot-List (RTSL) used to conduct channel access scheduling. Before transmitting the ACK packet to the mobile node, the AP (1) selects the node with the smallest RBT from the RTSL list as the next one to access the wireless channel and (2) uses RTSL to make a bit vector marking which time slots have been registered for data transmission, i.e., channel access. Then, the AP appends the aforementioned two pieces of channel access information to the ACK packet. Since the ACK packet is transmitted in a broadcast manner, all of the mobile nodes which overhear the transmission know which node has the next right to access the channel and which time slots are still available for channel access. Consequently, the occurrence of collisions can be reduced, which also results in decreasing power consuming. The simulation results show that CSMA/CA-RBTv has significant improvement in both transmission performance and energy efficiency of the M2M network as the number of mobile nodes increases.

Adaptive TDMA scheduling for real-time flows in cluster-based wireless sensor networks

To prevent scalability problem caused by increasing traffic of real-time applications, cluster architecture with Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) scheduling scheme is mostly deployed in wireless sensor networks. However, even though it have proven good scalability and suitability for real-time communications, but static scheduling lacks of adaptability in several situations by not admitting some real-time flows where slots remain available. To solve mentioned problem, in this paper, we propose an adaptive cluster-based scheduling scheme for real-time flows by utilizing the time slots for flows according to type of flows such as inside or outside cluster. So, the proposed scheme can achieve better utilization of channel by minimizing the number of unused channels for real-time flows than static scheme through new adaptive TDMA scheduling scheme . Simulation results show that more flows are admitted and delivered within the deadline in the proposed scheme by utilizing unused time slots accordingly.

Analysis of Real-Time Applications Feasibility through Simulation

An approach to estimate feasibility of a real-time multi-task application with various combinations of the scheduling mode and the protocol of access to shared informational resources when run on a multi-core platform is described. The application structure is specified through a simple formalized profile consisting of segments of three types and specifying access to informational resources shared among application tasks, the amount of the required computing resource being estimated for each segment. The approach is based on the notion of application density introduced by the authors, which characterizes the use of computational resource by this application and is derived from estimation of the application feasibility for various values of processor performance and the number of its cores in case of a multi-core platform. The overall structure of a simulation tool for estimation of the task response time (and therefore, application feasibility) is described, which provides more exact data compared to the known analytical methods where they are applicable. Two dissimilar implementations of this tool were developed and run on a number of benchmarks, including Liu-Layland configurations specified in the described formalism for application structure; the results in form of charts are presented along with their analysis and interpretation. The suggested approach allows to indentify an optimal combination of the scheduling mode and access protocol for the given multi-task application structure.

On Minimizing Data Forwarding Schedule in Multi Transmit/Receive Wireless Mesh Networks

A key problem in wireless mesh networks is forwarding packets to/from one or more gateways with connectivity to the Internet. In this respect, a short link schedule, which determines the transmission time of links, is critical. To date, existing link schedulers do not consider routers that incorporate advances in multiple input multiple output communications, i.e., interference cancellation and spatial multiplexing. In particular, these routers are able to transmit or receive distinct packets on all their links concurrently as well as deliver multiple packets to a neighbor simultaneously. To this end, we consider the problem of deriving a time division multiple access schedule that forwards packets to their respective destination quickly. We first consider the personalized broadcast problem, which assumes a single gateway and present Algo-PB, a solution that produces a schedule that is within 34.5% of the lower bound, and is 45.5% shorter than those computed by the state-of-the-art algorithms. We then extend the problem to consider multiple gateways. This so-called forest construction problem is modeled as an integer linear program (ILP). We then outline Algo-FC, a novel heuristic that generates a balanced forest by repeatedly picking a node from the heaviest tree and migrating it to another tree if doing so reduces the overall load. Experiment results show that the resulting forest generated by Algo-FC is within 9.1% of the ILP solution.

Optimal Scheduling for Interference Mitigation by Range Information

The multiple access scheduling decides how the channel is shared among the nodes in the network. Typically scheduling algorithms aims at increasing the channel utilization and thereby throughput of the network. This paper describes several algorithms for generating an optimal schedule in terms of channel utilization for multiple access by utilizing range information in a fully connected network. We also provide detailed analysis for the proposed algorithms performance in terms of their complexity, convergence, and effect of non-idealities in the network. The performance of the proposed schemes are compared with non-aided methods to quantify the benefits of using the range information in the communication. The proposed methods have several favorable properties for the scalable systems. We show that the proposed techniques yields better channel utilization and throughput as the number of nodes in the network increases. We provide simulation results in support of this claim. The proposed methods indicate that the throughput can be increased on average by $\mathbf {3\text{-}10}$ times for typical network configurations.

天基激光网络在线分布式接入调度算法

天基激光网络在线分布式接入调度算法

Individual Variation in Alcohol Intake Predicts Reinforcement, Motivation, and Compulsive Alcohol Use in Rats.

Alcohol is one of the most commonly used psychoactive substances. Prolonged alcohol use can result in alcohol use disorder (AUD), characterized by excessive and compulsive alcohol consumption. Importantly, however, the development of AUD only happens in a minority of individuals who consume alcohol. To understand the individual vulnerability for AUD, models that capture both the individual variability in alcohol consumption and the transition from casual to compulsive alcohol use are essential. Individual variability in voluntary alcohol intake and the preference for alcohol were assessed under continuous alcohol access (CAA) and intermittent-every-other-day alcohol access (IAA) schedules in the home cage using outbred Lister Hooded rats. Subsequently, the reinforcing properties of alcohol were tested in an operant setting. In subsequent experiments, we performed a quinine adulteration experiment to assess inflexible alcohol consumption and blood alcohol levels (BALs) were assessed after voluntary alcohol consumption. We found marked individual differences in alcohol consumption and preference under both access schedules, whereby subgroups of high- and low-alcohol-drinking rats (HD and LD) could be identified. HD with IAA increased their alcohol intake over days in the first month, whereas LD did not. Moreover, when alcohol access time was extended from 7 to 24 h/d for rats with IAA, alcohol intake profoundly increased in HD with IAA, whereas LD with IAA maintained low levels of alcohol intake. Furthermore, HD earned more alcohol than LD under both fixed ratio and progressive ratio schedules of reinforcement. We further found that HD continued their intake of a quinine-adulterated alcohol solution to a larger extent than LD and HD showed higher BALs after 30 minutes of alcohol consumption. These profound individual differences in alcohol intake, reinforcement, motivation, and AUD-like behavior provide a promising tool to unravel the neurobehavioral underpinnings of individual vulnerability for AUD.

Studying physician-adolescent patient communication in community-based practices: recruitment challenges and solutions.

Practice-based studies are needed to assess how physicians communicate health messages about weight to overweight/obese adolescent patients, but successful recruitment to such studies is challenging. This paper describes challenges, solutions, and lessons learned to recruit physicians and adolescents to the Teen Communicating Health Analyzing Talk (CHAT) study, a randomized controlled trial of a communication skills intervention for primary care physicians to enhance communication about weight with overweight/obese adolescents. A "peer-to-peer" approach was used to recruit physicians, including the use of "clinic champions" who liaised between study leaders and physicians. Consistent rapport and cooperative working relationships with physicians and clinic staff were developed and maintained. Adolescent clinic files were reviewed (HIPAA waiver) to assess eligibility. Parents could elect to opt-out for their children. To encourage enrollment, confidentiality of audio recordings was emphasized, and financial incentives were offered to all participants. We recruited 49 physicians and audio-recorded 391 of their overweight/obese adolescents' visits. Recruitment challenges included 1) physician reticence to participate; 2) variability in clinic operating procedures; 3) variability in adolescent accrual rates; 4) clinic open access scheduling; and 5) establishing communication with parents and adolescents. Key solutions included the use of a "clinic champion" to help recruit physicians, pro-active, consistent communication with clinic staff, and adapting calling times to reach parents and adolescents. Recruiting physicians and adolescents to audio-recorded, practice-based health communication studies can be successful. Anticipated challenges to recruiting can be met with advanced planning; however, optimal solutions to challenges evolve as recruitment progresses.

HMMC: A memory controller for heterogeneous Multi-core System

In a multi-core environment, the memory system and the scheduling of memory accesses are important factors that influence the performance of applications. The system encounters multiple delays (e.g. memory and task management), which degrade the overall system performance. This performance degradation demands an efficient memory system and high speed scheduler, which feeds complex data access patterns to the appropriate processing core. In this work, we propose an efficient scheduler and intelligent memory manager for heterogeneous Multi-core System, known as HMMC (Heterogeneous Multi-Core Memory Controller), which proficiently handles data movement and computational tasks. The proposed HMMC system improves performance by managing complex data transfers at run-time and scheduling multi-cores without the intervention of a control processor or an operating system. HMMC has been coupled with a heterogeneous system that provides both general-purpose cores and application specific accelerators. The HMMC system is implemented and tested on a Xilinx XC7VX485T FPGA VC707 evaluation board. In order to prove that our controller is efficient in a variety of scenarios, we run 17 benchmarks concurrently containing with different scheduling policies. The performance of the system is compared with a microprocessor based system that has been integrated with the Xilkernel operating system. Results show that the HMMC based heterogeneous multi-core system consumes 43% less hardware resources, 35.8% less dynamic power and achieves 6.8x of speed-up compared to the MicroBlaze-based heterogeneous multi-core system having Xilkernel support.

LALPC: Exploiting Parallelism from FPGAs Using C Language

This paper presents LALPC, a prototype high-level synthesis tool, specialized in hardware generation for loop-intensive code segments. As demonstrated in a previous work, the underlying hardware components target by LALPC are highly specialized for loop pipeline execution, resulting in efficient implementations, both in terms of performance and resources usage (silicon area). LALPC extends the functionality of a previous tool by using a subset of the C language as input code to describe computations, improving the usability and potential acceptance of the technique among developers. LALPC also enhances parallelism exploitation by applying loop unrolling, and providing support for automatic generation and scheduling of parallel memory accesses. The combination of using the C language to automate the process of hardware design, with an efficient underlying scheme to support loop pipelining, constitutes the main goal and contribution of the work described in this paper. Experimental results have shown the effectiveness of those techniques to enhance performance, and also exemplifies how some of the LALPC compiler features may support performance-resources trade-off analysis tasks.

Trait and state binge eating predispose towards cocaine craving.

Binge eating (BE) and drug seeking share similar behavioral features, including loss of control over consumption and compulsive seeking of the craved substance. Previous studies in animal models have demonstrated a complex interaction between 'state' BE, produced by intermittent access to a palatable diet, and 'trait' BE, a phenotypical proneness towards overeating. In the present study, we examined the relationship between state and trait BE and cocaine seeking. We used Otsuka Long Evans Tokushima Fatty rats, a genetic model for obesity that demonstrates BE-like behavior, and Long Evans Tokushima Otsuka controls. They received a schedule of limited access to a palatable diet (3 days/week or 5 days/week access to Ensure for a month). Next, they underwent cocaine self-administration training (1 mg/kg, 1 hour/day for 10 days) followed by extinction sessions (7 days). We found that the degree of BE-like behavior and the state and trait BE combination predicted cocaine craving patterns. Lower levels of dopamine D2 receptors in the prefrontal cortex were correlated with increased drug craving. Moreover, restricted access to an attractive diet was found to be a risk factor for heightened cocaine craving, particularly in trait binge eaters, as rats on the 3 days/week access schedule persistently failed to cease cocaine seeking throughout extinction. Hence, we postulate a joint role of state and trait BE as risk factors for heightened cocaine craving.

Prenatal exposure to ethanol stimulates hypothalamic CCR2 chemokine receptor system: Possible relation to increased density of orexigenic peptide neurons and ethanol drinking in adolescent offspring

Clinical and animal studies indicate that maternal consumption of ethanol during pregnancy increases alcohol drinking in the offspring. Possible underlying mechanisms may involve orexigenic peptides, which are stimulated by prenatal ethanol exposure and themselves promote drinking. Building on evidence that ethanol stimulates neuroimmune factors such as the chemokine CCL2 that in adult rats is shown to colocalize with the orexigenic peptide, melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) in the lateral hypothalamus (LH), the present study sought to investigate the possibility that CCL2 or its receptor CCR2 in LH is stimulated by prenatal ethanol exposure, perhaps specifically within MCH neurons. Our paradigm of intraoral administration of ethanol to pregnant rats, at low-to-moderate doses (1 or 3g/kg/day) during peak hypothalamic neurogenesis, caused in adolescent male offspring twofold increase in drinking of and preference for ethanol and reinstatement of ethanol drinking in a two-bottle choice paradigm under an intermittent access schedule. This effect of prenatal ethanol exposure was associated with an increased expression of MCH and density of MCH+ neurons in LH of preadolescent offspring. Whereas CCL2+ cells at this age were low in density and unaffected by ethanol, CCR2+ cells were dense in LH and increased by prenatal ethanol, with a large percentage (83–87%) identified as neurons and found to colocalize MCH. Prenatal ethanol also stimulated the genesis of CCR2+ and MCH+ neurons in the embryo, which co-labeled the proliferation marker, BrdU. Ethanol also increased the genesis and density of neurons that co-expressed CCR2 and MCH in LH, with triple-labeled CCR2+/MCH+/BrdU+ neurons that were absent in control rats accounting for 35% of newly generated neurons in ethanol-exposed rats. With both the chemokine and MCH systems believed to promote ethanol consumption, this greater density of CCR2+/MCH+ neurons in the LH of preadolescent rats suggests that these systems function together in promoting alcohol drinking during adolescence.

ANALISIS DAN IMPLEMENTASI MIKROTIK ROUTER BOARD RB450G UNTUK MANAJEMEN JARINGAN (STUDI KASUS : BADAN PENGKAJIAN DAN PENERAPAN TEKNOLOGI SUB BALAI BESAR TEKNOLOGI ENERGI (B2TE-BPPT) SERPONG)

The importance of a management of the network in B2TE and optimize use of existing network devices. During this time, the network system that is running can’t be managed properly. There are still problems, especially related to topology, traffic network system, bandwidth, access rights, and the login process. On the basis of these, carried out an analysis and implementation of development using Network Development Live Cycle (NDLC) with activity analysis, design, prototype simulation, implementation, monitoring, and management. Development method is applied to solve problems that occur. Data collection methods used are the methods of observation and interviews with the B2TE and do a similar study. To resolve issues related to topology, topology implemented using the router board. For traffic network system, load balancing system implemented by the method of Per Connection Classifier (PCC). Queue tree with Hierarcial Token Bucket (HTB) method and Per Connection Queue (PCQ) and hotspot system is applied to solve problems related to bandwidth and permissions. Single sign-on system (SSO) with Open LDAP and RADIUS functioned to minimize the use of username and password during the login process. From the test results of the implemented system, the selection router board it is appropriate to handle the problem topology. Load balancing with the PCC method, queue tree with HTB and PCQ methods and systems hotspot capable of answering traffic problems on the issue of network systems, bandwidth, and permissions. While the system SSO is capable of handling problems login process. For further development, it is expected that the system has been running for bandwidth management rule can be added to separate the local and international bandwidth. Then, for security, made ​​the policy in terms of access to the IP address and port. In terms of permissions, can be applied to the scheduling of access to certain sites. For the development of SSO, can be applied SSO system that can access multiple applications. DOI: 10.15408/ess.v4i1.1960

The impact of interventions on appointment and clinical outcomes for individuals with diabetes: a systematic review.

BackgroundSuccessful diabetes disease management involves routine medical care with individualized patient goals, self-management education and on-going support to reduce complications. Without interventions that facilitate patient scheduling, improve attendance to provider appointments and provide patient information to provider and care team, preventive services cannot begin. This review examines interventions based upon three focus areas: 1) scheduling the patient with their provider; 2) getting the patient to their appointment, and; 3) having patient information integral to their diabetes care available to the provider. This study identifies interventions that improve appointment management and preparation as well as patient clinical and behavioral outcomes.MethodsA systematic review of the literature was performed using MEDLINE, CINAHL and the Cochrane library. Only articles in English and peer-reviewed articles were chosen. A total of 77 articles were identified that matched the three focus areas of the literature review: 1) on the schedule, 2) to the visit, and 3) patient information. These focus areas were utilized to analyze the literature to determine intervention trends and identify those with improved diabetes clinical and behavioral outcomes.ResultsThe articles included in this review were published between 1987 and 2013, with 46 of them published after 2006. Forty-two studies considered only Type 2 diabetes, 4 studies considered only Type 1 diabetes, 15 studies considered both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, and 16 studies did not mention the diabetes type. Thirty-five of the 77 studies in the review were randomized controlled studies. Interventions that facilitated scheduling patients involved phone reminders, letter reminders, scheduling when necessary while monitoring patients, and open access scheduling. Interventions used to improve attendance were letter reminders, phone reminders, short message service (SMS) reminders, and financial incentives. Interventions that enabled routine exchange of patient information included web-based programs, phone calls, SMS, mail reminders, decision support systems linked to evidence-based treatment guidelines, registries integrated with electronic medical records, and patient health records.ConclusionsThe literature review showed that simple phone and letter reminders for scheduling or prompting of the date and time of an appointment to more complex web-based multidisciplinary programs with patient self-management can have a positive impact on clinical and behavioral outcomes for diabetes patients. Multifaceted interventions aimed at appointment management and preparation during various phases of the medical outpatient care process improves diabetes disease management.

Operational State Scheduling of Relay Nodes in Two-Tiered Wireless Sensor Networks

Operation state scheduling of relay nodes (RNs) in two-tiered wireless sensor networks is the focus of this paper. From multiple access control (MAC) viewpoint, scheduling of transmit, receive, and sleep operation states of RNs is formulated as an optimization problem under the objective of energy cost minimization. This problem is computationally intractable to solve optimally for practical problem sizes. With the perspective of a synchronous and schedule access MAC protocol, the problem is tackled using dual decomposition, and the solution is achieved collaboratively by RNs continually over time. To make the solution practically possible, a stochastic approximation iteration is provided, which results in an energy-aware MAC protocol with linear complexity. This protocol attains statistical convergence with respect to the time-varying channel state information in the time of its scope. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of this protocol in terms of consumed energy in comparison with classical protocols as a result of eliminating idle listening in the network.