Additional Delay Research Articles

Do you agree? Contrasting Google’s Core Web Vitals and the impact of cookie consent banners with actual web QoE

Providing sophisticated web Quality of Experience (QoE) has become paramount for web service providers and network operators alike. Due to advances in web technologies (HTML5, responsive design, etc.), traditional web QoE models focusing mainly on loading times have to be refined and improved. In this work, we relate Google’s Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics for improving user experience, to the loading time aspects of web QoE, and investigate whether the Core Web Vitals and web QoE agree on the perceived experience. To this end, we first perform objective measurements in the web using Google’s Lighthouse. To close the gap between metrics and experience, we complement these objective measurements with subjective assessment by performing multiple crowdsourcing QoE studies. For this purpose, we developed CWeQS, a customized framework to emulate the entire web page loading process, and ask users for their experience while controlling the Core Web Vitals, which is available to the public. To properly configure CWeQS for the planned QoE study and the crowdsourcing setup, we conduct pre-studies, in which we evaluate the importance of the loading strategy of a web page and the importance of the user task. The obtained insights allow us to conduct the desired QoE studies for each of the Core Web Vitals. Furthermore, we assess the impact of cookie consent banners, which have become ubiquitous due to regulatory demands, on the Core Web Vitals and investigate their influence on web QoE. Our results suggest that the Core Web Vitals are much less predictive for web QoE than expected and that page loading times remain the main metric and influence factor in this context. We further observe that unobtrusive and acentric cookie consent banners are preferred by end-users and that additional delays caused by interacting with consent banners in order to agree to or reject cookies should be accounted along with the actual page load time to reduce waiting times and thus to improve web QoE.

Temporal control by cofactors prevents kinetic trapping in retroviral Gag lattice assembly

For retroviruses like HIV to proliferate, they must form virions shaped by the self-assembly of Gag polyproteins into a rigid lattice. This immature Gag lattice has been structurally characterized and reconstituted in vitro, revealing the sensitivity of lattice assembly to multiple cofactors. Due to this sensitivity, the energetic criterion for forming stable lattices is unknown, as are their corresponding rates. Here, we use a reaction-diffusion model designed from the cryo-ET structure of the immature Gag lattice to map a phase diagram of assembly outcomes controlled by experimentally constrained rates and free energies, over experimentally relevant timescales. We find that productive assembly of complete lattices in bulk solution is extraordinarily difficult due to the large size of this ∼3700 monomer complex. Multiple Gag lattices nucleate before growth can complete, resulting in loss of free monomers and frequent kinetic trapping. We therefore derive a time-dependent protocol to titrate or “activate” the Gag monomers slowly within the solution volume, mimicking the biological roles of cofactors. This general strategy works remarkably well, yielding productive growth of self-assembled lattices for multiple interaction strengths and binding rates. By comparing to the in vitro assembly kinetics, we can estimate bounds on rates of Gag binding to Gag and the cellular cofactor IP6. Our results show that Gag binding to IP6 can provide the additional time delay necessary to support smooth growth of the immature lattice with relatively fast assembly kinetics, mostly avoiding kinetic traps. Our work provides a foundation for predicting and disrupting formation of the immature Gag lattice via targeting specific protein-protein binding interactions.

Determination of optimum operating parameters of MWCNT-doped ethanol fueled HCCI engine for emission reduction

Carbon based metallic additives were widely researched to improve combustion charecteristics of spark ignition and compression ignition engines. It was proven that carbon nanotube additive shortens ignition delay period and improves combustion characteristics especially in diesel engines. HCCI is a lean burn combustion mode which provides high thermal efficiency and simultaneously low NOx and soot emission. However it has drawbacks such as misfire at leaner mixtures and knocking at high loads. Carbon nanotube could be used to improve combustion for HCCI engines as well. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of multi-walled carbon nanotube addition to ethanol and n-heptane blends on HCCI engine performance, combustion and emission by experimentally and statistically. During the experiments, the mixed fuels formed with %25 ethanol, %75 n-heptane and 100, 150 and 200 ppm MWCNT additives were used. The experiment of these mixed fuels was carried out at different lambda and engine speed values. Response Surface Method was implemented to determine optimal additive amount and operation parameters of the engine. The variable parameter values to be used in the experiments were created with the central composite design, and a total of 20 experiments were performed. According to the obtained results, IMEP, ITE, BSFC, MPRR, COVimep, SOC, CA50, CO and HC response parameter values were obtained. Response parameter values were entered into the RSM environment and optimization studies were carried out depending on the response parameters targets. Among the optimum variable parameter values, the MWCNT ratio was determined as 102.16 ppm, lambda 2.7 and engine speed 1124.439 rpm. Response parameter values after optimization were determined as IMEP 4.988 bar, ITE 45.988 %, BSFC 227.846 g/kWh, MPRR 2.544 bar/CA, COVimep 1.722 %, SOC 4.445 CA, CA50 7 CA, CO 0.073 % and HC 476.452 ppm.

The integrated analysis of primary and secondary incident characteristics: Focusing on the impact and scope of the safety service patrol program in Iowa

Secondary incidents are considered a major risk in terms of traffic management due to dangerous ramifications, such as reduced capacity, additional traffic delays, and serious injuries. Therefore, it is necessary to examine what causes a secondary incident to occur after a primary incident and prepare countermeasures to reduce the possible damage to human and property from primary and secondary incidents. In Iowa, a safety service patrol program is being implemented on major highway routes to respond to both types of incident efficiently. However, research on when, where, and under what conditions these incidents occur and how the program can deal with incidents must be conducted to determine the major characteristics of primary and secondary incidents and to estimate the program's performance. Consequently, statistical and spatial analyzes were performed on traffic incidents in a 5-year period (2016–2020) in Iowa. A survival analysis confirmed that the program could decrease the probability of secondary incident occurrences, and 99.9% of secondary incidents occurred within 4 h of the primary incident. Additionally, the binary logistic regression analysis of primary incidents affirmed that a longer incident clearance time and a higher severity of incidents could increase the probability of secondary incidents occurrence. Furthermore, a spatial analysis evaluated that the Iowa DOT safety service patrol program adequately covered areas where primary and secondary incidents are focused. This study is expected to be used to develop countermeasures in both incident cases by identifying the characteristics of secondary and primary incidents in Iowa.

Consistent constraints on the equivalence principle from localized fast radio bursts

ABSTRACT Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are short astrophysical transients of extragalactic origin. Their burst signal is dispersed by the free electrons in the large-scale-structure (LSS), leading to delayed arrival times at different frequencies. Another potential source of time delay is the well known Shapiro delay, which measures the space–space and time–time metric perturbations along the line-of-sight. If photons of different frequencies follow different trajectories, i.e. if the universality of free fall guaranteed by the weak equivalence principle (WEP) is violated, they would experience an additional relative delay. This quantity, however, is not observable at the background level as it is not gauge independent, which has led to confusion in previous papers. Instead, an imprint can be seen in the correlation between the time delays of different pulses. In this paper, we derive robust and consistent constraints from twelve localized FRBs on the violation of the WEP in the energy range between 4.6 and 6 meV. In contrast to a number of previous studies, we consider our signal to be not in the model, but in the covariance matrix of the likelihood. To do so, we calculate the covariance of the time delays induced by the free electrons in the LSS, the WEP breaking terms, the Milky Way and host galaxy. By marginalizing both host galaxy contribution and the contribution from the free electrons, we find that the parametrized post-Newtonian parameter γ characterizing the WEP violation must be constant in this energy range to 1 in 1013 at 68 per cent confidence. These are the tightest constraints to-date on Δγ in this low-energy range.

Exploration of the barriers and enablers of benzodiazepines deprescribing in prisons: A qualitative study among health and social care professionals.

The prison environment is a place of high consumption of benzodiazepines (BZDs) due to the anxiety and sleep disturbances, mental disorders, detoxification and trafficking. The study aims to explore experiences of health and social care professionals on the use of BZDs in prisons, as well as the barriers and enablers to their deprescribing. Semistructured individual interviews with professionals working in a prison setting were performed between March and April 2022, based on an interview guide. They were recorded and transcribed using the NVivo software. A qualitative analysis using an inductive approach based on a thematic analysis was performed. Sixteen health professionals were interviewed, including psychiatrists, general practitioners, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, musicologists and pharmacy technicians. The identified barriers to deprescribing BZDs were problems of coordination between prescribers, lack of time and alternatives. Concerning the enablers, therapeutic education groups, staff's awareness of the irrelevance of some medication and multi-professional advice were identified. This study highlights the similarities in deprescribing difficulties between prison and other settings. Some of the levers identified in our study have shown their effectiveness in different settings. Deprescribing is done most of the time in good conditions but requires an additional delay compared to the outside environment.

Remote clinical cognitive assessment: Validation of mobile interactive cognitive self‐assessment scale

AbstractBackgroundThe diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease relies on trained clinicians and specialized diagnostic tests. Under the circumstances of COVID‐19, the clinical interview is restricted, which caused an additional delay in diagnosis. Emerging demand for remote interactive cognitive assessment aroused for diagnosis and mass screening. We aimed to develop a mobile interactive cognitive self‐ assessment scale (ICSAS)MethodThe ICSAS was created by an expert group applying nominal group techniques and focus groups. Initial examination and iterative rounds were conducted in participants from the community and hospital to optimize the scale. The final version of ICSAS included 4 tasks, covering executive function, logic memory, visual memory, and logic memory recall. Validation was conducted in 387 cognitively impaired participants and 297 participants with normal cognition from the institution. 2034 participants were enrolled from the community.ResultNo significant difference was found in age and sex between cognitively impaired participants and normal controls. Years of education, the score of MMSE and MoCA were higher in normal controls. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.79 which indicated relative good reliability. The KMO value was 0.76, and the optimal cutoff point was 228.90, leading to the sensitivity of 0.90 and specificity of 0.71. The positive likelihood ratio was 3.10, and the negative likelihood ratio was 0.14, which suggested ICSAS as an ideal scale. 284 participants from the community were predicted to be cognitively impaired, accounting for approximately 15% of participants from the community, which corresponds to the prevalence research.ConclusionOur research developed a remote interactive cognitive self‐assessment scale (ICSAS) which has relatively good reliability and sensitivity. The ICSAS may ease the struggle of remote clinical cognitive assessment brought by the COVID‐19 pandemic. Also, from the long‐term perspective, the application of ICSAS may enhance the feasibility of cognitive assessment, and it may be ideal for mass screening and cognitively impaired patients’ monitoring.

Proxy Path Scheduling and Erasure Reconstruction for Low Delay mmWave Communication

In 5G and future cellular systems, use of multiple millimeter-wave (mmWave) links in parallel can enable interactive applications that demand consistent low delays with very high data rates. In previous work we introduced a mmWave multipath proxy that preemptively manages a set of mmWave paths to guarantee a steady data rate with high confidence. Here we explore the impact choice of packet sending path has on packet delay in this dynamic system, as well as the potential benefits <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">erasure reconstruction codes</i> (ERC) may provide in mitigating packet reordering delays at the receiver. We find that capacity aware scheduling improves packet delay, but that improvements diminish relative to the staleness of the capacity knowledge. ERC almost completely eliminates head-of-line blocking delays at the receiver, but any benefit is diminished by additional queueing delays induced by parity packets, unless they are selectively sent according to available capacity.

Relay-Assisted Platooning in Wireless Networks: A Joint Communication and Control Approach

This paper addresses the problem of the joint design of the mobile communication system and the control scheme for enabling vehicle platooning applications. Vehicles communicate essential information for platooning control through multi-hop vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications and are assisted in this task by Road Side Units (RSU), when available. While classical approaches, adopted in previous and current mobile systems, consider the application needs solely as requirements for the communication network, we advocate a bi-directional interaction of application and communication network. We first study the impact of different communication strategies on the application-level performance, namely the inter-vehicle distance in the platoon. Such schemes introduce a tradeoff between the packet delivery rate and the additional delay introduced by relaying. In order to assess the impact of both metrics, we start by developing a Markov model for the different communication links (inter-vehicle and vehicle-to-RSU). We then propose a cross-layer approach that adapts the application layer (platoon control parameters) to the observed Medium Access Control (MAC) layer performance. We demonstrate via simulations the benefit of the proposed relaying scheme, and that a joint design of application and communication systems is essential for enabling the integration of industrial applications in future generation networks.

What is needed to make a simple density-dependent response population model consistent with data for eastern North Pacific gray whales?

Census estimates indicate that the eastern North Pacific gray whale population showed an increase rate of some 3.2% per annum from 1968-1988. Further, historic records suggest that the population was ‘commercially extinct’ at the end of the 19th century. The standard HITTER-FITTER population model trajectories which pass through the 1987-88 census estimate of some 21,113, and utilise the customary historic commercial catch series, are inconsistent with both of these features; in particular, they generally show a decrease over the 1968-1988 period. The quantitative extent of various possible adjustment factors that would be needed to resolve these inconsistencies is examined. Depensation effects alone cannot account for the inconsistencies, while a model used to incorporate an additional response delay in recovery from exploitation produces unrealistic population oscillations. Other adjustment factors can, however, produce a 1968-1988 annual population increase rate of 2% or more, and all also correspond to a depletion of the population in 1900 to less than 25% of its size at the onset of commercial whaling in 1846. These are: an increase in the carrying capacity from 1846-1988 of at least 2.5 times; an underestimation of the historic commercial catch from 1846-1900 of at least 60%; or annual aboriginal catch levels prior to the commercial fishery at least three times those estimated by the 1990 Special Meeting of the Scientific Committee (IWC, 1993). These limits weaken if the adjustment factors are considered in combination rather than separately. The results appear insensitive to values assumed for the biological parameters of the population model (natural mortality, age at first parturition, age at recruitment and MSY level). However, they are sensitive to assumptions concerning data inputs, viz the accuracy of the 1987-88 census estimate used, and a 2:1 female:male ratio assumed for the commercial catches for which this information is not available. All trajectories which reflect a 1968-88 annual increase rate of 2% or more correspond to MSYR values (in terms of a 5+ exploitable population) of at least 4%. Fits of the population model to the series of gray whale census estimates are mis-specified, unless either or both of the historic commercial and aboriginal catches have been substantially underestimated (or carrying capacity has increased). The precision of these fits, conditional on fixed levels for such underestimation, is quite high, with coefficients of variation of about 10% for historic population sizes and about 20% for MSYR. There are indications that even if allowance was made for the uncertainty about these levels of underestimation, MSYR would remain relatively robustly estimated to be some 5% (or about 4% if expressed in terms of uniform selectivity on the 1+ population).

Hierarchical porous activated carbon anode for dual carbon lithium-ion capacitors: Energy storage mechanisms and electrochemical performances

BackgroundUtilizing the graphite anode and activated carbon cathode to construct dual carbon lithium-ion capacitors (DC-LICs) is recently attracted much attention owing to their cost-effectiveness, enlarged operating voltage, high safety, etc. Despite these merits mentioned above, the kinetic mismatch and imbalance capacity among the electrodes restricts the rate capability and energy density, respectively. MethodsHerein, the high mass-loading (9 mg/cm2) and flexible electrodes composed of hydrogel-derived hierarchical porous activated carbon (HHPAC) are prepared by mechanically blending, repeatedly calendared, and completely dried at 130℃. The resulting free-standing sheets were adopted as electrodes for DC-LICs. Significant findingsBenefiting from the distinctive textural properties (e.g., graphitic layers, multi-porosity, and huge specific surface area of 2,012 m2/g), the energy storage mechanisms of HHPAC anodes simultaneously follow the intercalation and adsorption phenomena, which were confirmed by electrochemical and micro-Raman identifications. Moreover, an additional capacitive contribution (∼31%) and voltage delay of 64 mV are reflected at 5 mV/sec, as evidenced using cyclic voltammetry. Consequently, the DC-LICs assembled with pre-lithiated HHPAC anode and HHPAC cathode exhibited outstanding rate performances (39.7 mAh/g at 0.1 mA/cm2 and 20.3 mAh/g at 10 mA/cm2) and comparable cyclability (81% of retention after 1,400 cycles at 1 mA/cm2), revealing that our HHPAC materials are promising for serving as anode and cathode in DC-LICs.

ConPoolUBF: Connection pooling and updatable Bloom filter based SYN flood defense in programmable data planes

SYN flood attack is one of the common ways in which attackers take the advantage of TCP’s three-way handshake connection establishment to overwhelm target systems. With the emergence of programmable networks, many promising security functions have been implemented at the network layer. SYN authentication and cookie-based SYN proxy are two significant approaches recommended on programmable switches against SYN flood attacks. However, while the implementation of a cookie-based SYN proxy causes additional delays and packet drops, the SYN authentication approach increases the number of packets required to establish a TCP connection. In this study, two novel functions are implemented on programmable switches using the P4 language, and a new security solution against SYN flood attacks is proposed by combining both functions. The first function is the high-accuracy updatable Bloom filters implemented to track the state of network flows for TCP connection establishment. As the proposed data structure uses a salted input, it is more resistant to target-set coverage attacks. The second is the connection pooling function on programmable switches for requests to the backend servers. In this regard, the TCP three-way handshake is offloaded from the target systems to network switches. Upon the verification of a connection request, dynamic resource allocation is carried out from the connection pool on the P4 switch, enabling the client to connect to the server seamlessly and transparently without the need for additional packets. We implement these functions and demonstrate their feasibility as an effective defense against SYN flood.

Design theory of compact power divider with reconfigurable power division and negative group delay characteristics

This article presents the combined analysis of reconfigurable power division and negative group delay (NGD) in a power divider. A novel composite transmission line based reconfigurable power divider with high power division ratio, variable negative group delay, and lower characteristic impedance is presented in this work. The impedance transformation in composite transmission lines control both negative group delay and power division. This power divider possesses a wide range of power division ratios from 1 to 39, adequate isolation, impedance matching, and NGD of -3.4 ns to -4.7 ns in the reconfigurable transmission path. The negative group delay is achieved without using any additional group delay circuits. Theoretical equations corresponding to the low characteristic impedance of the transmission line sections and that of isolation elements are derived. The measurement results justify the attainment of high tuning of the power division ratio and negative group delay. Isolation and return loss are higher than − 15 dB at the centre frequency of 1.5 GHz. The significant contributions of this design can be listed as the wide reconfigurable power division along with negative group delay and reduced size.

COVID-19 Infection as a Barrier to Postpartum Tubal Ligation [ID: 1355689

INTRODUCTION: About half of patients who do not obtain a requested postpartum tubal ligation experience pregnancy within the following year. There are many challenges to fulfilling postpartum tubal requests. Obstacles are exacerbated for those without private insurance, including Medicaid consent form requirements. Our institution considers postpartum tubal ligations “elective” and created policy prohibiting them for COVID-positive patients. We aimed to study how this creates additional barriers and delays to care for our patients. METHODS: This retrospective study identified patients with documented COVID infection at time of vaginal delivery who were unable to receive a requested postpartum tubal ligation at our institution between February 2020 and February 2022. Sociodemographic information, documented contraception ultimately obtained, and documented future unintended pregnancy were evaluated. Institutional review board approval was obtained. RESULTS: In a 2-year period, 24 patients were unable to receive requested postpartum tubal ligations at our institution because of COVID infection. 42% (n=10) of such patients were uninsured and 54% (n=13) had Medicaid. 92% (n=22) were Hispanic/Latinx. Average age was 33, and average number of prior pregnancies was 5. Only 21% (n=5) received an interval tubal ligation after delivery; no uninsured patients received an interval tubal ligation. Of the remaining patients (n=19), 37% (n=7) never received any contraception, 37% (n=7) received long-acting reversible contraceptives, and 26% (n=5) received another type of contraception. One patient had a future documented unintended pregnancy. CONCLUSION: Our institution's policy not to perform postpartum tubal ligations for COVID-positive patients prevented about 80% of patients requesting permanent sterilization after vaginal delivery from ever accessing this procedure.

ODM-BCSA: An Offloading Decision-Making Framework based on Binary Cuckoo Search Algorithm for Mobile Edge Computing

Computational task offloading facilitates real-time applications on constrained mobile devices that require a large amount of processing resources, high storage capacity and battery power. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is a computing paradigm that shifts computing resources closer to the user at the network’s edges. Heavy tasks are then offloaded to edge nodes, thereby reducing the computations required on the mobile side. However, offloading computational tasks may result in additional energy consumption and delays, due to network congestion and time spent in server queues. Thus, to minimize completion time and energy consumption, it is essential to optimize offloading decisions, while also considering the financial costs. In this paper, we propose an Offloading Decision-Making Framework based on the Binary Cuckoo Search Algorithm for Mobile Edge Computing (ODM-BCSA). We formulated an offloading problem as a mixed-integer optimization problem to minimize time, energy, and payment costs. We resolved the problem of resource allocation using the Binary Cuckoo Search Algorithm (BCSA). The simulation results revealed that offloading decisions depend on multiple parameters, including the number of mobile devices being handled by the edge server, the bandwidth, and the number of tasks. Decisions made also depended on the priority assigned to each objective. Finally, we compared the ODM-BCSA against a brute force search, proving that the ODM-BCSA is more efficient and greatly minimizes execution time when a huge number of mobile devices are involved (by 99.9 %).

ИССЛЕДОВАНИЕ ПАРАМЕТРОВ ФИЗИЧЕСКИ НЕКЛОНИРУЕМОЙ ФУНКЦИИ ТИПА АРБИТР ПРИ РЕАЛИЗАЦИИ НА ПЛИС

The influence of various circuitry solutions of a physically unclonable function (PUF) of the arbiter type and the location of their logical blocks on the parameters of the PUF are investigated. The increasing proliferation and use of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and, accordingly, devices connected to cellular and Internet networks, an urgent problem is to ensure the security and confidentiality of data access. It should be noted that IoT devices are demanding on a number of parameters, such as power consumption, integrated circuit geometric dimensions, and the requirement to protect against cyberattacks. As a simple, cost-effective and universal solution, hardware methods of physical cryptography proved to be the most preferred. Physically unclonable functions can be implemented in various devices by designing their circuits based on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA). The Xilinx FPGA of the Zynq-7000 family has been used for this study. This approach gives greater flexibility in terms of the architecture used and allows the system to be more precisely adapted to any need. EBAZ4205 and AntMiner_v1.0 FPGA debug boards based on the XC7Z010CLG400-1 platform with two built-in ARM Cortex-A9 processor cores have been used as monitoring and measuring equipment. The method of physical cryptography of devices is considered. Several configuration bitstreams of PUF the arbiter-type firmware with different arrangement of functional blocks on a chip have been developed and implemented. All configurations have been tested, and the results were shown to change depending on the PUF location on the chip. An important task while implementing the PUF of the arbiter type on any hardware platform is to equalize the lengths of the signal propagation lines. This can be achieved both by adding additional delay blocks on the line, and by increasing the length of the routed signal line. In this study the best results were obtained with manual routing and a "vertical" arrangement of the logical blocks of the circuit.

Double Graph Attention Actor-Critic Framework for Urban Bus-Pooling System

To unleash the power of buses, we propose a bus-pooling system that keeps the notion of bus stops and terminals but discards the concept of fixed bus lines by enabling buses to choose the next stop or terminal based on orders submitted by passengers. Each bus, unlike a taxi, must consider the additional delays experienced by the passengers already on board when deciding how to adapt its route to serve new orders. This paper treats each bus as an agent and formulates the buses’ re-routing decision-making process as a Semi-Markov game. Then, we propose a novel <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">double graph attention actor-critic (DGAAC)</i> framework by integrating high-level and low-level actor-critics separately with graph attention networks (GATs) to solve the game. Specifically, GATs embedded in high-level and low-level critics take a large-scale graph covering a city-scale area as input and capture graph-structured mutual influences among buses. In contrast, the high-level and low-level actors equipped with GATs only take the n-hop sub-graph with local information as the input and are employed as the distributed decision module of each bus. We conduct extensive experiments on one of the largest real-world datasets in Shenzhen, China, and validate that the proposed DGAAC framework greatly outperforms all baselines.

Birth Spacing and Child Maltreatment: Population-Level Estimates for North Carolina.

We examine population-level associations between birth spacing and child maltreatment using birth records and child welfare records for 1,099,230 second or higher parity children born in North Carolina between 1997 and 2013. Building upon previous research, administrative data linkages were used to address out-of-state migration and family-level heterogeneity in birth spacing and child maltreatment risk factors. Findings provide the strongest evidence to date that very short birth spacing of zero through 6 months from last birth to the index child's conception is a prenatal predictor of child maltreatment (indexed as child welfare involvement) throughout early childhood. Consequently, information about optimal family planning during the postpartum period should become a standard component of universal and targeted child maltreatment prevention programs. However, challenging previous empirical evidence, this study reports inconsistent results for benefits of additional spacing delay beyond 6months with regard to child maltreatment risk reduction, especially for children of racial and ethnic minorities. These findings call for further inquiry about the mechanisms driving the connections between birth spacing and Child Protective Services assessments.

Power-Intent Systolic Array Using Modified Parallel Multiplier for Machine Learning Acceleration.

Systolic arrays are an integral part of many modern machine learning (ML) accelerators due to their efficiency in performing matrix multiplication that is a key primitive in modern ML models. Current state-of-the-art in systolic array-based accelerators mainly target area and delay optimizations with power optimization being considered as a secondary target. Very few accelerator designs directly target power optimizations and that too using very complex algorithmic modifications that in turn result in a compromise in the area or delay performance. We present a novel Power-Intent Systolic Array (PI-SA) that is based on the fine-grained power gating of the multiplication and accumulation (MAC) block multiplier inside the processing element of the systolic array, which reduces the design power consumption quite significantly, but with an additional delay cost. To offset the delay cost, we introduce a modified decomposition multiplier to obtain smaller reduction tree and to further improve area and delay, we also replace the carry propagation adder with a carry save adder inside each sub-multiplier. Comparison of the proposed design with the baseline Gemmini naive systolic array design and its variant, i.e., a conventional systolic array design, exhibits a delay reduction of up to 6%, an area improvement of up to 32% and a power reduction of up to 57% for varying accumulator bit-widths.

How the timing of visual feedback influences goal-directed arm movements: delays and presentation rates

Visual feedback normally helps guide movements to their goal. When moving one’s hand, such guidance has to deal with a sensorimotor delay of about 100 ms. When moving a cursor, it also has to deal with a delay of tens of milliseconds that arises between the hand moving the mouse and the cursor moving on the screen. Moreover, the cursor is presented at a certain rate, so only positions corresponding with the position of the mouse at certain moments are presented. How does the additional delay and the rate at which cursor positions are updated influence how well the cursor can be guided to the goal? We asked participants to move a cursor to consecutive targets as quickly as they could. They did so for various additional delays and presentation rates. It took longer for the mouse to reach the target when the additional delay was longer. It also took longer when a lower presentation rate was achieved by not presenting the cursor all the time. The fraction of the time during which the cursor was present was more important than the rate at which the cursor’s position was updated. We conclude that the way human arm movements are guided benefits from continuous access to recent visual feedback.