This paper investigates a round-trip delay (RTD) and channel-aware scheduler in wireless communications for feedback control applications. We propose a simple uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) scheduling method that achieves high spectrum efficiency while preventing the RTD from exceeding the allowable maximum delay as much as possible. The proposed method derives the scheduling metric for round-trip communication to minimize the appropriately defined risk of transmission failure based on the expected delay time of candidate terminals. The proposed method is simple and realistic since it reduces the number of parameters to be carefully tuned compared to the conventional α-proportional fair round-trip multiple deadlines (AP-RMD) method. Computer simulation results reveal that the proposed method accommodates more terminals while guaranteeing the maximum allowable RTD under a limited system bandwidth with fewer parameter adjustments than conventional methods, including AP-RMD.

ABSTRACTCongenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (CHH) is a rare disorder that results in delayed puberty and infertility due to impaired secretion of gonadotropin‐releasing hormone (GnRH). Here, we present a case of a 25‐year‐old male with a known history of Plummer–Vinson syndrome and celiac disease, who presented with the chief complaints of easy fatigability, shortness of breath on exertion, difficulty in swallowing, and no secondary sexual characteristics. Physical examination revealed a pale, thin, and lean male appearing significantly younger than his chronological age with notable findings of microgenitalia, absence of facial and axillary hair, decreased muscle mass, and no deepening of voice. His workup for delayed puberty, including hormonal studies, indicated hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, whereas Genetic testing confirmed a normal male karyotype. U/S scrotum showed bilateral atrophic testes. However, Neuroimaging studies revealed a normal olfactory bulb, no findings of agenesis, and hypoplasia of the olfactory sulcus. Thus, our findings in this case were consistent with and favor the diagnosis of congenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, also known as Idiopathic hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. It can be misdiagnosed as functional hypogonadotropic hypogonadism or simple constitutional delay of growth and puberty, especially in the presence of chronic illness. Thus, clinicians should consider CHH as one of the differential diagnoses and adopt a multidisciplinary approach when evaluating patients with delayed puberty. Timely and accurate diagnosis is crucial to initiate appropriate hormonal therapy and prevent long‐term complications such as infertility and osteoporosis.

Every day we encounter situations in which decisions require trade-offs between the delay to one reward and the likelihood of receiving another reward. The current study was designed to extend a general discounting framework to gain insights into this fundamental trade-off process. Forty-three undergraduates adjusted the probability of receiving an immediate hypothetical monetary reward (either $200 or $10,000) until that probabilistic reward was judged subjectively equal in value to the same reward received with certainty after a delay (ranging from 1 month to 25 years). We replicated previous findings that demonstrated a linear relation between log(delay) and log(odds-against), derived from the subjective probabilistic values. This linear relation was predicted when these choices were analyzed with the hyperboloid functions that describe simple delay and probability discounting in human decision making. Additionally, we extended the discounting framework and showed that the trade-off between risk and delay was well described by a modified hyperboloid discounting model (R2s = .99). These findings suggest that the discounting framework provides a valuable approach for capturing complexities of human decision making.

This paper addresses the persistence of restrictions on foreigners’ access to public service positions, even 25 years after the enactment of Constitutional Amendment No. 19 of June 4, 1998, which equalized Brazilians and non-nationals in this regard. It aims to investigate the factors that currently explain the non-implementation of this right by most entities of the Public Administration within the geographic space of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, based on two hypotheses: simple legislative delay and xenophobia. To achieve its objectives, the article provides a historical context of how Brazilian nationality came to be a constitutional requirement for access to public positions and the subsequent abandonment of this practice. It then maps the current state of the right of foreigners to access public positions and, finally, presents the results of field research conducted in the most populous municipalities of the state, pointing out possible ways to overcome the issue. The findings indicate a general scenario of legislative delay, both due to a lack of demand from the affected community and the absence of prioritization of the matter by local administrations.

Language development is a significant process in neurodevelopment since it allows us to express ourselves and understand others. Most of the communication disorders occur in the preschool age. Methodology: non-experimental, exploratory, observational research. Contribution: in a sample of 1047 participants, the results show that the highest prevalence is simple language delay with 43.73%, followed by anarthric language delay with 26.14%. This is followed by Autism Spectrum Disorder with 7.51%. Then, to a lesser extent, aphasic language delay at .9%. Finally, audiogenic language delay was found to be .6%. In addition, 18% were found to be within normal parameters, with a p=0.05.

Electrocardiography (ECG) plays a pivotal role in diagnosing certain cardiac pathologies. Interpreters receive significant training in this area; however, an electrocardiogram must be performed correctly for accurate interpretation. It should also be recorded and interpreted swiftly. The aim of this study was to assess the level of technical knowledge regarding ECG performance among healthcare professionals. The study was conducted between June 2023 and September 2023. A total of 243 participants, including nurses, doctors, and medical and nursing faculty students, were enrolled. The participants were asked 16 questions via a Google survey. The participants were statistically compared based on their professions and workplaces. The relationships between the descriptive characteristics of the participants and electrocardiography knowledge scores were not statistically significant in terms of age, gender, employment status, or duration of employment (p > 0.05). However, medical faculty students had significantly higher ECG knowledge scores compared to nurses (p < 0.01). Among the nurses, those working in surgical units had significantly lower scores than those working in internal medicine and pediatric units (p < 0.05). In this study, 16 questions were used to evaluate ECG acquisition knowledge. The ECG knowledge scores of the participants ranged between 0-14 and the mean score was 6.95 ± 3.13, which is quite low for a simple and applicable test. A simple mistake or delay in performing an electrocardiogram can lead to catastrophic consequences. Although nurses are the primary personnel performing ECG, their technical knowledge in performing the procedure was not as proficient as doctors. Some areas of focus may lead to errors. Although research has consistently focused on interpreting ECG, we still do not know how to perform ECG properly. More emphasis should be placed on ECG training, with the potential for regular training throughout the year as needed. These simple and preventable errors can be more easily overcome with artificial intelligence-supported programs.

Complex systems, such as biological networks, often exhibit intricate rhythmic behaviors that emerge from simple, small-amplitude dynamics in individual components. This study explores how significant oscillatory signals can arise from a minimal system consisting of just two interacting units, each governed by a simple non-autonomous delay differential equation with a recently obtained exact analytical solution. Contrary to the common assumption that large-scale oscillations require numerous units, our model demonstrates that rewiring two units from self-feedback to cross-feedback can generate robust, finite-amplitude dynamical oscillations. This phenomenon arises in this context when an appropriate amount of delay is present in the feedback line. Our findings highlight the potential of this minimalistic mechanism to generate high-amplitude dynamical oscillations from much smaller amplitude units, drawing a physical analogy to rewiring feedback lines.

Quantum memories for light are essential building blocks for quantum repeaters and quantum networks. Integrated operations of quantum memories could enable scalable application with low-power consumption. However, the photonic quantum storage lifetime in integrated devices has so far been limited to tens of microseconds, falling short of the requirements for practical applications. Here, we demonstrate quantum storage of photonic qubits for 1.021 milliseconds based on a laser-written optical waveguide fabricated in a 151Eu3+:Y2SiO5 crystal. Spin dephasing of 151Eu3+ is mitigated through dynamical decoupling applied via on-chip electric waveguides, and we obtain a storage efficiency of 12.0±0.5% at 1.021 milliseconds, which is a demonstration of integrated quantum memories that outperforms the efficiency of a simple fiber delay line. Such long-lived waveguide-based quantum memory could support applications in quantum repeaters, and further combination with critical magnetic fields could enable potential application as transportable quantum memories.

BackgroundLanguage acquisition is a critical developmental milestone, with notable variability during the first 4 years of life. Developmental language disorder (DLD) often overlaps with other neurodevelopmental disorders or simple language delay (SLD), making early detection challenging, especially for primary caregivers.ObjectiveWe aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Gades platform, an adaptive screening tool that enables preschool teachers to identify potential language disorders without direct support from nursery school language therapists (NSLTs).MethodsThe study took place in a nursery school and an early childhood educational and psychopedagogical center in Madrid, Spain, involving 218 children aged 6 to 36 months, 24 preschool teachers, and 2 NSLTs. Initially, NSLTs conducted informational sessions to familiarize teachers with DLDs and how to identify them. Following this, the teachers used the Gades platform to conduct language screenings independently, without ongoing support from NSLTs. The Gades platform was enhanced to collect detailed profiles of each child and implemented an adaptive screening model tailored to account for variability in language development. This setup allowed preschool teachers, who are not language experts, to observe and assess language development effectively in natural, unsupervised educational environments. The study assessed the platform’s utility in guiding teachers through these observations and its effectiveness in such settings.ResultsGades identified language difficulties in 19.7% (43/218) of the children, with a higher prevalence in boys (29/218, 13.3%) than in girls (14/218, 6.4%). These challenges were most frequently observed in children aged 15 to 27 months. The platform demonstrated a high accuracy rate of 97.41%, with evaluators largely agreeing with its recommendations. Teachers also found Gades to be user friendly and a valuable tool for supporting language development observations in everyday educational settings.ConclusionsGades demonstrates potential as a reliable and accessible tool for early detection of language disorders, empowering educators to identify DLD and SLD in the absence of NSLTs. However, further refinement of the platform is required to effectively differentiate between DLD and SLD. By integrating Gades into routine preschool assessments, educators can facilitate timely interventions, bridging gaps in early childhood education and therapy.Trial RegistrationPan-African Clinical Trial Registry (PACTR) PACTR202210657553944; https://pactr.samrc.ac.za/TrialDisplay.aspx?TrialID=24051

A fractional-N LC oscillator-based PLL with a 1/4 quantization noise (QN) range reduction technique is proposed. Simple open loop delay cells are used to generate 4-phase clocks and reduce the QN by a factor of 4 while the mismatches of the 4 phases are calibrated and covered by a single DTC. Designed in 40-nm CMOS process, the proposed PLL achieves 159-fs RMSjitter with 2.6-mW power consumption, leading to -251.8-dB FoM.

Novel empirical models to assess rock fragment size by drilling and blasting

An intelligent decision-making system enabled by vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications is essential to achieve safe and efficient autonomous driving (AD), where two types of decisions have to be made at different timescales, i.e., vehicle control and radio resource allocation (RRA) decisions. The interplay between RRA and vehicle control necessitates their collaborative design. In this two-part paper (Part I and Part II), taking platoon control (PC) as an example use case, we propose a joint optimization framework of multitimescale control and communications (MTCCs) MTCCs based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL). In this article (Part I), we first decompose the problem into a communication-aware DRL-based PC subproblem and a control-aware DRL-based RRA subproblem. Then, we focus on the PC subproblem assuming an RRA policy is given, and propose the MTCC- PC algorithm to learn an efficient PC policy. To improve the PC performance under random observation delay, the PC state space is augmented with the observation delay and PC action history. Moreover, the reward function with respect to the augmented state is defined to construct an augmented state Markov decision process (MDP). It is proved that the optimal policy for the augmented state MDP is optimal for the original PC problem with observation delay. Different from most existing works on communication-aware control, the MTCC- PC algorithm is trained in a delayed environment generated by the fine-grained embedded simulation of cellular vehicle-to-everything communications rather than by a simple stochastic delay model. Finally, experiments are performed to compare the performance of MTCC- PC with those of the baseline DRL algorithms.

Extending dynamic memory of spiking neuron networks

Highly sensitive surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors have recently been recognized as a promising tool for various industrial and medical applications. However, existing SAW sensors generally suffer from a complex design, large size, and poor robustness. In this paper, we develop a simple and stable delay line ultra-high frequency (UHF) SAW sensor for highly sensitive detection of temperature. A Z-shaped delay line is specially designed on the piezoelectric substrate to improve the sensitivity and reduce the substrate size. Herein, the optimum design parameters of extremely short-pitch interdigital transducers (IDTs) are given by numerical simulations. The extremely short pitch gives the SAW sensor ultra-high operating frequency and consequently ultra-high sensitivity. Several experiments are conducted to demonstrate that the sensitivity of the Z-shaped SAW delay line sensor can reach up to 116.685°/°C for temperature detection. The results show that the sensor is an attractive alternative to current SAW sensing platforms in many applications.

Satellite altimeters require correction for tropospheric delay to precisely measure sea surface heights (SSHs). Wide-swath altimeters (WSAs), operating near nadir, experience a slowdown in microwave signals and slight path bending due to changes in the atmospheric refractive index. The continued fraction-based global navigation satellite system (GNSS) mapping function, originally designed for low-elevation-angle GNSS observations, inadequately addresses the challenges faced by WSAs at very high-elevation angles. In addition, it necessitates time-and-location-specific calculations based on numerical weather models (NWMs), limiting its effectiveness in offline applications. This letter introduces a novel atmospheric delay mapping function specifically developed for WSAs with incident angles below 10°. Utilizing the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)’s stratified atmospheric pressure data and the ray-tracing method, this function improves accuracy by supplementing a first-order trigonometric function with remainders. This approach markedly reduces model errors from the millimeter-to-centimeter scale down to the sub-millimeter-to-millimeter scale. This new mapping function, dependent on elevation angle, allows for direct projection in the slant-range direction once the zenith delay is determined, thereby significantly simplifying its application.

Models intended to describe the time evolution of a gene network must somehow include transcription, the DNA-templated synthesis of RNA, and translation, the RNA-templated synthesis of proteins. In eukaryotes, the DNA template for transcription can be very long, often consisting of tens of thousands of nucleotides, and lengthy pauses may punctuate this process. Accordingly, transcription can last for many minutes, in some cases hours. There is a long history of introducing delays in gene expression models to take the transcription and translation times into account. Here we study a family of detailed transcription models that includes initiation, elongation, and termination reactions. We establish a framework for computing the distribution of transcription times, and work out these distributions for some typical cases. For elongation, a fixed delay is a good model provided elongation is fast compared to initiation and termination, and there are no sites where long pauses occur. The initiation and termination phases of the model then generate a nontrivial delay distribution, and elongation shifts this distribution by an amount corresponding to the elongation delay. When initiation and termination are relatively fast, the distribution of elongation times can be approximated by a Gaussian. A convolution of this Gaussian with the initiation and termination time distributions gives another analytic approximation to the transcription time distribution. If there are long pauses during elongation, because of the modularity of the family of models considered, the elongation phase can be partitioned into reactions generating a simple delay (elongation through regions where there are no long pauses), and reactions whose distribution of waiting times must be considered explicitly (initiation, termination, and motion through regions where long pauses are likely). In these cases, the distribution of transcription times again involves a nontrivial part and a shift due to fast elongation processes.

In this paper, we investigate the complex dynamics of a mapping derived from a differential equation with simple time-periodic delay. Firstly, we calculate the truncated normal form of 1:1 resonance of the mapping at a degenerate fixed point and obtain an approximating system of the mapping by using Picard iteration. By analyzing the approximate system, we find that the mapping will undergo a 1:1 resonance at the degenerate fixed point. Secondly, the qualitative property and the stability of the degenerate fixed point are determined, which provide a new view to understand the dynamic of differential equation with simple time-periodic delay. However, the approximate system does not have the versal unfolding of the Bogdanov–Takens singularity of codimension 2. These phenomena show that simple time-periodic delay can support complex dynamics. Finally, a numerical simulation is carried out to verify the analytic results.

Electron plasma waves can be efficiently excited by a resonant train of ultrashort pulses, spatially separated by a plasma wavelength. Generating a pulse train from a single amplified ultrashort pulse may be challenging when dealing with large beams. Here we discuss a pulse splitting technique using a simple delay mask that can be adapted to large diameter petawatt beams. We show via detailed numerical simulations that unique signatures of electrons accelerated by a resonantly excited wakefield can be obtained from realistic focused double-pulse trains obtained from a single-region delay mask.

Influence of fluidelastic vibration frequency on predicting damping controlled instability using a quasi-steady model in a normal triangular tube array

Prior research has shown that during language comprehension, memory representations associated with premodified words (e.g., the injured and dangerous bear) are retrieved faster from memory than those associated with unmodified words (e.g., the bear). Current explanations attribute this effect to the semantic richness of modified words. However, it is not clear whether the presence of modifying words are in fact necessary for a retrieval benefit. Premodifiers necessarily delay the onset of the target word (i.e., bear), and temporal delays may heighten attention to upcoming stimuli, and/or strengthen encoding by producing free time during encoding, facilitating subsequent retrieval. We therefore examined whether a simple delay in the onset of the target can produce a retrieval benefit. Our results show that delayed onset facilitates the subsequent retrieval of target words in the absence of any modifying information. These results lend support to models of language comprehension according to which delays may enhance attention to upcoming words, and also to models of working memory based on which free time replenishes encoding resources, strengthening the memory trace of encoded information and facilitating its retrieval at a subsequent point. Our results also contribute to current memory-based theories of sentence comprehension by showing that retrieval from memory may be affected by nonlinguistic factors such as delay-induced attention enhancement, or free time during encoding.