Cooperative Vehicular Content Distribution in Edge Computing Assisted 5G-VANET

By leveraging the 5G enabled vehicular ad hoc network(5G-VANET), it is widely recognized that connected vehicles have the potentials to improve road safety, transportation intelligence and provide in-vehicle entertainment experience. However, many enabling applications in 5G-VANET rely on the efficient content sharing among mobile vehicles, which is a very challenging issue due to the extremely large data volume, rapid topology change, and unbalanced traffic. In this paper, we investigate content prefetching and distribution in 5G-VANET. We first introduce an edge computing based hierarchical architecture for efficient distribution of large-volume vehicular data. We then propose a multi-place multi-factor prefetching scheme to meet the rapid topology change and unbalanced traffic. The content requests of vehicles can be served by neighbors, which can improve the sharing efficiency and alleviate the burden of networks. Furthermore, we use a graph theory based approach to solve the content distribution by transforming it into a maximum weighted independent set problem. Finally, the proposed scheme is evaluated with a greedy transmission strategy to demonstrate its efficiency.

Mobile Content Distribution with Vehicular Cloud in Urban VANETs

Plenty of multimedia contents such as traffic images, surveillance video, music and movie will flood into vehicular ad hoc networks. However, content distribution over VANETs is not a easy task, due to the high mobility of vehicles and intermittent connectivity. Infrastructure-based scheme can relieve the problem, but with a large amount of investment. In this paper, we propose a mobile content distribution scheme based on roadside parking cloud(RPC), which is formed by the parked car on the roadside, and mobile cloud(MC), which is formed by moving cars on the road. According to a trip history model, a mobile car can estimate its following trajectory. When it wants to download the content, gateway node of the RPC will work out a downloading schedule, which tells it how much chunks it can download from which RPCs. Moreover, the helper of the mobile car in mobile cloud would deliver specified chunks to it when there is lack of RPC in the following trip. Simulation results show that cloud-based scheme performs better than inter-vehicle communication approach and cluster-based scheme.

Distribution prediction of moisture content of dead fuel on the forest floor of Maoershan national forest, China using a LoRa wireless network

The moisture content of dead forest fuel is an important indicator of risk levels of forest fires and prediction of fire spread. Moisture distribution is important to determine wild fire rating. However, it is often difficult to predict moisture distribution because of a complex terrain, changeable environments and low cover of commercial communication signals inside the forest. This study proposes a moisture content prediction system composed of environmental data collected using a long range radio frequency band 433 MHz wireless sensor network and data processing for moisture prediction based on a BP (back-propagation) neural network. In the fall of 2019, twenty nodes for the collection of environmental data were placed in four forest stands of Maoershan National Forest for a month;7440 sets of data including temperature, humidity, wind speed and air pressure were obtained. Half the data were used as a training set, the other as a testing set for a BP neural network. The results show that the average absolute error between the predicted value and the real value of moisture content of fuels of Larix gmelini, Betula platyphylla, Juglans mandshurica, and Quercus mongolica stands was 0.94%, 0.21%, 0.86%, 0.97%, respectively. The prediction accuracy was relatively high. The proposed distributed moisture content prediction method has the advantages of wide coverage and good real-time performance;at the same time, it is not limited by commercial signals and so it is especially suitable for forest fire prediction in remote mountainous areas.

A Digital Right Management Model for Distribution of Digital Audiovisual Content

This paper presents a digital rights management model, which considers the integrated factors including legality, communication security, integrity of the content, and trading fairness. The architecture of the model, the necessary protocol for the copyright control and content distribution, the authentication mechanism which offer consumption registration for content fair distribution, of the model are all provided. The scheme also provides distribution and evidence for using the copyright of digital content fairly and effectively. Finally, analysis shows the proposed model has both high security and good performance.

Effect of Mercury Deposition on Mercury Content and Distribution in Rye Grass

A grass (Italian rye grass) experiment with complete design of three factors (Hg, grass and exposure) andtwo levels (with and without the factor tested) was carried out in Goteborg, Sweden from May to September,1995, toward understanding the effect of mercury deposition on plant Hg conteot and its distribution. It hasbeen foulld that besides the two general pathways of Hg absorption, i.e. root uptake and foliar absorption,mercury deposition can also significantly increase Hg content and total load in grass plant. Such effectsseem to be condned only within the above-ground parts of grass plant. Estimate has been made to makeclear of the contributions of different pathways to Hg content and total Hg load in the upper part of grass.Results showed that the coDtribution of Hg deposition accounted for 27%-32% of Hg content in the above-ground parts of grass plant without adding Hg to the soil, decreasing with the increase of soil and/or air Hgconcentrations. The increment of Hg load in the upper part of grass plant caused by Hg deposition duringan interval of two weeks varied between O.o1~O.o7 pg pot-1, contributing to 17%~48% of the total Hg loadin grass plant exposed.

Hybrid Content Distribution Framework for Large-Scale Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Content distribution in large-scale vehicular ad hoc networks is difficult due to the scalability issue. A message may need to be carried by several vehicles till it reaches the destination. To select an appropriate next-hop carrier, the current carrier should ex- change control messages with a large number of vehicles encountered, and thus the pure ad hoc solution is not scalable. In this paper, we introduce a hybrid-network solution. We first divide the area into regions, and select a hot spot in each region to install a road-side unit （RSU）. RSUs can coordinate message exchanges between vehicles, and storage devices are used to temporarily hold a message waiting for the next-hop carrier. The RSUs and the vehicles traveling between them construct an overlay store-car- ry-and-forward content distribution network. Two types of vehicles exist, one with fixed mobility patterns such as buses, and the other with random patterns such as taxis. Considering one or both types of vehicles, utility-based optimization problems can be formulated to find the optimal routing solutions. Using the bus and taxi traces of Shanghai city, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the hybrid framework in terms of delivery delay, delivery ratio and overhead ratio.

Carbon,Nitrogen,and Sulfur Contents in Marine Phytoplankton Cells and Biomass Conversion

In this study,we isolated and cultured phytoplankton along the coast of China and measured the cellular carbon,nitrogen,and sulfur contents under four temperatures.The results showed that the contents of the cellular elements varied widely among different phytoplankton.We found that temperature is one of the important factors affecting the carbon,nitrogen,and sulfur contents in phytoplankton cells;however,the degree of influence of temperature is different for different kinds of phytoplankton.By measuring the nitrogen content in cells,we found that the C:N ratio indirectly measured in the experiment fluctuated in the range of 3.50-8.97,and the average C:N ratio was 5.52.In this experiment,we accurately measured the cell elemental contents at different temperatures and transformed the cell count results into carbon,nitrogen,and sulfur contents to express the biomass.This method ensures that the contribution of species that are small in number but with a large cell volume in biomass is considered.Moreover,this method comprehensively considers the interspecific differences of species and the uneven distribution of elements in phytoplankton cells,which is of significance in the estimation of marine carbon and nitrogen budget.The distribution of nitrogen content in marine phytoplankton can well indicate the marine eutrophication caused by human activities.Climate change can affect the community structure and element composition of marine phytoplankton,meanwhile marine carbon and nitrogen element can regulate the climate to a certain extent.

Joint Content Caching and Fetching Scheme with Cooperative Transmission in Hierarchical Networks

Concerned with the surge of contentcentric applications,it is challenging to balance network traffic and cater to low-delay requirements.Hierarchical caching architecture of both edge network(EN)and core network(CN)emerges and leverages caching resources to reduce the delivery delay of contents.Most previous work takes an impractical assumption to treat the CN as a content provider,which neglects the collaboration by intermediate CN caches.Most importantly,it is still necessary to thoroughly study the tradeoff between CN delay and edge delay for files delivery so as to minimize the overall delivery delay across the network.In this paper,we consider a hierarchical caching network with distributed CN nodes and edge nodes,where cooperative transmission is enabled for edge nodes to transmit multi-files simultaneously.This poses a joint optimization problem of hierarchical file caching and fetching to minimize the overall delivery delay of requests.Since the problem is NP-hard,we decompose the original problem and design an iterative algorithm to address it.Numerical results validate that the proposed scheme can find a balanced solution between lowering edge delay by utilizing coordinated CN caching and lowering CN delay by solely relying on edge caching.

Root length density distribution and associated soil water dynamics for tomato plants under furrow irrigation in a solar greenhouse

Furrow irrigation is a traditional widely-used irrigation method in the world. Understanding the dynamics of soil water distribution is essential to developing effective furrow irrigation strategies, especially in water-limited regions. The objectives of this study are to analyze root length density distribution and to explore soil water dynamics by simulating soil water content using a HYDRUS-2D model with consideration of root water uptake for furrow irrigated tomato plants in a solar greenhouse in Northwest China. Soil water contents were also in-situ observed by the ECH_2O sensors from 4 June to 19 June and from 21 June to 4 July, 2012. Results showed that the root length density of tomato plants was concentrated in the 0–50 cm soil layers, and radiated 0–18 cm toward the furrow and 0–30 cm along the bed axis. Soil water content values simulated by the HYDRUS-2D model agreed well with those observed by the ECH_2O sensors, with regression coefficient of 0.988, coefficient of determination of 0.89, and index of agreement of 0.97. The HYDRUS-2D model with the calibrated parameters was then applied to explore the optimal irrigation scheduling. Infrequent irrigation with a large amount of water for each irrigation event could result in 10%–18% of the irrigation water losses. Thus we recommend high irrigation frequency with a low amount of water for each irrigation event in greenhouses for arid region. The maximum high irrigation amount and the suitable irrigation interval required to avoid plant water stress and drainage water were 34 mm and 6 days, respectively, for given daily average transpiration rate of 4.0 mm/d. To sum up, the HYDRUS-2D model with consideration of root water uptake can be used to improve irrigation scheduling for furrow irrigated tomato plants in greenhouses in arid regions.

Fine Characterization and Analysis of Drying Strain of the ELM Board via DIC Technology

In this paper,the occurrence and development mechanism of strain on the cross-section during the wood drying is explored.Therefore,strain regularity on the cross-section of 50 mm thickness elm(Ulmus rubra)board at the temperature of 40℃and 80℃is detected via digital image correlation technology.Hence,the difference between tangential and radial strain at surface and core layers was denoted.The results showed that strain distribution in the width direction of the board is uneven.Moreover,a large drying shrinkage strain occurs at the near-core layer,while the maximum strain difference reaches 4.08%.Hence,the surface of the board is cracked along the thickness direction.The radial strain of the board is higher than the tangential strain in the early stage of drying,while these strains are reversed in the later stage of drying.The temperature is related to the difference between the tangential and radial strains of the elm board.These differences at the core layer are larger than those of the surface layer.The conducted research results provide a theoretical basis for process optimization.

Isothermal diffusion of water vapor in unsaturated soils based on Fick’s second law

In arid regions, water vapor diffusion predominates the total water migration in unsaturated soil, which significantly influences agriculture and engineering applications. With the aim of revealing the diffusion mechanism of water vapor in unsaturated soil, a water vapor migration test device was developed to conduct the water vapor migration indoor test. The test results demonstrate that the characteristics of water vapor diffusion in unsaturated soil conformed to Fick’s second law. A mathematical model for water vapor diffusion under isothermal conditions in unsaturated soil was established based on Fick’s law. Factors including the initial moisture content gradient, initial moisture content distribution, soil type and temperature that affect the water vapor diffusion coefficient were analyzed. The results show that there was good agreement between the moisture content calculated by the mathematical model and obtained by the indoor experiment. The vapor diffusion coefficient increased with increasing initial moisture content gradient and temperature. When the initial moisture content gradient is constant, the vapor diffusion coefficient increases with the increase of matrix suction ratio in dry and wet soil section. The effect of soil type on the water vapor diffusion coefficient was complex, as both the moisture content and soil particle sizes affected the water vapor diffusion.

Effects of irrigation water salinity on soil salt content distribution,soil physical properties and water use efficiency of maize for seed production in arid Northwest China

In order to explore the use of groundwater resources,field experiments were conducted for three consecutive years during 2012-2014 in the Shiyang River basin of Northwest China.Irrigation was conducted using four different water salinity levels that were arranged in a split plot design.These four water salinity levels were s0,s3,s6 and s9(0.71,3,6 and 9 g/L,respectively).The soil salt content,soil bulk density,soil porosity,saturated hydraulic conductivity,plant height,leaf area index and yield of maize for seed production were measured for studying the effects of saline water irrigation on soil salt content distribution,soil physical properties and water use efficiency.It was observed that higher salinity level of irrigation water and long duration of saline water irrigation resulted in more salt accumulation.Compared to initial values,the soil salt accumulation in 0-100 cm soil layer after three years of experiments for s0,s3,s6 and s9 was 0.189 mg/cm3,0.654 mg/cm3,0.717 mg/cm3 and 1.135 mg/cm3,respectively.Both greater salt levels in the irrigation water and frequent saline water irrigation led to greater soil bulk density,but poorer soil porosity and less saturated hydraulic conductivity.The saturated hydraulic conductivity decreased with increase in soil bulk density,but increased with improvement in soil porosity.It was noted that the maize height,leaf area index and maize yield gradually decreased with increase in water salinity.The maize yield decreased over 25%and the water use efficiency also gradually declined when irrigated with water containing 6 g/L and 9 g/L salinity levels.However,maize yield following saline water irrigation with 3 g/L decreased less than 20%and the decline in water use efficiency was not significant during the three-year experiment period.The results demonstrate that irrigation with saline water at the level of 6 g/L and 9 g/L in the study area is not suitable,while saline water irrigation with 3 g/L would be acceptable for a short duration together with salt leaching through spring irrigation before sowing.

Double-Edge Intelligent Integrated Satellite Terrestrial Networks

The efficient integration of satellite and terrestrial networks has become an important component for 6 G wireless architectures to provide highly reliable and secure connectivity over a wide geographical area.As the satellite and cellular networks are developed separately these years,the integrated network should synergize the communication,storage,computation capabilities of both sides towards an intelligent system more than mere consideration of coexistence.This has motivated us to develop double-edge intelligent integrated satellite and terrestrial networks(DILIGENT).Leveraging the boost development of multi-access edge computing(MEC)technology and artificial intelligence(AI),the framework is entitled with the systematic learning and adaptive network management of satellite and cellular networks.In this article,we provide a brief review of the state-of-art contributions from the perspective of academic research and standardization.Then we present the overall design of the proposed DILIGENT architecture,where the advantages are discussed and summarized.Strategies of task offloading,content caching and distribution are presented.Numerical results show that the proposed network architecture outperforms the existing integrated networks.

Relationship between alumina mixing characteristics and feeder configurations in aluminum reduction cells

Because of the increasingly prominent problem of alumina content inhomogeneity in large or super-scale aluminum reduction cells,a transient numerical model for the alumina mixing process was developed for a400kA cell,and the relationship between the alumina content distribution and electrolyte flow field was analyzed.In the ANSYS software platform,several numerical simulation cases were presented to display the influence of the feeder configuration on the alumina mixing characteristics.The results showed that a large vortex flow of the molten electrolyte is beneficial for alumina mixing and uniform distribution in the inner areas of the vortexes.The alumina particles reach the inter-electrode zone in10?15s from the beginning of the feeding action,and the risk of early precipitation occurs in10?25s after the feeding.It was also found that a suitable grouping of feeders could reduce the content fluctuation and gradient.Therefore,a feeding on demand strategy was proposed,and the simulation results showed that although the spatial characteristics are not changed,the uniformity of the alumina content was markedly improved.

Strategies of Collaboration in Multi-Swarm Peer-to-Peer Content Distribution

In modern Peer-to-Peer （P2P） content distribution applications, multiple swarms typically exist, each corresponding to the dissemination of one content among interested peers. A common design in the existing P2P applications is to allow peers in one swarm to help each other, while different swarms are only coupled when sharing the upload bandwidth at the dedicated content servers/publishers. In recent years, a number of proposals have emerged which advocate inter-swarm collaboration and resource sharing, where peers in one swarm may contribute their storage and bandwidth resources to help peers in the swarm of another content. Such inter-swarm collaboration can improve content availability and optimize resource uti- lization in the entire system, at the cost of additional overhead for content preloading and inter-swarm coor- dination. This paper presents a survey of studies on effective inter-swarm collaboration mechanisms in the existing literature. This paper first discusses strategies of collaboration in P2P file sharing applications, and then presents multi-channel collaborative design for P2P live and Video-on-Demand （VoD） streaming. In particular, this paper elaborates our recent design of collaboration strategies among multiple streaming channels in a P2P VoD system, and shows that the server cost can be reduced by up to 25% while high streaming qualities are guaranteed in the entire system, even during extreme scenarios such as unexpected flash crowds. This paper also discusses representative approaches to implement inter-swarm collaborations in various P2P content distribution systems.

CFD simulation of effect of anode configuration on gas–liquid flow and alumina transport process in an aluminum reduction cell

Numerical simulations of gas–liquid two-phase flow and alumina transport process in an aluminum reduction cell were conducted to investigate the effects of anode configurations on the bath flow, gas volume fraction and alumina content distributions. An Euler–Euler two-fluid model was employed coupled with a species transport equation for alumina content. Three different anode configurations such as anode without a slot, anode with a longitudinal slot and anode with a transversal slot were studied in the simulation. The simulation results clearly show that the slots can reduce the bath velocity and promote the releasing of the anode gas, but can not contribute to the uniformity of the alumina content. Comparisons of the effects between the longitudinal and transversal slots indicate that the longitudinal slot is better in terms of gas–liquid flow but is disadvantageous for alumina mixing and transport process due to a decrease of anode gas under the anode bottom surface. It is demonstrated from the simulations that the mixing and transfer characteristics of alumina are controlled to great extent by the anode gas forces while the electromagnetic forces(EMFs) play the second role.

Relaying strategy for peer-to-peer content distribution based on genetic algorithm

This article proposes a cooperative relaying strategy to efficiently utilize the relaying resources of Interact service providers （ISPs）, speedup distribution and save server bandwidth costs. ISPs cooperatively relay for each other, and peers assist in distributing and fetching the content as near as possible. Base on the fluid model, a constrained model is derived to get optimized global distribution performance in the channel-based system with limited relaying resources. The multi-objectives of the model are minimizing the average distribution time and the distribution time of the slowest channel. Genetic algorithm （GA） is designed to solve the optimization problem. The relaying strategy based on GA can be run periodically to update the allocation policy of ISPs. The distribution performance of the relaying strategy is analyzed in the experiments and results show that GA can provide proper solutions for various network topologies.

Internet Load and Traffic Balancing

Load and traffic balancing for the Internet are analyzed. An intelligent domain name system(DNS) policy for the control and management of content distribution n etworks (CDN) is presented. An CDNs network based Unitech IntelliDNS is built, a nd performance of the network in realizing traffic and load balancing is measure d. It is proved that CDNs provide a valuable service and the methods are feasibl e.

Impact of public name resolving services on Akamai

To enhance user perceived performance,Akamai' s content distribution network(CDN) utilizes the domain name system(DNS) effectively to redirect users to close-by content replicas over short time scale.The use of DNS redirection has brought a significant advantage to Akamai' s CDN.However,the reliance on DNS also poses a fundamental threat to Akamai' s content distribution model.In particular,systematic evaluation and quantification illustrates the impact of recent emerging public DNS resolving services on Akamai' s CDN,including the degradation of corresponding user perceived performance and the benefit damnification of collaborating internet services providers(ISPs) that host Akamai's edge servers.The measurement demonstrates that a considerable penetration of public DNS resolving services(e.g.,OpenDNS and GoogleDNS) effectively corrupts the Akamai' s serving model,namely the large-scale server distribution and quick DNS redirection.

The MIP Technology and Its Commercial Application

This article introduces the specifics of the MIP technology involving respectively the case for production of clean gasoline, the case for producing clean gasoline coupled with production of diesel and the case for producing gasoline with increased output of propylene. The performance of the MIP units that were in operation was wrapped up. Test results have shown that the MIP technology is characterized by improved product distribution as evidenced by the reduced yields of dry gas and slurry and the increased total liquid yield; the upgraded product quality as evidenced by the reduced olefin and sulphur contents in gasoline; and the more ideal techno-economic indicators as evidenced by the reduced unit consumption of catalyst and the reduced energy consumption of the process unit.