Showing papers by "Bell Labs published in 2022"

PON going beyond FTTH [Invited Tutorial]

Abstract: Time division multiplexing passive optical networks (TDM-PONs) are the most widely deployed optical system solutions in current broadband access networks worldwide. The energy and cost efficiency of both their implementation and operation has reached levels that also make them an attractive option for other cost sensitive communication networks. We discuss how essential features of current TDM-PON specifications can be leveraged to also use them for low latency and high capacity professional services in public and private networks. Also, possible PON architecture evolutions towards added intra-PON communication are outlined that are motivated by the latency requirements of some practical use cases.

Shaping lightwaves in time and frequency for optical fiber communication

Abstract: In optical communications, sphere shaping is used to limit the energy of lightwaves to within a certain value over a period. This minimizes the energy required to contain information, allowing the rate of information transmission to approach the theoretical limit if the transmission medium is linear. However, when shaped lightwaves are transmitted through optical fiber, Kerr nonlinearity manifests itself as nonlinear interference in a peculiar way, potentially lowering communications capacity. In this article, we show that the impact of sphere shaping on Kerr nonlinearity varies with chromatic dispersion, shaping block length and symbol rate, and that this impact can be predicted using a novel statistical measure of light energy. As a practical consequence, by optimally controlling the parameters of sphere-shaped lightwaves, it is experimentally demonstrated that the information rate can be increased by up to 25% in low-dispersion channels on a 2824 km dispersion-managed wavelength-division multiplexed optical fiber link.

Experimental demonstration of flexible information rate PON beyond 100 Gb/s with probabilistic and geometric shaping

Abstract: The application of pairwise probabilistic shaping combined with geometric shaping is investigated for a pulse-amplitude-modulation-based intensity modulated and direct detection (IMDD) system. With probabilistically shaped signals, we experimentally demonstrate the flexible information rate beyond 100 Gb/s in a practical passive optical network (PON) link. Similar to the G.hsp 50 Gb/s PON standard, the PON link assumes the existence of a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), which boosts the transmitter power to achieve a high link budget. While the optimal signal distributions for the IMDD link with a SOA tend to be unipolar distributions, we consider a practical methodology of accommodating forward error correction (FEC) parity bits using pairwise probabilistic distribution. Since pairwise signaling causes performance degradation when the optimal signal would be strongly shaped, we propose to combine geometric shaping (GS) with probabilistic shaping (PS) to overcome the shortcomings of the pairwise signaling. We present experimental demonstrations of the various achievable rate measurements using PS $+$+ GS modulations with flexible FEC assumption. We also propose a novel descrambling-based decoding technique to evaluate the post-FEC performance based on transmission data that is agnostic of the FEC code. The post-FEC performances are then presented using a fixed and practical low-density parity check code.

Biphilic jumping-droplet condensation

Abstract: Jumping-droplet condensation on rough superhydrophobic surfaces exhibits increased heat-transfer rates when compared with dropwise condensation on smooth hydrophobic surfaces. However, the performance of superhydrophobic surfaces is limited by the low individual droplet growth rates associated with their extreme apparent advancing contact angles. Here, we report that biphilic surfaces having smooth, low-surface-energy spots on a superhydrophobic background exhibit a 10× higher jumping-droplet condensation heat-transfer coefficient when compared with homogeneous superhydrophobic surfaces. Our detailed condensation heat-transfer modeling coupled with numerical simulations of binary and coordinated droplet coalescence show that spot wettability should not be optimized toward minimizing droplet nucleation energy barriers. Rather, spot wettability should be optimized to minimize droplet adhesion while maximizing individual droplet growth rates. Model-predicted design optimization of a variety of biphilic surfaces is validated against experiments. Our findings provide design guidelines for biphilic surface development to maximize condensation heat transfer.

Optical Field Characterization using Off-axis Digital Holography

Abstract: Angular resolved digital holography is presented as a technique for real-time characterization of the full optical field (amplitude and phase) of space-division multiplexing components and fibers, here a 6-mode photonic-lantern is characterized.

Electrically Poled Vapor-Deposited Organic Glasses for Integrated Electro-Optics

Abstract: We introduce electrically poled small molecule assemblies that can serve as the active electro-optic material in nano-scale guided-wave circuits such as those of the silicon photonics platform. These monolithic organic materials can be vacuum-deposited to homogeneously fill nanometer-size integrated-optics structures, and electrically poled at higher temperatures to impart an orientational non-centrosymmetric order that remains stable at room temperature. An initial demonstration using the DDMEBT molecule and corona poling delivered a material with the required high optical quality, an effective glass transition temperature of the order of ∼80°C, and an electro-optic coefficient of 20 pm/V.

Design and Deployment of Expressive and Correct Web of Things Applications

Abstract: Consumer Internet of Things (IoT) applications are largely built through end-user programming in the form of event-action rules. Although end-user tools help simplify the building of IoT applicatio...

The utility and limitations of the New Ecological Paradigm scale for children

Abstract: The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale adapted for use with children (NEP-C) is one of the most frequently used measures of children’s environmental beliefs. Though widely utilized, the limitations of the NEP-C instrument are often overlooked. Based on a systematic synthesis of existing literature examining the NEP-C, we argue that the scale assesses specific types of beliefs within the larger NEP, that some children have difficulty comprehending items of this scale, and that the one-factor and three-factor models proposed in the original NEP-C did not achieve an exact fit to empirical data. Additionally, the relevance of the NEP-C total score as a predictor of children’s pro-environmental behaviors is questionable. Although the NEP-C is useful for measuring specific types of environmental beliefs, many researchers using this scale may be interested in broader constructs. We highlight potential benefits and drawbacks of using the NEP-C and discuss new directions for environmental education research.Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2022.2044281 .

Generation and transmission of 160-Gbaud QPSK Coherent Signals using a Dual-Drive Plasmonic-Organic Hybrid I/Q modulator on Silicon Photonics

Abstract: We report on coherent transmission of beyond 100 GBd signaling based on plasmonic technology. Using dual-drive plasmonic-organic-hybrid I/Q modulator on silicon photonics platform, we demonstrate the successful transmission of 160-GBaud QPSK and 140-GBaud 16QAM modulations.

A generalisation of a supercongruence on the truncated appell series

Abstract: Abstract Recently, Lin and Liu [‘Congruences for the truncated Appell series $F_3$ and $F_4$ ’, Integral Transforms Spec. Funct. 31 (1) (2020), 10–17] confirmed a supercongruence on the truncated Appell series $F_3$ . Motivated by their work, we give a generalisation of this supercongruence by establishing a q -supercongruence modulo the fourth power of a cyclotomic polynomial.

Integrated Optical-Wireless Interface and Detection

Abstract: This chapter elaborates on the beneficial aspects and hardware implementations of incorporating ultradense WDM-PONs (UDWDM-PONs) with hybrid optical-wireless fronthaul links and fiber to the home applications. Simulation results on the synthesis of a low-cost and low-energy consumption optoelectronic unit within the future 5G base stations (BS) are presented. In addition, an advanced neural network is investigated capable of compensating for the linear and nonlinear effects induced by semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA).

Applications of Deep Learning to the Design of Enhanced Wireless Communication Systems

Abstract: Innovation in the physical layer of communication systems has traditionally been achieved by breaking down the transceivers into sets of processing blocks, each optimized independently based on mathematical models. Conversely, deep learning (DL)-based systems are able to handle increasingly complex tasks for which no tractable models are available. This thesis aims at comparing different approaches to unlock the full potential of DL in the physical layer. First, we describe a neural network (NN)-based block strategy, where an NN is optimized to replace a block in a communication system. We apply this strategy to introduce a multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) detector that builds on top of an existing DL-based architecture. Second, we detail an end-to-end strategy, in which the transmitter and receiver are modeled as an autoencoder. This approach is illustrated with the design of waveforms that achieve high throughputs while satisfying peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) constraints. Lastly, we propose a hybrid strategy, where multiple DL components are inserted into a traditional architecture but are trained to optimize the end-to-end performance. To demonstrate its benefits, we propose a DL-enhanced MU-MIMO receiver that both enable lower bit error rates (BERs) compared to a conventional receiver and remains scalable to any number of users. Each approach has its own strengths and shortcomings. While the first one is the easiest to implement, its individual block optimization does not ensure the overall system optimality. On the other hand, systems designed with the second approach are computationally complex but allow for new opportunities such as pilotless transmissions. Finally, the combined flexibility and end-to-end performance gains of the third approach motivate its use for short-term practical implementations.

Bridging the Invisible Cultural Gap

Abstract: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” This famous line, from Rudyard Kipling's (1940) The Ballad of East and West, is often quoted to express Westerners’ resignation with the apparently insurmountable barrier between their worldview and that of people of the East. For Kipling and many of his contemporaries, the proverbial “East” is any non-European, nonmodern civilization, from Morocco to China; the “West” is its direct opposite: any modern European or North American culture.This paradigm has persisted into our current era, albeit in different guises. When I lived in Israel, I often heard of the “Arab mentality” as an explanation for actions of our Arab neighbors, which made no sense to us Jewish Israelis. The exact nature of that “Arab mentality” remained a bit vague, and there were always dissenting voices who said that it was merely a convenient excuse to ignore the other side's perspective, which might lead to admitting that “their” point of view had merit as well. Fictional or not, the “Arab mentality” was clearly a cognate of Kipling's East. There are quite a few other designations for both sides of this cultural divide, each with its own overtones and insinuations. For the sake of simplicity, I will use the East and West terminology, despite its geographic inaccuracy and lack of important nuances.The divergence between East and West, examined from the Eastern perspective, often led to the same conclusion as that of the dissenting voices in Israel: that the West was essentially refusing to understand the East, because that would bring into question some of its staunchly held convictions. In Orientalism, Said (1978) argued that Western, colonial prejudices pervaded much of the Western perception of the “Orient” (Said's cognate for Kipling's “East”) long after the political end of colonialism. According to Said, those prejudices were the reason that even “orientalists,” who dedicated their professional lives to the study of the East, failed to truly understand it. As might be expected, this opinion caused a backlash, particularly from the academics whom Said accused of getting it all wrong. Regardless of whether it is asked in the East or the West, the question remains: Does this cultural gap still exist today, and if it does, can it be bridged?According to Ofer Grosbard's aptly named Babel (2020; original Hebrew edition, 2013), the cultural gap still exists, but we are usually oblivious to its presence. Therefore, we are often unaware of our failure to understand people of other cultures, and consequently, we attribute to them intentions and thoughts that never crossed their minds. This is not only a problem of the West; people of Eastern cultures have an equally hard time understanding the motivation and thought process of Westerners. Babel aims to bridge this gap by equipping people with a framework to understand the inherent issues and tools to help communicate effectively across the East–West divide.The state of affairs described by Grosbard may be a sign of remarkable progress; the stark cultural differences experienced by Kipling and his contemporaries have been dwarfed to hardly noticeable nuances. On the other hand, the subtleties dividing us may put us at an even greater disadvantage because we are no longer aware of the difficulties we face in cross-cultural exchanges. If we assume that our interlocutors have the same mores and perspectives as us, we are much more likely to make a cultural faux pas and for that misstep to be treated as an insult instead of a foreigner's social stumble.My personal experience aligns with this insight from Grosbard. I spent much of my career as an engineer in research labs with colleagues from all over the world, where East and West met on a daily basis. Occasionally my colleagues’ behavior baffled me, but it never crossed my mind that this was due to our different cultural backgrounds. Reading the book, I kept recalling past incidents and wondering whether the issue was rooted in fundamental cultural differences, and not in the individual personalities.Babel is the fourth in the Cultural Code series by the same author (previous books: Cracking the Cultural Code, Dialogue—123 Therapeutic Tales From Traditional Societies and Their Resolution, and The Quran for Educating the Child). The first three books stemmed directly from Grosbard's work in Haifa, Israel, as a teacher and mentor of university students studying to become elementary and high school teachers. Many of those students were of the Arab minority and were experiencing the gap between their culture of origin and that of the Jewish majority in two ways. On one hand, higher education was often their first extended encounter with the Jewish Israeli culture. On the other hand, they realized that because of those cultural differences, the pedagogical tools with which they were being equipped were inadequate for use in their Arab hometowns and villages. The previous books in the series deal with the educational and child development aspects of these cross-cultural tensions.While studying these issues, Grosbard developed a theory to describe the cultural gaps between the Arab and Jewish societies in Israel. Babel is an attempt to generalize the insights obtained in the earlier works and apply them to any East–West interaction. Indeed, other studies that compare Eastern and Western cultures have also found profound differences that are often too subtle to notice through casual observation (see, for example, a comparison of Japanese and American college students in R. Nisbett, 2003). Babel distinguishes itself from previous literature on the subject with a rigorous theoretical explanation to the underlying causes of the cultural differences. It then shows how the various aspects of the cultural differences emanate from those causes. Once understood, this theoretical foundation can be put to immediate practical use.According to Grosbard, the difference between Western and Eastern societies was caused by the rapid changes of the modern era, which took place in Western Europe and North America in the last five centuries, with no parallel developments in the East. Eastern societies preserve many of the rigid social structures of premodern societies. In this paradigm, individual decisions—such as whom and when to marry, what profession to choose, where to live, and what to believe—are constrained by hallowed customs and guided by figures of authority such as parents, elders, and leaders. Achieving any personal goal requires the support of the social group, and personal success is often predicated on the group's success. Putting forward one's individuality, talking about one's personal views and feelings, or singling out other members of the group, even for praise, is frowned upon, because it threatens the cohesiveness of the group. People who grow up in such societies view themselves as members of the society first and foremost rather than as separate, independent individuals. Their locus of control is outside, which means that in interaction with others they are much more attuned to the other's needs and expectations. They often expect the people they deal with to show similar interest and care for their own needs. In Eastern societies the interpersonal relationship is an essential prerequisite for any collaboration, and Easterners often presume that the same is true for interactions with Westerners as well.In the West, Grosbard maintains that the individual's locus of control has shifted from the outside to the inside, and individuals are allowed, and in fact expected, to make decisions for themselves and to use their “inner self” to make judgments. Collaboration between individuals relies less on interpersonal relationships and more on external rules that define the role of each side. An individual maintains a level of separateness from the group, which legitimizes some egocentric or narcissistic behavior and allows disagreement to exist without damaging relationships between group members. If the bridges are occasionally burned, the Western familiarity with separateness allows the individual to survive outside the group and perhaps to join another reference group. In the East, the stance of separateness, which is natural for Westerners, is unfamiliar and often perceived as threatening or offensive.Although these East–West differences are deep, their presence may be revealed by slight nuances of speech or behavior. For example, a Westerner may open a sentence with “I am sure that . . . ,” putting the individual speaker front and center, whereas an Easterner would start a similar sentence with “Everyone knows that . . . ,” hiding their individuality and showing deference to the group (“everyone”).According to Grosbard, the shift of the locus of control and the emergence of separateness in the West resulted in a significant change in some basic mental processes. (I prefer “mental processes” over “thinking principles,” the term used in Babel, because of their important emotional and interpersonal aspects). For example, respect and shame are expressions of the way one is viewed by one's group of reference; accordingly, in Eastern societies, gaining respect and avoiding shame are of critical importance. Those primal drives have been internalized in the West and evolved into self-satisfaction and guilt, respectively, which reflect one's assessment of oneself. Thus, living up to the group's expectations is replaced by living up to the standards of one's own inner self.Babel lists a few other mental processes in which the Western locus of control shifted from the outside inward. Some of the most interesting ones relate to the handling of disagreement and the perception of agreement. In a dispute in an Eastern society, one side may resort to authoritativeness (“You should do X”) or invoke a sense of identifying with the other (“Your concern is my concern, so don't worry, together we will take care of it”). Both techniques assume a preexisting relationship and a shared code of conduct that binds both sides, or a bond of mutual care and loyalty. The parallel Western behaviors are assertiveness and empathy, rather than authoritativeness and identification, respectively. “I insist on X” and “I am absolutely certain that” are assertive statements that focus on the “I” and show indifference to the opinion of the other side. “I understand your concerns, but . . . ” shows empathy, which validates the other side's feeling without accepting his position. Both assertiveness and empathy demonstrate the Western separateness, which allows and tolerates open disagreements within the group while perhaps paying a price in reduced loyalty and camaraderie.While digesting these ideas I recalled some exasperating conversations with a former manager of mine. At the time, I felt that I could not get any straight answer from him. I remember saying to a colleague, “There are two words which will never pass this man's lips: ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’” Reflecting on it in light of Grosbard's book, I realize that this might have been an East–West culture gap. That manager hailed from an Eastern country. Although he had spent many years in the West, his circular replies to my questions may have been a technique to subtly disagree with me while avoiding an open confrontation within the team. At the time I thought that his behavior was nothing more than a reflection of that manager's personality, but now that I've read Babel, the cultural barrier explanation seems highly plausible.The last of these psychological differences between East and West that Grosbard explores is in the priority given to social skills versus critical thinking. An Eastern individual is not only more attuned to the minute details of others’ feelings and more adept at manipulating others; that individual also expects the same social attention and interpersonal sophistication from others. Not showing it may be perceived as a deliberate affront. Westerners, on the other hand, tend to rely on logical, impersonal “rules of engagement” and expect others to accept their ideas on their own merits, regardless of personal relationships. They often do not realize that to get their message across to Easterners, they need first and foremost to create a strong personal relationship with the other party.Attempting to present Grosbard's theory here in full would not do it justice. However, it is surprisingly concise. Its principles are fully explained in about eight pages of the Introduction. The rest of the book consists of numerous examples and test cases that flesh out these ideas and show the reader how they play out in real human interaction. Each example is followed by an analysis and a short “textbook solution,” which explains how a different wording or attitude would get the message across the cultural gap. Roughly equal amounts of test cases are dedicated to each direction, West to East and East to West. I found that reading through the test cases is essential for getting a real grasp of Grosbard's theoretical principles.Before getting biased by exposure to the theory and the examples, the reader of Babel is asked to take a “thinking vector direction” test, which determines where one stands in the range between “extremely Western” to “extremely Eastern” (i.e., internal vs. external locus of control, respectively). This should let the reader find where her or his locus of control is vis-à-vis the characters in the test cases. An appendix in Babel presents the considerations used in developing this test as a reliable measure of individualism versus collectivism, robust to the various biases that plagued previous tests, which were based on self-assessment. The test was validated on Arab and Jewish Israeli students attending high school and college, and the results were highly correlated to the ethnic origin (Arab Israelis tended to be more collectivists than Jewish Israelis), with a small but statistically significant correlation to age (individualism increases with age). As expected, the tests show significant variation within each group, but the intergroup differences between Jewish and Arab Israelis are obvious and significant. The test on its own is an important contribution to the research of intercultural differences. However, although the rationale behind it seems plausible and the experimental results are impressive, much more validation work is needed, in different cultures and languages, before it may be considered reliable outside the Israeli context.My thinking vector direction test showed that I am far on the Western end of the scale. Not surprisingly, when I read through the test cases and their analyses, the behavior of the Western characters was easy for me to understand; even if I would not act in the same way, I could easily understand their reasoning and motivations. On the other hand, I had difficulty making sense of the behavior of the Eastern characters, despite Grosbard's lucid explanations. Reflecting on it, I realize that my problem was not intellectual; I could see the premises that underlie the Eastern points of view and the way they led to specific behaviors. My difficulty lay in my internal resistance to the notion that intelligent, well-intentioned people might accept such premises.I suppose that Easterners have similar issues with the Western point of view, and I wonder which of the Western premises is hardest for Easterners to accept. For me, the point that evoked the strongest resistance was the Eastern lax attitude to the truth—the willingness, or even the expectation, to bend the truth in service of social cohesion. Of course, Westerners also spin, misrepresent, fabricate facts, and sometimes outright lie, but there is a general sense that being caught lying is highly undesirable. Therefore, lying while knowing full well that the listener is aware of the lie is rare. In the East, however, one might make a statement that is patently false just to reduce social tension, and the fact that everybody present is aware of the falsehood does not make any difference. For example, one may say, “Everyone knows that the accident was caused by the heavy rain yesterday,” even though yesterday was a clear, sunny day. It took me a long time to realize that whereas for the Westerner the ultimate criterion for “truth” is individual judgment, based on critical analysis of observations, an Easterner would prioritize the social impact of the conclusion, and his or her ultimate criterion for truth would be the opinion of the group. When the group reaches a consensus, this becomes the truth, and it is as compelling as the factual analysis is for the Westerner. As Grosbard emphasizes, in an Eastern society, the absolute truth has a much lower survival value than the social relations in the group and therefore it is much less compelling.In addition to their didactic purpose, the test cases in Babel are intended to demonstrate the validity of Grosbard's theory. Therefore, they must depict real-life interactions among actual Westerners and Easterners. This methodological challenge is addressed in Babel in an interesting way: All the examples are taken from political negotiations between Israel, its Arabic neighbors, and Palestinian organizations, often with American or European mediation. The descriptions of the test cases are based on meeting protocols and memoirs of the participants. The Israelis, Americans, and Europeans are generally considered to be the Westerners, and the Arab delegates represent the “East.” From an anthropological point of view, this is a refreshing change: Babel examines interactions that are of extreme importance to all sides, where everyone tries to use his or her mental and emotional skills as best they can to achieve the desired outcome.However, unlike classical anthropological studies, in the case of Babel there is a serious difficulty in the correct labeling of the subjects. The empirical basis for it is the results of the Thinking Vector Direction test, which showed significant differences between Jewish and Arab Israelis. Generalizing these results to Arabs from other countries on one hand, and to European and Americans on the other hand, is a hypothesis that may be plausible but is not confirmed. Furthermore, one wonders whether those seasoned statesmen and diplomats are good representatives for their respective populations. Most of the participants had significant experience in negotiating with people from all over the world; many of the Arab participants were educated in leading Western institutions, and because nearly half of Israeli Jews descended from immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa (which are East, in Grosbard's classification), the Israelis may not have similar Thinking Vector Direction scores as the American and European participants.Despite these caveats, Grosbard made a compelling case that the negotiators’ behavior was profoundly influenced by their culture of origin and that they often made the mistake of assuming that the people across the table thought and acted in a similar way to them. Grosbard points out the many shades of gray in this picture: There were notable differences between the members of each delegation, which is consistent with the intracultural differences in the Thinking Vector Direction Test, and some participants learned over time what they might expect from their colleagues on the other side and how to interpret their behaviors. Being a fly on the wall in those negotiations can be riveting, and it makes the wading through dozens and dozens of test cases an enjoyable experience. However, at a first reading one can easily miss the difference between a person's inherent locus of control and one's ability to adjust one's behavior to match the locus of control of another person. For example, Jimmy Carter, the president of the United States, was a clear Westerner, described by Z. Brzezinski, his national security advisor, as “highly controlled, precise . . . with a computer-like mind.” Nonetheless, Carter cultivated a close, familial relationship with Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, and when necessary he leveraged that relationship to manipulate Sadat emotionally to his advantage, in a typical Eastern style. This distinction between personality traits and learned behavior is at the heart of Babel, because the goal of the book is not to change the reader's personality but to make the reader capable of understanding and interacting with people from different cultures on their terms.Grosbard does not explore the reasons for the deep change in people's locus of control in the West. However, a reflection on the history of modernity brings to mind an array of movements in philosophy, religion, art, science, politics, and economy, which all drew attention to the individual and his or her rights, experiences, thoughts, and uniqueness. In fact, many of those movements idealized individual initiatives and adopted individuals who stood against commonly held views as role models. It is easy to see how those sweeping changes made individuality acceptable and even desirable in the West. Babel suggests, based on anecdotal evidence, that the developmental differentiation between East and West begins at a very young age and is continuously reinforced by parents and other influential figures throughout childhood and adolescence. This process is intriguing because a thorough understanding of it might suggest ways to bring up children who are better equipped to communicate across the East–West gap while keeping their native cultural affinity (Grosbard addresses these issues in his earlier books).In Babel, Grosbard has a very clear purpose, helping people successfully communicate and interact across the East–West gap, and he stays within the confines of this goal. Almost incidentally, however, he introduces a novel theory of personality structure that might have ramifications beyond the book's original scope. For example, in the explanation of how the locus of control shifts from the outside inward, transforming respect and shame into self-appreciation and guilt, respectively, the book conjectures that the child internalizes the influence of figures of importance and represents them with mental abstractions: general impersonal rules that guide one's thinking and attitude. This model is quite similar to the Freudian explanation of the development of the superego by generating internal representations of figures of authority, which take lives of their own, independent of the real persons who inspired their creation. This similarity raises a question: Is the Freudian personality model, or any more modern theory that aims to replace it, truly universal, or is it also culture specific? And if personality models are culture specific, how should the therapeutic practices based on them be modified when applied in different cultural contexts?Accepting Grosbard's theory may have a sobering effect on the hopes for progress in various fields in both the East and the West. Establishing democracies in “highly Eastern” countries may take much more than deposing dictators and holding free elections; it may require a change of the personality structure of the citizens, to enable them to openly disagree without destroying the social bonds that hold them together. On the other, alienation and loneliness, even in densely populated cities, are known maladies of the West, which are often explained by sociological causes such as migration, economical gaps, or fear of crime. However, if as Babel suggests, Westerners have underdeveloped social skills and less inclination to develop deep social connections, then an important reason for modern loneliness may be psychological, having to do with Western personality traits.It is fascinating to see how the perception of the East–West chasm evolved with the changing political reality. At the peak of the colonial era, Kipling viewed that gap as unbridgeable (actually, the Ballad suggested that it might be bridged if the East gave up its unique identity and became “westernized”). T. E. Lawrence (popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia), who lived at the verge of the crumbling of the colonial system, rightfully believed that he had found a way to effectively communicate with the East—in his case the Bedu of Hejaz (Seven Pillars of Wisdom,2004). Lawrence was fully aware of the vast distance between the European and the Bedu way of thinking, but he explained that “their minds work just as ours do, but on different premises. There is nothing unreasonable, incomprehensible, or inscrutable in the Arab” (27 Articles,1917/2017). When political colonialism had ended but was still fresh in memory, Said argued that those differences between East and West were essentially a fiction, resulting from Western prejudices. These days, we have reached the opposite pole, with people like Grosbard and Nesbitt finding that the differences between East and West, though often hardly perceptible, are very real and consequential.Is Babel useful in our day and age? Would it be helpful to a businessman who tries to close an international deal or to a scholar who wants to establish a collaboration with overseas colleagues? Judging by the insights I gained from it, these readers and many others would find Babel invaluable for recognizing, understanding, and avoiding the hidden pitfalls of cultural differences.

Analisi dell'influenza della tipologia di sorgente luminosa sulle performance di processo di un foto-bioreattore algale

Abstract: Le recenti emissioni dei gas climalteranti in atmosfera, causa dell’attività antropica, rappresentano la prima causa del riscaldamento globale. Uno dei principali gas serra (GHG) è l’anidride carbonica (CO2), la quale viene prodotta principalmente dai processi di combustione dei combustibili fossili . Risulta indispensabile, dunque, definire nuove soluzioni per la riduzione dei livelli di gas climalteranti in atmosfera. Si necessita di soluzioni innovative in grado di rispondere alla richiesta di tecnologie green per la riduzione delle emissioni di gas climalteranti in atmosfera, secondo un metodo di cattura e riutilizzo della CO2 denominato Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU). In particolare, l’attività condotta ha consentito di analizzare ed ottimizzare le prestazioni di un innovativo bioreattore algale (SEED mPBR), brevettato dal gruppo di ricerca del SEED, studiando e confrontando due sistemi di illuminazione. I risultati ottenuti sono stati confrontati in termini di efficienza di cattura della CO2, produzione di biomassa valorizzabile e caratteristiche qualitative della biomassa prodotta.

Activity Analytics from Fixed Cameras for Robot Path Planning

Abstract: <p> Abstract— Although mobile robots have on-board sensors to perform navigation, path planning can benefit from fixed, or infrastructure, cameras that capture activity analytics continuously and from non-robot perspectives. We describe an approach that collects statistics of motion that repeat at some period (usually a day) and perform path planning to avoid expected activity in time and space The same statistics are used to learn preferred human paths and plan robot paths on these at times of low human activity. Temporal filtering is performed in cascade to efficiently extract long- and short-term activity in two time dimensions (isochronal and chronological) for use in global and local path planning. We compare our lightweight activity detection approach to neural network object detection methods and propose an activity-gated approach that combines activity and object detection efficiently. We deployed our approach in the ROS robot software development framework by augmenting the cost map of static objects with dynamic regions determined from activity. We describe benefits and constraints of this combination. </p>

Modulation and Equalization Techniques for mmWaveARoF

Abstract: Fifth generation (5G) is the emerging mobile communications platform that aims to meet the market requirements in terms of enhanced broadband connectivity based on harnessing small cell and mmWave technology. These two in synergy will provide high capacity gain not only through the hyperdense deployment of small cell but also through accessing large swathes of untapped spectrum at mmWave frequencies. The envisaged architecture entails an integrated optical wireless network architecture, where optical technology will complement radio in order to handle the new demands on capacity over the backhaul and fronthaul network, leading to the notion of analog radio over fiber (ARoF). The goal of this chapter is to provide novel approaches to optimize the performances of mmWave ARoF systems that includes developing enabling technology from a digital to signal processing (DSP) and device perspective.

Power Saving Techniques in 3GPP 5G New Radio: A Comprehensive Latency and Reliability Analysis

Abstract: Energy efficiency is critical for future sustainable cellular systems. Power saving optimization has been a key part of the fifth generation (5G) new radio specifications. For 5Gadvanced and future 6G, with the anticipation of a trillion internet of things (IoTs) devices with non-rechargeable or low-density batteries, device power efficiency is rather essential. There are numerous contributions from industry and academia which present the potential power saving gains of the various 5G power saving techniques; however, there is a lack of art on the performance cost paid to achieve such power saving gains. Therefore, this paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of the radio latency and reliability cost, which is lost due to a certain 5G new radio power saving feature. A thorough review of the state of-the-art 5G power saving techniques is introduced. Extensive system level simulations are performed to evaluate the latency and reliability cost of the considered power saving features. The paper offers valuable recommendations for supporting power efficient latency-critical traffic for beyond 5G-advanced systems.