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Mobile UAV Eavesdropper Position Tracking for Improving Physical Layer Security in 6G Networks
Get PDFpeer reviewedThis paper investigates the secrecy performance of recon-figurable intelligent surfaces (RISs)-unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)within a 6G communication system. Specifically, a base station employ-ing rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) transmits both common andprivate messages to Internet of Things (IoT) devices (IDs) via a UAV re-lay (UR). Additionally, a mobile UAV eavesdropper (UE) is considered,capable of moving to intercept signals relayed by the UR. Therefore, weaddress the challenge of mobile UE position tracking to enhance physicallayer security (PLS). We propose a framework that integrates real-timeUE tracking using a particle filter (PF), a sequential Monte Carlo, forestimating the UE’s state. By continuously updating the UE location es-timates, the considered system enables a proactive security measure, suchas friendly jammers, to minimize the risk of intercepted communications.Simulation results demonstrate that accurate UE tracking significantlyimproves secrecy capacity and reduces the likelihood of successful eaves-dropping
The Court of Justice's interaction with the EU legislature in interpreting and applying primary law
No full textThe thesis addresses the following question: what is the Court of Justice’s interaction with the EU legislature in interpreting and applying primary law? At first sight, the answer appears rather straightforward. EU legislation is hierarchically subordinate to EU primary law. All the primary law sources – the Treaties, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and so on – constitute, according to the Court’s own words, the ‘constitutional framework’ of the Union. The EU legal order thus possesses a clear normative hierarchy similar to national legal systems, where legislative norms appear subservient to the constitutional norms. In addition, the Court of Justice has been vested by the Treaties with a monopoly to safeguard this hierarchy within the EU legal order, having exclusive jurisdiction to annul EU legislation for violating EU primary law. Therefore, the seemingly straightforward answer to the question posed by the thesis is that the Court of Justice is virtually omnipotent in its interaction with the EU legislature as regards the interpretation and application of primary law.
Nonetheless, even though the Treaties confer on the Court the role to scrutinise the acts of the EU legislature for their compliance with primary law, they are silent on the degree of that scrutiny. Several scholars have already advanced convincing arguments on why the Court should in principle respect the choices of the EU legislature. While, however, this normative argument on how the Court should interact with the EU legislature has been thoroughly articulated in the literature, the same cannot be said of the descriptive assessment of how this interaction has actually unfolded in the Court’s case-law.
The thesis seeks to provide a critical and as comprehensive as possible descriptive analysis of the Court’s case-law. It does so by examining six types of interaction between the Court and the EU legislature in the Court’s case-law: first, the discretion afforded by the Court to the EU legislature when reviewing the validity of EU legislation for its compliance with primary law; second, the Court’s interpretation of EU legislation in the light of primary law, with particular emphasis on cases in which the Court disregards the clear wording of a legislative provision – or, more broadly, the will of the EU legislature – in order to ‘reconcile’ its meaning with primary law; third, the Court’s interpretation and application of primary law in the absence of EU legislation and, in particular, whether the Court takes account of the will of the EU legislature as reflected in the broader legislative framework or in its resistance to Commission’s legislative proposals; fourth, the EU legislature’s power to revise its own assessments by amending legislation, even where that legislation has previously been interpreted and applied by the Court in light of primary law; and fifth, the EU legislature’s power to depart from earlier standalone interpretations of the Court on primary law. These five types of interaction are particularly examined in the fields of internal market integration, fundamental rights protection, EU citizens’ rights and direct taxation.
The main conclusion of the thesis is that the Court’s interaction with the EU legislature is more deferential than what has been generally perceived in the literature
Effectiveness of Self-Help plus and problem management plus interventions in providing psychological support to clients of Opioid Agonist treatment programs in Ukraine
Get PDFpeer reviewedBackground
The paper presents an effectiveness study of two World Health Organization (WHO) scalable psychological interventions, Self-Help Plus (SH+) and Problem Management Plus (PM+), for the patients of the Opioid Agonist Treatment (OAT) programs in Ukraine during wartime.
Method
The study (pragmatic trial) was designed as an experiment with two intervention groups (for SH+ and PM+) and one control group (waiting list). The GAD-7, PHQ-9, LEC-5, and PCL-5 scales were used for the outcomes’ screening three times (before, immediately after, and three months after the intervention). In addition, the number of missed visits on-site for medication in the last month was counted, and dose satisfaction was assessed. Data were collected from April to October 2023 (during the second year of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine) at OAT centers in Lviv, Sumy, and Vinnytsia.
Results
Both interventions showed promising improvements in mental health outcomes within their groups, though no statistically significant differences were observed between intervention and control groups. The SH+ showed additional benefits, a decrease in missed medication doses, and a reduction in PTSD and depression symptoms.
Conclusions
The findings demonstrate the potential for scalable psychological interventions to be integrated into OAT programs to address the dual challenges of mental health and OAT adherence in resource-limited and crisis-affected settings.3. Good health and well-bein
AoI-Aware Intelligent Platform for Energy and Rate Management in Multi-UAV Multi-RIS System
Get PDFpeer reviewedRecently, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have demonstrated exemplary performance in various scenarios, such as search and rescue, smart city services, and disaster response applications. UAVs can facilitate wireless power transfer (WPT), resource offloading, and data collection from ground IoT devices. However, employing UAVs for such applications poses several challenges, including limited flight duration, constrained energy resources, and the age of information of the data collected. To address these challenges, we employ a UAV swarm to maximize energy harvesting (EH) and data rates for IoT devices by optimizing UAV paths and integrating reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) technology. We tackle critical constraints, including UAV energy consumption, flight duration, and data collection deadlines, by formulating an optimization problem to find optimal UAV paths and RIS phase shifts. Given the complexity of the problem, its combinatorial nature, and the challenges of obtaining an optimal solution through conventional optimization methods, we decompose the problem into two sub-problems, employing deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to optimize EH and particle swarm optimization (PSO) to optimize RIS phase shifts. Our extensive simulations show that the proposed solution outperforms competitive algorithms, including Brute-Force-PSO, AC-PSO, and PPO-PSO algorithms, providing a robust solution for modern IoT applications
Leveraging V2X for Collaborative HD Maps Construction Using Scene Graph Generation
Get PDFpeer reviewedHigh-Definition (HD) maps play a crucial role in autonomous vehicle navigation, complementing onboard perception sensors for improved accuracy and safety. Traditional HD map generation relies on dedicated mapping vehicles, which are costly and fail to capture real-time infrastructure changes. This paper presents HDMapLaneNet, a novel framework leveraging V2X communication and Scene Graph Generation to collaboratively construct a localized geometric layer of HD maps. The approach extracts lane centerlines from front-facing camera images, represents them as graphs, and transmits the data for global aggregation to the cloud via V2X. Preliminary results on the nuScenes dataset demonstrate superior association prediction performance compared to STSU as a state-of-the-art baseline method
Coupled multi-physics modeling of spatio-temporal behavior of embankment subjected to freeze-thaw cycles considering layered construction phases
No full textpeer reviewedClimate change and the increasing frequency of extreme climatic conditions have profound implications for geostructures, significantly altering their stability, durability, and long-term performance. Therefore, this study is focused on a fully coupled multi-physics modeling of a layered embankment subjected to freeze-thaw (FT) cycles. The model incorporates a thermo-elasto-plastic constitutive framework to effectively capture the irreversible deformations of the embankment, leading to its progressive failure. The embankment was modeled to investigate deformation, pore water pressure dynamics, and pore structure evolution during construction and FT cycles. The results reveal critical mechanisms governing the long-term performance of earth structures in cold regions. Notably, heterogeneous deformation patterns, stress redistribution, and localized accumulation of ice pressure lead to progressive instability risks. During FT cycles, frost heave and thaw settlement resulted in the greatest vertical deformation occurring at the crest edge and the center of the slope. Subsurface layers exhibited delayed responses with reduced magnitudes, driven by indirect thermal effects and stress redistribution due to the expansion in the freezing front. Pore water pressure dynamics demonstrated spatial variability, with pronounced fluctuations in upper layers and significant negative pressures in subsurface layers due to water migration and dissipation. The findings further highlight that hysteresis in permeability-ice saturation loops indicated irreversible structural changes, posing long-term stability risks. In particular, the permeability in the centre of the slope was found to increase by more than 1.5 times during successive FT cycles. These findings contribute to the broader understanding of climate-resilient geotechnical infrastructure design and maintenance strategies in seasonally frozen regions
Pinching Antenna Systems Versus Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces in mmWave
Get PDFpeer reviewedFlexible and intelligent antenna designs, such as pinching antenna systems and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), have gained extensive research attention due to their potential to enhance the wireless channels. This letter, for the first time, presents a comparative study between the emerging pinching antenna systems and RIS in millimeter wave (mmWave) bands. Our results reveal that RIS requires an extremely large number of elements (in the order of 104) to outperform pinching antenna systems in terms of spectral efficiency, which severely impact the energy efficiency performance of RIS. Moreover, pinching antenna systems demonstrate greater robustness against hardware impairments and severe path loss typically encountered in high-frequency mmWave bands
Digital engagement and youth: a scoping review of opportunities, risks, and the role of socioeconomic resources
Get PDFpeer reviewedThe rapid expansion of digital technologies has created both opportunities and risks for young people. Previous research shows that their digital engagement is often driven by educational or informational needs, social interaction, and entertainment. However, many practitioners and scholars warn of youth-specific risks. Moreover, pre-existing socioeconomic advantages shape not only access but also young people’s digital motivation, mastery, and patterns of engagement. Adopting an inclusive approach that encompasses a wide range of methodologies, we conduct a scoping review to explore the impact of digital engagement on young people's life outcomes, with a particular focus on the role of socioeconomic resources. We selected relevant studies from a systematic search of the Web of Science, PsycINFO, and the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences. We then categorized the empirical evidence based on its relevance to our topic and analyzed each study's results, determining whether it showed benefit or harm based on the observed direction of the effect. Findings from 57 empirical studies suggest that digital activities are not inherently harmful or beneficial but depend on the specific task in focus and the domain of life outcomes considered. While digital engagement tends to have a positive impact on academic outcomes, its effects on wellbeing are mixed. Socioeconomic resources generally give young people an additional advantage in using digital devices and activities for more positive life outcomes and in balancing online opportunities and risks. However, more research is needed to analyze the channels through which this advantage is realized
Jammer Detection in Multicell Massive MIMO with Correlated Rician Channels
Get PDFpeer reviewedThis paper introduces an N-PSK-based jammer
detection scheme for multicell multiuser Massive MIMO systems
in spatially correlated Rician fading. Utilizing Least Squares (LS)
channel estimation for its efficiency, the scheme targets covert
jamming that contaminates pilot signals. We derive analytical
expressions for detection probability, accounting for pilot contamination,
spatial correlation, and multiple jammers. System
reliability under jamming is further assessed via uplink spectral
efficiency (UL SE) and outage probability. Numerical results
validate high detection probabilities, even with closely spaced
angles of arrival or multiple jammers, underscoring the scheme’s
effectiveness for robust security in 5G and 6G communications