Abstract
The advanced and widespread use of microfluidic devices, which are usually fabricated in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), requires the integration of many sensors, always compatible with microfluidic fabrication processes. Moreover, current limitations of the existing optical and electrochemical oxygen sensors regarding long-term stability due to sensor degradation, biofouling, fabrication processes and cost have led to the development of new approaches. Thus, this manuscript reports the development, fabrication and characterization of a low-cost and highly sensitive dissolved oxygen optical sensor based on a membrane of PDMS doped with platinum octaethylporphyrin (PtOEP) film, fabricated using standard microfluidic materials and processes. The excellent mechanical and chemical properties (high permeability to oxygen, anti-biofouling characteristics) of PDMS result in membranes with superior sensitivity compared with other matrix materials. The wide use of PtOEP in sensing applications, due to its advantage of being easily synthesized using microtechnologies, its strong phosphorescence at room temperature with a quantum yield close to 50%, its excellent Strokes Shift as well as its relatively long lifetime (75 mu s), provide the suitable conditions for the development of a miniaturized luminescence optical oxygen sensor allowing long-term applications. The influence of the PDMS film thickness (0.1-2.5 mm) and the PtOEP concentration (363, 545, 727 ppm) in luminescent properties are presented. This enables to achieve low detection levels in a gas media range from 0.5% up to 20%, and in liquid media from 0.5 mg/L up to 3.3 mg/L at 1 atm, 25 degrees C. As a result, we propose a simple and cost-effective system based on a LED membrane photodiode system to detect low oxygen concentrations for in situ applications.

Abstract

Abstract

Abstract
Aerial networks, composed of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) acting as Wi-Fi access points or cellular base stations, are emerging as an interesting solution to provide on-demand wireless connectivity to users, when there is no network infrastructure available, or to enhance the network capacity. This article proposes a traffic aware topology control solution for aerial networks that holistically combines the placement of UAVs with a predictive and centralized routing protocol. The synergy created by the combination of the UAV placement and routing solutions allows the aerial network to seamlessly update its topology according to the users' traffic demand, whilst minimizing the disruption caused by the movement of the UAVs. As a result, the Quality of Service (QoS) provided to the users is improved. The components of the proposed solution are described and evaluated in this article by means of simulation and an experimental testbed. The results show that the QoS provided to the users is significantly improved when compared to the corresponding baseline solutions.

Abstract
Extreme and rare events, such as spikes in air pollution or abnormal weather conditions, can have serious repercussions. Many of these sorts of events develop through spatio-temporal processes. Timely and accurate predictions are a most valuable tool in addressing their impact. We propose a new set of resampling strategies for imbalanced spatio-temporal forecasting tasks, which introduce bias into formerly random processes. This bias is a combination of a spatial and a temporal weight, which can be either static or relevance-aware, and includes a hyper-parameter that regulates the relative importance of the temporal and spatial dimensions in the selection of observations during under- or over-sampling. We test and compare our proposals against standard versions of the strategies on 10 different geo-referenced numeric time series, using 3 distinct off-the-shelf learning algorithms. Experimental results show that our proposals provide an advantage over random resampling strategies in imbalanced numerical spatio-temporal forecasting tasks.

Abstract
MPC-in-the-Head (MitH) is a general framework that enables constructing efficient zero-knowledge (ZK) protocols for NP relations from secure multiparty computation (MPC) protocols. In this paper we present the first machine-checked implementations of MitH. We begin with an EasyCrypt formalization that preserves the modular structure of the original construction and can be instantiated with arbitrary MPC protocols, and secret sharing and commitment schemes satisfying standard notions of security. We then formalize various suitable components, which we use to obtain full-fledged ZK protocols for general relations. We compare two approaches for obtaining verified executable implementations. The first uses a fully automated extraction from EasyCrypt to OCaml. The second reduces the trusted computing base (TCB) and provides better performance by combining code extraction with formally verified manual low-level components implemented in the Jasmin language. We conclude with a discussion of the trade-off between the formal verification effort and the performance of resulting executables, and how our approach opens the way for fully verified implementations of state-of the-art optimized protocols based on MitH.