JWST has ushered in an era of unprecedented ability to characterize exoplanetary atmospheres. While there are over 5000 confirmed planets, more than 4000 Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) planet candidates are still unconfirmed and many of the best planets for atmospheric characterization may remain to be identified. We present a sample of TESS planets and planet candidates that we identify as “best-in-class” for transmission and emission spectroscopy with JWST. These targets are sorted into bins across equilibrium temperature T _eq and planetary radius R _p and are ranked by a transmission and an emission spectroscopy metric (TSM and ESM, respectively) within each bin. We perform cuts for expected signal size and stellar brightness to remove suboptimal targets for JWST. Of the 194 targets in the resulting sample, 103 are unconfirmed TESS planet candidates, also known as TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs). We perform vetting and statistical validation analyses on these 103 targets to determine which are likely planets and which are likely false positives, incorporating ground-based follow-up from the TESS Follow-up Observation Program to aid the vetting and validation process. We statistically validate 18 TOIs, marginally validate 31 TOIs to varying levels of confidence, deem 29 TOIs likely false positives, and leave the dispositions for four TOIs as inconclusive. Twenty-one of the 103 TOIs were confirmed independently over the course of our analysis. We intend for this work to serve as a community resource and motivate formal confirmation and mass measurements of each validated planet. We encourage more detailed analysis of individual targets by the community.

The short latency required by IoT devices that need to access specific services have led to the development of Fog architectures that can serve as a useful intermediary between IoT systems and the Cloud. However, the massive numbers of IoT devices that are being deployed raise concerns about the power consumption of such systems as the number of IoT devices and Fog servers increase. Thus, in this paper, we describe a software-defined network (SDN)-based control scheme for client–server interaction that constantly measures ongoing client–server response times and estimates network power consumption, in order to select connection paths that minimize a composite goal function, including both QoS and power consumption. The approach using reinforcement learning with neural networks has been implemented in a test-bed and is detailed in this paper. Experiments are presented that show the effectiveness of our proposed system in the presence of a time-varying workload of client-to-service requests, resulting in a reduction of power consumption of approximately 15% for an average response time increase of under 2%.

Personal identification using analysis of the internal and external characteristics of the human finger is currently an intensively developed topic. The work in this field concerns new methods of feature extraction and image analysis, mainly using modern artificial intelligence algorithms. However, the quality of the data and the way in which it is obtained determines equally the effectiveness of identification. In this article, we present a novel device for extracting vision data from the internal as well as external structures of the human finger. We use spatially selective backlight consisting of NIR diodes of three wavelengths. The fast image acquisition allows for insight into the pulse waveform. Thanks to the external illuminator, images of the skin folds of the finger are acquired as well. This rich collection of images is expected to significantly enhance identification capabilities using existing and future classic and AI-based computer vision techniques. Sample data from our device, before and after data processing, have been shared in a publicly available database.

Knock in spark ignition (SI) engines is an undesired spontaneous auto-ignition of the unburned gas mixture, causing high combustion pressure pulses associated with vibration of the engine block. Knocking combustion limits performance, durability and produce more pollutants. In the paper the author proposes a fast knock detection method based on wavelet transform

This article introduces an innovative meteor detection system that integrates high-speed photodiode detectors with traditional camera-based systems. The system employs four photodiodes to record changes in sky brightness at 100 Hz, enabling meteor detection and the observation of their dynamics. This technology serves as a valuable complement to existing imaging techniques, offering a cost-effective solution for measuring meteor ablation at frequencies beyond the capabilities of camera-based systems. We showcase findings from the Perseid meteor shower, demonstrating the potential of our system. Moreover, our system addresses the current limitations in meteor radiometry, where many existing instruments either remain in developmental stages or have not been validated with a substantial number of confirmed meteor events. Our approach successfully addresses these limitations, demonstrating effectiveness across multiple meteor events simultaneously recorded on video.