In the past decade, the emergence of beyond fifth generation (B5G) wireless networks has necessitated the timely updating of system states in Internet of Things (IoT) and cyber-physical systems, where Age of Information (AoI) has been a well-concentrated metric. However, the content-agnostic nature of AoI reflects its limitation of characterizing the significance of status update messages, which induces various variants for AoI including Age of Incorrect Information (AoII).

We present a generalized linear structural causal model, coupled with a novel data-adaptive linear regularization, to recover causal directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) from time series. By leveraging a recently developed stochastic monotone Variational Inequality (VI) formulation, we cast the causal discovery problem as a general convex optimization. Furthermore, we develop a non-asymptotic recovery guarantee and quantifiable uncertainty by solving a linear program to establish confidence intervals for a wide range of non-linear monotone link functions.

In this paper we examine the general problem of determining when to update information that can go out-of-date. Not updating frequently enough results in poor decision making based on stale information. Updating too often results in excessive update costs. We study the tradeoff between having stale information and the cost of updating that information. We use a general model, some versions of which match an idealized version of the Age of Information (AoI) model. We first present the assumptions, and a novel methodology for solving problems of this sort.

We study a pull-based status update communication model where a source node submits update packets to a channel with random transmission delay, at times requested by a remote destination node. The objective is to minimize the average query-age-of-information (QAoI), defined as the average age-of-information (AoI) measured at query instants that occur at the destination side according to a stochastic arrival process.

We consider a semantics-aware communication system, where timeliness is the semantic measure, with a source which maintains the most current version of a file, and a network of $n$ user nodes with the goal to acquire the latest version of the file. The source gets updated with newer file versions as a point process, and forwards them to the user nodes, which further forward them to their neighbors using a memoryless gossip protocol.

We develop a data-driven framework to identify the interconnections between firms using an information-theoretic measure. This measure generalizes Granger causality and is capable of detecting nonlinear relationships within a network. Moreover, we develop an algorithm using recurrent neural networks and the aforementioned measure to identify the interconnections of high-dimensional nonlinear systems. The outcome of this algorithm is the causal graph encoding the interconnections among the firms.

Transverse-read is a novel technique to detect the number of ‘1’s stored in a domain wall memory, also known as racetrack memory, without shifting any domains. Motivated by the technique, we propose a novel scheme to combine transverse-read and shift-operation such that we can reduce the number of shift-operations while still achieving high capacity. We also show that this scheme is helpful to correct errors in domain wall memory. A set of valid-words in this transverse-read channel is called a transverse-read code.

Causal determinism, is deeply ingrained with our ability to understand the physical sciences and their explanatory ambitions. Besides understanding phenomena, identifying causal networks is important for effective policy design in nearly any avenue of interest, be it epidemiology, financial regulation, management of climate, etc. This special issue covers several areas where causal inference research intersects with information theory and machine learning.

To support the fast growth of IoT and cyber physical systems, as well as the advent of 6G, there is a need for communication and networking models that enable more efficient modes for machine-type communications. This calls for a departure from the assumptions of classical communication theoretic problem formulations as well as the traditional network layers. This new paradigm is referred to as goal or task-oriented communication, and is relevant also in part of the emerging area of semantic communications.

Sensing has emerged as a key feature of modern wireless communication systems and networks. Traditionally, advances in the design, optimization and deployment of sensing and communication systems have evolved somewhat independently of each other.